1981-1985
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 death. They showed him off at a party at the house of Klan elder Bennie Hays’ house that night before hanging his body from a tree.
Michael’s mother, Beulah, was of course devastated. She insisted on having an open casket like Emmett Till before.
Though Mobile police knew the klansmen had killed Michael, they dragged their feet. They arrested men not related to the crime and released them in an effort to appease the community, while doing little else to move the case along. The prosecution (which included Jeff Sessions, see link below) tried to say it was the result of a drug deal gone bad, or that he was sleeping with a white co-worker and was killed because of that. Basically, even though they knew who the killers were, they did everything they could to not arrest the actual killers.
Beulah worked with the local black community to get the attention of Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders, and eventually the FBI got involved. The FBI nearly stopped the entire investigation, but Beulah kept fighting (on a personal note, Beulah is a hero and I love her).
Finally, in 1983, Hays- the son of the second highest ranking KKK member in the state- and Knowles were arrested. Both confessed to the crime. Knowles was the star witness in Hays’ trial, and both men were convicted and sentenced—Knowles to life in prison for violating Michael’s civil rights, Hays to death for murder. It was the first time since 1913 that a white man was given the death sentence for killing a black man in Alabama.
Beulah didn’t think this was enough. She then sued The United Klan of America for wrongful death, stating that they told Hays and Knowles to kill her son. She wanted the klan and its members to be held responsible.
And this is where things get happy: SHE WON!!!! They were ordered to pay her 7 million dollars! The all-white (!!!!!!) jury deliberated just four hours. “I’m glad justice was done,” Donald told an Associated Press reporter after the verdict was handed down. “Money don’t mean a thing to me. It won’t bring my child back. But I’m glad they caught the guilty and brought them to court.”
The klan did not have this money. They instead gave her a deed to their headquarters worth $225,000 and declared bankruptcy. Plus, individual klan members had to pay, too. Some had their wages garnished and their property seized. This also set the legal precedent for other hate crimes to be prosecuted.
Sources/Comments:
-Why did it take until the murder of Michael Donald in 1981 for these rulings to be made? This is the same clan that beat the Freedom Riders, and bombed the 16 Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls, in 1963. Why did it take yet another lynching for some kind of justice to be done? I understand why people of color say, “We want justice NOW- we have waited too long!” I think they are right- it is taking far too long for people of color to be given the justice they deserve. Yes, this case shows progress. But should it really take 200 YEARS of fighting to get some kind of justice????
-There are pictures on-line of his hanging body- it's disgusting.
I don't like the term "last lynching." Lynchings are still happening- we just call them different names like "police brutality" or "hate crimes." But, that's what the media is calling it, so that's why I used it.
-When George Floyd called out to his mother, he was calling for every Beulah, for everyone with a child, to look at what is happening and demand change.
Click HERE
Day 62
1982: Ole Miss Cheerleader Refuses to Carry Confederate Flag
This story today makes me happy- it has a good ending, 38 years later, though the story is, of course, heartbreaking. This is one of my favorites, if there is such a thing with this project.
In 1982, John Hawkins was the first black man to make the Ole Miss cheerleading team. Ironically, he did not want to be a cheerleader. His friend wanted to be a cheerleader, but as a black woman, none of the white male cheerleaders would try out with her so she recruited John to help her make the team. She didn’t make it, he did. But she said that was God’s will, because she says she never could have stood up and endured what John was forced to endure.
There was a longstanding tradition that male cheerleaders would carry the confederate flag at the football games. At a press conference, he was asked if he would carry it. He said he didn’t even think, he just gave his gut reaction which was, “No.”
Unknowingly, he set off a massive firestorm! People WERE NOT happy that he didn’t want to carry the confederate flag! He was beaten, harassed, and his dorm room was bombed.
But he stayed steadfast.
Hawkins said, “It was never my goal to be an Ole Miss cheerleader. I didn’t wake up one morning and say this was something I aspired to do. I was not political. I was a regular student.”
Hawkins said, ”I was not going to carry that flag. I understood what it represented. I understood that for some students, for some people who embraced the flag that it was the symbol of school spirit for them. I also knew that there were other motives, in terms of people that supported the flag that were more consistent with the original intent which was an oppressive symbol representing slavery and I did not want to be a part of that; I do not want to be associated with that and was thankful that the university supported me in my efforts to say no, with respect to that, and of course a subsequent, proceeded to disassociate itself with that flag.”
He quickly went from being a popular student on campus to being the most hated man on campus.
But, it also got a lot of national media coverage. Other teams stopped wanting to play Ole Miss. In 1983, the school banned the flag from being used by the school, including stopping all cheerleaders from carrying the flag. However, fans were still allowed to carry flags to the games, which they did.
Just two months ago, in June, it would be football that banned the confederate flag in Mississippi altogether.
Basically the SEC (college football conference) came out and said that no bowl games would be held in states that still waved the confederate flag. Then, ESPN said they would not show games held at schools where the confederate flags were allowed.
Fearing all of this loss of revenue, FINALLY in June the Mississippi legislature voted to get rid of the confederate flag- 38 years after John Hawkins refused to carry the flag.
This entire story is fascinating, and this barely touches the surface. The podcast in the comments is fabulous- PLEASE listen!
Sources/Comments:
THIS Podcast episode is excellent
Click HERE
Day 63
1983: For Profit Prisons Open
Surely setting up a system where people can profit off others being incarcerated will end well, right?
In 1983, as The War On Drugs intensified and being “Tough on crime” was the way to get elected, the prison population exploded, leading to a shortage of jails. The solution? Investors! Yes, investors started building prisons. The first for-profit prison opened in 1983.
To cut corners, these prisons do things like the following: Hire fewer staff members, don’t train their staff members, do not have doctors on-site as required by law, etc. This leads to a 28% increase of violence at for profit prisons, high employee turnover, and more deaths.
But, is it saving taxpayers money? Nope. It is actually costing us about $1,600 more per prisoner per year. Surprisingly, the investors are simply pocketing the money from their cost saving measures.
In 2009, a kickback scheme called “Cash For Kids” in Pennsylvania was discovered. Judges in Pennsylvania would issue ridiculously long, harsh, unfair punishments to children of color for minor offenses like mocking a vice principal on MySpace or trespassing through a vacant building. They would single out minority children because their ability to fight these sentencings was much less than the ability of whites. These children would be given years long sentences, and the judges who gave them these harsh sentences would be given kickbacks from the prison owners as a thank-you for sending them these prisoners. Thousands of children suffered as a result of this.
Day 64
1984: Innocent Man Spends 30 Years On Death Row
In the past, we saw black men falsely accused of crimes and lynched. Now in the 80s, we are seeing black men falsely accused, convicted and sentenced to life in prison or to death. Flimsy evidence, coerced witnesses, incompetent defense attorneys, all white juries...the list goes on. But, it is truly no wonder that people of color do not trust the justice system. I am also having serious doubts about our justice system.
From the Equal Justice Initiative:
Glenn Ford, exonerated and released in March 2014 after nearly 30 years on Louisiana’s death row, died of lung cancer on June 29, 2015 at the age of 65. (note: He only got to enjoy 1 year of freedom, after suffering 30 years for a crime he didn't commit, before he died. Let that sink in)
That day, his case was cited by United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissenting opinion in Glossip v. Gross as “striking” evidence “that the death penalty has been wrongly imposed.”
In 1984, an all-white jury in Shreveport, Louisiana, convicted Mr. Ford of the murder of an elderly white man based on the testimony of a witness who admitted that police had helped her fabricate her story.
Evidence later showed that the State failed to give defense counsel (an oil and gas lawyer who had never tried a case to a jury) information that corroborated Mr. Ford’s story that he was not present at or involved in the murder, including information from an informant, a suppressed police report related to the time of the crime, and evidence of the murder weapon, which implicated the true perpetrator.
In 2013, prosecutors revealed that another man charged in the crime had admitted to a confidential informant that he – not Mr. Ford – killed the victim. Prosecutors asked the court to vacate Mr. Ford’s conviction and sentence; the court ordered his release on March 10, 2014.
Earlier this year, the lead prosecutor on his case, A.M. “Marty” Stroud III, issued a public apology and urged the state to grant Mr. Ford compensation for his wrongful conviction.
Mr. Stroud admitted that, in pursuing a death sentence for Mr. Ford, he “was not as interested in justice as I was in winning” and concluded that “[n]o one should be given the ability to impose a sentence of death in any criminal proceeding.”
Interim Caddo Parish District Attorney Dale Cox responded that “we need to kill more people.” His comments drew national attention and last week he announced that he will not run for District Attorney, saying that his “position on the death penalty is a minority position among the members of this community.” Nearly half of Louisiana’s death sentences have come from Caddo Parish, and Mr. Cox personally prosecuted a third of the cases resulting in death sentences since 2010.
At the time of his release, Glenn Ford was Louisiana’s longest-serving death row prisoner and one of the longest-serving death row prisoners in the United States. He was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer shortly after his release and lived free for just fifteen months. No compensation was granted before he died.
Sources/Comments:
Click HERE
Day 65
1985: Discrimination Leads To Black Farmers Losing Millions of Acres of Their Farmland
In the 1920’s, black farmers made up about 20% of the farming population in the south. Because they made up about 20% of the population, this was about right. Remember, black slaves were the real farmers of this country- they were the ones tilling the fields, growing the crops, working in the earth to produce the crops the slave holders sold.
Today, they make up less than 2% of farmers.
There are many reasons for this. Lynchings, refusing to give loans to black farmers, giving them loans with larger interest rates, violently taking the land, burning down crops so the farmers can’t survive- all of these caused black farmers to lose their land.
Here is a brief rundown from EJI, but also please listen to the podcast at the end. It will break your heart:
Starting with New Deal agencies in 1937, federal agencies whose “white administrators often ignored or targeted poor Black people—denying them loans and giving sharecropping work to white people” became “the safety net, price-setter, chief investor, and sole regulator for most of the farm economy in places like the Delta.” As small farms failed, large plantations grew into huge industrial mega-farms with enormous power over agricultural policy.
Illegal pressures applied through USDA loan programs created massive transfers of wealth from Black to white farmers in the period just after the 1950s. Half a million Black-owned farms across the country failed between 1950 and 1975. Black farmers lost about six million acres from 1950 to 1969. Black-owned cotton farms in the South almost completely disappeared, and in Mississippi from 1950 to 1964, Black farmers lost almost 800,000 acres of land, which translates to a financial loss of more than $3.7 billion in today’s dollars, The Atlantic reports.
While most of the Black land loss appears on its face to have been through legal mechanisms—“the tax sale; the partition sale; and the foreclosure”—it mainly stemmed from illegal pressures, including discrimination in federal and state programs, swindles by lawyers and speculators, unlawful denials of private loans, and even outright acts of violence or intimidation.
Discriminatory loan servicing and loan denial by white-controlled, federally funded committees forced Black farmers into foreclosure, and their property was purchased by wealthy white landowners.
Many Black farmers who avoided foreclosure were defrauded by white tax assessors who set assessments too high, leading to unaffordable tax obligations. Tax sales followed, and the land was purchased by wealthy white people.
Lack of access to legal services put Black families’ title claims in jeopardy. Lynchings, police brutality, and other forms of intimidation were sometimes used to force Black farmers off their land and still more land was abandoned as Black families fled racial terror in the South. From 1950 to 1970, Mississippi’s Black population declined by almost one-fifth as the white population increased by the same percentage. By the time Black people could exercise the vote in that state, they were a clear minority.
Mass dispossession did not require a central organizing force or a grand conspiracy. Thousands of individual decisions by white people, enabled or motivated by greed, racism, existing laws, and market forces, all pushed in a single direction.
The end of the 1970s saw commodity prices drop as inflation accelerated, creating a farm-credit crisis that was impossible to survive without federal assistance. But even 20 years after the Civil Rights Act, federal help was denied to most Black farmers. According to a 2005 article in The Nation, “In 1984 and 1985, at the height of the farm crisis, the USDA lent a total of $1.3 billion to nearly 16,000 farmers to help them maintain their land. Only 209 of those farmers were Black.”
Sources/Comments:
-Farm loans are very local. The local bank determines who gets loans. Bankers are white. They hang out with whites. If 5 farmers come in for a loan and 4 are white and 1 is black, the whites get the loans because all the white men are friends- they fish together and go to church together. They aren’t friends with the black farmers, so they don’t give them the loans. Without a loan, you can’t plant your crops- that’s how farming works. You get a loan at the beginning of the season, then pay it back at the end of the season via the sale of your crops. No loan, no crops, no money. So, if you’re black, you over mortgage the farm to try and get the money to plant your crops, but by then it’s late in the season and their crops fail and they lose their farm. This happened over and over and over again. Listen to THIS Podcast- it explains it much better.
-In 1983, just a year after a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report found examples of rampant racism throughout the USDA (ie, discriminating against black farmers so they couldn’t get the loans they needed), President Ronald Reagan decided to quietly close the USDA Office of Civil Rights as part of that year’s budget cuts. It was reported at the time that USDA employees routinely tossed the incoming civil rights complaints from black farmers into the trash without responding to or investigating the claims. In 1996, President Bill Clinton reopened the office, but the damage had been done. By 1997, blacks made up less than 1 percent of all farm operators, down from 1.5 percent in 1982.
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