Little Rock Nine

Photo of 101st U.S. Airborne Division courtesy http://upload.wikimedia.org.

My son Thomas started high school today at Hamilton District Christian High.  He had the normal first day of school jitters.  He wondered if he would know anyone in his classes.  He wondered what his first bus ride would be like.  He complained about the acne on his face.  But the one thing he didn't need to worry about was the colour of his skin.  He entered the school of his own accord rather than with armed troops at his side.  He entered the school without an angry mob yelling epithets and threats against him.  He entered the school without his fellow students spitting on him.  He entered the school without a line of reporters snapping his photo and posting it on the front page of the Hamilton Spectator.

Such was not the case when the Little Rock Nine (Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest green, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Arlotta Walls LeNier, Minnijean Brown Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed and Melba Patillo Beals) entered high school on this day in 1957.  Daisy Bates, the head of the local NAACP chapter, arranged to have nine Black students enroll at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas that year.  After the landmark case of Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, the court had ruled that segregation was unconstitutional and that all schools should be desegregated, but putting the theory into practice was a different story.  Governor Orval Faubus arranged to have the State National Guard meet the nine Black students with guns and gas masks ready to prevent their entry into the school.  White students called the Blacks "Communists" and other names; they spit in their faces; they threw bricks at them; and they blocked their entry into the school.  Reporters were beaten up by the angry mob. 

Little Rock soon became not only national but international news at a time when the Cold War was at its peak:  how could America justify treating its own citizens so poorly when it was supposed to be the land of democracy?  President Eisenhower realized something needed to be done so he pleaded with the Arkansas governor to call off the National Guard and allow the nine students to enter the school.  However, Mr. Faubus would not budge.  In the meantime, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Arkansas to officially integrate the school. 

On September 25, the Little Rock Nine entered the school, each with a patroller by his or her side.  While the show of solidarity was impressive, White students continued to harass the Black students at any given opportunity.  Melba Patillo Beals was stabbed at one point and had acid thrown in her face; fortunately her patroller immediately threw water in her eyes to prevent her from being blinded.  Minnijean, taunted by Whites in the cafeteria, poured a bowl of chili on one of them only to be suspended for six days while no punishment was doled out to the instigators.  One of the students had his or her home bombed in the Fall of 1959.

In the meantime, Governor Faubus tried to stop integration by closing down all four Little Rock high schools.  The board even fired 44 high school teachers who were later re-instated.  But the damage was done:  all of the Little Rock high school students could not attend school during "The Lost Year".  Some of the Little Rock Nine transferred to other schools due to the harassment, but three remained to graduate.  Melba Patillo Beals ended up becoming a teacher at Central High which is 60% Black today. 

So as my son heads back to high school tomorrow, I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that he can do so freely without harassment.  We take education for granted, but it came with a high price for the Little Rock Nine. 

Photo of one of the Little Rock Nine courtesy www.nps.gov.

*First published in 2012.

Brown vs Board of Education

And I remember going inside and my dad spoke with someone and then he went into the inner office with the principal, and they left me out to sit outside with the secretary. And while he was in the inner office, I could hear voices and hear his voice raised as the conversation went on. And then he immediately came out of the office, took me by the hand, and we walked home from the school, and I just couldn't understand what was happening, you know, because I was so sure that I was going to get to go to school with Mona, Guinevere, Wanda, and all of my playmates.

*This is a quote from Linda (Brown) Thompson, daughter of Oliver Brown, plaintiff in the case Brown vs. Board of Education, taken from 2004 PBS Documentary.

Linda Brown grew up in Topeka, Kansas in the 1950's.  Although she was black, she lived in an integrated neighbourhood where she had many white friends.  The neighbourhood school Sumner Elementary, however, was segregated.  Eight-year-old Linda watched her friends Mona, Guinevere and Wanda walk the seven blocks to the white school while she walked six blocks in the other direction and then hailed a bus to the black school one mile away.

Black families in the neighbourhood joined forces and with sponsorship from the NAACP, they filed a lawsuit called Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.  The lawsuit tried to undo the case of Plessy vs.Ferguson of 1896 which stated that all schools must be "separate but equal".  As long as the black schools were equal to the white schools, the lawsuit claimed this practice to be consititutional.

Although Brown was the plaintiff, the lawsuit included 12 other parents and was filed on behalf of their 20 children.  Oliver Brown, a lifelong resident of Topeka, was a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad.  He was also an assistant pastor at his church; perhaps his leadership in the church made him a good candidate to lead the lawsuit.  According to Oliver's youngest daughter, Cheryl, the black school buildings in Topeka, Kansas were equal to the white school buildings (unlike many of the schools in the Deep South).  The black teachers were well educated.  However, for the Brown's, it was the principle of the matter.

The lawsuit was filed in the district court of Kansas on February 28, 1951, but the plaintiffs lost.  However, Oliver Brown took the case to the Supreme Court and on May 17, 1954, Justice Earl Warren and his court ruled 9-1 in favour of the plaintiff.  Segregated schools were declared unconstitutional in the United States.

Linda Brown was able to join her friends Mona, Guinevere and Wanda at Sumner Elementary thanks to the courage of her father, Oliver, and the 12 other parents.

Photo of newly integrated classroom courtesy www.gpb.org.

*First published in 2012.

The Warmth of Other Suns

Why did 100 years elapse between the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the American Civil Rights Act in 1964?  Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson’s book, The Warmth of Other Suns, sheds much light on this question.  Although black slaves were freed during the Civil War, it took another century for attitudes in the Deep South to change.  After a brief respite for blacks during Reconstruction, they were subjected to a more subtle form of slavery with the adoption of the Jim Crow laws.  “Separate, but equal” became the motto:  blacks ate in different restaurants, drank from different water fountains, borrowed books from different libraries, lived in different neighbourhoods, attended different schools, rode in separate railway cars, sat in a separate section of busses and earned different (lower) wages.

Although blacks were no longer “owned” by whites, they still had to answer to them in the South, sometimes paying with their life:  lynchings were a dangerously common occurrence for decades.  Whites dictated the wages blacks received as they performed the back-breaking work of cotton picking on the large plantations.  Any attempt to organize to demand higher wages was met with hostility by the sharecroppers.  Any attempt to speak out against Jim Crow laws was met with resistance:  one newspaper writer was locked up in an insane asylum; a man who belonged to the NAACP had a bomb go off under his bed on Christmas Day.  Any attempt to “mix” with white society, even a young black boy speaking to a white girl, could result in dire consequences:  one boy was tortured mercilessly. 

Blacks finally sought refuge in the North and West of the United States:  it was called The Great Migration and would last from 1917 until 1970.  Refugees purchased train tickets and, with a box full of chicken and sweet potatoes for the journey, said goodbye to their loved ones at railroad stations across the south, making their way to destinations like Washington D.C., New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, etc.  In the later decades, some left by car, travelling across the Arizona desert to the ‘promised land” of California, settling in cities like San Diego, Oakland and Los Angeles. 

Those blacks who feared repercussions left in sneakier ways.  One man was stuffed in a box in the fetal position, put on a train and turned upside down, a position he held for 26 hours as he headed north to Washington DC where he was met at the station by a member of the NAACP.  The black newspaper reporter who was deemed insane and locked away in an asylum, managed to escape, with the help of Northerners, and was hustled away in a car, joined by a caravan of other cars; once the motorcade crossed the state line, the reporter found his way to a railroad station and purchased a ticket to freedom in the North. 

While the North and the West provided freedoms for blacks that they did not have in the South, it was not always the promised land that they had hoped for.  One farmer from Florida, who moved to New York City and became a railroad porter, remembers changing the cars at Washington D.C., as the train changed from an integrated to a segregated one.  Another central figure in the book leaves Mississippi for California, attempting to find a hotel in the desert, only to see VACANCY signs be turned off the second he arrived and requested a room.  One black couple moved to Chicago where they tried to get into the neighbourhood of Cicero, only to have their new apartment ransacked, and to see a riot ensue.  Cicero, a neighbourhood that had made room for immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, sadly had no room for black migrants.  One black boy accidentally crossed the invisible colour line in the water at a Lake Michigan beach and was drowned by whites.

While blacks in the Southern towns risked lynchings, black migrants to the Northern cities faced the vices of the streets like drugs, prostitution, etc.  Children of migrants sometimes succumbed to these temptations.  Furthermore, the South held two centuries of history for many black families, roots that were lost once they moved to the North.  Some blacks chose not to dwell on their pasts, hoping to make a new history for their children, but in essence leaving them rootless.  

Even so, many blacks found work in the Northern factories at wages they never could have earned in the South.  Many migrants were able to send their children to integrated elementary and high schools and even to Ivy League Universities where they trained for professions that they would likely not have learned in the South.  Some migrants saw their children win sports scholarships to colleges and later find jobs in the NBA or the NFL.  One young runner named JC, the son of a migrant, went on to win a gold medal at the Berlin Olympics in 1936; we know him as Jesse Owens.

The Great Migration is a fascinating topic to explore.  Isabel Wilkerson’s book is packed full of American History.  What a great read!

Image courtesy http://nationalpostarts.files.wordpress.com/.

*First published in 2012.

Cicero Race Riot

"Get out of Cicero and don't come back in town or you'll get a bullet through you."

(Chicago police officer to new tenant, Mr. Clark)

On July 11, 1951, a mob of 4,000 whites attacked a Chicago suburb apartment building where one black family had moved in.  When the fires burnt out, and the rubble was cleared away, 19 people were hurt and 117 arrested.

Mob of 4000 riots at Cicero apartment buildling courtesy originalpeople.org.

Mrs. DeRose, the landlord of a Cicero, Illinois apartment building, supposedly had a disagreement with some of her renters.  To get back at them, she rented out her unoccupied apartment to the first black family in the neighbourhood.  On June 8, police stopped a moving van with $2000 worth of furniture inside, which arrived at the apartment building.  The black family, the Clark's, were pulled aside by police and warned:  "Get out of here fast.  There will be no moving into this building."  Mr. Clark was hit eight times by police officers and warned:  "Get out of Cicero and don't come back in town or you'll get a bullet through you."

Harvey Clark and his wife circa 1951 courtesy https://plus.google.com/communities/113086078474409920236.

Mr. Clark, a World War II veteran, filed a lawsuit with the NAACP and tried to move into the Cicero apartment building again on June 26.  Some whites in the building stored their furniture and moved out.  Others plotted.  On the night of July 11, 4,000 whites gathered at the apartment building.  Twenty-one occupants fled to the rooftop.  The mob set to work destroying the building:  radiators were ripped from the wall; holes were punched through the plaster; windows were smashed, and furniture was set on fire.

Fires set at Cicero apartment building courtesy img.groundspeak.com.

For the first time in America's history, television crews were there to document what happened next. The police were called to the scene:  they could not do much given there were only 60 officers.  Their chief was supposedly "out of town".  Firefighters were called to the scene.  Asked by police to turn their fire hoses on the unruly mob, they refused.  Their fire chief was also "out of town".  The firemen were greeted by the protesters with a shower of bricks.

National Guard on front lawn of Cicero apartment building circa 1951 courtesy img.groundspeak.com.

Finally, the National Guard, armed with bayonets, rifle butts and tear gas, ended the riot the following day.  Damage was estimated at $20,000.  However, a Cook County jury did not charge the rioters.  Instead, they went after the NAACP lawyer and Mrs. DeRose.  But the charges did not stick. The apartment buildng was so severely damaged, all of the tenants, including the Clark's had to move out and the building was boarded up.

Boarded up apartment building courtesy img.groundspeak.com.

Note:  For more information, read As Long as They Don't Move Next Door (Hirsch).