tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/civil-rights-11321/articlesCivil rights – The Conversation2024-02-05T13:31:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2212992024-02-05T13:31:04Z2024-02-05T13:31:04ZBlack communities are using mapping to document and restore a sense of place<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573098/original/file-20240202-25-m9rzc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C11%2C1856%2C1272&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">These highways displaced many Black communities. Some Black activists are using mapping to do the opposite: highlight hidden parts of history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2011593044/">Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When historian <a href="https://www.nps.gov/cawo/learn/carter-g-woodson-biography.htm">Carter Woodson</a> created “Negro History Week” in 1926, which became “<a href="https://guides.loc.gov/black-history-month-legal-resources/history-and-overview">Black History Month” in 1976</a>, he sought not to just celebrate prominent Black historical figures but to transform how white America saw and valued all African Americans. </p>
<p>However, many issues in the history of Black Americans can get lost in a focus on well-known historical figures or other important events.</p>
<p>Our research looks at how African American communities struggling for freedom have long used maps to protest and survive racism while affirming the value of Black life.</p>
<p>We have been working on the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00087041.2023.2256131">Living Black Atlas</a>,” an educational initiative that highlights the neglected history of Black mapmaking in America. It shows the <a href="https://mappingblackca.com/">creative ways</a> in which Black people have historically used mapping to document their stories. Today, communities are using “restorative mapping” as a way to tell stories of Black Americans.</p>
<h2>Maps as a visual storytelling technique</h2>
<p>While most people think of maps as a useful tool to get from point A to point B, or use maps to look up places or plan trips, the reality is all maps tell stories. Traditionally, most <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520292833/chocolate-cities">maps did not accurately</a> reflect the stories of Black people and places: Interstate highway maps, for example, do not reflect the realities that in most U.S. cities the building of major roads <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-how-racism-shaped-interstate-highways">was accompanied by the displacement</a> of thousands of Black people from cities. </p>
<p>Like many marginalized groups, Black people have used maps as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/cart-2020-0011">visual story-telling technique</a> for “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44000276">talking back</a>” against their oppression. They have also used maps for enlivening and giving dignity to Black experiences and histories. </p>
<p>An example of this is the NAACP’s campaign to lobby for <a href="https://edsitement.neh.gov/curricula/naacps-anti-lynching-campaigns-quest-social-justice-interwar-years">anti-lynching federal legislation</a> in the early 20th century. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-black-cartographers-put-racism-on-the-map-of-america-155081">NAACP mapped</a> the <a href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore">location and frequency</a> of lynching to show how widespread racial terror was to the American public. </p>
<p>Another example is the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s efforts to document racism in the American South in the 1960s. The <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/sncc-national-office/research/">SNCC research department’s</a> maps and research on racism played a pivotal role in planning civil rights protests. SNCC produced conventional-looking county-level maps of income and education inequalities, which were issued to activists in the field. The organization also developed creative “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1631747">network maps</a>,” which exposed <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718521000300">how power structures and institutions</a> supported racial discrimination in economic and political ways. These maps and reports could then identify urgent areas of protest. </p>
<p>More recently, artist-activist Tonika Lewis Johnson created the “<a href="https://www.foldedmapproject.com/interactive-maps">Folded Map Project</a>,” in which she brought together corresponding addresses on racially separated sides of the same street, to show how racism remade the city of Chicago. She photographed the “map twins” and interviewed individuals living at paired addresses to show the disparities. The project brought residents from north and south sides of Chicago to meet and talk to each other.</p>
<h2>Maps for restorative justice</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/carto.45.1.32">Restorative mapping</a> is an important part of the Living Black Atlas: It helps bring visibility to <a href="https://www.southerncultures.org/article/rooted/">Black experiences</a> that have been marginalized or forgotten. </p>
<p>An important example of restorative mapping work comes from the <a href="https://www.honeypotperformance.org">Honey Pot Performance, a collective</a> of Black feminists who helped create the <a href="https://www.honeypotperformance.org/about-the-cbscm">Chicago Black Social Culture Map, or the CBSCM</a>. This digital map traces Black Chicagoans’ experiences from <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/migrations/great-migration">the Great Migration</a> to the rise of electronic <a href="https://www.thedjrevolution.com/the-history-of-electronic-dance-music/#:%7E:text=The%20early%20forms%20of%20house%20music%20began%20in%20the%20early,with%20drum%20machines%20and%20synthesizers">dance music in the city</a>. The map includes historical records and music posters as well as descriptions of important people and venues for that music. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five Black young men, dressed in suits, sit atop a white car with an Illinois number plate." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573191/original/file-20240203-29-y8l8ww.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">Millions of African Americans migrated from the Deep South to the industrial North between 1942 and 1970. In this photo, Black youngsters are dressed for Easter on the South Side of Chicago, April 13, 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TheGreatMigration/60132bf19f434519b6071ff3bb526a65/photo?Query=black%20history%20month%20chicago%20history%20music&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=817&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=14&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Library of Congress/FSA/Russell Lee</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While engaging Black Americans in the effort, the CBSCM map tells the story of Chicago through a series of artistic movements that highlight African Americans’ <a href="https://www.chicago.gov/dam/city/depts/zlup/Historic_Preservation/Publications/Chicago_Black_Renaissance_Literary_Movement_Report.pdf">connection with the city</a>.</p>
<p>After years of gentrification and urban renewal programs that displaced Black people <a href="https://www.beyondthewhitecity.org/urban-renewal-and-bronzeville">from the city</a>, this project is helping remember those neighborhoods digitally. It is also inviting a broader discussion about the history of Black Chicago. </p>
<h2>Restoring a sense of place</h2>
<p>An important idea behind restorative mapping is the act of returning something to a former owner or condition. This connects with the broader <a href="https://bjatta.bja.ojp.gov/media/blog/what-restorative-justice-and-how-does-it-impact-individuals-involved-crime">restorative justice</a> movement that seeks to address historic wrongs by documenting past and present injustices through perspectives that are often ignored or forgotten.</p>
<p>The CBSCM map is not a conventional paper map. While it includes many things you would find in such a map, such as road networks and political boundaries, the map also includes links to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12679">fiction writing</a> and <a href="https://www.chicago.gov/dam/city/depts/zlup/Historic_Preservation/Publications/Lorraine_Hansberry_House_Landmark_Report.pdf">the Chicago Renaissance</a>, <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520292833/chocolate-cities">art and music</a>, as well as expressions of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41279638">food</a>, family life, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2020.1784113">education</a> and politics that document a hidden history of Black life in the city. The map <a href="https://cbscmap.omeka.net/geolocation/map/browse">provides links to specific </a> historic documents, socially meaningful sites, and to the lives of people that tell the story of Black Chicago. </p>
<p>Thus, the map helps highlight how this geography is still present in Chicago in archives and people’s memories. Through this digital representation of Black Chicagoans’ deep cultural roots in the city, the mapping aims to restore a sense of place. Such work embodies what Black History Month is about.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221299/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>Black activists have long used maps to help illustrate their communities’ history and to document historical injustices.Joshua F.J. Inwood, Professor of Geography and Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn StateDerek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193572024-01-22T21:21:50Z2024-01-22T21:21:50ZThree trailblazing women in media who’ve been forgotten – until now<p>Men have had their empires. Everyone else has had the hushed, forgotten, erased or overlooked stories of the scientists, witches, explorers, artists, writers and scholars who didn’t fit the mould. </p>
<p>In the field of media studies, there are researchers, academics, journalists and public intellectuals who, often due to their gender, race or politics, have been ignored and marginalised in favour of recognising the “founding fathers” of the field.</p>
<p>Finally, these ghosts are making their way back into academic books, articles, teaching materials and popular culture. Our <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781913380748/the-ghost-reader/#:%7E:text=The%20Ghost%20Reader%3A%20Recovering%20Women's,cultural%20studies%2C%20and%20communication%20studies.">new book</a>, co-edited with Carol Stabile, reclaims the original ideas, essays and scholarship of 19 women and provides an introduction by experts in the field, along with samples of their work. From that 19, here are three we think are particularly worth knowing about. </p>
<h2>Film theory</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.27.1.135">Mae D. Huettig</a> from Los Angeles was the first economist to explain how the US film industry functioned as a vertically integrated factory that was less about dreams and glamour and more about vulgar capitalism. <a href="https://www.pennpress.org/9781512812381/economic-control-of-the-motion-picture-industry/">Her book</a>, Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry: A Study in Industrial Organization (1944), revealed how Hollywood movie studios produced films cheaply and used their own network of cinemas to screen them. </p>
<p>Huettig argued that Hollywood studios, just like automobile or coal factories, used the same economic model as any industry – dominate the competition and corner the market. Her work ultimately became a part of the 1948 federal case, the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/334/131/">Paramount Decree</a>. This landmark case addressed the practice of film studios owning cinemas and controlling their film distribution. The decree ended the vertically integrated Hollywood studio system. Production studios could no longer own the cinemas that screened their films, and cinemas were no longer beholden to one studio only. </p>
<p>After a few semesters teaching at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and working at a think tank, Huettig became an activist. Following the <a href="https://crdl.usg.edu/events/watts_riots">1965 Watts rebellion</a>, a civil rights uprising in Los Angeles, she trained minority youths on how to use film to monitor police misconduct. She also campaigned against school racial segregation, police abuse and corruption.</p>
<h2>The importance of images</h2>
<p><a href="https://archives.nypl.org/mss/6197">Romana Javitz</a> from New York was the first librarian to develop an organised, browsable collection of pictures that anyone with a library card could check out from the <a href="https://www.nypl.org">New York Public Library</a> (NYPL). </p>
<p>As the NYPL superintendent of the picture collection between 1928 and 1968, Javitz and her staff collected as many items as they could by cutting out images from old books and magazines. These included photos, paintings, ads, pop art and images of everyday people, places and things. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A statue of a lion outside the grand entrance to the New York Public Library" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569264/original/file-20240115-29-mjbj2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569264/original/file-20240115-29-mjbj2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569264/original/file-20240115-29-mjbj2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569264/original/file-20240115-29-mjbj2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569264/original/file-20240115-29-mjbj2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569264/original/file-20240115-29-mjbj2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569264/original/file-20240115-29-mjbj2m.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">Romana Javitz worked at the New York Public Library between 1928 and 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-city-public-library-entrance-345087263">Ryan DeBerardinis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Essentially, Javitz foresaw the image-based browsing that search engines provide today. She also anticipated their commercial control but believed that images are an important public resource. In speeches, pamphlets and grant applications, Javitz acted by <a href="https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/wallach-division/picture-collection/romana-javitz">urging</a> libraries to steward image collections. </p>
<h2>The media and civil rights</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.aaihs.org/surveillance-state-power-and-the-activism-of-shirley-graham-du-bois/">Shirley Graham DuBois</a> from Indiana was an activist, award-winning novelist, editor, and the first black female dramatist. In 1931, she produced the first black <a href="https://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/blog/finding-tom-tom">opera</a>, Tom-Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro. Graham was committed to using literacy and popular media as tools to free people from race and sex discrimination, whether Black, white, or Native American. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="An old sepia photo of a woman facing the right hand side of the image and looking upwards." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569266/original/file-20240115-23-mz1qdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569266/original/file-20240115-23-mz1qdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569266/original/file-20240115-23-mz1qdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569266/original/file-20240115-23-mz1qdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569266/original/file-20240115-23-mz1qdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569266/original/file-20240115-23-mz1qdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569266/original/file-20240115-23-mz1qdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shirley Graham DuBois played an instrumental role in civil rights activism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/079_vanv.html">Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>During the second world war, Graham worked on military bases giving courses on journalism and photography for black soldiers, helping them to produce their own literary magazines. She was founded the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/freedomways-1961-1985/">journal</a>, Freedomways: A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement in 1961. It provided a rare forum for discussing discrimination from the early years of the civil rights movement forward. </p>
<p>In 1961, Graham’s background in theatre and education caught the attention of the Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah. He asked her to develop the nation’s first public noncommercial, indigenous television network to promote literacy countrywide. Graham and Nkrumah were forced to leave Ghana after a military coup in 1966, before the network was completed.</p>
<h2>Digging deeper</h2>
<p>The contributions of these women, and the 16 others featured in our book, range broadly from film economics, advertising and library science, to progressive anti-racist journalism, theatre, audience researchers, and more. They show us that there has always been the possibility for progressive, inclusive, intersectional, anti-capitalist, anti-racist and gender-equal thought and action.</p>
<p>Our goal is not to create a “new” canon of media studies. Instead, the goal is for academics and lecturers to use our book in their classes to track their own tradition taking different, more inclusive, and radical routes that could provide fresh insight into the world.</p>
<p>In fact, alongside media and communication scholars such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612025.2021.1944345#:%7E:text=This%20silenced%20avenue%20of%20enquiry,and%20editing%20of%20broadcast%20sound.">Carolyn Birdsall and Elinor Carmi</a>, the book questions the need for a canon altogether.</p>
<p>Other researchers and students need to get their hands dirty, too. They need to dig in archives, read original works and examine dismissed ideas that go against the grain. It is likely that researchers in any field will find important women (and their ideas) hidden as typists, transcribers, or editorial, lab, field, or research assistants. Sometimes they may be left out altogether; all that may be left is their name on a grant application. Finding them takes time and effort. But the results are worth it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219357/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Elena Hristova is Lecture in Film and Media at Bangor University, Wales. As part of the research for this book she received funding from the Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, and the Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aimee-Marie Dorsten, Ph.D. works for Point Park University and is a member of the Union for Democratic Communication. </span></em></p>Mae D Huettig, Romana Javitz and Shirley Graham DuBois were instrumental in their respective media fields but very few of us will be aware of their individual contributions.Elena D. Hristova, Lecturer in Film and Media, Bangor UniversityAimee-Marie Dorsten, Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, Point Park UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191622024-01-22T13:31:34Z2024-01-22T13:31:34ZA surprising history of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, once a leader in expanding civil rights and now a leader in limiting government power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569907/original/file-20240117-21-7w73t0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C12%2C4235%2C2817&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AbortionRestrictionsTexas/8ae444ca5e2540708d5a395dd9ee0264/photo?Query=U.S.%20Court%20of%20Appeals%20for%20the%205th%20Circuit&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=979&digitizationType=Digitized&currentItemNo=1&vs=true&vs=true">AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has earned a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/26/5th-circuit-supreme-court-reversals-decisions/">reputation for strikingly conservative rulings</a>. One of its recent decisions could put the <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-50826-CV0.pdf">Consumer Financial Protection Bureau out of business</a>, another could <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/secs-in-house-enforcement-powers-risk-us-supreme-court-case-2023-11-28/">hamstring the ability of federal agencies</a> to enforce regulations, and a third could <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca5.213145/gov.uscourts.ca5.213145.183.2_1.pdf">effectively outlaw medication abortions</a>. </p>
<p>The 5th Circuit today looks very different than it did half a century ago, when it was on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/16/us/john-minor-wisdom-appeals-court-judge-who-helped-to-end-segregation-dies.html">front lines of enforcing civil rights</a>. The 5th Circuit currently handles cases in three states: Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/about-the-court/circuit-history/brief-history">Until 1982, it also covered Alabama, Georgia and Florida</a> – the entire Deep South during the civil rights era.</p>
<p>Then as now, the 5th Circuit has had a complicated relationship with a Supreme Court that was ideologically sympathetic with the lower court. At times, the 5th Circuit was willing to go further than the Supreme Court on some issues. But the high court hesitated to rebuke the 5th Circuit.</p>
<p>Understanding the 5th Circuit’s work therefore can provide important insights into broader legal trends in the U.S.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Orange boxes of a drug called Mifepristone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569923/original/file-20240117-29-868d4f.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">If a 5th Circuit decision on the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone is upheld by the Supreme Court, it could severely curtail the ability to get an abortion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photo-illustration-packages-of-mifepristone-tablets-news-photo/1481957802?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Undercutting federal agency power</h2>
<p>The Supreme Court can handle only a limited number of cases each year, so it tries to establish general principles that lower courts can apply. </p>
<p>Federal appellate courts oversee the work of federal district courts that apply those general principles. Because the devil is in the details, an appellate court can interpret those principles broadly or narrowly, and in so doing can support or undermine Supreme Court rulings on a day-to-day basis.</p>
<p>Several recent 5th Circuit decisions threaten to undercut the power of federal agencies. </p>
<p>One notable example is the <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-10362-CV1.pdf">case of the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone</a>. The 5th Circuit in August 2023 rejected the Food and Drug Administration’s relaxation of the conditions under which that drug can be used. That decision, if upheld by the Supreme Court, could severely curtail the ability of a woman to get an abortion. It could also portend widespread challenges to FDA decisions about the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit suggested an alternative basis for restricting access to mifepristone. It expressed some sympathy for the plaintiffs’ broad reading of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/comstock-act-1978-abortion-pill.html">1873 Comstock Act</a>, an anti-vice law, as forbidding the shipment of any “<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-obscure-1800s-law-is-shaping-up-to-be-the-center-of-the-next-abortion-battle-legal-scholars-explain-whats-behind-the-victorian-era-comstock-act-204728">drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion</a>.” But that interpretation might effectively outlaw all abortions, because not only pills but virtually everything used in surgical abortions gets shipped across state lines. </p>
<p>Other 5th Circuit rulings that went against the federal government are also pending before the Supreme Court this term. </p>
<p>Among those, one notable case could eviscerate the ability of agencies to enforce regulatory laws through traditional in-house hearings. The 5th Circuit ruled that <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-61007-CV0.pdf">the Securities and Exchange Commission must use jury trials in federal court</a> instead of those in-house hearings, that the statute giving the SEC discretion about using agency hearings was unconstitutional, and that the administrative law judges who preside at agency hearings were unlawfully appointed. That ruling, if it stands, could hamstring numerous agencies that enforce federal regulations via in-house hearings.</p>
<p>In a second case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, the 5th Circuit ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10891">funding mechanism was unconstitutional</a>, because this agency gets its money from the Federal Reserve rather than from Congress.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/supreme-court-sec-tribunals.html?searchResultPosition=1">That ruling could invalidate</a> not only the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but also the Federal Reserve itself and the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-448/266373/20230508190055738_22-448tsUnitedStates.pdf">entire Social Security program, including Medicare</a>, which also do not receive their funding from Congress.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit has also expansively interpreted gun rights in cases that call many firearms regulations into question, rejecting a law that bars persons <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/21/21-11001-CR2.pdf">subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms</a> and <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-10718-CV0.pdf">invalidating federal regulation of ghost guns</a>. </p>
<p>These rulings are part of a striking pattern of restricting federal authority that makes the 5th Circuit distinctive among federal appeals courts across the nation. </p>
<p>But this isn’t the first time the 5th Circuit has stood out.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of well-dressed people on the sidewalk outside an office building, with picketers in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569846/original/file-20240117-17-509uce.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&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 Meredith, center, and attorney Constance Motley, right, on Sept. 28, 1962, outside the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which that day ordered Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett to facilitate Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi or face arrest and fine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/james-meredith-and-his-attorney-constance-motley-were-news-photo/515030524?adppopup=true">Bettman/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Furthering desegregation</h2>
<p>In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 ruling in <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/brown-v-board-of-education">Brown v. Board of Education</a>, which barred racial segregation in public schools, the old 5th Circuit compiled a courageous record in promoting civil rights.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit judges wrote or upheld rulings that required the desegregation of <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2239&context=jour_mlr">public schools, universities and other public facilities</a> throughout the Deep South. </p>
<p>Those judges invalidated the segregation ordinance that was a key target of the 1955-56 <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/montgomery-bus-boycott.htm">Montgomery bus boycott</a>, which propelled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence and helped to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. The 5th Circuit even held the governor and lieutenant governor of Mississippi in <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/346/99/445527/">contempt of court for defying desegregation orders</a> in 1962.</p>
<p>The current 5th Circuit, in short, looks very different from its predecessor. That is no small irony, as the 5th Circuit sits in a courthouse named for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/16/us/john-minor-wisdom-appeals-court-judge-who-helped-to-end-segregation-dies.html">John Minor Wisdom</a>, one of the heroic judges of the civil rights era.</p>
<h2>Limiting federal power</h2>
<p>But it’s not only the 5th Circuit that has changed. So has the Supreme Court, which is now dominated by conservative justices.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court that decided Brown v. Board of Education wanted public schools desegregated, but <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/349us294">the justices left implementation to federal district judges</a>, whose knowledge of local circumstances could make the process go more smoothly. That approach too often encouraged foot-dragging and massive resistance. Still, the 5th Circuit’s persistence furthered the Supreme Court’s ultimate goal of breaking down segregation.</p>
<p>Today’s Supreme Court has very different priorities. Now, the justices are more interested in limiting federal power than in promoting civil rights. </p>
<p>The current court has <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">undermined the Voting Rights Act</a>, largely <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf">eliminated affirmative action</a> and <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">repudiated abortion rights</a>. </p>
<p>Through its <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12077">“major questions” doctrine</a>, which requires clear congressional authorization for agencies to address problems that have a significant economic impact, the court has made it harder for agencies to undertake new initiatives.</p>
<p>The 5th Circuit these days is still promoting larger Supreme Court goals. Sometimes the 5th Circuit has gotten ahead of the justices, which might explain why the Supreme Court has reversed or limited some of the appellate court’s decisions and might do so again this year.</p>
<p>Then, as now, the 5th Circuit has had a symbiotic relationship with the Supreme Court. This term’s rulings will further clarify the workings of that relationship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Entin 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>A court long known for its landmark decisions expanding civil rights is now known for highly conservative rulings reining in government power.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/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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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">
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<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/2112552023-11-21T19:45:05Z2023-11-21T19:45:05ZHow universities relate with students changed in the past century, but a duty of care remains<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-universities-relate-with-students-changed-in-the-past-century-but-a-duty-of-care-remains" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Universities have existed for over 1,000 years, and their institutional mission <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Governance-of-Higher-Education-Global-Perspectives-Theories-and-Practices/Austin-Jones/p/book/9780415739757">of teaching the next leaders and members of society has remained remarkably constant</a>. </p>
<p>One significant change, though, has been the student population and their relationship to the university. </p>
<p>Especially since <a href="https://doi.org/10.47678/cjhe.v14i2.182933">the end of the Second World War</a> and in the last four decades, <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/serving-diverse-students-in-canadian-higher-education-products-9780773547513.php">university populations in Canada have become increasingly diverse</a>. </p>
<p>Mature adult learners, students who are parents, students requiring accommodations, and first generation students have all been recognized as non-traditional university students — as have <a href="https://www.univcan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/trends-vol1-enrolment-june-2011.pdf">women, who only outpaced men in university enrolment in 1987</a> in Canada.</p>
<p>The proportion <a href="https://higheredstrategy.com/visible-minority-students-in-canadian-post-secondary-education">of racialized students</a> and international students has grown significantly. </p>
<p>In the past 20 years in particular, university policy has examined how welcoming groups marginalized or historically excluded from <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/serving-diverse-students-in-canadian-higher-education-products-9780773547513.php">universities, such as Indigenous, Black and gender-diverse students</a>, relates to different aspects of university life. Since the 1980s, <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/development-of-postsecondary-education-systems-in-canada--the-products-9780773543089.php">accessibility has been a major policy priority</a> for universities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/recognizing-history-of-black-nurses-a-first-step-to-addressing-racism-and-discrimination-in-nursing-125538">Recognizing history of Black nurses a first step to addressing racism and discrimination in nursing</a>
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<p>How universities <a href="https://higheredstrategy.com/canadas-internationalization-strategy">interact with and serve international students</a> in higher education is coming under increasing scrutiny. </p>
<p>Importantly, these changes have taken place within the context of shifting social values and advocacy for student rights. These transformations have had significant effects on how universities understand a duty of care for students, and what this implies for student services.</p>
<h2>Moral regulation</h2>
<p>Historically, universities in Canada served the elite and privileged of society, as well as, at some universities, students who were going to <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/university-governance-in-canada-products-9780228011453.php">be priests and members of other religious orders</a>. </p>
<p>Universities (and these standards) were <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/long-eclipse--a-products-9780773528055.php">influenced by a moral vision heavily shaped by Christian religion</a>, and also by ideals of participation <a href="https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/5801/3235">in a colonial enterprise</a>.</p>
<p>Students were expected to be upstanding citizens, and universities imposed strict behavioural and moral regulation on men to ensure they developed a strong moral character. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.universityaffairs.ca/feature-50-little-known-facts-canadian-universities-text/#">first English-language university in Canada</a>, the Provincial Academy of Arts and Sciences (later <a href="https://www.unb.ca/aboutunb/history/index.html">changed to University of New Brunswick</a>) <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315816401">was established in 1785</a>. Université Laval was established in 1852, becoming the <a href="https://www.ulaval.ca/en/about-us/origin-and-history#">first North American French-language university</a>, growing out of the Séminaire de Québec.</p>
<p>Increased governmental involvement and several legislative acts promoted expansion of post-secondary institutions as Canada grew as a colony and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/British-North-America-Act">British North America Act was passed in 1867</a>. </p>
<h2>Early 20th century</h2>
<p>As more <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/university-women-products-9780228008644.php">women started attending university</a>, and particularly <a href="https://doi.org/10.32316/hse-rhe.v34i2.5099">after the First World War</a>, senior leaders on campus recognized the need for differentiated residences and services. </p>
<p>Behavioural standards could include everything from appropriate dress to curfews and even to <a href="https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item?id=NQ69374&op=pdf&app=Library&oclc_number=56108577">approval of off-campus residences for women</a>.</p>
<p>Many campuses appointed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773575721">a dean of men and a dean of women whose roles focused on</a> upholding strict moral standards. With regards to student behaviour, violations of these standards could be treated harshly with suspensions and expulsions, often with the student having no recourse. </p>
<p>Philip Lee, an expert in education and law, chronicles how, in the United States, courts supported these stances and referred to universities <a href="https://sites.psu.edu/higheredinreview/2011/02/14/the-curious-life-of-in-loco-parentis-at-american-universities">acting in the place of a father administering discipline in his home or acting <em>in loco parentis</em></a> (in the place of a parent).</p>
<p>Writing of Canadian university history, legal scholar Clive B. Lewis <a href="https://rdo-olr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/olr_15.2_lewis.pdf">notes a high degree of paternalism</a> in how Canadian universities related with students.</p>
<p>The phrase <em>in loco parentis</em> is still sometimes used to argue <a href="https://macleans.ca/opinion/canadas-universities-and-colleges-are-failing-science/">for universities’ duty of care</a> for students.</p>
<h2>Response to veterans, rise in services</h2>
<p>Over the first four decades of the 20th century, the campus view of students needing “parental oversight” remained unchanged. The end of the Second World War saw immense shifts. With the <a href="https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/classroom/fact-sheets/civvy">Veterans’ Rehabilitation Act (1945)</a>, war veterans were provided with tuition, and family and living allowance. </p>
<p>Soon nearly a quarter of all university <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773575721">students were war veterans</a>. The vets were usually older and had families; they were more focused on long-term learning and career goals and some had suffered immense trauma during the war. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-have-thrived-despite-past-disruptions-and-could-grow-even-stronger-after-covid-19-150346">Universities have thrived despite past disruptions and could grow even stronger after COVID-19</a>
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<p>University Advisory Service (UAS) was established to represent counsellors who gave <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773575721">veterans personal and financial advice as well as placement advice</a>. Additionally, as these students were parents themselves and lived in their own homes, they did not require the oversight and monitoring that prior university students had needed. This successful implementation led to demand for these kinds of services for all students in the late 1940s and through the 1950s. </p>
<p>Services were increasingly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773575721">professionalized and organized within the umbrella of student services</a>. </p>
<p>A dramatic change was the shift from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0743558408326914">men’s and women’s separate residences to co-educational residences</a>.</p>
<h2>Agitation for civil, student rights</h2>
<p>The real end of universities acting in a similar capacities as parents began as society started to embrace different styles of music, dress and social norms, causing tension between these increasing freedoms and the stifling campus regulations. </p>
<p>At the same time, students were increasingly vocal about the strict codes of conduct imposed on them as students. Within the larger community, there was increasing agitation for <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/student-rights">the recognition of students’ rights</a>. </p>
<p>Multiple lawsuits in the United States were launched by college students, protesting against the university’s use of <em>in loco parentis</em> as a means of enforcing moral standards, and they demanded that their civil rights were restored.</p>
<h2>Universities as bystanders?</h2>
<p>As Lee details, at first, the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and a <a href="https://sites.psu.edu/higheredinreview/2011/02/14/the-curious-life-of-in-loco-parentis-at-american-universities">“bystander era” was ushered in where universities were believed to have no involvement in students’ lives</a> outside of academic matters.</p>
<p>After subsequent court cases regarding student non-academic misconduct causing harm, students successfully argued that universities had a duty of care and needed to protect student safety. </p>
<p>Universities now <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-colleges-are-keeping-a-closer-eye-on-their-students-lives">mitigate risk by addressing incidents immediately and putting proactive measures in place</a>. </p>
<p>Several writers have named this the <a href="https://sites.psu.edu/higheredinreview/2011/02/14/the-curious-life-of-in-loco-parentis-at-american-universities">“facilitator era”</a> as universities explore <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-colleges-are-keeping-a-closer-eye-on-their-students-lives">different ways they should be involved</a> in student lives.</p>
<h2>Duty of care for ‘responsible adults’</h2>
<p>As universities open access more broadly, the duty of care principle moves into a grey area. Today, universities respond to growing requests for accommodation and support for specific needs, growing financial stress and growing mental-health issues among students. </p>
<p>Campuses have to balance duty of care with treating their students as responsible young adults. Moreover, campuses must step back from a paternalistic role and treat students as <a href="https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v6i2.3318">active collaborators in addressing their own needs</a>. </p>
<p>The question remains: can campuses navigate facilitating student development, identity formation and academic success while ensuring the duty of care is upheld?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vicki Squires 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>Especially since the Second World War, an increasingly diverse university student body and advocacy for student rights have affected how universities understand a duty of care for students.Vicki Squires, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Administration, University of SaskatchewanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168102023-11-03T12:45:22Z2023-11-03T12:45:22ZBiden’s executive order puts civil rights in the middle of the AI regulation discussion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557353/original/file-20231102-17-gvkjb3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7532%2C5017&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vice President Kamala Harris held a meeting with civil rights leaders and consumer protection experts about the societal impact of AI on July 12, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vice-president-kamala-harris-looks-on-during-a-meeting-with-news-photo/1527887524">Mandel NGAN/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Oct. 4, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-white-houses-ai-bill-of-rights-outlines-five-principles-to-make-artificial-intelligence-safer-more-transparent-and-less-discriminatory-192003">released the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights</a>: A Vision for Protecting Our Civil Rights in the Algorithmic Age. The blueprint launched a conversation about how artificial intelligence innovation can proceed under multiple fair principles. These include safe and effective systems, algorithmic discrimination protections, privacy and transparency.</p>
<p>A growing body of evidence highlights the civil and consumer rights that AI and automated decision-making jeopardize. Communities that have faced the most egregious discrimination historically now face complex and highly opaque forms of discrimination under AI systems. This discrimination occurs in employment, housing, voting, lending, criminal justice, social media, ad tech targeting, surveillance and profiling. For example, there have been cases of AI systems contributing to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17040-9">discrimination against women in hiring and racial discrimination</a> in the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>In the months that followed the blueprint’s release, the arrival of generative AI systems like ChatGPT added urgency to discussions about how best to govern emerging technologies in ways that mitigate risk without stifling innovation. </p>
<p>A year after the blueprint was unveiled, the Biden administration <a href="https://theconversation.com/biden-administration-executive-order-tackles-ai-risks-but-lack-of-privacy-laws-limits-reach-216694">issued a broad executive order</a> on Oct. 30, 2023, titled Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI. While much of the order focuses on safety, it incorporates many of the principles in the blueprint. </p>
<p>The order includes several provisions that focus on civil rights and equity. For example, it requires that the federal government develop guidance for federal contractors on how to prevent AI algorithms from being used to exacerbate discrimination. It also calls for training on how best to approach the investigation and prosecution of civil rights violations related to AI and ensure AI fairness throughout the criminal justice system.</p>
<p>The vision laid out in the blueprint has been incorporated in the executive order as guidance for federal agencies. My research in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=_LSKGDQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">technology and civil rights</a> underscores the importance of civil rights and equity principles in AI regulation.</p>
<h2>Civil rights and AI</h2>
<p>Civil rights laws often take decades or even lifetimes to advance. Artificial intelligence technology and algorithmic systems are rapidly introducing <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-black-box-a-computer-scientist-explains-what-it-means-when-the-inner-workings-of-ais-are-hidden-203888">black box</a> harms such as automated decision-making that may lead to disparate impacts. These include racial bias in facial recognition systems. </p>
<p>These harms are often difficult to challenge, and current civil rights laws and regulations may not be able to address them. This raises the question of how to ensure that civil rights are not compromised as new AI technologies permeate society.</p>
<p>When combating algorithmic discrimination, what does an arc that bends toward justice look like? What does a “<a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/letter-birmingham-jail">Letter from Birmingham Jail</a>” look like when a civil rights activist is protesting not unfair physical detention but digital constraints such as disparate harms from digitized forms of profiling, targeting and surveillance?</p>
<p>The 2022 blueprint was developed under the leadership of <a href="https://www.ias.edu/sss/faculty/nelson">Alondra Nelson</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/16/president-biden-announces-ostp-leadership/">then acting director</a> of the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/">Office of Science and Technology Policy</a>, and her team. The blueprint lays out a series of fair principles that attempt to limit a constellation of harms that AI and automated systems can cause. </p>
<p>Beyond that, the blueprint links the concepts of AI fair principles and AI equity to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. By associating these fair principles with civil rights and the Bill of Rights, the dialogue can transition away from a discussion that focuses only on a series of technical commitments, such as making AI systems more transparent. Instead, the discussion can address how the absence of these principles might threaten democracy.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Alondra Nelson, former acting director, discussed the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights at a conference on the anniversary of its release.</span></figcaption>
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<p>A few months after the release of the blueprint, the U.S. Department of Civil Rights Division, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Federal Trade Commission <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/04/ftc-chair-khan-officials-doj-cfpb-eeoc-release-joint-statement-ai">jointly pledged to uphold the U.S.’s commitment</a> to the core principles of fairness, equality and justice as emerging automated systems become increasingly common in daily life. <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/s2892/text/is">Federal</a> and <a href="https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/events-insights-news/2023-state-by-state-artificial-intelligence-legislation-snapshot.html">state legislation</a> has been proposed to combat the discriminatory impact of AI and automated decision-making. </p>
<h2>Civil rights organizations take on tech</h2>
<p>Multiple civil rights organizations, including the <a href="https://civilrights.org/#">Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights</a>, have made AI-based discrimination a priority. On Sept. 7, 2023, the Leadership Conference <a href="https://civilrights.org/2023/09/07/the-leadership-conference-education-fund-announces-its-center-for-civil-rights-and-technology-a-first-of-its-kind-research-and-advocacy-hub/#">launched</a> a new <a href="https://civilrights.org/edfund/tech-center/#">Center for Civil Rights and Technology</a> and tapped Nelson, author of the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, as an adviser. </p>
<p>Before the release of the new executive order, Sen. Ed Markey, Rep. Pramila Jayapal and other members of Congress sent a letter to the White House <a href="https://jayapal.house.gov/2023/10/11/representative-jayapal-senator-markey-urge-president-biden-to-implement-ai-bill-of-rights-in-upcoming-executive-order/">urging the administration to incorporate the blueprint’s principles</a> into the anticipated executive order. They said that “the federal government’s commitment to the AI Bill of Rights would show that fundamental rights will not take a back seat in the AI era.”</p>
<p>Numerous civil rights and civil society organizations <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/17/us-congress-must-regulate-artificial-intelligence-protect-rights">sent a similar letter to the White House</a>, urging the administration to take action on the blueprint’s principles in the executive order.</p>
<p>As the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights passed its first anniversary, its long-term impact was unknown. But, true to its title, it presented a vision for protecting civil rights in the algorithmic age. That vision has now been incorporated in the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI. The order can’t be properly understood without this civil rights context.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216810/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret Hu is a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of Privacy Forum. She is also a Fellow with the Center for Democracy & Technology and a member of the Scholars Council with Data & Society. </span></em></p>If safety is the heart of the Biden administration’s executive order on AI, then civil rights is its soul.Margaret Hu, Taylor Reveley Research Professor and Professor of Law, Director, Digital Democracy Lab, William & MaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2126482023-09-14T20:52:10Z2023-09-14T20:52:10ZRecognition versus reality: Lessons from 30 years of talking about a Palestinian state<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/recognition-versus-reality-lessons-from-30-years-of-talking-about-a-palestinian-state" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>This week marked the 30th anniversary of the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/13/what-were-oslo-accords-israel-palestinians">Oslo Accords</a> aimed at bringing about Palestinian self-determination. The occasion has served as a stark reminder of the unfulfilled promises and unresolved struggles of the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-State-of-Palestine-A-critical-analysis/Leech/p/book/9780367596293">Palestinian quest for statehood</a>. </p>
<p>The simplistic question of whether Palestine has statehood or not obscures its broader struggle for recognition, dignity and human rights.</p>
<p>Academic, political and public debates, <a href="https://www.nyujilp.org/an-examination-of-palestines-statehood-status-through-the-lens-of-the-icc-pre-trial-chambers-decision-and-beyond/">often snared in legal technicalities</a>, fall short of capturing the lived realities of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and their relentless quest for sovereignty.</p>
<h2>Rethinking sovereignty</h2>
<p>Sovereignty is a complex concept with multiple dimensions. In his 1999 book <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s9d5"><em>Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy</em>,</a> American international relations scholar Stephen Krasner identified four key aspects: </p>
<ol>
<li>Domestic sovereignty, which refers to the internal authority and governance within a territory;</li>
<li>Interdependence sovereignty, focusing on control over the movement of goods, people and information across borders; </li>
<li>International legal sovereignty, pertaining to recognition by other states and international bodies;</li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/0198275285.003.0002">Westphalian sovereignty</a>, emphasizing non-interference in domestic affairs by external powers. </li>
</ol>
<p>Almost 25 years since the book’s publication, these aspects still provide a nuanced framework to understand the various facets of statehood and enable a more comprehensive exploration of the Palestinian quest for sovereignty.</p>
<p>The history of Palestinian statehood is marked by shifts in Krasner’s sovereignty categories. Understanding them can shed light on the complex dynamics and key challenges in the Palestinian statehood pursuit.</p>
<h2>Domestic sovereignty</h2>
<p>Palestine’s struggle for domestic sovereignty, or control within the Palestinian territory, can be traced back to what’s known as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/World-War-I-and-after">British Mandate period</a>, leading to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. </p>
<p>Following the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29362505">Six-Day War</a> in 1967, Israel’s West Bank and Gaza Strip occupation further complicated domestic control. </p>
<p>The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 provided a framework for Palestinian self-governance in certain areas, but left full sovereignty unresolved. Internal divisions within the Palestinian policy have further undermined domestic sovereignty.</p>
<h2>Interdependence sovereignty</h2>
<p>Israeli restrictions on movement and trade have historically limited Palestinian efforts to control transborder flows. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://unctad.org/system/files/information-document/ParisProtocol_en.pdf">Paris Protocol</a> of 1994 aimed to regulate economic relations between Israel and the Palestinian territories, but led to a lopsided dependency on Israeli goods and labour markets. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/timeline-humanitarian-impact-gaza-blockade">The blockade of Gaza since 2007</a> has further constrained interdependence sovereignty.</p>
<h2>International legal sovereignty</h2>
<p>The journey towards international legal sovereignty for Palestine has involved significant milestones, such as the Arab League’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestine-Liberation-Organization">recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization</a> as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1974. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2kx8910">Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988</a> garnered recognition from more than 70 countries. The <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2012/ga11317.doc.htm">United Nations General Assembly’s acceptance of Palestine</a> as a non-member observer state in 2012 marked further progress, yet full UN membership remains elusive.</p>
<h2>Westphalian sovereignty</h2>
<p>The principle of non-intervention in Palestinian affairs has been consistently challenged by Israeli occupation, settlement expansion and international mediation efforts. </p>
<p>The peace process often involves external influence through negotiations or initiatives led by what’s known as <a href="https://www.quartetoffice.org/">the Quartet</a>, the group comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that is supposed to work on Israeli-Palestinian peace issues. </p>
<p>Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and long inaction by the Quartet, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-726788">the group has been criticized for lacking legitimacy.</a></p>
<h2>Recent developments</h2>
<p>Under the leadership of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/37376229/Encyclopedia_entry_Salam_Fayyad_forthcoming_">former prime minister Salam Fayyad</a> and following a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/10/12/hamas-and-fatah-how-are-the-two-groups-different">schism between the two major factions in Palestinian politics</a> — Fatah and Hamas — the <a href="https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/palestinian_authority/">Palestinian Authority’s</a> international strategy has been aimed at leveraging various dimensions of sovereignty. That’s in an attempt to amplify its global presence and cement its domestic dominance. </p>
<p>Engaging with international organizations to increase interdependence sovereignty, Palestine applied for UN membership in 2011 and was accepted as a <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/countries/ps">UNESCO member</a> in October of the same year, aligning with international norms. </p>
<p>This pursuit of Westphalian sovereignty — the principle of non-intervention in Palestinian affairs — has been evident in Palestine’s success in garnering recognition from 139 UN member states asserting the right to domestic authority. </p>
<p>Efforts to consolidate domestic sovereignty were reflected in the <a href="https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/OPt_AgreementFatahHamas2011.pdf">Cairo Agreement between Fatah and Hamas</a> in May 2012, and although reconciliation attempts failed between 2011 and 2018, they nonetheless emphasized domestic cohesion. </p>
<p>The granting of non-member observer state status to Palestine by the UN General Assembly in 2012 was significant for international legal sovereignty, providing recognition in international law.</p>
<h2>Violence, setbacks</h2>
<p>The struggles and setbacks of the Palestinian quest for statehood have been worsened by recent shifts in U.S. policy, each undermining different dimensions of Palestinian sovereignty. </p>
<p>These setbacks have been intensified by the grim fact that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/29/palestinians-killed-west-bank-israel/">2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 16 years</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1660681183439593473"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/israel-un-experts-condemn-record-year-israeli-violence-occupied-west-bank">Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in 2022 than in any year since the UN began recording fatalities</a> in 2005, after the last major Palestinian uprising. </p>
<p>Under the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-israel-statement-idUSKCN11K2CI">Barack Obama administration</a> from 2009 to 2017, the U.S. failed to negotiate a two-state solution and increased military aid to Israel. American engagement had little impact on Palestinian sovereignty.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/5/14/17340798/jerusalem-embassy-israel-palestinians-us-trump">The Donald Trump administration’s pro-Israel stance</a> from 2017 to 2021, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 and the <a href="https://www.mei.edu/publications/two-years-what-state-abraham-accords">Abraham Accords</a> in 2020, eroded previous U.S. commitments to a two-state solution, undermining Palestinian claims to international legal sovereignty. </p>
<p>While reaffirming support for a two-state solution, Joe Biden’s administration has not deviated significantly from Trump’s approach, leaving Palestine’s aspirations for domestic and international legal sovereignty unmet. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the current Israeli government, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63942616">led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu</a>, has exhibited extreme hostility towards Palestinian statehood. </p>
<h2>International politics</h2>
<p>These policy failures reflect the intricate and often contradictory nature of international engagement with Palestine, leaving the prospects for statehood entangled in global politics.</p>
<p>The Palestinian quest for statehood is now little more than a mirage within a disheartening landscape of renewed <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/03/20/bezalel-smotrich-jordan-greater-israel-map-palestinians">Israeli resolve</a>, escalating desperation, violence and increasing international apathy. </p>
<p>Pursuing Palestinian statehood in any form appears increasingly elusive at the moment. But at the very least, Palestinians deserve full civil and political rights that are equal and equivalent to those enjoyed by Israelis.</p>
<p>The siren song of statehood — especially in the sense of what it has come to mean since the Oslo agreements — should no longer distract us from that goal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Leech-Ngo 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>The history of Palestinian statehood is marked by shifts in four sovereignty categories. Understanding them can shed light on the complex dynamics and key challenges in Palestine’s statehood pursuit.Philip Leech-Ngo, Senior Research Fellow, Centre on Governance, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2131112023-09-13T20:35:43Z2023-09-13T20:35:43ZStriking a balance: How the law regulates picket lines<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/striking-a-balance-how-the-law-regulates-picket-lines" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Picket lines are often the most visible feature of a labour dispute. And with the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9867957/summer-strikes-canada/">recent uptick in strike action across the country</a> — from port workers in British Columbia to grocery chain employees in Toronto — Canadians have been more likely than usual to encounter one.</p>
<p>Picket lines are meant to disrupt business as usual, rally support and communicate a message — all in an effort to increase pressure on employers to reach a negotiated settlement.</p>
<p>While picketing is a legal expressive activity, how the right to picket squares with property rights and civil rights is not straightforward. </p>
<p>The common view is that while picketers may carry signs, they may not — or at least, should not — prevent others from crossing picket lines. The reality is more complicated. </p>
<h2>Legal context</h2>
<p>Picketing is almost exclusively regulated by courts. Historically, courts did <a href="https://cbr.cba.org/index.php/cbr/article/view/2368/2368">not look kindly upon picketing</a> and police forces were only too eager to enforce injunctions (court orders) or engage in other efforts to dismantle picket lines.</p>
<p>Today, courts are less keen to use the blunt instrument of an injunction to limit picketing. Intervening too quickly in a labour dispute is now seen as unfairly helping one side, namely employers. This shift in approach was heavily influenced by the connection the Supreme Court of Canada has drawn between picketing and freedom of expression. </p>
<p>According to the Supreme Court, picketing “<a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1945/index.do">always involves expressive action</a>,” which is protected under the guarantee of freedom of expression in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As such, the court ruled that picketing may only be limited to prevent “wrongful acts.”</p>
<p>Courts will consider criminal acts like violence and damage to property as reasons to limit picketing. But wrongful actions also include things like trespassing and nuisance (interfering with others’ lawful right to enter and exit). </p>
<p>Since the main function of a picket line is to discourage others from crossing, delaying others in order to provide the union an opportunity to convey its message is key. </p>
<p>So, how do courts find the right balance between the expressive rights of picketers and the property and civil rights of others — all while ensuring the general safety of everyone involved? Some inconvenience to employers and the public is an essential part of the equation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in jeans, a T-shirt and a ball cap hands a flyer to a passerby." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545339/original/file-20230829-28-ewe8xx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545339/original/file-20230829-28-ewe8xx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545339/original/file-20230829-28-ewe8xx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545339/original/file-20230829-28-ewe8xx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545339/original/file-20230829-28-ewe8xx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545339/original/file-20230829-28-ewe8xx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545339/original/file-20230829-28-ewe8xx.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 striking TVO employee hands out flyers on the picket line outside of TVO offices in August 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Striking a balance</h2>
<p>Because the outcomes of judicial interventions are uncertain, employers and unions can benefit from negotiating non-binding picketing protocols in advance of any dispute.</p>
<p>Where they exist, protocols govern how picket lines will operate. For example, an employer may allow picketers to come onto private property to avoid creating dangerous traffic or public safety conditions. Or the parties may agree that people attempting to cross a picket line will be delayed a given amount of time, thereby allowing the union to communicate its message.</p>
<p>In fact, a refusal to even discuss a protocol in advance <a href="https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2004/2004canlii2565/2004canlii2565.html?resultIndex=1">may work against the refusing party</a> if a request for an injunction is later filed.</p>
<p>While the role of local police in labour disputes varies, it is now common for them to formally take a neutral stance and play no more than a mediating role with regard to public safety. While police are expected to keep the peace, they <a href="https://www.yrp.ca/en/about/resources/Labour_Disputes_Pamphlet.pdf">are not normally authorized to intervene on behalf of either party</a> engaged in the dispute. </p>
<p>When injunctions are issued, police do intervene to uphold court orders. But workers are generally still permitted to delay traffic, often with the proviso that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/coop-workers-injunction-10-minutes-1.5410026">anyone who doesn’t want to hear the union’s message may proceed at will</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, in issuing an injunction a judge may set further rules, for example, on the number of picketers or where they are permitted to picket.</p>
<p>The same balancing principles apply to <a href="https://www.cp24.com/news/metro-seeks-injunction-against-striking-workers-preventing-deliveries-to-stores-1.6535373">secondary picketing</a> (picketing against a third party to increase pressure on the struck employer). </p>
<p>For example, an <a href="https://77b90736.flowpaper.com/MetroOntarioIncvUniforanditsLocal414EndorsementdatedAugpdf/#page=1">injunction recently granted against Unifor,</a> the union representing striking Metro grocery workers in the Toronto area, restricted picketing workers from blockading the company’s distribution centres. </p>
<p>Yet the order still permitted picketers some <a href="https://77b90736.flowpaper.com/InterimOrderofJusticeChalmers/#page=1">leeway to continue stopping vehicles</a> for a prescribed amount of time. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-metro-workers-1.6953627">The workers recently ratified a new collective agreement after their month-long strike</a>.</p>
<h2>Emotions can run high</h2>
<p>Strikes may be inconvenient for the public. For striking workers, they can be highly emotional affairs. If a strike drags on or becomes particularly heated, negotiated protocols and even injunctions <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/regina-coop-refinery-lockout-unifor_ca_5e42f45bc5b6f1f57f1989fd">may be ignored out of frustration, anger or a sense of urgency</a>. </p>
<p>Besides the legal questions at play, union members also stress moral arguments for respecting picket lines. A refusal to do so can <a href="https://macleans.ca/opinion/whats-the-point-of-a-picket-line-to-stop-scabs/">feel like a betrayal</a>, especially when those crossing the line are from within union ranks.</p>
<p>That’s because crossing a picket line almost inevitably weakens the union’s bargaining position, and, ironically, may help to prolong the dispute by alleviating pressure on the employer to come to a negotiated settlement. </p>
<p>“Naming and shaming” replacement workers — known as scabs — also <a href="https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/13334/index.do">enjoys some constitutional protection</a>. </p>
<p>In short, the politics of picket lines can be complex, especially for members of the public encountering them for the first time. </p>
<p>No one wants a strike or lockout; they are stressful and full of uncertainty. While labour stoppages are typically used as a last resort to overcome a bargaining impasse, they can become lightning rods for unions, employers and members of the public. </p>
<p>Recognizing, however, that competing rights are at play is key to understanding how the law aims to uphold civil and property rights without jeopardizing workers’ freedom of expression.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213111/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Braley-Rattai receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larry Savage receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>When it comes to picket lines, courts aim to uphold civil and property rights without jeopardizing workers’ freedom of expression.Alison Braley-Rattai, Associate Professor, Labour studies, Brock UniversityLarry Savage, Professor, Labour Studies, Brock UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029232023-08-04T12:28:44Z2023-08-04T12:28:44ZA brief history of the Ku Klux Klan Acts: 1870s laws to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, now being used against Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541074/original/file-20230803-29-pqkkiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1306%2C80%2C5397%2C4362&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on an indictment against former U.S. President Donald Trump on Aug. 1, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/special-counsel-jack-smith-delivers-remarks-on-a-recently-news-photo/1586082375?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the indictment against former President Donald Trump and his role in the Jan. 6 violent attack against the U.S. Capitol, special prosecutor Jack Smith charged the former president with violating four different federal laws – and Trump pleaded not guilty to each one of them on Aug. 3, 2023. </p>
<p>Three of the charges in <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/trump-jan-6-indictment-2020-election/1f1c76972b25c802/full.pdf">United States of America v. Donald J. Trump</a> are fairly easy to understand. They require a jury to determine whether Trump tried to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and if he knowingly conspired to obstruct the certification of results on Jan. 6, 2021, all in an attempt to remain in the White House. </p>
<p>But the fourth charge against Trump – of conspiring against the rights of the voters to cast ballots and have them fairly and honestly counted – is more complicated, and it comes from a dark time in U.S. history.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://english.cofc.edu/faculty-staff-listing/kelly-joe.php">a historian</a> who studies and writes about democracy and the American South, I believe the 1870s have something to teach us about the fourth count in the Jan. 6 case against Trump. </p>
<h2>Ku Klux Klan Acts</h2>
<p>The indictment asserts that Trump knowingly conspired “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”</p>
<p>That quote comes from a series of laws enacted in the 1870s called the Ku Klux Klan Acts. They are officially known as the <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html">Enforcement Acts</a> because they empowered the federal government to enforce the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=With%20the%20adoption%20of%20the,the%20civil%20rights%20of%20Americans.">Civil War amendments</a> – the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=Section%201.-,Neither%20slavery%20nor%20involuntary%20servitude%2C%20except%20as%20a%20punishment%20for,place%20subject%20to%20their%20jurisdiction.">13th</a>, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment#:%7E:text=No%20State%20shall%20make%20or,Section%202.">14th</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/15th-amendment">15th</a> amendments that freed enslaved people and guaranteed equal protection of the laws and the right to vote.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/civil-rights-law-could-be-used-indict-trump">Brennan Center for Justice</a> points out, in the 20th century the Supreme Court has ruled that all sorts of election infringements violate the Enforcement Acts, including stuffing ballot boxes and bribing voters. A suspect doesn’t have to commit violence against Black voters to violate the law.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five people sitting on one side of a table with papers on the table in front of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former President Donald Trump with his attorneys inside the courtroom during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court on April 4, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-donald-trump-appears-in-court-at-the-news-photo/1250772070?adppopup=true">Seth Wenig/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Retreat from democracy</h2>
<p>When the Ku Klux Klan tried to steal the 1872 presidential election by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reconstruction-southern-violence/">killing and intimidating</a> newly enfranchised Black men, federal troops swooped into South Carolina and arrested hundreds of Klansmen. The Department of Justice <a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/proceedingsinkuk00unit/proceedingsinkuk00unit.pdf">secured convictions</a> in 140 cases by using the law that is being used to prosecute Trump.</p>
<p>Congress had to expand the attorney general’s staff into an entire <a href="https://www.justice.gov/history/timeline/150-years-department-justice#event-1195101">department of government</a> to handle the excessive case load.</p>
<p>The Klan prosecutions worked.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1872_Election/">1872 election</a> was relatively free and fair. In South Carolina, where the Black population outnumbered the white population, President Ulysses Grant, who had commanded the Union Army in the Civil War and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ulysses-s-grant/">led it to victory</a> over the Confederacy, won with 75% of the vote.</p>
<p><iframe id="tYrfU" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tYrfU/9/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>After Grant was reelected, many champions of Black rights lapsed into what historians often characterize as a moral fatigue. According to historian Eric Foner’s “<a href="https://archive.org/details/reconstructionam0000fone/page/524/mode/2up?view=theater">Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution</a>,” a “resurgence of overt racism” in the North triggered a “retreat from Reconstruction.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/">turning point</a> was at Colfax, Louisiana. </p>
<p>Just before Easter in 1873, federal soldiers steamed up Louisiana’s Red River to investigate reports of yet another wave of white terrorism against Black citizens. </p>
<p>As later described by <a href="https://archive.org/details/horriblemassacre00newo/page/14/mode/2up">Col. T.W. DeKlyne</a>, as the soldiers approached the town of Colfax, they saw neglected neglected crops and abandoned farmhouses. They followed a trail of corpses to the charred, smoking remains of the courthouse, whose grounds were strewn with more dead bloating in the sun. Some were burnt. Others had been shot, execution style, in the back of the head. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://archive.org/details/dayfreedomdiedco00lane/page/266/mode/2up?view=theater">history of the Colfax massacre</a>, journalist Charles Lane estimated that between 62 and 81 Black men were killed, most after they surrendered to the white militia. </p>
<p>Despite the bloodshed, Louisiana officials did nothing to hold the murderers accountable. </p>
<p>But federal attorneys indicted 98 men. Nine stood trial, including one <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/black-lives-civil-rights.html">William Cruikshank</a>, who Lane described as the “burly, self-confident” plantation owner who had supervised the executions. </p>
<p>Cruikshank was convicted not of murder but of the federal crime of <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/58/united-states-v-cruikshank#">conspiring to violate</a> the civil and voting rights of Americans – the same crime that Trump is charged with. </p>
<p><a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/92/542/">The case</a> was appealed to the Supreme Court, where justices heard all sorts of arguments on the authorities of state and federal governments to enforce voting rights laws. But the real issue was whether the federal government, 11 years after the end of the Civil War, still had the will to protect the civil rights of Black people.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A white man dressed in a dark military uniform stands at a table with another white man dressed in a military uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this illustration, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, left, accepts the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/robert-e-lee-surrenders-to-general-u-s-grant-royalty-free-illustration/112873439?phrase=ulysses%20s%20grant%20robert%20lee&adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Supreme Court set William Cruikshank free, and white supremacists established racist regimes in every Southern state for nearly 100 years thereafter.</p>
<p>According to Nicholas Lemann, professor emeritus at Columbia University, the Civil War did not end <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/appomattox-court-house">in 1865 at Appomattox Court House</a> – the Virginia village where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.</p>
<p><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429923613/redemption">The last battle</a>, he contends, was fought at Colfax, and the South won. The South staged unfair elections for the nearly the next 100 years. Not until the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting.">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a> did the federal government signal it would force states to hold free and fair elections.</p>
<h2>Civil War amendments today</h2>
<p>The latest retreat by the Supreme Court from defending Black civil rights might have begun in 2013, in its <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/570/529/">Shelby County v. Holder</a> ruling, in which the justices abolished a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that ensured federal oversight of voting rules in areas with a history of discrimination. The 5-4 majority held that states could be trusted to guarantee citizens’ voting rights.</p>
<p>Writing in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared enforcing the Civil War amendments to “battling the Hydra,” the multiheaded monster that sprouted new heads after one was defeated. </p>
<p>In North Carolina, for instance, the Republican lawmakers tried to put what is known as the “independent state legislature theory” into practice. <a href="https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/independent-state-legislature-theory-federal-courts-and-state-law">That theory</a> holds that state legislatures are the supreme authority in federal elections. </p>
<p>But in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1271_3f14.pdf">Moore v. Harper</a> case, Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed and wrote in the 6-3 majority opinion on June 27, 2023, that the “federal court must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review” over elections. </p>
<p>Given this long history of advance and retreat, it’s not surprising, then, that special counsel Jack Smith, in his use of a law to prosecute Trump that dates back to the Reconstruction Era’s laws protecting the Black vote, has reasserted the Department of Justice’s power to enforce the Civil War amendments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Patrick Kelly is affiliated with the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party. </span></em></p>One of the charges against Donald Trump dates back to the 1870s and was designed to give the federal government the power to ensure states held free and fair elections.Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2076782023-06-16T20:30:13Z2023-06-16T20:30:13ZJuneteenth, Jim Crow and how the fight of one Black Texas family to make freedom real offers lessons for Texas lawmakers trying to erase history from the classroom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532238/original/file-20230615-15-utcvwa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C166%2C1791%2C1011&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joshua Houston leads a Juneteenth Parade in Huntsville, Texas, in a photo circa 1900.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.samhoustonmemorialmuseum.com/">Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news was startling. </p>
<p>On June 19, 1865, two months after the U.S. Civil War ended, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/juneteenth-original-document">Union Gen. Gordon Granger</a> walked onto the balcony at Ashton Villa in Galveston, Texas, and announced to the people of the state that “all slaves are free.” </p>
<p>As local plantation owners lamented the loss of their most valuable property, <a href="https://www.galvestonhistory.org/news/juneteenth-and-general-order-no-3">Black Texans celebrated</a> Granger’s Juneteenth announcement with singing, dancing and feasting. The <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/slavery">182,566 enslaved African Americans in Texas</a> had finally won their freedom. </p>
<p>One of them was <a href="https://easttexashistory.org/items/show/10?tour=8&index=0">Joshua Houston</a>. </p>
<p>He had long served as the enslaved servant of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-race-and-ethnicity-houston-slavery-sam-houston-6ff3a0d8700841c58729bcaa0848c8b3">Gen. Sam Houston</a>, the most well-known military and political leader in Texas.</p>
<p>Joshua Houston lived about 120 miles north of Galveston when he learned of Granger’s proclamation. </p>
<p>It was read aloud at the local Methodist Church in Huntsville, Texas, by <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/gregory-edgar-m">Union Gen. Edgar M. Gregory</a>, the assistant commissioner for the <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/freedmens-bureau">Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas</a>.</p>
<p>If Juneteenth meant anything, it meant at least that Joshua Houston and his family were free.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A gray haired black man in the center wearing glasses is sitting down and surrounded by members of his family." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532444/original/file-20230616-17-baca9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joshua Houston and his family in October 1898.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library, Huntsville, Texas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there was more too. </p>
<p>The promise of freedom meant that more work needed to be done. Families needed to be reunited. Land needed to be secured. Children needed to be educated. </p>
<p>Indeed, the radical promise of Juneteenth is embodied in the community activism of Joshua Houston and the educational career of his son Samuel Walker Houston. </p>
<h2>The violent white reaction to Black political power</h2>
<p>Within a year of Granger’s proclamation, Houston had established a blacksmith shop near the Huntsville town square and moved his family into a two-story house on the adjoining lot.</p>
<p>He helped found the Union Church, the first Black-owned institution in the city, as well as a freedmen’s school to begin educating African American children. </p>
<p>In 1878 and 1882, a Republican coalition of Black and white voters opposed to conservative Democratic rule elected Houston as the county’s first Black county commissioner, a powerful position in local governance. </p>
<p>Despite this dramatic turn of events, Houston’s political story was hardly unique. </p>
<p>In the two decades following emancipation, 52 Black men served in the state Legislature or the state’s constitutional conventions. </p>
<p>But that number had fallen to two by 1882. </p>
<p>Opposition to Black freedom had been a powerful force in the state’s political culture since emancipation. </p>
<p>Armstead Barrett, a former slave in Huntsville, recalled in 1937 that an enraged white man had reacted to Granger’s Juneteenth order by <a href="https://www.studythepast.com/walkercountyslavenarratives/Armstead%20Barrett.pdf">riding past a celebrating Black woman and murdering her with his sword</a>. </p>
<p>In 1871, the violence continued when the white citizens of Huntsville stormed the county courthouse and aided the escape of three men who had <a href="https://lynchingintexas.org/items/browse/">lynched freedman Sam Jenkins</a>.</p>
<p>Later, in the 1880s, <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/civil-rights#:%7E:text=In%20the%201880s%2C%20White%20men,experienced%20similar%20forms%20of%20brutality.">attacks on Black elected officials</a>, their white political allies and Black voters escalated dramatically.</p>
<p>In the early 1900s, changes in state election laws, including the introduction of the poll tax, effectively <a href="https://txwf.org/minority-voter-suppression-jim-crow-laws-in-texas/">disenfranchised most Black voters</a> and many poor whites as well. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=w8QIEAAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PR1&dq=race%20and%20class%20in%20texas%20politics&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false">Voter participation dropped</a> from roughly 85% at the high tide of Texas populism in 1896 to roughly 35% when the poll tax became effective in 1904.</p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://lrl.texas.gov/legeleaders/members/memberdisplay.cfm?memberID=3580">Robert Lloyd Smith</a> was the last Black legislator for nearly 70 years when he finished his term in 1897. </p>
<p>That wall of white supremacy at the state Capitol would not crack again until 1966, when <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting.">federal voting rights legislation</a> and <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/ten-voting-rights-cases-that-shaped-history/">Supreme Court rulings</a> nullified <a href="https://www.tpr.org/podcast/texas-matters/2021-10-19/how-texas-used-multi-member-districts-to-weaken-minority-voting-power">schemes</a> to deny African Americans the ballot. </p>
<p>These changes enabled the election of Black officials such as <a href="https://www.humanitiestexas.org/programs/tx-originals/list/barbara-jordan">Barbara Jordan</a>, the first African American woman to serve in the Texas Senate. </p>
<h2>Like father, like son</h2>
<p>On an unknown date, a few years after Juneteenth, Joshua Houston’s son <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/houston-samuel-walker">Samuel Walker Houston</a> was born free in the bright light of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reconstruction-United-States-history">Reconstruction</a>.</p>
<p>Although he spent his adulthood in some of the darkest years of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow</a>, he continued his father’s work as an educator and community leader. Following a short stint at Atlanta University in Georgia and Howard University in Washington, D.C., Samuel Walker Houston returned to Huntsville and <a href="https://easttexashistory.org/items/show/2?tour=5&index=0">founded a school</a> in the nearby Galilee community. </p>
<p>Houston’s school was named for him and served as one of the first county training schools for African Americans in Texas. It enrolled students at every level, from first grade through high school, and provided a curriculum based on <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-washington/">Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee model</a> of vocational training. </p>
<p>Young women at Houston’s school received training in homemaking, sewing and cooking, while young men learned carpentry, woodworking and mathematics. </p>
<p>By 1922, enrollment at the school had grown to 400 students, and it was recognized by contemporaries as the leading school of East Texas. In the 1930s, Houston’s school was absorbed into Huntsville’s school district, and he became the director of Black education in the county.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In this black and white image, seven men stand outside a residential-style building with sawhorses and stacked lumber off to the side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532442/original/file-20230616-4884-pkw4fn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This 1919 photograph shows officials laying the foundation for a new building at the Samuel Walker Houston Training School.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jackson Davis Collection of African American Educational Photographs, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Houston encouraged a practical education for Black Texans, but he also believed that young Texans of all races needed to learn an account of history that differed from the white supremacist narrative that dominated Southern history. </p>
<p>Toward this end, he joined with Joseph Clark and Ramsey Woods, two white professors who pioneered race relations courses at Sam Houston State Teachers College. Together, the group led the <a href="https://shsu-ir.tdl.org/handle/20.500.11875/3760">Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation</a>’s effort to evaluate Texas public school textbooks during the 1930s. </p>
<p>In an analysis of racial attitudes in state-endorsed textbooks, they found that 74% of books presented a racist view of the past and of Black Americans. Most excluded the scientific, literary and civic contributions of Black people, while mentioning their economic contributions only in the period of slavery before the Civil War.</p>
<p>Instead, the group argued, books designed for both Black and white Texans needed to take the “opportunity … to do simple justice” by including Black history and the “struggle for the exercise” of equal civil, political and legal rights.</p>
<p>White Texans <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/state-history-textbook-erases-the-stories-black-hispanic-texans/">refused to adopt a textbook</a> in the 1930s that taught the fundamental equality of the races, or portrayed Reconstruction, as it is now widely understood, as a missed opportunity to establish a more just and egalitarian Texas.</p>
<p>But Houston and his <a href="https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/vol57/iss2/5/">white counterparts were motivated</a> by the conviction that progress, both for African Americans and for Texas, required a more honest and progressive account of the state and its history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In this black and white image, Black men and women are seen marching along a main street while others are watching." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532443/original/file-20230616-27-qg7tn4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Juneteenth Parade in Huntsville, Texas, circa 1900.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library, Huntsville, Texas.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An ongoing battle for equality</h2>
<p>Today’s legislative efforts in Texas and elsewhere to <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/06/15/abbott-critical-race-theory-law/">restrict the teaching</a> of systemic racism in public schools ignore the lessons and realities represented by Joshua and Samuel Walker Houston’s lives. </p>
<p>The argument used for supporting such restrictions is that “divisive concepts” like the history of racism may make some students feel uncomfortable or guilty. </p>
<p>That sort of thinking echoes the same justification provided by Texas lawmakers in 1873, when many argued that the state’s schools must be segregated to ensure “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Dance_of_Freedom/hVLtkG8EA3sC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=peace,%20harmony">the peace, harmony and success of the schools and the good of the whole</a>.” </p>
<p>But the opposite is true. </p>
<p>In reality, the prohibition on teaching the darker chapters of our past creates a segregated history. </p>
<p>Instead, as Samuel Walker Houston recognized, young Texans must have a more honest account of the past and of one another to progress into a unified and egalitarian society.</p>
<p>Texas history is both the story of people who dedicated their lives to the work of advancing freedom and the story of powerful people and forces that stood against it. </p>
<p>One cannot be understood without the other. </p>
<p>Americans cannot appreciate the accomplishments of Joshua and Samuel Walker Houston without examining the vicious realities of Jim Crow society. </p>
<p>The lesson of their lives, and of the Juneteenth holiday, is that freedom is a precious thing that requires constant work to make real.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207678/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>For the formerly enslaved Black people in Texas, Juneteenth meant more than freedom. It meant reuniting families and building schools and developing political power.Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Professor of History, Sam Houston State UniversityZachary Montz, Lecturer, History Department, Sam Houston State 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/2012472023-06-06T12:31:30Z2023-06-06T12:31:30ZSupreme Court is poised to dismantle an integral part of LBJ’s Great Society – affirmative action<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530134/original/file-20230605-15-3psr8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=271%2C116%2C2319%2C1487&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Lyndon Johnson delivers the commencement address at Howard University on June 4, 1965. </span> </figcaption></figure><p>Of all the civil rights policies enacted by U.S President Lyndon Johnson, affirmative action is arguably one of the most enduring – and most challenged. </p>
<p>Johnson made it clear during a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcfAuodA2x8">commencement address</a> at <a href="http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/selected-speeches/1965/06-04-1965.html">Howard University</a> on June 4, 1965, where he stood. </p>
<p>In his speech, “<a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/to-fulfill-these-rights/9780231183093">To Fulfill These Rights</a>,” Johnson argued that civil rights were only as secure as society and the government were willing to make them.</p>
<p>“Nothing in any country touches us more profoundly, and nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny than the revolution of the Negro American,” Johnson said. </p>
<p>In my view as a scholar of the history of affirmative action, Johnson’s speech and the legal structure it helped produce directly contradict those who would dismantle affirmative action and besmirch diversity programs today.</p>
<p>As the Supreme Court looks ready to strike down affirmative action in college admissions, it’s my belief that unlike the court’s conservative majority, Johnson understood that the U.S. could not serve as a moral leader around the world if it did not acknowledge its past of racial injustices and try to make amends. </p>
<h2>‘Equality as a result’</h2>
<p>Johnson knew that changing laws was only part of the solution to racial disparities and systemic racism. </p>
<p>“<a href="http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/selected-speeches/1965/06-04-1965.html">Freedom is not enough</a>,” he declared. “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” </p>
<p>In proposing to address these injustices, Johnson laid out a phrase that would become a defense of affirmative action.</p>
<p>“We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.” </p>
<p>Achieving this latter goal, Johnson explained, would be the “more profound stage of the battle for civil rights.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A white man dressed in a business suit talks with a Black woman who is smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529379/original/file-20230531-21-dofez7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529379/original/file-20230531-21-dofez7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529379/original/file-20230531-21-dofez7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529379/original/file-20230531-21-dofez7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529379/original/file-20230531-21-dofez7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529379/original/file-20230531-21-dofez7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529379/original/file-20230531-21-dofez7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=759&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 Johnson chats with Howard law professor Patricia Harris after Howard’s commencement on June 4, 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-dc-president-johnson-chats-with-mrs-patricia-r-news-photo/514870364?adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Johnson rejected the idea that individual merit was the sole basis for measuring equality. </p>
<p>“Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in – by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings,” <a href="http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/selected-speeches/1965/06-04-1965.html">Johnson said</a>. “It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.” </p>
<p>Johnson took a structural view of discrimination against Black Americans and explained that racial differences could not “be understood as isolated infirmities.”</p>
<p>“They are a seamless web,” Johnson said. “They cause each other. They result from each other. They reinforce each other.” </p>
<p>“Negro poverty is not white poverty,” Johnson said, “but rather the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice and present prejudice.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A middle-aged white man stands in front of a crowd of people as he hands a pen to a Black man dressed in a business suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529629/original/file-20230601-27-eg58z8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529629/original/file-20230601-27-eg58z8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529629/original/file-20230601-27-eg58z8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529629/original/file-20230601-27-eg58z8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529629/original/file-20230601-27-eg58z8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529629/original/file-20230601-27-eg58z8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529629/original/file-20230601-27-eg58z8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&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 Johnson hands a pen to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after signing the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-lyndon-b-johnson-hands-a-pen-to-civil-rights-news-photo/1749781?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Johnson also rejected comparisons to other minorities who immigrated to the U.S. and had allegedly overcome discrimination through assimilation. </p>
<p>“They did not have the heritage of centuries to overcome,” Johnson said, “and they did not have a cultural tradition which had been twisted and battered by endless years of hatred and hopelessness, nor were they excluded – these others – because of race or color – a feeling whose dark intensity is matched by no other prejudice in our society.”</p>
<h2>A constant challenge</h2>
<p>That profound battle over how to address the <a href="https://glc.yale.edu/legacies-american-slavery/what-is-a-legacy-of-slavery">legacies of slavery</a>, <a href="https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/what.htm">Jim Crow</a> and <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/racial-inequality-in-the-united-states">modern-day inequalities</a> is once again before the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Though the court is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-diverse-supreme-court-grapples-with-affirmative-action-with-its-justices-of-color-split-sharply-on-the-meaning-of-equal-protection-196554">most diverse in American history</a> – with three justices of color and four women – the conservatives, who have historically <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/159007/conservative-misdirection-affirmative-action-debate">opposed affirmative action programs</a>, hold a 6-3 majority. </p>
<p>And that majority has the power to ban the use of race when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/politics/supreme-court-affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html">the court issues a decision</a> in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. A decision is expected in June 2023.</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 Supreme Court, from left in front row: Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice 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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<p>At the time of Johnson’s speech, the U.S. faced <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/vietnam-war-protests-at-the-white-house">growing opposition</a> to its escalating war in Vietnam and <a href="https://prde.upress.virginia.edu/content/CivilRights">racial unrest</a> across the country. </p>
<p>But Johnson was determined to achieve his goal of racial equality. During his commencement address, Johnson heralded the passage of the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act">1964 Civil Rights Act</a> that he signed into law on July 2, 1964, and prohibited workplace discrimination. He also promised passage of the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting">Voting Rights Act</a> that would ban discriminatory voting practices. Johnson signed that into law on Aug. 6, 1965. </p>
<p>And shortly after his speech, Johnson signed <a href="https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/11246.html">Executive Order 11246</a> on Sept. 24, 1965. </p>
<p>It charged the Department of Labor with taking “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed … without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” </p>
<p>For Johnson, racial justice was attainable and, once achieved, would alleviate social strife at home and advance the United States’ standing abroad. </p>
<p>Despite urging civil rights activists to “light that candle of understanding in the heart of all America,” even Johnson became disillusioned with the racial politics of forming a more perfect union.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of urban riots in Newark, New Jersey, Detroit and other U.S. cities in 1967, Johnson created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders – better known as the <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/national-advisory-commission-civil-disorders-report">Kerner Commission</a> – to investigate the causes of the riots and suggest remedies. </p>
<p>The commission recommended billions of dollars’ worth of new government programs, including sweeping federal initiatives directed at improving educational and employment opportunities, public services and housing in Black urban neighborhoods.</p>
<p>The commission found that “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10730.html">white racism</a>” was the basic cause of the racial unrest.</p>
<p>Although the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/02/27/589351779/report-updates-landmark-1968-racism-study-finds-more-poverty-more-segregation">report was a bestseller</a>, Johnson found the conclusions politically untenable and distanced himself from the commission report.</p>
<p>Torn between his need to balance Southern votes and his ambition to leave a strong civil rights legacy, Johnson proceeded along a very cautious path. </p>
<p>He did nothing about the report. </p>
<p>U.S. Sen. Edward W. Brooke, Black Massachusetts Republican, was one of the 11 members on the commission.</p>
<p>In his book “<a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/bridging-the-divide/9780813539058">Bridging the Divide</a>,” Brooke explained Johnson’s reticence. </p>
<p>“In retrospect,” he wrote, “I can see that our report was too strong for him to take. It suggested that all his great achievements — his civil rights legislation, his antipoverty programs, Head Start, housing legislation, and all the rest of it – had been only a beginning. It asked him, in an election year, to endorse the idea that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion.”</p>
<p>Even for a politician like Johnson, that proved too much to handle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Travis Knoll 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>President Lyndon Johnson’s commencement address at Howard University in 1965 offered a compelling argument on the need for affirmative action. His policies have been challenged ever since.Travis Knoll, Adjunct Professor of History, University of North Carolina – CharlotteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045202023-05-18T12:41:53Z2023-05-18T12:41:53ZFrom sit-ins in the 1960s to uprisings in the new millennium, Harry Belafonte served as a champion of youth activism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526776/original/file-20230517-21-rcxyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harry Belafonte used his personal wealth to support young activists throughout his life.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-singer-songwriter-and-civil-rights-activist-harry-news-photo/1393509581?adppopup=true">Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of all the contributions for which Harry Belafonte will be remembered, perhaps none is more enduring than the celebrated entertainer’s lifelong support for youth activism.</p>
<p>This support can be traced back to Belafonte’s early involvement in the Black student-led protests of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s, but it didn’t end there. Using his social stature and personal wealth from a career that once made him the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/arts/music/harry-belafonte-dead.html">most highly paid Black performer in history</a>,” Belafonte also <a href="https://rockthebells.com/articles/harry-belafonte-hip-hop-beat-street/">helped establish hip-hop</a> as a dominant cultural force in the 1980s and spoke out in support of Black uprisings against police brutality in the 2010s in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore.</p>
<p>As a historian who has <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469661445/shelter-in-a-time-of-storm/">examined Black student activism from the civil rights era</a> to today, I see Belafonte, who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/arts/music/harry-belafonte-dead.html">passed away on April 25, 2023</a>, as one of America’s preeminent “<a href="https://guides.osu.edu/africana/raceman">race men</a>,” social justice warriors and elder statesmen for youth-led racial justice movements.</p>
<h2>Born in a new Black era</h2>
<p>Born in Harlem in 1927, Belafonte was immersed in the politics and art of the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/the-new-negro-movement.html">New Negro Era</a>, an era that gave birth to radically new interpretations of the Black aesthetic and launched new efforts toward Black liberation.</p>
<p>As the modern Civil Rights Movement unfolded in post-World War II America, Belafonte joined the ranks of Black entertainers who sought to use their platforms to advance the cause. But it was the direct-action phase of the movement, pioneered by Black college students throughout the South at the start of the 1960s, that elevated the movement to a more intense confrontation with Jim Crow America.</p>
<p><a href="https://civilrightstrail.com/experience/student-led-sit-ins-across-the-south-lead-to-desegregated-businesses/">Sit-ins</a>, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/">Freedom Rides</a> and <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/jail-no-bail/">jail-ins</a> orchestrated by organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – or <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/">SNCC</a> – and the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/congress-racial-equality-core">Congress of Racial Equality</a> brought Belafonte deeper into the orbit of the freedom struggle. Belafonte once said he admired the young activists for the “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/10860/my-song-by-harry-belafonte-with-michael-shnayerson/">power of their independence</a>.”</p>
<h2>A unifying force</h2>
<p>One of the tensest moments for the young activists was the <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/freedom-rides-1961/">Freedom Rides</a> that brought waves of young Black college students into the Deep South to challenge the legality of segregation in interstate busing. Many of them ended up as victims of police brutality in the infamous <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mississippi-state-penitentiary-at-parchman-1901/">Parchman Farm Penitentiary</a> in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Not only did Belafonte make a generous donation to their cause, but his willingness to support the activists strengthened their admiration of him.</p>
<p>“Folks were just overwhelmed,” <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ready-for-Revolution/Stokely-Carmichael/9780684850047">recalled civil rights organizer Kwame Ture</a>, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, “and I believe that marked the beginning of Bro. Belafonte’s long relationship – as adviser, benefactor, and big brother – to the young freedom-fighting organization.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525301/original/file-20230510-23-llt9h1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525301/original/file-20230510-23-llt9h1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525301/original/file-20230510-23-llt9h1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525301/original/file-20230510-23-llt9h1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525301/original/file-20230510-23-llt9h1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525301/original/file-20230510-23-llt9h1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525301/original/file-20230510-23-llt9h1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harry Belafonte being interviewed by a student at Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., year unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas F. Holgate Library at Bennettt College</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As students courageously languished in Mississippi’s sweltering prison, they converted Belafonte’s signature song into a freedom anthem. The calypso singer’s hit single <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO7M0Hx_1D8">“Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)</a>” echoed through Southern jails as students arrested for challenging Jim Crow laws <a href="http://civilrightssongs.blogspot.com/2014/12/willie-peacock-calypso-freedom-freedoms.html">repurposed the song with new lyrics:</a></p>
<p><em>Hey, I took a little trip on a Greyhound bus.</em></p>
<p><em>Yeah!</em></p>
<p><em>Freedom comin’ and it won’t be long.</em></p>
<p><em>Well, to fight segregation this we must.</em></p>
<p><em>Yeah, Freedom comin’ and it won’t be long.</em></p>
<h2>Financed the SNCC retreat to Africa</h2>
<p>The apex of Belafonte’s involvement with the SNCC was his facilitation of a <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/sncc-delegation-travels-to-africa/">sojourn to the West African nation of Guinea in September of 1964</a>. </p>
<p>Sensing the burnout and frustration that was brewing within the organization due to its growing dissatisfaction with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xNNrgesvx8">moderation and stall tactics</a> from both the liberal left and conservative right, Belafonte organized and paid for a three-week sabbatical. Eleven SNCC activists, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-lewis-traded-the-typical-college-experience-for-activism-arrests-and-jail-cells-143219">John Lewis</a>, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/fannie-lou-hamer/">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> and Stokely Carmichael, made the trip. Belafonte introduced them to Guinea’s political dignitaries, including <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/toure-ahmed-sekou-1922-1984/">President Sekou Toure</a>. The trip proved critical in sharpening the SNCC’s focus on the potential for Black empowerment back in the States – a revelation that would greatly shape the coming Black Power Movement that unfolded in 1966. </p>
<p>Ideological tensions concerning the direction of the Civil Rights Movement after 1965 <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Pillar-of-Fire/Taylor-Branch/9780684848099">pushed Belafonte closer</a> to the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.</p>
<p>However, the politically conscious showman never turned his back on the youth activists who helped to define the decade.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Harry y Belafonte waves to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he leaves civil rights marchers in Montgomery, Alabama in 1965." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526772/original/file-20230517-25-d8dno6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526772/original/file-20230517-25-d8dno6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526772/original/file-20230517-25-d8dno6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526772/original/file-20230517-25-d8dno6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526772/original/file-20230517-25-d8dno6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526772/original/file-20230517-25-d8dno6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526772/original/file-20230517-25-d8dno6.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">Singer Harry Belafonte waves to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., right, as he leaves the column of civil rights marchers in Montgomery, Ala., in 1965.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Supported hip-hop in its early years</h2>
<p>It should not surprise anyone that a man who had a deep affinity for folk music and songs of the people gravitated toward hip-hop as it emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.
Belafonte saw hip-hop as a logical next step in the evolution of Black cultural expression and a vital space for Black militancy. In a 2006 interview, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXqL84U3VP4">he declared</a>, “When I hung out up in the South Bronx with <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140309032121/http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/page/Afrika_Bambaataa">Afrika Bambaataa</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/grandmaster-melle-mel-mn0000739282/biography">Melle Mel</a>, and watched the dawning of the hip-hop culture, it brought to me a profound sense of a wonderful thing that was in our future.”</p>
<p>Belafonte produced the 1984 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086946/">Beat Street</a>,” a celebration of hip-hop that was critical in introducing the art form to wider audiences. One of the featured artists, Melle Mel of the pioneering hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, <a href="https://rockthebells.com/articles/melle-mel-harry-belafonte-beat-street-breakdown/">recalled that he met with Belafonte</a> prior to penning his verse on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrfO6kW8EIs">soundtrack’s title song, “Beat Street Breakdown</a>. His <a href="https://genius.com/Grandmaster-melle-mel-and-the-furious-five-beat-street-breakdown-lyrics">lyrics</a> reflected his exchange with the civil rights legend: </p>
<p><em>Peoples in terror, the leaders made a error
And now they can’t even look in the mirror
Cause we gotta suffer while things get rougher
And that’s the reason why we got to get tougher</em></p>
<p>Belafonte intensified his backing of hip-hop in later years, whether it was encouraging <a href="https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/harry-belafonte-giant-of-the-arts-and-the-struggle-for-justice-and-democracy/">Fidel Castro to carve out support for Cuban rappers in the 1990s</a>, or through various hip-hop summits that he hosted in an effort to prod and push hip-hop’s <a href="https://www.okayplayer.com/culture/jay-z-harry-belafonte-feud-trayvon-martin.html">most prominent entertainers to be more outspoken</a> on issues related to social justice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525302/original/file-20230510-15-uz87gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525302/original/file-20230510-15-uz87gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525302/original/file-20230510-15-uz87gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525302/original/file-20230510-15-uz87gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525302/original/file-20230510-15-uz87gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525302/original/file-20230510-15-uz87gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525302/original/file-20230510-15-uz87gz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harry Belafonte with 9th Wonder at one of Belafonte’s hip hop-summits in June 2013.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mentored young activists</h2>
<p>In his twilight years, Belafonte continued to mentor youth activists. In the aftermath of <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/07/31/631897758/a-look-back-at-trayvon-martins-death-and-the-movement-it-inspired">Trayvon Martin’s</a> killing in 2013, Belafonte visited Tallahassee, Florida, to support the work of the <a href="https://www.wuft.org/news/2013/10/15/who-are-the-dream-defenders/">Dream Defenders</a>, an organization founded by former students from Florida A&M University to, among other things, draw attention to the injustice of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/18/stand-your-ground-laws-us-deaths-racist-violence">Stand Your Ground </a> law that was used to justify Martin’s fatal shooting.</p>
<p>Standing with the students in solidarity, Belafonte <a href="https://www.cityandstatefl.com/first-read/2023/04/remembering-harry-belafontes-visit-dream-defenders-florida-capitol/385633/">told them</a>: "I’m here because I am a part of your history. You called, and I’m here to tell you that those of us who have been in this struggle for over a century are happy to be part of this moment.”</p>
<h2>Embraced Black Lives Matter</h2>
<p>Belafonte’s tireless devotion to human rights perfectly dovetailed into support for the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0016241/">Black Lives Matter movement</a> in the 2010s, as he continued to argue for disruption of political systems that upheld state-sanctioned violence.</p>
<p>Belafonte’s defiance and support for the movement was unwavering. “Radical thought at its best is supposed to make people feel uncomfortable,” Belafonte <a href="https://crosscut.com/2015/10/harry-belafonte-on-black-leadership-and-activism-and-the-importance-of-making-people-uncomfortable">declared in 2015</a>. “We talk about the uprisings in communities like in St. Louis and Baltimore, and it is what protests are supposed to do.”</p>
<p>From the 1960s until Belafonte’s passing, young people across several generations sought him out for wisdom and guidance. His enduring commitment to youth and idealism always made him easy to find.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jelani M. Favors 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>Harry Belafonte spent much of his life supporting youth-led movements that fought against racial injustice. A historian explains how.Jelani M. Favors, Professor of History, North Carolina A&T State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2046632023-04-28T12:46:25Z2023-04-28T12:46:25ZEmmett Till’s accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died – here’s how the 1955 murder case helped define civil rights history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523323/original/file-20230427-2476-sdo2si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Carolyn Bryant Donham, left, reads newspaper accounts of the Emmett Till murder trial in 1955. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1387675173/photo/emmett-till-murder-trial.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=6AHNEtCZd-n8SzB4KlwtTrW6VqogGwjiZZGJQP187mk=">Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman <a href="https://apnews.com/article/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-donham-1bcfff1c5a29484270d66b224422f112">who accused Black teenager</a> Emmett Till of making inappropriate advances toward her in 1955, has died at the age of 88 in Louisiana, according to a coroner’s report.</p>
<p>Nearly 68 years after Till was kidnapped, brutally tortured, murdered and then dumped into the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, the case continues to resonate with audiences around the world because it represents an egregious example of justice denied. </p>
<p>As a historian of the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=fLC2Ei-VvuoC&lpg=PR7&ots=97G2d6B94B&dq=davis%20houck%20till&lr&pg=PR7#v=onepage&q=davis%20houck%20till&f=false">Mississippi civil rights movements</a>, I quickly learned that most Mississippi civil rights history leads back to the widespread outrage over the Till case in the summer of 1955.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black boy leans against his arm and reclines on a bed in a black and white photo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523324/original/file-20230427-961-uvz7nc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&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">Emmett Till is shown lying on his bed in 1954, one year before his murder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/514974304/photo/emmett-till.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=H_59CkJeGX1ESuR52wL2c8X9aDnSxek6F17MCsU0L_E=">Bettmann/Contributor</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Emmett in Money, Mississippi</h2>
<p>Fourteen-year-old Emmett arrived in Mississippi on Aug. 20, 1955, from Chicago to visit his mother’s family, who sharecropped cotton in the tiny Delta community of Money. </p>
<p>On the evening of Aug. 24, Emmett and several cousins and neighbors drove the 2.8 miles into Money to buy candy at the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market. </p>
<p>Emmett entered the store alone. He bought 2 cents’ worth of bubble gum and left. At the door Emmett let out a loud, two-note wolf whistle directed at white 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. His cousins were terrified: Emmett had just hit the trip wire of Southern racial fears by flirting with a white woman.</p>
<p>Early on Aug. 28, several men – white and Black – took Emmett from his family’s house. Emmett’s badly decomposed and battered body was discovered three days later in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett’s uncle could identify Emmett only by a ring he was wearing that once belonged to Emmett’s father, Louis Till.</p>
<p>Two white men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were quickly arrested and later charged with murder. During a five-day trial in September, the two men were found not guilty after a 67-minute deliberation by an all-white, all-male jury. </p>
<p>Several years later, members of the jury confessed to a Florida State University graduate student, <a href="https://fsu.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fsu%3A277427">Hugh Stephen Whitaker</a>, that they knew the men were guilty but simply wouldn’t convict a white man of crimes against a Black child.</p>
<p>In 1956, Milam and Bryant <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/till-killers-confession/">sold their</a> “shocking true story” of what happened to Till for US$3,150 to Look magazine. For nearly 50 years, celebrity journalist William Bradford Huie’s “confession” story in Look functioned as the final word on the case. </p>
<h2>Continued interest and coverage</h2>
<p>Southern newspapers wanted immediately to forget the Till story, ashamed of the backlash caused by Milam and Bryant’s “confession.” Many Northern and Western newspapers editorialized on the case long after its conclusion. America’s Black press never quit writing about the case; it was their work, after all, helping to track down Black eyewitnesses in September 1955 that helped us understand the truth of what actually happened to Emmett Till on Aug. 28, 1955.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvijYSJtkQk&t=10s">investigative work</a> by documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp and others, the public has since learned that Milam and Bryant were part of a much larger lynching party, none of whom were ever punished.</p>
<p>Today, all of the people directly involved in Till’s murder are dead. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman stands with two young boys on the steps of a dilapidated looking wooden building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523359/original/file-20230428-30-kdf4gf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carolyn Byant Donham stands with her sons outside the store where she first encountered Emmett Till.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/515021604/photo/mrs-roy-bryant-leaving-building-with-sons.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=jxt9tRKAN3XqOxRFUF8GovCOblOFyeY6Xw0_Z3PoVhE=">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A case that aged with Carolyn Bryant Donham</h2>
<p>The last <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/carolyn-bryant-donham-dead.html">20 years of Bryant Donham’s life</a> were characterized by the attempt of private citizens and law enforcement to bring her to justice for the part she played in Till’s kidnapping and murder.</p>
<p>When Bryant Donham was in her 80s and living with family in Raleigh, North Carolina, FBI investigators and federal prosecutors revisited her case and the potential for prosecuting her for Till’s kidnapping and death. One question was whether Bryant Donham recanted her previous testimony about Till’s advances and said that it was false.</p>
<p>A historian said in 2017 that Bryant Donham told him in a rare interview that the most egregious parts of the story she and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/carolyn-bryant-donham-dead.html">others told about Emmett Till were false</a>.</p>
<p>The Justice Department said in 2021, though, that it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-investigation/2021/12/06/8f5e8490-56d1-11ec-9a18-a506cf3aa31d_story.html">was unable to confirm</a> whether Bryant Donham actually went back on her previous testimony, and it closed the case. </p>
<p>Then, in 2022, a team of researchers – including two of Till’s relatives – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/29/emmett-till-warrant-carolyn-bryant-donham-family-arrest">discovered an unserved arrest warrant</a> for Bryant Donham in a courthouse basement. This led some legal experts to say that the 1955 document could support probable cause to prosecute Bryant Donham for her involvement in Till’s death. </p>
<p>Mississippi’s attorney general said in 2022 that the office <a href="https://apnews.com/article/arrests-mississippi-emmett-till-19176fe64ec8054188601d000ba569f2">did not plan to prosecute</a> Bryant Donham – though that didn’t stop activists from protesting outside her home that same year.</p>
<p>Recently unearthed documents also showed that <a href="https://www.mississippicir.org/perspective/carolyn-bryant-lied-about-emmett-till-did-author-tim-tyson-lie-too">Till did not put his hands</a> on her nor talk lewdly to her in the store. That was all fabricated as part of the defense’s strategy to argue that the lynching amounted to justifiable homicide. When the presiding judge, Curtis Swango, did not allow the jury to hear <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/carolyn-bryant-donham-dead.html">Bryant Donham’s testimony</a>, the defense pivoted to <a href="https://famous-trials.com/emmetttill/1763-nottills">the absurd claim that the body taken</a> from the Tallahatchie River wasn’t Till’s. </p>
<p>Over the past several decades, the Till case has continued to resonate, especially for a nation that still experiences the all-too-frequent and seemingly unprovoked deaths of young Black men. The Till family has had to live with an open wound for 68 years. As Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement,” has noted, that <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/emmett-tills-accuser-carolyn-bryant-donham-dies-along-with-any-last-chance-of-justice">wound won’t suddenly go away</a> with Bryant Donham’s passing.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/emmett-tills-life-matters-99923">article originally published on July 13, 2018</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204663/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Davis W. Houck 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>While Bryant Donham was never charged for her involvement in Till’s death, the Justice Department continued to investigate the case and consider the potential for an arrest as recently as 2021.Davis W. Houck, Professor, Florida State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2046152023-04-28T12:00:39Z2023-04-28T12:00:39ZHarry Belafonte: a singer and actor but an activist at heart<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523199/original/file-20230427-26-ld5n1q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/berlin-germany-february-12-actor-singer-71069023">Denis Macarenko/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Caribbean-American singer and actor Harry Belafonte has passed away from congestive heart failure at the age of 96. Although he was well known for songs like Day-O (The Banana Boat song) and Jump In The Line, which earned him the title “King of Calypso”, his music was a vehicle for much more. </p>
<p>Belafonte led a life of tireless activism and was present at the many peaks of 20th-century civil and human rights struggles across the globe. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SupportBlackTheatreLA/videos/572463653952801/">Reflecting on his stardom</a>, Belafonte said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My activism always existed. My art gave me the platform to do something about the activism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Born 1927 in New York, he spent some years in Jamaica before returning to the US to enrol in high school. He then had a short stint in the navy before pursuing a career in the arts. </p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/BUki-v-NvoE">Inspired by Paul Robeson</a>, another singer and actor and titanic figure in the history of the struggle for Black liberation, Belafonte became a singer and then an actor. His first big break was in Bright Road (1953) starring opposite Dorothy Dandridge. </p>
<p>Though he skyrocketed to success and was quickly vying for leading man roles with Sidney Poitier, Belafonte chose to step back from Hollywood stardom from 1959 to 1970. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/arts/music/harry-belafonte-dead.html">He recounted</a> that decade as an era of film that lagged far behind reality in terms of racial matters. Protests were erupting across the US and yet Black actors were still reduced to portraying hollow characters whose race was their main characteristic. </p>
<p>Director Elvis Mitchell stated that Belafonte’s deliberate retreat made him the “<a href="https://www.netflix.com/watch/81387240?trackId=14277281&tctx=-97%2C-97%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2CVideo%3A81387240%2CdetailsPagePlayButton">Muhammad Ali of the film world</a>” – resisting untold fame and fortune to avoid sacrificing his principles.</p>
<h2>Civil rights</h2>
<p>With acting on the backburner, Belafonte turned his attention towards agitating for social justice. He became an ardent activist standing alongside Martin Luther King and others to protest for social, political and economic equality in America.</p>
<p>Belafonte integrated himself into a generation of Black artists like Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Frederick O’Neal, who similarly committed themselves and their platforms to help publicise and elevate grassroots activism. He participated in organising the 1963 March on Washington and financially backed the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. </p>
<p>With such close connections to civil rights activism, Belafonte saw the ups, downs and tragedies of such work. At one point, Martin Luther King was perturbed and <a href="https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2017/01/12/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-i-fear-i-am-integrating-m/">confided in Belafonte</a>: “I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house.” </p>
<p>Soon after this revelation King was dead.</p>
<p>Enduring through the pain of losing a close friend and mentor, Belafonte remained dedicated to the cause. He not only supported the King family by covering <a href="https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1650872390153371649">babysitting fees</a>, but continued to support Black activism and expanded into international work. </p>
<p>Like many Black political activists, he spoke out against <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/magazine/ramaphosa-recalls-belafonte-role-in-fighting-apartheid-4214570">South African apartheid</a> and also used his industry connections to organise 1985’s charity single We Are The World. For this, he was lovingly celebrated by the musicians featured in a group recital of his hit song Day-O. This clip remains a beautiful reminder of the respect and admiration Belafonte cultivated among his peers.</p>
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<h2>A global outlook</h2>
<p>By the 2000s, although in his 70s, he remained stalwart in his efforts to support numerous campaigns for liberation across the world. </p>
<p>He lauded the socialist successes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. He also <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/harry-belafonte-calls-bush-terrorist-praises-chavez-in-venezuela/">denounced the neo-colonial efforts of leaders like George W. Bush</a>. </p>
<p>In the last decade, Belafonte continued to attend talks and events concerning progressive politics. In 2016, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFwE9Itzzes&ab_channel=DemocracyNow%21">spoke at an evening with Democracy Now!</a> where he stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When they started the purge against communism in this country and against the voice of those who saw hope in a design for socialist theory, and for the sharing of wealth, and for the equality of humankind, when we abandoned our vision and visuals on that topic … I think we sold out ourselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also continued to appear on screen. He featured in <a href="https://youtu.be/mHm6l8dZyyU">Spike Lee’s Black KKKlansman</a> in 2018 and <a href="https://www.netflix.com/watch/81387240?trackId=14277281&tctx=-97%2C-97%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2CVideo%3A81387240%2CdetailsPagePlayButton">Is That Black Enough For You?</a> in 2022. </p>
<p>Just two weeks before he died, Belafonte celebrated how he had been inspired by Paul Robeson at the <a href="https://twitter.com/RobesonHousePHL/status/1650904381993238545">125th anniversary of his birth</a>.</p>
<p>Time and again, Belafonte invoked the sentiments of the late Robeson stating that “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFwE9Itzzes&ab_channel=DemocracyNow%21">art is the radical voice of civilization</a>”. With his voice and his actions, Belafonte was led by his “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFwE9Itzzes&ab_channel=DemocracyNow%21">rebellious heart</a>” to influence and help shape the lives of many. His legacy and his message lives on in all of those who embrace their own rebel hearts and commit themselves to building a fairer, more just, and more equitable world for all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tionne Alliyah Parris 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>Known as the ‘King of Calypso’, Belafonte used his platform as an artist to elevate and support political activism.Tionne Alliyah Parris, PhD Candidate, History, University of HertfordshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045002023-04-26T12:35:53Z2023-04-26T12:35:53ZHarry Belafonte leveraged stardom for social change, his powerful voice always singing a song for justice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522980/original/file-20230426-18-t6jgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C47%2C3765%2C2616&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harry Belafonte died at the age of 96.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/2011SundanceFilmFestivalPremiereofSingYourSong/32d0aee1f1544348892eac7fb4427f08/photo?Query=Belafonte&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=756&currentItemNo=565">AP Photo/Chris Pizzello</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In May 1963, as <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/birmingham-campaign">civil rights demonstrations rocked the city of Birmingham, Alabama</a>, Harry Belafonte was at a cocktail party in Manhattan, scolding the then-attorney general of the United States. </p>
<p>“You may think you’re doing enough,” he recalled telling <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy">Robert F. Kennedy</a>, “but you don’t live with us, you don’t even visit our pain.”</p>
<p>Belafonte had many frank and heated conversations with Kennedy. In fact, the singer, actor and activist was on intimate terms with many pivotal figures of the civil rights era.</p>
<p>He was a confidant and adviser to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/">Martin Luther King Jr</a> and allied with <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/toure-ahmed-sekou-1922-1984/">Ahmed Sékou Touré</a>, the president of Guinea. He funded the grassroots activists of the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a> (SNCC) as it battled Jim Crow, and he brought a delegation of Hollywood stars to the March on Washington. Along with his best friend and sometimes-rival, actor Sidney Poitier, Belafonte delivered funds to civil rights volunteers in Greenwood, Mississippi, <a href="https://blavity.com/how-sidney-poitier-and-harry-belafonte-escaped-the-kkk-to-help-save-freedom-summer?category1=news&category2=politics">while the Ku Klux Klan watched their every move</a>. </p>
<p>Belafonte, who <a href="https://apnews.com/article/harry-belafonte-dead-2d8cbdf0043e4383a6c4a85c862cdbe1">died on April 25, 2023, at the age of 96</a>, was a unique figure in the history of the Black freedom struggle in the U.S. No other entertainer immersed themselves so deeply in the Civil Rights Movement; no other activist occupied a niche at so many levels of American politics. If he was a powerful voice for justice, it was because he leveraged his celebrity.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A black man dressed in a military uniform stands next to a woman with her hand on her hip." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in the 1954 film ‘Carmen Jones.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actors-dorothy-dandridge-and-harry-belafonte-in-a-publicity-news-photo/686940153?adppopup=true">Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A remarkable career</h2>
<p>On stage, Belafonte was something to behold, a beacon of charisma. Clad in body-hugging shirts with his chest bare, drawing his audience’s eyes to the looping metal rings at the belt of his tight silk pants, he oozed with seduction. Women swooned. </p>
<p>And he was wildly successful. In 1957, Belafonte sold more records than Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. His repertoire resembled neither Sinatra’s classic pop nor Presley’s up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll. </p>
<p>The son of West Indian/Carribean immigrants, Belafonte inspired a short-lived craze for calypso music thanks to hits such as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5dpBWlRANE">Day O</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_mK1MyDntc">Jamaica Farewell</a>,” and he adapted ethnic folk music for popular consumption – his mainstays included “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE8rl5UwTP8">Hava Nagila</a>,” the Jewish celebration song. </p>
<p>He also starred in Hollywood films such as “<a href="https://prod-www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/639/bright-road#overview">Bright Road</a>” (1953) and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046828/">Carmen Jones</a>” (1954). “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050549/">Island in the Sun</a>,” released in 1957, caused a furor. Though Belafonte never kisses his white co-star, Joan Fontaine, on screen, the film explores the theme of interracial romance. The Southern censors banned it. </p>
<p>Belafonte danced around the taboos of race and sex. This exceptionally handsome Black man was charming primarily white audiences, though his light skin color and facial features softened that threat. As a performer, he nudged at racial boundaries without jabbing through them. </p>
<p>“Harry Belafonte stands at the peak of one of the remarkable careers in U.S, entertainment,” proclaimed <a href="https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19590302,00.html">Time magazine in a 1959 cover feature</a>. He had come a long way from a childhood split between Harlem and Jamaica, from stints in the Navy and as a struggling actor. By then, he was earning about US$750,000 a year, with a lucrative residency at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. </p>
<h2>Civil rights activism</h2>
<p>That stardom connected Belafonte to Martin Luther King, Jr. </p>
<p>The civil rights leader called him in 1956 during the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott">Montgomery Bus Boycott</a>. Soon Belafonte was part of the movement itself. Following King, he embraced nonviolence. As their friendship strengthened, Belafonte realized the crosses that King bore: the burden of leadership, the fear of death.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two black men dressed in business suits are shaking hands and smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King Jr. shaking hands on Aug. 21, 1964, at JFK International Airport in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-harry-belafonte-shakes-hands-with-us-clergyman-and-news-photo/494798200?adppopup=true">AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Belafonte bought a 21-room apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan. “Martin would come to think of it as his home away from home, staying with us on many of his New York trips,” he recalled in his memoir, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/10860/my-song-by-harry-belafonte-with-michael-shnayerson/">My Song</a>.” </p>
<p>“On occasion, he brought with him two or three of his closest advisers, and by the mid-sixties, the apartment was one of the movement’s headquarters.” It was a place to both plan strategy and blow off steam, laughing at stories and sipping Harveys Bristol Cream.</p>
<p>Ironically, for such a public figure, much of Belafonte’s work was in private. </p>
<p>In the 1960s, he served as an essential link between King and the SNCC. He not only bankrolled the young militant activists, but he also listened to their concerns, respected their organizing efforts and communicated their perspectives to influential power brokers.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A black man is smiling as he looks into the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘King of Calypso’ shortly before his 50th birthday in 1976.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/theres-good-news-as-usual-from-the-okeefe-centre-box-office-news-photo/502267825?adppopup=true">Erin Combs/Toronto Star via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That responsibility to speak for the movement led Belafonte to chide Bobby Kennedy in May 1963. Throughout the early 1960s, he expressed frustration with the attorney general’s detachment from the activists’ struggle. But over time, he came to appreciate Kennedy’s evolution, as he became a U.S. senator and emerged as a voice for the poor, for racial minorities, for “The Other America.”</p>
<p>Famously, in February 1968, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/08/910650652/the-sit-in-revisits-a-landmark-week-with-harry-belafonte-as-tonight-show-host">Belafonte hosted “The Tonight Show” for a week</a>, using his platform to illuminate Black perspectives and spotlight social injustice. His guests included King, who was about to launch his Poor People’s Campaign, and Kennedy, whom Belafonte urged to start a presidential campaign. </p>
<p>Within months, both men were assassinated.</p>
<p>For more than a half-century, Belafonte carried on the legacy of the 1960s, often taking <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-10-23-0210230046-story.html">provocative positions</a> from the far-left edge of the political spectrum. Like few others, he blended the worlds of culture and politics, singing a song of justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aram Goudsouzian 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>Singer, actor and activist died on April 25 at the age of 96. His legacy spans stage, screen and political activism.Aram Goudsouzian, Bizot Family Professor of History, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029072023-04-21T12:42:02Z2023-04-21T12:42:02ZBlack students in Washington state played key role in the Civil Rights Movement, new book states<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522174/original/file-20230420-29-ne9bdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C102%2C6692%2C4444&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protest led by the Black Student Union at the University of Washington at Seattle, 1968. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://depts.washington.edu/labpics/zenPhoto/uw_bsu/pitre/photo12.jpg">Emile Pitre Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>When it comes to civil rights history, the focus is often on the marches, boycotts, sit-ins and other protests that took place in the South. In “<a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479810406/washington-state-rising/">Washington State Rising</a>,” Marc Arsell Robinson, assistant professor of African American history at California State University, San Bernardino, takes a look at the civil rights protests that occurred in a lesser-examined region of the United States: the Pacific Northwest. The following Q&A is about what Robinson found for his forthcoming book, which is set to be published in August 2023.</em></p>
<h2>Why write a book on Black student activism in the Pacific Northwest?</h2>
<p>As an African American born and raised in Seattle, I was curious to learn if and how my hometown was connected to the protests of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. I was pleased to learn the city, and region, was deeply connected to these larger movements. I felt a responsibility to share what I had learned. </p>
<p>Also, studies of Black protests from the 1960s tend to focus on the South. And even studies of civil rights events and groups outside the South position the Pacific Northwest as marginal. This pattern holds true of research on 1960s Black student activism, such as the studies of nationwide protest by <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-campus-movement-black-students-and-the-racial-reconstitution-of-higher-education-1965-1972/oclc/744287241">Ibram X. Kendi</a> and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520282186/the-black-revolution-on-campus">Matha Biondi</a>. </p>
<p>My book shines light on Black Power’s reach beyond major cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It shows Black Power’s impact on higher education, and it details how some Black student activists used community organizing and interracial alliances to create change.</p>
<h2>What was one of your most interesting discoveries?</h2>
<p>The Black Student Union, or BSU, at the University of Washington helped connect the Black Panther Party to Seattle. The group formed in fall 1967, and later several of its members helped co-found the Seattle Panthers in April 1968. This includes Aaron Dixon, who <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/421-my-people-are-rising">confirms in his memoir</a> that he was in the Black Student Union at UW before being appointed by Bobby Seale as Captain, or leader, of the Seattle Panthers.</p>
<p>Moreover, as detailed in “Washington State Rising,” Dixon and other Seattle activists were introduced to the Panthers through BSU activities, including a trip to Oakland and San Francisco in April 1968 for a Black political conference, and the BSU’s network of local campus chapters and allied groups.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A book cover featuring a black and white photo of two Black men and one Black woman sitting at a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521726/original/file-20230418-20-tb6yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521726/original/file-20230418-20-tb6yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521726/original/file-20230418-20-tb6yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521726/original/file-20230418-20-tb6yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521726/original/file-20230418-20-tb6yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521726/original/file-20230418-20-tb6yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521726/original/file-20230418-20-tb6yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Washington State Rising’ tells the little-known story of the civil rights struggle in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nyupress.org/9781479810406/washington-state-rising/">Marc Arsell Robinson/NYU Press</a></span>
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<h2>What is the legacy of the Black Student Union in Washington state?</h2>
<p>Examples of the Black Student Union’s legacy are the Black studies courses and programs that were established in the 1960s. Prior to this, very few, if any, classes or assigned materials included the perspectives and experiences of Black people. Today, students and faculty continue to study Black history, even if names of programs or departments have changed to <a href="https://theconversation.com/california-vetoed-ethnic-studies-requirements-for-public-high-school-students-but-the-movement-grows-148486">ethnic studies and so forth</a>.</p>
<p>Similarly, ongoing efforts to recruit and retain diverse students, faculty and staff are part of the Black Student Union’s legacy. The most prominent example is the <a href="https://www.washington.edu/omad/">Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity</a>, known as OMAD, at UW. This initiative was a direct outcome of the Black Student Union’s <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/BSU_beginnings.htm">1968 sit-in</a> of the UW president’s office and negotiations with campus officials. The BSU was protesting UW’s small population of nonwhite students and faculty, along with related concerns. Today, the OMAD continues to offer African American and other minority students academic advising, cultural support, tutoring, leadership development and more.</p>
<h2>What does Black student activism in Washington state look like today?</h2>
<p>Black Student Unions are active at numerous colleges and universities in Washington, including the two schools featured in my book, the University of Washington and <a href="https://dailyevergreen.com/tag/black-student-union/">Washington State University</a>.</p>
<p>Like their 1960s counterparts, progressive Black students today continue to push their institutions to create, maintain and expand initiatives to graduate Black students, hire Black faculty and fund Black studies and related curricula.</p>
<p>In recent years, Black students across the Pacific Northwest have <a href="https://www.dailyuw.com/news/keep-the-pressure-on-uw-blm-continues-to-protest-for-unmet-demands/article_d1e7828e-ba7f-11ea-a0e5-9735552dd63b.html">organized in support of Black Lives Matter</a> and against the killings of unarmed Black people, often using social media as a tool for communication and public education. Overall, today’s Black student politics and struggles for greater equity continue the legacy of the Black Student Unions of the 1960s.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202907/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Arsell Robinson received the 2022 Mellon Emerging Faculty Award. He was also previously a student and employee of the University of Washington and Washington State University.</span></em></p>Washington isn’t a state that typically comes to mind in discussions about student-led protests from the Civil Rights Movement. A Black history professor seeks to change that with a new book.Marc Arsell Robinson, Assistant Professor of History, California State University, San BernardinoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2036262023-04-20T12:40:42Z2023-04-20T12:40:42ZSupreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas moves to reverse the legacy of his predecessor, Thurgood Marshall<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521925/original/file-20230419-28-6kaum8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C801%2C609&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thurgood Marshall, left, had a very different view of the purpose of the Supreme Court than his successor, Clarence Thomas.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">U.S. Supreme Court via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As public attention focuses on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ close <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow">personal and financial relationship</a> with a politically active conservative billionaire, the scrutiny is overlooking a key role Thomas has played for nearly three decades on the nation’s highest court.</p>
<p>Thomas’ predecessor on the court, Thurgood Marshall, was a <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/thurgood_marshall">civil rights lawyer before becoming a justice</a>. In 1991, in his final opinion before retiring after a quarter century on the court, Marshall warned that his fellow justices’ growing appetite to revisit – and reverse – prior decisions would ultimately “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/501/808/#tab-opinion-1958871">squander the authority and legitimacy</a> of this Court as a protector of the powerless.” </p>
<p>His prediction has been quoted by Supreme Court decisions since, including a three-justice dissent from the June 2022 <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/597/19-1392/">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a> ruling that declared there was no constitutional right to reproductive choice and overturned Roe v. Wade.</p>
<p>In his concurrence with the majority decision in that case, Thomas declared his opposition to Marshall’s principle, lamenting that the court had not done more to pare back its prior work. “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/597/19-1392/">In future cases</a>, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” Thomas wrote – directly implicating Americans’ rights to sexual privacy and same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>Throughout Thomas’ tenure he has pushed the Supreme Court to revisit prior decisions that embraced robust rights for society’s most vulnerable, and to <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35050">replace Marshall’s vision</a> with one more amenable to the powerful than the powerless. And in writing my book tracing the lives and work of both justices, I have seen the fruits of this effort multiply over the past decade.</p>
<h2>A shield for those in need</h2>
<p>Few phrases could so aptly capture Thurgood Marshall’s vision of the court’s work as “protector of the powerless.” And few, if any, Americans have done as much to make that vision a reality. </p>
<p>Marshall’s work to advance Black citizenship is <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/thurgood_marshall">well known</a>, but he also fought for expanded rights for <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/417/188/">women</a> and the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/471/">indigent</a>, the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1985/84-6263">accused</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1973/72-1465">convicted</a>, <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/432/63/">adherents to marginalized religions</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/510">those with unpopular viewpoints</a>.</p>
<p>At the root of Marshall’s jurisprudence was a hope that while law could be a powerful tool of oppression, it might also be a shield. </p>
<p>As he wrote in that final dissent, in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/501/808/#tab-opinion-1958871">Payne v. Tennessee</a>, enforcement of constitutional rights “frequently requires this Court to rein in the forces of democratic politics,” to protect the powerless from the tyranny of the majority.</p>
<p>While his Payne dissent criticized the court for reversing itself, Marshall was no stranger to calling for reconsideration of established law. Marshall’s signature accomplishment as a lawyer in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> was to convince the court to overturn the doctrine of separate but equal that had emerged after the 1896 <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v. Ferguson</a> decision. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three men in suits stand in front of the Supreme Court building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521967/original/file-20230419-16-45j37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&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">The three attorneys who won Brown v. Board of Education stand outside the Supreme Court after their victory: from left, George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall and James Nabrit Jr.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-dc-attorneys-who-argued-the-case-against-news-photo/517387902">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>As a justice, Marshall argued passionately and repeatedly that the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/69-5030">death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment</a>’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, leading to a brief period where it was considered unconstitutional.</p>
<p>The distinction between Marshall and Thomas is not really about whether the court should reverse past decisions but simply which ones. </p>
<p>While Marshall willed the court to become a “protector of the powerless,” Thomas has, I believe, argued not only to scale that vision back, but to advance the interests of the powerful.</p>
<h2>Power as a key factor</h2>
<p>While last summer’s abortion decision is an obvious example, Thomas has led the court’s assault on precedent in other areas as well. </p>
<p>For example, years before the court invalidated portions of the Voting Rights Act in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">Shelby County v. Holder</a>, Thomas had <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-322.ZS.html">argued</a> that the lack of modern voting discrimination made the act unnecessary. </p>
<p>Similarly, recent decisions have followed Thomas’ <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/17-1717">lead</a> in weakening the vitality of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which fortifies the separation between church and state. </p>
<p>Thomas has even <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/586/17-1026/#tab-opinion-4057622">called</a> for the court to reconsider its ruling in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/372/335/">Gideon v. Wainwright</a>, which established a constitutional right to a lawyer for indigent criminal defendants. </p>
<p>In each case, it is the powerless who stand to be most significantly affected. </p>
<p>Those in need of constitutional protection in Thomas’ view are more likely to be <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-107">property owners</a>, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-1674">corporations making campaign contributions</a> or <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-843">gun owners</a>.</p>
<h2>On affirmative action</h2>
<p>Perhaps no topic better captures the distinction between the two men’s views than affirmative action, which the court is considering in a pair of cases from <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/20-1199">Harvard</a> and the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/21-707">University of North Carolina</a> to be decided this term.</p>
<p>The distrust of government that fuels many of Thomas’ perspectives is never more personal than in cases about the use of race in college admissions. He has railed against affirmative action, saying it brands Black people in prominent positions with a “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/#tab-opinion-1961291">stigma</a>” about “whether their skin color played a part in their advancement.”</p>
<p>Indeed, Thomas claims his position requiring colorblindness is a <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/#tab-opinion-1961291">better path toward full Black citizenship</a>. He has made that claim even in situations where he knew it would result in more limited access to opportunities for Black students in the short term.</p>
<p>Marshall always looked at the issue from a different perspective, arguing that access to opportunities was essential not only for the Black students affected but for the nation at large. </p>
<p>“If we are ever to become a fully integrated society, one in which the color of a person’s skin will not determine the opportunities available to him or her,” Marshall wrote in 1977, “<a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/438/265/#tab-opinion-1952757">we must be willing to take steps to open those doors</a>.”</p>
<p>It was access for the powerless that Marshall thought ought drive the thinking of the court.</p>
<p>But this summer, the court may finally embrace a different vision on affirmative action, coming again to a position Thomas has been advocating for decades. </p>
<p>That turn would be yet another reversal squandering Marshall’s vision of the court.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Kiel 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>Throughout Thomas’ tenure on the court, he has pushed the Supreme Court to replace Marshall’s vision with one more amenable to the powerful than the powerless.Daniel Kiel, FedEx Professor of Law; Author of The Transition: Interpreting Justice from Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1972622023-03-08T13:39:30Z2023-03-08T13:39:30ZThe women who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained a movement for social change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512749/original/file-20230228-784-bty4l6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C1020%2C662&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women listen during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-participants-in-the-march-on-washington-some-with-news-photo/1350105902?phrase=%22march%20on%20washington%22&adppopup=true">Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Historian <a href="https://morehouse.edu/vicki-crawford/">Vicki Crawford</a> was one of the first scholars to focus on women’s roles in the civil rights movement. Her 1993 book, “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement-trailblazers-and-torchbearers-1941-1965/oclc/21035376">Trailblazers and Torchbearers</a>,” dives into the stories of female leaders whose legacies have often been overshadowed.</em></p>
<p><em>Today she is the director of the Morehouse College <a href="https://morehouse.edu/life/campus/martin-luther-king-jr-collection/">Martin Luther King Jr. Collection</a>, where she oversees the archive of his sermons, speeches, writings and other materials. Here, she explains the contributions of women who influenced King and helped to fuel some of the most significant campaigns of the civil rights era, but whose contributions are not nearly as well known.</em> </p>
<h2>An activist in her own right</h2>
<p>Coretta Scott King is often remembered as a devoted wife and mother, yet she was also a committed activist in her own right. She was deeply involved with social justice causes before she met and married Martin Luther King Jr., and long after his death.</p>
<p>Scott King served with civil rights groups throughout her time as a student at Antioch College and the New England Conservatory of Music. Shortly after she and King married in 1953, the couple returned to the South, where they lent their support to local and regional organizations such as the NAACP and the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/rosa-parks-in-her-own-words/about-this-exhibition/the-bus-boycott/the-montgomery-improvement-association/">Montgomery Improvement Association</a>. </p>
<p>They also supported the Women’s Political Council, an organization founded by female African American professors at Alabama State University that facilitated voter education and registration, and also protested discrimination on city buses. These local leadership efforts paved the way for widespread support of <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-was-rosa-parks-and-what-did-she-do-in-the-fight-for-racial-equality-51539">Rosa Parks’ resistance</a> to segregation on public busing. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a light-colored suit and a woman in short-sleeved dress look at a piece of paper together in a study." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512750/original/file-20230228-18-oo5tk6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King work in his office in Atlanta in July 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-baptist-minister-and-activist-martin-luther-king-news-photo/1470078983?phrase=coretta%20scott%20king&adppopup=true">TPLP/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following her husband’s assassination in 1968, Scott King devoted her life to institutionalizing his philosophy and practice of nonviolence. She established <a href="https://timeline.thekingcenter.org/dear-coretta/">the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change</a>, led a march of sanitation workers in Memphis and joined efforts to organize <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/start-campaign#:%7E:text=On%20May%2012%2C%201968%2C%20two,Organization%20was%20the%20principal%20organizer.">the Poor People’s Campaign</a>. A longtime advocate of workers rights, she also supported a 1969 <a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/charleston_hospital_workers_mo/coretta_scott_king_visits_char">hospital workers’ strike</a> in South Carolina, delivering stirring speeches against the treatment of African American staff.</p>
<p>Scott King’s commitment to nonviolence went beyond civil rights at home. During the 1960s, she became involved in peace and anti-war efforts such as <a href="https://digitalcollections.briscoecenter.org/item/451490">the Women’s Strike for Peace</a> and opposed the escalating war in Vietnam. By the 1980s, she had <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-06-27-mn-10768-story.html">joined protests</a> against South African apartheid, and before her death in 2006, she spoke out <a href="https://www.lambdalegal.org/news/il_19980305_prominent-chicagoans-join-coretta-king-for-lambda-celebration">in favor of LGBT rights</a> – capping a lifetime of activism against injustice and inequalities.</p>
<h2>Women and the March</h2>
<p>While Scott King’s support and ideas were particularly influential, many other women played essential roles in the success of the civil rights movement.</p>
<p>Take the most iconic moment of the civil rights struggle, in many Americans’ minds: the Aug. 28, 1963, <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>, at which King delivered his landmark “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UV1fs8lAbg">I Have a Dream</a>” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.</p>
<p>60 years after the march, it is critical to recognize <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/freedom-black-women-speak-march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">the activism of women</a> from all walks of life who helped to strategize and organize one of the country’s most massive <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/largest-marches-us-history-2017-1#the-march-on-washington-for-jobs-and-freedom-was-to-protest-the-systemic-disenfranchisement-of-black-americans-and-happened-on-august-28-1963-1">political demonstrations</a> of the 20th century. Yet historical accounts overwhelmingly highlight the march’s male leadership. With the exception of <a href="https://facingtoday.facinghistory.org/celebrating-daisy-bates-black-female-orator-at-the-march-on-washington">Daisy Bates</a>, an activist who read a short tribute, no women were invited to deliver formal speeches.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows several formally dressed women putting money in a church collection plate." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513015/original/file-20230301-16-wu85ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&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">Members of Carmel Presbyterian Church donating money for the March on Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-congregation-of-carmel-presbyterian-church-news-photo/50701804?phrase=%22carmel%20presbyterian%20church%22&adppopup=true">Carl Iwasaki/The Chronicle Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Women were among the key organizers of the march, however, and helped recruit thousands of participants. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/dorothy-i-height.htm">Dorothy Height</a>, president of the National Council of Negro Women, was often the lone woman at the table of leaders representing national organizations. <a href="https://www.hamline.edu/about/offices-services/hedgeman-center/namesake">Anna Arnold Hedgeman</a>, who also served on the planning committee, was another strong advocate for labor issues, anti-poverty efforts and women’s rights.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in an evening dress with a corsage stands next to a man in a suit, both smiling and chatting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513017/original/file-20230301-1837-8euyef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&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">Dorothy Height stands with Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-dorothy-i-height-civil-rights-activist-and-news-photo/469356243?phrase=dorothy%20height&adppopup=true">Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Photographs of the march show women attended in large numbers, yet few historical accounts adequately credit women for their leadership and support. Civil rights activist, lawyer and Episcopalian priest <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-episcopal-saint-whose-journey-for-social-justice-took-many-forms-from-sit-ins-to-priesthood-179449">Pauli Murray</a>, among others, called for a gathering of women <a href="https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1347">to address this</a> and other instances of discrimination a few days later.</p>
<h2>Hidden in plain view</h2>
<p>African American women <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement-trailblazers-and-torchbearers-1941-1965/oclc/21035376">led and served</a> in all the major campaigns, working as field secretaries, attorneys, plaintiffs, organizers and educators, to name just a few roles. So why did early historical accounts of the movement neglect their stories?</p>
<p>There were women propelling national civil rights organizations and among King’s closest advisers. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/septimapoinsetteclark.htm">Septima Clark</a>, for example, was a seasoned educator whose strong organizing skills played a consequential role in voter registration, literacy training and citizenship education. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/obituaries/dorothy-cotton-rights-champion-and-close-aide-to-king-dies-at-88.html">Dorothy Cotton</a> was a member of the inner circle of <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/southern-christian-leadership-conference-sclc">the Southern Christian Leadership Conference</a>, of which King was president, and was involved in literacy training and teaching nonviolent resistance.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man crouching on the pavement cradles an injured woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513254/original/file-20230302-17-bpnft1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&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">A civil rights marcher exposed to tear gas holds an unconscious Amelia Boynton Robinson after mounted police officers attacked marchers in Selma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civil-rights-marcher-suffering-from-exposure-to-tear-gas-news-photo/514682280?phrase=%22amelia%20robinson%22&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Yet women’s organizing during the 1950s and 1960s is most evident at local and regional levels, particularly in some of the most perilous communities across the deep South. Since the 1930s, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/25/fight-to-vote-newsletter-voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=But%20until%20recently%2C%20one%20of,in%20the%20now%20historic%20city.">Amelia Boynton Robinson</a> of Dallas County, Alabama, and her family had been fighting for voting rights, laying the groundwork for the struggle to end voter suppression that continues to the present. She was also key in planning the 50-mile <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgomery-march">Selma-to-Montgomery march</a> in 1965. Images of the violence that marchers endured – particularly on the day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday – <a href="https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/Civil-Rights/VRA-Documentary/#:%7E:text=On%20March%207%2C%201965%2C%20peaceful,landmark%201965%20Voting%20Rights%20Act.">shocked the nation</a> and eventually contributed to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sitting woman with gray hair in a gold-colored dress and jewelry." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513256/original/file-20230302-29-k9yz0h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&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">Civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson attends an awards ceremony in New York in 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/amelia-boynton-attends-the-2011-national-academy-of-news-photo/109454610?phrase=%22amelia%20robinson%22&adppopup=true">Marc Bryan-Brown/WireImage via Getty News</a></span>
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<p>Or take Mississippi, where there would not have been a sustained movement without women’s activism. Some names have become well known, like <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-hamer/">Fannie Lou Hamer</a>, but others deserve to be. </p>
<p>Two rural activists, Victoria Gray and Annie Devine, joined Hamer as representatives to the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/alliances-relationships/mfdp/">Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party</a>, a parallel political party that challenged the state’s all-white representatives at the 1964 Democratic Convention. A year later, the three women represented the party <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/mfdp-congressional-challenge/">in a challenge</a> to block the state’s congressmen from taking their seats, given ongoing disenfranchisement of Black voters. Though the congressional challenge failed, the activism was a symbolic victory, serving note to the nation that Black Mississippians were no longer willing to accept centuries-old oppression.</p>
<p>Many African American women were out-front organizers for civil rights. But it is no less important to remember those who assumed less visible, but indispensable, roles behind the scenes, sustaining the movement over time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vicki Crawford 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>From family to grassroots activists, these are some of the women who shaped MLK’s vision and campaigns.Vicki Crawford, Professor of Africana Studies, Morehouse CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1992522023-02-10T13:51:17Z2023-02-10T13:51:17ZHow video evidence is presented in court can hold sway in cases like the beating death of Tyre Nichols<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509006/original/file-20230208-15-izfcn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C15%2C5081%2C2858&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Video footage of the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols may be key to any criminal trial.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CongressPoliceReform/7927280ae6504bbf8ba431ff3332576c/photo?Query=footage%20Tyre%20Nichols&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=6&currentItemNo=0">City of Memphis via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Body camera and surveillance footage depicting the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/07/us/memphis-officers-tyre-nichols.html">Jan. 7, 2023, fatal beating of Tyre Nichols</a> was key in raising national awareness and prompting protests for police reform. It may now play a crucial part in any prosecution of those accused in his death.</p>
<p>Five Memphis police officers have been <a href="https://www.actionnews5.com/2023/01/27/court-date-set-5-former-mpd-officers-charged-with-murder-tyre-nichols/">charged with murder</a> and are <a href="https://www.actionnews5.com/2023/01/27/court-date-set-5-former-mpd-officers-charged-with-murder-tyre-nichols/">set to appear in court</a> on Feb. 17. Additionally, the U.S. Justice Department has opened <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtn/pr/statement-united-states-attorney-kevin-g-ritz">a civil rights investigation</a> into Nichols’ death. </p>
<p>For over a decade, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542531/seeing-human-rights/">I have studied</a> how video evidence has helped civil rights and human rights claims get recognition and restitution in the U.S. and around the world. As a <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/people/media-studies/sandra-ristovska">media scholar</a>, I am especially interested in understanding the power and limitation of video evidence inside the courtroom, especially as video is now estimated to form a part of <a href="https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/final-video-evidence-primer-for-prosecutors.pdf">four in every five criminal cases</a>. </p>
<p>I have found that video does not provide a unified, objective window onto the truth. Rather, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-42392-001?doi=1">jurors may perceive the depicted events differently</a> – based, among other factors, on how the video is presented in court. </p>
<h2>How video’s presentation can influence perception</h2>
<p>Video can turn its viewers into witnesses, giving them the impression that they are transported directly to the event in question. Even judges may believe that the opportunity to see a video is equivalent to those in court seeing the real event. In the words of one district judge, it is as if the court had “<a href="https://casetext.com/case/mcdowell-v-sherrer">witnessed with its own eyes</a>.” Yet a growing body of <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/2869">interdisciplinary research</a> has shown that there are many influences on how people perceive events recorded on video. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1603865113">The speed at which video is played in court</a>, for example, can affect people’s judgments. Videos played in slow motion, compared with normal speed, result in greater judgment of the intention of the person in the depicted action. Sports replays are an easy way to understand this point – slowing down events can make a foul in soccer or football seem more egregious. </p>
<p>Additionally, even the type of video people see can change their perception of what it shows. Across <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805928116">eight different experiments</a>, viewers of body camera footage were less likely to judge the police officer as having acted intentionally than those who watched the same incident captured on a dashboard camera.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man's finger pressing a button on a device placed on a blue police uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509033/original/file-20230208-29-j7xrit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&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 police officer starting a body camera recording.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/west-valley-city-patrol-officer-gatrell-starts-a-body-news-photo/464977016?phrase=body%20camera%20police&adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The variations in the perception of intent were driven, in part, by the distinctive camera perspective. A body camera records from the police officer’s point of view, so it is unable to show the officer. On the other hand, a dashboard camera is mounted on a police car, thus it can show the officer’s actions from a wider angle and not necessarily from their viewpoint. </p>
<h2>Confirmation bias</h2>
<p>The discrepancies in perception and the judgments that ensue from the type and presentation of video are significant: They can be highly consequential in a criminal court trial where intent needs to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. </p>
<p>Furthermore, these cognitive biases may be particularly pernicious to people of color within <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12355">a legal system that already discriminates against them</a>. The perspective of body cameras, for example, may worsen racial biases in viewers of videos depicting police use of force. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab002">A study</a> shows that white viewers perceived dark-skinned civilians more negatively than light-skinned individuals when the body camera made them the subject of primary focus. </p>
<p>A common assumption is that repeated viewing can assist people to focus on information they may have missed on the first viewing, seemingly helping them better evaluate the depicted event. During trial, jurors indeed have multiple opportunities to see the same video. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23743603.2022.2026214">an eye-tracking study</a> demonstrates how people engage in visual confirmation bias: Their eyes follow a very similar pattern of visual attention, making them overconfident about their initial perception of the video in question. In other words, multiple viewing opportunities are ultimately unlikely to reduce biases that may already exist. </p>
<p>The proliferation of video is therefore challenging the existing legal practices regarding its presentation and use in court. </p>
<h2>Equal and fair justice in an age of video</h2>
<p><a href="https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/final-video-evidence-primer-for-prosecutors.pdf">The Bureau of Justice Assistance</a> at the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that video now appears in about 80% of criminal cases. Yet U.S. courts, from state and federal all the way to the Supreme Court, lack clear guidelines on how video can be used and presented as evidence. </p>
<p>As a result, the U.S. legal system provides substantial discretion in evaluating video evidence by ignoring <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-38574-001">a range of biases</a> that may shape visual perception and judgment in court. </p>
<p>The footage of Tyre Nichols is yet another reminder that video can help people bear witness to traumatic events. However, the way video is presented in court can greatly influence jurors’ perceptions. </p>
<p>As more and more encounters with police officers that are proving deadly are making their way into criminal and civil courts, I believe, the legal system needs mechanisms that can ensure consistency and fairness in the presentation and evaluation of video as evidence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandra Ristovska is the recipient of a Mellon/ACLS Scholars & Society Fellowship (2021-2023). For her work on video evidence, she also received a Research and Innovation Office (RIO) Seed Grant from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2020-2021. </span></em></p>Jurors can perceive events in a video in different ways – one of which depends on how the evidence is presented in court, a media scholar explains.Sandra Ristovska, Assistant Professor in Media Studies, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed 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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<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/1972032023-01-10T17:15:46Z2023-01-10T17:15:46ZRichard Price: how one of the 18th century’s most influential thinkers was forgotten<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503384/original/file-20230106-23-db9yxn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C1914%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Richard Price reading a letter dated 1784 from his friend, Benjamin Franklin.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Benjamin West, National Library of Wales & Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to the eulogies and <a href="https://archive.org/details/sim_gentlemans-magazine_1791-04_61_4/page/388/mode/2up?q=price">obituaries</a> written at the time of his death in 1791, <a href="https://richardpricesociety.org.uk/">Richard Price’s</a> name would be remembered alongside figures such as Benjamin Franklin, John Locke, George Washington and Thomas Paine. </p>
<p>Three hundred years on from his birth in the village of Llangeinor, near Bridgend in south Wales, why has he therefore been lost from our popular memory? </p>
<p>After all, here was a polymath whose lasting contributions ranged across a number of disciplines, including moral philosophy, <a href="https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00638.x">mathematics</a> and theology. Moreover, Price’s contribution as a public intellectual made a huge impact, not least in international politics. </p>
<p>A useful starting point are the parallels with his friend <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/oct/05/original-suffragette-mary-wollstonecraft?CMP=share_btn_link">Mary Wollstonecraft</a>. She was a philosopher, a women’s rights advocate and the mother of <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/mary-shelley">Mary Shelley</a>. </p>
<p>Wollstonecraft was both inspired by Price and indebted to him. Indeed, her most influential texts are directly linked to Price and the pamphlet war known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_Controversy">Revolution controversy</a>. </p>
<p>In these texts, influential thinkers discussed the political issues arising from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution">French Revolution</a>. It has subsequently been recognised as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26213839">formative debate in terms of modern political ideas. </a></p>
<p>It was Price who sparked the controversy with a sermon in 1789 entitled <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Discourse_on_the_Love_of_Our_Country/92QNAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">A Discourse on the Love of Our Country</a>, in which he supported the opening events of the revolution in France. </p>
<p>He declared it to be a continuation of the spreading of enlightened values and ideas introduced by the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/revolution/">Glorious Revolution of 1688</a> in England. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XHjtIO0ZFs4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Richard Price’s sermon to the Revolution Society in 1789.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This provoked a response from the philosopher and Anglo-Irish Whig MP <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edmund-Burke-British-philosopher-and-statesman">Edmund Burke</a>, with his famous text, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/reflections-on-the-revolution-in-france-by-edmund-burke">Reflections on the Revolution in France</a>. </p>
<p>This is regarded as a formative text of modern conservative thought. It defended the importance of the traditional institutions of state and society while warning of the excesses of revolution. </p>
<p>In response, Wollstonecraft published <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/wollstonecraft-a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-men">A Vindication of the Rights of Men</a> in 1790. It was both a critique of Burke and a defence of Price, who died a year later. </p>
<p>Then in 1792, she wrote her profoundly influential <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/mary-wollstonecraft-a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman">A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</a>, explicitly extending dissenting ideals to women, with a searing social critique. </p>
<p>Both Price and Wollstonecraft would subsequently be written out of history. </p>
<p>Price’s biographer, <a href="https://www.uwp.co.uk/author/Paul-Frame-663/">Paul Frame</a>, suggests this can be partly accounted for by events in France and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reign-of-Terror">violent turn to terror during the French Revolution</a>. </p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://www.uwp.co.uk/book/libertys-apostle-richard-price-his-life-and-times/">Frame suggests</a> Burke was “the man who had accurately predicted the direction of the Revolution”. This “undermined the more optimistic faith in rationalism and natural rights” of Price and others. </p>
<p>They both also suffered in terms of their personal reputation. Price became a caricature of the picture painted by Burke, captured in the cartoons of the day. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Satirical cartoon of Richard Price at his writing desk overlooked by a large nose and eyes surrounded by haze representing Edmund Burke, carrying a crown, a cross and a copy of his pamphlet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503100/original/file-20230104-70338-pvtb8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503100/original/file-20230104-70338-pvtb8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503100/original/file-20230104-70338-pvtb8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503100/original/file-20230104-70338-pvtb8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503100/original/file-20230104-70338-pvtb8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503100/original/file-20230104-70338-pvtb8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503100/original/file-20230104-70338-pvtb8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A caricature of Richard Price with a vision of Edmund Burke looking over his shoulder, by James Gillray.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wollstonecraft was posthumously <a href="https://lithub.com/how-a-husbands-loving-biography-ruined-his-wifes-reputation/">undone by the candid biography of her widower</a>, its contents deployed maliciously by those who sought to undermine her. Thankfully, <a href="https://theconversation.com/mary-wollstonecraft-statue-a-provocative-tribute-for-a-radical-woman-149888">her works and good name were recovered by the feminist movement</a>. </p>
<p>As Frame suggests however, there were deeper, structural factors at play. </p>
<p>Price was the embodiment of a reformism the British establishment had a material interest in thwarting. He represented a dissenting community whose <a href="https://welshchapels.wales/nonconformity/">nonconformist Christian denominations</a> were in opposition to the established church and discriminated against. </p>
<p>Price spoke out against the crown, slavery and chauvinistic nationalism. He advocated equality, democratic principles and civic nationalism. </p>
<p>The hostility towards the progressive forces he embodied was symbolised by the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100452318;jsessionid=7677A3EB1D19321A218678801F2EDCD1">Seditious Meetings Act</a> introduced in 1795 to stifle the reform movement. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An illustration from 1790 showing three men speaking from a church pulpit to a group of others reading and tearing up documents." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503390/original/file-20230106-6729-mq16ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503390/original/file-20230106-6729-mq16ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503390/original/file-20230106-6729-mq16ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503390/original/file-20230106-6729-mq16ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503390/original/file-20230106-6729-mq16ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503390/original/file-20230106-6729-mq16ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503390/original/file-20230106-6729-mq16ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Price, Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsay in a 1790 engraving satirising the campaign to have the Test Act repealed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Sayers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There would have been very real consequences had it been Price and his ilk – and not Burke – who were lionised as the spirit of Britain (a state less than a century old at the time). Arguably, we still live with the ramifications today. </p>
<p>Price’s politics eventually had their day as the social tumult of the 19th century meant the tide of reform could not be stemmed. </p>
<p>Burke’s conservatism, however, conceivably still symbolises where the balance of power sits in terms of the UK’s political culture. The Tory party is often <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA271975015&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=15555623&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E26847d25">still regarded as the natural party of power</a>, and deference towards the ruling classes remains. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A memorial stone dedicated to Richard Price in Newington Green Unitarian Church" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503386/original/file-20230106-24-s9fgwp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503386/original/file-20230106-24-s9fgwp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503386/original/file-20230106-24-s9fgwp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503386/original/file-20230106-24-s9fgwp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503386/original/file-20230106-24-s9fgwp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503386/original/file-20230106-24-s9fgwp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/503386/original/file-20230106-24-s9fgwp.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">Memorial to Richard Price in Newington Green Unitarian Church in North London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Cardy</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the collective amnesia towards him within Britain, it is perhaps apt that celebrations of Price’s life and works should begin this month with a talk at <a href="https://www.amphilsoc.org/events/electrifying-thinkers">the American Philosophical Association</a> in Philadelphia. </p>
<p>There will, however, be <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089200358334">a programme of events at home</a> to reflect on his contribution and contemporary relevance. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1599865290761785344"}"></div></p>
<p>This will include a birthday celebration in Llangeinor, an academic conference, and <a href="https://contemporancient.org/">a play</a>. </p>
<p>If he has not been celebrated by a British culture, for which he had such high hopes, then it is high time it happened in Wales, at the very least.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Huw L Williams works for Cardiff University who are a lead partner in the 'Price 300' project celebrating Richard Price's tercentenary in 2023. His work as a philosopher is part-funded by the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, a government-funded body responsible for promoting academic activity and teaching through the medium of Welsh. He is the President of the Adran Athroniaeth Cymdeithas Cynfyfyrwyr Prifysgol Cymru that promotes philosophy through the medium of Welsh and Welsh-language philosophy.</span></em></p>He was an important philosopher, mathematician and social reformer of his time. But Richard Price was subsequently written out of history.Huw L Williams, Reader in Political Philosophy, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1938082022-11-14T20:21:47Z2022-11-14T20:21:47ZVoter intimidation in 2022 follows a long history of illegal, and racist, bullying<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494758/original/file-20221110-22-d61eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C462%2C5511%2C3258&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite intimidation both current and historical, American voters turned out in near-record numbers on Nov. 8, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-vote-as-poll-workers-assist-at-a-polling-place-at-news-photo/1440122451">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, a local Republican Party official allegedly knocked on people’s doors in November 2022 to accuse people who cast ballots by mail of <a href="https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2022-11-04/texas-civil-rights-project-reports-multiple-instances-of-harassment-and-intimidation-at-the-polls">having been ineligible to vote</a>. </p>
<p>In Beaumont, Texas, 300 miles east, white poll workers allegedly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/midterm-election-results-livestream-voting-11-08-2022/h_f8b4d5887430f3bf7b0f22328cffa342">followed Black voters to voting machines</a> and stood close enough behind them to see how they voted. </p>
<p>In Arizona, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/cases-alleged-intimidation-arizona-ballot-boxes-continue-rise/story?id=92811526">armed citizens had stationed themselves near ballot drop boxes</a>, but a federal judge ordered them to stay away and forbade them from photographing or taking videos of people dropping off ballots, or speaking to them.</p>
<p>In North Carolina, several people allegedly <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/16-incidents-suspected-voter-intimidation-reported-nc-ahead/story?id=92822354">photographed or video-recorded voters</a>.</p>
<p>Those are just some of the cases of voter intimidation marring the generally orderly conduct of the 2022 midterm elections. And with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/us/politics/florida-federal-voting-monitors.html">Florida and Missouri blocking federal monitors</a> from polling places, any intimidation in those states may have gone unreported. Those states said most outsiders – people who are not voters or poll workers – are not allowed in polling places.</p>
<p>Intimidation doesn’t always include demanding a person vote for or against a specific candidate or ballot issue, or involve making specific threats. As a scholar of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zj3sJcwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">election law and voter suppression</a>, I know that any behavior reasonably calculated to dissuade a person from participating in an election counts as intimidation. This can include deceiving people about voting rules, questioning the legitimacy of their votes or accusing a person of a voting crime. </p>
<p>These problems may be getting more attention now, but voter intimidation has existed throughout American history, and it has almost always been directed at people of color. Yet the law provides opportunities for voters to respond to these illegal acts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A street scene shows people standing in a parking lot talking to each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C59%2C5000%2C3263&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494757/original/file-20221110-5951-qemcvy.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 Black activist group encourages people to vote – one of many efforts to counter racist voter intimidation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/attendees-walk-through-a-soul-to-the-polls-event-put-on-by-news-photo/1244573009">Scott McIntyre/for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hundreds of years of voter intimidation</h2>
<p>Voter intimidation has marred elections throughout American history. As early as 1832, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” documented how the white majority in the free state of Pennsylvania had <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/815/pg815-images.html#link2HCH0037">intimidated African Americans from participating in elections</a>. That was just years before Pennsylvania, along with most other states with free Blacks, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/partisan-polarization-on-black-suffrage-17851868/D6FDE92281DC07500564FABBA5A82569#">banned or suppressed</a> the African American vote.</p>
<p>After the Civil War, white supremacist groups that wanted to restore the political order of slavery engaged in racially motivated voter intimidation. Probably the most famous example was the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/">Colfax Massacre in 1873</a>, where white Louisianians killed approximately 150 African Americans in an attack precipitated by the disputed Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1872. Massacres like this sent the message to African Americans that voting was at their own risk. </p>
<p>Congress responded to the ongoing voter intimidation against African Americans by passing the <a href="https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/15032451486">Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871</a>, which included provisions explicitly outlawing conspiracies to deprive citizens of their voting rights. Those provisions <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1985">remain in law</a> today.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, violent voter intimidation persisted during the Jim Crow era. White supremacists continued attacking and killing African Americans in lynchings and race riots across the United States between the 1890s and the 1950s. In 1898, a mob of approximately 2,000 white men <a href="https://www.ncdcr.gov/1898-wilmington-coup">overthrew the Wilmington, North Carolina, local government</a> and massacred the city’s African American population for exercising their political and speech rights. Historians have estimated as many as <a href="https://www.history.com/news/wilmington-massacre-1898-coup">250 African Americans were killed</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oPre-KEFiVs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Give Us The Ballot’ speech in 1957.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The civil rights response</h2>
<p>In the mid-century civil rights era, white supremacist forces <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/civil-rights-memorial/civil-rights-martyrs">repeatedly murdered voting activists</a> to intimidate activists and African American voters from exercising their voting rights.</p>
<p>The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s made it a primary goal to obtain voting rights for African Americans. In 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke about this in a speech in Washington entitled “<a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/give-us-ballot-address-delivered-prayer-pilgrimage-freedom">Give Us The Ballot</a>.” He spoke of the “conniving methods” used to intimidate African American voters, such as lynching and mob violence. He demanded federal protection and new laws to codify African Americans’ right to vote.</p>
<p>After some false starts, Congress did respond again to the voter intimidation problem through the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a>. Though not often discussed or used as a basis for lawsuits, Section 11(b) of the act contains a <a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:52%20section:10307%20edition:prelim)">broad prohibition</a> against voter intimidation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This law does not require proof that the person intended to intimidate a voter – just that their behavior can be reasonably seen as threatening, coercive or intimidating.</p>
<p>But voter intimidation did not simply go away because of these laws. After the passage of the Voting Rights Act, voter intimidation activities turned from overt terrorism to aggressive vigilance and challenging motivated by claims of fraud in voting. “Voting vigilante” groups, as many refer to them, continued to police voting by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/politics/arizona-voter-intimidation-doj">following, photographing and otherwise menacing and threatening voters</a>. These groups claimed this was to protect “election integrity,” but they were in fact acts to intimidate Black and Hispanic voters.</p>
<p>For example, in 1981, the Republican National Committee <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-gop-just-received-another-tool-for-suppressing-votes/550052/">hired off-duty police officers</a> to carry weapons and patrol majority-minority neighborhoods in New Jersey, wearing armbands declaring them part of a “National Ballot Security Task Force” that had no governmental sanction. That was one of several actions that resulted in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-encouragement-of-gop-poll-watchers-echoes-an-old-tactic-of-voter-intimidation-147234">federal judge’s order that the Republican Party stop intimidating voters</a>. That order was extended several times, but <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/09/rnc-ballot-security-consent-decree-328995">expired in 2017</a>.</p>
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<h2>21st-century voter intimidation</h2>
<p>But these activities extend beyond the GOP. Since around 2010, grassroots groups emerged in the name of protecting election integrity. These groups <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/retiree-latino-organizations-sue-group-alleged-voter-intimidation-ariz-rcna53887">alleged that there was rampant voter fraud</a> in American elections and took it on themselves to aggressively monitor elections.</p>
<p>Probably the most prominent of these groups is “True The Vote.” It and other groups like it claim they seek to root out voter fraud and protect American elections. Yet these groups have, as recently as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/06/us-far-right-groups-drop-box-voting-legal-issues">the 2022 midterms</a>, engaged in surveilling voters, made aggressive inquiries about voters’ practices and openly carried weapons while doing so. All of that is, arguably, voter intimidation. </p>
<p>Their motivation – unsupported by evidence, and in fact <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/truth-about-voter-fraud">comprehensively</a> <a href="https://scholars.org/sites/scholars/files/ssn_key_findings_minnite_on_the_myth_of_voter_fraud.pdf">contradicted</a> by it – is that massive voter fraud has affected the results of recent elections.</p>
<p>I argue that these claims serve to spread what I call the “<a href="https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol63/iss4/2/">meme of voter fraud</a>.” One of the consequences of this dangerous meme is to justify voter intimidation against minority communities. And I have <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.mercer.edu/jour_mlr/vol71/iss3/7/">analyzed</a> how this myth-making has increased with the voter fraud claims of former president Donald Trump. </p>
<p>Voter intimidation is still illegal and still damages American elections today. Protections <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1985">codified in the Ku Klux Klan Act</a> and the Voting Rights Act still allow citizens to <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol97/iss1/10">file civil lawsuits</a> against people who intimidate voters. These statutes, however, remain underused, probably because they have been overshadowed by larger provisions of the laws.</p>
<p>Yet, if more voters and civil rights organizations used these laws, they could confront aggressive voter intimidation and unmask its false claims of policing election integrity. These activities threaten to make American democracy inaccessible for millions of citizens whose voices deserve to be heard. And modern voter intimidation continues the ugliest racist trend of vote suppression from America’s past. </p>
<p>This history shouldn’t repeat itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193808/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Atiba Ellis is a consultant and expert witness in an ongoing voter intimidation lawsuit.</span></em></p>Any behavior reasonably calculated to dissuade a person from participating in an election is intimidation.Atiba Ellis, Professor of Law, Marquette UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927302022-10-19T21:08:01Z2022-10-19T21:08:01Z4.3 trillion readers can’t be wrong – why The Onion’s defence of satire should be heard by the US Supreme Court<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490564/original/file-20221019-14-eamm7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C6048%2C3992&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’ve read, watched and enjoyed the work of America’s best-known satirical publication <a href="https://www.theonion.com/">The Onion</a>, you might be surprised by how serious it suddenly became earlier this month. So serious, in fact, that it might end up before the US Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Each year approximately 7,000 appellants petition to have their cases heard before the Supreme Court, but <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/about">only 100 to 150</a> of these petitions are reviewed. What are known as <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/amicus_curiae#:%7E:text=Generally%2C%20it%20is%20referencing%20a,are%20called%20%22amicus%20briefs.%22"><em>amicus curiae</em> briefs</a> can be filed by interested third parties to strengthen the need for a petition to be seen by the court. </p>
<p>Little wonder, then, that it caught the eye of the media when such a brief was <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf">filed by The Onion</a>. Despite the publication’s typically absurd claim to a daily readership of 4.3 trillion, the intent of the brief is far from ridiculous. Because The Onion believes the right to use satire is under threat.</p>
<p>The brief was filed to support an appellant named Anthony Novak, who in 2015 was arrested and charged with <a href="https://codes.findlaw.com/oh/title-xxix-crimes-procedure/oh-rev-code-sect-2909-04.html">using a computer to disrupt police operations</a>. The disruption was said to arise from Novak’s decision to create a satirical Facebook page identical in appearance to that of the police department in the city of Parma, Ohio. </p>
<p>At trial, Novak was found not guilty and then sued the city for violation of his civil rights. The city sought qualified immunity for its officers, which shields them from civil litigation unless they had been shown to violate someone’s civil rights – exactly the claim raised by Novak. </p>
<p>A state judge agreed with Novak and rejected the city’s qualified immunity, indicating Novak could sue. The city appealed and the case moved to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Sixth Circuit reversed the lower court’s rejection and ruled the officers should be granted qualified immunity because Novak’s actions were not protected speech.</p>
<p>This barred Novak from seeking any damages for his arrest. His last chance for appeal is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.</p>
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<h2>Satire and protected speech</h2>
<p>The purpose of The Onion’s brief is to provide additional information about the nature of satire, and to urge the Supreme Court to hear Novak’s case and reconsider the decision handed down by the Sixth Circuit. </p>
<p>It’s written with humorous and satirical flair, and is indeed a very good read. True to form, though, the playful aspects of The Onion’s brief contain a serious message: if the Supreme Court were not to hear Novak’s case, future satirists (including the writers at The Onion) may face legal prosecution for creating satire. </p>
<p>Therefore, it argues, the Supreme Court must hear Novak’s case to ensure the preservation of satire as a legitimate means of free speech.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ninety-years-on-what-can-we-learn-from-reading-evelyn-waughs-troubling-satire-black-mischief-190441">Ninety years on, what can we learn from reading Evelyn Waugh's troubling satire Black Mischief?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Yet more than 30 years ago, the Supreme Court decided in <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/drawing-justice-courtroom-illustrations/about-this-exhibition/significant-and-landmark-cases/satire-is-protected-free-speech/">Hustler v. Falwell</a> that satire and parody are protected speech under the <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/">First Amendment</a> of the US Constitution. Why then did the Sixth Circuit rule in favour of the city if Novak’s page was a form of protected speech? </p>
<p>The reason is simple: the Sixth Circuit limited the boundaries of what it considered to be satire. <a href="https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/22a0090p-06.pdf">In its decision</a>, the Sixth Circuit noted that while the Facebook site was satire and thus protected, Novak also deleted spoiler comments from his page and copied a warning from the real page to his own. </p>
<p>The Sixth ruled the police officers could not be expected to extend first amendment protection to these actions and thus granted them qualified immunity, squashing Novak’s civil suit.</p>
<p>The court’s decision presents a quandary: how can the creation of a satirical work be protected speech when the maintenance of the work is not? The seemingly contradictory logic behind the Sixth Circuit’s decision is why The Onion’s brief is so important – it provides a definition of satire from a position of experience and expertise.</p>
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<h2>Defining how satire works</h2>
<p>So, what is satire and how does it work? While there is a tradition of defining it as a literary genre, satire is much more than a category on a bookshelf. Satire can occur in any medium, such as Novak’s Facebook page. </p>
<p>This is because satire is “parasitic” – a satirist appropriates formal features of an existing genre, person or event to create a pretence of authenticity and sincerity. By pretending to be something it is not – such as a news story or a police Facebook page – a satirical work arouses expectations and stereotypes associated with that genre. </p>
<p>At the same time, the satirist provides indirect and subtle clues which, when interpreted correctly, belie the satirical pretence and pull back the curtain to expose the ruse, which distinguishes the satire from the real thing. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-good-literary-hoax-a-political-point-for-starters-170538">What makes a good literary hoax? A political point, for starters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The second step must be indirect for satire to work, and it cannot work if the satirical object is labelled “satire” in advance. This point is strongly emphasised in The Onion’s brief: killing the satirical pretence kills the satire. If Novak’s efforts to maintain a satirical pretence are an arrestable offense, then satire is no longer protected speech.</p>
<p>Whether Novak’s case goes to the Supreme Court is still uncertain, and the details of his case are more nuanced than asking whether someone can be jailed for making satire. Instead, the Supreme Court would need to draw new lines defining what satire is and how it works. Agreeing on a universal definition of satire is far from easy. </p>
<p>Fortunately, “<a href="https://www.theonion.com/about">America’s Finest News Source</a>” has provided the court with an excellent explanation, demonstrating just how serious satire can be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Skalicky 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>‘America’s finest news source’ The Onion wants the US Supreme Court to answer some difficult questions: is satire protected speech, and if so, how do we define it?Stephen Skalicky, Senior Lecturer in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1918162022-10-07T15:01:29Z2022-10-07T15:01:29ZInflation: why you might be worrying about it more than you should<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488780/original/file-20221007-14-tvb5yg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A strange thing happens when we think about prices. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/family-debts-young-frustrated-desperate-woman-705340318">Zwiebackesser</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People <em>really</em> dislike inflation. Today, with <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm">US annual inflation</a> still above 8%, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx">one in five Americans</a> consider it the country’s biggest problem – <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/poll-midterm-momentum-shifts-back-to-gop-as-inflation-fears-grow-151344613.html">spelling trouble</a> for the Democrats at the November mid-terms.</p>
<p>Inflation is also the <a href="https://europeansting.com/2022/07/11/inflation-is-the-worlds-biggest-worry-according-to-a-new-poll/">top concern</a> for voters around the world, while in the UK, the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-inflation-under-tax-cuts-poll-b2140490.html">public wanted</a> the government to deal with it before thinking about tax cuts (but the government had other ideas). </p>
<p>From the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Spring">Arab spring</a> to the recent <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/central-asia/kazakhstan/behind-unrest-kazakhstan">Kazakh unrest</a>, price rises often lead to mass discontent. There’s even a word for fear of prices – timophobia – and there’s plenty of it in Europe at present. Scarcely had this autumn started than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/04/czech-republic-prague-protest-sanctions-energy-crisis-gas-russia">70,000 people gathered</a> in Prague to protest energy hikes, blaming the EU and Nato. Anti-European populism has triumphed in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/giorgia-melonis-win-in-italy-proves-even-a-seemingly-successful-government-can-fall-victim-to-populism-191278">Italian election</a>, with the far-right often using the energy crisis to attack the establishment. </p>
<p>Yet this discontent is at least in part the result of misconceptions. People tend to misperceive inflation as higher than it actually is, which stokes the potential for unrest. Economic research suggests this misperception is particularly common when the prices of everyday items are rising fastest, as they are today. So what explains this, and what can we do about it?</p>
<h2>How inflation works</h2>
<p>During the COVID lockdowns of 2020-21, consumer spending <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/consumer-spending">fell drastically</a>. Prices stagnated and in some countries even declined. But after the worst was over, consumer spending returned with a vengeance, creating supply shortages. Together with huge cash handouts in numerous countries to support people and businesses, and the effect of the Ukraine war on energy supplies, this is why inflation is resurgent for the first time in decades. </p>
<p>Economists are still investigating the persistence of this surge, but nobody expects records to be broken. While it is unquestionably hurting citizens, bankruptcies are unlikely for the most part. So why are people so worried?</p>
<p>It’s important to realise how economists measure inflation. They cost the typical basket of goods that a normal household would buy over a year, and compare it with the previous year. Some goods recur much more than others: for example, households typically buy many eggs each year but not many cars. If, though, a person buys a car worth £10,000 every ten years, economists assign a tenth of that outlay to the annual shopping basket – in other words, £1,000. </p>
<p>So despite appearing in larger quantities in the annual basket, everyday items affect inflation much less. You might buy milk worth £1 every other day, but this counts for less than, say, a mobile phone worth £1,000 bought every two years: £182 for the milk v £500 for the phone. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman with a shopping basket holding up a bottle of milk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488519/original/file-20221006-24-cwqxs6.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">Items like milk are less important to inflation than most people think.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-buying-milk-supermarket-1981461779">Pixel-Shot</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For this reason, economists (and central banks) worry less about the price of goods like milk, petrol or tomatoes than about big-ticket items. And increases in the prices of everyday items are often balanced out by drops in things like televisions or computers. </p>
<h2>Consumer perceptions</h2>
<p>In contrast, when the average citizen sees prices of everyday items rising, they assume it represents a general rise in living costs. <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/onb/oenbmp/y2005i3b2.html">For example</a>, when the euro was introduced, merchants tended to round up when translating prices from the old currencies. Shoppers would see milk climbing from, say, €0.90 equivalent to €1 in euros, and it felt like inflation was running at 11%. </p>
<p>But many overlooked the fact that TV sets only rose from, say, €499.50 to €500, which was just a 0.1% rise. Contrary to what people thought, overall eurozone inflation remained low. </p>
<p>To see if this idea would hold under proper research conditions, two colleagues and I designed and ran <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292114000221?via%3Dihub">a novel experiment</a> a few years ago. We invited 186 people to a computer lab, endowed them with a budget and asked them to buy a basket of virtual goods, over a number of imaginary years. We then asked them what the inflation rate was, and rewarded them in real US dollars for the accuracy of their estimations. </p>
<p>Our participants generally estimated well. However, in setups where they had to buy cheap goods frequently and the prices rose fast, they overestimated total inflation significantly. Equally, when the prices of such goods fell, they underestimated significantly. This showed conclusively that bias around frequent purchases leads to inflation misperception. </p>
<h2>What this means today</h2>
<p>How does this relate to the present, when prices really have been going up sharply? The same thing almost certainly applies, because frequently purchased goods have been rising especially fast. Take an everyday staple like your morning latte. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/almost-luxury-eu-coffee-prices-up-169-august-2022-10-06/">In the EU</a>, the price of coffee rose more than 15% in the year to August, milk more than 20% and sugar more than 30% – all way ahead of the 9% overall inflation level. </p>
<p>It’s similar across the board. Eurozone energy prices rose 30% in September year on year, and food, alcohol and tobacco more than 10%. Meanwhile, services and non-energy industrial goods rose only about 5%.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graph showing the difference between inflation in everyday items and overall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488753/original/file-20221007-14-hp8xvj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Inflation_in_the_euro_area">Eurostat</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This helps to explain the heavy pressure for salary rises and votes to strike, even though goods going up fastest in price are often a relatively small part of people’s budgets. Even for the poorest households, for whom inflation is a bigger issue, energy bills only represent <a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/04/21/a-guide-to-britains-cost-of-living-crunch">about 15%</a> of their total spending. </p>
<p>Such misperceptions can hurt government popularity deeply. No wonder nations are responding with expensive and possibly harmful subsidies that still might not suffice. Populist leaders who have been elected by appealing to voters’ biases more than reason are likely to be especially vulnerable. </p>
<p>Inflation misperception also puts more pressure on central banks to raise interest rates to tackle inflation. Yet raising rates will only help with inflation driven by the demand side (government handouts) as opposed to by the supply side (global logistics, Russia), so it’s hard to know how effective this will be. Since the rate rises affect the cost of mortgages and other lending, they may do more harm than good. </p>
<p>This all highlights the need for people to be better educated about inflation. Clearly the media has an important role here, though these are deep-rooted biases that will be difficult to shift in the short term. The spectre of civil unrest is therefore likely to haunt the northern hemisphere in the months ahead, even though such protests are not entirely based on reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191816/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sotiris Georganas 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>When we look at certain prices, we jump to conclusions about inflation rates that are not accurate.Sotiris Georganas, Reader in Behavioural Economics, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.