1946-1950
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 earlier beating as well) beat him again because Woodard answered “yes” instead of “yes, sir” to a question. Shull was beaten so badly he was made blind.
The attack left Woodard completely and permanently blind. Due to South Carolina's reluctance to pursue the case, President Harry S. Truman ordered a federal investigation. The sheriff, Lynwood Shull, was indicted and went to trial in federal court in South Carolina, where he was acquitted by an all-white jury.
This goes back to “The War on Two Fronts” that blacks faces during WWII. He was a decorated war hero, but he didn’t last more than 3 hours on American soil before he was beaten so badly he would never see again- simply because of the color of his skin.
Once again, I am personally learning that while blacks fought valiantly in WWII, their experience of returning home and being beaten, killed, lynched, and maimed is vastly different from the experience my grandpa came home to- when my grandpa received medals, parades, and GI Bills (all of which he fully deserved. But so did his black allies! I will talk more about the GI Bill later).
I have tried very hard to stick to historians and experts rather than celebrities to talk about racial injustice. But, I am sharing this video of Shannon Sharpe anyway. His emotion is so raw and real, it tore at my heart.
Here’s the issue: I know some of you hate Colin Kaepernick. Why? Because your grandpas fought in WWI and WWII and the flag deserves better! But, here’s the deal: SO DID BLACK GRANDPAS!!!!!!!!! They fought for that same flag!!!!!!! But, then they came home and were killed for wearing the same uniform my grandpa proudly wore!!!!!! My grandpa was never beaten for wearing his uniform- EVER! I think it is so important to recognize there are two very different Americas happening in this country! Can we not at least try and listen to understand what that other America is like????
Anyway, Shannon Sharpe’s words really touched me.
THIS is a great article about the oldest known WW2 soldier, who happens to be black. This article discusses what it was like to be black and a US solder:
“We went to war with Hitler, the world’s most horrible racist, and we did so with a segregated army because, despite guarantees of equal treatment, this was still Jim Crow America,” Citino says. “African Americans were still subject to all kinds of limitations and discrimination based on the color of their skin. I think they were fighting for the promise of America rather than the reality of America.”
I don't know if I am conveying this well enough...when black soldiers wore their uniforms upon returning home, they were often targeted for beatings and lynchings. They were spit upon, and there was a campaign against them to ensure that they knew that just because they fought in the war, they were not equal to whites, and they needed to remember their place in society. This isn't made up- this really happened. I am seeing it over and over and over again. It is heartbreaking.
Day 27
1947: Willie Earle Lynched, Nobody Convicted Despite Full Confessions (oh, and sense there were no convictions, his mom didn’t receive the $2,000 that a new law allowed for victims’ families of those lynched)
On February 17, 1947, Willie Earle, a twenty-four-year-old African American man, was being held in the Pickens County Jail in South Carolina, on charges of assaulting a white taxi cab driver. A mob of white men–mostly taxi cab drivers–seized Mr. Earle from the jail, took him to a deserted country road near Greenville, brutally beat him with guns and knives, and then shot him to death.
When arrested, twenty-six of the thirty-one defendants gave full statements admitting participation in Mr. Earle’s death. A trial commenced, and at its start, Judge J. Robert Martin warned that he would “not allow racial issues to be injected in this case.” During the ten-day trial, the defendants chewed gum and chuckled each time the victim was mentioned. The defense did not present any witnesses or evidence to rebut the confessions, and instead blamed “northern interference” for bringing the case to trial at all. At one point, the defense attorney likened Mr. Earle to a “mad dog” that deserved killing, and the mostly white spectators laughed in support.
Despite the undisputed confession, the all-white jury acquitted the defendants of all charges on May 21, 1947, and the judge ordered them released. Some Greenville leaders cited the trial as progress in Southern race relations: “This was the first time that South Carolina has brought mass murder charges against alleged lynchers. This jury acquitted them. If there should be another case, perhaps we may get a mistrial with a hung jury. Eventually, the south may return convictions.”
In 1948, when Mr. Earle’s mother attempted to collect under a state law ordering counties to pay two thousand dollars to the family of a lynching victim, her claim was denied on the grounds that, due to the acquittals, there was no proof her son had been lynched. In 2010, an historical marker was erected near the site of Willie Earle’s murder.
Sources/Comments:
This one incenses me! The full unfairness of the law and how SYSTEMATIC RACISM works just really infuriates me! Notice the callousness of the accused (who, remember, admitted to doing it), an all white jury- GRRR!!!!!!, and then his mother not being able to collect the money since there was no conviction! It is all just 100% wrong and shows why this isn’t just police brutality that is the problem (though it is a problem) but it is the entire system that is rigged against blacks. How are blacks ever supposed to win in such an unjust system??????
Click HERE
Day 28
1948: The Social Construct Of Race Is Solidified
This idea is something that is new to me: The social construct of race. But, as I am learning more I think I am understanding what this means.
Throughout the history of the world, race was never a thing. It never existed. It wasn't real.
Yes, the Greeks had slaves, but it wasn’t based on race, it was based on nationality or tribe. Race wasn’t anything anybody thought about- it simply meant you either lived in a hotter or colder climate. Your skin color was nothing more than a product of how close to the sun you lived.
But then in the 1400’s Europeans decided that they needed slaves- and so they started stealing people from Africa. And, they invented “race” to justify enslaving certain groups of people.
Genetically, humans all share 99.9% of the same DNA. A herd of penguins has more genetic variance than humans. But, in the 1400’s people with a darker skin tone started to be seen as not human, worth nothing more than to be a slave.
The social construct of racism began!
In 1948, an anthropologist named Alfred Kroeber used previous terminology and created three different races of people: The mongoloid, negroid, and caucasoid. But remember, THERE ARE NOT DIFFERENT RACES OF PEOPLE- that idea was invented in the 1400’s! We are all just….people! Some of whom live in hot, arid, sunny areas, and some of whom live in cold, overcast climates!
Nevertheless, the false idea that there are different races, classified by Kroeber, would be in textbooks into the 1980’s, and is still sadly in some use today.
Why is this important? Because it divides us! It sets us up to say that the negroids are not fully human, that they aren’t smart or capable and can only be slaves- they need a caucasoid master to tell them what to do.
In my faith, it has been WRONGLY interpreted to mean that dark skin is a “curse” and people with dark skin are wicked (this is FALSE- see comment below, and I will go into depth with this later as well).
Christians have often cited the mark of Cain to be a darkening skin. This was later used to justify slavery in The United States, even though (again) the “Mark” has nothing to do with skin color!
It’s important to know this because it isn’t real. The mark of Cain was not a darker skin, skin color does not mean you should be a slave, and in all likelihood, Jesus was NOT white. He lived in the middle East, remember?
I know some of you will say, “if race was created by man to justify slavery, then why on earth are we still talking about it? Let’s just move on and forget about it.” Well, because, sadly we are still dealing with the consequences of inventing race. It is now embedded in our society. We have no choice except to talk about it, acknowledge it, learn from it, and change the systems that have been put in place- and are still in place- as a result of this social construct.
Sources/Comments:
THIS Podcast episode is excellent
If, like me, you are a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, please watch this video about race in the scriptures and how we misinterpret it. This changed my entire paradigm, in the best possible way.
Day 29
1949: GI Bill Excludes Blacks (this is long, but I don’t apologize- I believe this is important to understand to see how the persecution of blacks is built into our everyday laws and culture and make it incredibly difficult to build generational wealth like whites)
When Eugene Burnett saw the neat tract houses of Levittown, New York, he knew he wanted to buy one. It was 1949, and he was ready to settle down in a larger home with his family. The newly established Long Island suburb seemed like the perfect place to begin their postwar life—one that, he hoped, would be improved with the help of the GI Bill, a piece of sweeping legislation aimed at helping World War II veterans like Burnett prosper after the war.
But when he spoke with a salesman about buying the house using a GI Bill-guaranteed mortgage, the door to suburban life in Levittown slammed firmly in his face. The suburb wasn’t open to Black residents.
The Burnetts weren’t the only Black Americans for whom the promise of the GI Bill turned out to be an illusion. Though the bill helped white Americans prosper and accumulate wealth in the postwar years, it didn’t deliver on that promise for veterans of color. In fact, the wide disparity in the bill’s implementation ended up helping drive growing gaps in wealth, education and civil rights between white and Black Americans.
While the GI Bill’s language did not specifically exclude African-American veterans from its benefits, it was structured in a way that ultimately shut doors for the 1.2 million Black veterans who had bravely served their country during World War II, in segregated ranks.
When lawmakers began drafting the GI Bill in 1944, some Southern Democrats feared that returning Black veterans would use public sympathy for veterans to advocate against Jim Crow laws. To make sure the GI Bill largely benefited white people, the southern Democrats drew on tactics they had previously used to ensure that the New Deal helped as few Black people as possible.
From the start, Black veterans had trouble securing the GI Bill’s benefits. Some could not access benefits because they had not been given an honorable discharge—and a much larger number of Black veterans were discharged dishonorably than their white counterparts.
Veterans who did qualify could not find facilities that delivered on the bill’s promise. Black veterans in a vocational training program at a segregated high school in Indianapolis were unable to participate in activities related to plumbing, electricity and printing because adequate equipment was only available to white students.
Simple intimidation kept others from enjoying GI Bill benefits. In 1947, for example, a crowd hurled rocks at Black veterans as they moved into a Chicago housing development. Thousands of Black veterans were attacked in the years following World War II and some were singled out and lynched.
Black veterans’ and civil rights groups protested their treatment, calling for protections like Black involvement in the VA and non-discriminatory loans, but the racial disparities in the implementation of the GI Bill had already been set into motion. As the years went on, white veterans flowed into newly created suburbs, where they began amassing wealth in skilled positions. But Black veterans lacked those options. The majority of skilled jobs were given to white workers.
The postwar housing boom almost entirely excluded Black Americans, most of whom remained in cities that received less and less investment from businesses and banks.
Though the GI Bill guaranteed low-interest mortgages and other loans, they were not administered by the VA itself. Thus, the VA could cosign, but not actually guarantee the loans. This gave white-run financial institutions free reign to refuse mortgages and loans to Black people.
Redlining—a decades-old practice of marking maps by race to characterize the risks of lending money and providing insurance—made purchasing a home even more difficult for Black veterans. Lenders froze out poorer neighborhoods, ensuring that loan assistance and insurance would be denied. And new white suburbs often came with overtly racist covenants that denied entry to Black people.
In 1947, only 2 of the more than 3,200 VA-guaranteed home loans in 13 Mississippi cities went to Black borrowers. “These impediments were not confined to the South,” notes historian Ira Katznelson. “In New York and the northern New Jersey suburbs, fewer than 100 of the 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI bill supported home purchases by non-whites.”
Black veterans in search of the education they had been guaranteed fared no better. Many Black men returning home from the war didn’t even try to take advantage of the bill’s educational benefits—they could not afford to spend time in school instead of working. But those who did were at a considerable disadvantage compared to their white counterparts. Public education provided poor preparation for Black students, and many lacked much educational attainment at all due to poverty and social pressures.
As veteran applications flooded universities, Black students often found themselves left out. Northern universities dragged their feet when it came to admitting Black students, and Southern colleges barred Black students entirely. And the VA itself encouraged Black veterans to apply for vocational training instead of university admission and arbitrarily denied educational benefits to some students.
Those students who did try to attend college found doors closed at every turn. A full 95 percent of Black veterans were shunted off to Black colleges—institutions that were underfunded and overwhelmed by the influx of new students. Most were unaccredited, and with a massive influx in applicants, they had to turn away tens of thousands of veterans.
“Though Congress granted all soldiers the same benefits theoretically,” writes historian Hilary Herbold, “the segregationist principles of almost every institution of higher learning effectively disbarred a huge proportion of Black veterans from earning a college degree.”
Sources/Comments:
The wealth gap exasperated by this can not be underestimated. Inter-generational wealth was acquired by whites, it was not by blacks- because they couldn’t buy land or get educated and pass the benefits of both onto their families. Today, a black man who has graduated college has 1/7th the wealth of a white man who drops out of high school. If that doesn’t give you pause to think about your white privilege, I don’t know what will.
Click HERE
THIS Podcast episode talks specifically about Levittown (talked about in OP) and how Leavitt was a total racist who only agreed to build if he could keep it white only, even though he used federal funds and was told he had to allow blacks to live there to get the money. But he refused to allow blacks. He even included clauses that owners couldn't resale or rent to blacks. Ugh!!!!
Also, it talks about the unfair treatment and history behind it of women in soccer. Worth listening to!
-These houses could be bought for $8,000. Now they are worth over 400k. Guess who benefits from that appreciation? The whites who were allowed to buy them. Blacks weren't able to build wealth because of these racist policies!
Day 30
1950: Voter Suppression Gets More Advanced
Voter fraud is more rare than being struck by lightning, yet the fear-mongering continues and persists today. In reality, the fear mongering is all about suppressing the black vote, and sadly- it works.
It began as soon as blacks were given the right to vote.
Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures deliberately designed to deny the vote to nonwhites.
This process was often referred to as a "literacy test," a term that had two different meanings — one specific and one general. Some states used an actual reading test- I posted Louisian’s which was used until 1965. Give it a try- it’s pretty fabulous.
But the test results were rigged by biased registrars who were the sole judges whether — in their opinion — you were sufficiently "literate" to "pass." They often did not require white applicants to take the test at all, or always "passed" those who did. Black applicants were almost always required to take the test, even those with college degrees, and they were almost always deemed to have "failed."
Here are some other voter suppression tactics:
-Poll taxes. A "poll tax" was a tax you had to pay in order to vote. At one time, state and local poll taxes were common, but by the mid-20th Century they were mainly limited to the South as a means of preventing Blacks and poor whites from voting. State poll taxes ranged from $1 to $5 per year, and some towns and counties levied additional local poll taxes. In Mississippi, for example, the state's poll tax was $2 per year (equal to $15 in 2012). That might not sound like a lot of money, but for impoverished families feeding their children on free federal "commodity" food it was a sum that forced them to choose between voting and necessities of life. And many of those at the very bottom of the economic ladder — sharecroppers, tenant farmers, agricultural laborers, coal miners, timber workers, and so on — existed entirely outside the cash economy. They had to buy their necessities at over-priced plantation or company stores on credit and their pay went directly to the store, not them.
-Police intimidation. The various state, county, and local police forces — all white of course — routinely intimidated and harassed Blacks who tried to register. They arrested would-be voters on false charges and beat others for imagined transgressions; and often this kind of retribution was directed not only at the man or woman who dared try to register, but against family members as well, even the children. They would also use attack dogs to attack blacks attempting to register to vote.
-Economic retaliation. Throughout the deep South, white businesses, employers, banks, and landlords were organized into White Citizens Councils who inflicted economic retaliation against nonwhites who tried to vote. Evictions. Firings. Boycotts. Foreclosures. Small-scale farmers needed a crop loan each year in order to buy seed, fertilizer, fuel, and food until they could sell their cotton or tobacco after picking. Banks denied those loans to Blacks who tried to vote, forcing them off the land.
-White terrorism. If economic pressure proved insufficient, the Ku Klux Klan was ready with violence and mayhem. Cross-burnings. Night riders. Beatings. Rapes. Church bombings. Arson of businesses and homes. Murder and mob lynchings, drive-by shootings and sniper assassinations. Today these people would be called "terrorists," but back then the white establishment saw them as defenders of the "southern way of life" and upholders of "our glorious southern heritage."
While in theory there were standard state-wide registration procedures, in real-life the individual county Registrars and clerks did things their own way. The exact procedure varied from county to county, and within a county it varied from day to day according to the mood of the Registrar. And, of course, it almost always varied according to the race of the applicant.
In the 1950s, blacks began going around the south to register people to vote. Many of these people were shot and killed. Others were fired from their jobs.
Sadly, voter suppression continues today in the form of voter purging, extremely long lines for voting (notice what happened in Georgia), voter ID laws, etc. We will talk more about this later but as the late John Lewis said, “Voting rights are under attack in America. There’s a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process. We must not step back to another dark period in our history. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have in a democratic society.”
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