Civil Rights Trail

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The Confederate Myth of Reconstruction

“What was Reconstruction?” James Loewen asked a class of incoming freshmen at Tougaloo University, a predominantly Black school in Mississippi in 1970. What he heard from them he calls “the Confederate myth of Reconstruction.”  His paraphrase:

Reconstruction was the time when African Americans took over the governing of the Southern states, including Mississippi. But they were too soon out of slavery, so they messed up and reigned corruptly, and Whites had to take back control of the state governments (157)

I attended high school in the north in the early sixties and I recall much the same story. John F. Kennedy told a similar story of L.Q.C. Lamar in the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage. The American Library Association’s  favorite book of all time Gone with the Wind described the empowered slaves this way: “Like monkeys or small children turned loose among treasured objects whose value is beyond their comprehension, they ran wild—either from perverse pleasure or simply because of their ignorance.” Another version of the Confederate myth of Reconstruction.

Answering the misconceptions of his students in 1970, Loewen countered:

  • Regarding control–all governors were white; almost all state legislatures had white majorities
  • Regarding corruption– “Mississippi enjoyed less corrupt government during the Reconstruction than in the decades immediately afterward” (157)
  • Regarding restored control by whites: some White Democrats used force and fraud to wrest control from biracial Republican coalitions.

Loewen was glad to report that twenty-five years later the majority of American history textbooks portrayed the Reconstruction more objectively. The Triumph of the American Nation (1986) explained that: “The southern Reconstruction legislatures started many and needed overdue public improvements  . . . strengthened public education . . . spread the tax burden more equitably . . . [and] introduced overdue reforms of in local government and the judicial system” (157).

The horrors of the treatment of African Americans after the Civil War are only beginning to be explored.

. “More than 4400 African American men, women, and children were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.” The public record of these atrocities has come to light through the Memorial  for Peace and Justice, which displays them by hanging pillars by name and county. Bryan Stevenson, who organized the research and construction for the monument, believed it would serve as a kind of Holocaust Museum for viewing the terror of lynching. Defining characteristics of lynching is that it be public and it go unpunished. Lynching was actually a spectacle sometimes attended by hundreds with celebration and picnicking. It was indeed a form of terror, punishing Blacks for incidental offenses like forgetting to say “sir” or looking a white woman in the eye.

Although the Freedman Schools became a hallmark of education for former slaves, they were under continual assault.  The head of the Freedman’s Bureau reported “In 1865, 1866 and 1867 mobs of the baser classes at intervals and in all parts of the South occasionally burned school buildings and churches used as schools, flogged teachers or drove them way, and in a number of instances murdered them.” (160). The threat of an educated black citizen seemed like the threshold to voting and sitting on juries, empowering actions.

Voting was the seat of power and the final victim of white supremacy in the Reconstruction. In spite of the 13th and 14th Amendments, the state legislatures of every Southern and border state disenfranchised the vast majority of Black voters between 1890 and 1907. While the right to vote was guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the enforcement of that right has been problematic from the Reconstruction till today. Much of the blood of the Civil Rights Movement was shed to regain this right for all citizens.

Even after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 civil rights crusaders remain at war with a prohibitive system. As I write today unknown numbers of citizens of Atlanta had to abandon their place in line because of inadequate numbers of polling places and failure of new voting equipment. Such problems bedevil urban centers with high concentrations of back citizens.

If you keep alert today you will find numerous opportunities to re-learn the Reconstruction. PBS just finished broadcasting a three-hour series featuring reputable historians setting the record straight. (https://www.pbs.org/show/reconstruction-america-after-civil-war/)

The need to change the narrative of human rights begins with the historical narrative. Until we revisit the Reconstruction, many of us don’t know what we don’t know.

 

 

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On the Civil Rights Trail: Learning and Changing the Narrative

The Civil Rights Conference began a new racial narrative for its 250 participants. We felt rain, wind, and virus infections, but the resolve to change the narrative was stronger than that. We saw landmarks and museums, heard eye witnesses and justice crusaders, ate barbecue and fried fish, and shared grief and guilt. We were changed, each in our own way, but we all wanted to change the narrative of racism.

My thanks to new friends and acquaintances who made the conference better, because of their good will and commitment. I think our paths will cross again, because we are moving toward a shared outcome.

How Long?

Civil Rights viewed through a glass screen,

How long? 

We learned, the South had won the Narrative War,

The Open Secret:

A dozen well-dressed white men around a table

Restrict the rights of the “Nigra,”

Not long!

Segregation, a racial etiquette

Separating the oppressed from the oppressor,

Our response: proximity.

How long?

City of slave marketing called

“regional hub for shipping, trading, and other commodities,”

While Birmingham faced its own racist reputation.

4,000 lynchings documented,

Many for social transgressions.

Residue of terror: PTSD

Not long!

 

Brown Chapel, Tabernacle Baptist, 

Edmund Pettus Bridge

Bloody Sunday, The March,

Voting Rights passed in months 

How long?

Beaten Freedom Riders’ agape love,

Charity begins at home,

Forgiveness is a gift,

Dexter Memorial Church lyrical love.

Not long!

 

 

                                                     God of Our silent tears,

Thou who has brought us thus

Far on the way,

Keep us Forever in the path, we pray

Soon! Not long!

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On the Civil Rights Trail: How Long?

Too many of us experienced the Civil Rights Movement through a glass screen, as if in a galaxy far, far away. The journey to

Alabama has proven the power of the eye-witness, over and over again, in Montgomery, in Tuskgegee, in Birmingham and finally in Selma.

Our  story began today at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

At Brown Chapel we met Joyce O’Neill and Diane Harris, teenagers at the time of the March, and later at Tabernacle Baptist, met the “foot soldiers” of the March, who recalled the early training of SNCC at Selma’s first mass meeting for voting rights May 14, 1963.

Brown Chapel

 

 

In spite of earnest efforts to register voters, only 2% of Selma’s black citizens were registered by 1965. Registration was blocked by harassment of applicants, by bizarre literacy requirements, by employers threatening to terminate Black employees for taking time off to register.  The shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion, February 26, 1965 climaxed the futile efforts, causing Rev. Jim Bevel to declare he was marching to Montgomery, and who would be going with him? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jimmie_Lee_Jackson

The plans to march from the Edmund Pettus Bridge to the Capitol Building in Montgomery were recounted through the eyes of Joyce O’Neil and Diane Harris for us at Brown Chapel. Joyce told how her sister, despite warnings from adults, followed the crowd to the bridge on “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965, when marchers were chased off the bridge, with clubs and tear gas, by police on horseback right up the steps of the Chapel in pursuit of marchers. The story is told dramatically by the National Park Service documentary “Never Lose Sight of Freedom.”

Diane Harris recalled being arrested, as a teenager, on a protest march to the County Courthouse and taken to a prison camp outside of town. Later she was arrested a second time and taken to the National Guard Academy. She described how the “posse men” walked around the building, hitting boys with billy clubs and girls with cattle prods.

Side entrance of Tabernacle Baptist Church. The front is identical.

On  March 21, 1965,  3200 marchers regrouped at Brown Chapel with the  protection of federal troops to march to Montgomery.  The  march is chronicled at the Lowndes Interpretive Center located at the halfway point of the fifty-three mile trek.  At the end of the first day they were told only 300 marchers could continue, to avoid blocking traffic on the narrow two-lane road.  In  spite of the warnings, cars and buses kept arriving with more marchers, so that some 10,000 marchers joined them by the fourth  encampment at St. Jude’s Hospital outside Montgomery.

They arrived on the Capitol steps on March 25, 1965, where Martin Luther King gave his “Our God is Marching On” speech, punctuated at the end by “How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long (etc.)” Then a recitation of “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.” The entire demonstration and speech was staged for national television.

The Voting Rights Act was passed on August 6, 1965.

Interior Dexter Memorial Martin Luther King Baptist Church

Fifty-five years later we assembled at the foot of the Edmund Petus Bridge to re-enact the crossing. It was drizzling, as we marched two-by-two along the left footpath, following the pioneers of voting rights. We sang several verses of “We Shall Overcome,” and spanned the bridge in less than fifteen minutes. Some drivers passing over the bridge honked their approval.

At nightfall we were back in Montgomery, marching in the pouring rain up Dexter Avenue toward the Capitol Building.  We had covered the most of the 53-mile trek to Montgomery by bus. After a day with Civil Rights history we were not about to complain about our inconvenient soaking. We sang a few more verses of “We Shall Overcome,” and the leadership had pity on us, detouring us into the Dexter Avenue Martin Luther King Memorial Baptist Church just short of our goal at the Capitol Building.

 

 

 

 

We heard Wanda Battle tell her personal conversion story and then urge us to follow through on the peace and justice work of Selma and Montgomery. What should we do with our new vision of Civil Rights history? “Charity begins at home,” she said, and then elaborated on the ultimately personal work of extending love to our neighbors. “Encourage and affirm others every day,” she urged, and she demonstrated with a few affirmations and hugs for members of our group. “Be genuine with yourself.”  “Ask for grace to forgive.”

Dinner in the Alabama Activities Center across the street was never so welcome. We were still drying out when dessert was served. We sang a few verses of a song composed for us, “Bend the Arc Toward Justice” feeling hopeful, but tired.

We wobbled the final half mile to our hotel, mentally packing our bags and checking in for the rest of our trip home.

“How long? Not long!”

 

 

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On the Civil Rights Trail: Day of Despair and Longing

On a day when we learned more than we might wish to know about terror, oppression and suffering, it was transcendent to worship with the spirited people of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.  The joy of all the music, but especially the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” with the lyrics of James Weldon Johnson telling the story of enslaved people with sober awareness and redemptive abandon– it lifted us up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyS3HPInHtI&feature=youtu.be

[This music video has some of the same stunning images of racism and heroism we have seen at the Conference this week, juxtaposed with the resolute language of the hymn. Worth watching and listening to.]

We have Come
over a way that with tears has been Watered,
We have come,
treading our path Through the blood of the slaughtered,

Dexter Avenue Martin Luther King Memorial Church

I have never felt more lovingly embraced in worship by the musicians, the preacher, by the worshippers themselves of Dexter Memorial, a church that lies in the shadow of a Capitol building with Confederate icons on its steps and Jim Crow remnants in its laws.

Out from The gloomy past,
till now we stand at Last
Where the white gleam
of our star is Cast.

Honestly, Victoria and I spent more time in church than in the Legacy Museum or the Memorial for Peace and Justice, but we had viewed them a year ago.  Like many others I was appalled by the rapid growth of the slave market in the early nineteenth century and the revolting revival of enslavement in the latter nineteenth century, with 73% of Alabama state revenue deriving from “contract leasing,” deployment of mostly-black prisoners in arduous labor.

“Gray Group’s” responses to the Legacy Museum and the Memorial ranged from dire despair to horror to anger to sincere self-examination. Many considered the psychological residue of enslavement most like PTSD scars remaining on today’s African American people. Some saw connections between slavery and current mass incarceration. Others cited the connections between lynching, police brutality and capital punishment. The persistence of the brutality weighed heavily on us.

Facing the truth is never easy, and these particular truths weigh cruelly. We have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of kindred spirits, and we have wished for reparations, whether they are emotional, spiritual or material.  May each of us find consolation in whatever brings us hope.

I cling to the hope I see from uniting in worship with the loving souls at Dexter Avenue Church. And I hope, in that great arc of history, to find justice from a merciful God. James Weldon Johnson gives words to it:

Memorial for Peace and Justice


God of our weary years,
God of Our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus
Far on the way;
Thou who has by thy Might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us Forever in the path, we pray

Lest our feet
Stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts,
drunk with the wine of The world, we forget thee,

Shadowed beneath thy Hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

 

 

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On the Trail of Civil Rights: Birmingham’s Truth

Freedom Riders from Washington to New Orleans

Unlike Montgomery, Birmingham was facing its dark history head on.  In 1921 it had the largest chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the nation.  So persistent was its targeted bombing campaign of the early 1960’s, it became known as “Bombingham.”  During the Freedom Rides of 1961, it welcomed the college students on the bus with severe beatings. It attracted worldwide attention in May, 1963, when the city responded to the “Children’s March” with attack dogs and high pressure fire hoses.

The plan to deploy high school kids to march for freedom.

Sculpture of a Dog Trained to Bite Civilians

Dog attacking during the Children’s March.

 

 

 

Then on September 15, 1963 it exceeded all its previous atrocities with the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and injuring 20 other church members.  As the 16th Street Church’s visitor’s guide said: “It was a shocking, terrifying day in the history of Birmingham and a day that forced white leaders to further come to grips with the city’s bitter racist reputation.”

With $300,000 dollars contributed, the church was restored and reopened by June 6, 1965. The beautiful stained glass image of the crucified black Christ (below) was donated by the people of Wales one year later. With the right hand, the crucified Christ pushes away the forces of oppression; with the left it welcomes all people to the beloved community.

Kelly Ingram Park was created across the street from the church to memorialize the bombing with statues and descriptive plaques. Most striking are the dream-like figures of the four deceased girls and the savage portrayal of the attack dogs from the Children’s March.

“Annie, please re-tie the sash around my dress.”

Also pictured below are three beloved clergymen praying for the fate of the Children’s March.

The images do not flatter the city for its shocking treatment of children, but literally carve the truth in stone in the surroundings of a memorial park for all to witness and reflect on. The 16th Street Baptist Church, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the Kelly Ingram Park are all on adjacent corners in the center of the district of Black commerce. The glory and shame of the city are fully on display.

Carolyn McKinstry, a young survivor of the church bombing, told us her story on Saturday afternoon from the pulpit of the church. She did not preach, but her gentle, yet firm manner testified that she remembered, but also forgave the men who attacked the vulnerable of her church. She said she had traveled the world over two decades and noticed that marginalized people exist in every country along with our own. When she was asked if the world would be different if Martin Luther King were alive today, she paraphrased him by saying: we have the power to change injustice and poverty right now, but not the will.

Carolyn McKinstry

On a chilly and sunny day, we met the dark corner of Birmingham history, and it reminded me “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”(Theodore Parker, 1871,  quoted by Martin Luther King in 1958).

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On the Trail of Civil Rights: Witnessing the Narrative

Yesterday we heard about the “second slavery” in our country following the Civil War. Today we heard about the front line witnesses to the fight against racism and from the witnesses themselves.

In the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel, Montgomery, Alabama,  Dr. Dorothy Autry told us we were standing on “holy ground,” ground contested by heroes and “sheroes” in the early to mid-twentieth century.

In 1918 the NAACP took root in Montgomery and began to combat the literacy tests and poll taxes that excluded African Americans from voter registration. NAACP defended voting rights and attacked segregation in the courts till Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954. Until the 1960’s NAACP was the undisputed champion of minority rights.

But the high point of the morning came when Dr. Autrey introduced heroes and daughters of heroes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott on a panel. We will not soon forget Hazel Gregory, represented by her daughter Janice Frasier (far right on the panel below). Hazel rescued the beaten Freedom Riders in Montgomery in May, 1961, driving their broken bodies to medical care. With the Women’s Political Council, she made thousands of copies of a call to boycott the buses, organized transportation, and raised $0.5 million to fund the boycott that lasted more than a year.

Dorothy Autry tells us we are on “holy ground.”

We will not forget Dr. Val Montgomery (second from right), who, when she was eight, lived in the peril of bombings and threatening mobs on Centennial Hill, where her family resided. They lived just a few doors from the parsonage where Dr. Martin Luther King lived. They witnessed the bombing of his home, and they protected the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Council by housing them for four days. She participated in the March on Washington and got expelled on the day of her high school graduation.

We will not forget Jean Gaetz (third from the right), wife of Rev. Robert Gaetz, a white pastor of a Black congregation in Montgomery.  Their collaboration with the Bus Boycott and the Women’s Political Council earned them a bomb in their driveway, which was fortunately undetonated. Jean described her battle trying to forgive the seven bombers, who were caught, tried, and exonerated. Ultimately she realized that forgiveness was a gift to her and found surprising grace to laugh at the incident.

We toured the parsonage, where Dr. King spent the first six years of his ministry. He replaced a determined preacher, Vernon Johns, who spoke of the need for economic independence. Rev. King came to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1954 and lasted until 1960, when his civil rights campaign took him to Atlanta. At the parsonage, we heard how he stood in his kitchen, just a few weeks before his house was bombed in December, 1955, and heard God’s promise to protect him and his family if he campaigned for justice and righteousness.

Probably the story of the Freedom Riders arriving in Montgomery and being attacked by a  white throng of cab drivers was the most compelling narrative of race conflict. Dr. Bernard Lafayette was present at the Freedom Rides Museum to recount the night he was beaten and jailed, as one of the Freedom Riders, coming from Birmingham and going to Jackson MS. The job of the Freedom Riders was to verify that the anti-segregation laws were being executed along the route from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, LA.  Montgomery was not their first contact with violence., but Dr. Lafayette suffered three broken ribs there in an attack as soon as they got off the bus, and it was untreated in jail and all the way to Jackson, which he called their “beachhead.” When the Civil Rights attorneys arrived at the Montgomery jail with bond, they bailed out both the assailants and the Freedom Riders. Lafayette called it “agape love.”

He described the strategy of non-violence “saving the situation.” They would “not let a situation die,” meaning they engaged constantly with their adversaries. Even beaten and in jail with nothing but a few mattresses on the floor, they sang to the guards, “You can take away our mattresses, oh yeah,” when threatened. They sang with such harmony that the guards came in earlier looking for the radio making the sound.

Bernard Lafayette tells his Freedom Rider story

At the end of the day we visited the River Walk, where slaves were unloaded nearly two centuries ago. One of the historical markers by the tunnel from river to main street reads:

It was at this time that the first of many riverboats, the Harriet, arrived and transformed Montgomery into an important regional hub for the shipping , trading and storing of cotton and many other important commodities.  with the grafitti “aka slaves”

Except for this unauthorized scribble, there is no mention of slaves in the eight plaques covering one hundred years of Montgomery’s history, the latter half marking the city as the hub of slave trading by the Civil War.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On the Trail of Civil Rights: Tuskgegee Narratives

“Double Victory,” they called it, victory in the air and at home for the Tuskgegee Airmen. The first class of black pilots and ground crew covered the victory in the air by downing 112 enemy planes in Europe, but prejudice at home was more entrenched and formidable. At Freeman Field in Indiana, Black flight officers tried to integrate the officers’ club and were blocked at the door.

Hangar Two at Tuskgegee Airmen National Historic Site

“Red Tail” Fighter (P 51Mustang)

The Armed Forces had already passed an ordinance forbidding segregation of the races, but on this base there were two officers’ clubs, and one excluded Blacks. One night in 1944 61 Black officers tried to push their way into the White club and were arrested. In the course of the military trial all but four were convicted on lesser charges and only one was dishonorably discharged.  The battle at home was still fraught with besetting prejudice.

Below, see the record of accomplishments of the Tuskgegee Airmen.

Bust of George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver was a genius with agricultural and chemical science, but he was most interested in inventions that improved people’s lives. He made exhaustive use of the peanut, the sweet potato, and the soybean. He was a tireless teacher who believed in learning by doing and took on young apprentices his entire life at Tuskgegee Institute. His inventions are on display at the Tuskgegee Institute National Historic Site.

In 1856, Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in Virginia as the son of Jane, an African-American slave, who was emancipated while he was still a child.[6]  Washington attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and the college at Wayland Seminary (now Virginia Union University). He became the first President of Tuskgegee Institute in 1881. As with most of the buildings on campus, his expansive nine-room home was built by the students of the Institute.

At right an ornate Japanese chair is displayed in his study at “the Oaks.” His house remains on the campus, owned by the National Parks Service.

We saw one of the more intriguing presentations of the day at the Tuskgegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center: the movie Open Secret. 

The movie dramatizes the re-conception of the Alabama State Constitution in 1901. A dozen well-dressed white men sit around a table planning to restrict the rights of the “Nigra” with various strategies to limit their suffrage, among them literacy tests and a poll tax, and their freedom, through the segregation of public spaces such as the rail car, public parks, cemeteries and libraries. All these measures reversed the reforms of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, like similar state laws throughout the South, returning the rights of Blacks to pre-Civil War status.

A later Twentieth Century atrocity was the Syphilis study, which failed to treat participants during a medical study without their written consent. The study persisted over forty years under a federal grant before it was exposed as the brutality it was.  The story of the study is well-documented on the main floor of the multi-cultural Center.

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On the Trail of Civil Rights: The Narrative of Racism

Change the narrative! That is what Bryan Stevenson called for, addressing the Road Scholar throng on Tuesday afternoon.  That is what the “Conference on Civil Rights” is striving for. Perhaps he was speaking to the choir, but there was a sense that this choir could do more, with a refreshing of the music, and that’s why we were in Montgomery.

The Union won the Civil War, says Stevenson, but the South won the narrative war. Between 1865 and 1876 over 2000 blacks were killed, many by lynching. During the decades 1865 through 1901, Alabama revised its Constitution twice to reverse the effects of Congressional Reconstruction, as Steve Murray, Director of Alabama Archives and History, told us. They dismantled the State Board of Education and segregated the schools, they built restrictions on voting (poll tax, literacy tests, property ownership), and they centralized the government, so they could generally institute white supremacy.

Bryan Stevenson addresses the Road Scholars Tuesday afternoon.

Using primary documents, Murray showed how slavery fueled the exploding cotton production needs of the early nineteenth century and made a comeback in the late nineteenth century with the Convict Lease System, whereby prisoners were conscripted to back-breaking, dangerous labor. The prison workforce was swelled by inability of poor blacks to pay fines for minor infractions.

White supremacists of the late nineteenth century referred to themselves as the “Bourbon Resurgence,” alluding to the wealthy interests that emerged still powerful after the French Revolution. Besides reviving the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan, they instituted social segregation of rail cars, cemeteries, public parks and libraries, and demonized inter-racial marriage.

Murray described the progress of racism as a pendulum that swung toward extremism in the Industrial Revolution (1760-1830), swung back toward reform following the Civil War (1865-1875), then swung back to Dejure Segregation and Slavery (through Convict Lease) (1875-1928), and swung again toward reform before and after World War II (1930-70). Where we are swinging now is a matter of conjecture.

Stevenson emphasized the need to remember our history of racism, to state the truth, so we can reconcile and change the narrative.  We responded to that charge by visiting two museums in Montgomery memorializing the martyrs and commemorating the heroes of racial struggle. The Civil Rights Memorial Center pictured forty victims of racial martyrdom in various media, including the unique disk of names swept by a continuous tide of water from its center, pouring over the edges. The wall behind it is inscribed by the biblical prophecy: “until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The Wall of Tolerance is pictured below.  You can add your name to the Wall  if you pledge to fight for justice, equality, and human rights.  From the example of the forty victims of racial terror, we are expected to take this pledge seriously. The corporal pictured below was sleeping on a bus when he was attacked and killed.

The Rosa Parks Museum is built near the bus stop where she was apprehended for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. The demonstration of her courageous stand comes through photographs, video, and a virtual reality performance of a crowded bus seen below. At this point you witness Ms. Parks about to be  led away by a police officer. One of Bryan Stevenson’s anecdotes concerns an afternoon spent with her and two female companions.  She admonished him about his overwork, he reported.

Tomorrow we motor to Tuskgegee to see the Airmen National Historic Site, the Tuskgegee Institute, the Tuskgegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center , and the home of Booker T. Washington.

 

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On the Trail of Civil Rights: Racism of our Grandparents’ Generation

Victoria and I begin the journey to Montgomery today to join a “Civil Rights Conference,” sponsored by Road Scholar. Over 250 will be attending for seven days of lectures, site visits, and reflections on the struggle against racism. I am just beginning to note that the tide of “civil rights”  is opposing a powerful undertow dragging us back toward white supremacy.

In preparation I read a chapter from the revealing critique of history textbooks Lies My Teacher Told Me (James W. Loewen),.  Only two chapters of this book address the growth and resilience of racism in the United States.  I am going to base my observations on one powerful, influential lie: that the United States has followed unbroken progress toward eliminating racism since the Civil War. I am quoting exclusively from Chapter 5 (“Gone with the Wind”) of this very well-documented text, which I recommend to teachers and critical readers of every age from middle school to lifelong learners.

Loewen agrees with Bryan Stevenson that the oppression of African slaves originates in the genocide of Native Americans, which he documents in Chapter 4.  The implicit belief in a sub-species of humanity was a key move to justify the brutality toward non-white peoples of our early history. The transition from genocide to human slavery was very smooth.

First, Loewen looks at the “Gay Nineties.” During this period the United States suffered its second worst depression, as well as numerous strikes, notably the Pullman and Homestead strikes. At best the “Gay Nineties” as a title for this decade is a misnomer. Rayford Logan called 1890-1940 “the nadir of American race relations.” Why should this period be even worse than the century before the Civil War?

In 1890 the Mississippi legislature removed African Americans from citizenship in its state Constitution. Without any federal resistance, all other southern states, including Oklahoma, followed suit.  In 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson upheld segregation. Loewen suggests this comprehensive definition of segregation for American History textbooks: “a system of racial etiquette that keeps the oppressed group separate from the oppressor when they are doing equal tasks, like learning the multiplication tables, but allows intimate closeness when the tasks are hierarchical, like cooking or cleaning for white employers” (163).  What this reveals is that segregation was pervasive, not confined to schooling, and that it did not prevent the oppressed class from working within the living quarters of their employers. As most of us know, Plessy continued as the law of the land until 1954 (Brown vs the Board of Education), so it frames this period that Logan called “the nadir of American Race Relations.”

In 1892 Grover Cleveland, a Democrat,  won the White House by pointing out the drive of Republicans to guarantee civil rights.  His party identified itself with the racial status quo. “From the Civil War to the end of the century, not single Democrat in Congress representing the North or the South, ever voted in favor of any civil rights legislation” (165). So much for the “Gay Nineties.”

In sports Loewen points out that African Americans played professional baseball with whites until 1889, when they were forced out until Jackie Robinson. Hence Robinson was not the first professional black ball player; he was the first since 1889.  In 1911 the Kentucky Derby eliminated black jockeys after they won fifteen of the first twenty-eight derbies.

Racism experienced a cultural resurgence at the turn of the century. Uncle Tom was the protagonist of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a socially influential narrative against racism by Harriet Beecher Stowe. In stage productions of early 1900’s he was transformed into a “sentimental dope who was loyal to his kindly master” (164). This turned him into a despised character among blacks, hence the reference “Uncle Tom” to blacks who who were subservient to white people.

In minstrel shows, whites in blackface parodied the intelligence and character of blacks. In the music  of the Old South songs of Stephen Foster (“My Old Kentucky Home” etc.) sentimentalized slavery and inequality as benign institutions. Black men were portrayed as  obsessed with inter-racial sex in the immensely popular movie Birth of a Nation.  All these demonstrate the pervasiveness of racist cultural messages in the early twentieth century.

Another neglected topic in history texts is the spread of “sundown towns” both in north and south before World War I. The majority of communities in Illinois, Indiana, Oregon and other northern states passed ordinances or informal resolutions to keep blacks from overnighting in their towns. This was the tip of the iceberg of neighborhood segregation, which we observe to this day.

Finally the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan before World War One allowed them to dominate the state legislatures of Georgia, Indiana, Oklahoma and Oregon and engaged in terrorism through public lynchings.  As Loewen points out, lynchings were intended to be public, often accompanied by photos, because they were acts of terror. Based on the authority of Dred Scott (1857) “a Negro had no rights a white man was bound to respect,” and so lynchings went unpunished. As Bryan Stevenson pointed out recently (Fresh Air, Teri Gross, January 20 2020), lynching was frequently the punishment of a “social transgression,” such as a black woman scolding unruly white children, blacks not yielding to whites on the sidewalk, preachers giving freedom sermons, and tenant farmers protesting injustices.  Lynchings succeeded in curtailing non-compliant behavior by sheer terror. The Memorial for Peace Injustice, which we will visit in the next week, arrays large hanging monuments of over 4,000 lynchings in the United States since 1877.

With these and other examples, Loewen describes the historical circumstances of our parents and grandparents (depending on your age). If we think that the United States has consistently resisted racism since the Civil War, we are grossly misinformed, most of all by the American history textbooks written before 1970. Another source of misinformation turns out to be Gone With the Wind, both book and movie, romanticizing the period of Reconstruction.  The narrative of continuous improvement in our history should be dispelled, Loewen declares.

We take this sobering story with us to Montgomery. I will try to report daily about what we are learning, because I think it will be crucial to our understanding of racism.  On Wednesday we will hear from Bryan Stevenson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Terri Gross interview with Bryan Stevenson, 1/20/2020

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=796234496&live=1