SF Freedom School

Supplemental Reading
July 15, 2006

NAACP History.......................................................................................................... 2
CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY.................................................................... 5
SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE.................................... 7
History of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee .................................... 8
Senate apologizes for blocking anti-lynch law......................................................... 12

INFORMATIONAL WEBSITES
Jim Crow/Segregation
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/history.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjimcrow.htm
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/
Civil Rights Veterans http://crmvet.org/
Freedom School Curriculum http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/
Freedom Archives http://www.freedomarchives.org/

1
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE
http://www.naacp.org/about/about_history.html
NAACP HISTORY

1909 -- On February 12th, founded by a multiracial group of activists, who answered "The Call."
They initially called themselves the National Negro Committee.

FOUNDERS -- Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington,
Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling

1910 -- the Pink Franklin case, which involved a Black farmhand, who unbeknowingly killed a
policeman in self-defense when the officer broke into his home at 3 a.m. to arrest him on a civil
charge. After losing at the Supreme Court, the following year the renowned NAACP official Joel
Spingarn and his brother Arthur start a concerted effort to fight such cases.

1913 -- President Woodrow Wilson officially introduces segregation into the Federal
Government. Horrified that President would sanction such a policy, the NAACP launched a
public protest.

1915 -- The NAACP organizes a nationwide protest D.W. Griffiths racially-inflammatory and
bigoted silent film, "Birth of a Nation."

1917 -- In Buchanan vs. Warley, the Supreme Court has to concede that states can not restrict and
officially segregate African Americans into residential districts. Also, the NAACP fights and
wins the battle to enable African Americans to be commissioned as officers in World War I. Six
hundred officers are commissioned, and 700,000 register for the draft..

1918 -- After persistent pressure by the NAACP, President Woodrow Wilson finally makes a
public statement against lynching.

1920 -- To ensure that everyone, especially the Klan, knew that the NAACP would not be
intimidated, annual conference was held in Atlanta, considered one of the most active Klan areas.

1922 - In an unprecedented move, the NAACP places large ads in major newspapers to present
the facts about lynching.

1930 -- The first of successful protests by the NAACP against Supreme Court justice nominees is
launched against John Parker, who officially favored laws that discriminated against African
Americans.

1935 -- NAACP lawyers Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall win the legal battle to admit a
black student to the University of Maryland.

1939 -- After the Daughters of the Revolution barred acclaimed soprano Marian Anderson from
performing at their Constitution Hall, the NAACP moved her concert to the Lincoln Memorial,
2
where over 75,000 people attended.

1941 -- During World War II, the NAACP leads the effort to ensure that President Franklin
Roosevelt orders a non-discrimination policy in war-related industries and federal employment.

1945 -- NAACP starts a national outcry when Congress refuses to fund their own Federal Fair
Roosevelt Employment Practices Commission.

1946 -- The NAACP wins the Morgan vs. Virginia case, where the Supreme Court bans states
from having laws that sanction segregated facilities in interstate travel by train and bus.

1948 -- The NAACP was able to pressure President Harry Truman to sign an Executive Order
banning discrimination by the Federal government.

1954 -- After years of fighting segregation in public schools, under the leadership of Special
Counsel Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP wins one of its greatest legal victories in Brown vs. the
Board of Education.

1955 -- NAACP member Rosa Parks is arrested and fined for refusing to give up her seat on a
segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Noted as the catalyst for the largest grassroots civil
rights movement, that would be spearheaded through the collective efforts of the NAACP, SCLC
and other Black organizations.

1960 -- In Greensboro, North Carolina, members of the NAACP Youth Council launch a series of
non-violent sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. These protests eventually lead to more than 60
stores officially desegregating their counters.

1963 -- After one of his many successful mass rallies for civil rights, NAACP's first Field
Director, Medgar Evers is assassinated in front of his house in Jackson, Mississippi. Five months
later, President John Kennedy was also assassinated.

1963 -- NAACP pushes for the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

1964 -- U.S. Supreme Court ends the eight year effort of Alabama officials to ban NAACP
activities. And 55 years after the NAACP's founding, Congress finally passes the Civil Rights
Act.

1965 -- The Voting Rights Act is passed. Amidst threats of violence and efforts of state and local
governments, the NAACP still manages to register more than 80,000 voters in the Old South.

1979 -- The NAACP initiates the first bill ever signed by a governor that allows voter registration
in high schools. Soon after, 24 states follow suit.

1981 -- The NAACP leads the effort to extend The Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. To
cultivate economic empowerment, the NAACP establishes the Fair Share Program with major
corporations across the country.

3
1982 -- NAACP registers more than 850,000 voters, and through its protests and the support of
the Supreme Court, prevents President Reagan from giving a tax-break to the racially segregated
Bob Jones University.

1985 -- The NAACP leads a massive anti-apartheid rally in New York.

1987 -- NAACP launches campaign to defeat the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the
Supreme Court. As a result, he garners the highest negative vote ever recorded for a 1989 Silent
March of over 100,000 to protest U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

1989 -- Silent March of over 100,000 to protest U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have reversed
many of the gains made against discrimination.

1991
When avowed racist and former Klan leader David Duke runs for US Senate in Louisiana, the
NAACP launches a voter registration campaign that yields a 76 percent turn-out of Black voters
to defeat Duke.

1992 -- The number of Fair Share Program corporate partners has risen to 70 and now represents
billions of dollars in business.

1995 -- Over thirty years after the assassination of NAACP civil rights activist, Medgar Evers -
his widow Myrlie, is elected Chairman of the NAACP's Board of Directors. The following year,
the Kweisi Mfume leaves Congress to become the NAACPs President and CEO.

1997 -- In response to the pervasive anti-affirmative action legislation occurring around the
country, the NAACP launches the Economic Reciprocity Program... And in response to increased
violence among our youth, the NAACP starts the "Stop The Violence, Start the Love' campaign.

1998 -- Supreme Court Demonstration and arrests

2000 -- TV Diversity Agreements. Retirement of the Debt and first six years of a budget surplus.
Largest Black Voter Turnout in 20 years

2000 -- Great March. January 17, in Columbia, South Carolina attended by over 50,000 to protest
the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag. This is the largest civil rights demonstration ever held
in the South to date.

2001 -- Cincinnati Riots. Development of 5 year Strategic Plan.

Under the leadership of Chairman Bond and President Mfume, the NAACP continues to thrive,
and with the help of everyone - regardless of race - will continue to do so into the next
millennium...

4
 CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY
http://www.core-online.org/history/history.htm

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 as the Committee of Racial
Equality by an interracial group of students in Chicago. Many of these students were members of
the Chicago branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a pacifist organization seeking to
change racist attitudes. The founders of CORE were deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's
teachings of nonviolent resistance.

CORE started as a nonhierarchical, decentralized organization funded entirely by the voluntary

contributions of its members. The organization was initially co-led by white University of
Chicago student George Houser and black student James Farmer. In 1942, CORE began protests
against segregation in public accommodations by organizing sit-ins. It was also in 1942 that
CORE expanded nationally. James Farmer traveled the country with Bayard Rustin, a field
secretary with FOR, and recruited activists at FOR meetings. CORE's early growth consisted
almost entirely of white middle-class college students from the Midwest. CORE pioneered the
strategy of nonviolent direct action, especially the tactics of sit-ins, jail-ins, and freedom rides.

From the beginning of its expansion, CORE experienced tension between local control and
national leadership. The earliest affiliated chapters retained control of their own activities and
funds. With a nonhierarchical system as the model of leadership, a national leadership over local
chapters seemed contradictory to CORE's principles. Some early chapters were dominated by
pacifists and focused on educational activities. Other chapters emphasized direct action protests,
such as sit-ins. This tension persisted throughout CORE's early existence.

Through sit-ins and picket lines, CORE had success in integrating northern public facilities in the
1940s. With these successes it was decided that, to have a national impact, it was necessary to
strengthen the national organization. James Farmer became the first National Director of CORE
in 1953.

In April of 1947 CORE sent eight white and eight black men into the upper South to test a
Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in interstate travel unconstitutional. CORE gained
national attention for this Journey of Reconciliation when four of the riders were arrested in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina and three, including Bayard Rustin, were forced to work on a chain
gang.

In the aftermath of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, CORE was revived from
several years of stagnation and decline. CORE provided the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott with
its philosophical commitment to nonviolent direct action. As the Civil Rights Movement took
hold, CORE focused its energy in the South.

CORE's move into the South forced the leadership to address the question of the organization's
place within the black community. Though whites still remained prominent, black leaders were
sought out for high profile positions. CORE remained committed to interracialism but no longer
required that new chapters have an interracial membership, largely expecting little white support
in the South. While middle-class college students predominated in the early years of the
5
organization, increasingly the membership was made up of poorer and less educated African
Americans.

CORE provided guidance for action in the aftermath of the 1960 sit-in of four college
students at a Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter, and subsequently became a nationally
recognized civil rights organization. As pioneers of the sit-in tactic the organization offered
support in Greensboro and organized sit-ins throughout the South. CORE members then
developed the strategy of the jail-in, serving out their sentences for sit-ins rather than paying bail.

In May of 1961 CORE organized the Freedom Rides, modeled after their earlier Journey of
Reconciliation. Near Birmingham, Alabama a bus was firebombed and riders were beaten by a
white mob. Despite this violent event, CORE continued to locate field secretaries in key areas of
the South to provide support for the riders.

By the end of 1961, CORE had 53 affiliated chapters, and they remained active in southern
civil rights activities for the next several years. CORE participated heavily in President Kennedy's
Voter Education Project (VEP) and also co-sponsored the 1963 March on Washington. In 1964
CORE participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project; three activists killed that summer
in an infamous case, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were members
of CORE.

By 1963 CORE had already shifted attention to segregation in the North and West where
two thirds of the organization's chapters were located. In an effort to build CORE's credibility as
a black-protest organization, leadership in these northern chapters had become almost entirely
black. CORE's ideology and strategies increasingly were challenged by its changing membership.
Many new members advocated militancy and believed nonviolent methods of protest were to be
used only if they proved successful.

As the tactics were being questioned so was the leadership. In 1966, under mounting
pressure and with the organization losing members influence and financial support, James Farmer
stepped down as National Director and was replaced by the more militant Floyd McKissick.
McKissick endorsed the term Black Power and was a much more acceptable leader to the Black
community than Farmer was.

When McKissick took over, the organization was badly disorganized and deep in debt. Although
McKissick was a charismatic and respected leader, he was unable to turn the organization's
finances around. In 1968 he announced his retirement to pursue his dream of building a "Soul
City" in North Carolina and Roy Innis, who was Chairman of the Harlem Chapter of CORE,
replaced him as the National Director.

Innis inherited the organization with a completely de-centralized structure, with more than a
million dollars in debt and no fundraising mechanism. The organization's fundraising arm--CORE
Health, Education & Welfare Fund--had deserted the organization when Farmer left. Innis
quickly declared the first order of business was restructuring so that Chapters and field operatives
were responsible back to the National Headquarters. Innis also developed a new fundraising
arm--CORE Special Purpose Fund--and began to chip away at the organization's debt.

6
 Under Innis's leadership, CORE embraced an ideology of pragmatic nationalism and lent its
support to black economic development and community self-determination.

SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP

CONFERENCE
S C L C 591-A Edgewood Avenue Atlanta, GA 30312
http://sclcnational.org/net/content/item.aspx?mode=p&s=25461.0.12.2607

Our History
The very beginnings of the SCLC can be traced back to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The
Montgomery Bus Boycott began on December 5, 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing
to give up her seat to a white man on the bus. The boycott lasted for 381 days and ended on
December 21, 1956, with the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott was
carried out by the newly established Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Martin
Luther King, Jr. served as President and Ralph David Abernathy served as Program Director. It
was one of history’s most dramatic and massive nonviolent protests, stunning the nation and the
world.

The boycott was also a signal to Black America to begin a new phase of the long struggle, a
phase that came to be known as the modern civil rights movement. As bus boycotts spread across
the South, leaders of the MIA and other protest groups met in Atlanta on January 10 – 11, 1957,
to form a regional organization and coordinate protest activities across the South.

Despite a bombing of the home and church of Ralph David Abernathy during the Atlanta
meeting, 60 persons from 10 states assembled and announced the founding of the Southern
Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration. They issued a document
declaring that civil rights are essential to democracy, that segregation must end, and that all Black
people should reject segregation absolutely and nonviolently.

Further organizing was done at a meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 14, 1957. The
organization shortened its name to Southern Leadership Conference, established an Executive
Board of Directors, and elected officers, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President, Dr.
Ralph David Abernathy as Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee,
Florida as Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Secretary, and
Attorney I. M. Augustine of New Orleans, Louisiana as General Counsel.

At its first convention in Montgomery in August 1957, the Southern Leadership Conference
adopted the current name, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Basic decisions made
by the founders at these early meeting included the adoption of nonviolent mass action as the
cornerstone of strategy, the affiliation of local community organizations with SCLC across the
South, and a determination to make the SCLC movement open to all, regardless of race, religion,
or background.

7
SCLC is a now a nation wide organization made up of chapters and affiliates with programs that
affect the lives of all Americans: north, south, east and west. Its sphere of influence and interests
has become international in scope because the human rights movement transcends national
boundaries.

Our Presidents
# Martin L. King, Jr., Leader from 1957 to 1968
# Ralph D. Abernathy, Leader from 1968 to 1977
# Joseph E. Lowery, Leader from 1977 to 1997
# Martin L. King, III, Leader from 1997 to 2004
# Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Leader from Feb. 2004 to Nov. 2004
# Charles Steele, Jr., Leader from Nov. 2004 to Present

HISTORY OF THE STUDENT NONVIOLENT

COORDINATING COMMITTEE
http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/mds/sncchist.html

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), United States political organization

formed in 1960 by black college students dedicated to overturning segregation in the South and
giving young blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement in the United States.

SNCC was organized to advance the "sit-in" movement, a protest technique that became
prominent after February 1, 1960, when four young black men sat at a segregated "whites only"
lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave when ordered to do so. This
was one of many sit-ins, nonviolent protests against
segregation in which protesters "sat" in segregated facilities. In the next two months, similar sit-
ins occurred in 54 cities in nine states. Ella Baker, a longtime promoter of community-based civil
rights activism in the South, called on the young protesters to gather for a conference to discuss
ways to coordinate their efforts and broaden the agenda of the sit-ins to include fighting all forms
of segregation. Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960, the students announced the
formation of SNCC, a civil rights organization that would be led and staffed primarily by black
students. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) encouraged the creation of the student organization, assuming that SNCC would organize
itself as an arm of SCLC. The students, however, wanted their own voice and declared their
independence from the beginning. Although composed of fewer than 200 college students,
SNCC's influence was widely felt because of its members' courage in challenging segregation in
the Deep South.

After the 1960 sit-in movement, SNCC members joined with activists from the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE), a New York-based civil rights organization, in the 1961 Freedom Rides.
Thirteen people, seven of them black, initially set out to challenge segregated restrooms,
restaurants, and waiting rooms at interstate bus facilities along a
route extending from Washington, D.C., through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
8
and Mississippi. Along the way, some Freedom Riders left, and others joined. In Anniston,
Alabama, some riders were beaten and one bus was set on fire by a white mob. Various Freedom
Riders were also beaten by mobs in Montgomery, Alabama; subject to an all-night siege in a
black Baptist church in Montgomery; arrested in Jackson, Mississippi; or imprisoned for more
than a month at a Mississippi state penitentiary. Other Freedom Rides continued throughout the
spring of 1961, with the U.S. Justice Department eventually sending federal marshals to protect
the riders.

Starting in 1961, SNCC shifted its main efforts to organizing voter registration campaigns in
heavily black, rural counties of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. SNCC and CORE made a
strong voter registration drive in the Mississippi Delta, where SNCC added to its staff older local
activists like Fannie Lou Hamer, who had been jailed and beaten by police in 1962 shortly after
registering to vote. In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national
attention on Mississippi's racism. The project's primary goal was to register black voters. An
estimated 600 young people, many of them white college students, went to the South that summer
to help the effort. SNCC organizers recruited teachers, clergy, artists, and lawyers to staff
freedom schools and community centers in an effort to educate and mobilize black citizens. Black
members of SNCC retained most of the leadership positions and directed projects that were based
primarily in four of Mississippi's congressional districts. Three civil rights activists who
participated in the project—two whites and one black—were murdered by members of the Ku
Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi, in June of that year.

As an outgrowth of Freedom Summer, SNCC helped create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party (MFDP) to provide an alternative to the official white-controlled state Democratic Party.
When blacks were barred from Mississippi's delegation to the 1964 Democratic National
Convention, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Hamer and other MFDP activists went to the
convention to challenge the total control whites maintained over Mississippi's Democratic Party.
National Democratic Party officials offered blacks from Mississippi two convention seats, but the
MFDP rejected the compromise offer and went home. Although unsuccessful, the MFDP
challenge eventually resulted in more openness toward blacks and other minorities in the
Democratic Party.

Throughout 1964 and 1965, SNCC organized voter registration efforts in and around Selma,
Alabama. After protesters met with violent opposition in Selma in the spring of 1965, SNCC and
SCLC led a march to the state capitol of Montgomery, more than 80 km (50 mi) away. The
march created support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which President Lyndon Johnson
signed into law in August. The act suspended (and amendments to the act later banned) the use of
literacy or other voter qualification tests that had sometimes been used to keep blacks off of
voting lists.

By 1965 tensions between SNCC and SCLC had increased. Many SNCC organizers felt they
would often put in the hard work of planning and organizing protests and voter registration
drives, only to have the charismatic King arrive later and receive much of the credit. SNCC
leaders also expressed doubts about the effectiveness of nonviolent protest. Many young black
civil rights activists criticized what they saw as SCLC's willingness to compromise with whites,
and argued that blacks needed to be more militant about their demands and fight back when
confronted with violence. In addition, the civil rights movement up to that point focused on
9
battling segregation and winning the right to vote for Southern blacks, but had largely ignored the
economic difficulties of blacks in Northern cities.

In May 1966 a faction of SNCC committed to black separatism and headed by Stokely
Carmichael took over the organization from John Lewis, who favored integration. SNCC then
began to eject its white members. Carmichael soon issued a call for Black Power, a term used to
describe a series of new tactics and goals, including an i nsistence on racial dignity and black
self-reliance, and the use of violence as a legitimate means of self defense.

As Carmichael and his successor as chairman of SNCC, H. "Rap" Brown, became national
symbols of black radicalism, SNCC became an even more controversial organization. Both were
accused of instigating racial division and violence. Opposition became stronger in 1968 when the
Black Panther Party—founded in Oakland, California, in 1966—emerged as the preeminent
organization upholding Black Power.
The Panthers advocated violence, if necessary, to achieve their goals and battled police in
Chicago and Oakland. Several of the organization's leaders were killed and others imprisoned for
killing policemen.

SNCC and the Black Panthers cooperated on various levels in the late 1960s, organizing rallies
and sharing offices in certain cities, but the relationship between the groups was often shaky, with
SNCC members often disagreeing with the Black Panther's advocacy of violent confrontation.
Carmichael was expelled from SNCC in August 1968 over his support for guerrilla tactics and the
use of violence in urban areas. He worked to organize Black Panther chapters during the next
year, but later dropped out of that organization. In the summer of 1969, Brown changed SNCC's
name to the Student National Coordinating Committee, indicating that the group would retaliate
violently if forced to do so. However, Brown's mounting legal problems left him with little time
to devote to the group and in 1970 he went into hiding after being charged with arson, inciting a
riot, and transporting weapons across state lines. The organization became virtually defunct.
Brown was wounded in a shoot-out with New York City police in 1971 while holding up a
tavern, convicted and sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison in 1973, and paroled in 1976.

Several of SNCC's early leaders went on to gain national prominence, including John Lewis, a
U.S. congressman from Georgia; Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C.; and Julian Bond, a
national spokesman on civil rights issues and state senator in Georgia.

from Encarta Africana 2000

FROM RACE AND RECESSION: A Special Report Examining How

Changes in the Economy Affect People of Color (Applied Research Center, Summer
2002)

People of Color Have Been Hardest Hit by the Recent Recession and are More
Vulnerable to Layoffs and Discrimination.

Despite 26 years of experience as a commercial truck driver in Albuquerque, New

10
Mexico, Moises Ortaega had his hours cut by 90 percent. His son, Jacob, lost his job
and is applying for public assistance to support his three children (see page 8). The
Ortegas are among millions of workers of color in industries that have been hit hardest by
the recession, namely transportation, manufacturing, and services. After September 11,
the increase in unemployment rates for Latinos and African Americans was more than
double that for white employees, and unemployment rates for workers of color continue to
rise. Persistent and well-documented discrimination in hiring practices compounds and
perpetuates this hardship.

Due to the federal government’s “anti-terrorist” policies, Filipino airport screeners

Victorio and Norma Humarang will lose jobs they’ve held for five years at Oakland
International Airport (see page 7). The Humarangs are among 30,000 immigrant
workers nationwide who will lose airport jobs because they are not U.S. citizens. These
workers are in a particularly precarious situation, as legislation passed in 1996 denies
immigrants access to most public assistance programs. For the Humarangs, there will be
no safety net when they become jobless.

The Safety Net Provides Few Protections for Unemployed Workers.

Arnold Bassett, an African American manufacturing worker in Davenport, Iowa,

had to move his family into a homeless shelter when his company downsized, because
he was one of millions of workers who didn’t meet restrictive unemployment
insurance guidelines (see page 11). African American workers like Bassett are less likely
to receive unemployment insurance. In New York City, for example, African Americans
account for only 27 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, even though they
make up 37 percent of the jobless. Nationally, out of 1.26 million unemployed Latinos in
December 2001, 60 percent, or 756,000 workers, were unlikely to receive unemployment
benefits.

Without child care assistance, Kim Mazon of Knoxville, Tennessee had to give up a
steady job and now works sporadically under dangerous conditions as a day laborer
(see page 16). Mounting evidence reveals appalling disparities in public child care
expenditures for families of color and white families across the nation. For example, one
Georgia county spent $2,090 per year on child care per welfare recipient, of whom 98
percent were white, while a neighboring county spent only $694 per recipient, of whom
96 percent where African American.
Welfare Offices Violate Anti-Discrimination Laws and Offer Whites Preferential
Treatment.

Ramon Zapata, a monolingual Spanish-speaker from Brooklyn, New York, was

required to sit through job training programs that were only offered in English—a
direct violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He later lost his public
assistance benefits for not meeting requirements that were never translated to him
(see page 12). Latino public assistance recipients like Zapata are more likely than whites
to be illegally denied an application for assistance, told that benefits do not exist, not

11
offered a translator, or denied documents in their own language. The lack of enforcement
of anti-discrimination protections has a profound impact on people who are already most
vulnerable to job losses.

Wanda Sayers, a Native American from Duluth, Minnesota, was denied assistance
after her caseworker told her, “You Indian women always have babies just for the
welfare money.” Under continued harassment, Sayers had to seek legal assistance to
regain her benefits (see page 13). Race and Recession documents racist statements by
welfare personnel, numerous instances where caseworkers lied and misinformed
recipients, and a lack of consequences for welfare departments violating the law.

In Hui Lee of Marin City, California, filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Bureau
of the Department of Social Services after being consistently discouraged from
getting her education (see page 21). Since the passage of welfare reform in 1996,
college enrollment for public assistance recipients has plummeted. A Virginia study
revealed that although African American recipients were, on average, better educated than
whites, caseworkers encouraged no African Americans to go to school, but encouraged 41
percent of whites to do so.

SENATE APOLOGIZES FOR BLOCKING ANTI-

LYNCH LAW
sfbayview.com June 15, 2005

Journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells blazed the trail

by Amy Goodman

Democracy Now!
On the evening of June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, three young Black men were pulled from
their jail cells and lynched by a mob numbering in the thousands. Up to a tenth of the city’s
residents clogged the street in front of the police station to witness the hanging. Reporters from
the two major newspapers of Minneapolis and St. Paul shocked their readers with lurid accounts
of the event.

On Monday, the U.S. Senate passed a non-binding resolution to apologize for its failure to enact
anti-lynching legislation. The resolution states that the Senate “expresses the deepest sympathies
and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of
whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all
citizens of the United States.”

More than 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress in the first part of the 20th
century, and the House of Representatives passed anti-lynching bills three times. However, the
legislation was repeatedly blocked by senators from the South, and almost 5,000 people – mostly
12
African-Americans – were lynched between 1882 and 1968.

This time, the resolution was introduced by two senators from the South, Democratic Sen. Mary
Landrieu from Louisiana and Republican Sen. George Allen from Virginia. Landrieu called
lynching “an American form of terrorism.” She also referenced the song anti-lynching song
“Strange Fruit” as well as pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells, who was a fearless anti-lynching
crusader, suffragist and women’s rights advocate.
Ida B. Wells

Speaking on the Senate floor Monday, Sen. Mary Landrieu said: “Jazz legend Billie Holiday
provided us with some real texture in her story and song, ‘Strange Fruit,’ which I will submit to
the record. She defied her own record label and produced and published this song on her own,
(and her life) was threatened … because she continued to sing it. …

“Something in the way she sang this song, something in the pictures that described the event,
must have touched the heart of Americans, because they began to mobilize, and men and women,
white and black, people from different backgrounds, came to stand up and begin to speak. … But
the Senate of the United States, one of the most noble experiments in democracy, continued to
pretend … that this was not happening in America and continued to fail to act. …

“In March of 1892, three personal friends of Ida B. Wells opened the People’s Grocery Co., a
store located across the street from a white-owned grocery store that had previously been the only
grocer in the area. Angered by the loss of business, a mob gathered to run the new grocers out of
town.

“Forewarned about the attack on their store, the three owners armed themselves for protection,
and in the riot that ensued one of the businessmen injured a white man. All three were arrested
and jailed. Days later, the mob kidnapped the men from jail and lynched them. This was the case
that led Ida B. Wells to begin to speak out against this injustice. …

“Forty-two years and thousands of lynchings later is the case of Claude Neal of Marianna,
Florida. After 10 hours of torture, Claude Neal “confessed” to the murder of a girl with whom he
was allegedly having an affair. For his safety, he was transferred to an Alabama prison.

“A mob took him from there, they cut off his body parts, they sliced his sides and stomach. And
then people would randomly continue to cut off a finger here, a toe there. From time to time, they
would tie a noose around him, throw the rope over a tree limb. The mob would keep him there in
that position until he almost died, then lower him again, to begin the torment all over.

“And after several hours – and I guess the crowd exhausted themselves – they just decided to kill
him. His body was then dragged by car back to Marianna, and 7,000 people from 11 states were
there to see his body in the courthouse of the town square. Pictures were taken and sold for 50
cents apiece.

“And one might ask, how do we know all of the grisly details of Claude Neal’s death? It’s very
simple. The newspapers in Florida had given advance notice, and they recorded it, one horrible
moment after another. One of the members of the lynch mob proudly relayed all the details that
13
reporters had missed, seeing it in person.

“Yet, even with the public notice, 7,000 people in attendance and people bragging about the
activity, federal authorities were impotent to stop this murder. State authorities seemed to
condone it. And the Senate of the United States refused to act.”

Amy Goodman: We’re joined today in the studio by the president of the American Sociological
Association, Troy Duster. Not as well known (is that he is) the grandson of Ida B. Wells. Yes,
Professor Duster teaches sociology at New York University and UC Berkeley and is author of a
number of books, his most recent called “Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind
Society.” We welcome to you Democracy Now!

Troy Duster: Thank you.

Amy Goodman: You were born after your grandmother, Ida B. Wells, died?

Troy Duster: Yes.

Amy Goodman: Can you talk about her significance in this country’s history?

Troy Duster: Well, first perhaps a personal story about my grandmother. She apparently was a
very fierce, strong personality.

My mother described her as someone who didn’t keep friends very long, because she had this
idea that one should have almost a litmus test about justice. So the idea that lynching could occur
without redress was apparently deeply mired in her ideas about this country.

And I think it goes back to her childhood, where she grew up in Reconstruction, where there was
a period in which whites and Blacks had hope that there might be some kind of justice. And when
the Northern troops withdraw, she sees the complete reversion, and lynching becomes the
symbolic act to take Blacks back to a period where there was no justice.

Amy Goodman: She was a journalist?

Troy Duster: She was a journalist, yes. She actually began as a schoolteacher. But she saw that
journalism would be a vehicle for mobilizing Blacks to some action. …

I’m a sociologist, and so what comes to mind is the way in which lynching was used as a device
to disenfranchise and make it impossible for Blacks to be competitive economically. We tend to
think of these as individual acts, but what was happening in the South in this period was that
lynching was used as a message to those other Blacks who might be engaged in what was called
uppity behavior, and that meant direct competition with whites.

So it was not just that we have 4,000 people who were killed. The important thing sociologically
is that (they) were killed … in a public way to intimidate other Blacks.

And what Ida B. Wells was doing was trying to draw the parallel between the patterns of
14
lynching and the nature of competition. The connection to today is not that far-fetched, because
one can see the ways in which competition between whites and Blacks is being eroded by certain
kinds of strategies.

The current situation for the last, say, 20 years, where over a million and a half people have been
placed in prison, taking them out of the capacity to vote, to return to society, to be engaged in
productive economic labor, all of this is subtle.

It’s not like lynching. But there are some real parallels here between what happened in 1890 to
1910, in terms of the erosion of competition, (and) in the last 20 years of our country’s history,
where many, many Blacks are disenfranchised and unable to engage in competition in the
marketplace.

Amy Goodman: … How important is this (apology)?

Troy Duster: Well, I think an apology is a first step. I mean, I don’t trivialize the apology. But I
think if it’s only going to be a moment in history that’s forgotten, it’s of not much consequence.
…

We tend to be a nation with a memory of five to 10 years. And so when people talk about things
like affirmative action or Head Start, they tend to think of this very short period. So I think it’s
important to put the apology, to open up the consciousness of the nation to what actually
happened in Reconstruction, what happened when the South went back to a period of complete
domination: white supremacy. That conversation has not been held.

The apology might therefore have an important function, if we use it as a device for reintroducing
the idea that we need to repair this history. …

Amy Goodman: The issue of whitewashing race?

Troy Duster: Well, there’s an easy idea that we have reached a point in the 21st century when
race should no longer be a consideration in human affairs in the United States. … But what that
ignores is (the) historical legacy ….

If you go back only to the 1930s and talk about the way in which people were able to get houses
through housing acts, race was a key figure here, a key element. You got a house for the 1 percent
or 2 percent loan, but only if you were white.

And over the next 60 years there was something called the accumulation. Blacks were not part of
that accumulation. So currently today, median net worth of whites is 10 times that of Blacks. Just
off the top, 10 times the net worth of whites to Black. And so the idea that we should simply
forget this history and “whitewash” race is to ignore the power of the accumulation of wealth. …

Amy Goodman: We turn now to an excerpt of a documentary called “Black Press” that examines
the history of America’s Black newspapers. It first aired on PBS in 1999. This is an excerpt that
talks about Ida B. Wells. …

15
Narrator: On June 4, 1892, while Ida B. Wells was in New York on her first trip north, her paper,
The Memphis Free Speech, was attacked by a lynch mob.

Vernon Jarrett: They actually destroyed this woman’s press and intended to destroy her body,
take her life, to the extent that she walked the streets with a pistol under her blouse or apron or,
according to legend, two pistols on occasion.

Narrator: Fearing for her life, Wells did not return South for 30 years. She continued her
groundbreaking work on the staff of the New York Age.

Jane Rhodes: She really set the stage for a very radical, very activist kind of Black journalism.
And as a Black woman, she was also an inspiration because there were so few African American
women who had worked in journalism before. And when they did, it tended to be sort of a social
service-oriented journalism, not the sort of powerful, radical, you know, vociferous journalism
that said, “We won’t stand for this, we must do something about the kinds of violence affecting
African Americans.”

Amy Goodman: An excerpt of “Black Press: Soldiers without Swords,” produced and directed by
Stanley Nelson. This is Democracy Now!, DemocracyNow.org.

This story is excerpted from the Tuesday, June 14, broadcast of Democracy Now! Read the entire
transcript at http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/14/1350253. Hear Democracy
Now! Monday-Friday morning at 6:00 and 9:00 on KPFA 94.1 FM and 330 other TV and radio
stations around the country or at www.democracynow.org.

An apology is like an admission of guilt

Dr. Mustafa Ansari

Indigenous African American Reparations Tribunal

Under international reparations law doctrine, an apology is like an admission of guilt. This is the
first step in repairing the people or group you have injured.

The significance of the U.S. Senate apologizing for cooperating with the Southern senators in
their quest to lynch us and oppress us is an admission of guilt by a nation-state to ”crimes against
humanity.” Presently, many African chiefs and elders, President Clinton, Banks, Abraham
Lincoln and now the Senate have apologized for their ancestors’ collaboration in the slave trade
and for the resultant “crimes against humanity.”

However, an apology is just the first step. Our solution to the “crimes against humanity” is based
on the New International Reparations Law, which says that an offending state has a duty to
compensate, restitute, rehabilitate and give the people it has harmed a guarantee of non-repetition
(see www.aareparations.com). The U.S., France, Nigeria and Benin amongst other states are
signatories.

The progressive Atlanta chapter of N’COBRA has invited our international experts to present the
16
international law of reparations at their national conference, so that we can move forward towards
a remedy in the international arena. In this regard, on June 24 and 25 at Georgia State University,
we will present a legally sustainable way to obtain compensation, self-determination and an
indigenous political identity that will repair our people.

Power to our people as we go forward to a global African reconciliation plan.

Dr. Mustafa Ansari is chief justice of the Indigenous African American Reparations Tribunal.
Contact him at (866) 658-0164 or dransari@onebox.com.

17