Jim Crow And The Nuremberg Laws

I was having a debate about Muhammad Ali with an Australian...Not only do I think he was the greatest boxer of all time but I also think his stance against the Viet Nam War and the price he paid for that stance , having his boxing license revoked in the prime of his career and his passport taken away so he could not fight abroad, made him a transcendent athlete and one of the seminal figures of the twentieth century...

I also explained the milieu in which he found himself in... Up until 1965 blacks in the South could not vote, could not marry outside their race, could not go to integrated schools or colleges, could not eat at certain restaurants nor lodge at certain hotels, nor drink from water fountains or defecate or urinate in toliets that were reserved for whites...

For the first time I thought Jim Crow was not much different from The Nuremberg Laws...

and Eleanor Roosevelt was the first major figure to make that connection, and a lot of folks didn't want to hear it.

And boxing was HUGE until recently. HUGE. Everybody knew who the champ was and followed the big fights. So, Ali was a Very Big Deal. Here and the world. His victory pose over Sonny Liston is one of THE photographs of the 20th Century.

My friend , Nate, is seventy years old...He grew up in Selma and went to segregated schools...He's career military as is most of his family...He has Bronze Stars from Viet Nam and Korea...I asked him how he could devote his life to a country that didn't always treat him right...He said he served and fought for what America aspired to be even if it wasn't...

It reminds of what Joe Louis said when he was asked the question I asked my friend Nate...He said the "problems aren't anything Hitler could fix."...

Slavery by Another Name:
The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II

In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—when a cynical new form of slavery was resurrected from the ashes of the Civil War and re-imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans until the dawn of World War II.

Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel Corp.—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of "free" black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.

The neoslavery system exploited legal loopholes and federal policies which discouraged prosecution of whites for continuing to hold black workers against their wills. As it poured millions of dollars into southern government treasuries, the new slavery also became a key instrument in the terrorization of African Americans seeking full participation in the U.S. political system.

Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude. It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the system’s final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II.

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME is a moving, sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book

~

...although I don't know as much about it as I'd like.

Here are some links:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/etc/road.html

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/40

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1978/2/78.02.02.x.html

Booker T Washington said blacks should "earn" their rights by showing whites how earnest and hard working they are...DuBois said those rights were a birth right...

...Washington said blacks should wait for society to allow them to enjoy rights and DuBois disagreed.

~

you were not in on the game.

"As I came to see it," said DuBois, "Washington bartered away much that was not his to barter. Certainly I did not believe that the skills of an artisan bricklayer, plasterer, or shoemaker, and the good farmer would cause the white South, grimly busy with disfranchisement and separation, to change the direction of things."

Will start reading after our family reunion this weekend.

can't wait to read this.

what most don't understand was that Jim Crow was much more than simply segregation. It was in place to preserve and reinforce a racial caste system that is the USA's open wound to the present day. Jim Crow included both laws and social customs. Here are some examples--

Social customs:

A Black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a White male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a Black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a White woman, because he risked being accused of rape.

Blacks and Whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, Whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them.

Under no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the cigarette of a White female -- that gesture implied intimacy.

Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended Whites.

Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to Blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, Blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to Whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.

Laws:

Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia).

Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons (Georgia).

Buses. All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races (Alabama).

Child Custody. It shall be unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in this State, having the control or custody of any white child, by right of guardianship, natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or surrender such white child permanently into the custody, control, maintenance, or support, of a negro (South Carolina).

Education. The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately (Florida).

Libraries. The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals (North Carolina).

Mental Hospitals. The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be together (Georgia).


http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/what.htm

I have a black friend, Andy.
He's a contractor who has done some work for me.
When we first met, we shook hands as I introduced my self by first and last names (what else?), as did he.

And I called him Andy and he called me Mr. Lastname.

He was at our house every day for about 3 weeks and we became friends.
As he was preparing to knock off one day I walked in the kitchen to fix a drink. I asked him if he'd like to join me.
Sure.
"What'll you have?"
"Some of that Crown would do fine."

We drank and chatted in the kitchen for a bit and then refreshed our drinks and moved out to the deck. We were talking politics and bemoaning the damage Bush has done to the country.

He still called me Mr. Lastname.
I told him if he didn't call me by my first name (actually a nickname) I was going to start calling him Mr. Smith. He laughed and said OK.
But it was a very hard habit for him to break.
Every once in a while he'd say "Mr..." and I'd look at him and say "Watch out now." He'd laugh and use my first name.
Several years later he and his wife are close friends and there's no more thought of Mr. or Mrs.