Daily Archives: 02/19/2024

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

1942 – U.S. President Roosevelt signed an executive order giving the military the authority to relocate and intern Japanese-Americans.


Never forget …

Many Americans worried that citizens of Japanese ancestry would act as spies or saboteurs for the Japanese government.  Fear — not evidence — drove tPublicly posted instructions for Japanese-Americans to turn themselves inhe U.S. to place over 127,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps for the duration of WWII.War II. Their crime? Being of Japanese ancestry.

Despite the lack of any concrete evidence, Japanese Americans were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral land. Anti-Japanese paranoia increased because of a large Japanese presence on the West Coast. In the event of a Japanese invasion of the American mainland, Japanese Americans were feared as a security risk.

Succumbing to bad advice and popular opinion, President Roosevelt signed an executive order in February 1942 ordering the relocation of all Americans of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps in the interior of the United States.

Evacuation orders were posted in Japanese-American communities giving instructions on how to comply with the executive order. Many families sold their homes, their stores, and most of their assets. They could not be certain their homes and livelihoods would still be there upon their return. Because of the mad rush to sell, properties and inventories were often sold at a fraction of their true value.     Internment Camp BarracksAfter being forced from their communities, Japanese families made these military-style barracks their homes.

Until the camps were completed, many of the evacuees were held in temporary centers, such as stables at local racetracks. Almost two-thirds of the interns were Nisei, or Japanese Americans born in the United States. It made no difference that many had never even been to Japan. Even Japanese-American veterans of World War I were forced to leave their homes.

Relocation Camps

Most of the ten relocation camps were built in arid and semi-arid areas where life would have been harsh under even ideal conditions.orced to leave their homes.

Ten camps were finally completed in remote areas of seven western states. Housing was spartan, consisting mainly of tarpaper barracks. Families dined together at communal mess halls, and children were expected to attend school. Adults had the option of working for a salary of $5 per day. The United States government hoped that the interns could make the camps self-sufficient by farming to produce food. But cultivation on arid soil was quite a challenge.

Evacuees elected representatives to meet with government officials to air grievances, often to little avail. Recreational activities were organized to pass the time. Some of the interns actually volunteered to fight in one of two all-Nisei army regiments and went on to distinguish themselves in battle.

Fred Korematsu        Fred Korematsu challenged the legality of Executive Order 9066 but the Supreme Court ruled the action was justified as a wartime necessity. It was not until 1988 that the U.S. government attempted to apologize to those who had been interned.

Fred Korematsu decided to test the government relocation action in the courts. He found little sympathy there. In Korematsu vs. the United States, the Supreme Court justified the executive order as a wartime necessity. When the order was repealed, many found they could not return to their hometowns. Hostility against Japanese Americans remained high across the West Coast into the postwar years as many villages displayed signs demanding that the evacuees never return. As a result, the interns scattered across the country.

In 1988, Congress attempted to apologize for the action by awarding each surviving intern $20,000. While the American concentration camps never reached the levels of Nazi death camps as far as atrocities are concerned, they remain a dark mark on the nation’s record of respecting civil liberties and cultural differences.

ushistory.org

~ In the Library

In the Library … The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – by Rebecca Skloot


On 8/11/13, I was watching the MHP show when I heard about the settlement for the family and heirs of Mrs. Lacks. They were completely unaware that scientists had taken her cells or what impact her cells had on so many nor did those who stole a piece of life from her at the time. It was a wow; a how didn’t I know moment and an overwhelming sense that finally; after having read this book a while ago, her family ~not only large, but has gone through some tough times …is finally being recognized and reimbursed for the contribution this woman made, though it took so long and may never really make up for what happened or what they all lost.
To get an idea, read a snippet of her life then go get Rebecca’s book
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa.

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She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.
If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings.
*****
HeLa cells, were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects;   her cells helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet, Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave, stolen cells lost advantages and money
*****
Now, Rebecca Skloot, takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethicist, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?           Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
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Interestingly, this book is still being debated by folks who feel it could possibly be an exploitation of Mrs. Lacks and the family for a piece of the big pie or settlement after having done a decade of research, and getting personally involved while reports stated that she used personal funds.  Others talk about the family like trash and fail to see why they should be given reparations. We must not ignore or deny, yes realize how important race, and ethics in the healthcare industry or lack of them, and the attempts to reform these issues still exist today. I feel that Rebecca set off a series of events that led to this family not only finding out things about their mother but also recouping some if only a fraction of their mother and the contribution she made.  In my opinion as a mom and daughter, whatever the settlement was it clearly would never ever be enough since they stole her cells and Mrs. Lacks lost her battle to cancer. Sadly, people of colour were treated so poorly in 1951 and while this was and still is a fantastic scientific discovery, it also exposes the widespread discrimination on so many levels.

So, it’s 2023, and the news reports that Ms Lacks’ family is satisfied with the settlement  ~Nativegrl77

 Resource: Rebecca Skloot’s book
Black History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

1883 – The U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It allowed for individuals and corporations to discriminate based on race ~Black History


Written By: Melvin I. Urofsky

image by Blace Female Artist

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

Civil Rights Cases, five legal cases that the U.S. Supreme Court consolidated (because of their similarity) into a single ruling on October 15, 1883, in which the court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional and thus spurred Jim Crow laws that codified the previously private, informal, and local practice of racial segregation in the United States. In an 8–1 decision, the landmark ruling struck down the critical provision in the Civil Rights Act prohibiting racial discrimination in public places (such as hotels, restaurants, theatres, and railroads), what would later be called “public accommodations.” The ruling barred Congress from remedying racial segregation and in effect legalized the notion of “separate but equal” (though the ruling did not use this language) that would predominate in American society until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was a devastating blow to the rights of African Americans. The five consolidated cases were United States v. Stanley, United States v. Ryan, United States v. Nichols, United States v. Singleton, and Robinson and wife v. Memphis & Charleston R.R. Co.

Background
The Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment brought an end to slavery in the United States, but they did not give the former bondsmen either legal or political equality. In fact, the Southern states almost immediately passed a series of laws known as “Black Codes,” which, though not enslaving the freedmen, severely restricted their freedoms and put them at the mercy of whites. Opposition to freedom for African Americans often took extralegal forms as well, notably brutal attacks on former slaves by the Ku Klux Klan.

During the period known as Reconstruction, Congress tried to protect African Americans through a series of civil rights and enforcement statutes and through two more amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment defined a citizen of the United States as any person born in the country or who had immigrated and been naturalized. It also prohibited the states from denying to any citizen the due process of law or the equal protection of the laws or from abridging the privileges and immunities attached to citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment declared that the right to vote could not be denied because of race.

During the time when Union troops occupied the former Confederate states, the army protected African Americans and enforced these rights, while resentment grew among white Southerners. By the 1870s the North had tired of the conflict with the South over race relations and civil rights. Racism, moreover, continued to afflict American society in general, including its justice system.

The Supreme Court ruling
In the last of the great Reconstruction statutes, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the Republican majority in Congress tried to secure by law some semblance of racial equality that could be protected by the government and by courts. While no one expected that such legislation would change the prevailing racial attitudes held by both Northern and Southern whites, the law aimed to protect African Americans from deprivation of the minimal rights of citizenship

A critical provision of the Civil Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in public places, what would later be called “public accommodations,” which rested on Section 5—the enforcement clause—of the Fourteenth Amendment. Five cases testing the application of this section rose in both the North and the South, and the Supreme Court combined them for a single hearing in March 1883. The government argued on behalf of the Civil Rights Act, declaring that the Thirteenth Amendment had not only abolished slavery but conferred all the rights of free citizens on the former slaves and that the Fourteenth Amendment had given Congress the power to protect those rights through appropriate legislation.

The Court disagreed, and, in the opinion for the 8–1 ruling, Justice Joseph P. Bradley denied both of the government’s contentions. In effect, the ruling robbed the amendments of much of their meaning. Bradley argued that, because not every example of discrimination against African Americans could be interpreted as a renewal of slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment could not be invoked as a ban on racial prejudice.

Although the Fourteenth Amendment had in fact been drafted specifically to ensure African Americans’ rights, Bradley denied that Congress had any affirmative powers under the amendment. Congress could legislate in a remedial manner to correct an unconstitutional law. It could intervene only if a state enacted a law that restricted the rights of African Americans. Bradley also held that if a state failed to take action but, by inaction, tolerated discrimination—such as exclusion from hotels, restaurants, and clubs—Congress could not legislate. By this decision, the court in one stroke nullified all congressional power to protect African Americans under the Fourteenth Amendment and left their fate to the states. It also invited the Southern states not only to tolerate but to encourage private discrimination. The ruling would remain in force until the Court disavowed it in upholding the 1964 Civil Rights Act, nearly a century after the Civil War ended.

Justice John Marshall Harlan entered the lone dissent in the Civil Rights Cases, pointing out that the court had eviscerated the Fourteenth Amendment of its meaning. He also noted the bias in the court’s judgment, since before the war the court had accorded Congress comparable powers in upholding the various Fugitive Slave Acts. Harlan utilized the idea of “affected with a public interest,” which the court had expressed in Munn v. Illinois (1876), and argued that facilities such as railroads, hotels, restaurants, and theatres performed a public function, a notion that had long been recognized in common law and that served as the basis for regulating those services. If such businesses discriminated, then they did so with the consent of the state; this constituted state action and could be reached under the Fourteenth Amendment, even using Bradley’s crabbed view of Section 5 power. Although Harlan wrote in dissent, his theory of state action would be the basis on which the court built up a civil rights jurisprudence after World War II.

The ruling in the Civil Rights Cases not only barred Congress from taking affirmative steps against racial discrimination but permitted states to legally allow private discrimination simply by looking the other way, which they did. In tandem with the landmark decision in Plessy v. Ferguson 13 years later, which sanctioned the doctrine of “separate but equal,” the Civil Rights Cases inaugurated the Jim Crow era.

Resource: britannica.com

Black History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

1866 – The Civil Rights Bill passed over U.S. President Andrew Johnson’s veto.


Civil Rights Bill passed over the president’s veto. The bill conferred citizenship on Blacks and gave them “the same right, in every State and Territory… as is enjoyed by white citizens.”

 

Resource: Blackfacts.com

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