We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness (Declaration of Independence, 1776).
I´m not American, I watch the country from the outside. My sources of information are probably biased and even though I´m not feasting off the knowledge offered up on the altar of any and all social media platform, I too may be confined to the comforts of my own echo chamber. I get that. I also get that when writing about this for students, it´s almost impossible to get it right in the eyes of everyone. Why have I picked out these exact events to focus on? Why not spend classes on the joy of baseball or the triumphs of the community spirit, or something nice instead? Well, I´ll try to give my reason for it.
We have talked a lot about critical thinking this term and how it will become an even more important skill for you in the decades to come. I believe that any society´s progress towards the ideals of equality and liberty for all rests upon the ability to evaluate the past and the present critically. And the admiration of, heck, even love for a country, does not stand in opposition to raising critical perspectives on what´s going on there. They make up a pair of solid building blocks, love and criticism, where one rests on the other. I think such a critical approach in principle is the same kind of personal soul searching we do ourselves at times. It´s uncomfortable some times, and we might dislike what we find, but what that discomfort reveals needs to be aired out or dealt with for real, so that it becomes an experience we can build on and learn from. I don´t know about you, but I have plenty of ideals and principles that I am struggling to live up to. I don´t hate myself for that, but I like to think that I´m working on it, and in my everyday trying to make them “self-evident” too. That´s why. And also that I don´t really get baseball;) Ok, so back to the quote from the Declaration of Independence.
Bold words in 1776, and a great vision for a people and a new country. But a guiding principle in practical politics and governance? The ideals stand firmly, but the historical evidence of a state unable to live up to its creed has been piling up, to say the least. To begin with, most of those who signed the declaration in the summer of 1776 were slave owners (Parsa, 2019). The hypocrisy is overwhelming. Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist writing for the 1619 Project in the New York Times Magazine highlights the fact that …
“there is no mention of slavery in the final Declaration of Independence. Similarly, 11 years later, when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it” (Hannah-Jones, 2019).
Slaves Arriving at Jamestown, 1619
Howard Pyne, 1901 (CC0)
At the bus station in Durham, North Carolina
Jack Delano, 1940 (CC0)
The one from 1896 first. In its ruling, the Supreme Court documented the facts of the case and explained the reasoning behind its decision. The Court establishes how in 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy “of mixed descent” bought a ticket for a first-class rail car to get from New Orleans to Covington (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896). He then sat down on a vacant seat in a passenger coach reserved for “passengers of the white race”, was asked to leave by the conductor and subsequently thrown off the train by a police officer and arrested for not complying with the request (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896). The Supreme Court, in a 7 to 1 decision, agreed that it was within the jurisdiction (i.e. it was ok) of the state assembly in Louisiana to require train companies to keep separate accommodations for black and white people. With this ruling the Supreme Court introduced what has later been called the “separate but equal” doctrine, in other words, officially condoning (i.e. allowing) the practice of public segregation in the US. One judge disagreed, and phrased a dissent (i.e he disagreed) that would in time resonate even stronger than the ruling of the majority. Especially his metaphor about color blindness has stuck. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote:
“The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, 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 color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens (ibid).”
Supreme Court Justices – a wordsearch challenge!
In the word search below, your job is to identify the surname of the Justices on the present-day Supreme Court. The Court (always with a capital “C”) consists of 9 Justices (with a capital “J”). Each of them have been nominated by the president and the nomination has to be sanctioned (approved/supported) by the Senate. Once appointed, it´s a lifetime position. Oh, and look for the surname of the presidents who have nominated them too.
The Jim Crow laws, for all practical purposes, denied black people in the South the right to vote. Being disenfranchised like that and treated like a second-class citizens is difficult enough to reconcile with the promises made in 1776. An even more brutal version of white supremacy justified lynching as a means to an end. As voting rights and the ability to hold public office were extended to former slaves in the South, as part of a policy called Reconstruction, after the Civil War, a hate group was formed and soon grew stronger (Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d.). Triggered by the presidential election in 1868, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center,
“from Arkansas to Georgia, thousands of Black people were killed. Similar campaigns of lynchings, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became a hallmark of the Klan” (Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d.).
The extent of these brutal murders is supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP estimating the total number of lynchings between 1882 to 1969 to be over 4,700 (NAACP, u.d.). The stories and images that document these heinous acts are disturbing and painful to bear witness to. I write about this and include the links not only in remembrance of the people who lost their lives, but also to explain the risk that others after them would run, the leaders and role models, the active citizens who stood up to continue the fight for the rights promised them in the declaration from 1776. This was part of their reality, the context of the everyday life they lived. It speaks to the courage and bravery they found, and maybe also to the desperation they must have felt. It also makes me wonder about the quality of my own character and, on a personal level, begs the question, what would I have done? Not standing up is a strategy that makes sense to me, considering the hostile and inhumane environment at the time. Stay down and be humiliated or stand up and risk being murdered?
Do three things now:
1) Listen to the song «Strange Fruit» by Abel Meeropol, recorded by Billie Holliday in the late 1930s (see video-clip below + link to lyrics.
2) Read the poem «A Dream Deferred» (also known as «Harlem» by Langston Hughes, published in 1951, and
3) have a look at To Do after.
Here´s a link to the lyrics of «Strange Fruit».
What happens to a dream deferred ?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Things change, times change. Sometimes even the Supreme Court of the US changes. Resting on the Supreme Court decision in Plessy Jim Crow laws had eroded a lot of what improvement the end of slavery had brought to black Americans. Education was an area where the consequences of the doctrine of separate but equal would become especially concerning, since it affected children specifically. On their website, The National Museum African American History and Culture expresses the injustice like this:
«Plessy v. Ferguson allowed Black children to be segregated into overcrowded and unsafe school buildings that were often inaccessible by public transportation, forcing students to walk long distances year-round. Classrooms were poorly resourced, without enough desks for every child, and the few books students had were tattered hand-me-downs from white schools. Black teacher were paid only a fraction of the salary of their white counterparts» (The National Museum of African American History and Culture, n.d.).
Photograph from 1958 shows an almost empty hallway at Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, during the time that it was closed rather than integrated. This was taken four years after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
(CC0)
«I just couldn’t understand. We lived in a mixed neighborhood but when school time came I would have to take the school bus and go clear across town and the white children I played with would go to this other school. My parents tried to explain this to me but I was too young at that time to understand» (Romo, 2018).
The decision in Brown is considered a landmark case for its importance in bringing equality to everyone. The Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum and it was about to become even more of a force to reckon with.
Martin Luther King jr. did not set out to be a civil rights leader. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University has chronicled his formative years and early career. At 15 he enrolled in Morehouse College in Atlanta and graduated there after four years, in 1948, with a bachelor´s degree in sociology (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, n.d.). After a spiritual development at Morehouse, he was also ordained during his last semester, continuing the calling of three generations of ministers of the Baptist church before him (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, n.d.). He then attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania for three years, before moving north earning his doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955 (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, n.d.). In May, 1954 he accepted a position as the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, n.d.).
Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested for loitering outside of a courtroom where his friend Ralph Abernathy is appearing for a trial, Montgomery, Alabama.
Charles Moore, 1958 (CC0)
On December 1, 1955, a woman on her way home from work refused to give up her seat in the white section of a bus in Montgomery. Local civil rights leaders formed a group to protest her arrest and they asked the newly arrived pastor to be their spokesperson. King jr. did not set out to be a civil rights leader, but when asked to play a role he accepted it. The story of Rosa Parks should be familiar to you, and we´ll skip the details here. I mention it here for two reasons:
1) The Montgomery Bus Boycott, from December 1955 to December 1956, propelled King jr. onto the national stage of the most influential civil rights leaders (Burns, n.d.).
2) It´s an indication of the progress that the Civil Rights Movement was beginning to make.
The bus boycott was ended on December 20, 1956, because a local court handed down its decision on a case that day, Browder v. Gayle, rendering segregation on buses to be unconstitutional. Remember, this was not even two years after Brown v. Board of Education and might serve as an indication that the deliberate strategy of turning to the courtrooms and to litigation to change the system was proving somewhat successful. ISCOTUS Co-Director Christopher W. Schmidt details and adds nuance to this perspective in his essay «Martin Luther King Jr., the Law, and the Courts» (Schmidt, 2018).
On Sunday, March 22, 1965, 8 000 people crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The march ended with 25 000 entering the square in front of the Alabama State Capitol Building in Montgomery, 56 miles and four days later. You can become familiar with some of the related events by watching the documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble. Numerous online resources also chronicle and comment on the actual march and its significance in a greater perspective. History.com´s page about the march, for example.
The march was an important event that added to the pressure on Congress and on President Lyndon B. Johnson to have the Voting Rights Act passed and signed into law on August 6 the same year. Initially the 15th amendment to the constitution, ratified in 1870, was supposed to extend voting rights to former slaves, stating that «the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude» (National Constitution Center, n.d.). However, the Jim Crow laws we had a look at above found ways to circumvent that phrase, institutionalizing white supremacy in the South rendering the amendment increasingly moot. Congress, in 1965, introduced the law, specifically detailing that it was passed to «enforce the 15th amendment to the Constitution» (National Archives, n.d.). The phrasing of the law is almost ridiculous in how it addresses specific schemes and plots to disenfranchise the victims of Jim Crow laws. In section 4a it states «that no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to comply with any test or device in any State», but this was not enough (ibid). In section 4c it specifies that «the phrase ‘test or device’ shall mean any requirement that a person as a prerequisite for voting or registration for voting (1) demonstrate the ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter, (2) demonstrate any educational achievement or his knowledge of any particular subject, (3) possess good moral character, or (4) prove his qualifications by the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class» (ibid). And it goes on like this, crossing the t´s and dotting the i´s. The shortcomings of the more general message in the 15th amendment almost 100 years prior had made that necessary.
The year before the passing of the Voting Rights Act, another important bill was signed into law as well, The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Section 201 (a) makes it clear that «all persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin» (National Archives, n.d.). After almost 300 years, discrimination and segregation had been ended, at least de jure, according to the law. Almost 300 years to change the legislation, but to change people´s hearts, and to end de facto segregation and discrimination seems to be even harder. That will be the topic of the next segment.
(The 1964 law did also target voting rights, but the wording would prove insufficient in addressing the scope and nuances of the deeply ingrained Jim Crow laws, and it became clear that another, more specific piece of legislation was needed to remedy that. The Khan Academy has devoted a page to these two acts and some of their consequences. You can get to the Khan Academy´s page about the Civil Rights Ac and the Voting Rights Act here.
So, all these things considered, the bus boycott, Brown v. Board of Education, the civil rights act of the 1960s, does that mean the nation finally had delivered on their initial promise of equality? Hardly, but the legislative strides it had taken has to be acknowledged as vital steppingstones to get across to one day fulfilling its creed. In the following, I have picked out a couple of sources that I would like you to study and form an opinion on. Do three things now:
1) Watch the video (7 mins) by the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkley.
2) Study the statistics presented in this USA Today-article about racial disparities, and then
3) get to work on To Do a little further down on this page.
The March – a word search challenge
Here I have picked out a few names, years and words from what you have worked for the past few classes. You´ll recognize some of the from above, I think. Can you find them? And even more importantly, do you know why they matter in this context? I had to combine two words into one a few times, please forgive my spelling;) Good luck!
Below you will find some of the same names, years and words from Unit 4, stacked on top of each other. Drag them on to the timeline and put them in the right order. I suggest you do this in pairs, so that you can explain the reasoning behind the chronology you create. It will be crowded, but you´ll make it work;) Please note, the task will only work on desktop (not tablet or mobile).
Plessy v. Ferguson
Langston Hughes
Brown v. Board of Education
Lyndon B. Johnson
Edmund Pettus Bridge
Montgomery
Jim Crow
Separate but equal
1964
John Marshall Harlan
Emancipation Proclamation
Billie Holiday
Jamestown
1965
Timeline
Burns, S. (n.d.). Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Retrieved April 2023, from https://billofrightsinstitute.org/: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/rosa-parks-martin-luther-king-jr-and-the-montgomery-bus-boycott
Hacker, J. D. (2020). From ‘20. and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States. Slavery & abolition, 41(4), pp. 840–855.
Hannah-Jones, N. (2019, August 14). Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. Retrieved April 2023, from www.nytimes.com/section/magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/ 2019/08/14/ magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html
Maloy, M. (2023, June 20). The Founding Fathers Views of Slavery. Retrieved March 2024, from The American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles /founding-fathers-views-slavery
NAACP. (n.d.). History of Lynching in America. Retrieved April 2023, from www.naacp.org: https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america
National Archives. (n.d.). Civil Rights Act (1964). Retrieved April 2023, from https://www.archives.gov/: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act
National Archives. (n.d.). https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act. Retrieved April 2023, from https://www.archives.gov/: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act
National Constitution Center. (n.d.). Right to Vote Not Denied by Race. Retrieved April 2023, from https://constitutioncenter.org/: https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xv
Parsa, A. (2019, September 1). Thirty-four of the 47 men depicted in the famous “Declaration of Independence” painting were slaveholders. . Retrieved April 2023, from www.politifact.com: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/ 2019/sep/10 /arlen-parsa/evidence-shows-most-47-men-famous-declaration-inde/
Plessy v. Ferguson, 210 (US May 18, 1896).
Romo, V. (2018, March 26). Linda Brown, Who Was At Center Of Brown v. Board Of Education, Dies. Retrieved April 2023, from https://www.npr.org/: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/26/597154953/linda-brown-who-was-at-center-of-brown-v-board-of-education-dies
Schmidt, C. W. (2018, January 15). Martin Luther King Jr., the Law, and the Courts. Retrieved 2023 April, from https://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/: https://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/martin-luther-king-law/
Southern Poverty Law Center. (n.d.). Ku Klux Klan. Retrieved April 2023, from www.splcenter.org: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. (n.d.). Introduction. Retrieved April 2023, from kinginstitute.stanford.edu: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/ encyclopedia/introduction
The National Museum of African American History and Culture. (n.d.). The Struggle Against Segregated Education. Retrieved April 2023, from https://nmaahc.si.edu/: https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/ struggle-against-segregated-education
United States Courts. (n.d.). History – Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment. Retrieved April 2023, from https://www.uscourts.gov/: https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/history-brown-v-board-education-re-enactment
Arne Mjelde Sæther
47 69 59 80
arnemjeldesaether@gmail.com
Arne Mjelde Sæther
47 69 59 80
arnemjeldesaether@gmail.com
Arne Mjelde Sæther
47 69 59 80
arnemjeldesaether@gmail.com
INEQUALITY AND REPRESENTATION
