Matt
On June 7, 1892, a 30-year-old colored shoemaker named Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy went to court and argued, in Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
Justice John Harlan: Dissented
"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case...The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficient purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution.”
The Plessy decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." The "separate but equal" doctrine was quickly extended to cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools. Not until 1954, in the equally important Brown vs The Board of Education decision, did the "separate but equal" get over turned.Cait
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy V. Ferguson upheld the Louisiana State Law of “separate but equal.” It was passed in 1896, and had come to light after the reconstruction’s Civil Rights Act of 1875.“In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 act, ruling that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress authority to prevent discrimination by private individuals.
It was after 1887, when Florida passed a low forcing rail roads to have separate seating for the different races that the separation really became mainstream. Before the Civil War there was no need for separate seating, as the majority of the black population was in slavery and would never step on a rail road car. “On May 15, 1892, the Louisiana State Supreme Court decided in favor of the Pullman Company’s claim that the law was unconstitutional as it applied to interstate travel. Encouraged, the committee decided to press a test case on intrastate travel. With the cooperation of the East Louisiana Railroad, on June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a mulatto (7/8 white), seated himself in a white compartment, was challenged by the conductor, and was arrested and charged with violating the state law. In the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Tourge argued that the law requiring separate but equal accommodations was unconstitutional. When Judge John H. Ferguson ruled against him, Plessy applied to the State Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition and certiorari. Although the court upheld the state law, it granted Plessy’s petition for a writ of error that would enable him to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.”
In 1896, Supreme Court Justice Brown presented the majority decision, which backed the Constitutionally of Louisiana’s Jim Crow Law. It was Justice Harlan who wrote the powerful dissent, which laid the ground work for Brown V. Board of Education (1954) to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson when he said: “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 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 people of the United States, for whom an by whom, through representatives, our government is administrated. Such a system is inconsistent with the guarantee given by the Constitution to each State of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”Frank
Plessy v. Ferguson
Important Facts to note:
- It was and has always been considered a landmark supreme court ruling because it declared that states could prohibit the use of public facilities by African Americans.
- In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed a law that required separate accommodations for blacks and whites on railroads, including separate railway cars.
- Several black and white citizens in New Orleans formed an association dedicated to the repeal of that law. They persuaded Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth black, to test the segregation laws of the state.
- In 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana railway from New Orleans. The train provided only third-class cars to black passengers. He was arrested when he refused to leave his seat.
- Justice Henry Billings Brown ruled in favor of the Louisiana statute.
- The court rejected Plessy's arguments based on the 13th ammendment, seeing no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it.
- The majority of the Court also rejected the view that the Louisiana law fostered any inferiority of Blacks, in violation of the 14th ammendment, held rather that the law merely separated the races as a matter of social policy.
- Declaration by Justice Brown: "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."Ann-Marie
“Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission.”- W.E.B DuBois
“In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticized. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.”
-W.E.B DuBois
In 1895, Booker T Washington expressed his consent to segregation in the Atlanta Compromise. At this point in time Washington felt that the relationship between African Americans and White Americans had progressed to a positive point. The fact that African Americans were now free citizens with partial rights was a progressive idea to Washington. He felt that with segregation both blacks and whites could be happy. Washington says at the end of his address, “In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition.” He is accepting of what the white Americans have lied out for the African Americans for it was better that what they had been subjected too.
W.E.B DuBois wrote a critique of the Atlanta Compromise. He felt that indeed segregation was a first step in the rights of African Americans, but he sought to have equal rights as the other Americans. The above quotes show the respect for Washington that DuBois had. But it also shows the fact the compromise was only a compromise for the white Americans. There was still a lot of progress to be made for equal rights for African Americans.Cristie
Booker T. Washington
~Booker T. Washington made a speech, Atlanta Compromise, in which he told a story regarding a ship lost at sea. Another ship approached and all the lost ship wanted was water. He was trying to say that everyone should help out those in need, no matte the color of their skin or native country. He wanted the African Americans to make friends with their white neighbors resulting in a better America.
“To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down you bucket where you are." Cast it down among the 8,000,000 Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South.”
~The Atlanta Compromise address established Booker T. Washington as America’s leading African American spokesman.
~ In the excerpt from Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up from Slavery, he wrote about how it was to realize how influential his speech actually was.
“I very soon began receiving all kinds of propositions from lecture bureaus, and editors of magazines and papers, to take the lecture platform, and to write articles. One lecture bureau offered me fifty thousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a night and expenses, if I would place my services at its disposal for a given period. To all these communications I replied that my lifework was at Tuskegee; and that whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of the Tuskegee school and my race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a mere commercial value upon my services.”
~ He even sent a copy of the address to the President and he replied, “MY DEAR SIR: I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered at the Atlanta Exposition.
I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read it with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its delivery. Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange indeed.
Yours very truly,
GROVER CLEVELAND.Emily
-The riot began on July 27, after an African-American youth named Eugene Williams, while swimming with friends in Lake Michigan near 29th Street, strayed into an area informally reserved for the exclusive use of white bathers. For this, Williams was pelted with stones by an unruly group of young white men and soon drowned. When the police ignored eyewitness accounts of the event and refused to arrest those responsible for the boy's death, indignant crowds of blacks gathered in protest. Distorted accounts of the incident inflamed already tense relations between black and white Chicagoans. For the next two weeks, gangs of unruly whites and mobs of outraged blacks clashed with one another in sporadic fighting across the city's South Side. On the fourth day of rioting, the state militia was deployed to restore order, but the fighting continued. In the end, the violence claimed the lives of 38 Chicagoans: 23 blacks, 15 whites. Additionally, over 500 were injured. And hundreds of families lost everything when their homes were torched by rioters.
-Four weeks spent in studying the situation in Chicago, immediately following the outbreaks, seem to show at least eight general causes for the riots, and the same conditions, to a greater or less degree, can be found in almost every large city with an appreciable Negro population. These causes, taken after a careful study in order of their prominence, are:
- Race Prejudice.
- Economic Competition.
- Political Corruption and Exploitation of Negro Voters.
- Police Inefficiency.
- Newspaper Lies about Negro Crime.
- Unpunished Crimes Against Negroes.
- Housing.
- Reaction of Whites and Negroes from War.
-For a long period prior to the riots, organized gangs of white hoodlums had been perpetrating crimes against Negroes for which no arrests had been made. These gangs in many instances masqueraded under the name of "Athletic and Social Clubs" and later direct connection was shown between them and incendiary fires started during the riots. Colored men, women and children had been beaten in the parks, most of them in Jackson and Lincoln Parks. In one case a young colored girl was beaten and thrown into a lagoon. In other cases Negroes were beaten so severely that they had to be taken to hospitals. All of these cases had caused many colored people to wonder if they could expect any protection whatever from the authorities. Particularly vicious in their attacks was an organization known locally as "Regan's Colts."
Kevin
William Tuttle, Jr.'s book, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919, includes a 1969 interview with an eyewitness. This witness was one of the boys swimming and playing with Eugene Williams in Lake Michigan between 26th Street and the 29th Street Beach. He recalled having rocks thrown at them by a single white male standing on a breakwater 75 feet from their raft. Eugene was struck in the forehead and as his friend attempted to aid him, Eugene panicked and drowned. The man on the breakwater left, running toward the 29th Street Beach. By this time rioting had already erupted there precipitated by vocal and physical demonstrations against a group of blacks who wanted to use the beach in defiance of its tacit designation as a "white" beach. The rioting escalated when a white police officer refused to arrest the white man, by now identified as the perpetrator of the separate incident near 26th Street. Instead he arrested a black individual. Anger over this, coupled with rumors and innuendoes that spread in both camps regarding Eugene Williams death led to 5 days of rioting in Chicago that ultimately claimed the lives of 23 blacks and 15 whites, with 291 wounded and maimed.
Journal of Negro History
Mobile, Ala., April 25, 1917.
Sir :
I was reading in theat paper about the Colored race and while reading it I seen in it where cars would be here for the 15 of May which is one month from to day. Will you be so kind as to let me know where they are coming to and I will be glad to know because I am a poor woman and have a husband and five children living and three dead one single and two twin girls six months old today and my husband can hardly make bread for them in Mobile. This is my native home but it is not fit to live in just as the Chicago Defender say it says the truth and my husband only get $1.50 a day and pays $7.50 a month for house rent and can hardly feed me and his self and children. I am the mother of 8 children 25 years old and I want to get out of this dog hold because I dont know what I am raising them up for in this place and I want to get to Chicago where I know they will be raised and my husband crazy to get there because he know he can get more to raise his children and will you please let me know where the ears is going to stop to so that he can come where he can take care of me and my children. He get there a while and then he can send for me. I heard they wasnt coming here so I sent to find out and he can go and meet them at the place they are going and go from there to Chicago. No more at present. hoping to hear from you soon from your needed and worried friendLuke
Chicago Race Riots Report
http://www.encylopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/11045.html
Chicago Race Riots by Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg provided a detailed account of how the Chicago Race Riots started. It began when a black teenager named Eugenie Williams and his friends went swimming at Lake Michigan. They traveled on a raft that brought them to the white section of the beach. A white man threw rocks at them and injuring Williams with nothing being done about it since a police officer nearby did nothing to help Williams or arrest the man. It resulted in a riot erupting and I found it shocking that police never intervened to deal with the crisis such as arresting the people that started throwing more rocks.
http://chicago.urban-history.org/scrapbks/raceriot/raceriot.htm
The Chicago Race Riot from the Jazz Age Chicago Website
This account gave a detailed look at the events leading up to the riot with whites and blacks competing for jobs in Chicago. It resulted in many racial tensions developing that explain why the Chicago Race Riot was such a huge event. The riot started when a policeman refused to intervene with a white man drowning Eugenie Williams. It gives an effect of how the riots had 38 Chicago residents dead with 500 people being injured. There were also hundreds of families losing everything when their homes were burned by rioters. I find it astonishing that a riot this big erupted from a small incident that occurred on Lake Michigan.Kerri
Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882-1968 *
State White Black Total
Alabama 48 299 347
Arizona 31 0 31
Arkansas 58 226 284
California 41 2 43
Colorado 65 3 68
Delaware 0 1 1
Florida 25 257 282
Georgia 39 492 531
Idaho 20 0 20
Illinois 15 19 34
Indiana 33 14 47
Iowa 17 2 19
Kansas 35 19 54
Kentucky 63 142 205
Louisiana 56 335 391
Maine 1 0 1
Maryland 2 27 29
Michigan 7 1 8
Minnesota 5 4 9
Mississippi 42 539 581
Missouri 53 69 122
Montana 82 2 84
Nebraska 52 5 57
Nevada 6 0 6
New Jersey 1 1 2
New Mexico 33 3 36
New York 1 1 2
North Carolina 15 86 101
North Dakota 13 3 16
Ohio 10 16 26
Oklahoma 82 40 122
Oregon 20 1 21
Pennsylvania 2 6 8
South Carolina 4 156 160
South Dakota 27 0 27
Tennessee 47 204 251
Texas 141 352 493
Utah 6 2 8
Vermont 1 0 1
Virginia 17 83 100
Washington 25 1 26
West Virginia 20 28 48
Wisconsin 6 0 6
Wyoming 30 5 35
Total 1,297 3,446 4,743
*Statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute.
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Walnut Street Bridge, Scene of Lynching of Ed Johnson
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"I am ready to die. But I never done it. I am going to tell the truth. I am not guilty. I have said all the time that I did not do it, and it is true. I was not there. I know I am going to die and I have no fear to die and I have no fear at all....God bless you all. I am innocent."
--The last words of Ed Johnson before he was lynched on the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga on March 19, 1906.
“Shipp was the last witness called by the defense in the Supreme Court's contempt trial. Shipp testified, "I never conspired with any living man." He said, "I had no knowledge--not the slightest--that there would be any effort on my part or anybody to interfere with Johnson." He claim to have been "seized" by the lynchers and held prisoner in his old jail until the lynchers left with Johnson. On cross-examination, prosecutors honed in on Shipp's contentions that he did not recognize any of the lynchers, did not ask any of the lynchers their names, never heard any of the lynchers identified by name, and never attempted to use his gun. After testifying, Shipp told friends, "I think they're going to end up dropping this whole mess. Nothing will ever come of it.’”
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/shippbiog.htmlJohn
I thought it was interesting to actually be able to see pictures of where the events of the rape of Nevada Taylor took place, and where the trial of Shipp took place.
This is the scene of the original attack on Nevada Taylor.
This is the picture of where Ed Johnson the accused rapist got murdered.
Old Chatnooga Courthouse Shipp was put on trial later for allowing the lynching of Ed Johnson
This is a picture of the prosecutor Matt Whitaker who was prosecuting Shipp for allowing the murder of Ed Johnson.
Here is finally a picture of Shipp who was the first one of the first people to actually ever be put on trial for allowing the lynching of a black man.Jeff
"To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man." - James Agee
These two pictures show some of the war scenes of the movie. D.W Griffith was the first to have action scenes so real that theses shots were the reason this movie was so popular. This movie was the first to have editing and camera angles so real that the viewers of this time had never seen before.
The movie how ever is one of the most controversial movies of all time. The pictures above show a scene from the movie showing a black man being hunted down the KKK. The racial implications of this movie were so bad that Griffith will never get the recognition for be a great director and will never get created for creating the first blockbuster movie in America.
Tony
- “Birth of a Nation” was a movie that dealt with and depicted slavery and racism throughout American history. The movie came out in 1915, and was considered very controversial, especially after voice was introduced into the flick in 1930.
- The movie, developed by Griffith, derives a lot of its back round, story, and information from the both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Stowe’s novel, but it uses mostly Stowe’s novel in relation to “Birth of a Nation”
- The cabin depicted by Griffith is almost an exact imitation of that of Tom’s cabin. When taken inside the cabin, it depicts much of what Stowe tried to get across in her novel about the home life of slaves and their children.
-At first with both the movie and Stowe, the slaves are depicted as the victim, but after their emancipation, the southern white slave owner, big farmer, is now depicted as the victim, for the blacks plan to take away their livelihood.
-The film and Stowe both depict the Ku Klux Klan as saviors in ridding the southern former slave owners of the racial threat, and unites the white American world, giving birth to an Aryan nation.
-The film, although protested and banned in certain cities, was quite popular and successful in its time. The movie depicts threatening black mobs being quelled by the KKK, and it praises the KKK as heroes to the American nation.
- “Birth of a Nation” although very controversial, and not exactly considered noble, especially today, is still considered, in film and art, as one of the greatest silent movies of all times.Mike
The Wilmington Massacre of 1898
Kirk a pastor of the Central Baptist Church of Wilmington, N.C. writes on Col. Waddell’s crime against the negros. “His crime: leading “the Negroes in their depredations" (Kirk 8). "Depredations" included the defiant expressions of Alex Manly, editor of the "Record," the only black daily in the state and perhaps the nation.”
COL. ALFRED M. WADDELL responds to the allegations against him. Waddell admits in participating in the events but notes that he was pushed to lead the whites against the negro’s and their newspaper. He acts as though some of the events were unintentional and other times he says he was only doing what the white community wanted to him to do as their elected leader.
I took my Winchester rifle, assumed my position at the head of the procession, and marched to the "Record" office. We designed merely to destroy the press
I believe that the fire which occurred was purely accidental; it certainly was unintentional on our part.
Immediately there were shouts when the fire occurred.
"Stop that fire! Put it out!
I at once ahd the fire alarm bell rung. We saved the wooden buildings next to the "Record" office, and soon had the fire out.
Below are two quotes from a speech of Waddells.
"If there should be a race conflict here (which God forbid!), the first men who should be held to strict accountability are the white leaders, who would be chiefly responsible, and the work should begin at the top of the list. I scorn to leave any doubt as to whom I mean by that phrase. I mean the Governor of this State, who is the engineer of all the deviltry and meanness."
"We will not live under these intolerable conditions. No society can stand it. We intend to change it, if we have to choke the current of the Cape Fear River with carcasses."
Waddell feels as though he was misinterpreted among the black community feels like these quotes were out of context from the rest of the his speech. However from the events of the “Record” building bode otherwise.
This lead to a rebellion of sorts among the black community which lead to several deaths. Eleven negros were killed and three whites wounded. There were several headlines throughout the country reporting this incident the following day.
http://www.mith.umd.edu/courses/amvirtual/wilmington/newsobserver1.html
http://www.mith.umd.edu/courses/amvirtual/wilmington/morningstar1.html
http://www.mith.umd.edu/courses/amvirtual/wilmington/herald1.htmlJen
Pictures
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Charlotte Observer- (May 24,1905) "Story of Wilmington Riot- A Pure-Bred Negro Relates"
Account of Jim Reeves- He was working as a cotton weigher in Wilmington when he heard the alarm bell going off. Jim saw a black man run by and yell "Oh, my Gawd! De red shirts is done killed one man, an' de i'll git us al." Jim tried to walk home, but he saw men with guns blocking the streets. He ran back to the office and hid in the cotton for two hours. He then ran home and stayed inside for 3 days and nights without food, while listening to the rioting going on. Think this account is interesting because is shows how bad the race relations had got that Jim Reeves, a big man of 225 pounds, who was so knowledgeable about the rage and violence of some white people towards blacks that he felt that he had to hid in his house for 3 days to stay safe.
