[[link removed]]

THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, APR 9–15  
[[link removed]]


 

xxxxxx

[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ New Deal Says Yes/No to Racism (1939), ¡Rachel Corrie, Presente!,
Klan Sways A Jury (1964), The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Jim Crow
Shows Who's Boss (1944), If the Shoe of Inhumanity Fits, Wear It
(1939), Big Win for Telephone Operators (1919) _

,

 

_NEW DEALERS SAY NO TO RACISM, OR DO THEY?_

85 YEARS AGO, on April 9, 1939, world-famous soprano Marian Anderson
gave an open-air performance at the Lincoln Memorial in the middle of
Washington, D.C. The event is well-remembered particularly because it
is often recalled as an important moment in the struggle against white
racism. Anderson had been scheduled to make her appearance in
Constitution Hall, which was, at the time, Washington's premier
concert hall. But the owners of the hall, the so-called Daughters of
the American Revolution, refused to allow the performance because
Anderson was African-American. When the DAR enforced its long-standing
Jim Crow policy, the Roosevelt administration declared its opposition
to racism and invited Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial, where
she thrilled a huge, integrated audience of 75,000 in addition to
millions who listened on the radio. 

But details somewhat diminish the warm anti-racist glow of the event's
memory. Before Anderson got the offer to use the Lincoln Memorial, she
had tried to rent the large auditorium at Central High School, which
was the property of the D.C. Board of Education. The B of E refused
her application on the same ground as the DAR. Washington public
schools were segregated in 1939, and Central High was for whites only.
The D.C. Board of Education was controlled by the U.S. Congress, which
had complete authority to overrule the Board or to even take the
opportunity to put an end to the segregation of D.C. schools.  Not
only did Congress do nothing in 1939, but federally-controlled D.C.
schools remained segregated until 1954.
[link removed]   

_¡RACHEL CORRIE, PRESENTE!_

45 YEARS AGO, on April 10, 1979, Rachel Corrie was born in Olympia,
Washington. As a college student in her home state, Rachel, who had
become a peace activist and anti-imperialist, became a member of the
International Solidarity Movement. In January 2003, at the age of 23,
she joined other activists in their efforts to prevent the Israeli
Army from reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble. Not long after she
arrived, she lay down in front of an Israeli Army bulldozer to prevent
the destruction of a Palestinian home. The driver acted as though she
was not there and crushed her. Two weeks before her untimely death,
Rachel had written these words to her mother in Olympia:  

_When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and
constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into
more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done.
So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with
their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the
reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which
I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is
largely responsible._
[link removed]…
[[link removed]];

_A JURY VOTES THE WAY THE KLAN WANTS_

60 YEARS AGO, on April 11, 1964, some 75 Mississippi racists,
"tough-looking men, some linked with Klan activity" put on a display
of authority at the trial of Byron De La Beckwith, who was accused of
the 1963 murder of NAACP official Medgar Evers. They filled nearly
every seat in the Jackson, Mississippi, courtroom in order to exclude
other spectators. A mistrial was declared a week later when the
all-white jury was unable to agree on a verdict. No doubt some of the
jurors thought the evidence of De La Beckwith's guilt was beyond a
reasonable doubt, but they feared the wrath of the Klan more than they
feared violating their oath to follow the evidence. When De La
Beckwith was tried for the murder a third time, in January 1994, he
was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]
 

_WHAT NEXT FOR ANTI-RACIST NON-VIOLENCE?_

60 YEARS AGO, on April 12, 1964, Malcolm X delivered a speech -- "The
Ballot or the Bullet" --that cemented his reputation as a leading
radical voice in the struggle against Jim Crow. As soon as he
delivered it, the speech became the subject of wide discussion. As if
to emphasize its importance, Malcolm delivered the same speech to
massive audiences on successive Sundays in two different cities,
Cleveland and Detroit.

"The Ballot or the Bullet" came at a crucial moment, when a bill that
had the potential to become the most significant federal civil rights
legislation of the era had already passed the House by a comfortable
margin but was blocked by a seemingly insurmountable filibuster in the
Senate. In the speech, Malcolm said that the legislative stalemate
raised the question, "What next?" and suggested that the answer was
"the ballot or the bullet," that is, if elected officials could not
find their way to follow an anti-racist course of action, then the
non-violence of the civil rights movement was at risk.  

"Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic Party," said Malcolm.
"If he's for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and
declare himself. Let him go in there right now and declare himself.
Let him go in there and denounce the Southern branch of his party. Let
him go in there right now and take a moral stand -- right now, not
later. Tell him, don't wait until election time. If he waits too long,
brothers and sisters, he will be responsible for letting a condition
develop in this country which will create a climate that will bring
seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking
like something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it's the ballot
or the bullet."

The reaction among civil rights activists was mixed, but the
overwhelming majority either applauded Malcolm's position or refrained
from attacking it. It required many weeks to sink in, but the
well-publicized threat that the strategy of non-violence had the
desired result. The Senate took the unexpected step of voting to end
the filibuster, and a few weeks later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was
signed into law. Read the entire speech here:
[link removed]

_JIM CROW SHOWS THE SUPREME COURT WHO'S IN CHARGE_

80 YEARS AGO, on April 13, 1944, South Carolina's racist state
legislature had a problem. The U.S. Supreme Court had just ruled that
it was unconstitutional for a state government to make it illegal for
African-Americans to vote in a primary election. Okay, said the South
Carolina state legislature, we'll do what almost every other state in
the Deep South is already doing; we won't make any laws about who can
vote in the primaries.  We'll let the political parties make the
rules about who is eligible to vote. The political parties have no
legal obligation to follow the constitution, so they are free to
prevent African-Americans from voting.  

But they still had a small problem, which was that South Carolina had
147 laws about primary elections on the books.  It took six days for
the South Carolina legislature to repeal every one of those laws,
leaving the parties with complete authority to continue the state's
decades-old policy of running whites-only primaries.
[link removed]  

I_F THE SHOE OF INHUMANITY FITS, WEAR IT_

85 YEARS AGO, on April 14, 1939, John Steinbeck published what is
surely one of the greatest U.S. radically conscious novels, The Grapes
of Wrath. It was so effective in its depiction of the fate that
awaited the refugees from the Dust Bowl  that only 18 weeks after it
was published, it was banned from the schools and libraries of Kern
County, which was one of the California counties where some of the
victims of the Dust Bowl sought refuge. The county's resolution to ban
the book stated that the ban was necessary because Steinbeck had
presented the officials, farmers and citizens of the county as
“inhumane vigilantes, breathing class hatred and divested of
sympathy or human decency.” [link removed]

_OPERATORS' STRIKE SHUTS DOWN TELEPHONE SERVICE  _

105 YEARS AGO, on April 15, 1919, some 9000 telephone operators,
almost all of them women, went out on strike against New England
Telephone to enforce their demand for higher wages and union
recognition. Their leader was Julia O'Connor.

O'Connor, who had  joined the Boston Telephone Operators Union when
she became an operator in 1912, was elected president of Local 1A of
the National Telephone Operators in 1918. The 1919 strike that
O'Connor led came close to eliminating New England Telephone's
operations for five days. It  was settled when the company agreed to
both of the union's demands: that the union be recognized as the
worker's bargaining agent, and a five percent pay increase. O'Connor
continued to lead telephone operators' unions until she retired in
1957.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]