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• bjred
  August 22nd, 2007 at 10:58 pm

  YES ABSOLUTELY Here is My little contribution I love what you are doing please dont stop no matter what I support you to the maximum!

  The New Racism

  For several years the fate of the Southern Negro hung in the
  balance. With home rule restored, the South, so it seemed, had
  achieved its goals. Bourbon whites, the remnant of the plantation
  aristocracy, dominated the Southern Democratic party and
  through it controlled state and local governments. There was a
  growing discontent among small farmers who wanted the state
  governments to alter the tax burden and interest rates in their
  favor. Largely spearheaded by the Populist movement, Negro and
  white farmers came to see that their interests were identical.
  The Southern Farmers’ Alliance grew rapidly, and it encouraged
  the formation of the colored farmers’ organizations with which
  it was closely allied. In Georgia, Tom Watson led the attempt to
  form a coalition between Negro and white farmers against the
  interests of the conservative white aristocracy. Hopes for a
  genuinely popular government and for a society free from racial
  tension reached a high level.

  Unfortunately, some Negroes continued to back the Democratic
  party. House servants had always felt close to the gentry, and
  many of them remembered that poor white farmers had always been
  particularly prejudiced against them. In turn, conservatives
  deliberately encouraged racial hatred in order to drive a wedge
  between poor whites and Negroes within the rising
  Populist movement. It became evident to both Democrats and
  populists that the Negro vote had become the deciding vote in
  many states. White farmers and white aristocrats both felt uneasy
  over this state of affairs.

  The result was widespread agreement to systematically and legally
  eliminate Negroes from politics altogether. State constitutions
  were either amended or rewritten. Literacy tests and poll taxes
  became standard devices for limiting Negro voting. The
  "understanding test" required a citizen to interpret a portion of
  the state constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar. The
  severity of the test varied invariably with the color of the
  applicant. The "grandfather clause" prohibited those whose
  ancestors had not voted from exercising the franchise. Because
  slaves had not voted, their descendants were disqualified.
  Although the Fifteenth Amendment had been designed to guarantee
  the vote to the ex-slave, the South now evaded it. Although both
  major parties complained about this disenfranchisement and
  condemned it as being unconstitutional, neither party took any
  action. The Supreme Court also played an important part in
  restricting the freedom of freedmen. In 1883 it declared the 1875
  Civil Rights Act to be unconstitutional. This act had made it
  illegal for individuals to discriminate in public accommodations.
  Although it had never been enforced, the court’s decision
  nevertheless, came as a setback, because it was the signal to the
  South that through Jim Crow legislation Negroes could be kept in
  "their place." Under slavery there had been considerable social
  contact between the races. Segregation as a social system was
  begun in the North prior to the Civil War, but, during the last
  two decades of the nineteenth century, Southern states made it a
  legal requirement. Its relentless growth is carefully outlined
  by C. Vann Woodward in his book The Strange Career of Jim Crow.
  Finally the South developed two societies with two sets of
  institutions: separate railroad cars, separate waiting rooms,
  separate wash rooms, separate drinking fountains, separate
  hospitals, separate schools, separate restaurants, separate
  cemeteries and, although there was only one judicial system,
  separate Bibles for taking oaths.

  In 1896 the Supreme Court gave its blessing to the Jim Crow
  system. Plessy, a Louisiana mulatto, insisted on riding in the
  white car on the train. He was arrested and found guilty of
  violating the state statute. He appealed to the U. S. Supreme
  Court, but it upheld his conviction by claiming that "separate
  but equal" facilities were not a violation of his rights. Because
  the court did not define what it meant by equal and did not
  insist on enforcing that equality in concrete terms, its decision
  was, in fact, a blatant justification for separate and inferior
  facilities for Negroes.

  Segregation was accompanied by a new wave of race hatred. White
  Americans came to believe that all Negroes were alike and
  therefore could be treated as a group. An identical stereotype of
  the Negro fixed itself on the white mind throughout the entire
  country. If the Northerner hated this stereotype somewhat less
  than did the Southerner, it was only because the number of
  Negroes in the North was considerably smaller. At the end of the
  century only two percent of the total number of Afro-Americans
  was to be found in the North. The great northern migration had
  not yet begun.

  Both the Northern press and the genteel literary magazines
  contained the same vulgar image of the Negro which was to be
  found in openly racist communities in the South. Whether he
  appeared in news articles, editorials, cartoons, or works of
  fiction, he was universally portrayed as superstitious, stupid,
  lazy, happy-go-lucky, a liar, a thief, and a drunkard. He loved
  fun, clothes, and trinkets as well as chickens, watermelons, and
  sweet potatoes. Usually he was depicted as having been a
  faithful and loving slave before Emancipation, but,
  unfortunately, he was unable to adjust to his new freedom News
  stories and editorials referred to Negroes in slanderous terms
  without any apparent sense of embarrassment. Phrases like
  "barbarian," "Negro ruffian," "African Annie," "colored
  cannibal," "coon," and "darkie" were standard epithets. Whenever
  blacks were depicted in cartoons or photographs, the stereotype
  presented them as having thick lips, flat noses, big ears, big
  feet, and kinky woolly hair. News items concerning those involved
  in criminal activities almost always identified them by color.
  This contributed to the development of the stereotype of the
  criminal Negro.

  Throughout its history, America had been predominantly an
  Anglo-Saxon and Protestant country. The Afro-American stood out
  in sharp distinction to this picture both because of his color
  and his African heritage. By the end of the nineteenth century
  America was being flooded with immigrants from Southern and
  Eastern Europe. They too were much darker than the dominant
  strains of Northern Europe, and many were Catholics. There was a
  growing feeling that these new immigrants, like the Negroes,
  were inherently alien and intrinsically unassimilable. Liberals
  in the progressive movement, who were concerned about protecting
  the integrity and morality of American society, were in the
  fore-front of those who feared the new hordes of "swarthy"
  immigrants.

  One of those who feared that the large influx of South and East
  Europeans would undermine the quality of American life was
  Madison Grant. In his book The Passing of the Great Race, he
  warned that Nordic excellence would be swamped by the
  faster-spawning Catholic immigrants. Originally these racial
  stereotypes had some cultural and historical basis, but they were
  gaining a new strength and authority from the sociological and
  biological sciences centering in the concepts of Social
  Darwinisn.

  Darwinism and related theories in anthropology and sociology
  helped to give an aura of respectability to racism in both Europe
  and America. The same kind of pseudo-scientific thinking which
  was developed in Europe to justify anti-Semitism was used in
  America to reinforce prejudices against Negroes as well as
  against Jews and South Europeans. In the first half of the
  nineteenth century the American anthropologist Samuel George
  Morton argued that each race had its own unique characteristics.
  Racial character, he believed, was the result of inheritance
  rather than of environment. Because these characteristics found
  specific environments congenial, each race had gravitated to its
  preordained geographic habitat.

  Darwin’s theory of evolution offered another explanation for the
  existence of differing species in the animal kingdom, and
  anthropologists concluded that it would also provide an
  explanation for racial differences in mankind. Early
  anthropologists and sociologists were preoccupied with dividing
  humanity into differing races and trying to catalog and explain
  these differences. Phrenology was another pseudo-science which
  attempted to construct a system according to which intellectual
  and moral characteristics would be correlated with the size and
  shape of the human head. On this basis many tried to divide
  mankind into physical types and to assign to each its own
  intellectual and moral qualities.
  Another one who believed that human races could be scientifically
  measured and that their superiority and inferiority could thus be
  established was Joseph A. de Gobineau, a French anthropologist.
  Herbert Spencer took Darwin’s concept of the survival of the
  fittest and used it as a scientific justification for the
  competitive spirit, It became the basis of the explanation why
  some individuals moved up the social ladder while others remained
  behind. Racial thinkers applied the concept of human
  competitiveness to racial conflict instead of to individual
  competition. In its usual form the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic race
  was depicted as superior, and the Semitic and Negroid races as
  inferior. Human history was explained as the history of race
  conflict, and racial hostility was justified because, through
  this conflict, the superior types would survive and human
  civilization would be elevated. The concept of human equality was
  reduced to a meaningless abstraction, Scholars like William
  Graham Sumner insisted that the founding fathers only intended
  human equality to refer to their own kind of people.

  To Thomas Nelson Page, in the North American Review, it appeared
  that the African race had not progressed in human history. It had
  failed to progress in America, not because it had been enslaved,
  but because it did not have the faculty to raise itself above
  that status. He continued to argue that its inability to advance
  in the scale of civilization was demonstrated by the level of
  social and political life to be found in Liberia, Haiti, the
  Dominican Republic, and Brazil. In the same journal, Theodore
  Roosevelt announced that the African was a member of "a perfectly
  stupid race" which was kept down by a lack of natural
  development. Another one whose views became influential was
  Josiah Strong. A prominent clergyman at the turn of the century,
  he was of the opinion that the pressure of population expansion
  would eventually push the whites, who had superior energy and
  talent, into Mexico, South and Central America, the islands of
  the seas, and eventually into Africa itself. This expansion would
  lead to racial conflict which would culminate in the survival of
  the fittest through the victory of the white over the colored
  races of the world. Strong’s belief that white racial
  superiority would naturally lead to racial imperialism and world
  domination by the white race was shared by many contemporary
  Americans. A few of those who shared his ideas were Senator
  Albert Beveridge, Senator Cabot Lodge, John Hay, Admiral Alfred
  T. Mahan, and Theodore Roosevelt. Racism opened the door to
  American imperialism.

  The new racism could not depend on the existence of slavery in
  order to reinforce white superiority. Instead, it drew on racial
  stereotypes and flimsy scientific opinion. The conquest of Africa
  by Europe and the American acquisition of lands in the Caribbean
  and Pacific which were inhabited by darker peoples, were taken as
  clear evidence of racial inequality even in the land which had
  been founded on the belief in the equality of all men.
  Second-class citizenship for blacks had become a fact which was
  accepted by Presidents, Congress, the Supreme Court, the
  business community, and by labor unions. Segregation was
  universal. In the North it was rooted in social custom, but in
  the South it had been made a matter of law. Separate facilities
  were inferior facilities. The basic political and civil rights
  of the Afro-American were severely limited in almost every state.

  Perhaps the clearest and cruelest index of the lowest state to
  which the black had been relegated was the large number of
  lynchings which occurred at the end of the century, In the 1890s
  lynchings of both blacks and whites were common. In that decade
  one black was lynched almost every two days. It became
  universally accepted that the American principles of justice,
  liberty, and equality did not have to be applied equally to
  whites and blacks.

• bjred
  August 22nd, 2007 at 11:02 pm

  ABSOLUTELY PART 2

  Racism and Democracy

  Fighting Jim Crow

  RAYFORD W. LOGAN, in his book The Betrayal of the Negro
  described the turn of the century as the low point in
  Afro-American history. After Emancipation, he contended, the
  hopes of the Negroes were betrayed. Again they were pushed down
  into second-class status. It appeared that democracy was for
  whites only. Actually, the increasing growth of racism and of
  segregation as well, led inevitably to the development of opposition groups
  bent on destroying this discrimination. Segregation promoted the
  creation of Negro institutions which then became the center for
  this counterattack.

  The most prominent of these Afro-American institutions was the
  Negro church. Like the white church, it was fragmented into many
  separate denominations. There was the African Methodist
  Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church,
  the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, the National Baptists,
  and a host of denominational organizations.

  However, integrated congregations within the mainly white
  church groups were almost nonexistent. Those blacks who did
  belong to such white denominations usually attended all-black
  congregations within the larger institutional structure. Negro
  colleges also sprang up throughout the South as well as an
  occasional one in the North. These included such well-known
  schools as Howard, Hampton, Tuskegee, and Fisk. The churches and
  colleges became training grounds for a growing middle-class and
  for future community leaders. Each in its own way provided a
  debating center in which racial problems closing in from all
  sides were considered.

  As Negroes were frequently denied employment by whites,
  they began to develop businesses of their own. Because their
  capital was almost always small, their task was made more
  difficult. White-owned banks hesitated to lend money to Negroes,
  forcing them into developing banks of their own. By 1900 blacks
  had founded four banks which appealed mainly to a Negro
  clientele. They had a combined capital of more than $90,000.
  White-owned insurance companies often refused to sell insurance
  policies to Negroes. Standardized mortality charts showed that
  Negroes died at an earlier age than whites. When insurance
  companies did accept them as clients, they were charged higher
  rates than were whites. During the nineteenth century, various
  Negro secret societies attempted to develop insurance programs
  for their members. In 1898 the National Benefit Insurance Company
  was opened in Washington. Owned by blacks, it deliberately
  sought out Negro patronage. In the same year, the Mutual Benefit
  Insurance Company was opened in North Carolina along similar
  lines.

  White undertakers and beauticians were reluctant to cater to
  Negro customers. Aside from their personal tastes, they
  feared that it would alienate their white patrons. A similar
  situation held true for dentists and doctors. This forced the
  Afro-American community to develop its own professionals. By
  1900, Negroes had invested half a million dollars in undertaking
  establishments. that same year, the Afro-American community had
  produced 1,700 physicians, 212 dentists, 728 lawyers, 310
  journalists, an several thousand college, secondary, and
  elementary school teachers.

  Other Negro professionals, finding themselves excluded from
  existing official affiliations formed their own professional
  fraternity in 1904. Two years later, the first Greek letter
  society for Negroes was established to help its members in coping
  with the effects of social discrimination on largely white
  college campuses. In 1915, Carter G. Woodson established the
  Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and began
  publication of the Journal of Negro History.

  In 1905, W. E. B. DuBois, John Hope, Monroe Trotter, Kelly
  Miller, and other outspoken young Negro intellectuals met in
  Niagara Falls, Ontario, and founded the “Niagara Movement.”
  Unlike the other black institutions mentioned above, the
  “Niagara Movement” was primarily political in its objectives. On
  the one hand, it strove to seize the leadership of the
  Afro-American community, taking it away from the more
  conciliatory emphasis of Booker T. Washington. On the other
  hand, they wanted a platform from which to condemn, loudly and
  clearly, the white prejudice they found all about them.

  The organization deliberately tried to resurrect the spirit of
  the angry abolitionists immediately preceding the Civil War. The
  meeting places of their three conventions were chosen for their
  symbolic value. Niagara Falls was the terminal on the underground
  railway, the point at which runaways had reached freedom.
  Harpers Ferry had been the site of John Brown’s violent assault
  on slavery, and Oberlin, Ohio, had been well known as a center of
  abolitionist activity.

  The growth of racism at the turn of the century, besides
  encouraging the development of Negro institutions, revived the
  interests of some whites in fighting for racial justice. Whites
  were particularly upset by racially motivated acts of violence.
  Lynchings reached a high point in American history at this time.
  Between 1900 and 1910, there were 846 lynchings, in which 92
  victims were white and 754 Negro. Northern whites were
  especially perturbed as racial violence began to move into the
  North. Previously they had viewed it as a Southern white man’s
  problem. When a vicious race riot occurred in Springfield,
  Illinois, in 1908, this illusion was shattered. William English
  Walling, the journalist, was shocked and wrote an impassioned
  article, “Race War in the North,” which was published in The
  Independent.

  Walling’s article, which was based on his visit to Springfield,
  brought several collaborators to his side. In it, he contended
  that Southern racists were bringing the race war into the North
  and that the only alternative was to revive the spirit of
  abolitionism and to fight for racial equality. The following year
  a group of concerned individuals, black and white, met in New
  York City and their meeting resulted in the formation of the
  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
  Those attending this meeting, besides Walling, included Oswald
  Garrison Villard, the grandson of William LloYd Garrison. Jane
  Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago, John Dewey, the
  philosopher, William Dean Howells, the editor of Harper’s
  magazine, Mary White Ovington, a New York social worker, and Dr.
  Henry Moskowitz. The Negro delegation consisted of W. E. B.
  DuBois and most of the other members of the Niagara Movement. At
  this meeting it was decided that the achievement of racial
  equality must be the major target of their attack. In order to
  achieve this goal it was decided that their immediate priorities
  should include the enfranchisement of Negroes and the enforcement
  of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The members also
  insisted that it was time to launch a concerted attack against
  lynching and other kinds of mob violence.

  The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
  People was officially established in 1910 with Moorefield Storey
  as its president. W. E. B. DuBois was the only black on its board
  and served as its director of publicity and research. Most blacks
  and whites at the time believed that the N.A.A.C.P. was
  irresponsible for including so many of the members of the Niagara
  Movement in its membership. Monroe Trotter and a few others,
  however, held that an interracial organization such as the
  N.A.A.C.P. could not be trusted to take a strong enough stand on
  important issues, and they refused to cooperate with it. The
  N.A.A.C.P. began publication of its own Journal, Crisis, which
  was a basic part of its informational program. Crisis was
  edited by W. E. B. DuBois.

  The most important work of the Association was done by its legal
  department. Its lawyers attacked the legal devices used by some
  states to disenfranchise Negroes. In 1915, the Supreme Court
  declared, in Guinn v. United States, that the “grandfather
  clause” in the constitutions of both Maryland and Oklahoma was
  null and void because it contradicted the Fifteenth Amendment.
  Two years later, in Buchanan v. Warley, the court said that
  Louisville’s ordinance requiring Negroes to live in specified
  sections of the city was unconstitutional. In 1923, the
  N.A.A.C.P. came to the defense of a Negro who, it believed, had
  not received a fair trial. In Moore v. Dempsey, the Supreme
  Court granted the defendant a new trial because the court which
  had convicted him of murder had exempted Negroes from serving on
  its Jury.

  Branches of the N.A.A.C.P. spread all across the country. By
  1921 there were more than 400 separate chapters, and the
  Association was still growing. Its membership, whether white or
  black, tended to be middle-class and educated. In this respect it
  bore a marked similarity to the National Urban League which came
  into existence at about the same time.

  The National Urban League grew out of a concern for the
  employment problems of Negroes in New York City. George Edmund
  Haynes, a Negro graduate student at Columbia University, was
  researching the economic conditions of New York City Negroes. He
  was invited to present his findings to a Joint meeting of two
  city organizations which were probing the same problem. The
  Committee for Improving Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New
  York as well as the National League for the Protection of
  Colored Women had been formed early in the century and were
  eager to base their efforts on scientific study rather than on
  mere sentimentality. Haynes’s research was later published as The
  Negro at Work in New York City.

  This meeting resulted in the establishing of the Urban League
  which has been concerned primarily with finding employment for
  Negroes and aiding them in acquiring improved job skills. Haynes
  and Eugene Kinckle Jones were its executive directors. One of its
  sponsors was Booker T. Washington, who was more sympathetic with
  its orientation than he had been with either the Niagara Movement
  or the N.A.A.C.P., both of which were more political and
  aggressive. The philanthropist Julius Rosenwald gave the League
  substantial financial aid. The Urban League soon spread into
  other major cities and gained increasing importance as
  ever-growing numbers of Negroes migrated into Northern urban areas
  and needed assistance in making the adjustment. Negro churches
  and colleges, along with interracial organizations, began to
  establish the foundation for the long hard struggle for racial
  equality which lay ahead.

• klatu
  August 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 am

  I’m sorry, but I was taught at home the evil of this word. Stop blaming the schools and the Whites. The problem can best be summed up on a tee-shirt I once saw worn by a black woman; “It’s a Black thing and you(Whies) wouldn’t understand.” It IS a Black thing. You don’t hear Whites (commedians, sports figures, entertainers, etc.) using the term.It’s a Black problem and only Blacks can solve it.

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