Black History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

1968 – Three protestors die in the Orangeburg Massacre


On the night of February 8, 1968, police officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina open fire on a crowd of young people during a protest against racial segregation, killing three and wounding around 30 others. The killing of three young African Americans by state officials, four years after racial discrimination had been outlawed by federal law, has gone down in history as the Orangeburg Massacre.

After decades of protests across the country, segregation was abolished in the United States by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While its passage was a major victory, many white Americans throughout the South simply refused to obey it, knowing local police would not care to enforce it.

In early February of 1968, a group of activists in Orangeburg tried to convince one such man, Harry Floyd, to desegregate his bowling alley, but he refused. Several days of expanding protests followed, during which protesters damaged a window of the bowling alley, police responded with arrests and beatings, and unrest spread to the nearby campus of South Carolina State University, a historically Black college.

Source: history.com

Black History, ~ Culture & History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Jim crow… did you know?


Jim Crow Era

After the Civil War, there was a period from about 1865 to 1877 where federal laws offered observable protection of civil rights for former slaves and free blacks; it wasn’t entirely awful to be an African American, even in the South. However, starting in the 1870s, as the Southern economy continued its decline, Democrats took over power in Southern legislatures and used intimidation tactics to suppress black voters. Tactics included violence against blacks and those tactics continued well into the 1900s. Lynchings were a common form of terrorism practiced against blacks to intimidate them. It is important to remember that the Democrats and Republicans of the late 1800s were very different parties from their current iterations. Republicans in the time of the Civil War and directly after were literally the party of Lincoln and anathema to the South. As white, Southern Democrats took over legislatures in the former Confederate states, they began passing more restrictive voter registration and electoral laws, as well as passing legislation to segregate blacks and whites.

It wasn’t enough just to separate out blacks – segregation was never about “separate but equal.” While the Supreme Court naively speculated in Plessy v. Ferguson that somehow mankind wouldn’t show its worst nature and that segregation could occur without one side being significantly disadvantaged despite all evidence to the contrary, we can look back in hindsight and see that the Court was either foolishly optimistic or suffering from the same racism that gripped the other arms of the government at the time. In practice, the services and facilities for blacks were consistently inferior, underfunded, and more inconvenient as compared to those offered to whites – or the services and facilities did not exist at all for blacks. While segregation was literal law in the South, it was also practiced in the northern United States via housing patterns enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices.

This kind of de facto segregation has lasted well into our own time.

The era of Jim Crow laws saw a dramatic reduction in the number of blacks registered to vote within the South. This time period brought about the Great Migration of blacks to northern and western cities like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a resurgence and spread all over the country, finding a significant popularity that has lingered to this day in the Midwest. It was claimed at the height of the second incarnation of the KKK that its membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide. The Klan didn’t shy away from using burning crosses and other intimidation tools to strike fear into their opponents, who included not just blacks, but also Catholics, Jews, and anyone who wasn’t a white Protestant.

This time period was not without its triumphs for blacks, even if they came at a cost or if they were smaller than one would have preferred. The NAACP was founded in 1909, in response to the continued practice of lynching and race riots in Springfield, Ill. From the 1920s through the 1930s in Harlem, New York, a cultural, social, and artistic movement took place that was later coined the Harlem Renaissance. Musicians like Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton, writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, it-girls like Josephine Baker, and philosophers like W.E.B. Du Bois all had a hand in the Harlem Renaissance and American culture as a whole is richer and better for it. 

Notable Supreme Court Cases:

  • The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873) – this series of three cases, which were consolidated into one issue, offered the first opinion from the Supreme Court on the 14th Amendment. The court chose to interpret the rights protected by the 14th Amendment as very narrow and this precedent would be followed for many years to come.
  • Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) – in this set of five cases that were consolidated into one issue, a majority of the court held the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional against the lone famous dissent of Justice Harlan. The majority argued that Congress lacked authority to regulate private affairs under the 14th Amendment and that the 13th Amendment “merely abolishe[d] slavery”. Segregation in public accommodations would not be declared illegal after these cases until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) – this is the case which gave us the phrase “separate but equal” and upheld state racial segregation laws for public facilities. Justice Harlan again offered a lone dissent. These laws would remain in play until 1954.

Selected Library Resources:

Additional Resources:

library.law.howard.edu

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Edward william Brooke – Black History


Edward William Brooke III was an American Republican politician. In 1966, he became the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate. He represented Massachusetts in the Senate from 1967 to 1979.

Brooke was born on October 26, 1919 and raised in Washington, D.C.. He graduated from the Boston University School of Law after serving in the United States Army during World War II. After serving as chairman of the Finance Commission of Boston, Brooke won election as Massachusetts Attorney General in 1962. In 1966, he defeated Democratic Governor Endicott Peabody in a landslide to win election to the Senate.

In the Senate, Brooke aligned with the liberal faction of Republicans. He co-wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibits housing discrimination. Brooke became a prominent critic of President Richard Nixon and was the first Senate Republican to call for Nixon’s resignation in light of the Watergate scandal.

for the complete article … Blackthen.com

by jae jones

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Charles Wright Museum ~ thewright.org

1 Comment

Founded in 1965, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History has for over half a century been a leading institution dedicated to the African American experience.
Our mission is to open minds and change lives through the exploration and celebration of African American history and culture. Our vision is of a world in which the adversity and achievement of African American history inspire everyone toward greater understanding, acceptance and unity!

The Wright Museum houses over 35,000 artifacts and archival materials and is home to the Blanche Coggin Underground Railroad Collection, Harriet Tubman Museum Collection, Coleman A. Young Collection and the Sheffield Collection, a repository of documents of the labor movement in Detroit. The museum also features:
• And Still We Rise: Our Journey Through African American History and Culture, the museum’s 22,000 square foot, interactive core exhibit, which is the largest single exhibition on African American history in existence
• The Ford Freedom Rotunda and its 95-foot wide by 65-foot high glass dome; this architectural wonder is more than twice the width of the State Capitol dome and just one foot shy of the width of the U.S. Capitol dome
• Ring of Genealogy, a 37-foot terrazzo tile creation by artist Hubert Massey surrounded by bronze nameplates of prominent African Americans in history
• Inspiring Minds: African Americans in Science and Technology, a permanent exhibition focused on S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) concepts for children
• The Louise Lovett Wright Library and Robert L. Hurst Research Center
• The General Motors Theater, a 317-seat facility for live performances, film, presentations and more
• Over 300 public events annually including concert performances, theatrical productions, film screenings, lectures, and family and children’s programming. The museum also serves as a facility for countless private functions including weddings, anniversaries, corporate meetings and conferences, memorial services, and community events. All told, The Wright serves over half a million people annually through its exhibitions, programs, and events such as African World Festival.

History

“My legacy was my job. Everything I did was what I was supposed to do. I worked with untold numbers of mothers to deliver 7,000 babies in Detroit, partnered with Margaret Burroughs, founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, to form the African American Museums Association… I was committed to what I defined as ‘one of the most important tasks of our times,’ ensuring that generations, especially young African Americans, are made aware of and take pride in the history of their forbears and their remarkable struggle for freedom. An idea came to me that African Americans needed a museum to collect and preserve our history and culture. And, with the help of many minds and hands, that idea came to fruition.” ~ Dr. Charles H. Wright

Dr. Charles Wright, an obstetrician and gynecologist, envisioned an institution to preserve Black history after visiting a memorial to Danish World War II heroes in Denmark. As a result of this visit, he was convinced that African Americans needed a similar resource center to document, preserve and educate the public on their history, life and culture. On March 10, 1965, Dr. Wright, in partnership with a racially integrated group of 33 community members, established Detroit’s first International Afro-American Museum. The Museum, known by the acronym I AM, opened on January 30, 1966 at 1549 West Grand Boulevard with dozens of exhibits showcasing such items as African masks from Nigeria and Ghana and the inventions of Elijah McCoy. Also in 1966, the I AM traveling museum, housed in a converted mobile home, began touring the state and spreading information about the contributions of African Americans.

In the fall of 1978, the City of Detroit agreed to lease the Museum a plot of land between John R and Brush Streets to build a facility five times larger than its predecessor. In order to raise funds, Detroit Public School students participated in a “Buy a Brick” campaign, raising $80,000 for the new facility. Following the students’ initiative, a group of adults started the Million Dollar Club in which each member pledged at least $1,000. This major fundraiser earned $300,000. In 1985, the Afro-American Museum and the City of Detroit formed a partnership to build a new facility in the city’s University Cultural Center, securing the funding to complete the $3.5 million facility. The name of the International Afro-American Museum was changed to the Museum of African American History and ground was broken for a new facility on May 21, 1985. Two years later, on May 8, 1987, the doors of the Museum of African American History were reopened to the public at 301 Frederick Douglass. The new 28,000-square-foot structure accommodated a range of offerings. Featuring a series of exhibits, lectures, concerts, cultural celebrations, festivals and programs designed especially for children, it preserved the past and strengthened the future.

Once again the museum outgrew its facility and grander ideas for a new museum took shape. In 1992, Detroit voters authorized the City of Detroit to sell construction bonds to finance a larger building and ground was broken for the third generation of the Museum in August of 1993. On April 12, 1997, a 125,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art facility opened, making it the largest African American historical museum in the world. On March 30, 1998, the museum was renamed the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in honor of its founder. After a half century of service and with generous support from individuals, foundations, corporations, and government sources, The Wright Museum continues to be a cultural icon in the city of Detroit and throughout the world.

Read the “Detroit Physician Voices Resentment of A.M.A. Indifference” from the Journal of the National Medical Association, an article written by Dr. Charles H. Wright.

politics,pollution,petitions,pop culture & purses