tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/jim-crow-18120/articlesJim Crow – The Conversation2024-03-06T13:35:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236052024-03-06T13:35:38Z2024-03-06T13:35:38ZThe Black history knowledge gap is widening – and GOP politicians are making it worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579345/original/file-20240302-24-o1gqu6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=474%2C94%2C2539%2C1911&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Andra Day performs 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' prior to Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/andra-day-performs-lift-every-voice-and-sing-prior-to-super-news-photo/2007003884?adppopup=true">Perry Knotts/Getty Image</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the day of the Super Bowl, Matt Gaetz, a Republican member of Congress from Florida, publicly announced that he <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/matt-gaetz-boycott-super-bowl-black-national-anthem/">would not watch</a> one of the most popular sporting events in America. </p>
<p>The reason for his boycott?</p>
<p>“They’re desecrating America’s national anthem by playing something called the ‘Black national anthem,’” <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/matt-gaetz-refuses-watch-super-bowl-over-black-national-anthem-performance-1868867">Gaetz explained</a>. </p>
<p>The song he criticized is “<a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/lift-every-voice-and-sing">Lift Every Voice and Sing</a>,” which was written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-century-ago-james-weldon-johnson-became-the-first-black-person-to-head-the-naacp-149513">James Weldon Johnson</a> and his brother <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200038845">Rosamond Johnson</a> in 1903. For more than a century, this hymn has celebrated the faith, persistence and hope of Black Americans. </p>
<p>“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was sung at the Super Bowl by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ0B7cF3DQk">Andra Day</a>, after <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLH8fzAPWYk">Reba McEntire</a> sang the national anthem. </p>
<p>Whether or not Gaetz’s racist antic was the result of ignorance about the song’s legacy, it is clear that there is a knowledge gap between Black and white students on our nation’s racial history. This gap makes it vital to teach high school and college students <em>more</em> African American history, not less, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/florida-gov-desantis-leads-the-gops-national-charge-against-public-education-that-includes-lessons-on-race-and-sexual-orientation-196369">Republicans have mandated</a> in many states, including Gaetz’s home state of Florida. </p>
<p>As someone who teaches Black history to mostly white college students, I have seen how learning this subject can create the understanding and empathy needed to bridge America’s racial and political divides. </p>
<h2>Who was James Weldon Johnson?</h2>
<p>In my Black American Narratives class, we are currently reading James Weldon Johnson’s 1933 autobiography “Along This Way.” Johnson’s life provides a rare example of the opportunities that existed for very few Black Americans after the Civil War and before white Southerners wrested away those possibilities through the creation of <a href="https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/what.htm">Jim Crow laws and social customs</a> that maintained white supremacy. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man in suit holds hold-fashioned telephone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370197/original/file-20201118-19-jssp3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Weldon Johnson became the first Black American to head the NAACP in 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93505758/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Johnson’s parents grew up free – his father in New York and his mother in the Bahamas. Both were literate at a time when <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp">80% of Black Americans were not</a>. These advantages helped them become homeowners when many Southern Black families lacked the money to buy land.</p>
<p>Raised with this rare opportunity, Johnson thrived. </p>
<p>He graduated from Atlanta University in 1894 during an era when only about <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf">2% of 18-to-24-year-olds</a> in the U.S. received any college education. He became a high school principal in his native city of Jacksonville, Florida, the editor of a daily newspaper and the first Black Floridian to pass the state bar exam. </p>
<p>He published poetry and novels, produced musical theater and served as U.S. consul to Venezuela. He was a professor at New York University and Fisk University and the <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/james-weldon-johnson">first Black executive secretary of the NAACP</a>. While Johnson’s successes were extraordinary, they illuminate what Black Americans could achieve when provided with even the narrowest avenues for advancement. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old NAACP poster calls attention to 3,436 people lynched between 1889 and 1922." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370199/original/file-20201118-13-t367m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1045&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The NAACP produced this anti-lynching poster in 1922.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.si.edu/object/poster-naacp-anti-lynching-campaign:nmaahc_2011.57.9?edan_q=naacp&oa=1&edan_fq%5B0%5D=media_usage:CC0&destination=/search/collection-images&searchResults=1&id=nmaahc_2011.57.9">National Museum of African American History and Culture</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The accomplishments of Johnson and contemporaries such as <a href="https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/fleet-walker/">Moses Fleetwood Walker</a>, <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett">Ida B. Wells</a> and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/george-washington-carver.htm">George Washington Carver</a> help students today understand that Black Americans’ struggles were predominantly the product of <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/black-codes-and-jim-crow-laws/">barriers created by white supremacists</a> rather than their own shortcomings. </p>
<h2>The knowledge gap</h2>
<p>Normally, I play “Lift Every Voice and Sing” for the students when we reach the part of Johnson’s autobiography that covers his writing of the song, but the immediate relevance of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUH82QSG7GY">Andra Day’s version</a> justified playing it a few classes earlier this semester. </p>
<p>When I asked who knew the song, both Black students in my class said they did, but only two of the 24 white students raised their hands. That gap has remained fairly consistent during the four years I have taught Johnson’s autobiography. </p>
<p>We discussed the importance of the song, then turned to that day’s assignment.</p>
<p>In his book, Johnson discusses his experience as a summer school teacher in rural Georgia during the 1890s. He described those months as his “first tryout with social forces” and “the beginning of my knowledge of my own people as a ‘race.’” </p>
<p>We reviewed his first encounters with “White” and “Colored” signs on bathroom doors, and the laws and unspoken traditions of segregation that this young man learned during his time in the rural South. </p>
<p>Students often regard these “social forces” as ancient history, so I explained that these same traditions caused the <a href="https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/aug/28">murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955</a> after he spoke to a white woman while buying candy in a Mississippi store. They were startled to hear Till was born the same year as my father, making him about the same age as many of their grandparents. </p>
<p>Then I mentioned that even in 2012, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/05/us/trayvon-martin-shooting-fast-facts/index.html">Trayvon Martin</a> was killed for walking through a predominantly white neighborhood at night while wearing a hoodie. </p>
<p>Silence.</p>
<p>“How many of you know about <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trayvon-martin-death-10-years-later-c68f12130b2992d9c1ba31ec1a398cdd">Trayvon Martin</a>?”</p>
<p>The two Black students raised their hands. The white students looked at me blankly.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Black woman stands in front of a church and holds a poster of a Black man wearing a hoodie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579348/original/file-20240302-16-z461cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579348/original/file-20240302-16-z461cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579348/original/file-20240302-16-z461cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579348/original/file-20240302-16-z461cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579348/original/file-20240302-16-z461cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579348/original/file-20240302-16-z461cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579348/original/file-20240302-16-z461cp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Trayvon Martin supporter displays her sign during a march in Florida on March 31, 2012 .</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trayvon-martin-supporter-displays-her-sign-during-a-march-news-photo/142192389?adppopup=true">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stunned, I told them <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/07/31/631897758/a-look-back-at-trayvon-martins-death-and-the-movement-it-inspired">the story of Martin’s death</a>, but in the moment I couldn’t remember his killer’s name. </p>
<p>One of the Black students quietly said “<a href="https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/who-killed-trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-b2023977.html">Zimmerman</a>.”</p>
<p>These students were only 6 or 7 when Martin died, so not remembering the event is understandable. Not learning about it since then highlights the continuing racial divide in our children’s education. </p>
<p>When students do learn this history, it can literally improve the culture of a campus and a city. </p>
<p>Students from these classes have helped to strengthen the relationship between the Black Student Union and the Jewish student organization Hillel on our campus. They have also conducted interviews with alumni of the local high school who attended classes during the racially segregated days of Jim Crow. </p>
<p>In another example of gaining firsthand knowledge, students have attended Sunday services at a local historically Black church – a first experience for most of them. These students subsequently helped the congregation build a mobile exhibit about the church’s history. </p>
<p>Despite what <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/581029-nearly-half-of-republicans-polled-say-schools-shouldnt/">Republican politicians</a> have claimed, learning this history does not generate guilt or shame among students. It often inspires them how to reach across cultural divides in ways they have never attempted before. </p>
<h2>The value of Black history</h2>
<p>Most students enter my class knowing only of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs">I Have a Dream</a>” speech, <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/rosa-parks">Rosa Parks’ bus protests</a> or <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/it-time-reassessment-malcolm-x-180968247/">Malcolm X’s activism</a>. Some may know about Jim Crow.</p>
<p>But white students tend to know little about the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/report-black-people-are-still-killed-police-higher-rate-groups-rcna17169">recent history of racial violence</a> in the U.S. They are familiar with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html">George Floyd</a> and the protests that emerged after his murder by a white police officer, but few other recent victims of this kind of violence. </p>
<p>Ferguson, Missouri, where protests led by <a href="https://afas.wustl.edu/racism-reform-rebellion-ferguson-uprising-rise-black-lives-matter">Black Lives Matter</a> emerged after <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/5/31/17937818/michael-brown-police-shooting-darren-wilson">18-year-old Michael Brown</a> was shot and killed by a white police officer, means little to them.</p>
<p>The problem is not a general lack of historical knowledge but its disparity along racial lines. Black students do know this history, or at least more of it than their white peers. </p>
<p>Bridging this knowledge gap is made more difficult because today’s young Americans of different races do not <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111060299/school-segregation-report#:%7E:text=More%20than%20a%20third%20of,of%20a%20single%20race%2Fethnicity.">sit in the same classrooms</a> as a result of segregated schools in segregated communities – nor do they learn the same history. </p>
<p>Its my belief that schools fail all students when they omit the difficult parts of U.S. history. Teaching Black history can create understanding and spark rare discussions on challenging topics across racial lines. </p>
<p>Those of us who actually teach these subjects recognize these benefits – no matter what the politicians say.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ringel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Unlike some GOP politicians, a college professor who teaches Black history to mostly white students was excited that the Black national anthem was being played at the Super Bowl.Paul Ringel, Professor of U.S. History, High Point University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221062024-02-20T13:18:14Z2024-02-20T13:18:14ZSeparate water fountains for Black people still stand in the South – thinly veiled monuments to the long, strange, dehumanizing history of segregation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571683/original/file-20240126-21-60gtdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=388%2C153%2C5003%2C3500&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this 1938 image, a Black boy uses a fountain marked 'colored' at a North Carolina county courthouse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-an-african-american-child-using-a-water-news-photo/532291108?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>No one knows for certain when public facilities like bathrooms and drinking fountains were separated by race. </p>
<p>But starting in the 1890s, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized “separate but equal” in <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/plessy-v-ferguson">Plessy v. Ferguson</a>, the <a href="https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/what.htm">Jim Crow</a> laws and customs that emerged required Black and white people to be separated in virtually every part of life. They used separate restrooms, sat in separate sections on trains and buses and drank from separate water fountains.</p>
<p>Even in death, Black and white people were buried in separate cemeteries.</p>
<p>Though the racist practice of separate accommodations was <a href="https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/2021/06/13/when-did-segregated-water-fountains-end-southern-states/7550716002/">officially outlawed</a> by the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a>, relics from the past still linger today. </p>
<p>In Ellisville, Mississippi, for instance, two water fountains remain standing in front of the Jones County Courthouse. When they were first built in the late 1930s, the words “white” and “colored” designated which fountain was to be used by which race. </p>
<p>Over the years, those words were covered up by different ceremonial plaques. But for some Black Ellisville residents, the fountains still stir up painful memories of second-class citizenship. </p>
<p>During public hearings in 2020 to determine whether the fountains should be removed, then 68-year-old Donnie Watts told the County Board of Supervisors that he had lived there for most of his life.</p>
<p>“I got told once to get away from that fountain because I, as a 6-year-old, was drinking out of the ‘white’ fountain,” <a href="https://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/05/segregated-water-fountain-jones-county-ms-courthouse-remains/6176111002/">Watts said</a>. “Can you imagine what a child, that age, how they felt when they were told that they can’t drink out of that fountain and they had to drink out of another fountain that said ‘colored’?”</p>
<h2>Separate and unequal</h2>
<p>In the 2001 <a href="https://repository.duke.edu/dc/behindtheveil">Behind the Veil project</a>, Duke University historians and researchers conducted interviews with over 300 Black and white people to document what day-to-day life was like during the Jim Crow era of legal segregation. </p>
<p>One of those interviewed was <a href="https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/public.html">Mary Sive</a>, who in 1947 was 24 years old and lived in Montclair, New Jersey. That year, she was traveling through the Deep South when she saw water fountains labeled “colored” and “white” for the first time. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Black man is drinking from a water fountain that has a signs that reads for colored only." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576233/original/file-20240216-20-e8a5ai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576233/original/file-20240216-20-e8a5ai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576233/original/file-20240216-20-e8a5ai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576233/original/file-20240216-20-e8a5ai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576233/original/file-20240216-20-e8a5ai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576233/original/file-20240216-20-e8a5ai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576233/original/file-20240216-20-e8a5ai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Men drinking from segregated water fountains in 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/segregated-drinking-fountain-in-use-in-the-american-south-news-photo/515579376?adppopup=true">Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“This was not outright cruelty such as lynching or denial of voting rights,” she said. “It was not silly, as it at first seemed to me. I realized that for segregation to stick, it had to intrude into the simplest everyday activity such as taking a drink of water. It was that very banality that brought home what it must be like to be ‘colored.’”</p>
<p>Sive said she chose not to drink from either fountain.</p>
<p>The signs were not the only thing that separated the fountains. </p>
<p>The fountains for whites were often <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/200456/water_fountains_symbolize_1960s_civil_rights_movement">more modern</a>, offered some form of filtering from contaminants found in tap water and were capable of providing cold water. The colored water fountains <a href="https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/what.htm">were always worse</a>, generally older and less well kept and usually found in the basement or outdoors.</p>
<p>More often than not, there were no Black facilities. </p>
<h2>Bloody Tuesday</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=566DVVQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my view</a> as a sociologist who studies race and ethnicity, part of the legal and systematic effort to maintain Black subservience was based in part on the white people’s fear that formerly enslaved Black people would be rebellious and unwilling to stay on the lower levels of society.</p>
<p>It’s not surprising, then, that peaceful protests against the repressive structure of Southern society was met with a violent reaction from Southern law enforcement officers.</p>
<p>On June 9, 1964, for instance, Rev. T.Y. Rogers organized a march with the NAACP <a href="https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/news/2021/06/05/tuscaloosas-bloody-tuesday-year-before-selmas-bloody-sunday/7468120002/">to protest segregated drinking fountains</a> and restrooms in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. </p>
<p>The civil rights group had planned to march to the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse but barely made it a few steps from where they started at the First African Baptist Church before they were <a href="https://www.al.com/news/tuscaloosa/2014/06/bloody_tuesday_tuscaloosa_reme.html">assaulted, beaten, arrested and tear-gassed</a> by police officers, who used cattle prods and wooden batons to subdue the demonstration. </p>
<p>Known as <a href="https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/news/2021/06/05/tuscaloosas-bloody-tuesday-year-before-selmas-bloody-sunday/7468120002/">Bloody Tuesday</a>, the day saw the hospitalization of 33 Black men, women and children and the arrests of 94 others on charges of unlawful assembly.</p>
<p>That tragedy has been largely overshadowed by another protest march in Alabama from <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/selma-montgomery-march">Selma to Montgomery</a> that occurred nearly a year later on March 7, 1965.</p>
<p>In what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” more than 600 marchers who were demanding equal voting rights, including <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=2">John Lewis</a>, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and future congressman, were beaten and arrested by state troopers led by segregationist Public Safety Commissioner <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/meet-players-other-figures/">Eugene “Bull” Connor</a>.</p>
<p>But unlike Bloody Tuesday in Tuscaloosa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-images-of-john-lewis-being-beaten-during-bloody-sunday-went-viral-143080">news photographers and television cameras</a> captured the images of Black marchers being beat by white police officers. </p>
<p>Those images triggered national outrage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A white man is shaking the hands of a Black man as a crowd of other men stand behind them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568329/original/file-20240108-19-jsmytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568329/original/file-20240108-19-jsmytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568329/original/file-20240108-19-jsmytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568329/original/file-20240108-19-jsmytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568329/original/file-20240108-19-jsmytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568329/original/file-20240108-19-jsmytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568329/original/file-20240108-19-jsmytv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Lyndon B. Johnson, left, shakes hands with Martin Luther King Jr. after signing the Civil Rights Act on July 3, 1964, at the White House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-lyndon-johnson-shakes-hands-with-the-us-clergyman-news-photo/150253569?adppopup=true">AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But enactment of civil rights laws didn’t mean the end of the fight. </p>
<p>After Donnie Watts’ testimony about his experience with discrimination at age 6, Jones County voters <a href="https://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/05/segregated-water-fountain-jones-county-ms-courthouse-remains/6176111002/">decided to keep</a> the two separate fountains in <a href="https://www.wdam.com/2020/11/03/jones-co-votes-keep-once-segregated-water-fountains-outside-courthouse/">a 2020 referendum</a>.</p>
<p>Even though the fountains don’t work any longer and the words “white” and “colored” remain covered by ceremonial plaques, Watts said in a published interview that his memory of them remains clear.</p>
<p>“I can see right through those plaques. I know what they say,” <a href="https://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/05/segregated-water-fountain-jones-county-ms-courthouse-remains/6176111002/">Watts told the</a> Hattiesburg American. “If they were so gung-ho about keeping those fountains, why don’t they take those plaques off where everybody can see the words ‘colored’ and ‘white’?”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222106/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodney Coates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 officially ended racial discrimination in public places, relics of the Jim Crow South still haunt modern memory.Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Miami UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186802023-12-14T13:11:18Z2023-12-14T13:11:18ZIn the worst of America’s Jim Crow era, Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois found inspiration and hope in national parks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564987/original/file-20231211-21-dcxo75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A view of the Grand Canyon after a snowfall.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-grand-canyon-after-snow-fall-in-arizona-january-news-photo/74363220?adppopup=true">Tom Stoddart/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his collection of essays and poems published in 1920 titled “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm">Darkwater</a>,” <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois">W.E.B. Du Bois</a> wrote about his poignant encounter with the beauty of the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm">Grand Canyon</a>, the stupendous chasm in Arizona. </p>
<p>As he stood at the canyon’s rim, the towering intellectual and civil rights activist described the sight that spread before his eyes. The Grand Canyon’s “grandeur is too serene – its beauty too divine!” <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm">Du Bois wrote</a>. “Behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space! See yonder peak! No human foot has trod it. Into that blue shadow, only the eye of God has looked.” </p>
<p>But Du Bois’ experience undermined a widely held assumption that was reinforced by early conservationists like Theodore Roosevelt – that only white people could appreciate the landscapes of national parks. For Roosevelt and his progressive allies, saving nature was connected to saving the white race. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/bio-thomas-s-bremer/">My research</a> on <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/religious-and-spiritual-appeal-of-national-parks/">the history of national parks</a> shows that these racial assumptions and federal policies contributed to making the parks unwelcome places for Black nature enthusiasts such as Du Bois.</p>
<p>Du Bois traveled to national parks anyway, and he understood that most other Black people were unable to follow because of the cost and discrimination found at every turn. It still bothered Du Bois, however, that Black people were unable to experience a joy similar to what he found at what would later become Acadia National Park in Maine.</p>
<p>“Why do not those who are scarred in the world’s battle and hurt by its hardness travel to these places of beauty and drown themselves in the utter joy of life?” <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm">Du Bois asked</a>. </p>
<h2>The progressive politics of racial purity</h2>
<p>President <a href="https://www.nps.gov/thri/theodorerooseveltbio.htm">Theodore Roosevelt</a> has been recognized as a “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-wilderness-warrior-douglas-brinkley?variant=32122628046882">wilderness warrior</a>” for his unprecedented protection of lands and wildlife. But his conservation record was tied to the belief of white racial superiority that was <a href="https://theconversation.com/francis-galton-pioneered-scientific-advances-in-many-fields-but-also-founded-the-racist-pseudoscience-of-eugenics-144465">embodied in eugenics</a>, the racist pseudoscience of the early 20th century that tried to determine who was fit or unfit to have children.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A sign posted near a road tells visitors where the Negro area is at the park." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/565300/original/file-20231212-22-94obqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this undated photograph taken between 1939 and 1950, the history of racial segregation at the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia is revealed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=5994917&id=1e62a6e9-155d-451f-6737-61d6190f8193&gid=20B61590-155D-451F-6786CFBCF8DF232B">National Park Service</a></span>
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<p>One initiative of the Roosevelt administration was the creation of the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/09035662/#:%7E:text=The%20National%20Conservation%20Commission%20was,an%20inventory%20of%20those%20resources.">National Conservation Commission</a> on June 8, 1908. Though Congress eliminated the commission’s budget after six months, its task was to take an inventory of all the nation’s natural resources and make recommendations on how best to protect them.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/gifford-pinchot.htm">Gifford Pinchot</a>, the president’s most trusted environmental adviser, served as the commission’s executive chairman and <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/09035662/">compiled its final report</a> in February 1909. </p>
<p>It offered 10 far-reaching recommendations on topics as diverse as public health to labor regulation and the elimination of poverty and crime. The 10th recommendation advocated for “eugenics, or hygiene for future generations” that connected federal conservation to white supremacy. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in-the-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-with-disabilities-and-lasted-into-the-21st-century-143144">Pinchot’s report called for the forced sterilization</a> of “degenerates generally” – namely, most immigrants, Black and Indigenous people, poor whites and people with disabilities. It also sought to increase the breeding of what they believed to be racially superior races, such as white Anglo Saxons and people of Scandinavian heritage.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Two middleaged white men are talking with each other as they stand on boat that is traveling on a river." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564975/original/file-20231211-17-yo44o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Theodore Roosevelt, left, and Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot aboard a steamship on the Mississippi River, in October 1907.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-theodore-roosevelt-and-chief-forester-gifford-news-photo/1486782930?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>“The problem of the conservation of our natural resources is therefore not a series of independent problems, but a coherent, all-embracing whole,” the report concluded. “If our nation cares to make any provision for its grandchildren and its grandchildren’s grandchildren, this provision must include conservation in all its branches – but above all, the conservation of the racial stock itself.”</p>
<p>Another of Roosevelt’s close associates took an even more pointed approach to white supremacy and conservation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/madison-grant.htm">Madison Grant</a> had worked with Roosevelt since the 1890s and was an avid conservationist. He was also the author of an influential book on eugenics, “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.passingofgreatra01gran/?st=gallery">The Passing of the Great Race</a>,” a racist tome arguing the superiority of what he called the “Nordic race.” </p>
<h2>New agency, same philosophy</h2>
<p>The election in 1912 of President Woodrow Wilson saw the implementation of <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469628387/racism-in-the-nations-service/">discriminatory policies</a>.</p>
<p>According to historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/eric-s-yellin-212600">Eric S. Yellin</a>, Wilson’s administration was “loaded with white supremacists” who effectively <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-black-middle-class-was-attacked-by-woodrow-wilsons-administration-52200">enacted harsh anti-Black policies</a> in the federal government.</p>
<p>In 1913, for instance, <a href="https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/how-woodrow-wilsons-racist-segregation-order-eroded-the-black-civil-service/">Wilson ordered the federal workforce</a> to be racially segregated, first at the U.S. Post Office, where most Black federal employees worked, and then at the Treasury Department, which had the second-largest number of Black workers. </p>
<p>The Wilson administration also created the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/quick-nps-history.htm">National Park Service</a>, the federal agency in charge of managing and interpreting the country’s national parks, when Wilson signed the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/management/organic-act-of-1916.htm">Organic Act</a> in 1916. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, this new park service had the same racial policies of the Wilson administration and abided by local laws on racial segregation. That meant <a href="https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2019/08/how-national-park-service-grappled-segregation-during-20th-century">Black nature enthusiasts</a> would continue to be prohibited in national parks in most of the former Confederate South.</p>
<p>My research has shown that the National Park Service <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/bio-thomas-s-bremer/">catered exclusively</a> to the expectations and needs of white visitors and it had very few Black employees or visitors. The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/segregation-and-desegregation-at-shenandoah.htm">policies included racially segregated</a> dining rooms, picnic grounds and restrooms. Maps and signs in some parks directed Black visitors away from whites and to designated Black sections of the parks. </p>
<p>The official policy didn’t end until 1945, when U.S. Interior Secretary <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/article/more-diversity-how-to-make-national-parks-anti-racist">Harold Ickes outlawed segregation</a> at national parks. But local segregation remained in practice in most Southern states for decades and still excluded Black visitors. </p>
<h2>National parks as worth the struggle</h2>
<p>Du Bois was <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/traveling-through-jim-crow-america">willing to endure the racist laws</a> that made traveling unpleasant for Black people seeking to find joy in natural beauty.</p>
<p>“Did you ever see a ‘Jim-Crow’ waiting-room?” Du Bois wrote in “Darkwater,” referring to the system of laws and social customs that disenfranchised Black people.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A Black man dressed in a dark suit and wearing a bow tie poses for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564972/original/file-20231211-21-345ikt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois on Jan. 1, 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/black-american-writer-and-advocate-of-radical-black-action-news-photo/2664059">C M Battey/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>“Usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer. To buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the ‘other window’ is waited on,” he explained. “Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and money are over there.” </p>
<p>For Du Bois, the struggle was worth the experience of the Grand Canyon.</p>
<p>“There can be nothing like it,” Du Bois wrote. “It is the earth and sky gone stark and raving mad… It is human – some mighty drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy, and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak, unheard, unechoed, and unknown.”</p>
<p>The sight of the Grand Canyon, Du Bois concluded, “will live eternal in my soul.” </p>
<p>The same view has had the same effect on generations of visitors – Black, white and of countless other backgrounds – ever since.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas S. Bremer has conducted historical research for the National Park Service as a consultant at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.</span></em></p>Though progressive politics at the turn of the 20th century called for the protection of America’s national parks, it did so for the enjoyment of white people.Thomas S. Bremer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and American Religious History, Rhodes CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2152232023-11-30T19:30:10Z2023-11-30T19:30:10ZEdward Blum’s crusade against affirmative action has used the legal strategy developed by civil rights activists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557181/original/file-20231101-22-7fzxyn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=552%2C143%2C2443%2C1850&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Edward Blum stands in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 20, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/edward-blum-the-affirmative-action-opponent-behind-the-news-photo/1348676191?adppopup=true">Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Few people have been <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/supreme-court-edward-blum-unc-harvard-myth.html">more associated</a> with rolling back modern-day civil rights laws than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/us/edward-blum-affirmative-action-race.html">Edward Blum</a>, the former stockbroker who has successfully challenged many affirmative action and voting rights laws.</p>
<p>Blum has no formal legal training. He, in fact, refers to himself as an “<a href="https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/05/29/meet-edward-blum-the-man-behind-the-harvard-affirmative-action-case/">amateur litigator</a>.” Yet, he was <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/affirmative-action-supreme-court-ed-blum-100b36c3">instrumental in engineering several legal cases</a> that ultimately led to the June 29, 2023, U.S. Supreme Court decision that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/supreme-court-admissions-affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html">banned the use of race</a> in college admissions. </p>
<p>Spared from that decision were <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-affirmative-action-military-academies-exemption/">U.S. military academies</a>. In a brief footnote in the 237-page decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that those institutions have “potentially distinct interests” from other universities and thus made them exempt from the court’s decision banning affirmative action programs.</p>
<p>That exemption – and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point’s use of race in its admissions – are Blum’s latest targets. </p>
<p>On Sept. 19, 2023, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/09/19/west-point-affirmative-action-lawsuit-race">Blum filed a suit</a> in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against West Point over its racial-balancing admission goals. </p>
<p>Given Blum’s strategy of appealing lower court rulings to the nation’s highest court, his latest test case has the potential to once again bring the issue of affirmative action back to the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>In an October 2022 interview, Blum said he believes that <a href="https://time.com/6225372/edward-blum-affirmative-action-supreme-court-interview/">diversity on campus</a> is a good thing, but “there is a way to go about doing this without putting a thumb on the scale.”</p>
<h2>A political awakening</h2>
<p>Until recently, Blum’s <a href="https://time.com/6225372/edward-blum-affirmative-action-supreme-court-interview/">legal activism</a> rarely gave rise to widespread public praise, condemnation or even scrutiny. His crusade began in the early 1990s when Blum <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/shape-up/">lost a 1992 congressional election</a> in Texas. </p>
<p>Blum and others eventually sued Texas, claiming that political districts created in 1990 to increase minority voter participation were unconstitutional. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 1996 decision in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/952/">Bush v. Vera</a>, the Court agreed with Blum and his fellow litigants. Justices held that race was the dominant factor in the creation of those districts, and thus violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. </p>
<p>As a result, the court redrew the political boundaries of 13 congressional districts and ordered the state to conduct special elections in those districts they deemed were racially gerrymandered.</p>
<p>“After the Supreme Court opinion came down, my interest in the world of business and investment dramatically declined and my interest in law and public policy dramatically increased,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/24/edward-blum-supreme-court-harvard-unc/">Blum later told The Washington Post</a>.</p>
<p>But Blum’s subsequent conservative crusade and legal strategies derive from an unlikely source – the <a href="https://naacp.org/">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a>, known as the NAACP, the very civil rights group that used the courts to dismantle racial segregation in its seminal 1954 case <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brown_v_board_of_education_(1954)">Brown v. Board of Education</a>.</p>
<p>History is not without irony. </p>
<h2>The NAACP’s legal legacy</h2>
<p>The NAACP was <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807855959/the-naacps-legal-strategy-against-segregated-education-1925-1950/">one of the first advocacy organizations</a> to recognize that litigation had the power to change social life. </p>
<p>Long before civil rights activists took to the streets after the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/montgomery-bus-boycott">Montgomery bus boycott</a> in the 1950s, the NAACP had set its sights on what is now known as <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4997&context=ndlr">institutional reform litigation</a>. </p>
<p>The idea? </p>
<p>During the 1930s and 1940s, the NAACP and its <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/ldf-mission/">Legal Defense Fund</a>, led by brilliant legal minds like <a href="https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/alumni/charles-hamilton-houston">Charles Hamilton Houston</a> and future Supreme Court justice <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/about-us/history/thurgood-marshall/">Thurgood Marshall</a>, began to challenge the inherent inequalities of legal segregation by using what became known as <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/history-brown-v-board-education-re-enactment">test cases</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2004/cottrol_diamond_ware_naacp">These test cases</a> targeted racial discrimination in voting, housing and education. They also served a higher purpose in trying to end the system of racist laws known as <a href="https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1035&context=edu_fac">Jim Crow</a> – the very laws that established segregation across the South and disenfranchised Black voters. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A Black man dressed in a business suit is sitting behind a desk with his hands crossed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562154/original/file-20231128-19-un7l1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562154/original/file-20231128-19-un7l1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562154/original/file-20231128-19-un7l1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562154/original/file-20231128-19-un7l1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562154/original/file-20231128-19-un7l1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562154/original/file-20231128-19-un7l1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562154/original/file-20231128-19-un7l1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall sits behind his desk in 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-lawyer-and-special-counsel-of-the-news-photo/666092350?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The NAACP also very carefully <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/brown-v-board/bios.html">chose litigants</a> and test cases. </p>
<p>For instance, the lion’s share of the NAACP’s plaintiffs were respected citizens in both Black and white communities. A good number of <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/naacp-carries-teacher-salary-fight-into-va-1938/">these cases derived from Southern border states</a> such as Virginia, where racial tensions between white and Black people were less hostile than in deep Southern states such as Mississippi and Alabama.</p>
<p>Using this strategy, the organization filed dozens of test cases against segregation.</p>
<p>Marshall <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/thurgood-marshall">argued 32 cases alone</a>, winning 29 of them. </p>
<h2>A new conservative playbook</h2>
<p>Blum and his allies are using similar strategies and have been widely successful in achieving their conservative political ideals. </p>
<p>Blum’s strategy against minority voting protections that started in Texas eventually ended in the 2015 <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/shelby-county-decision">Shelby County v. Holder</a> decision. </p>
<p>In Shelby, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/07/selective-originalism-and-selective-textualism-how-the-roberts-court-decimated-the-voting-rights-act/">gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965</a>. And they did it by eliminating the requirement that states with a history of racial disenfranchisement needed federal approval when making changes to voting rules. </p>
<p>Blum specifically encouraged Shelby County officials in Alabama to challenge <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/about-section-5-voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=Under%20Section%205%2C%20any%20change,makes%20a%20submission%20to%20th">Sections 5 of the Voting Rights Act</a>. That section required Shelby County and certain other Southern jurisdictions to report all proposed voting-related changes to the U.S. Justice Department. </p>
<p>The review process was meant to ensure that the changes would not, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/about-section-5-voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=Under%20Section%205%2C%20any%20change,makes%20a%20submission%20to%20th">as the Justice Department wrote</a>, “deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.”</p>
<p>From its very start, Southerners <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43626/15">fought against the law</a> and spent decades trying to dismantle Section 5, especially because it required direct federal supervision over state and local elections. </p>
<p>That day came with the Shelby County v. Holder decision. Blum’s case helped eliminate a major component of the landmark Voting Rights Act – federal oversight – and has since given rise to <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-supreme-court-decision-gerrymandering-fix-is-up-to-voters-117307">partisan gerrymandering</a> in the states previously under federal scrutiny for their legacy of discriminatory voting practices.</p>
<p>By the early 2000s, Blum turned his attention toward affirmative action in higher education. Much like the NAACP during the civil rights era, Blum carefully chose his plaintiffs and test cases. </p>
<p>Blum hand-picked <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/a-colorblind-constitution-what-abigail-fishers-affirmative-action-case-is-r">Abigail Fisher</a>, a white woman that his alma mater, the University of Texas Austin, had rejected. Fisher, who was a legacy candidate because her father graduated from there, claimed that she was a victim of reverse discrimination as a result of the school’s affirmative action policies. If successful, the case would have meant the end of race-based admission polices at the Texas school and consequently at other colleges across the country.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court ultimately disagreed in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/579/14-981/">Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin</a> in 2016 and reaffirmed its belief in schools that “train students to appreciate diverse viewpoints, to see one another as more than mere stereotypes, and to develop the capacity to live and work together as equal members of a common community.”</p>
<p>But that didn’t stop Blum. </p>
<p>In new lawsuits against the University of North Carolina and Harvard, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/edward-blum-lawsuits-affirmativeaction-law-firms-b8871ab1">Blum strategically featured</a> the plight of Asian Americans, in part because they could be depicted as especially sympathetic victims and model minorities cruelly harmed by affirmative action. </p>
<p>“I needed Asian plaintiffs,” Blum <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiBvo-05JRg">told a group</a> gathered by the Houston Chinese Alliance in 2015.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Five men and four women are wearing black robes as they pose for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508673/original/file-20230207-29-owvlbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508673/original/file-20230207-29-owvlbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508673/original/file-20230207-29-owvlbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508673/original/file-20230207-29-owvlbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508673/original/file-20230207-29-owvlbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508673/original/file-20230207-29-owvlbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508673/original/file-20230207-29-owvlbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The U.S. Supreme Court, from left in front row, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan, and from left in back row, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/united-states-supreme-court-associate-justice-sonia-news-photo/1431388794?phrase=us%20supreme%20clarence%20thomas&adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/02/1183981097/affirmative-action-asian-americans-poc">He found them</a>, and they became the plaintiffs in the cases that led to the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23864004-students-for-fair-admissions-inc-v-president-and-fellows-of-harvard-college">decisions</a> in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/politics/supreme-court-affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html">Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard</a> and <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/students-for-fair-admissions-inc-v-university-of-north-carolina/">Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina</a> that banned the use of race in college admissions. </p>
<p>Both cases were brought by <a href="https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/">Students For Fair Admission</a>, an anti-affirmative action group <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/05/29/meet-edward-blum-the-man-behind-the-harvard-affirmative-action-case/">created by Blum</a>. </p>
<p>Blum’s focus on race neutrality often overlooks one very important historical reality – the <a href="https://medium.com/new-american-history/how-black-history-shaped-history-abbf7dec8804">white backlash</a> that followed the enactment of civil rights laws in the 1960s. In some ways, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/affirmative-action-supreme-court-ed-blum-100b36c3">Blum’s crusade</a>, I believe as a historian of the civil rights movement, embodies that anxiety – and arguably makes a case for why laws protecting minority rights are still needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215223/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Maxwell Hayter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Without much scrutiny or fanfare, Edward Blum has led the attack against federal minority voter protection laws and the use of race in college admissions.Julian Maxwell Hayter, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138112023-09-29T12:24:33Z2023-09-29T12:24:33ZLessons for today from the overlooked stories of Black teachers during the segregated civil rights era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549789/original/file-20230922-24-riaeuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=525%2C194%2C2981%2C2371&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Black schoolroom in Mississippi in 1939.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/class-in-a-schoolroom-on-the-mileston-plantation-in-delta-news-photo/615301754?adppopup=true">Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>My grandmother’s name was Mrs. Zola Jackson. </p>
<p>As one of the handful of Black teachers in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era of racially segregated public schools, she faced a daunting challenge in providing a first-class education to students considered second-class citizens. </p>
<p>Educated at Rust College, a historically Black school, in the 1940s, she taught in the small city of Hattiesburg for over 30 years from 1943-1975, the majority of which was spent in elementary classrooms at DePriest, the school for Black children.</p>
<p>Before the 1954 landmark <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education">Brown v. Board decision</a> that deemed segregated schools “separate and unequal,” the efforts of Black teachers went unheralded, underappreciated and virtually unknown. </p>
<p>I, too, was disconnected from their stories until I became a public school teacher teacher myself and began <a href="https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/126660">my research</a> on the oral histories of Black female teachers in Mississippi during the civil rights era.</p>
<p>My research revealed at least one important lesson: What Black teachers face today is not that different from what we faced in the past. </p>
<h2>In spite of it all</h2>
<p>One of the initial questions that I wanted to answer was, how did educators in the past meet the academic and emotional needs of their students with little to no resources and the constant threat of racial violence?</p>
<p>What I found was that for Black people, education was in and of itself an act of active resistance against racial disenfranchisement.</p>
<p>As education scholar <a href="https://education.illinois.edu/faculty/christopher-span">Christopher Span</a> explained in his 2012 seminal book “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469622217/from-cotton-field-to-schoolhouse/">From Cottonfield to Schoolhouse</a>”: </p>
<p>“To be educated was to be respected; to be educated was to be a citizen. Accordingly, countless black Mississippians willingly sought out schooling, viewing it as the foundation for self-improvement and one means for attaining social and economic parity in slavery’s aftermath.” </p>
<p>At the center of that rich and complex history were Black teachers who believed that a good education was synonymous with freedom and the desire to move beyond the confines of second-class citizenship. </p>
<p>As a result, Black teachers used classrooms to not only impart the lessons of history, but also to encourage students to be actively involved in the fight for racial equity. </p>
<p>In “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807845813/their-highest-potential/">Their Highest Potential</a>,” education scholar <a href="https://naeducation.org/our-members/vanessa-siddle-walker/">Vanessa Siddle Walker</a> wrote in 1996 that Black teachers were “consistently remembered by their former students and colleagues "for their high expectations for student success, for their dedication, and for their demanding teaching style.” </p>
<h2>Education was paramount</h2>
<p>Black teachers used many approaches to ensure student success. Here are a few that serve as lessons for today: </p>
<p>Arguably the most important, the first is developing relationships and mentorships. </p>
<p>Because teachers were part of the community during the civil rights era, it was common for them to be an extension of their students’ families. If needed, teachers made home visits, were in regular communication with families about students’ well-being and held students to high academic and behavioral expectations. Further solidifying those relationships was the fact that many of the teachers had taught several generations of families. </p>
<p>These relationships enabled teachers to use what is now known as <a href="https://online.sou.edu/degrees/education/msed/early-childhood-education/whole-child-approach-learning/">the whole child approach</a> that focuses on a student’s academic potential as well as their social and emotional needs. </p>
<p>It was understood by Black teachers that educating the whole child helped to establish foundations needed for academic and emotional growth in young students. Because of their teachers, Black students valued education and modeled their own behavior to achieve their own potential.</p>
<p>A second lesson from the past that is useful today was the emphasis on civic engagement. Back then, classrooms were places to imagine radical change. Inaction in the face of injustice was not a viable option, and there was an expectation that young people work to become leaders.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A group of Black teenagers carry American flags as they protest against the murder of a civil rights leader." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550946/original/file-20230928-25-f7cw8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550946/original/file-20230928-25-f7cw8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550946/original/file-20230928-25-f7cw8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550946/original/file-20230928-25-f7cw8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550946/original/file-20230928-25-f7cw8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550946/original/file-20230928-25-f7cw8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550946/original/file-20230928-25-f7cw8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Black teenagers in Mississippi carry American flags on Jun. 13, 1963, to protest the murder of a civil rights leader.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/african-american-teenagers-carrying-american-flags-protest-news-photo/1211547094?adppopup=true">Archive Photos/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Going to jail, protesting, risking one’s life and making sacrifices to help the Civil Rights Movement were all realities young people faced and were willing to endure if it meant securing equal rights. </p>
<p>A third lesson is the importance of building coalitions across racial lines. </p>
<p>Groups such as the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power/sncc">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a>, the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/the-civil-rights-era.html">NAACP</a> and the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/congress-racial-equality-core">Congress of Racial Equity</a> worked with <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/for-educators/religion-and-the-civil-rights-movement-background/">religious organizations</a> and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/">white students from colleges</a> during the 1960s <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sit-ins">lunch counter sit-ins</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Freedom-Rides">the freedom rides</a>, as well as <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>. </p>
<p>But not all coalitions were effective. During a 1967 meeting of the National Council of Negro Women, civil rights activist <a href="https://iucat.iu.edu/iub/9589559">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> criticized the educated middle-class Black alliances in Mississippi with Black ministers and white power brokers. But even still, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mississippi-scholarship-online/book/29348/chapter-abstract/244098725?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false">she explained</a>, “the only thing we can do is to work together.”</p>
<p>Of the many lessons from the past, one handed down from my grandmother still rings true today. </p>
<p>She knew then that education was intended to be the great equalizer in America and the key to upward mobility – and she worked her entire career making sure that became a reality in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. </p>
<p>At the school where my grandmother taught, for instance, she used <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9505395/">creativity</a> to solve a critical problem: DePriest did not have a library. </p>
<p>Instead, my grandmother started her own by bringing in books from her personal collection and letting students borrow them one at a time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marlee Bunch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During the civil rights era, Black teachers were valued members of the community and often taught generations of family members.Marlee Bunch, Staff K-12 Initiatives, Office of the Chancellor, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2082752023-08-08T12:28:52Z2023-08-08T12:28:52ZWhen Confederate-glorifying monuments went up in the South, voting in Black areas went down<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541540/original/file-20230807-32816-6usu56.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4556%2C3136&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators hold Confederate flags near the monument for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis on June 25, 2015, in Richmond, Va., after it was spray-painted with the phrase 'Black Lives Matter.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DavisStatueVandalized/ebf030ed819f4497a47fa322218756f4/photo?Query=Confederate%20monuments&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1935&currentItemNo=139">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Confederate monuments <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/09/421531368/south-carolina-gov-nikki-haley-to-sign-confederate-flag-bill-into-law">burst into public consciousness in 2015</a> when a shooting at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, instigated the first broad calls for their removal. The shooter intended to start a race war and had posed with Confederate imagery in photos posted online.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/16/us/confederate-monuments-removed.html">Monument removal efforts grew in 2017</a> after a counterprotester was killed at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacist groups defended the preservation of Confederate monuments. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970610428/nearly-100-confederate-monuments-removed-in-2020-report-says-more-than-700-remai">Removal movements saw widespread success in 2020</a> following George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police.</p>
<p>These events <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/racist-statues-controversial-monuments-in-america-robert-lee-columbus/index.html">linked Confederate monuments to modern racist beliefs</a> and acts. But whether monuments carry inherent racism or are merely misinterpreted requires further exploration.</p>
<p><a href="http://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20211067">Research by economist Jhacova A. Williams has shown</a> that Black Americans who live in areas that have a relatively higher number of streets named after prominent Confederate generals “are less likely to be employed, are more likely to be employed in low-status occupations, and have lower wages compared to Whites.” </p>
<p><a href="https://alexntaylor.github.io">I study economic and political history</a> and have researched the effects of <a href="http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4451402">Confederate monuments in the post-Civil War South</a>. I found that these symbols helped solidify the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow era</a>, which established segregation across the South and lasted from the 1880s until the 1960s. These symbols were accompanied by increases in the vote share of the <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow">Democratic Party – the racist party</a> that had supported slavery and, after the Civil War, supported segregation for another century. The building of these monuments was also accompanied by reductions in voter turnout. Further research I conducted shows that these political effects disproportionately occurred in areas with a larger share of Black residents. </p>
<p>In other words, as these monuments were erected, the vote increased for members of the then-racist Democratic Party, and people turned out to vote in lower numbers in predominantly Black areas.</p>
<p>These findings demonstrate that a connection existed between racism and these monuments from their inception – and provide context for modern monument debates.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People hold a large tarpaulin beneath a statue of a man riding a horse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richmond, Va., city workers prepare to drape a tarp over a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ConfederateMonumentsProtest/31b060bdbdd84f349a5bc96319bcccc3/photo">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Monumental history</h2>
<p>The South saw almost no monument dedications during the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heritage_timeline_print.pdf">Monuments first appeared during the Reconstruction era</a> – 1865 to 1877 – when Southern states were occupied by the North and integrated back into the Union. </p>
<p>Reconstruction-era monuments in general <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ghosts-of-the-confederacy-9780195054200?cc=be&lang=en&#">did not glorify the Confederacy</a>. These monuments largely honored the dead and were placed in cemeteries and spaces distant from daily life. They compartmentalized the trauma of the war, commemorating lives but not placing the Confederacy at the center of Southern identity.</p>
<p>As Reconstruction neared its end in 1875, a <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2015651796/">Stonewall Jackson monument erected in Richmond, Virginia</a>, foreshadowed the different monuments to come. </p>
<p>The monument’s dedication drew 50,000 spectators and included a military-style parade. The potential presence of a local all-Black militia <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008199">proved to be controversial</a>. To avoid accusations of race mixing, organizers planned to place the militia and any other Black participants in the back of the parade. </p>
<p>The militia did not attend, likely in anticipation of the controversy, and the only Black Southerners present in the parade were formerly enslaved people who had served in the <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/stonewall-brigade/">Confederacy’s Stonewall Brigade</a>. This stark picture of Southern race relations served as a preview of political developments to come.</p>
<p>This trend continued after Reconstruction, which ended with the <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/struggle_president.html">Compromise of 1877</a>. This compromise settled the disputed 1876 presidential election, giving Republicans the presidency and <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813108131/the-life-and-death-of-the-solid-south/">Democrats, then a pro-segregation party</a>, full political control of the South. Democrats subsequently established what would become known as <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312302412/americannightmare">Jim Crow laws</a> across the South, an array of restrictive and discriminatory laws that disenfranchised Black Southerners and made them second-class citizens.</p>
<p>Monuments played a cultural role in establishing the Jim Crow South. Unlike Reconstruction monuments, post-Reconstruction monuments were erected in prominent public spaces, and their focus shifted toward the portrayal and glorification of famous Confederates. Monument dedication ceremonies were particularly popular around the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/whose-heritage">peaking in 1911</a>.</p>
<p>Additional Confederate monuments have been dedicated since that period, but those numbers pale in comparison to the monument-building spree of 1878 to 1912.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two flags fly near a monument to a soldier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mississippi state and U.S. flags fly near the Rankin County Confederate Monument in the downtown square of Brandon, Miss., on March 3, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ConfederateMemorialDay/337ff60bdb974c22ab9798576adc1d15/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Monumental effects</h2>
<p><a href="http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4451402">My research</a> investigates the political effects of Confederate monuments in the Reconstruction and early post-Reconstruction – 1877-1912 – eras, namely their effects on Democratic Party vote share and voter turnout.</p>
<p>I expected monuments’ potential effects to be directly related to their centrality to everyday life and glorification of the Confederacy. This is the primary difference between soldier-memorializing Reconstruction and Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. </p>
<p>I expected to find little political effect from soldier-memorializing Reconstruction monuments, but some pro-Jim Crow effects from Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. As monuments moved from cemeteries into central public spaces such as parks and squares, I expected them to affect voters’ decisions.</p>
<p>That is precisely what I found. </p>
<p>During Reconstruction, counties that dedicated Confederate monuments saw no change in voter turnout or Democratic Party vote share in biennial congressional elections. These symbols were soldier-memorializing and physically separate from public life and did not influence voter decision-making.</p>
<p>However, when monuments began to glorify the Confederacy and shifted into public life, political effects emerged. </p>
<p>Counties that dedicated monuments in the early post-Reconstruction period saw, on average, a 5.5 percentage point increase in Democratic Party vote share and a 2.2 percentage point decrease in voter turnout compared with other counties.</p>
<p>As monuments changed, so did their effect on the public. Glorifying public monuments communicated to the public that the Confederacy was worth preserving, thus strengthening Democratic majorities and lowering participation in the political process.</p>
<p>Larger Democratic majorities alongside lower voter turnout already suggests Black Southerners, who almost exclusively voted for Republicans at that time, were voting less in areas with monuments. I conducted further exploration and found that these political effects disproportionately occurred in counties with larger Black populations. This suggests that Black voters were more responsive to Confederate monuments, which suppressed their political activity by signaling they were not accepted by the local community.</p>
<p>The effects of post-Reconstruction monuments suggest that they played a role in continued racism throughout the South into the early 20th century. </p>
<p>Their controversy today demonstrates the values still conveyed by their presence in society. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad014">Recent research</a> has demonstrated the long-run effects of the spread of Southern white culture and prejudices across the United States post-Civil War, connecting it to higher levels of modern-day Republican Party voting and conservative values. </p>
<p>It is thus no wonder Confederate monuments, as prominent symbols of pro-Confederate, Southern white culture, continue to be – and are likely to remain – cultural flashpoints.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander N. Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The drive to remove Confederate monuments links those monuments to modern racism. An economic historian shows that the intent and effect of those monuments from inception was to perpetuate racism.Alexander N. Taylor, PhD Candidate in Economics, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2072002023-06-14T12:35:42Z2023-06-14T12:35:42ZHow Black Americans combated racism from beyond the grave<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531729/original/file-20230613-29-v4r4v4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=628%2C18%2C2933%2C2017&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The addition of a simple 'Mr.' or 'Mrs.' could be a quiet act of resistance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2020/138/UNCEM_35636_03eec082-5c04-49d3-923d-56e52521da3c.jpeg?v=1589684490">Rae Tucker/Find a Grave</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/descendants-fight-to-preserve-black-cemetery-behind-buckhead-condo/ZB57GY6QXRCGNLDB5MAPMIL4U4/">published a story about a Black cemetery</a> in Buckhead, a prosperous Atlanta community.</p>
<p>The cemetery broke ground almost two centuries ago, in 1826, as the graveyard of Piney Grove Baptist Church. The church has been gone for decades; the cemetery now sits on the property of a townhouse development. It is overgrown, with most of its 300-plus graves unmarked.</p>
<p>The article describes how some of the buried’s descendants and family members are trying to get the property owner to clean up and take care of the cemetery. </p>
<p>Audrey Collins is one of those descendants. Her grandmother, Lenora Powell Thomas, is buried there, and a photograph of her grandmother’s headstone accompanied the article.</p>
<p>The headstone is not one of those polished markers that you are probably used to seeing. It is small, perhaps 18 inches tall. It has a rough, poured concrete base with a plaster inset, which includes the name of the funeral home, the name of Collins’ grandmother and the date of her death. Her name reads, “Mrs. Lenora Thomas.” </p>
<p>Those first three letters – Mrs. – might be the most important on the headstone. </p>
<p>The courtesy titles Mr., Mrs. and Miss rarely appear on headstones; usually it is just the first and last name. </p>
<p>But here, they serve an important function, reminding viewers of how Black Americans came up with creative ways to retain their dignity and weather the dehumanizing effects of racism.</p>
<h2>Unworthy of honorifics</h2>
<p>In September 1951, the Savannah Tribune, a Black newspaper, <a href="https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn84020323/1951-09-27/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=01%2F01%2F1763&nottext=&date2=12%2F31%2F2023&words=house+lewd+operated+operating+operator&searchType=advanced&sequence=0&lccn=sn84020323&index=1&proxdistance=5&rows=12&ortext=&proxtext=&andtext=operating+a+lewd+house&page=1">complained about a couple of items</a> that had recently appeared in the white press.</p>
<p>One was a report of a white woman who was convicted of “operating and maintaining a lewd house.” The newspapers put “Mrs.” before her name. The second item was an announcement of the principals in the city’s “colored schools.” The names of the female principals were given without the courtesy titles of “Miss” or “Mrs.” The difference was literally Black and white.</p>
<p>When you hear about life in the Jim Crow South, you might think of segregated schools, city buses and lunch counters. </p>
<p>But subtler slights were part of everyday life. White Southerners refused to refer to African Americans with the courtesy titles Mr., Mrs. or Miss, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/opinion/sunday/white-newspapers-african-americans.html">depriving them of their dignity</a>. In the late 1970s, <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/education/benjamin-mays-ca-1894-1984/">Benjamin Mays</a>, president of Atlanta’s Morehouse College, <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820316970/living-atlanta/">recounted how</a> “‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ and ‘Miss’ were signs of social equality. They didn’t call you that.” </p>
<p>This denial of Black dignity was pervasive. A 1935 study of 28 Southern white newspapers <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2292331">found none that used courtesy titles for Black Americans</a>. In a 1964 article, the Atlanta Daily World noted that <a href="https://www.proquest.com/hnpatlantadailyworld/docview/491308729/5951604249B14D6BPQ/17?accountid=11824">in the telephone book</a> “Miss” or “Mrs.” appeared before the names of white women; for Black women, it was just “Susie Smith” or “Jenny Davis.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Black and white mugshot photo of woman with short hair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531495/original/file-20230612-27-1zmtqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531495/original/file-20230612-27-1zmtqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531495/original/file-20230612-27-1zmtqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531495/original/file-20230612-27-1zmtqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531495/original/file-20230612-27-1zmtqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531495/original/file-20230612-27-1zmtqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531495/original/file-20230612-27-1zmtqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil rights activist Mary Hamilton was arrested in Jackson, Miss., in 1961 while participating in the Freedom Rides. Two years later, she would be arrested again – and held in contempt of court for refusing to respond to a lawyer who called her ‘Mary.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Miss_Mary_Hamillton_mugshot_1961.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Only in the 1960s did this begin to change. <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/11/30/567177501/when-miss-meant-so-much-more-how-one-woman-fought-alabama-and-won">Mary Hamilton</a>, a civil rights activist, was arrested at a demonstration in Gadsden, Alabama, in 1963. In the courtroom, the prosecutor asked her a question, addressing her as “Mary.” </p>
<p>“I won’t respond,” Hamilton said, “until you call me Miss Hamilton” – which is how he had been addressing white women on the stand. The judge ordered her to answer the question, and, when she refused, he sentenced her to a few days in jail for contempt of court. </p>
<p>Her appeal reached the Supreme Court, which ruled that <a href="https://www.proquest.com/hnpatlantaconstitution2/docview/1556878357/EEEA8E7745694E50PQ/1?accountid=11824">judges and lawyers do have to use “Miss” and other honorifics for Black witnesses</a>, just as they do for white people.</p>
<h2>Dignity in death</h2>
<p>In the 1940s, Black funeral directors in Atlanta came up with a way to combat this dehumanization: grave markers that anointed their dead with the courtesy titles that white society had denied them. </p>
<p>There <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208154394/hattie-binyon">are</a> <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/69779193/leonard-fuller">hundreds</a> of <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/115550887/woody-d-blountson">headstones</a> like Mrs. Thomas’ in <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195981183/zebbie-bailey">older</a> <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/181934133/otha-swanson">Black cemeteries</a> in the Atlanta area. Most of those markers were made by <a href="https://oaklandcemetery.com/eldren-bailey-the-story-of-a-cemetery-artist/">Eldren Bailey</a>, an artist who worked in concrete and plaster. They are beautiful in their simplicity. And they all clearly say “Mr.,” “Mrs.” or “Miss.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three photographs of three old gravestones taken at dusk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=198&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531501/original/file-20230613-15-dg0cdi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tombstones for Mrs. Annie R. Summerour, Mr. Walter I. Summerour and Mr. Charlie Price in the graveyard of Mount Zion AME Church in Kennesaw, Ga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David B. Parker</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These grave markers were sold as part of a funeral package, so they each bear the name of one of a dozen or so African American funeral homes in Atlanta: Hanley, Cox Brothers, Ivey Brothers, Haugabrooks, Sellers, Murdaugh and others. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674036215">One historian</a> noted that “black funeral directors not only regularly participated in the fight for racial equality but also made significant contributions to the cause.” That was certainly true of <a href="https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=186438">Geneva Haugabrooks</a>, who established the Haugabrooks Funeral Home in 1929. She was active in the <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/atlanta-negro-voters-league-anvl/">Atlanta Negro Voters League</a>, and she supported the <a href="https://negromotoristgreenbook.si.edu/compass/">Negro Motorist Green Book</a>. In 1953, <a href="https://www.proquest.com/hnpatlantadailyworld/docview/490999968/6EACB8A703E24AD9PQ/1?accountid=11824&parentSessionId=pNLzX56RIdYYlazg4PGQjbwYX3MhjRaF8pCdvfzUQoI%3D">the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP honored her</a> for “the valuable work she has done locally and nationally.”</p>
<p>I do not know who came up with the idea of using honorifics in these markers. Perhaps it was Mrs. Haugabrooks, whose funeral home appears on some of the oldest.</p>
<p>In any case, I believe they are worth preserving and remembering, as they restored, in death, a sense of dignity to people who had been denied it in life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207200/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David B. Parker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tombstones that used the honorifics ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’ restored a sense of dignity to people who had been denied it in life.David B. Parker, Professor of History, Kennesaw State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2007442023-03-09T14:28:58Z2023-03-09T14:28:58ZJimmy Carter’s African legacy: peacemaker, negotiator and defender of rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512455/original/file-20230227-1191-gv4ueg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Carter's interest in southern Africa was crucial to keeping the peace.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When historians and pundits praise Jimmy Carter’s <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/abs/nancy-mitchell-jimmy-carter-in-africa-race-and-the-cold-war-stanford-ca-stanford-university-press-2016-4500-pp-xiv-883-isbn-978-0-8047-9358-8/DB52A5925C6F10E199F93FB881AB03D9">achievements</a> as the US president and extol his exemplary post-presidential years, they mention the recognition of China, the <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/the-panama-canal-treaties-jimmy-carter">Panama Canal Treaties</a> and the <a href="https://carterschool.gmu.edu/why-study-here/legacy-leadership/camp-david-hal-saunders-and-responsibility-peacemaking">Camp David Accords</a>. Almost no one mentions what Carter achieved in Africa during his presidency. This is a serious oversight. </p>
<p>When I interviewed President Carter in 2002, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=25540&i=Excerpt%20from%20the%20Introduction.html">he told me</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I spent more effort and worry on Rhodesia than I did on the Middle East.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The archival record supports the former president’s claim. Reams of documents detail Carter’s sustained and deep focus during his presidency on ending white rule in Rhodesia, and helping to bring about the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/zimbabawean-independence-day">independence of Zimbabwe</a>.</p>
<p>There were several reasons for Carter’s focus on southern Africa. First, realpolitik. Southern Africa was the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25798909?seq=4">hottest theatre</a> of the Cold War when Carter took office in January 1977. A year earlier, Fidel Castro had sent <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">36,000 Cuban troops</a> to Angola to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">protect the leftist MPLA</a> from a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">South African invasion</a> backed by the Gerald Ford administration. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Freedom-Washington-Pretoria-1976-1991/dp/1469628325">Cubans remained in Angola until 1991 </a>.</p>
<p>Mozambique was no longer governed by America’s NATO ally, Portugal, but instead by the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4185752">left-leaning Frelimo</a> . Apartheid South Africa – so recently a stable, pro-American outpost far from the Cold War – suddenly faced the prospect of being surrounded by hostile black-ruled states.</p>
<p>The unfolding events in southern Africa riveted Washington’s attention on Rhodesia, where the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">insurgency against the white minority government</a> of <a href="https://www.mandela.ac.za/Leadership-and-Governance/Honorary-Doctorates/Ian-Smith-1979">Ian Smith</a> was escalating. One week after the Carter administration took office it assessed the crisis in Rhodesia: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This situation contains the seeds of another Angola … If the breakdown of talks means intensified warfare, Soviet/Cuban influence is bound to increase.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The administration knew that if the war did not end, the Cuban troops might cross the continent to help the rebels.</p>
<h2>And then what?</h2>
<p>It was unthinkable that the Carter administration, with its <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/human-rights#:%7E:text=He%20intended%20to%20infuse%20a,the%20fate%20of%20freedom%20">stress on human rights</a>, would intervene in Rhodesia to support the racist government of Ian Smith. But, given the Cold War, it was equally unthinkable that it would stand aside passively enabling another Soviet-backed Cuban victory in Africa. Therefore, the administration’s first <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44376206">Presidential Review Memorandum</a> on southern Africa, written immediately after Carter took office, announced:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In terms of urgency, the Rhodesian problem is highest priority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Carter administration assembled a <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25540">high-powered negotiating team</a>, led by <a href="https://aysps.gsu.edu/andrew-young-biography/">UN Ambassador Andrew Young</a> and <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/vance">Secretary of State Cyrus Vance</a>, to coordinate with the British and hammer out a settlement. These negotiations, spearheaded by the Americans, led to the <a href="https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5847/5/1979_Lancaster_House_Agreement.pdf">Lancaster House talks</a> in Britain, and the free elections in 1980 and black majority rule in an independent in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>There was another reason for Carter’s interest in southern Africa: race. Carter <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Before-Daylight-Memories-Boyhood/dp/0743211995">grew up in the segregated South</a> of the 1920s and 1930s. As a child, he did not question the racist strictures of the <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what.htm">Jim Crow South</a>, but as he matured, served in the US Navy and was elected governor of Georgia, his worldview evolved. </p>
<p>He appreciated how the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/">civil rights movement</a> had helped liberate the US South from its regressive past, and he regretted that he had not been an active participant in the movement. When I asked Carter why he had expended so much effort on Rhodesia, part of his explanation was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I felt a sense of responsibility and some degree of guilt that we had spent an entire century after the Civil War still persecuting blacks, and to me the situation in Africa was inseparable from the fact of deprivation or persecution or oppression of Black people in the South. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Parallels with the US South</h2>
<p>Carter’s belief that there were parallels between the freedom struggles in the US South and in southern Africa may have been naïve, but it was important. </p>
<p>Influenced by Andrew Young, who had been a <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/young-andrew">close aide</a> to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/">Martin Luther King </a>, Carter transcended the knee-jerk anticommunist reaction of previous American presidents to the members of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/struggle-Zimbabwe-Chimurenga-War/dp/0949932000">Patriotic Front</a>, the loose alliance of insurgents fighting the regime of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/lifeinfocus/a-life-in-focus-ian-douglas-smith-last-white-prime-minister-rhodesia-zimbabwe-a8754971.html">Ian Smith</a>.</p>
<p>Young challenged the Manichaean tropes of the Cold War. <a href="https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/race-and-the-cold-war.html">He explained in 1977</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Communism has never been a threat to me … Racism has always been a threat – and that has been the enemy of all of my life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Young helped Carter see the Patriotic Front, albeit leftist guerrillas supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, as freedom fighters. Therefore, unlike the Gerald Ford administration which had <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">shunned</a> the Front and tried to settle the conflict through negotiations with the white leaders of Rhodesia and South Africa, Carter considered the Front the key players. He brought them to the fore of the negotiations. This was extraordinarily rare in the annals of US diplomacy during the Cold War. </p>
<p>Carter has not received the credit his administration deserves for the Zimbabwe settlement. It was a success not only in moral terms, enabling free elections in an independent country. It also precluded a repetition of the Cuban intervention in Angola. It was Carter’s signal achievement in sub-Saharan Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (C) speaks as former US president Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel of Mozambique look on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Joe/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Angola and the Cold War reflexes</h2>
<p>Carter also improved US relations with the continent as a whole. He <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">increased</a> trade, diplomatic contacts and, simply, treated Black Africa with respect.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">war in the Horn of Africa</a>, he resisted intense pressure to throw full US support behind the Somalis when the Somali government waged a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">war of aggression</a> against leftist Ethiopia. His administration attempted valiantly to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/dh/article-abstract/34/5/853/490367">negotiate a settlement</a> in Namibia and condemned apartheid in South Africa. </p>
<p>But in Angola, as historian Piero Gleijeses’ superb <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Freedom-Washington-Pretoria-1976-1991/dp/1469628325">research</a> has shown, Carter reverted to Cold War reflexes. He asserted that the US would restore full relations with Angola only after the Cuban troops had departed. This, even though he knew that the Cubans were there by invitation of the Angolan government, and were essential to hold the South Africans at bay. Carter’s was the typical response of US governments to any perceived communist threat. But it serves to highlight – by contrast – how unusual was the administration’s policy of embracing the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>For the next 40 years, Carter focused more on sub-Saharan Africa than on any other region of the world. The Carter Center’s almost total <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/23/1158358366/jimmy-carter-took-on-the-awful-guinea-worm-when-no-one-else-would-and-he-triumph">eradication of Guinea worm</a> has saved an estimated 80 million Africans from this devastating disease. Its election monitoring throughout the continent, and its conflict resolution programmes, have bolstered democracy. </p>
<p>Carter’s work in Africa, and especially in Zimbabwe, forms a significant and underappreciated part of his impressive legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Carter’s work in Zimbabwe forms a significant and under appreciated part of his legacyNancy Mitchell, Professor of History, North Carolina State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1974752023-02-03T13:30:25Z2023-02-03T13:30:25ZCivil rights legislation sparked powerful backlash that’s still shaping American politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506449/original/file-20230125-16-70s0sb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3868%2C2598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of voters lining up outside the polling station, a small Sugar Shack store, on May 3, 1966, in Peachtree, Ala., after the Voting Rights Act was passed the previous year. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-voters-lining-up-outside-the-polling-station-a-news-photo/3088626?phrase=Voting%20Rights%20Act&adppopup=true">MPI/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For nearly 60 years, conservatives have been trying to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/voting-rights-act-democracy/617792/">gut the Voting Rights Act</a> of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. <a href="https://jepson.richmond.edu/faculty/bios/jhayter/">As a scholar of</a> American voting rights, I believe their long game is finally bearing fruit.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision</a> in <a href="https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/1027">Shelby County v. Holder</a> seemed to be the death knell for the Voting Rights Act.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/08/15/the-court-right-to-vote-dissent/">In that case</a>, the court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that supervised elections in areas with a history of disenfranchisement.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court is currently considering a case, <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/merrill-v-milligan-2/">Merrill v. Milligan</a>, that might gut what remains of the act after Shelby.</p>
<p>Conservative legal strategists want the court to say that Alabama – <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/merrill-v-milligan-supreme-court/">where African Americans</a> make up approximately one-quarter of the population, still live in concentrated and segregated communities and yet have only one majority-Black voting district out of seven state districts – should not consider race when drawing district boundaries. </p>
<p>These challenges to minority voting rights didn’t emerge overnight. The Shelby and Merrill cases are the culmination of a decadeslong conservative legal strategy designed <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/john-roberts-supreme-court-voting-rights-act/671239/">to roll back</a> the political gains of the civil rights movement itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A receipt for a $1.50 poll tax paid in 1957 by Rosa Parks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506451/original/file-20230125-22-zpgh30.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A number of Southern states had a poll tax that was aimed at preventing by Black people, many of whom couldn’t afford to pay it. This is a receipt for a $1.50 poll tax paid in 1957 by Rosa Parks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss85943.002605/?sp=2&r=0.026,-0.021,1.01,0.419,0">Library of Congress, Rosa Parks Papers</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Victory – and more bigotry</h2>
<p>The realization of civil and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/07/02/the-civil-rights-act-was-a-victory-against-racism-but-racists-also-won/">voting rights laws</a> during the 1960s is often portrayed as a victory over racism. The rights revolution actually gave rise to more bigotry.</p>
<p>The Voting Rights Act criminalized the use of discriminatory tests and devices, including literacy tests and <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/21/239081586/the-racial-history-of-the-grandfather-clause">grandfather clauses</a> that exempted white people from the same tests that stopped Black people from voting. It also required federal supervision of certain local Southern elections and barred these jurisdictions from making electoral changes without <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/about-section-5-voting-rights-act">explicit approval from Washington</a>.</p>
<p>These provisions worked. </p>
<p>After 1965, <a href="https://www.crmvet.org/docs/ccr_voting_south_6805.pdf">Black voters instigated a complexion revolution</a> in Southern politics, as African Americans voted in record numbers and elected an unprecedented number of Black officials. </p>
<p>In fact, the VRA worked so well that it gave rise to another seismic political shift: White voters left the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/emerging-republican-majority/595504/">Democratic Party</a> in record numbers.</p>
<p>As Washington protected Black voting rights, this <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/158320/western-origins-southern-strategy">emerging Republican majority</a> capitalized on fears of an interracial democracy. Conservatives resolved to turn the South Republican by associating minority rights with white oppression. </p>
<p>In 1981, conservative political consultant and GOP strategist Lee Atwater recognized that Republicans might exploit these fears. <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/">He argued</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.“</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Retard civil rights enforcement’</h2>
<p>It wasn’t just Southerners who aimed to undo the revolution enabled by the Voting Rights Act. </p>
<p>President Richard Nixon helped begin this process by promising Southerners that he wouldn’t enforce civil rights. In fact, in a secret meeting with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/27/us/strom-thurmond-foe-of-integration-dies-at-100.html">segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond</a>, Nixon promised to ”<a href="https://www.amacad.org/publication/past-future-american-civil-rights">retard civil rights enforcement</a>.“ </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three men in suits at a large gathering smoking cigars, clapping and looking happy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506474/original/file-20230125-11748-j7xsu2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Conservative political consultant and GOP strategist Lee Atwater, center, at the GOP National Convention in Dallas, Aug. 23, 1984, recognized that Republicans might capitalize on white people’s fears of rising Black political power.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RNCCigars/b716a9e732ca4ea39fd610b1faa0171f/photo?Query=Lee%20Atwater&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=51&currentItemNo=11">AP Photo/Ed Kolenovsky</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan also used white people’s <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/">growing fear of African American political clout</a> to his advantage. </p>
<p>Reagan’s administration, according to voting rights expert <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26493">Jesse Rhodes</a>, used executive and congressional control to reorganize the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>The objective?</p>
<p>To undermine how Washington enforced the Voting Rights Act – without appearing explicitly racist.</p>
<p>One of the Reagan administration’s strategies was to associate minority voting rights with so-called reverse discrimination. They argued that laws privileging minorities discriminated against white voters. </p>
<h2>Undoing progress</h2>
<p>Here’s the background to that strategy:</p>
<p>The years following 1965 were characterized by the <a href="https://jointcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/VRA-report-3.5.15-1130-amupdated.pdf">dilution of Black Southerners’ voting power</a>. Realizing that they couldn’t keep African Americans from voting, Southerners and segregationists resolved to weaken votes once they’d been cast. They gerrymandered districts and used other means that would dilute minority voting power. </p>
<p>African Americans took the fight to the courts. In fact, nearly 50 cases involving vote dilution <a href="https://www2.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/cr12v943a.pdf">flooded the court system after 1965</a>.</p>
<p>Over the course of the 1970s, the Supreme Court met the challenge of <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S1-8-6-6/ALDE_00013453/">vote dilution</a> by mandating the <a href="https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2905&context=law_lawreview">implementation of majority-minority districts</a>. </p>
<p>Conservatives during the early 1980s had become increasingly alarmed by the Supreme Court’s and Department of Justice’s preference for drawing racial district boundaries to give minorities more influence in elections in such ”<a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Majority-minority_districts">majority-minority districts</a>.“ <a href="https://www.democratic-erosion.com/2021/10/24/unpacking-redistricting-are-majority-minority-districts-really-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/">These districts</a> aimed to guarantee that minorities could elect candidates of their choice free from machinations such as vote dilution. </p>
<p>With little regard for vote dilution itself, conservative politicians and their strategists argued that majority-minority districts discriminated against whites because they privileged, like affirmative action policies, equality of outcomes in elections <a href="https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/section-1-equality-opportunity-and-alternatives/equality-outcome">rather than equal opportunity to participate</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A gray-haired man in a suit walking in front of a lot of marble steps." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506475/original/file-20230125-3412-tih2e4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Blum, a longtime conservative legal activist, has brought and won many cases at the Supreme Court rolling back civil rights gains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/edward-blum-a-long-time-opponent-of-affirmative-action-in-news-photo/1437982045?phrase=Edward%20Blum&adppopup=true">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Tidal wave</h2>
<p>This strategy paid off. </p>
<p>During the 1980s, Republicans used congressional control, a Republican White House and judicial appointments to turn the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/magazine/voting-rights-act-dream-undone.html">federal court system and the Department of Justice even further right</a>. </p>
<p>By the 1990s, conservatives replaced federal officials who might <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/01/09/proving-his-mettle-in-the-reagan-justice-dept/416680ce-9ee7-485f-86f8-df6570cab56f/">protect the Voting Rights Act</a>. In time, these developments, and growing conservatism within the courts, prompted conservative litigation that continues to shape civil rights laws.</p>
<p>A tidal wave of anti-civil rights litigation, led by <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/10/supreme-court-edward-blum-unc-harvard-myth.html">a well-funded man</a>, Edward Blum, flooded the court system. Blum sought to undermine the Voting Rights Act’s supervision of local elections and undo racial quotas in higher education and employment. </p>
<p>Blum, <a href="https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Captured%20Courts%20Equal%20Justice%20report.pdf">a legal strategist</a> affiliated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, helped engineer these now-famous test cases – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-casemaker-cases/cases-edward-blum-has-taken-to-the-supreme-court-idUKBRE8B30Z120121204">Bush v. Vera (1996), Fisher v. University of Texas (2013) and Shelby v. Holder (2015)</a>. He also orchestrated <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/24/edward-blum-supreme-court-harvard-unc/">two pending cases</a> at the court that could reshape the consideration of race in college admissions, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/20-1199">Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/21-707">Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina</a>. </p>
<p>These cases, at their core, attacked the rights revolution of the 1960s – or rights that privilege minorities. The argument? </p>
<p>These protections are obsolete because Jim Crow segregation, especially its overt violence and sanctioned segregation, is dead.</p>
<h2>New claim, old game</h2>
<p>Nearly 30 years of Republican or divided control of Congress and, to a lesser degree, the executive office gave rise to increasingly conservative <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/156855/republican-party-took-supreme-court">Supreme Court nominations</a> that have not just turned the court red; they all but ensured favorable outcomes for conservative litigation.</p>
<p>These include the Shelby and Merrill cases and, more recently, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/24/edward-blum-supreme-court-harvard-unc/">litigation</a> that seeks to remove racial considerations from college admissions.</p>
<p>In the Shelby case, the court held that the unprecedented number of African Americans in <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fifty-years-after-march-selma-everything-and-nothing-has-changed/">Alabama</a> – and national – politics meant not merely that racism was gone, it meant that the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-broke-america/564707/">Voting Rights Act is no longer relevant</a>. </p>
<p>These cases, however, have all but ignored <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/165283/suppress-black-vote-jim-crow">the uptick</a> in conservatives’ claims of <a href="https://www.retroreport.org/video/poll-watchers-and-the-long-history-of-voter-intimidation/">voter fraud and political machinations</a> at polling stations in predominantly minority voting districts. </p>
<p>In fact, the rise of voter fraud allegations and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/11/19/true-danger-trump-his-media-allies-denying-election-results/">contested election results</a> is a new iteration of old, and ostensibly less violent, racism.</p>
<p>The Voting Rights Act was not only effective; Washington was also, initially, committed to its implementation. The political will to maintain minority voting rights has struggled to keep pace with the continuity of racist trends in American politics.</p>
<p>The work of protecting minority voting rights remains <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/05/democracy-january-6-coup-constitution-526512">unfinished</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Maxwell Hayter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Conservatives and the GOP have mounted a decadeslong legal fight to turn the clock back on the political gains of the civil rights movement.Julian Maxwell Hayter, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1936992022-11-04T16:21:21Z2022-11-04T16:21:21ZWhat’s at stake this Election Day – 7 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493337/original/file-20221103-13-5pz4zm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People volunteer at a Native Alaskan voting station on Nov. 2, 2022 in Anchorage. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/people-participate-in-voting-in-the-upcoming-midterm-elections-at-a-picture-id1244447058?s=612x612">Spencer Platt/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Election Day closes in, uncertainty and concern about potential chaos – from violence at polling sites to candidates refusing to accept defeat – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63494618">continue to rise</a>. </p>
<p>Problems that have historically plagued the U.S. electoral and political system – like voter intimidation – are cropping up ahead of the midterms. But so, too, are less familiar issues, like how previously run-of-the-mill state election positions are becoming opportunities for political activism.</p>
<p>Here are seven key issues that affect the midterm elections, drawn from stories in The Conversation’s archive.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white older man in a dark blue suit stands next to two American flags, and a third very large flag over a blue backdrop. A Black man in a suit stands on the other side of the American flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">President Joe Biden spoke on Nov. 2, 2022, warning of the need to preserve and protect democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-joe-biden-arrives-to-deliver-remarks-on-preserving-and-as-picture-id1244440371?s=612x612">Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>1. Who is voting</h2>
<p>Voter participation during midterm elections is typically low – though <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/">some experts say</a> that there could be heavy turnout this year. But the question of who actually heads to the polls will also be critical, as races in key <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/">swing states tighten</a>. </p>
<p>Young voters are much less likely to vote during midterms than older people, as opposed to their higher turnouts during presidential elections, American University government scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1XMWY78AAAAJ&hl=en">Jan Leighley</a> wrote. Young voters are also more likely to identify as Democrats. </p>
<p>“So if younger voters are underrepresented in the November 2022 elections, more Republicans may be elected, as well as candidates less likely to reflect younger citizens’ views on key issues,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-voters-are-more-likely-to-skip-midterm-elections-than-presidential-races-192314">Leighley wrote.</a> </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-voters-are-more-likely-to-skip-midterm-elections-than-presidential-races-192314">Young voters are more likely to skip midterm elections than presidential races</a>
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<p>This year, meanwhile, record numbers of Latinos are also expected to turn out to vote. In 2020, most Latinos voted for President Joe Biden – but increasing numbers of Latino voters are also supporting GOP candidates, including former president Donald Trump, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gop-made-gains-among-latino-voters-in-2020-but-democrats-remain-the-party-of-choice-for-upcoming-midterms-192679">wrote University of Tennessee social work</a> scholar <a href="https://experts.utk.edu/experts/mary-lehman-held/">Mary Lehman Held.</a></p>
<p>One reason is that Latino voters have different backgrounds, values and priorities. And not all would be turned off by Republican candidates’ restrictive immigration politics. </p>
<p>“Immigration policies only affect a subset of Latinos, most notably Mexicans, followed by Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans,” Lehman Held explained.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gop-made-gains-among-latino-voters-in-2020-but-democrats-remain-the-party-of-choice-for-upcoming-midterms-192679">The GOP made gains among Latino voters in 2020 but Democrats remain the party of choice for upcoming midterms</a>
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<h2>2. What voters want</h2>
<p>It’s the economy, stupid, <a href="https://politicaldictionary.com/words/its-the-economy-stupid/">as the famous</a> 1992 political adage about voters’ top concern goes. </p>
<p>Soaring inflation <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inflation-will-likely-stay-sky-high-regardless-of-which-party-wins-the-midterms-193416">rates top voters’</a> concerns this year, even though neither political party has been found particularly more effective at tackling the issue and bringing down inflation, as Texas State University finance scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eP0xZ1kAAAAJ&hl=en">William Chittenden wrote.</a></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inflation-will-likely-stay-sky-high-regardless-of-which-party-wins-the-midterms-193416">Why inflation will likely stay sky-high regardless of which party wins the midterms</a>
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<p>There was a flurry of political activism around the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a> in June 2022, undoing the federal right to an abortion. But just four months later, men and women both say that abortion politics are not bringing them to the polls, according to Harvard Kennedy School and Northwestern University social science scholars <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vUKLlG4AAAAJ&hl=en">Matthew A. Baum</a>, <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/alaunasafarpour/home">Alauna Safarpour</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=P_3neYQAAAAJ&hl=en">Jonathan Schulman</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0JH3YoUAAAAJ&hl=en">Kristin Lunz Trujillo</a>. </p>
<p>“The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision may have initially mobilized some voters in June and July, particularly women, but its effects appear to have diminished when we asked Americans about their intentions to vote again in August and October,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/abortion-is-not-influencing-most-voters-as-the-midterms-approach-economic-issues-are-predominating-in-new-survey-191836">they wrote.</a></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abortion-is-not-influencing-most-voters-as-the-midterms-approach-economic-issues-are-predominating-in-new-survey-191836">Abortion is not influencing most voters as the midterms approach – economic issues are predominating in new survey</a>
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<h2>3. Elections aren’t what they used to be</h2>
<p>Gone are the days when election administrators were considered low profile, conducting essential – but not flashy – work, like organizing voter lists, staffing polling places and counting election results. </p>
<p>Overall mistrust in elections is high in the U.S. following the 2020 elections – and former President Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat. It’s a new era in politics, where it is not necessarily a given that “elections happen, votes are counted, the winners are declared and democracy moves on,” wrote Arizona State University’s <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FdltMX4AAAAJ&hl=en">Thom Reilly</a>, a public governance scholar and former state election official. </p>
<p>One complicating factor is that the U.S. is the only democracy that elects many of its election officials, and high-ranking members of the Republican or Democratic parties usually oversee elections at the state level. </p>
<p>“That partisan system largely worked until now because, in essence, each party checked the other party’s ability to influence election outcomes. As long as states were politically diverse, members of the two major parties acted in good faith, and this model functioned – albeit imperfectly,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">wrote Reilly</a>. </p>
<p>But there’s already evidence that newly minted and highly partisan poll workers and election observers plan to disrupt the elections, potentially diminishing public faith in this essential democratic institution and weakening democracy itself. And a high number of candidates running for state election administration roles are election deniers. If they win, wrote Reilly, that will further erode public confidence in election integrity. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large white sign says 'Vote!' People walk past the sign outside, in what appears to be a green campus with trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Young people pass a voting information sign on the Emory University campus in Atlanta on Oct. 14, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/young-people-pass-a-voting-information-sign-on-the-emory-university-picture-id1244204492?s=612x612">Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore</a>
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<h2>4. Black voters face possible intimidation</h2>
<p>Amid warnings from the Department of Homeland Security about political violence on Election Day – which University of Maryland, Baltimore County security researcher <a href="https://cybersecurity.umbc.edu/richard-forno/">Richard Forno</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-america-isnt-going-away-anytime-soon-193597">recently explored</a> – there’s an increased risk that polling sites will become yet another place for political violence. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-america-isnt-going-away-anytime-soon-193597">Political violence in America isn't going away anytime soon</a>
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<p>The threat brings to mind <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/voting-rights-for-african-americans/">long-standing efforts</a> by white supremacists to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/27/voter-intimidation-surging-2020-protect-minority-voters-column/6043955002/">intimidate and</a> threaten Black voters. </p>
<p>Georgia is one place with a long history of voter intimidation that is rolling out election reform laws, making it actually harder for voters – especially people of color – to vote. One part of this new law, called SB 202, removes some voting drop boxes, which people of color predominantly use. This comes as Black voters gain number and power in Georgia – and the tightened voting rules are reminiscent of the 1940s and other times when white conservatives cracked down on voting rights in response to rising Black political strength.</p>
<p>“The almost immediate passage of new election laws at a time of growing Black political strength suggests the persistence of a white backlash in Georgia,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/georgias-gop-overhauled-the-states-election-laws-in-2021-and-critics-argue-the-target-was-black-voter-turnout-not-election-fraud-192000">wrote</a> Emory University <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Doner-2">political science scholar Richard Doner</a>. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/georgias-gop-overhauled-the-states-election-laws-in-2021-and-critics-argue-the-target-was-black-voter-turnout-not-election-fraud-192000">Georgia's GOP overhauled the state's election laws in 2021 – and critics argue the target was Black voter turnout, not election fraud</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Voter demographics and policy priorities are two recurrent, big issues on Election Day – but shifts in election administration and voting laws are new challenges influencing the midterms.Amy Lieberman, Politics + Society Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1874302022-09-02T05:16:17Z2022-09-02T05:16:17ZSydney Theatre Company’s A Raisin in the Sun is an enormous achievement with superb cast, direction and staging<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482439/original/file-20220902-18-54kqzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3199%2C2122&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joseph Mayers/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Wesley Enoch for the Sydney Theatre Company.</em></p>
<p>It is hard to believe the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning A Raisin in the Sun (1959) is its Australian mainstage premiere – nearly 65 years after it appeared on Broadway with the magnificent Sidney Poitier in one of the lead roles. </p>
<p>The first play on Broadway written by an African American woman, A Raisin in the Sun was nominated for four Tony Awards, including for best play, and went on to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. </p>
<p>Arguably one of the most compelling narratives of 20th century Black American life, Hansberry’s play remains a stalwart in the American literary canon.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black couple on a couch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482442/original/file-20220902-18-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Raisin in the Sun is a stalwart in the American literary canon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joseph Mayers/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Across a compressed several weeks, A Raisin in the Sun traces the hopes and dashed dreams of three generations of the African American Younger family, headed by matriarch, Lena (Gayle Samuels). </p>
<p>Written five years after the Supreme Court’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education">Brown v. Board of Education</a> ruling, which put an end to legal school segregation, and four years after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott">Montgomery bus boycott</a>, this just might be, as Black poet Amiri Baraka <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5519">declared it</a>, the “quintessential civil rights drama”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-must-read-list-the-enduring-contributions-of-african-american-women-writers-111954">A must-read list: The enduring contributions of African American women writers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A sense of entrapment</h2>
<p>Hansberry’s scathing narrative of postwar American race relations stands up well to the test of time, and this production, directed by Wesley Enoch, is superb.</p>
<p>The rapport among the actors, including those in more minor roles, is palpable. This is a true ensemble. </p>
<p>Samuels and Zahra Newman (as Ruth Younger) both give particularly compelling performances, and Nancy Denis is hilarious as their nosy neighbour Mrs Johnson. </p>
<p>Together, the cast really succeeds in drawing out Hansberry’s humour, and thus the play’s often jarring shifts between comedy, satire and tragedy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women at a kitchen table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482444/original/file-20220902-14-7un7pb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Designer Mel Page has created an honest rendering of the family’s shabby, rat-infested apartment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joseph Mayers/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The play unfolds in the single setting of the family’s shabby, rat-infested apartment on Chicago’s Southside. Mel Page’s smart set design means we can see into its two small bedrooms at all times, giving a real sense of the family’s entrapment, and heightening the escalating conflicts. </p>
<p>As the play opens, the family anxiously awaits the delivery of the recently deceased Mr Younger’s life-insurance cheque, a prospect that provokes each of the family members to disclose their hopes and wishes, embodied in the raggedy pot plant Lena carefully tends throughout. </p>
<p>Lena yearns to provide her family with a home. Her son Walter Lee (Bert LaBonté) yearns to join the ranks of the Black middle class. Her daughter, Beneatha (Angela Mahlatjie) yearns to become a medical doctor to “make [people] whole again”. </p>
<p>Yet the aspirations Black Americans like Walter Lee and Beneatha nurtured are impossible in this era of segregation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman puts on lipstick" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482445/original/file-20220902-14-pwiq6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beneatha yearns to become a doctor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joseph Mayers/Sydney Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lena does succeed in achieving her dream: she purchases a house for her family, but it is in the white neighbourhood of (fictional) Clybourne Park. </p>
<p>This twist generates an encounter between the family and the only white character in the play, Karl Lindner (Jacob Warner), spokesman for the Clybourne Park community, which wants to buy the house from the Youngers to keep the neighbourhood “respectable”. </p>
<p>As Beneatha observes, when Lena asks whether Lindner threatened the family: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>they don’t do like that anymore. He talked Brotherhood. He said everybody ought learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-ultimate-choice-is-desegregation-or-disintegration-recovering-the-lost-words-of-a-jailed-civil-rights-strategist-155675">'Our ultimate choice is desegregation or disintegration' – recovering the lost words of a jailed civil rights strategist</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A heavy load</h2>
<p>Hansberry took the title of her play from Langston Hughes’ 1951 poem, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem">Harlem</a>. Pondering “a dream deferred,” Hughes writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Does it dry up <br>
like a raisin in the sun? <br>
Or fester like a sore <br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Reviewers and critics of A Raisin in the Sun frequently rush to claim the universality of this narrative of postwar Black American life. In such an approach, we risk losing what is specific to the festering sore of Jim Crow America. We also miss the play’s significance in light of our own moment of global racial foment, of Black Lives Matter, and much else. </p>
<p>In a 1959 interview, Hansberry <a href="https://www.lhlt.org/i-believe-one-most-sound-ideas-dramatic-writing-order-create-something-universal-you-must-pay-very">told radio host</a> Studs Terkel:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This production of A Raisin in the Sun is an enormous achievement – thanks not only to its superb cast, direction and staging, but too, the Sydney Theatre Company’s commitment to attending to the specific, to telling stories we still need to hear.</p>
<p><em>A Raisin in the Sun is at Wharf 1 Theatre until October 15.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/langston-hughes-domestic-pariah-international-superstar-133027">Langston Hughes – domestic pariah, international superstar</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Gleeson-White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Raisin in the Sun is arguably one of the most compelling narratives of 20th century Black American life.Sarah Gleeson-White, Associate Professor in American Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1840302022-07-29T12:21:41Z2022-07-29T12:21:41ZCharles Henry Turner: The little-known Black high school science teacher who revolutionized the study of insect behavior in the early 20th century<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475880/original/file-20220725-12-r36mpc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C1010%2C573&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Turner was the first scientist to prove certain insects could remember, learn and feel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Charles I. Abramson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a crisp autumn morning in 1908, an elegantly dressed African American man strode back and forth among the pin oaks, magnolias and silver maples of <a href="https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/parks/parks/browse-parks/view-park.cfm?parkID=68&parkName=O%27Fallon%20Park">O’Fallon Park in St. Louis, Missouri</a>. After placing a dozen dishes filled with strawberry jam atop several picnic tables, biologist Charles Henry Turner retreated to a nearby bench, notebook and pencil at the ready. </p>
<p>Following a midmorning break for tea and toast (topped with strawberry jam, of course), Turner returned to his outdoor experiment. At noon and again at dusk, he placed jam-filled dishes on the park tables. As he discovered, <a href="https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/BEES/euro_honey_bee.htm">honeybees (<em>Apis mellifera</em>)</a> were reliable breakfast, lunch and dinner visitors to the sugary buffet. After a few days, Turner stopped offering jam at midday and sunset, and presented the treats only at dawn. Initially, the bees continued appearing at all three times. Soon, however, <a href="https://mellenpress.com/author/charles-i-abramson/4825/">they changed their arrival patterns</a>, visiting the picnic tables only in the mornings.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnerbio.html">simple but elegantly devised experiment</a> led Turner to conclude that bees can perceive time and will rapidly develop new feeding habits in response to changing conditions. These results were among the first in a cascade of groundbreaking discoveries that Turner made about insect behavior.</p>
<p>Across his distinguished 33-year career, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.075">Turner authored 71 papers</a> and was the first African American to have his research <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ns-19.466.16">published in the prestigious journal Science</a>. Although his name is barely known today, <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnermain.html">Charles Henry Turner was a pioneer in studying bees</a> and should be considered among the great entomologists of the 19th and 20th centuries. While researching <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557206/the-butterfly-effect-by-edward-d-melillo/">my book on human interactions with insects in world history</a>, I became aware of Turner’s pioneering work on insect cognition, which constituted much of his groundbreaking research on animal behavior.</p>
<h2>Humble beginnings</h2>
<p>Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1867, a mere two years after the Civil War ended. The son of a church custodian and a nurse who was formerly enslaved, he grew up under the specter of Jim Crow – a set of formal laws and informal practices that relegated <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws">African Americans to second-class status</a>.</p>
<p>The social environment of Turner’s childhood included school and housing segregation, frequent lynchings and the denial of basic democratic rights to the city’s nonwhite population. Despite immense obstacles to his educational goals and professional aspirations, Turner’s tenacious spirit carried him through.</p>
<p>As a young boy, he developed an abiding fascination with small creatures, capturing and cataloging thousands of ants, beetles and butterflies. An aptitude for science was just one of Turner’s many talents. At Gaines High School, he led his all-Black class, securing his place as valedictorian.</p>
<p>Turner went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Cincinnati, and he became the first African American to receive a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Henry-Turner">doctorate in zoology from the University of Chicago</a>. Turner’s cutting-edge doctoral dissertation, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.920170502">The Homing of Ants: An Experimental Study of Ant Behavior</a>,” was later excerpted in the September 1907 issue of the Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology.</p>
<p>Despite his brilliance, Turner was unable to secure long-term employment in higher education. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-021-00855-9">University of Chicago refused to offer him a job</a>, and Booker T. Washington was too cash-strapped to hire him at the <a href="https://www.tuskegee.edu/about-us/history-and-mission">all-Black Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo of a large brick high school building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474367/original/file-20220715-16-uu04fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sumner High School in St. Louis, Mo., circa 1908.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://mohistory.org/collections/item/N46489">Missouri Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following a brief stint at the University of Cincinnati and a temporary position at Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), Turner spent the remainder of his career teaching at <a href="https://www.slps.org/domain/8207">Sumner High School in St. Louis</a>. As of 1908, his salary was a meager US$1,080 a year – <a href="https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1908">around $34,300 in today’s dollars</a>. At Sumner – without access to a fully equipped laboratory, a research library or graduate students – Turner made trailblazing discoveries about insect behavior. </p>
<h2>Probing the minds of insects</h2>
<p>Among Turner’s most significant findings was that wasps, bees, sawflies and ants – members of the <em>Hymenoptera</em> order – are <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnerbio.html">not simply primitive automatons</a>, as so many of his contemporaries thought. Instead, they are organisms with the capacities to remember, learn and feel. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white engraving of a variety of bees from 1894." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474365/original/file-20220715-22-fzxqs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bees were not well understood at the turn of the 20th century. Illustration published by Popular Encyclopedia, 1894.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/old-engraved-illustration-of-bees-antique-royalty-free-image/1211227581">mikroman6/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the early 1900s, biologists were aware that <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250070975/astinginthetale">flowers attracted bee pollinators by producing certain scents</a>. However, these researchers knew next to nothing about the visual aspects of such attractions, when bees were too far from the flowers to smell them. </p>
<p>To investigate, Turner pounded rows of wooden dowels into the O’Fallon Park lawn. Atop each rod, he affixed a red disk dipped in honey. Soon, bees began traveling from far away to his makeshift “flowers.”</p>
<p>Turner then added a series of “control” rods topped with blue disks that bore no honey. The bees paid little heed to the new “flowers,” <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1536088">demonstrating that visual signals provided guidance</a>, when the bees were too distant to smell their targets. Although a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07929978.1997.10676682">honeybee’s ability to detect red remains controversial</a>, scientists have determined that Turner’s bees were likely responding to something called <a href="https://www.encyclo.co.uk/meaning-of-achromatic_stimulus">achromatic stimuli</a>, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.075">allowed them to discern among various shades and tints</a>.</p>
<h2>Lasting legacies of an underappreciated pioneer</h2>
<p>Turner’s astounding range of findings from three decades of experiments established his reputation as an authority on the <a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/turner/turnerbio.html">behavioral patterns of bees, cockroaches, spiders and ants</a>.</p>
<p>As a scientific researcher without a university position, he occupied an odd niche. In large part, his situation was the product of systemic racism. It was also a result of his commitment to training young Black students in science. </p>
<p>Alongside his scientific publications, Turner wrote extensively on African American education. In his 1902 essay “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=39R1AAAAMAAJ&q=Charles+Henry+Turner#v=snippet&q=Charles%20Henry%20Turner&f=false">Will the Education of the Negro Solve the Race Problem?</a>” Turner contended that trade schools were not the pathway to Black empowerment. Instead, he called for widespread public education of African Americans in all subjects: “if we cast aside our prejudices and try the highest education upon both white and Black, in a few decades there will be no Negro problem.”</p>
<p>Turner was only <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Henry-Turner">56 when he died of acute myocarditis</a>, an infectious heart inflammation. He was survived by two children and his second wife, Lillian Porter.</p>
<p>Turner’s scientific contributions endure. <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315802558">His articles continue to be widely cited</a>, and entomologists have subsequently <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/542031d">verified most of his conclusions</a>.</p>
<p>Despite the colossal challenges he faced throughout his career, Charles Henry Turner was among the first scientists to shed light on the secret lives of bees, the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557206/the-butterfly-effect-by-edward-d-melillo/">winged pollinators that ensure</a> the welfare of human food systems and the survival of Earth’s biosphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184030/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward D. Melillo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The son of a formerly enslaved mother, Charles Henry Turner was the first to discover that bees and other insects have the ability to modify their behavior based on experience.Edward D. Melillo, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1861032022-07-05T18:02:37Z2022-07-05T18:02:37ZFred Gray, the ‘chief counsel for the protest movement,’ to get Medal of Freedom for his civil rights work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472549/original/file-20220705-18-7de5le.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2986%2C1922&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., left, and attorney Fred Gray, whom King called 'the brilliant young Negro who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement,' at a political rally in Tuskegee, Alabama, April 29, 1966.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MLK/8737625471544085b6428c5a36f1cc6d/photo?Query=%22Fred%20Gray%22&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=34&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Jack Thornell</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past seven decades, longtime Alabama civil rights lawyer <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gray-fred-david-sr">Fred Gray represented Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.</a> and the victims of the infamous <a href="https://www.tuskegee.edu/about-us/centers-of-excellence/bioethics-center/about-the-usphs-syphilis-study">Tuskegee syphilis experiment</a>, in which the U.S. Public Health Service refused for decades to provide readily available treatment to Black men who had the disease. </p>
<p>Gray played important roles in landmark Supreme Court decisions that outlawed segregated public transit and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1956/342">affirmed the strategy of the Montgomery bus boycott organizers</a>. He protected the freedom of association guaranteed by the First Amendment by <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1957/91">preventing Alabama officials from obtaining the NAACP’s membership list</a>. He argued in the Supreme Court a case on racial gerrymandering that redefined the city boundaries to exclude 400 Black people – but no white people – from the city limits of Tuskegee, Alabama, which set the stage for the one-person, one-vote rule that <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/32">governs redistricting after every census</a>. And when state and local segregationist leaders in Alabama sued the national press and local civil rights leaders, Gray’s legal efforts <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1963/39">afforded strong constitutional protection</a> to critics of public officials and government policy. </p>
<p>As a scholar of constitutional law and civil rights, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns5L4-lmZYs">I understand that Fred Gray has</a> <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gray-fred-david-sr#:%7E:text=During%20the%20Montgomery%20bus%20boycott,their%20seats%20to%20white%20passengers.">had an enormous impact</a> on American law and society. His cases are taught in every law school in the country, and his work has led to fundamental reforms in legal doctrine and helped to cement important changes in the lives of ordinary people all over the country.</p>
<p>I’m not the only person to recognize Gray’s enormous contributions: Martin Luther King Jr. called him “the brilliant young Negro who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement.” And on July 7, Gray <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2022/07/alabama-civil-rights-pioneer-fred-gray-to-receive-presidential-medal-of-freedom.html">will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom</a>, the highest civilian honor in the nation, from President Joe Biden. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older woman in a red jacket whispers into the ear of an older man in a blue suit and red tie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472540/original/file-20220705-4393-40impz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At an October 2021 ceremony, the city of Montgomery, Alabama, changed the name of W. Jeff Davis Avenue – named after the Confederate leader – to Fred D. Gray Avenue; it was where Gray, right, listening to his wife, Carol, grew up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civil-rights-attorney-fred-gray-shares-a-moment-with-his-news-photo/1236142846?adppopup=true">Julie Bennett/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>‘Destroy everything segregated’</h2>
<p>Remarkably, Fred Gray did not plan on becoming a lawyer. </p>
<p>The youngest of five children, whose father died just after his second birthday in December 1932, he <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/gray-fred-david-sr">aimed for the ministry</a> as one of the few professions open to Black men at the time. He attended a church-sponsored high school in Nashville and traveled around the country with the school’s president <a href="http://newsouthbooks.com/archives-samples/busridetojustice.pdf">as a boy preacher</a>. </p>
<p>But that ambition changed during his junior year at what was then called Alabama State College for Negroes – now Alabama State University. Fed up with degrading treatment on Montgomery’s segregated buses, Gray <a href="http://newsouthbooks.com/archives-samples/busridetojustice.pdf">wrote in a memoir</a>: “I concluded that in addition to being a minister and trying to save souls for eternity, that in the here and now African Americans were entitled to all the rights provided by the Constitution of the United States of America. Therefore, I decided I would become a lawyer.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C10%2C2382%2C2453&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small woman with a dark sweater, standing with two men, one holding his hat and the other standing in front of papers and a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C10%2C2382%2C2453&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472532/original/file-20220705-16-jm2ofp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rosa Parks, left, who was fined for violating the bus segregation law in Montgomery, Alabama, with E.D. Nixon, center, former Alabama state president of the NAACP, and attorney Fred Gray.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MONTGOMERYBUSBOYCOTT1955/b7a6bcdf44e1da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo?Query=%22Fred%20Gray%22&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=34&currentItemNo=1">AP Photos</a></span>
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<p>He would go to law school, he wrote, “<a href="http://www.newsouthbooks.com/bkpgs/detailtitle.php?isbn_solid=1588384519">determined to destroy everything segregated that I could find</a>.” And there were plenty of segregated things to destroy: rigid segregation of housing, education and jobs, and almost no Black people were allowed to vote anywhere in Alabama.</p>
<p>But fulfilling this ambition would be a real challenge. No law school in Alabama admitted Black students. Although he almost certainly could have won a lawsuit to force his admission to the University of Alabama, he realized that the authorities would find some excuse to prevent him from graduating or getting admitted to the bar.</p>
<p>So Gray enrolled in law school at what is now known as Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, mainly because he could work part time while going to school. “In September of 1951, with barely enough money to cover expenses, I took a segregated train to Cleveland to begin law studies,” <a href="http://newsouthbooks.com/archives-samples/busridetojustice.pdf">he wrote in his memoir</a>.</p>
<p>After getting his law degree in 1954, he moved back home to Montgomery. Then he faced the daunting task of obtaining character references from five experienced local lawyers before he could sit for the Alabama bar exam. The problem was that there were fewer than five experienced Black lawyers in the state at the time. But several white lawyers – notably <a href="http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/Article/h-1254">Clifford Durr</a>, a leading New Deal attorney and brother-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black – supported his application.</p>
<p>But no white lawyer would employ him, and there was only one other Black lawyer in Montgomery. So he rented a small office from a Black minister who served as an adviser and helped refer clients to him. </p>
<p>More important, he became active in the NAACP, where he got to know Rosa Parks and other leading civil rights activists. This made him the go-to lawyer for the movement and set him on the path of fulfilling his ambition to destroy segregation.</p>
<h2>Protesting segregation from lunch counters to schools</h2>
<p>From his base in Montgomery, <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4717&context=caselrev">Gray represented</a> sit-in demonstrators arrested for protesting segregated lunch counters, and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/">freedom riders</a>, the demonstrators – white and Black – who rode buses throughout the South to protest segregation on buses and in terminals. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit and tie, holding a seating diagram of a bus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472585/original/file-20220705-7090-b8zpdm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fred Gray shows a diagram of a bus to help illustrate the ultimately successful case he brought on behalf of Black people in Montgomery, Alabama, to desegregate the city’s bus system, in February 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-attorney-fred-gray-rests-a-diagram-of-a-bus-on-his-news-photo/50326134?adppopup=true">Photo by Don Cravens/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1510">Gray’s legal work</a> desegregated state universities and public schools throughout Alabama. He filed the lawsuit <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgomery-march">that allowed the Selma-to-Montgomery march</a> to proceed after the police violence against marchers on what became known as Bloody Sunday. That march led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Then, Gray won <a href="https://ala-lawyers.org/fred-gray-sr/">some of the most important early cases</a> testing the law’s promise that Black people could no longer be disenfranchised. </p>
<p>Gray knew that his efforts would incur the wrath of the white power structure. And that wrath was not long in coming. </p>
<p>For example, state authorities in 1956, at the height of the bus protest, indicted him for stirring up civil rights lawsuits, which could have resulted in his law license’s being lifted. The charges were dismissed almost immediately because it was clear that the state had no case on the merits and lacked jurisdiction to prosecute him. Later that year, the local draft board tried to induct him into the Army. The national director of selective service, Gen. Lewis Hershey, squashed that gambit.</p>
<p>At age 91, Gray is still practicing law full time – while the U.S. still faces enormous challenges tackling systemic racism. That’s a point not lost on Gray even after a lifetime of success in fighting segregation. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.ksl.com/article/133394/parks-not-seated-alone-in-history">an interview he gave to USA Today in 2005</a> to mark the opening of a Smithsonian exhibit on the Montgomery bus boycott, Gray said, “My interest and my concern is not so much to … commemorate what happened 50 years ago but to look at where we are now. We have to realize racism is not going to go away by itself.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have known Fred Gray for nearly 40 years and have written extensively about his work and career.</span></em></p>When Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Fred Gray was her lawyer. Now he’s being honored for a lifetime of civil rights advocacy.Jonathan Entin, Professor Emeritus of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1792662022-05-27T12:33:01Z2022-05-27T12:33:01ZStudents are often segregated within the same schools, not just by being sent to different ones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465073/original/file-20220524-22-jiazkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C27%2C6029%2C3983&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Classmates in grades 3, 4 and 5 are more likely to come from diverse economic backgrounds than their schoolmates in grades 6, 7 and 8.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-pass-a-beach-ball-to-the-next-person-on-the-list-news-photo/1334723214">Paul Bersebach, MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Children from low-income households are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221081853">increasingly being segregated into different classrooms</a> from their peers from higher-income households, according to recent research <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NOT4bMEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> have conducted with education policy scholar <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/marcotte.cfm">Dave E. Marcotte</a>.</p>
<p>From 2007 to 2014, we tracked all North Carolina public school students statewide, from third through eighth grades, observing how the students were grouped into math and English language arts classes by each school’s process for creating class groups.</p>
<p>We used course enrollment data to figure out how many students in each classroom were from families whose incomes are at or below 185% of the federal poverty threshold – and how many were not. We found that those economically disadvantaged students were increasingly likely to be concentrated in a subset of classrooms rather than spread out relatively evenly throughout the school. </p>
<p><iframe id="eaY3H" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/eaY3H/9/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Often school segregation is thought about as Black and white students being forced to attend <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12010">different schools</a>. This makes sense given the <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow">history of Jim Crow</a> – a 19th- and 20th-century legal system meant to <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what.htm">relegate Black people to second-class status</a> in white society – and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043152">court orders to desegregate schools</a>. </p>
<p>Another aspect of this issue is how students are sorted into classrooms within schools. A 2021 study found that more racially diverse schools are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-020-09309-w">more likely to have classrooms that are more segregated</a> than schools that are less diverse overall.</p>
<p>Researchers have recently begun to identify <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216652722">rising levels of segregation between schools</a> based not just on race, but also on household income.</p>
<p>Students from wealthier households are more likely than their less-well-off peers to have <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/whither-opportunity">higher academic achievement as measured by test scores</a> and to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416645834">attend and complete college</a>.</p>
<p>Efforts to provide equitable opportunities for all students often focus on comparing funding and staffing between schools. Indeed, lower levels of school funding lead to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv036">lower educational attainment and lower wages in adulthood</a>.</p>
<p>However, resources can also be distributed inequitably within schools, on a classroom-by-classroom basis. For instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.009">more experienced teachers raise student test scores more than novice teachers, on average</a>. However, novice teachers are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X13495087">frequently assigned to classrooms with more low-income students</a>. Therefore, the more students are separated along lines of household income, the more likely poorer students are to fall behind academically.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>We aren’t sure why there is an increase in segregation within schools by household income. One potential reason could be an increase in what is called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4501_2">academic tracking</a>,” which is the process of grouping students into classes based on their prior achievement, such as performance on standardized tests. </p>
<p>If <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.5.1927">low-income students perform worse on standardized tests than their peers</a>, they may be placed in lower tracks. However, standardized test scores may not accurately reflect ability for low-income students, since <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2003.09.002">students from marginalized groups perform disproportionately worse</a> on assessments.</p>
<p>If in fact test scores do accurately reflect ability, there may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.5.1739">some educational advantages</a> to track students into certain classes. However, researchers have long argued that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F019263658506948430">tracking perpetuates inequalities between low- and high-tracked students</a>. For example, students who are placed on lower tracks than their peers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3172">suffer from lower self-esteem</a> and are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904816681526">not as well prepared for college success</a> as higher-tracked students with similar test scores.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/09/22/charter-school-pandemic-enrollment-growth">growth in charter school enrollments</a> over the past two decades could also contribute to the increases in within-school segregation by income that we find. Public school principals who fear their students may depart for charters may attempt to retain them <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373715577447">by introducing specialized curricula or expanding gifted and talented programs</a>. If these programs continue to primarily serve students from families with higher incomes, that could increase income segregation within schools. This is a possibility we are exploring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kari Dalane and Dave Marcotte received funding from the Smith Richardson Foundation.</span></em></p>In middle school classes, students from lower-income families tended to be concentrated in just a few classrooms, new research from North Carolina has found.Kari Dalane, Ph.D. Candidate in Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1668072021-09-15T12:17:14Z2021-09-15T12:17:14ZTexas voting law builds on long legacy of racism from GOP leaders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420913/original/file-20210913-27-1nyacfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3000%2C1832&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the early 1960s, Barry Goldwater, a Republican U.S. senator from Arizona, called for the GOP to adopt racist principles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GOLDWATERCAMPAIGN1962/019c4c3a37e9da11af9f0014c2589dfb/photo">AP Photo/Henry Burroughs</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/07/abbott-texas-voting-restrictions-signs-bill/">signed into law</a> a bill on Sept. 7, 2021, that reduces opportunities for people to vote, allows partisan poll watchers more access and creates steeper penalties for violating voting laws. </p>
<p>The Republican governor argued that the legislation would “solidify trust and confidence in the outcome of our elections by making it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/07/abbott-texas-voting-restrictions-signs-bill/">easier to vote and harder to cheat</a>.” Democratic opponents of the measure, however, said Republican legislators <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-texas/texas-governor-signs-republican-backed-voting-restrictions-idUSKBN2G31A1">presented no evidence</a> of widespread voter fraud during debate on the bill.</p>
<p>Civil rights organizations <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-texas/texas-governor-signs-republican-backed-voting-restrictions-idUSKBN2G31A1">immediately filed suit</a>, calling the law unconstitutional because it is intended to restrict voting among minorities, <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/09/29/stacking-the-deck-how-the-gop-works-to-suppress-minority-voting/">who overwhelmingly</a> support Democratic political candidates. </p>
<p>Across the country, Republicans have turned to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/09/how-a-widespread-practice-to-politically-empower-african-americans-might-actually-harm-them/">gerrymandering</a> and <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/new-voter-suppression">voter suppression legislation</a> such as closing polling stations in minority and low-income precincts, mandating discriminatory voter ID laws and purging millions from voter rolls. In addition, GOP politicians and right-wing commentators have demanded that educators quit teaching the facts of <a href="https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt-162752">America’s racist history</a>. </p>
<p>For several decades, the GOP has depended on racism to keep white people in power and nonwhites on the outside.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5451%2C3528&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A seated man holds a document for public view, with other men sitting and standing next to him" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5451%2C3528&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420336/original/file-20210909-8898-cd25e2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shows off a signed voting restrictions law criticized for disproportionately limiting the rights of nonwhite people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/APTOPIXVotingBillsTexas/d3fc8c95ce9e4cac864a62944a137a4a/photo">AP Photo/LM Otero</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lee Atwater and the strategy of racism</h2>
<p>In 1981, longtime GOP strategist Lee Atwater plainly declared that the Republican Party’s key strategy was racism. Atwater described how the GOP began to <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/">define itself as a white supremacist party</a> in response to the civil rights movement. The Nation magazine later published the full audio recording of the interview.</p>
<p>“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N—–, n—–, n—–.’”, Atwater said, using the actual racial slur.</p>
<p>“By 1968, you can’t say ‘n—–’ – that hurts, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract,” he continued. </p>
<p>“Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites,” Atwater explained. “‘We want to cut this’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/">N—–, n—–</a>.’”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X_8E3ENrKrQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An excerpt from Lee Atwater’s 1981 interview explaining racist Republican tactics.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The GOP moves from overt racist words to coded words</h2>
<p>For much of the country’s history, the Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln and racial equality, and the Democratic Party was the party of Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/18/fact-check-democrats-republicans-and-complicated-history-race/3208378001/">The two parties switched</a> positions during the civil rights movement when the Democrats abandoned their support for segregation and Republicans sought to appeal to segregationists. </p>
<p>In the early 1960s, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a Republican, challenged the GOP’s more liberal politicians to redefine the Republican Party as what newspaper editor William Loeb called “<a href="https://theconversation.com/before-breitbart-there-was-the-charleston-news-and-courier-86277">the white man’s party</a>.” Republican New York Gov. Nelson B. Rockefeller responded that if the GOP embraced Goldwater, an opponent of civil rights legislation, as its presidential candidate in 1964, then it would advance a “program <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-is-happening-to-the-republicans">based on racism and sectionalism</a>.” </p>
<p>Goldwater won the GOP’s nomination but lost the presidential election <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/johnson-defeats-goldwater-for-presidency">in a landslide</a> to the Democratic incumbent, Lyndon Johnson. But even without winning the Oval Office, Goldwater and other like-minded conservative Republicans won the hearts and minds of pro-segregation Democrats, who were angry with Johnson for signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.</p>
<p>The GOP, as Atwater pointed out, learned to use coded words to court these disillusioned Democrats who became Republicans in what would become known as the “<a href="https://www.heritage.org/commentary/the-last-dixiecrat">great white switch</a>” or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/race-reckoning/">Southern strategy</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man reaches out to a crowd of smiling people" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420335/original/file-20210909-23-1lk86vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign included a speech supporting states’ rights near a place where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RonaldReaganPresidentialCampaign1980/64de548a686945a2b95a69c23f8997e6/photo">AP Photo/Jack Thornell</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>States’ rights, welfare queens and Willie Horton</h2>
<p>Republican Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election in part by using references to states’ rights and “law and order,” rather than by making blatant appeals to white supremacy or racism. Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, noted that Nixon “emphasized that you have to face the fact that the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/18/us/haldeman-diary-shows-nixon-was-wary-of-blacks-and-jews.html">whole problem is really the Blacks</a>. The key is to devise a system that recognized this while not appearing to.”</p>
<p>In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, also a Republican, gave a presidential campaign speech at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/reagan-speech-at-neshoba/">where three civil rights workers had been murdered</a> in 1963.
Reagan declared his own support for states’ rights. Gabrielle Bruney wrote in Esquire that “by touting himself as a states’ rights candidate near the site of one of the nation’s most famous hate crimes, <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a34733508/reagans-showtime-racism-matt-tyrnauer-ian-haney-lopez-donald-trump/">Reagan offered voters a racism</a> that was both obvious and unspoken.” </p>
<p>As president, Reagan used coded rhetoric to connect race to crime, welfare and government spending. For instance, Bryce Covert wrote in The New Republic, Reagan frequently used distortion in his references to a single con artist named Linda Taylor, the so-called “<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/154404/myth-welfare-queen">welfare queen</a>,” to argue that welfare was corrupt and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/154404/myth-welfare-queen">Black people were too lazy to work</a>.</p>
<p>Atwater worked as a consultant for Reagan and then as campaign manager for Vice President George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988. Atwater approved a television ad blaming Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts, for a furlough program in the state that released a Black first-degree murderer, Willie Horton, who then raped a white woman. Atwater famously claimed, “By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether <a href="https://www.history.com/news/george-bush-willie-horton-racist-ad">Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate</a>.” Bush won the election.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit and overcoat stands in front of a sign saying " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420912/original/file-20210913-27-gzm7o1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In his election and reelection campaigns, Donald Trump used racist messages to attract support.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-arrives-to-speak-at-a-make-america-news-photo/1229379005">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Onward to Donald Trump</h2>
<p>The GOP’s hold on the South became complete in 2016 when Donald Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/07/republican-party-is-white-southern-how-did-that-happen/">won all the former Confederate states</a> except Virginia. </p>
<p>Trump became one of the GOP’s top contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination after questioning without evidence whether Black president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/race-reckoning/">Barack Obama was born in Hawaii</a>. When Obama released his birth certificate, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/race-reckoning/">Trump’s candidacy fell apart</a>.</p>
<p>When Trump ran for president in 2016, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history">he used racially divisive rhetoric</a>, calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. and suggesting <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history">a judge should recuse himself</a> from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage.</p>
<p>His campaign used the slogan “Make America Great Again,” which had been widely criticized for being a <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-appeals-to-white-anxiety-are-not-dog-whistles-theyre-racism-146070">dog whistle to white people</a> who felt that minorities were encroaching on their country. Then, as president, he <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/13/16140504/trump-charlottesville-white-supremacists">pandered to white supremacists</a> by refusing to criticize them <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-history-of-support-from-white-supremacist-far-right-groups-2020-9">and by using coded words</a>. He told Americans that there are “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine-people-charlottesville-who-were-they-2/">fine people on both sides</a>” after a confrontation between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12, 2017.</p>
<p>When Trump ran for reelection in 2020, he renewed his birther claim by insinuating that Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, who is <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-kamala-harris-americans-yet-again-have-trouble-understanding-what-multiracial-means-145233">Black and Asian</a>, “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history">doesn’t meet the requirements</a>” to run for vice president. When Trump lost the election, he challenged the accuracy of voting in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-21/trump-challenge-to-election-results-hits-hardest-at-black-voters">precincts that were heavily minority</a>.</p>
<p>Now Republicans in Texas and around the nation are back to openly expressing their racism with no need for dog whistling or other forms of abstraction.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand key political developments, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For much of the country’s history, the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and racial equality, and the Democratic Party backed Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. The two parties switched.Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676212021-09-13T12:13:17Z2021-09-13T12:13:17ZJim Crow tactics reborn in Texas abortion law, deputizing citizens to enforce legally suspect provisions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420539/original/file-20210910-27-ftypey.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3159%2C2287&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a bill that effectively bans abortion in the state. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TexasAbortionExplainer/8cdabff9e67a4bc2bb1c94078da38a64/photo?Query=abortion&mediaType=photo,graphic&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=8033&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/Eric Gay</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/abortion-law-texas.html">new Texas law that bans most abortions</a> uses a method employed by Texas and other states to enforce racist Jim Crow laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to disenfranchise African Americans.</p>
<p>Rather than giving state officials, such as the police, the power to enforce the law, the <a href="https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB8/id/2395961">Texas law instead allows enforcement</a> by “any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state.” This enforcement mechanism relies solely on citizens, rather than on government officials, to enforce the law. </p>
<p>This approach to enforcement is a legal end-run that privatizes a state’s enforcement of the law. By using this method of enforcement, state officials are shielded from being sued for violating the Constitution, and the law is made, at least for a time, more durable.</p>
<p>The U.S. Justice Department filed suit against the state on the grounds the law violated a woman’s <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/justice-department-lawsuit-texas-abortion-law/d016174e3d19703e/full.pdf">constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability</a>. In its suit, the Justice Department specifically cites <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17077042024381294936&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">one of the cases</a> that was brought over a Texas Jim Crow law that excluded Blacks from participating in primaries, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1944. </p>
<h2>Privatizing discrimination</h2>
<p>Following Reconstruction in the South, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/273us536">Texas banned African Americans from voting in party primaries in a law adopted in 1923</a>. This was an example of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow</a>, a system of laws and customs that institutionalized anti-Black discrimination in the U.S.</p>
<p>When this state law was challenged before the Supreme Court and struck down in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/273us536">Nixon v. Herndon in 1927</a>, the Texas Legislature responded in 1928 with a tricky maneuver much like the current Texas abortion law. Texas repealed the offending statute and <a href="https://opencasebook.org/casebooks/81-landmark-decisions-discrimination-based-on-race-and-ethnicity/resources/6-smith-v-allwright/">enacted legislation</a> that specifically delegated to political parties the power to determine “qualifications of voters in primary elections,” thus seeking to take the state out of the equation.</p>
<p>By putting that power in the hands of private parties, allowing them to discriminate against and prevent African Americans from voting, the state sought to avoid legal rules, based on the Constitution, that required “state action” before a law could be struck down. Essentially, the state contracted out the dirty work of denying Black Texans the right to vote.</p>
<p>In the landmark <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/321us649">1944 ruling in Smith v. Allwright</a>, the Supreme Court “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NyhjCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=%E2%80%9Clooked+behind+the+law+and+ferreted+out+the+trickery,%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=8_m9UelK7e&sig=ACfU3U3aXMGHCkcpkNghhqbOQa_CXxr6cA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiuksKe6PLyAhWGJMAKHYAMAAMQ6AF6BAgHEAM">looked behind the law and ferreted out the trickery</a>,” as expressed by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case at the court. The court ruled that no matter how “uninvolved” the state of Texas attempted to be, primary elections involved state action sufficient for purposes of a successful lawsuit under the 14th Amendment. </p>
<p>The court concluded that the constitutional right to vote “is not to be nullified by a state through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A historical marker memorializing the Terry v. Adams case." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420545/original/file-20210910-19-18yjv9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420545/original/file-20210910-19-18yjv9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420545/original/file-20210910-19-18yjv9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420545/original/file-20210910-19-18yjv9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420545/original/file-20210910-19-18yjv9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420545/original/file-20210910-19-18yjv9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420545/original/file-20210910-19-18yjv9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A marker in Kendleton, Texas, commemorates the Terry v. Adams case, in which the Supreme Court struck down a Texas Jim Crow law that disenfranchised Black voters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Fleming#/media/File:Kendleton_TX_Civil_Rights_Marker.JPG">Djmaschek/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Not giving up</h2>
<p>Democratic Party members in Texas, bent on prohibiting African Americans from voting, turned to yet another privatization strategy to accomplish their objectives. </p>
<p>Since 1889, the “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/345/461">Jaybird Association</a>” in Fort Bend County, <a href="https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/02874/cah-02874.html">a Democratic political organization that was made up exclusively of qualified white county voters</a>, ran its own “pre-primary” to vet and select Democratic candidates for office. Blacks were excluded from these privately run contests. This selection process determined who would run in and likely win the Democratic primaries, which effectively meant only whites would gain those offices. </p>
<p>Blacks in the county sued. Yet again, in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/345/461/">the 1953 ruling in Terry v. Adams</a>, the Supreme Court invalidated this privately run primary process as a violation of the Constitution. As the court pointed out, the “Jaybird primary has become an integral part, indeed the only effective part, of the elective process that determines who shall rule and govern in the county.” </p>
<p>The court’s ruling invalidated similar privately enforced discrimination in voting in other states, such as South Carolina. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 110,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<h2>Resurrecting Jim Crow</h2>
<p>The new law, formally called the <a href="https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB8/2021">Texas Heartbeat Act</a>, constitutes a similar attempt by the state to privatize enforcement of state policy – all in an effort to prevent legal moves that would stop it from going into effect. </p>
<p>Texas has resurrected a decades-old technique that it used during the Jim Crow era to insulate its discriminatory laws from constitutional review in the courts. And by delegating enforcement authority to private individuals, Texas has transformed its population into a cadre of private law enforcers. Now that the federal government has sued the state over the law, the courts will be in a position to review the constitutionality of the statute.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the statute raises grave issues about how states go about enforcing their policies. Will Texas voters appreciate that the state has resurrected a Jim Crow-era mechanism to avoid legal responsibility for its policies?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefanie Lindquist does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Texas lawmakers resurrected a Jim Crow-era legal maneuver, used to deny Black people the right to vote, in their new law banning most abortions.Stefanie Lindquist, Foundation Professor of Law and Political Science, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1634132021-06-30T12:11:37Z2021-06-30T12:11:37ZWhen a Black boxing champion beat the ‘Great White Hope,’ all hell broke loose<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408713/original/file-20210628-15-12h7z86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C0%2C4514%2C2642&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, right, beat James Jeffries in 1910, sparking racial violence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1910-07-06/ed-1/seq-9/">George Haley, San Francisco Call, via University of California, Riverside, via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An audacious Black heavyweight champion was slated to defend his title against a white boxer in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910. It was billed as “the fight of the century.”</p>
<p>The fight was seen as a referendum on racial superiority – and all hell was about to break loose in the racially divided United States.</p>
<p>Jack Johnson, the Black man, decisively beat James Jeffries, nicknamed “the Great White Hope.” Johnson’s triumph ignited <a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">bloody confrontations and violence</a> between Blacks and whites throughout the country, leaving perhaps two dozen dead, almost all of them Black, and hundreds injured and arrested. </p>
<p>“No event yielded such widespread racial violence until the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., fifty-eight years later,” Geoffrey C. Ward wrote in his biography of Johnson, “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/11/18/the-man-with-the-golden-smile/">Unforgiveable Blackness</a>.”</p>
<p>Johnson’s victory, in the manliest of sports, contradicted claims of racial supremacy by whites and demonstrated that Blacks were no longer willing to acquiesce to white dominance. Whites were not willing to give up their power. The story has a familiar ring today, as America remains a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/05/what-do-do-about-race-big-divider-american-politics/">country deeply divided by race</a>.</p>
<p>I began my book, “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803276802/">From Jack Johnson to LeBron James: Sports, Media, and the Color Line</a>,” with Johnson because the consequences of the fight’s aftermath would affect race relations in sports, and America, for decades.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustrations showing troops preparing to leave and marching out of a town center" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408928/original/file-20210629-15-i3ve54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Federal troops leave New Orleans in April 1877, as Reconstruction ends.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/93505869/">A.J. Bennett in Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A backdrop of racial hostility</h2>
<p>Born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas, Johnson grew up as the Jim Crow era in American history was getting started. The previous year, Rutherford B. Hayes became president <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/compromise-of-1877">after promising three former Confederate states</a> – South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana – that he would withdraw federal troops, who had protected the measure of racial equality Blacks were beginning to achieve.</p>
<p>As federal forces left, whites disenfranchised Black voters and passed segregation laws, which were enforced by legal and illegal means, including <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/insurgency-refocuses-need-for-history-of-white-mob-violence-to-be-taught-in-classroom/2021/01">police brutality and lynching</a>. <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210769/">Journalists</a>, too, sought to maintain social order by preserving myths about white supremacy.</p>
<p>Johnson’s boxing career challenged those myths. He dispatched one white fighter after another and taunted both the fighter and the crowd. He was brash and arrogant and made no attempt to show any deference to whites. He sped through towns in flashy cars, wore expensive clothes, spent his time with gamblers and prostitutes, and dated white women, which Black sociologist and commentator W.E.B. Du Bois considered “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fight-jack-johnson-1878-1946/">unnecessarily alienating acts</a>.”</p>
<h2>Setting up a racial battle</h2>
<p>Johnson won the heavyweight title by easily defeating the defending champion Tommy Burns in 1908. Novelist Jack London, writing in the New York Herald, wrote about Johnson’s “hopeless slaughter” of Burns and, like other journalists, called on former champion James Jeffries to come out of retirement and “<a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">wipe that smile from Johnson’s face</a>.”</p>
<p>Jeffries announced to the world that he would “<a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128245468">reclaim the heavyweight championship for the white race</a>.” He became the “<a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128245468">Great White Hope</a>.”</p>
<p>The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, said Jeffries and Johnson would “settle the mooted question of supremacy.” The Daily News in Omaha, Nebraska, reported that a Jeffries victory would restore <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=L07wCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT10&lpg=PT10&dq=Johnson+would+settle+the+mooted+question+of+supremacy&source=bl&ots=Irf6RpfNOu&sig=ACfU3U0YUdyayxVqHeqRW_6mouIHYoLeSg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFu4ej4LXxAhXPKs0KHeMMAFYQ6AEwA3oECAkQAw#v=onepage&q=Johnson%20would%20settle%20the%20mooted%20question%20of%20supremacy&f=false">superiority to the white race</a>. </p>
<p>Before the fight, there were signs whites feared a Jeffries loss – and that this loss would not be restricted to the boxing ring but would have ramifications for all of society. </p>
<p>The New York Times warned, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=L07wCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT10&lpg=PT10&dq=%22If+the+black+man+wins,+the+New+York+Times+editorialized,+%22thousands+and+thousands%22&source=bl&ots=Irf6RwhTIv&sig=ACfU3U03XhwVDEzCZVB9yIX_6RR0mjJUnw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjk_sfB7rfxAhVBpZ4KHcN7CBEQ6AEwAHoECAQQAw#v=onepage&q=%22If%20the%20black%20man%20wins%2C%20the%20New%20York%20Times%20editorialized%2C%20%22thousands%20and%20thousands%22&f=false">If the black man wins</a>, thousands and thousands of his ignorant brothers will misinterpret his victory.” The message was clear: If Jeffries won, white superiority would be proved – but if he lost, whites would still be superior. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BnMJL36_oCs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Footage of the Johnson-Jeffries fight.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Seeking to retain power</h2>
<p>After Johnson easily defeated Jeffries, the Los Angeles Times reinforced white supremacy, telling Blacks: “<a href="https://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2012/10/07/a-word-to-the-black-man-a-reminder/">Do not point your nose too high</a>. Do not swell your chest too much. Do not boast too loudly. Do not get puffed up. … Your place in the world is just what is was. You are on no higher place, deserve no new consideration, and will get none.” Nearly a century later, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jan-14-ed-johnson14-story.html">the newspaper</a> apologized for that 1910 editorial.</p>
<p>In response to the violence, <a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">many cities forbade a film</a> of the fight to be shown in theaters. In 1912, Congress, citing the same motion picture, passed the Sims Act, <a href="https://reason.com/2018/05/25/jack-johnson-fight-films/">banning the transport of fight</a> films over state lines.</p>
<p>In doing so, it kept Blacks and whites from seeing Johnson beat a white man. Historian Jeffrey Sammons says, “in many ways, Johnson represented the ‘bad n—–’ that whites were so willing to parade as an example of why <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fight-jack-johnson-1878-1946/">blacks must be kept in ‘their place.</a>’”</p>
<h2>An outpouring of violence</h2>
<p>No white boxer could defeat Johnson in the ring, so white America worked to defeat him outside the ring. Johnson was <a href="https://www.history.com/news/white-slave-mann-act-jack-johnson-pardon">arrested in 1912</a> and charged <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unforgivable-blackness/mann-act/">with violating the Mann Act</a>, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” He served <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/sports/jack-johnson-pardon-trump.html">10 months in federal prison</a>. </p>
<p>But he was much more than one man. “No longer the respectful darky asking, hat in hand, for massa’s permission, Johnson was seen as the prototype of the independent black who acted as he pleased and accepted no bar to his conduct,” Randy Roberts wrote in “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Papa-Jack/Randy-Roberts/9780029269008">Papa Jack</a>,” his biography of Johnson. “As such, Johnson was transformed into a racial symbol that threatened America’s social order.”</p>
<p>Whites responded to Johnson’s triumph by using violence to keep Blacks in their place by any and all means. When Black construction workers celebrated Johnson’s victory near the town of Uvalda, Georgia, whites began shooting. As the Blacks tried to escape into the woods, the whites hunted them down, killing three and injuring five, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Papa-Jack/Randy-Roberts/9780029269008">Roberts wrote</a>. </p>
<p>Such scenes were <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1910/07/05/Race-riots-in-dozen-cities-follow-Johnson-fight-victory/8746818371120/">repeated throughout the country</a>, according to local media reports. </p>
<p>When a Black man in Houston expressed his joy over the fight’s outcome, a white man “slashed his throat from ear to ear.” Another Black man in Wheeling, West Virginia, who was driving an expensive car, just like Johnson was known for, was dragged from his car by a mob and lynched. A white mob in New York City set fire to a Black tenement and then blocked the doorway to <a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-black-fighter-won-the-fight-of-the-century-race-riots-erupted-across-america-3730b8bf9c98">keep the occupants from escaping</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A newspaper front page showing news of the fight result and ensuing violence" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408933/original/file-20210629-28-18jepxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Leavenworth Times in Kansas on July 5, 1910, published news of Johnson’s win and racial violence across the nation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://hchm.org/floats-of-every-description-the-fight-of-the-century-july-4-1910/">Leavenworth Times via Harvey County Historical Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The sports world responds</h2>
<p>Johnson’s punishment served as a cautionary tale for Blacks during the Jim Crow era. Black athletes, however talented, whether it was sprinter Jesse Owens or boxer <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/fight-black-boxers-and-idea-great-white-hope/">Joe Louis</a>, were warned they had to be the “right type” of Black person, one who knew his place and did not challenge the racial status quo. </p>
<p>In those sports where Blacks were not banned and instead begrudgingly allowed to compete with and against whites, there were violent attacks on Black athletes. <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/jack-trice-life-and-football-career-were-tragically-cut-short/">Jack Trice</a>, an Iowa State football player, died of injuries from the attack he suffered in a game against the University of Minnesota in 1923. </p>
<p>The end of professional baseball’s color line in 1946 line was possible only because Jackie Robinson promised he would <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/02/17/jackie-robinson-spring-training-story-75-years-ago/4488581001/">not respond to racist epithets</a> and physical abuse so that he would be acceptable to white America.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, white America taught Muhammad Ali, whom many considered the “wrong type” of Black athlete, the lesson it had once taught Jack Johnson. Ali, a brash Muslim who refused to defer to the demands of white supremacy, <a href="https://www.si.com/boxing/2020/04/28/this-day-sports-history-muhammad-ali-refuses-induction-army-stripped-title">was convicted of draft evasion</a> for refusing to be inducted into the armed services. He was stripped of his heavyweight title and sentenced to prison. </p>
<p>Other Black athletes, like sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, baseball player <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/07/curt-flood-fought-for-free-agency-and-against-racism-but-who-remembers/">Curt Flood</a> and football player <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/02/09/black-history-tommie-smith-colin-kaepernick-athlete-activism/6484313002/">Colin Kaepernick</a>, all found themselves punished and ostracized for challenging white supremacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Johnson’s victory, in the manliest of sports, contradicted claims of racial supremacy by whites and demonstrated that Blacks were no longer willing to acquiesce to white dominance.Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1611412021-06-18T12:30:05Z2021-06-18T12:30:05ZHow Black writers and journalists have wielded punctuation in their activism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407101/original/file-20210617-13-1ba8em2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=114%2C123%2C1784%2C1254&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Playing with syntax, capitalization and punctuation marks can upend narratives put forth by the mainstream media.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/woman-looking-over-shoulder-under-question-mark-royalty-free-image/1253985738?adppopup=true">Klaus Vedfelt/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Using punctuation and capitalization as a form of protest doesn’t exactly scream radicalism. </p>
<p>But in debates over racial justice, punctuation can carry a lot of weight.</p>
<p>During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, mainstream news organizations grappled with whether to capitalize the first letter of “black” when referring to Black people. Of course, writing “Black” was already common practice in activist circles. Eventually <a href="https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2020/ap-says-it-will-capitalize-black-but-not-white">The Associated Press</a>, <a href="https://www.nytco.com/press/uppercasing-black/">The New York Times</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/12/why-usa-today-gannett-capitalizing-b-black-uppercase/3178288001/">USA Today</a> and many other outlets declared that they, too, would capitalize that first letter.</p>
<p>It turns out the push to capitalize “black” is only the most recent way Black writers and activists have pushed back against entrenched power through ostensibly bland elements of writing.</p>
<p>As I discuss in my recent book, “<a href="https://www.umasspress.com/9781625345264/jim-crow-networks/">Jim Crow Networks: African American Periodical Cultures</a>,” Black activism in the media can take a variety of forms – some more subtle than others. </p>
<p>Seemingly unimportant elements of writing have long been adapted as tools of Black activism. Much like the recent drive to capitalize “black,” activists have deployed punctuation to question the legitimacy of confessions, criticize justifications made for lynchings and highlight the undervaluing of Black expertise and knowledge.</p>
<h2>The power of punctuation</h2>
<p>Punctuation was developed in the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150902-the-mysterious-origins-of-punctuation">3rd century B.C.</a> to visually separate sentences and improve comprehension. But punctuation can do more than clarify. It can extend, contradict and play with meaning. </p>
<p>Think of the difference between ending a sentence with an exclamation point and with an <a href="https://cmosshoptalk.com/2019/07/30/dot-dot-dot-a-closer-look-at-the-ellipsis/">ellipsis</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/emoticons-and-symbols-arent-ruining-language-theyre-revolutionizing-it-38408">or the way emoticons made of repurposed punctuation</a> can be used to denote sarcasm or add playfulness and emotion.</p>
<p>This makes it a useful tool for activists who seek to upend dominant narratives.</p>
<h2>Quotation marks convey suspicion</h2>
<p>A push to capitalize has actually happened before. </p>
<p>In the 1920s, influential Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois wrote to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/insider/capitalized-black.html">The New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/08/the-battle-between-w-e-b-du-bois-and-his-white-editor-was-an-early-reckoning-over-objectivity/">Encyclopedia Britannica</a> to argue that the word “negro” ought to have its first letter capitalized.</p>
<p>A decade later, to counter racism in the white press, the Black press used quotation marks when reporting on the case of a young man named Robert Nixon, who was convicted of murder. </p>
<p>In 1938, the white-owned Chicago Tribune notoriously described Nixon – who would serve as the basis for protagonist Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s 1940 novel “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/native-son-richard-wright?variant=32207416983586">Native Son</a>” – as an “animal” whose “physical characteristics suggest an earlier link in the species.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A black and white portrait of author Richard Wright, pictured seated." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407104/original/file-20210617-16-16uf6y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Wright.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a42820/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the city’s influential Black newspaper, the <a href="https://search-proquest-com.i.ezproxy.nypl.org/hnpchicagodefender/docview/492523968/4FB79128D34F46CBPQ/32?accountid=35635">Chicago Defender</a>, covered the case differently, reporting Nixon’s claim that his confession was the result of police coercion. In a 1938 article, the Defender included a subheading that declared, “Nixon Also Refutes ‘Confession’.”</p>
<p>These simple quotation marks signaled doubt over the legitimacy of this confession, while teaching newspaper readers to be suspicious of so-called legal facts.</p>
<p>As sociologist Mary Pattillo notes in her book “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo4149945.html">Black on the Block</a>,” the Defender’s strategic use of quotation marks called into question official accounts of Nixon as a murderer. In doing so, the paper highlighted the unfair treatment of Black people by the media, police and court system.</p>
<h2>The code of the question mark</h2>
<p>Similarly, Black activists used question marks to criticize mainstream accounts of events during the Jim Crow era. </p>
<p>In her 1892 pamphlet “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14975/14975-h/14975-h.htm">Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases</a>,” anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells used question marks in parentheses on four occasions to interrogate descriptions of crimes supposedly committed by Black Americans.</p>
<p>For example, she wrote, “So great is Southern hate and prejudice, they legally(?) hung poor little thirteen year old Mildrey Brown at Columbia, S. C., Oct. 7th, on the circumstantial evidence that she poisoned a white infant.” </p>
<p>She also quoted from one of her earlier newspaper editorials in which she discussed the lynchings of eight Black men by saying that, in each case, “citizens broke(?) into the penitentiary and got their man.” The question mark casts doubt on this “break-in” and suggests that the perpetrators were, in fact, aided and abetted by law enforcement in murdering these men.</p>
<p>These simple question marks subtly undermined a legal system that sought to cast the murders of a young girl and eight men as just responses. Wells indicted not only the legal system but also the white press, which was often an accomplice to racial violence.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 106,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<h2>Afrofuturist questions</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Pauline Hopkins poses for a portrait wearing a hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407107/original/file-20210617-20-11msypm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pauline Hopkins.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pauline_Elizabeth_Hopkins_circa_1901.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The writer, editor and activist Pauline E. Hopkins similarly used question marks within parentheses in her early Afrofuturist novel “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Of_One_Blood.html?id=FJ0EqcHzEU0C">Of One Blood</a>.” </p>
<p>The novel – which contains depictions of a leopard attack, a lost African city and a ghost – was serialized in the pages of the <a href="http://coloredamerican.org/">Colored American Magazine</a> from 1902 to 1903. At one point, the protagonist, a Black doctor, brings a patient back to life. Yet the responses to this miracle display ambivalence:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The scientific journals of the next month contained wonderful and wondering (?) accounts of the now celebrated case, – re-animation after seeming death.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much as Wells used the question mark to dismiss the official accounts of lynchings, Hopkins deploys it to undermine the scientific establishment and cast doubt on the journals for their stunned and disbelieving responses to the medical marvel. </p>
<p>For Hopkins, the question mark worked to demand respect for Black expertise and knowledge.</p>
<h2>Punctuation’s possibilities</h2>
<p>Punctuation activism can be an important companion to on-the-ground activism. It reveals language’s capacity to transform the world. At the same time, it exposes language’s often hidden role in maintaining structures of power.</p>
<p>Certainly, punctuation – like language overall – is typically used in less radical ways. But these examples of early 20th century Black writers, activists and journalists point to punctuation’s possibilities in questioning entrenched power structures and laying claim to alternative futures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eurie Dahn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For over a century, Black activists have used punctuation marks to subtly challenge official accounts of events.Eurie Dahn, Associate Professor of English, The College of Saint RoseLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1556752021-04-09T12:19:49Z2021-04-09T12:19:49Z‘Our ultimate choice is desegregation or disintegration’ – recovering the lost words of a jailed civil rights strategist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393822/original/file-20210407-17-1tooxnm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C21%2C4770%2C3127&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">View of the Friendship 9 students who protested against racial discrimination and were put in prison, Rock Hill, South Carolina, February 1961.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-friendship-9-students-who-protested-against-news-photo/179698243?adppopup=true">Afro American Newspapers/Gado via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a cramped cell in a South Carolina prison camp, 22-year-old African American activist <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/tom-gaither/">Thomas Gaither</a> wrote, “I am presently in deep contemplation as to just what our nation and our particular region of the nation prizes most.” </p>
<p>It was Thursday, Feb. 23, 1961, and Gaither was serving a 30-day term of hard labor on a road gang for what police called “trespassing,” when he and students from Friendship Junior College staged a sit-in at a Rock Hill, South Carolina, lunch counter. The letter he was <a href="https://pascal-usc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991018701269705618&context=L&vid=01PASCAL_USCCOL:USC&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,Jailed-In&offset=0">writing marked day 23</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://civilrights.sc.edu/our-work/#SCCHR">Gaither wrote on a folded sheet of paper</a>, responding to Alice Spearman, a white civil rights advocate and executive director of the South Carolina Human Relations Council. Gaither told Spearman that he lauded “the concern you and many other Americans have shown for us as we have been imprisoned here, and moreover for the cause for which we suffer…</p>
<p>"Ugly, distasteful, and irrational attitudes as displayed here in S.C. and all over the confederate South are suppressing Justice and the glowing opportunity for America to become again the leader of the world,” he wrote.</p>
<p>For the nation, Gaither concluded, “our ultimate choice is desegregation or disintegration.”</p>
<p>For nearly 60 years, Gaither’s powerful words on yellowing paper lay deep in one records box in the <a href="https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/south_caroliniana/index.php">South Caroliniana Library</a>. The carefully written letter came to light as scholars at the University of South Carolina’s <a href="https://civilrights.sc.edu/">Center for Civil Rights History and Research</a>, where one of us, Bobby J. Donaldson, is the director, reviewed material for an exhibit entitled “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMe9ZnruHk&amp;t=1s">Justice for All</a>,” that tells, through hundreds of documents like Gaither’s letter, the long history of South Carolina’s African American struggle for justice and civil rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A yellowed press release from 1941 in which the Friendship Nine are said to be the inspiration for other students being arrested at a sit-in." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A draft press release by SNCC in which the Friendship Nine are said to be the inspiration for other students being arrested for a subsequent lunch counter sit-in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/p15932coll2/id/66664">Wisconsin Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Training of a movement architect</h2>
<p>In 1960, students moved to the front lines of civil rights activism in the U.S. <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/sit-ins">with an independent movement of lunch counter sit-ins</a> and mass marches to protest segregation. </p>
<p>Inspired by the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/februaryone/film.html#:%7E:text=In%20one%20remarkable%20day%2C%20four,small%20city%20in%20North%20Carolina.">Feb. 1 sit-in of four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina</a>, thousands of students in cities across the South staged sit-ins. One of the <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/orangeburg-south-carolina-students-sit-us-civil-rights-1960">largest movements took place in the college town of Orangeburg, South Carolina</a>, where Gaither was a senior at Claflin College and <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/chuck-mcdew/">Charles McDew</a>, the future chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, was a student at South Carolina State College.</p>
<p>After organizing Orangeburg protests, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/tom-gaither/">Gaither was hired as a field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality</a>, an interracial alliance formed in Chicago in the 1940s that used nonviolent direct action to draw public attention to social injustice. He was assigned to Rock Hill, near his hometown of Great Falls, South Carolina.</p>
<p>After a fall of training, Gaither capped a month of student sit-ins with a special protest, leading the group of Friendship Junior College freshmen in the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/rock-hill-sit-ins-and-jail-no-bail/">Rock Hill McCrory’s store sit-in on Jan. 31, 1961</a>. Police and television news crews were waiting, and a manager immediately told the students: “We can’t serve you here.” </p>
<p>After just 15 seconds, police rushed in, shoved the students off the lunch counter stools, then roughly marched them to the nearby city jail.</p>
<p>Typical of courts in the Jim Crow South, Gaither and the students <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/south-carolina-court-clears-friendship-nine-in-1961-sit-in.html">stood trial</a> the next morning. They were summarily convicted. In an attempt to end sit-ins, the judge threatened the students with a sentence of hard labor or US$200 bail.</p>
<p>Instead, the students had planned to serve time in the prison farm in a “<a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/rock-hill-sit-ins-and-jail-no-bail/">Jail, No Bail</a>” strategy. Gaither learned the tactic at a fall 1960 CORE conference in Florida; then he trained Friendship Junior College students in it. </p>
<p>Now, the group that would come to be known as the “<a href="https://www.crmvet.org/nars/gaithert.htm">Friendship Nine</a>” hoped to reinvigorate the sit-in movement and to push the costs of enforcing segregation onto the city, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/rock-hill-sit-ins-and-jail-no-bail/">rather than onto civil rights supporters</a>, who paid substantial bail fees every time students were arrested.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/courier.html#:%7E:text=The%20Pittsburgh%20Courier%20was%20one,%2C%20Ohio%2C%20and%20New%20York.">The Pittsburgh Courier</a>, a leading African American newspaper that circulated widely in South Carolina and the South, ran an article headlined, “Jail … No Bail Is ‘Sit-ins’ New Approach.” It was obvious, <a href="https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/mccray-john-henry/">South Carolina journalist John McCray</a> wrote, “that the idea of putting school kids on the chain gang ‘shook up’ just about everybody.”</p>
<h2>New civil rights strategy</h2>
<p>Inside the prison, armed guards forced the prisoners to work at hard manual jobs.</p>
<p>Outside, word spread of their “Jail, No Bail” campaign. Within a week, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/charles-sherrod/">Charles Sherrod</a>, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/charles-jones/">J. Charles Jones</a>, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/diane-nash-bevel/">Diane Nash</a> and <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/ruby-doris-smith-robinson/">Ruby Doris Smith</a> of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee traveled from an Atlanta meeting to stage a sit-in in the same Rock Hill lunch counter in protest of the Friendship Nine’s treatment – and also went to jail.</p>
<p>New York Times reporter Claude Sitton traveled to Rock Hill to write about Gaither and his sit-in companions in a story headlined, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1961/02/07/archives/4-negroes-jailed-in-carolina-sitin-students-declare-they-will-not.html">Students Declare They Will Not Post Bail or Pay Fine – New Campaign Seen</a>.” In the article, SNCC leaders urged other students from the region to “join them at the lunch counters and in jail.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jVGW9JxTJK8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gaither, in a 2014 interview with Civil Rights History Project, discusses the ‘Jail No Bail’ strategy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As public demonstrations of support for the students grew, the warden increased his pressure on them, forcing them to work double that of the other hard labor prisoners. When one of them, John Gaines, objected to their treatment, the warden removed him from the group and <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HvdNAAAAIBAJ&pg=4432,2889166&dq=rock+hill+sit-in&hl=en">put the rest of the men back in solitary confinement</a>.</p>
<p>“Aware of what might happen to a lone Negro ‘agitator’ in the hands of white southern prison guards,” Gaither wrote later, “we feared for Gaines’ safety.”</p>
<p>The students launched a hunger strike until they learned where and how Gaines was. On the third day, alarmed prison officers told the students that Gaines had been transferred to the city jail. The Friendship Nine ended their hunger strike. The warden returned them to regular confinement and ended the injurious double work.</p>
<p>In writing his letter days later, Gaither emphasized that the students staging sit-ins at lunch counters “are not striving to make headlines in the newspaper or to put any store out of business, but to save a lost nation.” In Atlanta, 85 students adopted the “Jail, No Bail” strategy following a sit-in arrest and conviction, and their action led directly to an agreement to desegregate the city’s lunch counters.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>After his release, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/freedom-rides/">Gaither received a new assignment</a> from CORE’s directors. In April 1961, he rode a bus south from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, scouting the route for <a href="http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom%20rides.htm">CORE’s Freedom Rides</a>, which tested enforcement of the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/7">1960 U.S. Supreme Court ruling</a> that ordered desegregation of waiting rooms, lunch counters and restrooms used for interstate buses and trains.</p>
<p>Gaither mapped bus station entrances and exits, preparing for the historic challenge later that month. He routed the group through Sumter, where he had done CORE work, and Rock Hill, where riders including future Congressman John Lewis <a href="https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/9">encountered their first violent attack</a>.</p>
<p>In 2015, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/south-carolina-court-clears-friendship-nine-in-1961-sit-in.html">a South Carolina court vacated the sentences</a> of the Friendship Nine, clearing them of the convictions. Judge John C. Hayes III, whose uncle originally sentenced the Friendship Nine, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/01/28/382136622/judge-throws-out-friendship-nines-civil-rights-era-conviction">said from the bench</a>, “We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history.”</p>
<p>On the contrary, Thomas Gaither’s neatly folded letter permits us to revisit and revise a pivotal chapter in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. As Gaither supporter Lillian Smith wrote at the time, “It is something that should not have happened in our country and yet it did happen. Why? You and I must answer that.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A long-lost letter from prison by a civil rights activist provides a window on the pivotal role protesters in South Carolina played in fighting segregation.Bobby J. Donaldson, Associate Professor of History; Director Center for Civil Rights History and Research, University of South CarolinaChristopher Frear, Doctoral candidate, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1550812021-02-23T13:29:06Z2021-02-23T13:29:06ZHow Black cartographers put racism on the map of America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385359/original/file-20210219-13-1glotvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C2%2C1630%2C1101&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An early 20th-century NAACP map showing lynchings between 1909 and 1918. The maps were sent to politicians and newspapers in an effort to spur legislation protecting Black Americans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/static/classroom-materials/naacp-a-century-in-the-fight-for-freedom/documents/lynching.pdf">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How can maps fight racism and inequality?</p>
<p>The work of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-shootout-between-black-panthers-and-law-enforcement-50-years-ago-matters-today-153632">Black Panther Party</a>, a 1960s- and 1970s-era Black political group featured in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/01/judas-and-the-black-messiah-review-electric-black-panthers-drama">new movie</a> and a <a href="https://crosscut.com/2020/02/new-documentary-gives-voice-women-seattles-black-panther-party">documentary</a>, helps illustrate how cartography – the practice of making and using maps – can illuminate injustice. </p>
<p>As these films show, the Black Panthers focused on African American empowerment and <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/black-panther-party-challenging-police-and-promoting-social-change#">community survival</a>, running a diverse array of programming that ranged from <a href="https://www.history.com/news/free-school-breakfast-black-panther-party">free school breakfasts</a> to armed self-defense. </p>
<p>Cartography is a less documented aspect of the Panthers’ activism, but the group used maps to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00501.x">reimagine the cities where African Americans lived and struggled</a>.</p>
<p>In 1971 the Panthers collected 15,000 signatures on a petition to create new <a href="http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/berkeley-to-vote-on-splitting-police-department-radical-groups-support-plan/">police districts in Berkeley, California</a> – districts that would be governed by local citizen commissions and require officers to live in the neighborhoods they served. The proposal made it onto the ballot but was defeated. </p>
<p>In a similar effort to make law enforcement more responsive to communities of color, the Panthers in the late 1960s also created a map proposing to divide up <a href="https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Black_Panthers">police districts</a> within San Francisco, largely along racial lines. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white drawing of San Francisco with designated districts around certain neighborhoods" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Black Panthers’ proposed police districts for the city of San Francisco, created in 1966 or 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.foundsf.org/images/b/bf/Panthpol.jpg">Ccarolson/FoundSF</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Black Panthers are just one chapter in a long history of “counter-mapping” by African Americans, which our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.022">research in geography</a> explores. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/mar/06/counter-mapping-cartography-that-lets-the-powerless-speak">Counter-mapping</a> refers to how groups normally excluded from political decision-making deploy maps and other geographic data to communicate complex information about inequality in an easy-to-understand visual format. </p>
<h2>The power of maps</h2>
<p>Maps are <a href="https://www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/723">not ideologically neutral</a> location guides. Mapmakers choose what to include and exclude, and how to display information to users.</p>
<p>These decisions can have far-reaching consequences. When the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s set out to map the risk associated for banks loaning money to individuals for homes in different neighborhoods, for example, they rated minority neighborhoods as high risk and color-coded them as red. </p>
<p>The result, known as “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/19/498536077/interactive-redlining-map-zooms-in-on-americas-history-of-discrimination">redlining</a>,” contributed to housing discrimination for three decades, until federal law banned such maps in 1968. Redlining’s legacy is still evident in many American cities’ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/redlining-was-banned-50-years-ago-its-still-hurting-minorities-today/">patterns of segregation</a>.</p>
<p>Colonial explorers charting their journeys and city planners and developers pursuing urban renewal, too, have used cartography to represent the world in ways that further their own priorities. Often, the resulting maps exclude, misrepresent or <a href="https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1036">harm minority groups</a>. Academics and government officials do this, too. </p>
<p>Counter-maps produce an alternative public understanding of the facts by highlighting the experiences of oppressed people. </p>
<p>Black people aren’t the only marginalized group to do this. <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-amazonian-forest-peoples-are-counter-mapping-their-ancestral-lands-84474">Indigenous communities</a>, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-and-Cartography-in-the-Progressive-Era/Dando/p/book/9780367245306">women</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-story-maps-redraw-the-world-using-peoples-real-life-experiences-98051">refugees and LGBTQ communities</a> have also redrawn maps to account for their existence and rights. </p>
<p>But Black Americans were among the earliest purveyors of counter-mapping, deploying this alternative cartography to serve a variety of needs a century ago.</p>
<h2>Black counter-mapping</h2>
<p>Mapping is part of the <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/demonic-grounds">broader Black creative tradition and political struggle</a>. </p>
<p>Over the centuries, African Americans developed “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37569-0_4">way-finding</a>” aids, including a <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-book-highlights-the-problems-of-driving-while-black-both-then-and-now-111561">Jim Crow-era travel guide</a>, to help them navigate a racially hostile landscape and created visual works that affirmed the value of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12679">Black life</a>. </p>
<p>The Black sociologist and civil rights leader <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-time-together-and-color-book-displays-web-du-bois-visionary-infographics-180970826/">W.E.B. Du Bois</a> produced maps for the 1900 Paris Exposition to inform international society about the gains African Americans had made in income, education and land ownership since slavery and in face of continuing racism. </p>
<p>Similarly, in 1946, Friendship Press cartographer and illustrator Louise Jefferson published a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-25/the-women-cartographers-who-mapped-art-and-science-in-the-20th-century">pictorial map</a> celebrating the contributions of African Americans – from famous writers and athletes to unnamed Black workers – in building the United States.</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, anti-lynching crusaders at the NAACP and Tuskegee Institute stirred public outcry by producing <a href="https://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsoflyn00nati">statistical reports</a> that informed <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701e.ct002012/">original hand-drawn maps</a> showing the location and frequency of African Americans murdered by white lynch mobs. </p>
<p>One map, published in 1922 in the NAACP’s magazine “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/0200-crisis-v23n04-w136.pdf">Crisis</a>,” placed dots on a standard map to document 3,456 lynchings over 32 years. The Southeast had the largest concentration. But the “blots of shame,” as mapmaker Madeline Allison called them, spanned the country from east to west and well into the north. </p>
<p>These visualizations, along with the underlying data, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742552739/African-Americans-Confront-Lynching-Strategies-of-Resistance-from-the-Civil-War-to-the-Civil-Rights-Era">were sent</a> to allied organizations like the citizen-led <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/commission-interracial-cooperation#">Commission on Interracial Cooperation</a>, to newspapers nationwide and to elected officials of all parties and regions. The activists hoped to spur Congress to pass federal anti-lynching legislation – something that remains to this day <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/politics/rand-paul-anti-lynching-bill-senate.html">unfinished business</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of Rustin at a desk holding a big map and smiling, with papers all over this desk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin organizing the 1963 March on Washington, an example of how existing maps can also be used in politically disruptive ways.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/08/15/ap630824099_custom-9bf942d77b3591a797f1676f5279c69cd12f7e27-s1500-c85.jpg">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much anti-lynching cartography was inspired by the famed activist and reporter <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/7/16/8979771/ida-b-wells-lynching-data">Ida B. Wells</a>, who in the early 1880s made some of the first tabulations of the prevalence and geographic distribution of racial terror. Her work refuted prevailing white claims that lynched Black men had sexually assaulted white women. </p>
<h2>Modern maps</h2>
<p>The precariousness of Black life – and the exclusion of Black stories from American history – remains an unresolved issue today.</p>
<p>Working alone and with white allies, Black activists and scholars continue using cartography to tell a fuller <a href="https://www.blackinappalachia.org/bristol">story about the United States</a>, to <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chicago-folded-map-project">challenge racial segregation</a> and to <a href="https://www.racialviolencearchive.com/research.html">combat violence</a>. </p>
<p>Today, the maps they create are often digital. </p>
<p>For example, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Alabama-based legal defense group run by Bryan Stevenson, has produced a modern map of <a href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore">historical lynching</a>. It’s an interactive update of the anti-lynching cartography made 100 years ago – although a full reconstruction of lynching terror remains impossible because of incomplete data and the veil of silence that persists around these murders.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Red-tinged map of the US with a plot point in Illionois highlighted to show that there were 56 murders there between 1877 and 1950" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Equal Justice Initiative’s map tells stories of people who were lynched.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore">Screenshot, Equal Justice Initiative</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another modern mapping project, called Mapping Police Violence, was launched by <a href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/how-an-orlando-data-scientist-is-helping-the-blacklivesmatter-movement-make-the-case-against-police-violence/Content?oid=2478826">data activists</a> after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. <a href="https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/">It tracks</a> police use of force using a time-series animated map. Deaths and injuries flash across the screen and accumulate on the map of the United States, visually communicating the national scale and urgency of this problem.</p>
<p>Counter-mapping operates on the theory that communities and governments cannot fix problems that they do not understand. When Black counter-mapping exposes the how-and-where of racism, in accessible visual form, that information gains new power to spur social change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155081/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek H. Alderman receives funding from National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua F.J. Inwood receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Mapping is one way African Americans fight for equality and help each other navigate a racially hostile landscape.Derek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of TennesseeJoshua F.J. Inwood, Associate Professor of Geography and Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1444742020-08-14T14:31:54Z2020-08-14T14:31:54ZLovecraft Country: HBO series brings new life to America’s weirdest horror writer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352942/original/file-20200814-22-3t7ijc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C6%2C1495%2C983&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Weird scenes from Jim Crow-era America.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lovecraft Country, a new series from HBO adapted from <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/matt-ruff/lovecraft-country/">the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff</a>, takes a critical look at the legacy of the controversial but classic horror writer, HP Lovecraft. By doing so it also sheds a light on the mode of literature he famously pioneered: weird fiction.</p>
<p>The name HP Lovecraft is inextricably linked with images of slimy tentacles, archaic monsters and cosmic horrors. Whether you are familiar with Lovecraft’s writing or not, his signature style of “Lovecraftian horror” has left a mark on the genre that is still felt today. </p>
<p>Yet beneath this contribution lay a decidedly xenophobic man. While he was undoubtedly a pioneer for an incredibly popular style of writing which he named “weird fiction”, Lovecraft left a legacy marred by his racist, xenophobic and antisemitic views. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="HP Lovecraft on the cover of Time Magazine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352945/original/file-20200814-16-nb7g38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The famed writer had some highly unpleasant views on race.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Will Hart via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Lovecraft Country, showrunner and executive producer Misha Green faces this legacy head on. Green describes each episode as an attempt to “<a href="https://www.thewrap.com/lovecraft-country-hp-lovecraft-racist-racism-misha-green-series-premiere-hbo/">reclaim</a>” Lovecraft’s contributions by refusing to ignore his racist views while also drawing on the style he pioneered. Set in America towards the end of the Jim Crow era in the 1950s, the series uses Lovecraftian horror to represent the fear faced daily by black Americans at the hands of a racist system. In effect, prejudice is as monstrous as any one of Lovecraft’s slimy creations.</p>
<h2>Weird Tales</h2>
<p>In 1996, Joyce Carol Oates famously hailed Lovecraft as the “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1996/10/31/the-king-of-weird/">King of the Weird</a>”. In reexamining Lovecraft’s contribution to the horror genre, the new series also re-envisions his contributions to the weird sub-genre of speculative fiction. </p>
<p>For Lovecraft, the “<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601181h.html">really weird</a>” refers to “a profound sense of dread … contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dvamPJp17Ds?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The term originates, in part, from the early 20th-century periodical, Weird Tales. Founded by editors JC Henneberger and JM Lansinger in 1922, Weird Tales gained a cult following publishing pulp stories by Clark Ashton Smith, Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch and, of course, Lovecraft. These were stories of <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_1/Issue_1/Ooze">dangerous ooze</a>, <a href="https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx">tentacled beasts</a> and <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cthulhuwho1/6783259170">Satanic history</a>.In the words of the magazine’s first editor, Edwin Baird: “<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/download-issues-of-the-pioneering-pulp-horror-fantasy-magazine-weird-tales.html">They are unusual, uncanny, unparalleled</a>”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Magazine cover with illustration of man carrying scared woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352946/original/file-20200814-24-1n3qts6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stranger than fiction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clearly, the fear sought after by Weird Tales – and the authors who wrote for it – was of a different sort to the established norms of the Gothic tradition. While shocking, these stories prioritised elements of existential fear and an intangible sense of dread. Their monsters were older, slimier, more cosmic in scope than the Victorian era’s Dracula or Frankenstein.</p>
<p>Popular audiences who had tired of Gothic literature’s well-worn formulas found a home in this new, decidedly weirder, method of inciting horror. The magazine’s closure in 1954 did not signal the end of weird fiction for long. In television series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955 to 1965) and the famously uncanny Twilight Zone (1959 to 1964), Weird Tales found its way onto the silver screen and into the homes of a new generation. </p>
<p>In 1994, famed horror director John Carpenter offered a nod to Lovecraft in In the Mouth of Madness (referencing Lovecraft’s novel In the Mountains of Madness). This signalled a trend of “Weird” films – which include Hell Raiser (1983) and Videodrome (1987) among others – that would peak with Event Horizon three years later. Ultimately, these films attempted to recreate the cosmic existential terror beloved by Weird authors like Lovecraft.</p>
<p>Today, a new generation of authors and filmmakers have sought to exhume the weird once again. China Miéville, author of Perdido Street Station (2000), is one of the key figures of the aptly named, “<a href="https://bookriot.com/new-weird-genre/">new weird</a>”. He is joined by other “new weird” authors such as Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, Thomas Ligotti and KJ Bishop, as well as filmmakers like Guillermo Del Toro, Jordan Peele and Leigh Janak. </p>
<p>On the small screen, series including Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018 to 2020) and <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/02/writer-nic-pizzolatto-on-thomas-ligotti-and-the-weird-secrets-of-true-detective/">True Detective</a>(three series since 2014) have brought weird fiction and its contributors well and truly into the realm of pop culture. Yet each of these weird iterations, while maintaining the genre’s key attributes, also look to resolve its faults.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man and woman stood outside building at night look offscreen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352947/original/file-20200814-14-16xm70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Travels in Lovecraft Country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And so we return to Lovecraft Country. While the series is indebted to the legacy of Lovecraft – and weird fiction – its strength comes from the way Misha Green and her team, including executive producers Jordan Peele and JJ Abrams, rethink this legacy. Though the series boasts a number of uncanny and abnormal monstrosities, its horror comes from a stark reminder of just how monstrous “normal” can be for certain oppressed groups of people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guy Stephen Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By focusing on African Americans’ experiences of racism in the 1950s, the new series aims to address HP Lovecraft’s racist views.Guy Stephen Webster, PhD Candidate in Literature, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1423272020-08-11T12:10:01Z2020-08-11T12:10:01ZAfrican Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351663/original/file-20200806-18-1phy7tm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C16%2C2609%2C1781&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters at the Richmond, Virginia monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee on June 18, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protesters-against-police-violence-and-racism-continue-to-news-photo/1221109212?adppopup=true">Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are <a href="https://hgreen.people.ua.edu/csa-monument-mapping-project.html">coming down</a> by the dozens.</p>
<p>In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. </p>
<p>It’s now a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/style/statue-richmond-lee.html">new community space</a> where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that <a href="http://www.blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a>. </p>
<p>This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/4113/discussions/157750/register-kentucky-historical-society-vol-115-no-1-now-available">research</a>, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. </p>
<p>But those African American memorial cultures have often been overshadowed by Confederate monuments that dominate public space and set in stone a white supremacist story of the past.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351665/original/file-20200806-20-1qr4rf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sketch of the ‘Colored National Convention’ in Tennessee, 1876.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sketch-of-the-colored-national-convention-in-tennessee-1876-news-photo/657153622?adppopup=true">From the New York Public Library/Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Black celebrations</h2>
<p>In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans had <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/protesters-denounce-abraham-lincoln-statue-in-dc-urge-removal-of-emancipation-memorial/2020/06/25/02646910-b704-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html">less power and money</a> than whites did to erect statues to celebrate their past. </p>
<p>Instead, they challenged white dominance of public space using <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/emancipation-day">holidays</a>, <a href="https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/13704/barkleybrown_negotiatingandtransforming.pdf;jsessionid=DD208F1EE358CB9A7B81FAD9BB7A0D42?sequence=1">parades</a>, <a href="https://coloredconventions.org/about-conventions/">conventions</a>, mass meetings and other events. Black people used public celebrations such as <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/historical-legacy-juneteenth">Juneteenth</a> to tell a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=0JWdKmh64XgC&printsec=frontcover">positive story</a> about their history, debate and set political goals for the community, applaud the role of Black soldiers and workers, and create a legacy and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/history-and-memory-in-african-american-culture-9780195083972?q=fabre&lang=en&cc=us">cultural identity</a> for Black men, women and children. </p>
<p>These community celebrations helped guide Black protests and organizing after the Civil War and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/06/19/heres-what-juneteenth-looks-like-in-2020-photos/#2becddaf4199">continue to inspire activists today</a>. </p>
<p>Here are just a few of the ways African Americans challenged white dominance in public spaces:</p>
<p>• On July 4, 1866, Black people <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Defining_Moments/e8M8fnMcwyUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=kathleen+clark+%22liberty+which+no+white+man+ever+yet+presumed+to+take+with+Virginia%E2%80%99s+great+work+of+art%22&pg=PA52&printsec=frontcover">gathered</a> in Richmond’s Capitol Square and decorated the statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and George Mason with garlands and flags – a radical act that a reporter from the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84024738/">Richmond Dispatch</a> fumed was “a liberty which no white man ever yet presumed to take with Virginia’s great work of art.” By claiming the Founding Fathers as their own, African Americans protested against their exclusion from public space and citizenship. </p>
<p>• In 1867 Black men and women publicly assembled at a convention in Lexington, Kentucky, where political leader William F. Butler <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6NC-Yu-AHzgC&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q&f=false">stated</a>, “First we ha[d] the cartridge box, now we want the ballot box, and soon we will get the jury box. I don’t mean with our fists, but by standing up and demanding our rights.” Butler argued that Black men fought to maintain the Union, “but we were left without means of protecting ourselves….We need and must have the ballot box for that purpose.” </p>
<p>• A Baltimore procession in May 1870 celebrated the ratification of the <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/15th-amendment">Fifteenth Amendment</a>, which guaranteed Black men the right to vote. The event had more than 12,000 participants and 20,000 spectators. Newspapers called the procession <a href="https://msa.maryland.gov/dtroy/project/newspapers/american/">“vast and magnificent in its appointments, gorgeous in its decorations, and noble in its purposes.”</a> Participants carried banners reading, “Give us equal rights and we will protect ourselves,” and “Equity and justice goes hand in hand.” </p>
<p>These and other African American celebrations asserted their right to public spaces where previously enslaved people might have needed <a href="https://www.ncpedia.org/slave-codes">passes</a> or were supposed to be invisible. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351661/original/file-20200806-22-u0zlie.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The central part of this image, called ‘The Fifteenth Amendment,’ depicts the grand parade held in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 19, 1870.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tr22a.html#obj11">Thomas Kelly after James C. Beard/Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Monuments and power</h2>
<p>For both Black and white residents, the actions they took to commemorate their cultures demonstrated the importance of residential and commercial spaces, such as city parks, neighborhoods and shopping districts, and especially official civic spaces such as city halls or courthouses. </p>
<p>White organizations raised hundreds of statues in public spaces, especially in the South, during the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy">height of Confederate memorializing</a> in the Jim Crow and civil rights eras.</p>
<p>White supremacist groups such as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/16/the-whole-point-of-confederate-monuments-is-to-celebrate-white-supremacy/">United Daughters of the Confederacy</a> erected these Confederate monuments to, in their words, <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009583001">“correct history”</a> by celebrating the <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/lost_cause_the#start_entry">Lost Cause</a>, the idea that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Confederate cause was just. </p>
<p>These monuments represented a way to remind African Americans that <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/06/how-charlottesvilles-confederate-statues-helped-decimate-the-citys-historically-successful-black-communities.html">public spaces, public commemoration and public advancement</a> were not for them. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/29/why-bree-newsome-took-down-the-confederate-flag-in-s-c-i-refuse-to-be-ruled-by-fear/">And while protests</a> that Confederate flags and monuments do not belong in public spaces have grown stronger since <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/878828088/5-years-after-charleston-church-massacre-what-have-we-learned">2015</a>, resistance is not new. African Americans have been protesting against Confederate monuments since they were erected. </p>
<p>In Charleston, South Carolina, Black citizens in the 1880s and 1890s mocked and defaced the original monument to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-C-Calhoun">John C. Calhoun</a>, a South Carolina congressman and U.S. vice president, who defended slavery as a “positive good.” </p>
<p>Teacher and civil rights activist <a href="https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w68p67zx">Mamie Garvin Fields</a> remembered that as a child it seemed as if Calhoun’s statue was “looking you in the face and telling you … I am back to see you stay in your place.” She recalled bringing something to <a href="https://www.whatitmeanstobeamerican.org/places/the-south-carolina-monument-that-symbolizes-clashing-memories-of-slavery/">“scratch up the coat, break the watch chain, try to knock off the nose”</a> – perhaps leading to its replacement in 1896 with a much taller monument. </p>
<p>In 1923 the United Daughters of the Confederacy urged Congress to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/opinion/sunday/confederate-monuments-mammy.html">fund a monument</a> “to the faithful slave mammies of the South” in Washington, D.C. The National Association of Colored Women mobilized several Black activist organizations in letter-writing campaigns, petitions and editorials and crushed the plan. The monument was never built.</p>
<h2>Turning away</h2>
<p>White residents had the power to ignore Black residents’ commemorative activities. </p>
<p>Rather than watch the festivities or listen to Black speakers, they chose to leave town for the day, stay inside or express disgust among themselves. White people in Richmond celebrated the Fourth of July in the countryside, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hGE3CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=partly+to+enjoy+the+days+relaxation+from+business+and+partly+to+avoid+the+spectacle+which+they+could+not+have+avoided+witnessing+had+they+remained+at+home.&source=bl&ots=gvRTZzZnH9&sig=ACfU3U15UP1QzeTLZvGcgxKj44Rq61ZsFw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiSwe_s2bHqAhUFXc0KHcrDCvMQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=partly%20to%20enjoy%20the%20days%20relaxation%20from%20business%20and%20partly%20to%20avoid%20the%20spectacle%20which%20they%20could%20not%20have%20avoided%20witnessing%20had%20they%20remained%20at%20home.&f=false">noted the Richmond Dispatch newspaper</a>, “partly to enjoy the day’s relaxation from business and partly to avoid the spectacle which they could not have avoided witnessing had they remained at home.” </p>
<p>The Baltimore American newspaper noted that those who were too “thin-skinned” to see Black residents celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment shut their doors, “presenting the appearance that ‘nobody was in.’” White residents <a href="https://msa.maryland.gov/dtroy/project/newspapers/american/">“refused to witness the procession, declaring they could not gaze upon such a humiliating scene.”</a> </p>
<h2>Remaking public space</h2>
<p>In 2017, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 11-12 for the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/14/543471538/charlottesville-rally-aimed-to-defend-a-confederate-statue-it-may-have-doomed-ot">Unite the Right rally</a>, ostensibly to protect a monument of Robert E. Lee. </p>
<p>It was a battle over what vision of America would prevail in public space in the 21st century. </p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p>
<p>Chanting “White lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us,” the white supremacists violently attacked counterprotesters. </p>
<p>Today, the tables are turned. Anti-racism protesters are transforming public space by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/us/richmond-jefferson-davis-statue-pulled-down-trnd/index.html">tearing down</a> Confederate monuments or demanding their removal. Years of activism combined with these same types of activities – mourning, celebration of Black pasts, public demands for the future, politics in the streets – have led to the removal of many Confederate monuments, despite the violence and fury of white supremacists. </p>
<p>Activists are telling a <a href="https://www.vmfa.museum/about/rumors-of-war/">new story</a> of African American history out of the relics of a white supremacist past, just as they did in public celebrations in the 19th century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shannon M. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Protests of Confederate flags and monuments have grown since 2015, but resistance is not new. African Americans have been protesting against Confederate monuments since they were erected.Shannon M. Smith, Associate Professor of History, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401432020-08-03T11:58:48Z2020-08-03T11:58:48ZHow the failures of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty set the stage for today’s anti-racist uprisings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349728/original/file-20200727-21-gt3hqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=90%2C67%2C4865%2C3311&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On May 27, 1919, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Italian President Vittorio Orlando, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and American President Woodrow Wilson met May 27, 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-prime-minister-lloyd-george-italian-president-news-photo/3289187?adppopup=true">Lee Jackson/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The racism that is now the target of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/06/world/george-floyd-global-protests.html">protest across the globe</a> is rooted in the tragic choices of leaders seeking to roll back change a century ago. </p>
<p>Nearly all historians now agree that at the end of World War I, the choice to return to an imperialist world order by the victorious Allied, or Entente, powers – France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States – was a historic error. It not only prepared the ground for the rise of fascism in Europe, but also sparked decades of political violence in Asia and Africa by <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/the_paris_peace_conference_and_its_consequences">people denied their rights</a> and humanity.</p>
<p>As World War I ended in <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/world-war-i-ends">November 1918</a>, the Spanish Flu pandemic swept across the globe, killing <a href="https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence#:%7E:text=The%20horrific%20scale%20of%20the%201918%20influenza%20pandemic%E2%80%94known,and%20civilians%20killed%20during%20World%20War%20I%20combined.">more than 50 million</a> people. <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/210420/worldwide_flu_outbreak_killed_45000_american_soldiers_during_world_war_i">Most vulnerable were soldiers</a> living in crowded barracks and their families back home, where hunger weakened immunity.</p>
<p>Like today, the effect of pandemic was aggravated by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2015/02/02/the-biggest-recession-youve-never-ever-heard-of/#4d41863d3619">economic recession and unemployment</a>. Worse, the people of the defeated German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires <a href="https://www.history.com/news/germany-world-war-i-debt-treaty-versailles">suffered chaos under political collapse</a>.</p>
<p>Amid these multiple crises, the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace">Paris Peace Conference</a> opened in January 1919. American President Woodrow Wilson personally traveled to Paris to ensure that the conference would make the world “<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/woodrow-wilson-racism-self-determination.html">safe for democracy</a>.”</p>
<p>Wilson had promised a new era of peace and justice in his famous <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/fourteen_points.shtml">Fourteen Points</a> statement of war aims, which included an end to secret treaties, the curtailment of colonial empires, the right of all people to choose their own government and a League of Nations to adjudicate international conflicts. </p>
<p>In 1920, like 2020, race became the pivot of a historic turning point. In both moments, world leaders faced a choice: to restore the previous status quo that had produced the crisis – or to embrace the need for a new world order. </p>
<p>The European members of the Entente powers <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Allied-Powers-international-alliance#ref1228825">at Paris – Britain, France, and Italy</a> – ignored Wilson’s call for world order based on law and rights. With the implementation of the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0043.pdf">Treaty of Versailles</a> in January 1920, they chose to restore a racial hierarchy across the globe, extending their colonial rule over territories once held by the defeated German and Ottoman empires in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. </p>
<p>The treaty, which included establishment of the League of Nations, betrayed not only Wilson’s ideals, but also the Entente’s nonwhite allies and the colonial soldiers who fought in the “war to end all wars.” The racial injustice of the 1919-20 peace settlement sparked decades of political violence – not only in the colonized Middle East, Africa and Asia, but also in the United States. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349735/original/file-20200727-19-u04cq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">NAACP leader W.E.B. Du Bois went to Paris to try to ensure that racist laws like the U.S. had would not be imposed in Africa to the detriment of African rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2003681451/?loclr=blogloc">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Journey to Paris</h2>
<p>In January 1919, activists from around the world traveled to Paris <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic#:%7E:text=Even%20President%20Woodrow%20Wilson%20reportedly%20contracted%20the%20flu,in%20Spain%2C%20though%20news%20coverage%20of%20it%20did.">despite risks to their health</a>. They embraced Wilson’s Fourteen Points as a chance to remake a broken world system of imperial rivalry that had led to World War I and the deaths of <a href="https://www.geo.tv/latest/212756-world-war-i-in-numbers">10 million soldiers and 50 million civilians</a>.</p>
<p>Among those activists was NAACP leader <a href="http://scua.library.umass.edu/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:versailles_peace_conference">W.E.B. Du Bois</a>, who had fought against the spread of racist, segregationist Jim Crow laws from southern states to the North. He now feared that a similar legal double standard might be imposed in international law, to the detriment of African rights.</p>
<p>Du Bois asked to join the American delegation at Paris, but the Wilson administration refused him. Wilson feared that Du Bois’ <a href="https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/civil-rights-during-and-after-world-wars/dubois-wilson">call for racial equality</a> might spoil his negotiations with the other conference leaders – prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy – who ruled most of Africa as colonies. </p>
<h2>Claiming rights</h2>
<p>Undeterred, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/world-war-i-american-experiences/about-this-exhibition/world-overturned/peace-and-a-new-world-order/the-pan-african-conference/">Du Bois organized a Pan African Congress</a> to defend Africans’ rights. He understood, as others did in Paris, that racial <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/08/11/742293305/a-century-later-the-treaty-of-versailles-and-its-rejection-of-racial-equality">inequality was the foundation</a> of the old imperial world order.</p>
<p>Like Du Bois and his African allies, <a href="https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/06/the-middle-eastern-prince-who-tried-to-change-the-treaty-of-versailles/">Arabs and Egyptians</a> claimed their right to sovereignty. But they found that the Entente leaders also considered Arab Muslims a lower species of human, unfit for self-rule.</p>
<p>Prince Faisal of Mecca gained entry to the conference because his Arab army had fought against the Ottoman Turks alongside Britain, with the understanding that Arabs would <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/08/14/treaty-versailles-michael-neiberg">gain an independent state</a>. But the British broke their promise and denied independence to Faisal’s Syrian Arab Kingdom. They instead <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Sykes-Picot-Agreement">joined French colonialists to divide Arab lands</a> between them. </p>
<p>Asians, too, were regarded as an inferior race. Japan had fought alongside the victorious Allies and had <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-Treaty-Of-Versailles-And-Japan-F3V33J6WKPTDX">won a leading role</a> at the conference.</p>
<p>But when the Japanese delegation proposed a racial equality clause for the Covenant of the new League of Nations, the conference’s white leaders <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-japan-turned-against-paris-peace-treaty-and-why-it-matters-39527">rejected it</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The five members of the Japanese delegation to the Paris peace conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349734/original/file-20200727-23-11is6ba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Japanese delegation, shown here, proposed a racial equality clause for the charter of the new League of Nations. The leading powers rejected it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.28843/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Racial inequality codified</h2>
<p>The Covenant of the League of Nations, drafted by those same leaders at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/League-of-Nations/The-Covenant">Paris in 1919</a>, codified the inequality of races in international law.
<a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp">Article 22</a> denied independence to Arabs, Africans and Pacific Islanders once ruled by the Ottomans and Germans. </p>
<p>In the condescending language of moral uplift, the article designated them as “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” Therefore, they would be placed under temporary European rule as “a <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22">sacred trust of civilisation</a>.”</p>
<p>In other words, the League of Nations would administer temporary colonies, called mandates, to tutor uncivilized (nonwhite) people in politics. Racial inequality was enshrined in the very institution, the League of Nations, that was to ensure the governance of international law.</p>
<p>The mandates were imposed by gunpoint, with no pretense to respect self-determination. In July 1920, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Syria/The-French-mandate">French army occupied Damascus</a>, destroyed the Syrian Arab Kingdom and sent <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Faysal-I">Faisal into exile</a>. Likewise, the British battled mass opposition to claim its mandates in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Iraq/British-occupation-and-the-mandatory-regime">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199796953/obo-9780199796953-0200.xml">Palestine</a>. Meanwhile, South Africa imposed a brutal racist regime upon southwest Africa.</p>
<p>Racial exclusion from the club of so-called civilized nations provoked anti-colonial movements for the rest of the 20th century. </p>
<p>The president of the Syrian Arab Kingdom’s Congress, Sheikh Rashid Rida, foresaw violent consequences <a href="https://tcf.org/content/report/arab-worlds-liberal-islamist-schism-turns-100/?session=1">in his 1921 appeal</a> to the League of Nations. </p>
<p>“It does not befit the honor of this League, which President Wilson proposed to include all civilized nations for the good of all human beings,” he wrote, “for it to be used as a tool by two colonial states. These states seek to use this Assembly to guarantee … the subjugation of peoples.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Prince Faisal of Mecca with his delegation at the Peace Conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349737/original/file-20200727-27-1hwbmt8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prince Faisal of Mecca with his delegation at the Peace Conference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq#/media/File:FeisalPartyAtVersaillesCopy.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rida prophetically warned that “Syria, Palestine, and other Arab countries will ignite the fires of war in both the West and the East.” The bitter sheikh turned against European liberalism and inspired the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rashid-Rida">founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928</a>. </p>
<p>In the later 20th century, this racial exclusion of Arab Muslims inspired the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/06/30/the-new-islamic-caliphate-and-its-war-against-history/">violent Islamist movements that</a> drew the United States into seeming endless conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.</p>
<h2>Jim Crow stays</h2>
<p>In the United States, racial hierarchy was similarly reimposed by violence. Black veterans returned from Europe to confront <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/wwi/red-summer">lynching and race riots</a>.</p>
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<p>The link between the American racial order and the new world order was made explicit by President Wilson’s adviser, Colonel <a href="https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=2294">Edward M. House</a>. He advised Wilson that racial equality would cost him votes in the South and California. Worse, such a clause could <a href="https://www.guernicamag.com/andrew-s-lewis-wilson-and-the-racial-equality-clause/">empower the League of Nations</a> to intervene in the United States against Jim Crow laws.</p>
<p>In March 1920, the U.S. Senate <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/senate-rejects-league-of-nations-nov-19-1919-113006">rejected American membership</a> in the League of Nations precisely because clauses on transnational law enforcement and collective security threatened U.S. sovereignty.</p>
<p>It is no accident that the current crisis in the U.S. has come to focus on racial injustice. Among its several sources are the decisions made 100 years ago by white men from powerful countries who believed maintaining their dominance was more important than seeking peace through justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Thompson received funding for her research from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and American University in Washington, DC. </span></em></p>Suffering a pandemic and the aftermath of a war that killed 50 million, the world in 1920 faced a turning point as it negotiated a new political order. As today, the key issue was racial inequality.Elizabeth Thompson, Professor and Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1398052020-06-02T12:18:48Z2020-06-02T12:18:48ZGeorge Floyd’s death reflects the racist roots of American policing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338938/original/file-20200601-95032-1m6roxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C77%2C7713%2C4770&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer has sparked widespread outrage.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-carrying-banners-march-to-protest-over-the-death-of-news-photo/1216633357">John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Outrage over <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-killing-of-ahmaud-arbery-highlights-the-danger-of-jogging-while-black-138085">racial profiling</a> and the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/us/george-floyd-three-videos-minneapolis/index.html">killing of African Americans</a> by <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/">police officers</a> and vigilantes has recently resurfaced following the death of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/864732088/minneapolis-seethes-over-george-floyds-death-as-trump-calls-protesters-thugs">George Floyd</a> on May 25, 2020. Video footage a bystander took of Floyd’s death while a now-former police officer pressed his knee into the man’s neck quickly went viral.</p>
<p>But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. </p>
<p>There were many precedents to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/17/black-lives-matter-birth-of-a-movement">Ferguson, Missouri, protests</a> that ushered in the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/2014/11/michael-brown-case-fact-sheet">in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>Those precedents include the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Los-Angeles-Riots-of-1992">Los Angeles</a> riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/rodney-king-9542141">Rodney King</a>. That upheaval happened nearly three decades after the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/watts-riots">1965 Watts riots</a>, which began with <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-19-me-2790-story.html">Marquette Frye</a>, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest. </p>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MAKZ6okAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">criminal justice researcher</a> who <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15377938.2010.526868">often focuses</a> on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277436/original/file-20190531-69095-14chox3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new slogan for an old problem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nationwide-Protests-Ferguson/98026cc4d4b14bfa9f2d7c6627d6634d/3/0">Photo/Lynne Sladky</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Slave patrols</h2>
<p>There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement. </p>
<p>Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10511250500335627">slave patrols</a>, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/did-african-american-slaves-rebel/">crushed uprisings</a> led by enslaved people and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10511250500335627">punished enslaved workers</a> found or believed to have violated plantation rules. </p>
<p>The first <a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1">slave patrols</a> arose <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10511250500335627">in South Carolina</a> in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yrO6KIMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">Michael A. Robinson</a> has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934717702134">state that had not yet abolished slavery</a> had them.</p>
<p>Members of slave patrols could <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511250500335627">forcefully enter anyone’s home</a>, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.</p>
<p>The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were <a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1">centralized municipal police departments</a> that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere. </p>
<p>The first police forces were overwhelmingly <a href="https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/02-2017/african_americans_in_law_enforcement.asp">white</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Stebbins-Wells">male</a> and more focused on responding to <a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-history-of-policing-in-us.pdf">disorder</a> than crime.</p>
<p>As Eastern Kentucky University criminologist <a href="https://justicestudies.eku.edu/recent-scholarship/dr-gary-potter">Gary Potter</a> explains, officers were expected to control “<a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-history-of-policing-in-us.pdf">dangerous classes</a>” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. Through the early 20th century, there were <a href="https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/50819_ch_1.pdf">few standards</a> for hiring or training officers. </p>
<p>Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-long-history-of-black-officers-reforming-policing-from-within/547457/">African Americans</a> who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans. </p>
<h2>Jim Crow laws</h2>
<p>Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws">Black Codes</a>. </p>
<p>For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted <a href="http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/race-and-voting-in-the-segregated-south">black voting rights</a>, dictated how and where African Americans could <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-green-book-the-black-travelers-guide-to-jim-crow-america">travel</a> and limited where they could live.</p>
<p>The ratification of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">14th Amendment</a> in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934717702134">illegal</a> by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. But within two decades, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws">Jim Crow laws</a> aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.</p>
<p>For about 80 years, Jim Crow laws <a href="http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/southern-black-codes.html">mandated separate public spaces</a> for blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, <a href="https://sophiedaveyphoto.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/photographs-that-tell-a-story-elliot-erwitts-segregated-water-fountains/">water fountains</a> and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/85472/1/usappblog-2017-10-05-from-the-slave-codes-to-mike-brown-the-brutal.pdf">police brutality</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-heal-african-americans-traumatic-history-98298">African Americans were lynched</a>. Nor did the judicial system <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/mississippi-burning">hold the police accountable</a> for failing to intervene when black people were being <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/emmett-lynching-america/">murdered by mobs</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1131268349827137536"}"></div></p>
<h2>Reverberating today</h2>
<p>For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/reconciling-results-racial-differences-police-shootings">more likely to be killed</a> by the police than whites.</p>
<p>The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police-shootings-2018/">229 out of 992</a> of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American. </p>
<p>Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/why-black-america-fears-the-police">legacy of reinforced inequality</a> in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.</p>
<p>In addition, the police disproportionately target <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07418820200095291">black drivers</a>.</p>
<p>When a <a href="https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/publications/">Stanford University</a> research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic <a href="https://5harad.com/papers/100M-stops.pdf">racial profiling</a>, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver’s complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.</p>
<p>This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.</p>
<p>There is <a href="http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/creating-a-multicultural-law-enforcement-agency/">greater understanding within the police</a> that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are <a href="https://datausa.io/profile/soc/333050/">becoming more diverse</a>.</p>
<p>What’s more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10511253.2017.1409781">“diversity in criminal justice” courses</a>. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.</p>
<p>Law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to <a href="https://trustandjustice.org/">recognize and minimize their own biases</a> in <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/82-fair-policing-contract-produce/68a8bf346ec3c8dc560c/optimized/full.pdf#page=1">New York City</a> and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.</p>
<p>But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021934717702134">keep repeating mistakes</a> of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article first published on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816">June 4, 2019</a>. It has been updated to correct a quote. Criminologist Gary Potter wrote that 19th-century police officers were expected to control “dangerous classes,” not “a dangerous underclass.”</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Connie Hassett-Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Half a century after the federal government voided Jim Crow laws, the criminal justice system still discriminates against African Americans.Connie Hassett-Walker, Assistant Professor of Justice Studies and Sociology, Norwich UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1299632020-02-10T13:57:20Z2020-02-10T13:57:20ZLynching preachers: How black pastors resisted Jim Crow and white pastors incited racial violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313546/original/file-20200204-41476-1tkrfxm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3620%2C2406&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A funeral held in July 1945 for two victims of the Ku Klux Klan, George Dorsey and his sister, Dorothy Dorsey Malcolm, of Walton County, Georgia, held at the Mt. Perry Baptist Church Sunday. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-funeral-for-two-of-the-victims-in-the-july-25th-news-photo/514970326?adppopup=true">Bettman via Getty</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>White lynch mobs in America murdered at least 4,467 people between 1883 and 1941, hanging, burning, dismembering, garroting and blowtorching their victims. </p>
<p>Their violence was widespread but not indiscriminate: About 3,300 of the lynched were black, according to the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023119841780">most recent count</a> by sociologists <a href="https://sociology.la.psu.edu/people/czs792">Charles Seguin</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Rigby3">David Rigby</a>. The remaining dead were white, Mexican, of Mexican descent, Native American, Chinese or Japanese. </p>
<p>Such numbers, based on verifiable newspaper reports, represent a minimum. The full human toll of racial lynching may remain ever beyond reach.</p>
<p>Religion was no barrier for these white murderers, as I’ve discovered in my <a href="https://thewitnessbcc.com/on-the-assault-of-james-cone-black-liberation-theology/">research</a> on Christianity and lynch mobs in the Reconstruction-era South. White preachers incited racial violence, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3856205/">joined the Ku Klux Klan</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lynching-Beyond-Dixie-American-Violence/dp/0252078950">lynched black people</a>. </p>
<p>Sometimes, the victim was a pastor. </p>
<h2>Buttressing white supremacy</h2>
<p>When considering American racial terror, the first question to answer is not how a lynch mob could kill a man of the cloth but why white lynch mobs killed at all. </p>
<p>The typical answer from Southern apologists was <a href="https://www.unz.com/print/Forum-1893oct-00167/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=cab61c7ba91a12d8c33b54ec2f574e7d6f6d6d3b-1580782592-0-AW7mBphh9C90hiWp9iXtbrJd2X4vYmDZ3NBpAUJGadAyuvhKERXLIaRrUgD72UCVy4RMEb8FbCUkvRELIFAi3QVpOU4pOgUm6qePhlqqATqAhMukQcKoeCPdDhBY03Qib0YIc9h5PogqRuh0ROtQ-6_cUgQnAA1AakxbYunotcDRUqB9KAJ_-_ANkxEELzy2irMoW3znVMUEssmuQQx8z5Fsc58tOJAHp9fz_dOiHwQa6uEAIw9AzwmsaZJCiomSTd54iZgwivAkNtLjSTLBDUBY8BQIuSrGmxIVupNDAs0u">that only black men who raped white women</a> were targeted. In this view, lynching was “popular justice” – the response of an aggrieved community to a heinous crime.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313558/original/file-20200204-41554-18tg6e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A white lynch mob in Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-determined-men-of-a-shelbyville-tennessee-mob-were-news-photo/515589032?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Journalists like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-ida-b-wells.html">Ida B. Wells</a> and early sociologists like <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/work-monroe-nathan-1866-1945/">Monroe Work</a> saw through that smokescreen, finding that only about <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271621304900110">20% to 25%</a> of lynching victims were alleged rapists. About 3% were <a href="https://theconversation.com/lynching-memorial-shows-women-were-victims-too-95029">women</a>. Some were children. </p>
<p>Black people were <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14977/14977-h/14977-h.htm">lynched for murder or assault</a>, or on suspicion that they committed those crimes. They could also be lynched for looking at a white woman or for bumping the shoulder of a white woman. Some were killed for being near or <a href="http://www.waltontribune.com/article_71c8489e-7152-11e7-9190-4f7f8e038947.html">related to someone</a> accused of the aforementioned offenses.</p>
<p>Identifying the dead is supremely difficult work. As sociologists <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/121/4/1310/2581695">Amy Kate Bailey and Stewart Tolnay</a> argue persuasively in their 2015 book “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469620879/lynched/">Lynched</a>,” very little is known about lynching victims beyond their gender and race. </p>
<p>But by cross-referencing news reports with census data, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469620879/lynched/">scholars</a> and <a href="https://eji.org">civil rights organizations</a> are uncovering more details.</p>
<p>One might expect that mobs seeking to destabilize the black community would focus on the successful and the influential – people like <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-black-church-in-the-african-american-experience">preachers</a> or prominent business owners. </p>
<p>Instead, lynching disproportionately targeted lower-status black people – individuals society would not protect, like the agricultural worker <a href="https://digital.wwnorton.com/america11">Sam Hose</a> of Georgia and men like <a href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore/texas/henry-smith">Henry Smith</a>, a Texas handyman accused of raping and killing a three-year-old girl. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313550/original/file-20200204-41503-1vyp3ky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The National Memorial For Peace And Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, commemorates the victims of lynching.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/markers-display-the-names-and-locations-of-individuals-news-photo/951575614?adppopup=true">Bob Miller/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rope and the pyre snuffed out primarily the socially marginal: the unemployed, the unmarried, the precarious – often not the prominent – who expressed any discontentment with racial caste.</p>
<p>That’s because lynching was a <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814793992/">form of social control</a>. By killing workers with few connections who could be economically replaced – and doing so in <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807871973/lynching-and-spectacle/">brutal, public ways that struck terror</a> into black communities – lynching kept white supremacy on track.</p>
<h2>Fight from the front lines</h2>
<p>So black ministers weren’t often lynching victims, but they could be targeted if they got in the way. </p>
<p>I.T. Burgess, a preacher in Putnam County, Florida, was hanged in 1894 after being accused of planning to instigate a revolt, according to a May 30, 1894, story in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. Later that year, in December, the Constitution also reported, Lucius Turner, a preacher near West Point, Georgia, was shot by two brothers for apparently writing an insulting note to their sister. </p>
<p>Ida B. Wells wrote in her 1895 editorial “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309644/the-light-of-truth-by-ida-b-wells/">A Red Record</a>” about Reverend King, a minister in Paris, Texas, who was beaten with a Winchester Rifle and placed on a train out of town. His offense, he said, was being the only person in Lamar County to speak against the horrific 1893 lynching of the handyman Henry Smith. </p>
<p>In each of these cases, the victim’s profession was ancillary to their lynching. But preaching was not incidental to black pastors’ resistance to lynching. </p>
<p>My dissertation research shows black pastors across the U.S. spoke out against racial violence during its worst period, despite the clear danger that it put them in. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313554/original/file-20200204-41490-1h8qknc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells, the great documentarian of the lynching era, in 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-ida-b-wells-1920-news-photo/529345339?adppopup=true">Chicago History Museum/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many, like the Washington, D.C., Presbyterian pastor Francis Grimke, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_works_of_Francis_J_Grimke_%CC%80.html?id=8--0AAAAMAAJ">preached to their congregations</a> about racial violence. Grimke argued for comprehensive anti-racist education as a way to undermine the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uncovering-the-roots-of-racist-ideas-in-america-71467">narratives</a> that led to lynching.</p>
<p>Other pastors wrote furiously about anti-black violence. </p>
<p>Charles Price Jones, the founder of the Church of God (Holiness) in Mississippi, for example, wrote <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100835320">poetry affirming the African heritage of black Americans</a>. Sutton Griggs, a black Baptist pastor from Texas, wrote <a href="https://wvupressonline.com/node/701">novels</a> that were, in reality, thinly veiled political treatises. Pastors wrote articles against lynching in their own <a href="https://www.thechristianrecorder.com/">denominational newspapers</a>.</p>
<h2>By any means necessary</h2>
<p>Some white pastors <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/02/jim-crow-souths-lynching-of-blacks-and-christianity-the-terror-inflicted-by-whites-was-considered-a-religious-ritual.html">decried racial terror</a>, too. But others used the pulpit to <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/september/legacy-lynching-america-christians-repentance.html">instigate violence</a>. </p>
<p>On June 21, 1903, the white pastor of Olivet Presbyterian church in Delaware used his religious leadership to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lynching-Beyond-Dixie-American-Violence/dp/0252078950">incite a lynching</a>. </p>
<p>Preaching to a crowd of 3,000 gathered in downtown Wilmington, Reverend Robert A. Elwood urged the jury in the trial of George White – a black farm laborer accused of raping and killing a 17-year-old white girl, Helen Bishop – to pronounce White guilty speedily. </p>
<p>Otherwise, Elwood continued, according to a June 23, 1903 New York Times article, White should be lynched. He cited the Biblical text <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+5%3A13&version=NIV">1 Corinthians 5:13</a>, which orders Christians to “expel the wicked person from among you.” </p>
<p>“The responsibility for lynching would be yours for delaying the execution of the law,” Elwood thundered, exhorting the jury.</p>
<p>George White was dragged out of jail the next day, bound and burned alive in front of 2,000 people. </p>
<p>The following Sunday, a black pastor named Montrose W. Thornton discussed the week’s barbarities with his own congregation in Wilmington. He urged self-defense.</p>
<p>“There is but one part left for the persecuted negro when charged with crime and when innocent. Be a law unto yourself,” he told his parishioners. “Die in your tracks, perhaps drinking the blood of your pursuer.” </p>
<p>Newspapers <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7Vc_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=die+in+your+tracksperhaps+drinking+the+blood+of+your+pursuers&source=bl&ots=5Vffra-DdL&sig=ACfU3U2gGE1DXlCVALHFqvr1AEEJy-Dbrw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjf3Pya6bHnAhUDYawKHTENDg8Q6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">around the country</a> denounced both sermons. An editorial in the Washington Star said both pastors had “contributed to the worst passions of the mob.”</p>
<p>By inciting lynching and advocating for self defense, the editors judged, Elwood and Thornton had “brought the pulpit into disrepute.” </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Malcolm Brian Foley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Religion was no barrier for Southern lynch mobs intent on terror. White pastors joined the KKK, incited racial violence and took part in lynchings. Sometimes, the victim was a preacher.Malcolm Brian Foley, PhD Candidate in Religion - Historical Studies, Baylor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.