1886 Anti-Chinese Convention Votes To Remove All Chinese From Idaho

 

Feb. 25, 1886, Anti-Chinese sentiment in the American West was as prominent of a characteristic, perhaps even more of one than prejudice against Native Americans.

From Denver to California to Wyoming and throughout the northwest with the China Town Massacre in Denver, Rock Springs Massacre, and others. The hatred was at all levels and forced the passage of the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, much of this hate originated in competition for railroad and mining jobs but it grew because of cultural differences and perceived competition for the same jobs, this perception was hyped up by the Knights of Labor, an early labor union in Idaho.

In Idaho, Chinese immigrants made up 25-35 percent of the total population. Even then they had no power to even protect themselves, Chinese residents were not permitted to testify against whites in court and acts of violence committed against the Chinese were rarely investigated or punished. Perhaps the most extreme was the taxation, each person who was Chinese had to pay $5.00 a month to live in Idaho, approximately $160 in 2023 dollars, so an almost exorbitant amount.

On this day in 1886 representatives from across the state met in Boise to discuss what could be done to push the Chinese out, similar conventions were occurring in California and Nevada on the same day. In Idaho and California the language of resolutions was as prejudiced and bigoted as anything else ever written in the United States:

          Resolved: That we regard the Chinese among us as a mental, physical, moral, and financial evil.

          Resolved the Chinese must go

In other states, there was language stating that all methods must be based on the laws of the state and the federal government, but in Idaho, it was just resolved they must go. This was after the Federal 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act had made it impossible for anyone new to immigrate from China and since this made it impossible for many Chinese to bring in their families many returned to China, while others never saw their families again.

In Idaho, there was a two-pronged assault to remove the Chinese. They made moves in the state legislature to ensure that no one who was Chinese could own property in the state, this included property they already owned, forcing them to sell often at only 10 percent of the actual value. Also, violence against the Chinese increased with beatings and threats forcing them to move. This culminated in the 1887 Hells Canyon Massacre where 7 white horse thieves killed 34 Chinese miners and stole over $5 thousand in gold. They were brought to trial and acquitted of the massacre.

By 1910 the Chinese population of Idaho had dropped from 4,000 to less than 45. Through violence and lawful intimidation the men who gathered in Boise on this day in 1886 accomplished their goal. 

The Pavonia Massacre In New Jersey The First Act Of First Nation Genocide

 

Feb 25, 1643, Many first came to the White, European settlements in the 1600s. Before it was New York the city on the Hudson River was known as New Amsterdam and the territorial governor was a man named Willem Kieft.

Willem Kieft arrived in New Netherland in 1639 appointed as Director of New Netherland, with a directive to increase profits from the port at Pavonia. He was also to hold the territory from rival powers England, France, and Sweden. As the representative of the Dutch West India Company, Kieft made a series of moves to stabilize New Amsterdam; he was allowed to have all nations to trade in New Amsterdam and use the Hudson River in exchange for an import/export tax, and encourage settlers to purchase their own land within New Amsterdam instead of just leasing from the company. He also attempted to exact tribute from the native Lenape with claims that the money would buy them protection from rival groups.

Due to war between the Algonquin and Mohican people the Lenape were also among the First Contact refugees and made camps on the western shore of the Hudson. Relations between New Amsterdam and the Lenape were not great, although there were economic dealings the natives had refused the protection tax and suffered from European diseases and livestock encroachment onto their land. occasional acts of savage killing on both sides also increased tensions.

One night, hundreds of Lenape fleeing Mohican invaders sought refuge in New Amsterdam. Kieft not only refused, but on February 25, 1643, he led a raiding party of 80 men into Pavonia, the old name for northern New Jersey, and slaughtered over a hundred unarmed Lenape of all gender and ages. This became known as the “Pavonia Massacre.”

It was reported to be brutal, a witness wrote to the 12-man advisory council in New Amsterdam: “Infants were torn from their mother’s breasts and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents, and pieces thrown into the fire and in the water”

David De Vries, a prominent citizen in New Amsterdam and a political adversary of Governor Kieft recounted hearing the sounds of the massacre from his hearth across the Hudson River in New Amsterdam; “I heard a great shrieking, and I ran to the ramparts of the fort and looked over to Pavonia. Saw nothing but firing, and the shrieks of the natives murdered in their sleep.”

The Native Americans called this "The Slaughter of the Innocents". This attack united the Algonquian peoples in the surrounding areas, to an extent not seen before. On October 1, 1643, a force of united "tribes" attacked the White homesteads at Pavonia, most of which were burned to the ground. Many settlers were killed and those who survived were ordered to the relative safety of New Amsterdam. Pavonia was evacuated. However, the next generation of Algonquin and Iroquois would be devastated by smallpox and were no longer a military threat by the 1664 British takeover.

The place known as Pavonia is now part of the Communipaw neighborhood of Jersey City, New Jersey. Where the salt marsh led to the river itself is now cut off from the water by the New Jersey Turnpike.

In many ways, the Pavonia Massacre was the beginning of the First Nations genocide

Willhem Kieft

Sources:

https://anothertownonthehudson.com/2015/06/05/the-pavonia-massacre/

https://www.publichistoryproject.org/remembering-pavonia/#:~:text=Done%2C%20Feb%2024th%2C%201643.,night%2C%20including%20women%20and%20children.

https://untappedcities.com/2015/02/25/today-in-nyc-history-a-1643-massacre-of-the-lenape-almost-dooms-new-amsterdam/

 

Learn more about the #PAVONIA1643 project here https://www.publichistoryproject.org/remembering-pavonia/#pavonia1643

South Carolina Post Master Lynched For Being Black In a White Town

Feb 22, 1898, it isn’t an overstatement to say that just being a free Black man in the Jim Crow south was enough to cause hate and violent death.

Such was the case for Frazier Baker the Postmaster for Lake City, South Carolina. Baker was a former schoolteacher, married and father of 6 children. He was 40 years old and known to a quiet and reserved man who just attempted to be live and do his job.

President William McKinley had appointed Baker to the position in July of 1897 and it was met immediately with anger and rancor by Whites in the community.

In the short time he had been Postmaster, six months, Baker had received death threats and had been shot at twice, there was a never-ending series of petitions and letters to officials to have Baker removed.

Baker dealt with these hostilities by writing a record of the incidents and reporting it all to his superiors, Soon after his appointment Baker faced a boycott of his post office by the White population and an investigation by a district inspector, the inspector suggested shutting down the Lake City post-office but the regional need was felt to be too strong so after Whites burned down the in town post-office a new one was constructed outside of town where Baker moved with his family.

This was actually a bit pointless as shortly after the Baker family moved in the night of Feb. 22 arrived and a mob of over 200 White men surround the building that acted as both post office and family resident.

The mob began by firing their guns into the house more than 1,000 times before lighting it on fire. Baker’s wife and children ran from the house and she and one of the children were wounded. When Baker attempted to leave with his infant daughter he was shot.

The fire was extremely intense and turned the building to ash and the remains of Baker and his infant daughter Julia. News reports stated that they had basically been cremated.

Newspapers in the area and of the era were mixed in their reporting of the crime. Some such as the Yorkville Enquirer reported that Lake City was a sober and moral town and that the lynching was the fault of McKinley for promoting a Negro so high above his station, in a position no White could accept. South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman followed this line of thinking when he said the "proud people" of Lake City refused to receive "their mail from a nigger."

Other papers though, such as the Watchman and Southron of Sumter, South Carolina declared that Williamsburg to be stained by such an atrocious crime. The legendary journalist and lynching activist Ida B. Wells led protests in Chicago and noted that in this case the murderers didn’t even attempt to hide their murder under curtain of Southern Chivalry and an accusation of another crime.

After the coroner recovered what he could and held an inquest the county attorney did in fact compel a grand jury to hear the evidence of murder, the grand jury refused any indictments,

The McKinley administration under the direction of the President conducted a robust investigation of the murder, initially offering a $1,500 ($48,858 today) reward for the arrest and conviction of members of the mob. Despite resistance by witnesses to testifying, on 1 July 1898 Federal prosecutors indicted 7 men on the charge of murdering Baker.

There was a mistrial then, as the all whit jury of ten men was evenly divided 5 ruling guilty and 5 ruling acquittal. Even with eye witness testimony of Baker’s wife and statements of some of the suspects, the prosecution did not seek a new trial.

Today a historical marker stands on the spot of the murder.

 

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/529153516/?terms=%22Frazier%20Baker%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/339335036/?terms=%22Frazier%20Baker%22&match=1

https://www.newspapers.com/image/668571583/?terms=%22Frazier%20Baker%22&match=1

 

History Snapshot: The Assassination Of Malcolm X

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was better known by his public name Malcolm X

On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated by three gunmen at an Organization of Afro-American Unity rally in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

Though it was initially believed that the three assassins were members of the Nation of Islam and were affiliated with religious leader Louis Farrakhan, the killing remains controversial, and no consensus exists on who the killer(s) were.

In 2021, Muhammad Aziz was exonerated after being convicted in 1966 for the killing along with Khalil Islam and Mujahid Abdul Halim. Halim, who admitted to the shooting but later said Aziz and Islam were not involved, was paroled in 2010.

Forgotten History: 1947 Massachusettes Protest Proves Power of Non-Violence

Feb 21, 1947, in a precursor to the Civil Rights Activism of the late 50s and the 60s students at Williams College in Massachusetts protested a barber in Williamstown who had tried to charge an African-American customer, Wayman Caliman, Jr., $3.00 for a haircut rather than the $1.00 he charged white customers.

Forty-five students picketed Mederic Bleau’s shop with the support of the student body at Williams. Caliman Jr. and the editor for the student paper, The Williams Record, Norman Redlich stopped into the shop late in the afternoon and Bleau told Caliman Jr. the cost would be $3.00 as opposed to the regular $1.00. So the two students left the store, and Redlich announced in The Record the plans to picket the shop.

Bleau told the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, MA that he had cut the hair of students for 32 years and in that time cut the hair of Spaniards and Mexicans and of many nations but asked if he had cut any other Negro’s hair he refused to answer.

Bleau also told the paper that the fact was it wasn’t the student’s skin color but size of head and thickness of his hair. “I didn’t refuse him service,” said Bleau. “I had a hard day and his head looked huge to me in the mirror so I told him my price and he and the other boy left.”

The Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts took up the case and took Bleau to court using an 1865 law that no business could discriminate on the basis of skin color. Bleau was fined $50.

While the 5-day protest was a preview of protests to come it didn’t seem to hurt the shop in the long term. Mr. Bleau told the Eagle in 1953 he thought in 37 years with the scissors he had cut over 100,000 students hair. He retired in 1959 and died in 1969 at the age of 87.

Although he was a member of the NAACP for the rest of his life the protest wasn’t the start of an activist life for Wayman Caliman, Jr. He graduated from Williams with his BA then in 1949 with his MBA from Columbia University. In 1950 he joined the U.S. Navy and served for 28 years. Mr. Caliman died in 1986 at the age of 57.

Sources:

https://www.newspapers.com/image/532120593/?terms=%22Wayman%20Caliman%2C%20Jr%22

https://www.newspapers.com/image/155343377/?terms=%22Wayman%20Caliman%2C%20Jr%22&match=1

 

FDR Signs Executive Order 9066 Creating World War Two Japanese Internment Camps

In an opinion piece in the LA Times attorney, W.H. Anderson argued that “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched—so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents—grows up to be a Japanese, not an American.” This was before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the war starting.

For many in America this was the attitude towards their Japanese neighbors even before the bombing, so the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942, wasn’t met with massive protest at the time.

The infamous order though didn’t mention Japanese Americans specifically and said nothing about what would become of the people who would be evacuated. This was left up to the Department of War/Defense to decide.

So, with paranoia about the Japanese, reinforced by an existing prejudice the DOD rounded up about 122,000 Americans of Japanese descent and sent them to concentration camps. Many of their homes, businesses, and farms were confiscated.

Another factor that played into the decisions regarding the Nisei (Americans born to Japanese parents) many were farmers and there were competing economic interests that paid lobbyists to come to Washington and persuade congress to support the internment of the Japanese Americans.

The government made no charges against them, nor could they appeal their incarceration. All lost their personal liberties; although several Japanese Americans challenged the government’s actions in court cases, the Supreme Court upheld their legality. However, as incongruous as it sounds Nisei were encouraged to serve in the armed forces, and some were also drafted. Altogether, more than 30,000 Japanese Americans served with distinction during World War II in segregated units.

Realizing the total injustice of what happened to the Japanese Americans various individuals and groups sought compensation for those incarcerated after the war. The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948, with amendments in 1951 and 1965, provided token payments for some property losses. More serious efforts to make amends took place in the early 1980s when the congressionally established Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians held investigations and found that total property loss was estimated at $1.3 billion, and net income loss at $2.7 billion (calculated in 1983 dollars). As a result, several bills were introduced in Congress from 1984 until 1988. In 1988, Public Law 100-383 acknowledged the injustice of incarceration, apologized for it, and provided partial restitution – a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated.

Sources:

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9066

 

Bhagat Singh Thind Loses In Supreme Court , Indians lose Citizanship

 

Feb 19, 1923, A racist Supreme Court is a great danger to all Americans, this was proven more than once but never more so than in the ruling in the United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.

In 1919, Bhagat Singh Thind filed a petition for naturalization under the Naturalization Act of 1906, which allowed only "free white persons" and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" to become United States citizens by naturalization.

While his petition was initially granted, almost immediately other U.S. immigration officials began the work to cancel his citizenship. Their basis for this cancellation was based on Thind’s political activities as a founding member of the Ghadr Party, a violent Indian independence movement headquartered in San Francisco. Based on this and stating he was not White; immigration officials rescinded his citizenship in four days.

Bhagat Singh Thind immigrated to the U.S. in 1913 for further college studies, he had volunteered and enlisted in the U.S. Army and fought in World War One, Thind was discharged honorably with his character designated as "excellent". 

Thind received his citizenship for the second time in the state of Oregon in November 1920 after the Bureau of Naturalization was unsuccessful in its efforts to stall it in Oregon court. The case then reached the Supreme Court, where a California attorney and fellow immigrant Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, represented Thind.

Before the court Pandit argued that while Thind was not light-toned in complexion, Thind was racially Caucasian by the scientific classification of the time, making him a white person under the precedent of Ozawa v. United States and therefore eligible for naturalization. Pandit made his arguments quoting anthropological texts that stated people in Punjab and other Northwestern Indian states belonged to the "Aryan race."  He cited scientific authorities such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach as classifying Aryans as belonging to the Caucasian race.

This argument fell on deaf ears even if it met the precedent set in Ozawa v. United States just a few months before. When the court returned with their decision on Feb 19 and it was unanimous against Thind.

The court stated, “What we now hold is that the words ‘free white persons’ are words of common speech, to be interpreted in accordance with the understanding of the common man, synonymous with the word ‘Caucasian’ only as that word is popularly understood.”

The repercussions of the case were immediate, Bhagat Singh Thind’s American citizenship was revoked by the Bureau of Naturalization. Not only were new citizenships not granted, 65 South-Asian Americans who possessed their citizenship before the Thind decision had their citizenship revoked between 1923 and 1927.

After the ruling, Ulysses Webb, Attorney General of California, declared, “the menacing spread of Hindus holding our land will cease,” and using the California Alien Land Law, officials began taking homes and property. The Supreme Court upended, and in some cases cut short, the lives of ordinary people who had long considered the United States a home where they could safely lead their lives. Vaishno Bagai an immigrant art dealer who had his citizenship rescinded. He committed suicide in 1928 inhaling gas, he sent his suicide letter to the San Francisco Examiner.

“I came to America thinking, dreaming, and hoping to make this land my home. Sold my properties and brought more than twenty-five thousand dollars (gold_ to this country, established myself and tried my very best to give my children the best American education. But they now come to me and say, I am no longer an American citizen. They will not permit me to buy my home and lo, they even shall not issue me a passport to go back to India. Now what am I? What have I made of myself and my children? We cannot exercise our rights, we cannot leave this country. Humility and insults, who is responsible for all this? Myself and American government.”

After the U.S. v. Thind decision, the South-Asian American community dwindled in the United States, and the population was reduced to half its previous number by 1940.

 

Sources:

https://www.saada.org/item/20130513-2748

https://aaregistry.org/story/united-states-v-bhagat-singh-thind-ruled/

https://pluralism.org/bhagat-singh-thind-citizen-or-alien

President Wilson Helps Reignite the Klan By Endorsing Birth of A Nation

Feb. 18, 1915, an old acquaintance of President Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Dixon was an avowed White Supremacist and Southern Apologist. He had written a play called “The Clansman” which film director and producer D.W. Griffith had optioned and made into the film, “Birth of A Nation” Dixon asked for the opportunity to screen the film at the White House for the president and he agreed to the screening.

Both myths and history were made this night, ones that would have ripples over the next decade and influence American thought and treatment of African Americans.

The myth is that Wilson was an enthusiastic viewer of the film and told both Griffith and Dixon, “It's like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” This line has appeared in numerous books and articles regarding the film and it is often done to support that both Wilson and the film are extremely bigoted. The truth is the film is racist and so was Wilson however if at all true only the first part of the quote is close to authentic.

The greater truth is that it is irrelevant whether Wilson said this. The very fact that he saw the film and did not denounce the racism and the story of a heroic Ku Klux Klan was enough.

Just the fact that a sitting president would screen a film in the White House for his family and cabinet members at this point if film history was in and of itself an endorsement. Moreover, Wilson had segregated federal employment eliminating Blacks from all but the most basic cleaning positions. Wilson’s own scholarly, historical writings before he became president showed that he was a White Supremacist.

This tacit, informal endorsement of the film led to several events that were frankly bad for Black Americans and other minority populations. By reinforcing the prejudices of many White Americans the film became some people's truth and not fiction, They preached it from the church pulpit, politician soapbox, or anywhere else.

Worse than just reinforcing the existing prejudices the fact the president saw the film and did not speak out it cast the Klan in a favorable light. The popularity of the film after Wilson’s screening kicked off a full rebirth of the Klan.  Former Methodist minister William Joseph Simmons revived the Klan in Atlanta, Georgia, holding a cross burning at Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving night in 1915. This version of the Klan grew quickly and turned out to be more violent than the original. Its growth helped spur the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919 which led to nationwide violence and even massacres of Blacks.

The repression of Blacks by putting them in their proper place was the message and with the Klan and supporters infiltrating many police departments and government offices it became difficult if not impossible to expand civil rights

Whether Wilson said the infamous line or not he gave his approval of the false history of “Birth of A Nation” and helped boost its popularity which had consequences that are undeniable.

 

Sources:

Benbow, Mark E. “Birth of a Quotation: Woodrow Wilson and ‘Like Writing History with Lightning.’” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 9, no. 4, 2010, pp. 509–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20799409. Accessed 19 Feb. 2023.

 

Benbow, Mark E. “Birth of a Quotation: Woodrow Wilson and ‘Like Writing History with Lightning.’” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 9, no. 4 (2010): 509–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20799409.

 

Benbow, M. E. (2010). Birth of a Quotation: Woodrow Wilson and “Like Writing History with Lightning.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 9(4), 509–533. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20799409

 

Willie Earle: The Last Lynching In South Carolina And The Aquittal Of His Killers

 

Feb. 17, 1947, a cab driver named Thomas Watson Brown was stabbed to death in Greenville, South Carolina, it was rumored that 24-year-old Black man Willie Earle was his last passenger so naturally suspicion fell upon him, and on this circumstantial evidence, he was arrested and jailed.

Even though it was 1947 and some tolerance was beginning to form, or if not tolerance at least respect for the laws of the land, but not for Willie Earle. Early on the morning of Sunday the 17^th the other cab drivers of Greenville and Pickens County formed a convoy with other White vigilantes and stormed the jail and forced the release of Willie Earle into their custody from the jailer J.E. Gilstrap.

The mob forced Willie Earle into a car and proceeded to a lonely road outside of town, beat him viciously, stabbed him, and then took a shotgun to his face. Afterward, someone telephoned the Black undertaker in the town of Pickens to tell him that there was, “a dead nigger in need of his offices by the slaughter-pen in a  dirt road off the main road from Greenville to Pickens.

It had been 20 years since there had been a lynching in South Carolina and even the White Supremacist authorities didn’t believe mob justice was the correct outcome of this case. Governor Strom Thurmond ordered the state patrol to investigate the case and J. Edgar Hoover sent FBI agents.

In a case that was already different than any before it more than 150 suspects were questioned in the days after Earle's murder, and 31—all but three of whom were taxi drivers who were charged with the crime. 26 of the suspects wrote self-incriminating statements basically confessing to at least a conspiracy to commit murder.

Judge J. Robert Martin warned that he was considered an excellent jurist and fair, and he was a Greenville native. He told the assembled court that he would “not allow racial issues to be injected in this case.” During the 10-day trial, the defendants chewed gum and chuckled each time the victim was mentioned.

The defense presented that Wille Earle was an epileptic drunk who was prone to having violent outbursts and, not complying with the judge's order, it was said he hated White men. They talked of how the murdered taxi driver was a wounded veteran of the world war.

The prosecution did not present any evidence but the confessions and a statement from the elderly jailer, however, he insisted he didn’t recognize the men.

John B, Culbertson one of the two defense attorneys also based his defense on ‘Northern Interference,” and in his closing arguments stated that, “Willie Earle is dead and I wish more like him were dead!”

So when the 10-day trial concluded it came as a little surprise that the jury of 12 White men were acquitted. The normal strain of racism had asserted itself along with the defiance of both state and federal intervention.

While the nation was shocked the people of Greenville celebrated the acquittal. They had little use for either Blacks or Northerners and this verdict was just justification for those feelings.

 

Sources:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1947/06/14/opera-in-greenville

https://www.newspapers.com/image/809824826/?terms=%22Willie%20Earle%22&match=1

https://greenvillejournal.com/black-history-month/75-years-later-willie-earles-lynching-still-looms-large-in-greenvilles-painful-past/

Louis Wright Lynched For Standing Up For Himself And Fellow Performers

Feb. 16, 1902, entertaining while Black in the early 20^th Century was always a risk, American minstrel shows often faced racialized, hateful crowds that couldn’t always be overcome.

Louis Wright was a 19-year-old performer with the traveling Richard and Pringle’s famous Georgia Minstrels. He was primarily a singer but had to also act, be a comedian, and dancer, physical ability was a necessity in these shows, and being acrobatic was a major asset. Wright was from Ottawa Kansas and had been with the show for about two years, his fame was growing.

The show arrived in town by train the day before meeting snow and cold in the morning but as per custom, they did a street parade in their full performance wear of tuxedos and top hats. The combination of fresh snow and the inevitable racism, and machoism of the young white men led to several of the performers getting hit with snowballs. They did not break from their performance though. However, when Wright and two other men were walking back to the opera house two white toughs again started throwing packed ice and slush at them. Wright cursed at them but the town marshal was on the scene quickly to make sure there was no violence.

While violence was prevented then there was tension in the town and in the crowded opera house that night when the performance began. Several White men took up the seats in the front two rows and called insults to the performers and of course more snowballs. These men had heard of the earlier meeting between Wright and the two White toughs, they repeatedly said asked where “that nigger was who dared to curse a White man.”

This went on throughout the show with some of the older White men trying to calm the tempers of the younger men and remind them these were performers and would soon be out of town. The younger men would have none of it and be angry about the disrespect they felt they had received from all the performers.

As the show closed several of these young men rushed the stage, some of them flashing pistols and shooting into the curtain or air. As they were going through the narrow passageway from the stage, one of the members of the minstrel company opened fire with a revolver. In a moment, half a dozen pistols were being fired at random by both companies. Panic ensued in the hall, and men, women, and children rushed pell-mell from the building, screaming and crying. 

At least one of the performers and one white man received minor wounds. The minstrels escaped out a side door and took refuge in their railroad car, which was parked on a sidetrack nearby. Local law officers arrived and placed five of the performers under arrest, including Wright. Taken to jail, they all denied firing any shots or knowing who did, and no weapon was found on any of them. They spent the night crammed into a damp cell with standing room only.

Things kind of calmed down around town, except many of the young White men were congregating around and talking about the shooting and earlier disrespect they felt they had received. Meanwhile, throughout the day on Sunday, the prisoners were taken one by one from the jail to the courthouse across the yard for interrogation before a special jury, composed of thirty of the town’s “best citizens,” which had been called to investigate the shooting.
Under an intense “sweating,” one or more of the minstrels revealed that Louis Wright was the person who had cursed the white boys on Saturday afternoon. Most newspaper accounts said Wright was also identified as the man who fired from the stage, but the performers all denied this.

This of course to White supremacists already agitated this was enough proof and identification. They had already been discussing vigilante activities, but this sent them over the top. Late Sunday night five men went to the jail and overpowered the night watch and took Wright, they joined several other men nearby and took Wright to a grove of trees and hung him.

Wright’s crime was cursing at immature White men and potentially defending himself and his friends from people shooting at them. As was so often the case during this era it didn’t matter, they had to kill someone for the perceived crime. Several of the regional papers did report that the minstrel performers did not commit any crime but the worst that could be said was they were defending themselves.

A promising young entertainer was slain for doing nothing more than standing up for himself and as always there were no charges pressed against any of the white citizens of Madrid and no investigation.

 

 

Sources:

https://ozarks-history.blogspot.com/2018/05/daring-to-curse-white-boy.html

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/721746

https://utd-ir.tdl.org

 

 

Forgotten History: Rabbi Leo Franklin And Henry Ford Friends Become Foes

 

Feb. 15, 1921, on this day Jewish leaders in the city of Detroit issued a challenge to automaker and newspaper publisher Henry Ford over his writings in his own paper the Dearborn Independent that was very anti-Semitic and his statements that he was just working towards world peace.

“It is not through dislike of the Jews,” Ford told the Boston American on Feb 12, 1921. “Not because of Anti-Semitism, but because Jews to cooperate with the Gentiles and bring about world peace our paper is being used to expose Jewish Propaganda”

The Jewish leaders in Detroit felt strongly this had not been even close to denouncing Anti-Semitism. In fact, Rabbi Leo Franklin who was acting as spokesman for the three groups was at one time a close friend of Ford. The automaker had cultivated a friendship with the rabbi. Franklin was the rabbi at the Temple Beth El, the most prominent temple in Detroit. From this position, Franklin had reached out across the interfaith barrier and held Sunday morning services for interfaith groups. His community work made him among the most famous Jewish leaders in the U.S. in the early 20^th Century.

Ford and Franklin lived on the same block in Detroit in the teens and in 1913 Ford offered a new Model T for his pastoral duties every year, which Franklin gratefully accepted. The two men spoke frequently, and Franklin basically was one of the men who had generally open access to Ford.

Franklin considered Ford both a friend and an ally to the Jews so it came as a stunning shock when Ford started publishing his anti-Jewish articles in the Dearborn Independent. As the head of the Anti-defamation League in Detroit Franklin approached Ford regarding these articles. Ford remained stubborn about what he was publishing and so Franklin ended their association by returning the most recent Model T. Ford was genuinely shocked writing to Franklin, “I thought you were one of the good Jews.”

On Feb. 14 after Ford’s interview with the Boston American Franklin said, “Mr. Ford's fallacious declaration that, ‘We are not Anti-Semitic’ must contemplate on his part colossal credulity on the part of the American public.”

Franklin went on to say that Ford was being duplicitous saying he would have signed a statement on Anti-Semitism, or that his employing 5,000 men of Jewish descent proved he did not hate Jews if he continued to write the articles justifying the persecution of Jews.

“The chief viciousness of Mr. Ford’s writing lies in how he published his latest article in the Dearborn Independent the same day his interview appeared in the American,” stated Franklin. “We must conclude that his provocative statement is against his reported feelings.”

Unfortunately, the protest and Leo Franklin’s personal outreach did not impact Ford. He went on to print millions of copies of the “International Jew” over the next few years. These writings were foundational in the beliefs of the Nazis.

In 1931, two years before he became the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler gave an interview to a Detroit News reporter in his Munich office, which featured a large portrait of Ford over the desk of the future führer. The reporter asked about the photo.

“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” Hitler told the News.

Franklin and other Detroit Jewish leaders were willing to pay for proof of any of the accusations Ford was making in his articles in the Dearborn Independent or that would be included in the; ‘International Jew’. No one took them up on the challenge.

In 1927 Ford lost a libel suit over the articles but argued that even with his byline on the articles, and his ownership of the Dearborn Independent he was not responsible for the stories.

“The International Jew,” sold well around the world before World War II and continues to sell today.

Photo Header: Rabbi Leo Franklin, Ford's Pamphlet, Henry Ford

Sources: 

https://www.newspapers.com/image/352857609/?terms=%22Jewish%20Groups%22&match=1&clipping_id=118690213

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/henry-ford-and-jews-story-dearborn-didnt-want-told

https://www.newspapers.com/image/368021849/?terms=%22Henry%20Ford%22&match=1

The Rape Of Recy Taylor and The White Wall Of Injustice

Feb. 14, 1945, White men in Alabama were of the opinion that Black women were basically all whores to do what they felt like with, or rather one could believe that as on this day a second all White male grand jury voted unanimously to not indict six men for the gang rape of Recy Taylor a Black woman from Abbeville, Alabama.

On the night of Sept. 3 1944 Taylor was walking home from a revival meeting, with two friends near her own home when 7 men in a green Chevrolet pulled up to her and forced her into their car, one of the men, Herbert Lovett, had a shotgun he aimed at her two friends. They took Taylor to a remote wooded area and six of them raped her.

Her friends had already spread the alarm to her family and the Negro community so when the men threw Taylor from their car a search party was already looking for her. Disoriented from the assault Taylor, then 24 mother and sharecropper with her husband, wandered the roads looking for direction and safety.

Taylor’s friend Fannie Daniels had tried to find the sheriff but he wasn’t around so she was able to get the former chief of police Will Cook and Taylor’s father Benny Corbitt to go looking for her, they found her near the local highway at about 3 AM and took her back to Cook’s workshop where her husband and Daniels waited. Henry County Sheriff, George Gamble had also been found in the interim and was there. Taylor bravely recounted the entire experience, while she couldn’t identify the men the car was well known because of its color.

Sheriff Gamble knew who owned the car and went to pick him up. The young man was Hugo Wilson. When the sheriff brought him back to Cook’s store, Taylor identified Wilson as one of the rapists. Wilson was taken to jail and confessed to participating in the attack. He gave up the names of the other men including U.S. Army Private Herbert Lovett, Billy Howerton, Dillard York, Luther Lee, Joe Culpepper, and Robert Gamble. Wilson though insisted that because they paid her, their kidnapping and brutalization could not be considered rape. The sheriff released Wilson and never brought the other men in.

Even though the sheriff appeared to have no intention of actually making arrests the rapists and other Whites still attempted to intimidate Taylor and her family, they firebombed her home and burned the porch and front room. So they moved in with her father and siblings. Her father began spending his nights in a tree with a shotgun watching the house only sleeping after the sun had risen.

The NAACP chapter in Montgomery heard of the terrible assault and treatment of Taylor and sent Rosa Parks to investigate the case. Parks interviewed Taylor, Daniels, and her son, Taylor’s husband, father, and Will Cook. Parks also came under surveillance by Deputy Sheriff Lewey Corbitt a distant cousin of Taylor who was White. Taylor followed Parks around Abbeville and drove by the older Corbitt’s home several times each day. Finally, Sheriff Gamble himself had decided he was not willing to allow outsiders to influence anyone, he stormed into the Corbitt home and told Parks to leave, “I don’t want any troublemakers here in Abbeville,” he said. “If you don’t go, I’ll lock you up.”

Parks returned to Montgomery and started promptly launched the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. The committee flooded the South with fliers “decrying white attacks on black women,” according to the Black newspaper the Chicago Defender.

A correspondent for the Defender, Fred Atwater, arrived in Abbeville and reported that the lawyer representing the suspects in the case had offered $600 to Willie Guy Taylor to silence his wife. “Nigger — ain’t $600 enough for raping your wife,” the story quoted the lawyer saying. The six defendants were willing to pay $100 each “if Recy Taylor would forget.”

She refused to bow and pressed charges against the men. A grand jury was brought together but they basically ignored the witness statements and on Oct, 9 unanimously voted to dismiss the case.

Nationwide outrage was building in the case and the NCCAP pressed with protests and letters, and they got the attention of Alabama Governor  Chauncey Sparks. Sparks made a statement on Dec. 18^th that he was ordering a full investigation of the matter. This was followed up by Alabama Attorney General William McQueen sending two of the lead investigators to Abbeville and interviewing everyone involved. McQueen stated there were no legal issues about this just because one grand jury did not bring back a case.

Despite these efforts when a second grand jury was impaneled, it was once again 12 White men and they did what White men did in the Jim Crow South and dismissed the case.

After this second failure to indict people began to move on to other events. While there were still groups attempting to keep the focus on Taylor’s case and they did raise some money by June there just was no longer any political motivation or will to continue.

No longer feeling safe or comfortable in Abbeville Taylor, her husband, and daughter moved to Montgomery for a few months living with Parks. They then moved to central Florida and worked in the orange groves. By 1960 Taylor and her husband had separated and in 1961 Mr. Taylor died. Tragically Taylor’s only child, her daughter, died in a car accident in 1967.

The case drifted into obscurity for decades until historian Danielle L. McGuire included Taylor’s story in her book entitled, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance” in 2011. The book led to the Alabama State Legislature issuing a full apology to Taylor:

“That we acknowledge the lack of prosecution for crimes committed against Recy Taylor by the government of the State of Alabama. That we declare such failure to act was, and is, morally abhorrent and repugnant, and that we do hereby express profound regret for the role played by the government of the State of Alabama in failing to prosecute the crimes.”

Taylor died in 2017

 

Sources:

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, by the historian Danielle L. McGuire. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/obituaries/recy-taylor-alabama-rape-victim-dead.html

https://www.thelily.com/when-recy-taylor-was-gang-raped-in-1944-no-arrests-were-made-the-naacp-sent-rosa-parks-to-investigate/

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/recy-taylor

 

The Blinding of Sargent Isaac Woodard And The Concious Of President Harry Truman

 

Feb. 12, 1946, Sargent Isaac Woodard boarded a Greyhound bus in Augusta, Georgia headed for his home in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He was excited as he had just been discharged from the Army after serving in the Pacific during World War Two. Sargent Woodward had been given an honorable discharge; he was a decorated veteran of the war.

When the bus stopped again in North Augusta on the South Carolina side of the city Sargent Woodward asked the driver, Alton C. Blackwell, if he had time to use the restroom. The driver insulted him but allowed him time; “Talk to me like I am talking to you,” Sargent Woodward told him in response, adding: “I am a man just like you.”

Sargent Woodward returned to his seat and was unaware of Blackwell having contacted the police in the city of Batesburg, South Carolina. When the bus stopped in Batesburg police chief Lynwood Shull and officer Elliot Long came on the bus to remove Sargent Woodward whom the driver had reported as being drunk and disorderly.

The police took Sargent Woodward into an alley next to the station and preceded to beat him severely. They then took him to the police station and charged him with being drunk and disorderly and then left him in his cell. They at no point attempted to get him medical care, although he complained of great pain.

The next morning Sargent Woodward appeared in court and was convicted of the charges and fined $50, at this time he again requested medical care. It took another two days before he was seen by a doctor. Not knowing where he was and still experiencing amnesia, Woodard ended up in a hospital in Aiken, South Carolina but he was receiving substandard medical care since he was Black. Three weeks after he was reported missing by his relatives, Woodard was discovered in the hospital at Aiken. He was immediately rushed to an Army hospital in Columbia.

Finally receiving care his memory began to return his vision did not his eyes had been gouged by both fingers and a police nightstick as well as multiple contusions and possible Intracranial hematoma. The damage was at this point permanent there was no way for them to restore his vision.

Although it was not reported very much initially, news of the assault slowly began spreading across the nation and people were outraged that this happened to a veteran. The NAACP worked hard to make Sargent Woodard’s case a national referendum on civil rights. Orson Welles took up the case on his national ABC radio show. Welles criticized the lack of action by the South Carolina government as intolerable and shameful. Woodard was the focus of Welles's four subsequent broadcasts. The NAACP felt that these broadcasts did more than anything else to prompt the Justice Department to act on the case.

In August of 1946 the NAACP held a benefit for Sargent Woodward and his family at Harlem’s now-defunct Lewisohn Stadium, the show was headlined by Billie Holiday and boxer Joe Louis. Folk singer Woody Guthrie performed a song he wrote, “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard” the benefit concert drew a crowd of 20,000 and raised $10,000 for Sargent Woodard and his family.

Also, in August NAACP leader Walter White met with President Harry S. Truman and asked for the Department of Justice to look into the case. Truman had only heard a few things about the case but when White gave him a detailed account of the attack. Truman reportedly exploded in rage, “My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We’ve got to do something!” He immediately ordered Attorney General Tom C. Clark to investigate why the state of South Carolina had not done anything.

The DOJ did a short investigation and then indicted Lynwood Shull and several of his officers. The bus stop was at Camp Gordon and Sargent Woodward was in uniform so it was a federal crime.

What followed was by all standards a travesty of justice. Claude Sapp, the local U.S. Attorney charged with handling the case, failed to interview anyone except the bus driver, in fact, other veterans who witnessed the argument with the bus driver and had signed affidavits were never called as witnesses and their statements were not introduced as evidence. Sapp only called upon. The defense was as unprofessional with Shull’s lawyer using racial epitaphs, “The way he spoke is not how a sober nigger speaks in the south.” He called Shull himself as a witness and the bus driver Blackwell. Both insisted Sargent Woodward  was drunk and threatening; Shull said he drove Sargent Woodward  to the Veteran’s hospital himself  once it was clear he was wounded, this was perjury. He added that a conviction of Shull would be equal to South Carolina once again seceding from the union.

After the cases wrapped up Judge Julius Waring gave instructions to the all-white jury to review all evidence and do their due diligence as a jury, they took 15 minutes to do so and ruled Shull, Elliot Long, and other officers innocent. Waring was visibly upset with the verdict.

Truman was so moved by the entire case and its outcome that he signed executive order 9808 that established the Civil Rights Commission by; a fifteen-member, interracial group, including the President of General Electric, Charles E. Wilson; academics such as John Sloan Dickey from Dartmouth College; and Sadie Tanner Alexander, a black attorney for the city of Philadelphia, as well as other activists.

In a 1947 speech, the President said that civil rights were a moral priority, and it was his priority for the federal government. He had seen by Woodard's and other cases that the issue could not be left to state and local governments. He said: “It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans—I mean all Americans.”

On February 2, 1948, Truman sent the first comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress. It had incorporated many of the thirty-five recommendations of his commission. In July 1948, over the objection of senior military officers, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, banning racial discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, and Executive Order 9980 to integrate the federal government. (Facilities had been segregated under President Woodrow Wilson). This was in response to a number of incidents against black veterans, most notably the Woodard case. The armed forces and federal agencies led the way in the United States for the integration of the workplace, public facilities, and schools. Over the decades, the decision meant that both institutions benefited from the contributions of minorities.

Sargent Woodard moved to New York City after the trial and was active to some extent in the Civil Rights movement. He died in a VA hospital in the Bronx in 1992.

 

 

Sources:

Woody Guthrie’s Song “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A7A5VGjSFk

 

https://time.com/5950641/blinding-isaac-woodard/

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/woodward-isaac-beating-of/

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/woodard-isaac-1919-1992/

Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Gergel, Richard. Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, FSG, 2019.