Plessy v Ferguson –Supreme Court Justices, 1896

Establishes the “Separate but Equal” doctrine.

Challenged the Separate Car Act of 1890 which imposed a, “…fine of $25 or Twenty days in Jail” for violation of its mandate.

Homer Plessy, 1863 – 1925

“Octoroon”: 7/8 White; 1/8 Black

…the Citizens' Committee of New Orleans (Comité des Citoyens) recruited Plessy to violate Louisiana's 1890 separate-car law. To pose a clear test, the Citizens' Committee gave advance notice of Plessy's intent to the railroad, which had opposed the law because it required adding more cars to its trains

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket for the commuter train that ran to Covington, sat down in the car for white riders only and the conductor asked whether he was a colored man, Medley said. The committee also hired a private detective with arrest powers to take Plessy off the train at Press and Royal streets, to ensure that he was charged with violating the state's separate-car law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Plessy

Justice John Marshall Harlan

Delivers lone dissenting opinion

“I am of opinion that the statute of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that State, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several States of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law would, it is true, have disappeared from our country, but there would remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens now constituting a part of the political community called the [163 U.S. 564] People of the United States, for whom and by whom, through representatives, our government is administered.”

13th Amendment

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

14th Amendment

The amendment provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) which had excluded slaves and their descendants from possessing Constitutional rights. The amendment requires states to provide equal protection under the law to all people within their jurisdictions and was used in the mid-20th century to dismantle racial segregation in the United States, as in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Its Due Process Clause has been used to apply most of the Bill of Rights to the states.

Children of Sharecroppers, Turn of the Century

The Great Migration

• From the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, roughly 91% of African Americans live in South.

• Between 1915 and 1920, five years, between 500,000 and

1, 000,000 blacks leave rural south for urban North.

• Between 1915 and 1970 over Six Million migrate north.

• Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington D.C., experience biggest gains.

Lecture: Hubert Harrison

Clip: International Workers of the World

Clip 2: IWW

Clip: The Communist Manifesto

Socialism and Communism• 1877, Socialist Labor Party formed• 1897, Socialist Democratic Party• 1901, Socialist Party of America• 1905, Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies)• 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, 1920

– Socialist parties run candidates for President• 1912, Eugene V. Debs receives 900,000 or 6% of popular

vote.• 1912, Thirty-Three cities have socialist mayors.• 1917, U.S. Government passes the Espionage Act• 1918, passage of the Sedition Act.

– More than 100 Wobblies convicted in Chicago for opposing the war.

– Eugene Debs receives a 20 year sentence for encouraging people to resist the draft (later pardoned by President Taft)

• 1919, left abandons Socialist Party to form the Communist and Communist Labor Parties. They unite in 1923

• 1919, “Red Scare” U.S. Department of Justice begins keeping files on “radicals.

– 249 leftists, including Anarchist Emma Goldman, deported to Russia without a hearing.

• 1920, New York Legislature expels five duly elected Socialist members.

• 1921, conviction and execution of Italian Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti

The White League

The “Military Arm” of the Democratic Party

Founded in 1874

Operated openly, not a “secret society”

Responsible for the “Coushatta Massacre” of 1874.

The Knights of the White Camelia

Formed in 1867

Affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan

An underground organization

Composed of elite, wealthy members of the Democratic Party: physicians, newspaper editors, doctors, and officers of the “peace.”

Mississippi Klansmen arrested by federal authorities in 1871 for the attempted murder of an entire family.

Minneapolis, 1882

Like most of the Slides that follow in this presentation, the above image is taken from the exhibition Without sanctuary ─ a collection of lynching postcards from the late 19th and early 20th century. Although there were no prosecutions for these crimes, the postcards were sent

through the United States Postal Service.

Stereograph of the burnt and partially skinned

corpses of Ami "Whit" Ketchum and Luther H. Mitchell. December 10, 1878, Calloway, Custer

County, Nebraska.

Front Back

George Meadows, his body hanging from a hardwood tree.

January 15, 1889, Pratt Mines, Alabama

Postcard of Lynching scene -- Clanton, Alabama, 1891.

Think about the power of the gaze and the act of witnessing.

Lynching was often a performance of power and place.

A spectacle.

Who is behind the camera?

Notice the age, gender and class of the “audience.”

Ida B. Wells• 1862, born in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

– Educator, Activist, Writer

• 1878, begins teaching

• 1889, buys 1/3 interest in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. Later becomes editor

• 1890s, founding member of the: National Black Women’s Club Movement

• 1892, begins four decade campaign against Lynching.

• 1909, one of original founders of NAACP

• 1910, catalyzes the founding of the:Negro Fellowship League, designed to help black migrant workers in Chicago with Housing, recreation, literacy and employment.

Postcard from first Postcard from first decade of the centurydecade of the century

Four photographs of the lynching of an unidentified African American male in a coastal Georgia swamp. 1902

The corpses of five African American males, Nease

Gillepsie, John Gillepsie, "Jack" Dillingham, Henry Lee, and

George Irwin with onlookers. 

August 6, 1906.  Salisbury, North Carolina.

The lynching of Dick Robinson and a man named Thompson. October 6, 1906, Pritchard Station, Alabama.

The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 was a mass civil disturbance in Springfield, Illinois, USA sparked by the transfer of two African American prisoners out of the city jail by the county sheriff. This act enraged many white citizens, who responded by burning black-owned homes and businesses and killing black citizens. By the end of the riot, there were at least seven deaths and $200,000 in property damage. The riot led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

A residential black neighborhood was burned to the ground in Springfield, Ill., during race riots in 1908 that required 4,000 state militiamen to quell. Many white residents of the city still object to commemorating past race riots.

burned houses Springfield, Illinois, burned houses Springfield, Illinois, 19081908

destroyed black businesses, destroyed black businesses, Springfield, Illinois, 1908Springfield, Illinois, 1908

The lynching of Will James.

Lynching as public SPECTACLE.  Commercial Avenue jammed with spectators below the electrically lit Hustler's Arch. November 11, 1909, Cairo, Illinois.

Although lynching is often thought of as a crime against individuals, they violence impacted entire communities, both black and white.

Allen Brooks hanging from Elk's Arch, surrounded by spectators.  

Printed inscription on border, "LYNCHING SCENE, DALLAS, MARCH 3, 1910".   Penciled inscription on border:

"All OK and would like to get a post from you. Bill, This was some Raw Bunch."

Laura Nelson

OklahomaOklahoma

19111911

Male victimMale victim

OklahomaOklahoma

19111911

Joseph Richardson, damaged shoeshine stand. September 26, 1913

Leitchfield Kentucky

Lynching of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas, 1916Lynching of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas, 1916

““This is the barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a This is the barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe [Myers].”cross over it. Your son, Joe [Myers].”

← ← 10 cent 10 cent Postcard Postcard

WEB Dubois

“…being a problem is a strange experience – peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first burst upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards – ten cents a package – and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, -- refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.”

Souls of Black Folk, 1903

Race Riots of 1917

• East St. Louis, July 2, 1917– Officially 40 but as many as 200 blacks killed and 6,000 burned

out of their homes.– Grew out of a labor dispute. Thousands of blacks had poured into

St. Louis to work for the Aluminum Ore Company who used them to undermine the power of white labor unions.

• Houston Texas, August 23, 1917

– 24th infantry battalion riot killing 17 whites, 50 sentenced to life in

prison and 19 hanged or shot for mutiny.

WEB Dubois• Born February 23, 1868 – Six years after

Emancipation in Great Barrington, MASS.

• 1903 Publishes, Souls of Black Folk

• 1905 - 1909, Founder and General Secretary of: The Niagara Movement

• 1909, One of original founders and incorporators of:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

• 1912, Supports Woodrow Wilson. Encourages blacks to leave the Republican Party.

• 1915, NAACP organizes national protests against Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.

• 1919, General Secretary of:

The First Pan African Congress in England

WEB Dubois

• Created the first, modern platform for civil rights.

• Cleared the way and charted a course for the NAACP in 1909.

• Marked W.E.B. Du Bois' first attempt at civil rights organization.

• Rejected Booker T. Washington as the spokesman for African Americans.

Niagara Movement

Web Dubois, famous quotes

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

“One ever feels his two-ness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.”

NAACP Organizes Silent protest. Some NAACP Organizes Silent protest. Some 10,000 black citizens March down 510,000 black citizens March down 5thth Avenue, Avenue, NYC, July 28, 1917NYC, July 28, 1917

silent protest, NYC, July 28, 1917silent protest, NYC, July 28, 1917

silent protest, NYC, July 28, 1917silent protest, NYC, July 28, 1917

DOUBLE V and World War One(Victory abroad, Victory at home)

"That which the German power represents today spells death to the aspirations of Negroes and all darker races for equality, freedom and democracy. Let us not hesitate. Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy. We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills."

WEB Dubois: from “Close Ranks,” editorial in The Crisis July 1918

“this is Our Country—we have worked for it, we have suffered for it, we have fought for it; we have made its music, we have tinged its ideals, its poetry, its religion, its dreams; we have reached in this land our highest modern development and nothing, humanly speaking, can prevent us from eventually reaching here the full stature of our manhood. Our country is at war. The war is critical, dangerous and world-wide. If this is our country, then this is our war. We must fight it with every ounce of blood and treasure .... But what of our wrongs, cry a million voices with strained faces and bitter eyes. Our wrongs are still wrong. War does not excuse disfranchisement, "Jim Crow" cars and social injustices, but it does make our first duty clear. It does say deep to the heart of every Negro American—we will not bargain with our loyalty. We will not profiteer with our country's blood. . . .”

WEB Dubois: editorial in The Crisis August 1918

Lynching and Race Riots

“From June through December, 1919, seventysix blacks were lynched…It [the United

States]lynches ... it disfranchises its own citizens ...

it encourages ignorances ... it insults us. . . .

We return. We return from fighting. We

return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We

saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will

save it in the U.S.A., or know the reason why.”

WEB Dubois, The Crisis, 1919

Offices of the NAACP, NYC

Red Summer, 1919and the Red Scare…• Chicago Riot July 27 – August 2 – 38 killed, 537 injured, 1,000 homes destroyed

• Elaine, Arkansas Riot September 30 – October 1– Perhaps 250 killed

• In all, 26 major riots including: Washington, D.C.Charleston, South CarolinaNashville and Knoxville, TennesseeOmaha, Nebraska Longview, Texas

Stoning death of a Stoning death of a black man --black man --

Chicago Race Riots, Chicago Race Riots, 19191919

Hunting for a Black Man –- Chicago, 1919

Police rescue a black man from lynch Police rescue a black man from lynch mob, Chicago, 1919mob, Chicago, 1919

Omaha, Nebraska,Omaha, Nebraska, 1919 1919

William Brown.September 28, 1919

This photograph was acquired from a Lincoln, Nebraska, man whose grandfather purchased it for two dollars as a souvenir while visiting Omaha in 1919.

1920s1920s

Lige Daniels.  Onlookers, including young boys. August 3, 1920, Center, Texas

Dead Black Man –Tulsa, Oklahoma Massacre, Dead Black Man –Tulsa, Oklahoma Massacre, 19211921

Tulsa, Oklahoma --1921Tulsa, Oklahoma --1921

Tulsa, Oklahoma -- 1921Tulsa, Oklahoma -- 1921

Klan -- Atlanta, Klan -- Atlanta, Georgia, 1922 Georgia, 1922

↓↓

The bill would have made lynching a federal felony, allowing the United States to prosecute cases. States had been notoriously reluctant to pursue prosecution in most lynchings. The bill prescribed punishments for perpetrators, specifically:

(A)A maximum of 5 years in prison, $5000 fine, or both, for any state or city official who had the power to protect a person in his jurisdiction but failed to do so or who had the power to prosecute those responsible and failed to do so.

(B)A minimum of 5 years in prison for anyone who participated in a lynching, whether they were an ordinary citizen or the official responsible for keeping the victim safe.

(C)$10,000 fine to be paid by the county in which the lynching took place, to be turned over to the victim’s family. If the victim was seized in one county and killed in another, both counties were to be fined.

On June 13, 2005, in an unprecedented resolution, the Senate formally apologized for its failure to enact this and other anti-lynching bills.

March on Washington, D.C., for passage of the Dyer March on Washington, D.C., for passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching bill, 1921Anti-Lynching bill, 1921

The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, a large gathering of lynchers. August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana.

"Bo pointn to his niga." On the yellowed outer matte: "klan 4th Joplin, Mo. 33."

TheScottsboro

Boys

1931

“You Can’t Kill the Working Class”

Charged for “Insurrection”

Angelo Herndon: 1913 (Wyoming Ohio) - 1997

The lynching of Rubin Stacy. Onlookers, including four young

girls.

July 19, 1935, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Lynching of Lint Shaw in Royston, Georgia 1936