Plessy v Ferguson: A dissent

     In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal.The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools, and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws—and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.By a vote of 7-1 (one justice did not participate), the Court approved the principle of separate but equal, which for the next half-century and more was used to justify laws mandating segregation in every area of life in the South, from transportation to education to public accommodations. The one lonely, courageous dissenter against the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was a Kentuckian, Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan.

       

    At issue was a Louisiana law compelling segregation of the races in rail coaches. To test the law's constitutionality, Homer Plessy, a Louisianan of mixed race, made a point of getting arrested for sitting in the whites-only section of a train car. When his case reached the Supreme Court, Plessy argued that enforced segregation in theoretically separate-but-equal accommodations compromised the principle of legal equality and marked blacks as inferior. The Court majority disagreed, declaring the law constitutional while saying it stamped blacks with "a badge of inferiority" only if "the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."

    

    But if his fellow justices found no objections to the Louisiana law, John Harlan could find little else. He wrote:

"In the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. "Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. . .The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."

    

    Furthermore, argued Harlan, the decision would poison relations between the races.

"What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments, which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation."

Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro Era

     The northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be an upper-class white neighborhood in the 1880s, but rapid overdevelopment led to empty buildings and desperate landlords seeking to fill them.

In the early 1900s, a few middle-class black families from another neighborhood known as Black Bohemia moved to Harlem, and other black families followed. Some white residents initially fought to keep African Americans out of the area, but failing that many whites eventually fled.

    American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize “the Negro” apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced Black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of thought but rather characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous impact on subsequent Black literature and consciousness worldwide. While the renaissance was not confined to the Harlem district of New York City, Harlem attracted a remarkable concentration of intellect and talent and served as the symbolic capital of this cultural awakening.

    The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro movement that had emerged in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The social foundations of this movement included the Great Migration of African Americans from rural to urban spaces and from South to North; dramatically rising levels of literacy; the creation of national organizations dedicated to pressing African American civil rights, “uplifting” the race, and opening socioeconomic opportunities; and developing race pride, including pan-African sensibilities and programs. Black exiles and expatriates from the Caribbean and Africa crossed paths in metropoles such as New York City and Paris after World War I and had an invigorating influence on each other that gave the broader “Negro renaissance” (as it was then known) a profoundly important international cast.

    

    The Harlem Renaissance is unusual among literary and artistic movements for its close relationship to civil rights and reform organizations. Crucial to the movement were magazines such as The Crisis, published by the NAACP; Opportunity, published by the National Urban League; and The Messenger, a socialist journal eventually connected with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a Black labor union. Negro World, the newspaper of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, also played a role, but few of the major authors or artists identified with Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement, even if they contributed to the paper.

    The renaissance had many sources in Black culture, primarily of the United States and the Caribbean, and manifested itself well beyond Harlem. As its symbolic capital, Harlem was a catalyst for artistic experimentation and a highly popular nightlife destination. Its location in the communications capital of North America helped give the “New Negroes” visibility and opportunities for publication not evident elsewhere.

    Several icons including Claude McKay, W.E.B DuBois, James Wheldon Johnson, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and many more.

Tuskegee Airmen

     The Tuskegee Airmen were the first black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps (AAC), a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. Trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, they flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces.

    The program’s trainees, nearly all of them college graduates or undergraduates, came from all over the country. In addition to some 1,000 pilots, the Tuskegee program trained nearly 14,000 navigators, bombardiers, instructors, aircraft and engine mechanics, control tower operators and other maintenance and support staff.

    With pioneers like Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh breaking ground, many young Africa Americans aspired to be pilots; however, experienced several obstacles. With the belief that black soldiers being inferior to white soldiers, soldiers struggled to gain  positions as Roosevelt expanded the civilian pilot training, in responds to the ongoing war in Europe.

    Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier joined civil rights groups like the NAACP in arguing that black Americans be included, leading to the Tuskegee Experiment. Roosevelt and the Department of War chose to place the trainees in Jim Crows’ Alabama, near the prestigious Tuskegee University.

    By their last combat mission on April 26, 1945, two weeks before the German surrender, the Tuskegee Airmen had  destroyed and damaged 36 German planes in the air and 237 on the ground, as well as nearly 1,000 rail cars and transport vehicles and a German destroyer.

    Even after their brave service, the Tuskegee Airmen returned home to a country where they continued to face systematic racism and prejudice.

    But they did represent an important step forward in preparing the nation for the racial integration of the military, which began with President Harry Truman who issued Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces and mandating equality of opportunity and treatment on July 26, 1948.

Brown v Board

 

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools, and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws—and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the NAACP was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware.

 Linda Brown was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools. In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for black children were not equal to the white schools and that segregation violated the so-called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka became a landmark case in  1954  in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional, ultimately reversing the Plessy v Fergurson. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

Plessy V Ferguson: An argument

 

        The Constitution of the United States does permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights.  Every true man holds pride in himself and his race and with the rights of others, his being equal before the law, shall not be stripped from him. As it is his privilege to express such pride in his race and take action based on what seems proper to him.

        The 14th amendment actively states that “All persons”. I’ll repeat that “All persons, born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are hereby citizen of the United States. The 14th amendment continues as such, “ No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

        It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race but simply in act a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens.  Many are aware that the statues in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons.   The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statues is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens. If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so, and no government, proceeding alone on grounds of race, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each.

        The white race has deemed itself to be the dominating race of very this country.  However, in the view of the Constitution, supposedly in the eyes of the law, this country has no superior race or ruling class of citizens.  There is no caste here.  Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.  In respect to civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.   The law regards man as man, not as a black man or a white man. Therefore all civil rights are guaranteed those who are American by the supreme law of the land are involved.

State v Mann

 

    In 1829 Elizabeth Jones, who owned a slave named Lydia, hired her out for a year to John Mann of Chowan County. Lydia was unhappy with the arrangement, and at one point Mann decided to punish her, possibly by whipping her. But Lydia escaped during the punishment and began to run away. Mann shouted to her, ordering her to stop, but Lydia continued to run. Mann then shot and wounded her. Such, at least, was Mann's story.

    The circumstances were so odd, however, that a local grand jury took the unusual step of indicting Mann for assault and battery against a slave. During the trial, the judge told the jury that if it believed that the punishment Mann inflicted was "cruel and unwarrantable, and disproportionate to the offense committed by the slave that, in the law, the Defendant was guilty," particularly since he was not even her owner. This is obviously exactly what the jury thought, for it found Mann guilty. Mann then appealed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

    Thomas Ruffin was the chief justice of that court, and the appeal put him in a very bad position. He disliked the idea of slavery, and he was horrified that a white man had used such violence against a black woman. On the other hand, he could not escape the fact that slavery was perfectly legal in North Carolina. Torn between his sense of justice and his sense of duty to the law, he penned a startling opinion.

    "A Judge cannot but lament when such cases as the present are brought into court," he began. "The struggle … in the Judge's own breast between the feelings of the man, and the duty of the magistrate is a severe test." But despite his veiled denouncement of the evils of slavery, Ruffin then proceeded to side with the law. "It is criminal in a Court to avoid any responsibility which the laws impose. With whatever reluctance therefore it is done, the Court is compelled to express an opinion upon the extent of the dominion of the master over the slave in North Carolina."

Reconstruction Era: Hostile Road to Recovery

The reconstruction era was the period that followed the American Civil War and during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war. Reconstruction witnessed far-reaching changes in America’s political life. At the national level, new laws and constitutional amendments permanently altered the federal system and the definition of American citizenship. In the South, a politically mobilized Black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican Party to power, and with it a redefinition of the responsibilities of government.

     

    Reconstruction was a hostile era following the Civil War, it was the first attempt to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former enslaved people and other African Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began with the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, newly enfranchised Black people gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces–including the Ku Klux Klan–would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.

    

    Although the Civil War ended the official establishment of slavery, slavery still continued through the reconstruction era. Several newly freed slaves chose to stay on the plantation and continue to work, as these were places that they would be provided food and homes. This form of slavery ulimately evloved into what we know today as sharecropping. Sharecropping also became many people only as many states like South Carolina required large fees up to $100 if any African Americans had an occupation outside of farmer or servant.

   

     Under Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, nearly all the southern states would enacted their own black codes between 1865 and 1866. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans,including the right to buy and own property, marry, make contracts and testify in court (only in cases involving people of their own race),their primary purpose was to restrict blacks’ labor and activity.

    

    Some states limited the type of property that blacks could own, while virtually all the former Confederate states passed strict vagrancy and labor contract laws, as well as so-called “anti-enticement” measures designed to punish anyone who offered higher wages to a black laborer already under contract.

Blacks who broke labor contracts were subject to arrest, beating and forced labor, and apprenticeship laws forced many minors (either orphans or those whose parents were deemed unable to support them by a judge) into unpaid labor for white planters.

Passed by a political system in which blacks effectively had no voice, the black codes were enforced by all-white police and state militia forces,often made up of Confederate veterans of the Civil War, across the South.

 

Harper's Ferry: John Brown's Raid

 

    On the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown and seventeen other men seized the U.S. armory and arsenal, while also taking 60 hostages at Harpers Ferry, VA. The raiders held a train at bay for five hours, until finally allowing it to start its journey to DC; spreading the news of the raid. 

A  local militia had succeeded in killing and wounding ten of Brown’s men, including 2 of his sons; this lead Brown to acknowledge his failure. However,  he was determined not to give up; therefore, Brown and the remainder of his men took the hostages and barricaded themselves into the fire engine house.

On the morning of October 18, Lt. Col. Robert E Lee and the U.S. Marines stormed the fire engine house, leading to the deaths and capture of the remaining raiders.

Among the proslavery community, Brown was known to be a violent murder, due to being the head conspirators of the Pottawatomie Massacre. 

Antislavers, however, saw Brown be a frontier hero. While Brown saw himself as a peaceful man in a fight against the evils of slavery and a servant of God. 

Brown hoped that the Raid at Harpers Ferry would lead to a slave revolt big enough to end slavery. The raid did ensure fear in the south as towns from Virginia to Georgia began to formed vigilante groups and mobilized militias, in the belief that this was the start of several Northern attacks to come.

Brown’s Raid was a success as I would become a contributing factor in the cause of the Civil War, so much so Union troops were known to sing “ John Brown’s body after their battle whether it in triumphantly or sadly.