1936-1940
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’t race at the collegiate level, even though they are the ones denying him scholarships because of the color of his skin. When he was in college, he couldn't live on campus like the rest of the athletes.
As I celebrate the 4th of July, a holiday I love that celebrates a country I thank God every day for, I am better aware that my relationship with The United States is very different from others. While I love my country with all of my heart, I am beginning to understand that other people have a much more complicated relationship with this country. That doesn’t make this country bad- but for me it means I need to try harder to learn and empathize with those who have a different experience.
As the Podcast 1619 says, “White people invented democracy. But it is black people who have fought for centuries to perfect it.”
Sources/Comments:
Day 17
1937: Nine Teens Arrested and Falsely Accused of Rape- Arrested and On Death Row For Years, Their Lives Destroyed By Little White Lies
The false accusations and subsequent arrests of 9 innocent black men occurred in 1931. In 1937, four of those teens were finally released. But, the other 5 innocent men were given 20 years to life. There is a meme going around that says something like, “If you’re innocent, you don’t need to be afraid of the police.” Sadly, the black experience has proven otherwise. This is one tragic example:
In 1931, nine black teenagers riding a freight train through Alabama and north toward Memphis, Tennessee, were arrested after being falsely accused of raping two white women. After nearly being lynched, they were brought to trial in Scottsboro, Alabama.
Despite evidence that exonerated the teens, including a retraction by one of their accusers, the state pursued the case. All-white juries delivered guilty verdicts and all nine defendants, except the youngest, were sentenced to death. From 1931 to 1937, during a series of appeals and new trials, they languished in Alabama's Kilby prison, where they were repeatedly brutalized by guards.
In 1932, the United States Supreme Court concluded in Powell v. Alabama that the Scottsboro defendants had been denied adequate counsel at trial. In 1935, the Court in Norris v. Alabama again ruled in favor of the defendants, overturning their convictions because Alabama had systematically excluded black people from jury service.
Finally, in 1937, four of the defendants were released and five were given sentences from twenty years to life; four of the defendants sentenced to prison time were released on parole between 1943 and 1950, while the fifth escaped prison in 1948 and fled to Michigan. One of the Scottsboro Boys, Clarence Norris, walked out of Kilby Prison in 1946 after being paroled; he moved north to make a life and did not receive pardon until 30 years later.
Sources/Comments:
-I beg you to please look at the faces of these men in this picture. Their entire lives were ruined- they were taken from their families, stripped of all their freedom and potential, unable to work to provide for their families, because of made up allegations and a broken justice system. Wrongs like this are still being perpetuated today, and we must stand up and fight against this! I once had a home teacher who was a lawyer who told me, “I don’t mind if I prosecute an innocent black man, because chances are he committed another crime that we didn’t catch him for.” THAT IS SYSTEMATIC RACISM- a system that predetermines guilt simply because of the color of your skin!
-There is some good that came out of this case- two SCOTUS rulings came as a result of this: The inclusion of blacks on juries and the need for adequate legal representation. But, let’s be clear: Everything the blacks have ever gotten has been at the expense of some of their lives. They have had to fight for everything they have that we as white people take for granted.
If this sounds similar to The Central Park Five, you are right. We will talk more about that later. The continued themes of racism truly just repeat.
Day 18
1938: Judy Garland Wears Blackface
I had to do a lot of research on this one. I obviously know that “blackface” is in the news a lot, but I didn’t know much about it. What is it? When did it start? And, most importantly, why is it a big deal?
In the 1830’s a struggling actor doing the minstrel circuit named T.D. Rice was at Crow Stables where he met a happy go lucky black groomer who was singing and dancing in the barn. Rice then took some boiled pork fat, painted his face black, and went on stage performing in blackface and naming his character “Jim Crow.” Where have you heard Jim Crow before?
Jim Crow characterized blacks as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual, and prone to thievery and cowardice. And, Jim Crow was extremely successful- so much so that other actors began replicating Jim Crow in order to get laughs, all the while presenting blacks at ignorant buffoons incapable of doing real work or having intelligent thoughts. It was so popular, in fact, that even black men would dress up in blackface to entertain the audience.
The first major motion picture, D. W. Griffith’s 1915 “Birth of a Nation,” used blackface to depict African American villainy at the same time that it romanticized the KKK. The film served as a recruiting tool for the nearly defunct terrorist organization, carrying it to national prominence during the Jim Crow period. “Birth of a Nation” was a blockbuster before the term was invented.
Blackface, and the horrible caricature it created of black people, continued through the 1960s with Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, and many others donning blackface, before finally being considered offensive and cruel in the late 1990’s.
And there you have it- a VERY brief history of blackface, and why it isn’t funny- isn’t funny at all.
Sources/Comments:
THIS Podcast episode is incredibly insightful
Day 19
1939: Lloyd Gaines Disappears After Winning Desegregation Case
Want to keep an entire race of people down? Make the ones willing to stand up and fight “disappear” to discourage anyone else from standing. That’s what happened to Lloyd Gaines, simply because he fought to be able to attend an all-white law school:
On March 19, 1939, just months after he prevailed in a lawsuit to force the University of Missouri to accept him to its all-white law school, a young black man named Lloyd Gaines went missing and was never seen again.
After graduating from the historically black Lincoln University in 1935, Lloyd Gaines applied for admission to the segregated University of Missouri School of Law–the only law school in the state. In March 1936, the school notified Mr. Gaines that his application had been rejected, and instead offered to subsidize his tuition elsewhere (at a historically black law school or a non-segregated law school in another state).
With the NAACP's support, Mr. Gaines rejected the offer and sued the University of Missouri to challenge its policy that barred him from attending law school in his home state merely because of his race. Mr. Gaines lost in state courts and appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court, where he won the case in December 1938. As a result, the University of Missouri was ordered to accept Mr. Gaines to its law school or create an in-state law school for African Americans.
The Missouri legislature responded by hastily establishing a separate, unequal law school for African Americans that the NAACP insisted did not comply with the Court's decision. However, when the NAACP was preparing to file another legal challenge, they learned that Mr. Gaines was missing. A housekeeper at his residence in Chicago reported last seeing him on March 19, 1939. Without a plaintiff, the desegregation lawsuit against the University of Missouri was dismissed; it would be another decade before the school would admit its first African American student.
Family members suspected that Mr. Gaines was abducted and murdered for his activism, while state officials claimed he fled and assumed another identity in response to threats against him and his loved ones. To this day, Mr. Gaines's fate is unknown.
Sources/Comments:
And, HERE is the story of an attempted lynching that just happened in July 2020.
Day 20
1940: Peonage (kind-of) Ends (but we will see it again later, just called something different)
(Note: This was written and comes from Chuck Allen, Director at I Am My Brother’s Keeper)
“In 1866, one year after the 13 Amendment was ratified (the amendment that ended slavery), Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor (peonage). This made the business of arresting Blacks very lucrative, which is why hundreds of White men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility was to search out and arrest Blacks who were in violation of Black Codes.
Once arrested, these men, women and children would be leased to plantations where they would harvest cotton, tobacco, sugar cane. Or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor.
It is believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Blacks were part of the system of peonage, or re-enslavement through the prison system. Peonage didn’t end until after World War II began, around 1940.
This is how it happened.
The 13th Amendment declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Ratified in 1865)
Did you catch that? It says, “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude could occur except as a punishment for a crime". Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. This system of convict labor is called peonage.
The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish laws called Black Codes. Here are some examples of Black Codes:
In Louisiana, it was illegal for a Black man to preach to Black congregations without special permission in writing from the president of the police. If caught, he could be arrested and fined. If he could not pay the fines, which were unbelievably high, he would be forced to work for an individual, or go to jail or prison where he would work until his debt was paid off.
If a Black person did not have a job, he or she could be arrested and imprisoned on the charge of vagrancy or loitering.
This next Black Code will make you cringe.
In South Carolina, if the parent of a Black child was considered vagrant, the judicial system allowed the police and/or other government agencies to “apprentice” the child to an "employer". Males could be held until the age of 21, and females could be held until they were 18. Their owner had the legal right to inflict punishment on the child for disobedience, and to recapture them if they ran away.
This (peonage) is an example of systemic racism - Racism established and perpetuated by government systems. Slavery was made legal by the U.S. Government. Segregation, Black Codes, Jim Crow and peonage were all made legal by the government, and upheld by the judicial system. These acts of racism were built into the system, which is where the term “Systemic Racism” is derived.
This is the part of Black History that most of us were never told about.” ~Chuck Allen
(thank you Weisha Mize)
Sources/Comments:
This information came from a beautiful Facebook account, I Am My Brother's Keeper. Please check it out!
Comments
Post a Comment