DesegregationNon-violent

Direct ActionResistance

The Long Civil Rights Movement

AIHE – Buena, NJDecember 12, 2012Dr. Lillie Johnson EdwardsDrew University, Madison, NJ

Intimidation & HarassmentRitual Violence

Lynching Rape

Acts of Racial Violence

Separate, but Equal

Plessy vs. Ferguson(1896)

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787)

On biology: “The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? . . . They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. . . .This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. . . .They seem to require less sleep.

On beauty and sexuality: “Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable vile of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black women over those of his own species. . . . “ Jefferson, Notes, 1787

Jemima's Wedding Day:

Cake Walk. Martin Saxx (words by Jere O'Halloran). Boston, MA: Saxx Music Co., 1899

sheet music cover.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/image/79004#ixzz1QxkTfjom

On work, leisure & entertainment: “A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. . . .” T. Jefferson, Notes, 1787

Women’s Day Magazine, 1940.http://graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/show-picture?id=1178077169

On emotions: “They are more ardent after their female; but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient.. . In general, their existence appears to participate more in sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. T. Jefferson, Notes, 1787.

On intellect: Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarce be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” T. Jefferson, Notes, 1787

http://128.227.230.45/projects/s11/powers_m/raceads.html

Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell novel, 1936

Film, 1939

Culver Pictures

“Uplifting the Race” and the Culture WarsIdeas about how to “uplift” the image of the race has generated heated artistic and political debate within the African-American community and the debate continues among African-American scholars. At the beginning of the 20th century the debate was shaped largely by middle class African-American women, such as those who founded major black women’s organizations: the National Council of Negro Women, the Negro Women’s Club Movement, and the first black sororities. These women’s self-identity as “ladies” was shaped by the ways in which society denied them that status and the reality of how black women were treated.

Shaw, Stephanie. What A Woman Ought To Be and Do: Black Professional Women during the Jim Crow Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.

Spelman College Archives, Atlanta, Georgia

http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0707/photo_essay.jsp?page=4

Library of Congress, NAACP Collection;

photograph by M. Smith.http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0408/photo_essay.jsp?page=4

Radical Agenda Conservative Agenda

Undemocratic abuse of power by black ministers

Stained Glass Ceiling for Women

Early 20th century middle-class black church bans expressive spirituality in worship

Civil Rights: confronts racial status quo

Reparations for Slavery

Black Education, especially higher education for men and women

Speaks to the world for the black community

Conservative and Radical Influence

of Black Religion

Civil Rights in the Early 20th Century

1. National Association of Colored Women/NACW (1896)

2. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People/NAACP (1909)

3. National Urban League (1910)4. Association for the Study of

Negro Life and History/ASNLH (1915)

Civil Rights in the Early 20th Century

5. United Negro Improvement Association/UNIA (1917) First Pan-African Congress (1919)6. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car

Porters (192o)7. Congress of Racial Equality

(1942)8. Committee for Equal Justice

(1944)

Civil Rights in the Early 20th Century

9. Women’s Political Council, Montgomery, AL (1946)10. Montgomery Improvement Association (1955)11. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964)

“”

Lifting As We Climb

National Association of Colored Women (NACW),

1896

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) worked alongside Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Mary McLeod Bethune. She co-founded the Colored Women's League in Washington and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and helped found the NAACP.

Library of Congress

“Lifting As We Climb”

Journalist NACW and NAACP

Ida B. Wells Barnett (1862-1931)“Princess of the Black Press”

(http://hierographics.tripod.com/IdaBWells-Barnett/IdaBWellsBiographyandLinks2.htm)

The Library of Congress. http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/il2.htm

City 1910 1920 1930

New York City 91,709 152,467 328,000

       

Chicago 44,103 109,458 234,000

       

St. Louis 45,000   94,000

       

Cleveland 8,500   72,000

       

Philadelphia 84,5000   220,600

The Great Migration Creates Black Urban Communities1914-1919: 1 million1920-1930: 1 million

The Black Migration by Gerald Early. (http://www.pbs.org/jazz/places/faces_migration.htm)

Old Guard, e.g., DuBois New Writers

The artist as an individual

Depict the realities of black life as it exists•Blues•Poverty•Anger• Internal conflicts, i.e., gender, colorism, and class

Depict the best of the race as proof of black intellect and achievements

Art is part of the Civil Rights agenda

Culture Wars of the Harlem Renaissance Era

Langston Hughes(1902-1967)

Blues and jazz style

Race relations Realism of black

working class lifeNational Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY

.http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0807/photo_essay.jsp?page=1

The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light, The sciences were sucklings at thy breast; When all the world was young in pregnant night Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best. Thou ancient treasure-land, thou modern prize, New peoples marvel at thy pyramids! The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes Watches the mad world with immobile lids. The Hebrews humbled them at Pharaoh's name. Cradle of Power! Yet all things were in vain! Honor and Glory, Arrogance and Fame! They went. The darkness swallowed thee again. Thou art the harlot, now thy time is done, Of all the mighty nations of the sun.

Africa,1921by

Claude McKay

Zora Neale Hurston

(1891-1960)

Compiled folktales, spirituals, sermons, work songs, blues, and children's games in the South

Mules and Men (1935), was the first collection of black folklore published by an African American.

Her most famous novel is Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Library of Congresshttp://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/features/archive/0807/photo_essay.jsp?

page=2

“But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world--I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

From “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928) Zora Neale Hurston

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, 1875-1950

Journal of Negro History

Negro History Bulletin

Negro History Week

Inclusion of K-12 Teachers

Inclusion of Community Organizations

Association for the Study ofNegro Life and History

Marcus Garvey(1887-1940)

New York, 1922

Black Star Shipping Line

Negro World

Back to Africa Movement

Support of Black Businesses

United Negro Improvement Association

The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLA

Dr. W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)

Niagara Movement

NAACP

Crisis Magazine

Pan-African Congress, 1919

(http://www.nps.gov/hafe/historyculture/w-e-b-dubois.htm)

Federal Council on Negro Affairs (Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” of 27 prominent African-Americans, led by Mary McLeod Bethune)

Segregation and discrimination by New Deal agencies

Roosevelt Administration employs black architects, lawyers, engineers, economists, statisticians

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro. US Public Health Service, 1932-1972

1930s

Executive Order 8802 the US Marine Corps accepts black men for the first time.

Commandant of the Corps, Maj. Gen. Thomas Holcomb, “If it were a question of having a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 Negroes, I would rather have the whites.” (Hine 545)

1941 War Department establishes Tuskegee Army Airfield, Alabama for black pilots

Mabel K. Staupers leads the struggle to end quotas and discrimination against black women nurses in the armed forces and the Red Cross segregation of black and white blood

Black women working in factories increases from 6.8% to 18% & black workers join the CIO.

Under the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) discrimination against black men and women in war industries continues, especially in the South.

With Executive Order 9346, Roosevelt in 1943 establishes the Committee on Fair Employment Practice

Detroit Race Riot of 1943 where black and white workers competed for jobs and housing.

1940s

Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters“My Name is Not ‘George’”

http://www.aphiliprandolphmuseum.com/evo_history4.html

A. Philip Randolph

(1989-1979)Rosina Tucker

(1981-1997)

Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters &

the Women’s Auxiliary

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pu-Ro/Randolph-A-Philip.html

“There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in the defense industry or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.”

Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941

March on Washington & Executive Order 8802

A. Philip Randolph

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pu-Ro/Randolph-A-Philip.html

• James Farmer, Jr. (1920-

1999)

• Bayard Rustin (1912 –

1987)

• Influenced by Ghandi’s

activism in India

• 1947 Journey of

Reconciliation (the

precursor to the

Freedom Rides of the

1960s)

Congress on Racial Equality CORE (1942)

Ecumenical & Interracial Civil Rights

Coalitions formed among African-American and white women

Church Women United (1941)

Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA)

Click icon to add pictureInterracial Sexual Violence &

the Activism of Southern Black

Women

[Danielle McGuire, At the End

of a Dark Street (Knopf,

2010)]

The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor, 1944

Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

• Racial Violence

• The Press

• Mose Wright: The

Extraordinary Courage

of Ordinary People

Emmett Till (1941-1955)

“This is for Monday, December

5, 1955

Another Negro woman has

been arrested and through into

jail because she refused to get

up out of her seat on the bus

for a white person to sit down.

. . .Don’t ride the bus at all on

Monday.”

Women’s Political Council, 1946

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (1912-1992)

30,000 leaflets distributed

The Montgomery Bus

Boycott December 1, 1955 – December

21, 1956

Montgomery Improvement Association

E.D. Nixon (1899-1987)Pullman Porter and Union Organizer

Mississippi Freedom Democratic PartyFannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

• The Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC (1957)

• “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963)

• “I Have A Dream” (1963)

• Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Nobel Prize for Peace (1964)

• Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Poor People’s Campaign (1967) and the March on Washington (1968)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968): The Beloved Community