100 Years In 100 Days (A White Suburban Mom's Attempt To Understand Racism In America)

Day #1 1921- The Tulsa Race Massacre Tulsa, OK was known as “Black Wall Street.” This was the most affluent black city in the country. And, on June 1st, 1921 it was completely decimated- it was looted and burned to the ground by white rioters. The first bombs to ever fall in the USA were dropped on black Americans by white Americans during this massacre- and all sanctioned by local officials and the national guard, which had been called in. The entire 35-block city was burned to the ground. As many as 300 blacks were murdered, over 1,200 structures were burned to the ground including houses, schools, and churches (the equivalent of $32.5 million in lost property, which insurance refused to cover), and over 10,000 blacks were left homeless . Of course, nobody was ever charged with a crime. The reason for the massacre? On the morning of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was riding in the elevator in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a white woman named Sarah Pag...

  Day 6: James Clark Lynching 1926 The last known lynching in Brevard County happened in the summer of 1926. It was the third lynching of a black man in the area in two months. The victim’s name was James Clark, and a photograph of his lynching was made into a postcard. (Read: A photograph of his lynching was made into a postcard!) “It is said that the negro had been arrested Sunday for an attempted attack on a white girl of Eau Gallie, and that he was on his way, about 7:00 o’clock that evening, with the chief of police to Titusville for safe keeping, when the officer was over-powered by masked men,” the article states. “The man was whisked away, the body being found the next morning.” There was no attempt to find out who had murdered Clark before he could be tried for his alleged crime in a court of law. The article states only that it was determined that Clark was, in fact, dead. “A coroner’s jury was empaneled Monday morning to view the remains of a negro man, who was found thr...

  Day 11 1931: Two Black Women Die After Segregated Hospital Refuses Care On November 7, 1931, Dean Juliette Derricotte of Fisk University in Nashville was driving three students to her parents’ home in Atlanta when a Model T driven by an older white man suddenly swerved and struck Ms. Derricotte’s car, overturning it into a ditch. The white driver stopped to yell at the black occupants of Ms. Derricotte’s car for damaging his own vehicle, then left the scene without rendering any aid. When others tried to get care for the injured black riders, nearby Hamilton Memorial Hospital in Dalton, Georgia -- a segregated facility -- refused to admit African American patients. Instead, Ms. Derricotte and the three students were treated by a white doctor at his office in Dalton. Though Ms. Derricotte and one of the students, Nina Johnson, were critically injured, they were afterward left to recuperate in the home of a local African American woman. Six hours after the accident, one of the less...

Day 16 1936: Jesse Owens Wins Gold In Berlin For USA, But Snubbed At Home Who doesn’t LOVE Jesse Owens? The fastest runner in the world, who ruined the 1936 Olympic Games for Hitler! Turns out, AMERICANS don’t love Jesse Owens. Or, at least not the ones who lived in the 1930’s. While all the white gold medal winners were treated to college scholarships, invitations to meet the President, awards dinners throughout the country, Jesse Owens was not. The one awards dinner he was invited to, they made him use the service elevator while everyone else used the elevator for guests. Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to invite him to The White House, despite Owens being the most decorated athlete of the games. In fact, he never even received so much as a congratulations from the president. Blacks were not allowed to be given scholarships, so Owens had to drop out of college to support his family- and then was treated poorly by whites who were angry he dropped out of college and therefore couldn’...

  Day 21 1941: Detroit Builds Black Housing In White Neighborhood- Whites Riot Before and during World War II, the city of Detroit, Michigan, was a hub for economic activity that attracted a large influx of new residents. Many newcomers were African Americans fleeing racial violence and inequality in the rural South, in a wave known as the Great Migration. Those who resettled in Detroit felt the city offered new opportunities for economic mobility. Housing scarcity was a major challenge for growing Detroit, as new construction did not keep pace with the increasing population, and residential segregation created dangerous slums. Black families were banned from most public housing, restricted to over-crowded neighborhoods, and often forced to pay higher rents to live in dilapidated homes without indoor plumbing. They also faced hostility from the local Ku Klux Klan, police, and groups of white workers. In June 1941, Detroit policymakers approved plans to build the Sojourner Truth Hom...

  Day 26 1946: WWII Veteran Beaten and Made Blind (While Wearing His Army Uniform) By Police Officer Who Didn’t Like A Black Man Needing To Use the Bathroom Isaac Woodard Jr. was a decorated African-American World War II veteran. On February 12, 1946, hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army, he was attacked while still in uniform by South Carolina police as he was taking a bus home- after 18 months of being overseas, he was finally heading home to see his wife. While at a gas station, he asked to get off the bus to go to the bathroom. The bus driver said “no,” but Isaac got off and went anyway. Three miles later, the bus stopped, police were called, and three came and removed him from the bus, asked to see his discharge papers (he had been discharged about 3 hours before) and beat him repeatedly with nightsticks. Woodard was then arrested for “disorderly conduct” and thrown in jail. While there, the chief of police- Lynwood Shull (who participated in the...

  Day 31 1951: The Martinsville Seven Electrocuted For Rape Crime Today’s story is about the inequalities of the justice system. Pay attention to today's story because it is going to come up a lot in the next week. In Virginia, 7 black men were arrested for raping a white woman. The evidence does seem to conclude that 2 of the men were involved in the rape, though even that has some doubt because even though they signed confessions, they were apparently drunk, had no legal representation, and were “coerced” into signing the confession. I will include the full story in the comments, but right now I want to focus on their punishment. The two who confessed were the only 2 the woman could identify, yet all 7 were arrested. Regardless of their guilt or not, all seven were quickly found guilty by (of course) an all white, all male jury, and all seven were sentenced to death. When have you ever heard of a white man being sentenced to death for rape, not murder, of a black woman? If your a...

  Day 36 1956: Rape of 16-Year-Old Annette Butler For a further analysis of the history of sexual exploitation of black women, please see comments. On May 13, 1956, sixteen-year-old Annette Butler of Tylertown, Mississippi, was kidnapped and raped by four white men. Ms. Butler and her family reported the assault and the men were arrested, jailed, and tried for the crime – a rarity in Mississippi for white men charged with assaulting Black women. Near dawn on May 13th (Mother’s Day), Ernest Dillon, his brother Ollie, and their cousins Olen and Durora Duncan set out looking for “colored women.” When they found the Butler home where Annette Butler was staying with her mother, Ernest claimed he was a police officer and told Annette Butler she was under arrest. Ernest then forced her into the car, while another of the four men kept a gun trained on her mother. The men then drove Annette Butler to the nearby Bogue Chitto Swamp and took turns raping her. When the men were finished, they l...

  Day 41 1961: Freedom Riders Bus Burned, Brutally Attacked In 1961, a group of civil rights activists known as the Freedom Riders began a desegregation campaign. The interracial group rode together on interstate buses headed south from Washington, D.C., and patronized the bus stations along the way, to test the enforcement of Supreme Court decisions that prohibited discrimination in interstate passenger travel. Their efforts were unpopular with white Southerners who supported segregation. The group encountered early violence in South Carolina but continued their trip toward the planned destination of New Orleans. On Mother's Day, May 14, 1961, a Greyhound bus carrying Freedom Riders arrived at the Anniston, Alabama, bus station shortly after 1:00 p.m. to find the building locked shut. Led by Ku Klux Klan leader William Chapel, a mob of fifty men armed with pipes, chains, and bats, smashed windows, slashed tires, and dented the sides of the Riders' bus. Though warned hours earl...

  Day 46 1966: Samuel Younge Jr. Shot In Head For Asking To Use White Bathroom- Killers Walk Free Twenty-one-year-old Tuskegee Institute student activist Samuel Younge Jr. spent January 3, 1966, registering Black voters in Macon County, Alabama. He stopped at a gas station to use the restroom. The white attendant, 68-year-old Marvin Segrest, directed him to the “colored” restroom out back. When Younge said he wanted to use the regular public restroom, Segrest threatened to shoot him. Younge reported Segrest to the police, then returned to the gas station and told Segrest the police were coming. The two men argued and Segrest shot at Younge, who hid in a bus. When he exited the bus, Segrest shot him in the head, killing him. The shooting exacerbated tensions in Tuskegee between African Americans and pro-segregation whites. The day after the shooting, Tuskegee students launched protests that lasted for weeks. On January 7, 1966, 250 Black students marched in downtown Tuskegee to prot...

  Day 51 1971: “War on Drugs” A Ruse To Incarcerate Black Men (no, really, Nixon’s people admit it) Many of the stories “I” write, are not written by me. Originally I hoped they would be, but it was taking too much time for me to rewrite everything, and so I often share what was written before. I always cite the source in the comments, but today is another example of a post mostly written by the incredible Equal Justice Initiative. I will try to do better at saying what posts I write vs. what others write: After President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971 (he said drug use was “public enemy number one”), the number of people incarcerated in American jails and prisons escalated from 300,000 to 2.3 million. Half of those in federal prison are incarcerated for a drug offense, and two-thirds of those in prison for drug offenses are people of color. Disproportionate arrest, conviction, and sentencing rates for drug offenses have devastated communities of color in America. ...

  Day 56 1976: Rosedale, Queens New York Uses Violence To Stop Blacks From Moving To New York Normally, New York City is seen as a wonderfully diverse and accepting community. But, a documentary produced in 1976 by Bill Moyer shows just how inaccurate that assumption was/is. Rosedale, in Queens, New York, was a working class, immigrant area with many Jews, Irish, Italians, Polish, etc. Everything was wonderful until blacks began moving to the area. In 1971, a score of men and teenage boys using axes and picks nearly destroyed a house, reportedly bought by a black man married to a white woman. Two hundred residents stood by and watched. On New Year’s Eve 1974, a pipe bomb went off at the home of Tony and Glenda Spencer and their two sons while they slept. Intending to kill them all, a note was left that said, ““Nigger, be warned. We have time. We will get your firstborn first.” It was signed: Viva Boston. KKK.” In 1975 a group of young, black girls were riding their bikes around the...

  Day 61 1981: “The Last Lynching In America”- The Lynching of Michael Donald and A Mother's Love That Takes Down the KKK Michael Donald was a 19 year old young man who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. In Alabama, a black man who possibly killed a police officer was not sent to prison when the jury declared a mistrial. This incensed the local KKK members (please remember, this is 1981, not 1921. I was alive when this happened). For the KKK “this meant that a black man could kill a white man with impunity so long as there were blacks on the jury…[Donald] was killed as a reprisal against the black community and to confirm the power of the Ku Klux Klan in south Alabama.” (ummm…..also remember how many black men have been murdered and whose murderers walked free because of all white juries!) Furious about the verdict, Klan members Henry Francis Hays and James “Tiger” Knowles chose Michael Donald at random, chased him down, beat him brutally, then strangled him to de...

  Day 66 1986: The Drug Abuse Act Subjects Hundreds of Thousands of Blacks to Prison For Petty Crimes While Whites Not Sentenced For Same Crime There is a lot to today’s post! Honestly, it's too much for a FB post and I am unqualified to discuss it in depth- but I am going to try and shed some light on the gravity of what has happened in the policing and justice systems back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, that has led us to where we are today. It truly illuminates why there are so many protests and mistrust between the justice system and people of color. I am learning this history is essential in understanding why we are where we are today. Watch 13th on Netflix for a starter course on what I’m presenting today… Who remembers this commercial with an egg and a frying pan: “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” And, of course, the “Just Say No” campaign in the 80s. These two things saved me from a life of drugs! Actually, no they didn’t. Drugs really weren’t a ...