Race and The Tradition of Black Protest

1. Race and The Tradition of Black Protest

2. Challenging the Paradigm • Lets discuss the making of race and slavery • What are the origins of Black protest?

3. Until the 1660s, slavery in VA legally ill-defined • “race” derived meaning from travel/scientific literature • Defacto enslavement of African by European traders • Black efforts to escape bondage

4. “Race” in the Old World • Mid-15th Century—Turning Point • Portuguese explorations down the West African Coast (beg. 1441) • 1st time black Africans arrived directly by sea from Africa. • New Dynamic • Before—Black Africans were the Muslims’ slaves – the other’s other. • Since the war against Islam was a Holy War—no justification needed. • How did the Portuguese morally defend the enslavement of black Africans? • Argued their capture (and enslavement) part of just war to convert heathens.

5. Institutional Endorsement of “just war” – of African slavery The first institutional endorsement of African slavery occurred in 1452 – • The pope granted the King of Portugal (Afonso V) the right to reduce to “perpetual slavery” all pagans, and other infidels and enemies of Christ” in West Africa. • In 1454, The Pope issues another Bull granting Portugal the specific right to conquer and enslave all people south of Cape Bojador. (Cape Bojador was the most southerly European-known point on the coast of Africa. Until one of Henry's expeditions, was pass it, in 1434.) (the famous Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal in 1494) • Taken together these papal bulls did more than just grant Portuguese exclusive rights—they signaled to the rest of Christian Europe that the enslavement of Saharan Africans was acceptable and encouraged. • All Europeans had the RIGHT to enslave Africans on the grounds that theirs were “civilizing” missions.

6. English Adoption of Racial Ideas While there were thousands of Africans in Portugal and Spain around 1500, they were rare elsewhere in Europe. Why?--England’s geographic and social distance from the contested borderlands of Christian Europe and the lands of African rendered slavery far less important than in Spain and Portugal. • Only a few Englishmen profited from direct exploitation of their African slaves prior to 1600

7. The English, the slave trade and “the Negro” • In 1550s England began direct involvement in transporting Africans across the Atlantic – on a very small scale. • But by the 1570s, conflict in Europe, led to a shift, from trade to piracy. • English privateers employed by Queen Elizabeth to plunder Spanish and Portuguese ships in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic. • Slave ships seized and reinforced English familiarity with African slavery and the slave trade. • Just as was the case with the Portuguese and Spanish, northern Europeans recognized that “Negro” was synonymous with enslaveable status. • Thus, when the term Negro was applied by Northern Europeans to Africans, it was another “double othering” • An acceptance of the Iberian conflation of skin color and slave status. Negroes—Africans—were the other’s other.

8. Why is the “race origins debate” important? • What is at stake is whether racism was an “unthinking” result of economic and political systems imposed by elites in the Americas, or whether racism was a function of more deeply entrenched ideas that were at the core of Western society and culture.

9. The Barbados Example • 1627 -- settled, 10 “Negars” came with first settlers • by 1650- slavery inheritable • Before SUGAR--Line between freedom and slavery fluid • Evidence of slaves suing for freedom, claiming illegally held in bondage.

10. The making of race in the Chesapeake • “pioneer” blacks • became Christian, spoke English, and learned English law • Used the two most important colonial institutions-church and court house • They were litigious people • Strove to own their own land • Blacks and whites grew/worked tobacco together • Africans planted tobacco on small quarters usually surrounded by whites

11. Making Race • In the 1660s white servants outnumbered black slaves by 5:1 (at least) • In the 1670s began importing Africans directly from Africa—the balance changed—black slaves outnumbered white servants. • Slave Codes As Africans grew in numbers, threatened whites passed laws to severely control the slave population.

12. Virginia, 1662 Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any christian shall committ fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act. • Maryland, 1664 That whatsoever free-born [English] woman shall intermarry with any slave. . . shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband; and that all the issue of such free-born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were. • “African in America” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html

13. Virginia, 1667 Act III. Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth. . . should by virtue of their baptism be made free, it is enacted that baptism does not alter the condition to the person as to his bondage or freedom; masters freed from this doubt may more carefully propagate Christianity by permitting slaves to be admitted to that sacrament. • Virginia, 1682 Act I. It is enacted that all servants. . . which [sic] shall be imported into this country either by sea or by land, whether Negroes, Moors [Muslim North Africans], mulattoes or Indians who and whose parentage and native countries are not Christian at the time of their first purchase by some Christian. . . and all Indians, which shall be sold by our neighborign Indians, or any other trafficing with us for slaves, are hereby adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all intents and purposes any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.

14. Making Blackness: From ethnicity to Race • Africans had to learn the significance of “race.” • Dual process -- the adoption of an identity from forces without and within the enslaved black community.

15. The Process • The barracoon • The Middle passage • “The Seasoning” • Resistance key • The stratification of the black community key to transition from ethnicity to race

16. The multiple meanings of Race • Time and Place • Virginia • Lowcountry • Louisiana • Response to slavery differed

17. Race and Systems of Control after Slavery

18. Creating Jim Crow: A System of Racial Domination • Economics • Politics • Social

19. Black Codes: Jim Crow precedent 1. Civil Rights: • The Southern Black Codes defined the rights of freedmen. had the right ‘to acquire, own and dispose of property; to make contracts; to enjoy the fruits of their labor; to sue and be sued; and to receive protection under the law in their persons and property.” Also, for the first time, the law recognized the marriages of black persons and the legitimacy of their children. 2. Labor Contracts: 3. Vagrancy: 4. Apprenticeship: http://www.hist.umn.edu/~sargent/1308/blacklaw.htm

20. Jim Crow • Must help students understand that Jim Crow was more than a series of strict anti-black laws. It was a way of life.

21. Jim Crow laws • List of typical Jim Crow laws • Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia). • Blind Wards. The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race (Louisiana). • Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons (Georgia). • See “What Was Jim Crow?” by Dr. David Pilgrim at www.jimcrow.org

22. Jim Crow etiquette A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it implied being socially equal. Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them. Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names. If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person sat in the back seat or the back of a truck. White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.

23. Race and Place

24. "The Tripartite System of Racial Domination”(Aldon Morris, Author of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement) • 1) Economics • Job Discrimination • Lack of Legal Protection • Sharecropping and Debt Peonage • 2) Politics • Disfranchisement and Political Intimidation • http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_02/Vote172.shtml LA Literacy Test • 3) Segregation

25. Sharecropping System – the dominate form of labor relations • What did black farmers want? • What did white planters want? • Cycle of debt • “fixing the books” • “settlin’ time” • Debt peonage • Credit system • Vagrancy laws • Convict lease system • Involuntary servitude

26. Sharecropper Contract, 1882 http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/sharecropper.pdfhttp://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/mapcontractquestions.pdf To every one applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be read, and agreed to. To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to furnish the team, plow, and farming implements . . . The croppers are to have half of the cotton, corn, and fodder (and peas and pumpkins and potatoes if any are planted) if the following conditions are complied with, but-if not-they are to have only two-fifths (2/5) . . . All must work under my direction. . . . No cropper is to work off the plantation when there is any work to be done on the land he has rented, or when his work is needed by me or other croppers. . . . Every cropper must feed or have fed, the team he works, Saturday nights, Sundays, and every morning before going to work, beginning to feed his team (morning, noon, and night every day in the week) on the day he rents and feeding it to including the 31st day of December. ...for every time he so fails he must pay me five cents. The sale of every cropper's part of the cotton to be made by me when and where I choose to sell, and after deducting all they owe me and all sums that I may be responsible for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds. Work of every description, particularly the work on fences and ditches, to be done to my satisfaction, and must be done over until I am satisfied that it is done as it should be. SOURCE: Grimes Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in Robert D. Marcus and David Burner, eds., America Firsthand (1992), pp. 306—308.

27. Sharecropping:Continuity or Change? http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/planta3.htm

28. Sharecropping in Virginia • http://www.mcps.org/ss/5thgrade/ShareCropTN.pdf

29. The Politicsof Jim Crow • Disfranchisement, Violence, and Political Intimidation

30. Disfranchisement • Disfranchisement was a two part process

31. Disfranchisement I: Literacy Requirements • Poll Taxes, Grandfather Clauses, and All-White Primaries. • Disfanchisment Laws had to be carefully crafted to avoid 15th amendment, they could not explicitly use race as a barrier to voting

32. Escape clauses • designed so that poor and illiterate whites could still qualify to vote. • (1) Understanding clause • Literacy and educational requirements • http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_02/Vote172.shtml LA Literacy Test • Grandfather clause • Could not vote if grandfather could not have voted prior to 1867

33. Disfranchisement II: The KKK and the Politics and Culture of Lynching • KKK and other related groups using violence to suppress black political action • Violence justified by the threat of miscegenation. • “'Without Sanctuary': Artifacts of Lynching in America” see www.npr.org

34. The Culture of Violence and Intimidation • Chain GangsConvict Lease System

35. Taken from the third chapter of "The Reason why the colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition," published in 1893 • … the convicts are leased out to work for railway contractors, mining companies and those who farm large plantations. These companies assume charge of the convicts, work them as cheap labor and pay the states a handsome revenue for their labor… • ..[The] reason our race furnishes so large a share of the convicts is that the judges, juries and other officials of the courts are white men who share these prejudices. They also make the laws. It is wholly in their power to extend clemency to white criminals and mete severe punishment to black criminals for the same or lesser crimes. The Negro criminals are mostly ignorant, poor and friendless. Possessing neither money to employ lawyers nor influential friends, they are sentenced in large numbers to long terms of imprisonment for petty crimes. • …Every Negro so sentenced not only means able-bodied men to swell the state's number of slaves, but every Negro so convicted is thereby disfranchised. • http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fredouconlea.html

36. Jackson Weekly Clarion, printed in 1887 the inspection report of the state prison in Mississippi: • "We found [in the hospital section] twenty-six inmates, all of whom have been lately brought there off the farms and railroads, many of them with consumption and other incurable diseases, and all bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and brutal treatment. Most of them have their backs cut in great wales, scars and blisters, some with the skin pealing off in pieces as the result of severe beatings. Their feet and hands in some instances show signs of frostbite, and all of them with the stamp of manhood almost blotted out of their faces.... They are lying there dying, some of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through their skin, many complaining for the want of food.... We actually saw live vermin crawling over their faces, and the little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and stiff with filth. As a fair sample of this system, on January 6, 1887, 204 convicts were leased to McDonald up to June 6, 1887, and during this six months 20 died, and 19 were discharged and escaped and 23 were returned to the walls disabled and sick, many of whom have since died." http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm

37. Why the convict lease system? • no black crime spree • Southern governments wanted to control the black population. • The system used by the planter class and industrialist to intimidate black sharecroppers and provide workers for the South’s growing industry. • The system reaffirmed white feelings of racial superiority • Helped maintained racial hierarchy of southern society.

38. Other Helpful Websites: • http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/ • Especially see sections on “Jim Crow Laws,” “Lynching and Riots,” and “Jim Crow Stories.” The lesson plans and activities are also useful.

39. THE ULTIMATE ACT -- LYNCHING • Billie Holiday's Song "Strange Fruit“ Lesson Plan • http://www.teachervision.fen.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4839.html • “Strange Fruit” • http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html • Site includes review of film “Strange Fruit” and history of the song. Audio clip of song also available online. • Lyrics: • Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.

40. Other Helpful Websites: • http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/ • Especially see sections on “Jim Crow Laws,” “Lynching and Riots,” and “Jim Crow Stories.” The lesson plans and activities are also useful. • http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/97/crow/crowhome.html • “From Jim Crow To Linda Brown: A Retrospective of the African-American Experience from 1897 to 1953” • A mini-unit that allows students to explore to what extent the African American experience was "separate but equal." • http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/98/robinson/intro.html • “Jackie Steals Home” • Students read two documents relating to Jackie Robinson's breaking of the racial barrier in professional baseball and through the readings explore racism in the United States, both in and out of sports.

41. African-American Responses I: Accommodation and Agitation • Booker T. Washington • The Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895 (see http://historymatters.gmu.edu for document) • The Washington-DuBois Debate • “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” published within The Souls of Black Folk (1903) (see http://historymatters.gmu.edu for document) • Niagara Movement (see next slide) • The Niagara Movement was organized in 1905 by W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, Ida Wells Barnett, and other middle-class but militant Black intellectuals. It was a repudiation of the conservative and stifling leadership of Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Machine. (see “The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles” at http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1152.htm ) • NAACP • The NAACP was formed in 1909 through the merger of two organizations: the Niagara Movement and the National Negro Conference. • Challenges against Segregated Transportation (see “All the Women were White”)

42. Excerpt of “The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles” (1905) • Protest: We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults. Through helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million Americans must never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as America is unjust. • Color-Line: Any discrimination based simply on race or color is barbarous, we care not how hallowed it be by custom, expediency or prejudice. Differences made on account of ignorance, immorality, or disease are legitimate methods of fighting evil, and against them we have no word of protest; but discriminations based simply and solely on physical peculiarities, place of birth, color of skin, are relics of that unreasoning human savagery of which the world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed. • "Jim Crow" Cars: We protest against the "Jim Crow" car, since its effect is and must be to make us pay first-class fare for third-class accommodations, render us open to insults and discomfort and to crucify wantonly our manhood, womanhood and self-respect. • Soldiers: We regret that this nation has never seen fit adequately to reward the black soldiers who, in its five wars, have defended their country with their blood, and yet have been systematically denied the promotions which their abilities deserve. And we regard as unjust, the exclusion of black boys from the military and naval training schools.

43. African-American Responses II: The Culture of Resistance • Wearing the Mask of Segregation • Paul Laurence Dunbar's (1872-1906) poem "We Wear the Mask" (1896)         •     WE wear the mask that grins and lies,     It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—     This debt we pay to human guile;     With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,     And mouth with myriad subtleties. •     Why should the world be over-wise,     In counting all our tears and sighs?     Nay, let them only see us, while             We wear the mask. •     We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries     To thee from tortured souls arise.     We sing, but oh the clay is vile     Beneath our feet, and long the mile;     But let the world dream otherwise,             We wear the mask! • “Behind the veil” (Du Bois) • “Politics of Respectability” (Higginbotham)

44. African American Responses III:Collective Protest • Complex factor: WWI • W.E. B. Dubois “Returning Soldiers” May 1919 • “We are returning from war! The Crisis and tens of thousands of black men were drafted into a great struggle. For bleeding France and what she means and has meant and will mean to us and humanity and against the threat of German race arrogance, we fought gladly and to the last drop of blood; for America and her highest ideals, we fought in far-off hope; for the dominant southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington, we fought in bitter resignation. For the America that represents and gloats in lynching, disfranchisement, caste, brutality and devilish insult—for this, in the hateful upturning and mixing of things, we were forced by vindictive fate to fight also. • But today we return! We return from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.”

45. Red Summer • “If We Must Die” (1919) Claude McKay • If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock at our accursed lot.If we must die, O let us nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be shedIn vain; then even the monsters we defyShall be constrained to honor us though dead!O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!What though before us lies the open grave?Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

46. The Great Migration • The migration stimulated a national movement for civil rights • Many Americans began to realize that segregation and discrimination were no longer  uniquely Southern problems. • The rise of black ghettos in northern and western cities compounded the problems of segregation and discrimination and • Allowed for the flowering of African-American cultural movements such as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. • www.nextext.com (Langston Hughes and J. W. Johnson)

47. One Way Ticket (Langston Hughes) I pick up my life, And take it with me, And I put it down in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Scranton, Any place that is North and East, And not Dixie. I pick up my life And take it on the train, To Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake Any place that is North and West, And not South. Migration Series (Jacob Lawrence) Great Migration: Part I See http://www.pbs.org/gointochicago/ (section “Art and Poetry) for complete the poem, images, and other resources.

48. Great Migration: Part II • http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom/defmigration.html THE BLUES

49. Between the Wars • “Direct Action during the Depression contrasted sharply both quantitatively and qualitatively with the history of such tactics during the entire preceding century” A. Meier and E. Rudwick • Increase in Black Political Awareness • Newspaper circulation doubled • NAACP membership increased • Increased militancy • Marcus Garvey – UNIA • “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” (1929-1941) • Harlem Riot- 1935

50. The ARTS: Rising Black Militancy • Langston Hughes (1931) “Tired” I am so tired of waiting, Aren’t you For the world to become good And beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife And cut the world in two— And see what worms are eating At the rind. • Richard Wright (1940) Native Son • Paul Robeson