Early In The Mornin

An

African-American

Context

The Slave trade: an estimated 15 million Africans were transported to the Americas between 1540 and 1850.

“The cargo of a vessel of a hundred tons, or little more, is calculated to purchase from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty slaves. Their lodging-rooms below the deck, which are three (for the men, the boys, and the women) besides a place for the sick, are sometimes more than five feet high, and sometimes less; and this height is divided towards the middle, for the slaves lie in two rows, one above the other, on each side of the ship, close to each other, like books upon a shelf. I have known them so close, that the shelf would not, easily, contain one more."

1857 - Dred Scott case: the Supreme Court decision The case before the court was that of Dred Scott v. Sanford.

Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin before moving back to the slave state of Missouri, had appealed to the Supreme Court in hopes of being granted his freedom.

In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States.

Taney -- a staunch supporter of slavery -- wrote in the Court's majority opinion that, because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue.

Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, "all men are created equal," Taney reasoned that "it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included…”

Civil War 1861 - 1865 By 1860, the question of slavery had deeply divided

the still new United States.

A series of political arguments over the place of slavery in newly acquired territories and states had prompted several southern states to secede from the Union and form their own confederacy.

On April 14, 1861, a barrage of artillery from the newly seceded Confederate forces against Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, officially began the Civil War (Vandiver 1992).

The Reconstruction When the Civil War ended with Union victory in 1865, it became the

task of northern lawmakers to decide what to do with the decimated South and the millions of newly freed slaves

Under the enforcement of Union soldiers posted in the South, newly freed slaves began to clear and own their own land, establish school systems, and participate in local and federal elections. However, white southern resistance to the effects of Reconstruction was high, and the time of progress for African-Americans in the South was short-lived.

Whatever rights and privileges African-Americans had gained during this brief period were quickly taken away as southern whites exerted their authority once more.

A PEACE THAT WAS NO PEACE: 1866 - 1965From the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 to the start of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the South was ruled by a series of laws called the Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation of blacks and whites in all public places (Rubel 2005).

While segregation was supposedly designed as a “separate but equal” status for African-Americans, in reality, blacks were given inferior treatment and were forced into a number of economic, social, and educational disadvantages as a result.

At the same time as Jim Crow laws were forcing southern blacks into an inferior status, state after state in the South began to pass literacy tests and poll taxes as requirements for voting which prevented blacks from exercising their new rights as citizens. Southern whites also used an even more effective method called the “grandfather clause” to disenfranchise African-Americans, which denied voting rights to anyone whose grandfather had not been free, preventing nearly all blacks from voting regardless of their financial situation or level of education

Lynching: open public murders of individuals suspected of crime conceived and carried out more or less spontaneously by a mob

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the lynching of Black people in the Southern and border states became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize Blacks and maintain white supremacy.

In the South, during the period 1880 to 1940, there was deep-seated and all-pervading hatred and fear of the Negro which led white mobs to turn to lynch law as a means of social control.

According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 3,437 Negroes were lynched in the United States.

At the start of the 20th century in the United States, lynching was photographic sport. People sent picture postcards of lynchings they had witnessed

KKK Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost

every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks.

Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders.

After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, blacks and organized labour.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity, including bombings of black schools and churches and violence against black and white activists in the South.

The most that I can tell you ‘bout is the Klu Klux. I never will forget when they hung Cy Guy. They hung him for a scandalous insult to a white woman an’ they comed after him a hundred strong. They tries him there in the woods, an’ they scratches Cy’s arm to get some blood, an’ with that blood they writes that he shall hang ‘tween the heavens and the earth till he is dead, dead, dead, and that any nigger what takes down the body shall be hanged too. (This eyewitness account is a part of the collection of the Library of Congress: WPA Slave Narrative Project, North Carolina Narratives, Volume 11, Part 2, Federal Writer's Project, United States Work Projects Administration (USWPA); Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Chalmers, David Mark, Hooded Americanism: the history of the Ku Klux Klan (1981); Horn, Stanley, F. Invisible Empire: the story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871 (1969).

Strange FruitSouthern trees bear a 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.

Billie Holiday

1955 - The murder of Emmett Till

In August 1955, a fourteen year old boy went to visit relatives near Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till had experienced segregation in his hometown of Chicago, but he was unaccustomed to the severe segregation he encountered in Mississippi. When he showed some local boys a picture of a white girl who was one of his friends back home and bragged that she was his girlfriend, one of them said, "Hey, there's a [white] girl in that store there. I bet you won't go in there and talk to her." Emmett went in and bought some candy. As he left, he said "Bye baby" to Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the store owner.

Although they were worried at first about the incident, the boys soon forgot about it.

A few days later, in the middle of the night. Roy Bryant, the owner of the store, and J.W. Milam, his brother-in-law, drove off with Emmett.

Three days later, Emmett Till's body was found in the Tallahatchie River. One eye was gouged out, and his crushed-in head had a bullet in it. The corpse was nearly unrecognizable; Mose Wright could only positively identify the body as Emmett's because it was wearing an initialled ring.

Defence attorney John C. Whitten told the jurors in his closing statement, "Your fathers will turn over in their graves if [Milam and Bryant are found guilty] and I'm sure that every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men in the face of that [outside] pressure."

The jurors listened to him. They deliberated for just over an hour, then returned a "not guilty" verdict on September 23rd, the 166th anniversary of the signing of the Bill of Rights.

The jury foreman later explained, "I feel the state failed to prove the identity of the body."

1942 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) established.

1946The Supreme Court declared segregation on buses that crossed state borders was illegal.President Truman established a Committee on Civil Rights.

1948 Discrimination in the armed forces was banned.1952 This was the first year since 1881 without a lynching.

1954The Supreme Court declared segregation in schools to be unconstitutional.The last all-black units in the armed forces were disbanded.

1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott began after the arrest of Rosa Parks.

1957Dr Martin Luther King became President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.The Little Rock High School clash occurs and Eisenhower had to use Federal troops to enforce the law.Civil Rights Act passed.

1960First student sit-ins against segregation at lunch counters occurs.SNCC formed - Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee.Elijah Muhammad called for the creation of a separate state for blacks.

1961 The arrest of the Freedom Riders in the South.

1962James Meredith’s attempt to attend Mississippi University was only successful as a result of Federal troops being used.

1963

NAACP leader - Medgar Evers - was assassinated.250,000 civil rights protesters marched in WashingtonFour black children were killed in the Birmingham church bombing - the arrested white man was charged with the unlawful possession of dynamite but not murder. Only some years later were the guilty brought to trial for murder.

1964Riots in Harlem (New York), Chicago, Rochester + Philadelphia.A Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress.Dr. Martin Luther King was awarded the Noble Peace Prize.

1965

Malcolm X was assassinated.A civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery was lead by Dr Martin Luther KingA Voting Rights Act was passed which in theory made it illegal for anyone to restrict the right of anybody to vote.A violent riot in Watts, Los Angeles, left 34 dead.

1966 The idea of Black Power was introduced by Stokely Carmichael.

1967State laws forbidding inter-racial marriage were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.Thurgood Marshall became the first Black American to be appointed to the Supreme Court by Texan president Lyndon Johnson.

1968

Martin Luther King was assassinated. The man convicted of his murder - James Earl Ray - was sentenced to 99 years prison but he denied having anything to do with the murder.At the Mexico Olympics, a Black Power protest was made at the medal ceremony for the men's 400 meters by Tommy Smith and John Carlos.

Ruby

MLK - January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

References http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6729 http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/tl1865.html http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/kkk.htm http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/02/frut-f08.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2933.html http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/witness/witness_20111108-0905a.mp3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/emmett.html http://www.randomhistory.com/black-history-in-america.html http://ia700302.us.archive.org/9/items/BillieHoliday-StrangeFruit/BillieHoliday-StrangeFruit.mp3 http://www.history.com/topics/ku-klux-klan http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/civil_rights_timeline_america.htm http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/vfstitle.html http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASships.htm