Dynamics of Desegregation; 5; 14th Generation Americans

The dynamics of desegregation. The dynamics of desegregation. I am a 14th generation American. My family's arrival on this continent is part of the history of Western exploration and expansion.

Under a royal charter from King James of England, Scotland and France, the London Company dispatched three ships, the Sarah Constan, the Good Speed, and the Discovery, from London in late winter of 1606. Under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, the 191 voyagers were charged by his majesty to plant in any of the territories of America between the degrees of 34 and 41 from the Equinotical Line northward, a colony for his majesty. In late April, 1607, they entered the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and forthwith established the settlement, James Town, in honor of the King. I am a 14th generation American. My people landed in James Town in late August, 1619, and a ship commanded by a Captain Juk.

The name of the vessel is not recorded, but it was flying the Dutch flag. The record of its arrival says it brought not anything but 20 and odd Negroes, which the governor and Cape Merchant bought at the best and easiest rates they could. My people have been part of American history for over 350 years. Since their arrival in James Town, Negro Americans have been an integral part of our nation, but they have been denied their full rights to citizens because of their color. Their history is at once a shameful and a proud part of our national heritage, shameful, in that our country could have countenance such ranked discrimination against a tenth of its citizens for so long. Proud, in that our darker citizens have had the type of persistent faith in American democracy to enable them to maintain their weary struggle for over three centuries.

The long struggle began, of course, with slavery, the stigma which is still to be found throughout much of the United States today. But why did slavery leave such a deep and lasting scar upon our nation while other areas of the world, such as Brazil, had the institution longer than we and yet have more successfully thrown off its effects? The answer to this important question seems to lie in the peculiar nature of slavery under English law. This story in Frank Cannonbaum has pointed out that the Iberian countries of Spain and Portugal, unlike England, had had centuries of experience with slavery prior to the founding of the New World, hence under Iberian law, that had evolved to special category for the slave as a human being. But English law, unfamiliar with the institution, had no such special category and treated the slave as merely dehumanized property, no different legally from a house or barn or an animal.

Under Spanish law, the slave may marry a free person if the slave status is known to the other party. Once married, they cannot be sold apart, except under conditions permitting them to live together as men and women. The English law recognizes no marriage relation between slave. There is no question of the right of the owner to sell his slave separately, with no limitation upon separating husband and wife or mother and child. He who kills his slave intentionally must suffer the penalty for homicide, and if the slave dies as a result of punishment without intention to kill, the master must suffer five years exile. If any slave, by punishment of running away or of other offense, suffers in life or limb, none shall be liable to the law for the sake.

But whosoever else shall kill a slave out of willfulness, wantonness, or bloody-mindedness, shall suffer three months imprisonment and pay fifty pounds to the master of the slave. Latin America, emulating Iberian law, never developed a totally dehumanizing stigma surrounding slavery as we did following English law. Now, I don't mean that slavery was not also cruel in Latin America, or that there are no race problems there at present. The Latin legal definition of slavery meant that they had to overcome less of a handicap than we. But how could slaveholders treat human beings as mere property, and at the same time, believe in the high American ideals of human equality? The answer is that they never did rest easily with a squaring contradiction, though they tried as best they could to rationalize and excuse the conflict.

Into the 19th century, the leaders in slavery generally employed religious rationalizations. Slavery was an effective method, some claim to introduce Christianity to African-Hedon. God had will that the black man served the white man, claim others, who rather loosely interpreted selected passages of the Old Testament. Here is this portion of an actual sermon based on Genesis 9 and 10. The descendants of Shem migrated eastward and occupied most of Asia. The descendants of Jaffith migrated westward, and ultimately occupied the continent of Europe, while the children of Ham moved southward and occupied the continent of Africa. This brief record, while affirming the unity of race, also implies an all-wise providence is responsible for the distinct racial characteristics, which are chiefly responsible for segregation of racial groups across the century and in our own time.

In time, however, these rationalizations lost their potency. For one thing, by the 19th century, Negroes were increasingly becoming Christian themselves. As an oppressed people, they often seem to grasp the profoundness of the New Testament message of an oppressed Christ at a level that white Christians seldom obtain. My children, I know your burdens are heavy, and your bondage is law. But your lives are in a great hand of the Lord, whose burden was a heavy, heavy cross. And whose way was up a high, high hill? He knows your sorrow. And when you fall, he'll take you to his bosom as a mother takes a child. He pays you. Because when that great day comes and Gabriel blows his trumpet,

you'll see the New Jerusalem, and God himself will be there. And he'll wipe away every tear from your eyes. And death will be God. And there won't be molding. You are crying. You are paining more. But just as the religious rationalizations were losing their force, new biological ideas were being introduced. For the 19th century was the age of Darwin and biological thinking. Almost desperately, guilty white Americans seized these ideas and fashioned them into the divisive and dangerous concepts of race and racial superiority. Now, religion did not have to be invoked. New girls were slaves of Caucasians simply because they were born inferior. They were, so the reasoning had it, a lower order of human development in a Darwinian sense.

Now even vicious, as this seems today, in the light of the vast advances in biology and genetics of recent generations, this racist reasoning seemed logical to all but the thoughtful. For all one had to do was look around him. We're not slaves, obviously inferior to their masters in intelligence and manners. And were they not happy, trial-like in their behavior? And if such things are all biologically determined, is this not proof that whites are racially superior to Negroes? Such was the argument for the sweeping importance of environment and opportunity we're not well understood at this time. Particularly by those who needed the racist myth to bolster their own self-images and to lay their guilt over the treatment of fellow human beings. As a matter of fact, the racist rationalizer could point to the lowly condition of the three Negroes as well as that of the slave. Well, technically three.

These Negroes in the South were restricted to in almost every conceivable manner. Most of the states kept their free Negroes from voting, denied their right to assemble, granted them no equality in the courts. Circumstrived their movements and was hell-education for them. Consequently, many of these free Negroes slipped below the living standards of even the slaves, who at least enjoyed a modicum of paternalistic benefits in their status as property. Though again, a restricted environment led directly to their desperate plight, the free Negroes of the South were often cited by guilty white southerners as proof that Negroes were just children and needed the protection of slavery. Free Negroes spared a little better in the North prior to the Civil War, I should say. While in any Negro riots flared up in New York City, Philadelphia, other northern cities in the 1830s and 40s. And many northern cities were establishing separate Negro schools. Indeed, Massachusetts did not abolish segregated schools until 1855,

when finally the abolitionist spirit put the torch to local sentiments concerning slavery. Now the importance of this nationwide discrimination against the free Negro prior to the Civil War was that it furnished a natural and convenient precedent for handling the emancipated Negro after the Civil War. For example, the ink was barely dry at Appomattox before North Carolina legislatively extended to the new free men in the same restrictions, burdens and disabilities that had formally applied to free Negroes in that state. Other southern states passed similar statues. In short, the full fruits of the most dramatic action in Negro American history, the 1863 emancipation proclamation were being denied by the South as soon as the Civil War ended. Then of course, as you know, the reconstruction era began in 1867. The Victoria's Union retained its military occupation of the South and set up reconstruction state governments. Now, today, segregationists likened reconstruction to the depths of their archages.

We must not forget that this period witnessed the repeal of anti-Nigra laws and the passage of anti-discrimination laws throughout the whole size. Many Negroes assumed important public office, and those with education proved capable. Mrs. Cepri, for instance, was ably represented by Senator Rebels, who is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio. The great tragedy of this period, however, is that no World War II martial plan was employed to strengthen the South's sagging economy, and thus make more permanent these sweeping changes in race relations. It is wrong, however, to assume that the South we've rooted immediately back to white supremacy when the reconstruction era drew to a close in the 1870s. C. Van Woodwood, in his fascinating historical volume, the strange career of Jim Crow, has carefully documented his contention that segregation did not Russian as a system. Until very late in the 19th century.

As segregationist friends, they have found a saying, segregation races have always been traditional in the side. But they choose to ignore this interesting 10 to 15 year period after reconstruction when Jim Crow did not, in fact, exist. It was not until the North had grown tired of race relations problems, and the South was faced with a state political crises that legal racism returned throughout the South, state government scandals and a powerful agrarian revolt movement made it expedient to use the Negro once again as a convenient scapegoat. White men have to stick together, argued the conservative politicians, who feared a class coalition between Negro and poor white voters. Other whites feared that many uneducated Negroes would sell their votes to the wealthy politicians. Henry W. Grady, the Atlanta leader of the industrializing new South, said in the late 19th century.

The worst thing that could happen is that the white people of the South should stand in opposing faction, with the vast mass of ignorant or purchasable Negro vote between. Consider such a status. If the Negroes were skillfully led and leaders would not be lacking, it would give them the balance of power, a thing not to be considered. By the turn of the century, southern states, one by one, were disfranchising the Negro. Between 1890 and 1910, the whole complex of Jim Crow laws was enacted. Separate railroad cars, separate taxes, separate lunch counters, separate waiting rooms, separate doorways. Later on, Oklahoma required separate telephone booths. Arkansas required separate gambling tables. And many courts began to use separate bibles to be sworn upon. Eventually it came to be almost separate everything.

In the 100 years since Mr. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, this particular period marked the very nadar of Negro American fortunes. This was the period, too, when Western colonization confidently ruled much of the world's non-whites. And lynchings of Negro Americans were commonplace. But through these dark years, the Negro never lost hope. With quiet and relentless determination, black Americans have stepped by steps succeeded in the past half century to write Jim Crow's epitaph. Of course, this is the story we all know much better than the events of the 19th century. We know of the mass migration of the Negro out of the rural south and into the urban north and west. He's ever increasing political and economic power. And always he's constant reminder to white America that racial discrimination betrays our highest national ideals.

I'll just struggle, then, at the mainstream. In the long and gradual ones, the popular term new Negro, as applied to the currently protesting Negro's very misleading, it makes it sound as if Negro Americans had passively and willingly endured their second class citizenship until recently. But actually, the present day new Negro is a maturation, not a mutation. Negroes have been protesting their treatment in the land of the free for centuries. Frequent slave revolts prior the Civil War, after evidence of this. Moreover, since the Civil War, every generation of Negro Americans has been tagged the new Negro for each had its unique form of protest to make and each seemed new and threatening to surprise whites. Here's a new Negro in 1780. We, seven Negroes of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, protest on February 10, 1780. In a petition to the Revolutionary Legislature of our state,

against the fact that we are subjected to taxation without the right to vote for the new Negro in 1865, we the colored citizens of Virginia resolve that as far as in us lives, we will not patronize our whole business relations with those who deny to us our equal rights. For the new Negro in 1907, the Niagara Department of Civil Rights devotes itself to the following lines of work this year, to improve traveling accommodations on local carriers in the south, and to force the service of colored men on grand and petted juries in the southern states. The maturation process is also seen in the actions of Negro leaders down through the years, for example, Frederick Douglass. The first truly nationwide Negro spokesman was a militant abolitionist

and later an insistent demand or a full citizenship for Negroes. That son of a slave mother and a white father, Douglass was a slave himself until he was escaped from bondage in 1838 at the age of 21. Large, handsome, self-educated man, he worked tirelessly for the abolition of slavery as an editor of an influential newspaper and as a commanding speaker. Now once the Civil War began, Douglass became an activist recruiter of Negro volunteers for the Union Army. He was quite successful, and civil law and Negro regiments were formed. But Jim Crow soon raised its ugly head. The Negro soldiers were not promoted or paid in an equal fashion to the white soldiers. Angered and hurt, Douglass went straight to President Lincoln to press personally as the man's frequent treatment. Lincoln agreed that these were unfortunate practices and admitted, frankly, that the law paid for Negro troops who were simply a soft, the Northern racial bigotry.

But he promised he would sign any commission for a Negro soldier that he Secretary of War would present. The only half satisfied Douglass left the meeting as a firm admirer of Lincoln. Douglass's admiration for the President was further confirmed of course later by the emancipation proclamation and even the later revealing incident between the two men. It was in 1865 and Douglass was attending Lincoln's inaugural celebration. He was waiting in the long reception line. He was spotted by two guards who, claiming to have orders not to admit Negroes, pounced upon Douglass and rushed him to the exit. The terminus today is freedom orders to enjoy his rights. Douglass did not accept this kind of treatment passively. He was certain that Mr. Lincoln would never allow such orders. He called out to a familiar face in the crowd to tell the President that Frederick Douglass was being detained at the door. Soon he was called for him. I should write past the whole line right up to speak to Lincoln himself. The President agreed to him as my friend Douglass

and asked him how he'd like his inaugural address that day. Douglass was hesitant about holding up the whole line and reminded the President that thousands of people were waiting. No, no, you must stop a little Lincoln insisted. I want to know what you think of my address. Douglass answered Mr. Lincoln. That was a sacred effort. Douglass went on to hold a number of prominent federal positions late in his life after the death of his Negro wife. Douglass created a national furor by marrying his white secretary. Once again, the proud Douglass was equal to the occasion. I married my first wife and honor of my Negro mother. He roared back at his critics. And I married my second wife in honor of my white father. During the same year Douglass died, 1895. Another ex-slave assumed national prominence with a famous speech at the Cotton State's National Exposition in Atlanta. Look at Oliver Washington, the founder and president

of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Gained immediate renown by proposing to both races that in all things that appear to be social, we can be as separate as the fingers. Yet one is the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. Washington was a very different personality, of course, than he served in Douglass. He was determined to change the status quo. He preferred the velvet glove, however, to the iron fist. Partly because of his quiet nature, partly because of the desperate situation in which he found himself. Unlike Douglass, Washington remained in the deep south and had to contend with the difficult years at the turn of the century. His hopeful theory was that once Negro Americans gained the technical skills that the expanding nation needed, they would have to be accepted as equal citizens. And his own growing Tuskegee Institute was the embodiment of his theory. But within Washington, too, burned the spirit of more direct protest.

Behind the scenes, he provided thousands of dollars for crucial legal cases that challenged Jim Crow. And he quietly used his considerable influence in the Theater of Roosevelt's administration to ameliorate racial injustice. Finally, just after his death in 1915, an article by Washington was published a blasted segregationist totally unjust. He was alone and he had sadly come to conclude we're not enough. And the other Negro leaders reached the same conclusion as Washington. In 1905, a small group of young Negro intellectuals convened at Niagara Falls to organize a militant association for the advancement of Negro rights. Ironically, these young men would deny accommodations because of their color on the American side of the falls. And they were forced to leave their native land and cross over to Canada to hold their not-aggress conference. Later, following a bloody two-day race ride in 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, the very home of President Lincoln,

a group of concerned whites call a national conference on the problem. In 1910, these whites, including in their number since distinguished people, are John Dewey, the philosopher, and Jane Adams, the humanitarian, and Lincoln Steffan, the newspaper man. A joint with the Niagara group performed an air-famous national association for the advancement of colored people, the NEACP. A few years later, the National Urban League was founded to aid in the Negro's adjustment to his new urban surroundings. And a series of new leaders took up the fight and from Douglass in Washington and pressed on for full equality. The latest development in this unfolding of protest techniques, of course, is that of nonviolent demonstrations with Dr. Martin Luther King as the symbol and leader. Thus, as the generations have passed, the techniques have changed, but the goals and determination of Negro Americans have not.

Today's Negro protest against Jim Crow then have a long history. Behind the headlines of racial court cases and citizens and freedom rights, life-footteen generations of oppression, and oppression made worse by our anti-bellum legal tradition of classifying slaves as mere property. But race is an idea and a rationalization for this oppression we see is only a little over a century old. Indeed, segregation as we know it today in the South is only a little over a half century old. But demands by Negroes for full rights as American citizens are as old as Negro American history itself, and the so-called new Negroes. We're willing now to go to Mississippi Jails in order to speed Jim Crow's demise or directly following an unbroken tradition of Negro insistence that the American dream applied to them also. No longer largely a rural southerner, the urbanized Negro American today is steadily increased

his economic and political power. In fact, he's made more progress in the past generation than in any other international history. And with a concerned world watching closely, there's no reason to doubt that the next generation will witness an even more rapid rate of progress. The distinguished poet, Langston Hughes, sums it up for Negro Americans in his poem, I2. I2, sing America. I am the DACA brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes. But I laugh and eat well and grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll sit at the table when company comes. And nobody will dare say, eat in the kitchen then. Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am. And be ashamed. I2, am America. I2, sing America. ...

Phetoma plain and Oscar farmer. Beta for Jim Crow is a presentation of the Commission on Extension Courses, 75 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts. An Association with a Low Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, WGBH-TV Boston. Studio production costs were provided in part with the assistance of grants from the Anti-Defamation League of Nate Brith, the Commonwealth School Boston and the Claudia B. and Maurice L. Stone Foundation.

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