The Civil War was fought in part over slavery, but legal prejudice against African-Americans and other cultures was sanctioned by U.S. laws, and it wasn't until the 1940's and 50's that things really began to change.
(SALEM, Ore.) - There are no simple answers for racism. Few problems in our society rival it, and for the first time in U.S. history, we will very likely elect our first black President. This scenario leaves many people grinning, and others grimacing, as they watch something take place that they never would have predicted.
It is important to separate fact from fiction when it comes to racism and the plight of African-American people in the history of this place we call the United States.
White people have lived from the beginning of western society, with a relative amount of comfort. They have for the most part, had the ability to work and be paid fairly for that day's labor.
Black Americans of African descent on the other hand, lived generation after generation as slaves from 1619 to 1865. That is when the southern states that separated from the United States in a bloody Civil War that cost millions of lives, was defeated. Slavery was abolished.
But it did not end there for African-Americans. As the years after the Civil War passed, one law after another was drafted incorporating direct prejudice blacks. As you will see below; one state would pass a racism-inspired law and then another would follow, and another one would slime out another law based purely on racism. The last state time after time, would be Oklahoma.
Some people argue that we are all born with prejudice as part of our psyche, and maybe that is true; but it is our personal responsibility as adults and parents to educate ourselves and others by learning to respect other races and cultures, hopefully through co-existing with people of other backgrounds.
The graph to the left shows the changes and modifications to racism that people of color endured in the early days of the Colonies, through the Civil War, and into more recent years. Only a small portion of these years show black people being treated with a degree of fairness. It is important to note the length of the red column next to it.
One of the people I have spent years studying, is the only black pilot of World War One. Eugene Bullard, born and raised in the United States, would be remembered by many as "The Black Baron" and his exploits as a pilot flying for France were in the legion of the greatest heroics. But France was the only country Bullard would fly for; the United States refused to even consider him for a pilot's job because he was black.
Bullard's racist beating at Peeksill in '49
As late as 1949, Eugene Bullard was beaten by an angry crowd in New York for trying to attend a black spiritual rally. (see: Book Review: Eugene Bullard - Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris)
Sadly, events like this well documented case of abuse define American history and as great as we view ourselves to be, the truth bears out a different story where the "greatness" was reserved for people with the right skin color.
Over the years Dr. King, Malcom X and a host of others have tried to bring balance and decency to the plight of the African American. Their achievements stand out and their failures are lamented, but they did what it took to make their voiced heard, much like Barack Obama has today.
The bottom line to many of us, is shown in the graph at left. Blacks were treated with indecency far more years in this country than they were treated fairly.
Racism Timeline in the U.S.
1619
One crucial event in the development of early America was the arrival of Africans to Jamestown. A Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of Africans for food in 1619. The popular conception of a racial-based slave system did not develop until the 1680's.
1680
Millions of Native Americans were also enslaved, particularly in South America. In the American colonies in 1730, nearly 25 percent of the slaves in the Carolinas were Cherokee, Creek, or other Native Americans. From the 1500s through the early 1700s, small numbers of white people were also enslaved by kidnapping, or for crimes or debts.
1705
The Virginia Assembly declares that "no Negro, mulatto, or Indian shall presume to take upon him, act in or exercise any office, ecclesiastic, civil or military." Blacks were also forbidden to serve as witness in court cases.
1752
Ledgers and account books kept by George Washington clearly show that he bought slaves. In 1754 he bought two male and a female; in 1756, two males, two females and a child, etc.
1761
Slave traders are excluded from the Society of Friends by American Quakers despite the fact that many Quakers own slaves.
1775
Philadelphia - The Continental Congress bars blacks from the American Revolutionary army, even though about one-fifth of the people of the mainland colonies were of African ancestry.
1787
Members of a black group called the Free African Society were pulled off their knees in November at a "white" Methodist church. It led to the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church which improved the economic and social conditions of American blacks through the Free African Society.
1804
Tobacco Slave Narrative "For any of the higher offences, the slaves are stripped, tied up by the hands- - sometimes by the thumbs- - and whipped at the quarter- - but many times." - Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains; or, the Life of an American Slave (New York, 1858).
1835
The Yankee John Quincy Adams wrote that "slavery in a moral sense is an evil, but in commerce it has its uses." In another episode of tragic irony, an aged Adams returned to Washington as a Congressman to wage a heroic, lonely battle against the slavers' domination.
1849
Maryland slave Harriet Tubman escapes to the North and begins a career as "conductor" on the Underground Railway that started in 1838. Tubman made 19 trips back to the South to free more than 300 slaves including her aged parents in 1857.
1859
The same year that the last slave ship arrived in the U.S., Abolitionist John Brown with 21 men seized U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry (then Virginia) October 16th. U.S. Marines captured raiders, killing several. Brown was hanged for treason by Virginia December 2nd.
1861
The Civil War begins, and President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, then signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862, nine months later. The act brought to conclusion decades of agitation aimed at ending what antislavery advocates called "the national shame" of slavery in the nation's capital.
1865
Robert E. Lee surrendered 27,800 Confederate troops to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The United States won the Civil War against a number of southern states that took up arms against the U.S.A. so they could continue owning slaves.
1866
Some people believed that everything would change. In some cases, for a while at least, it did. The African-American citizens of Washington, D.C., celebrated the abolition of slavery with a procession of 4,000 to 5,000 people assembled at the White House. They were addressed by President Andrew Johnson. Marching past 10,000 cheering spectators, the procession, led by two black regiments, proceeded up Pennsylvania Avenue to Franklin Square for religious services and speeches by prominent politicians. A sign on top of the speaker's platform read: "We have received our civil rights. Give us the right of suffrage and the work is done."
1871-1912
Height of global European Imperialism and the "scramble for Africa" proceed, rationalized as a "civilizing mission" based on white supremacy. Europeans assert their "spheres of interest" in African colonies arbitrarily, cutting across traditionally established boundaries, homelands, and ethnic groupings of African peoples and cultures. Following a "divide and rule" theory, Europeans promote traditional inter-ethnic hostilities. "The European onslaught of Africa that began in the mid 1400s progressed to various conquests over the continent, and culminated over 400 years later with the partitioning of Africa.
1881
Segregation of public transportation. Tennessee segregated railroad cars, followed by Florida (1887), Mississippi (1888), Texas (1889), Louisiana (1890), Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Georgia (1891), South Carolina (1898), North Carolina (1899), Virginia (1900), Maryland (1904), and Oklahoma (1907)
1887
In order to stop one of the biggest fears in society: the mixing of the races, the U.S. government succeeded by using segregation laws which required railroads operating in the state or passing through the state to house black passengers in separate cars from the whites.
1890
African-Americans are disenfranchised. The Mississippi Plan, approved on November 1, used literacy and "understanding" tests to disenfranchise black American citizens. Similar statutes were adopted by South Carolina (1895), Louisiana (1898), North Carolina (1900), Alabama (1901), Virginia (1901), Georgia (1908), and Oklahoma (1910).
1915
"D.W. Griffith's "Birth of A Nation" represented the essence of racism in film. The movie set the stage for future portrayals of blacks in film. Griffith showed blacks as, "endearing inferiors duped into rising above their accustomed station by misinformed abolitionists and vindictive reconstruction congressmen who had betrayed Lincoln's benign plans for the defeated South."
1919
The mob of about 400 whites in Washington, D.C. that went on a rampage, was motivated by weeks of sensational newspaper accounts of alleged sex crimes by a "Negro fiend" that unleashed a wave of violence that swept over the city for four days.
1921
A riot destroyed a 30-square-block area of north Tulsa, Oklahoma known as Greenwood, a primarily black neighborhood. Newspaper accounts reported 76 dead, but historians have put the figure closer to 300. Blacks here have long maintained that whites used airplanes to bomb homes, churches and businesses in north Tulsa.
1930
Jessie Daniel Ames formed the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. She got 40,000 white women to sign a pledge against lynching and for change in the South.
1940
This is the year the Second Great Migration began - In multiple acts of resistance, more than 5 million African Americans left the violence and segregation of the South for jobs, education, and the chance to vote in northern, midwestern and California cities.
1947
Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player in professional baseball in 60 years, and President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 ordering the end of segregation in the Armed Forces.
1955
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing a committee to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment. This is the year teenager Emmett Till is killed for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi, (see: Cousin of Emmett Till Speaks Tonight at Willamette)and on December 1st, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1963
Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address. In April, Mary Lucille Hamilton, Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality, refuses to answer a judge in Gadsden, Alabama, until she is addressed by the honorific "Miss". Hamilton was jailed for contempt of court but she prevailed in court.
1965
In February, Malcolm X was shot to death in Manhattan, New York, probably by members of the Black Muslim faith. March 7th is remembered as Bloody Sunday: when Civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama marching to Montgomery were stopped by a massive police blockade as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many marchers were severely injured and one killed.
1968
On a primetime television special, Petula Clark touched Harry Belafonte's arm during a duet. The Chrysler Corporation, manufacturers of today's biggest gas guzzling monstrosities, was the show's sponsor. They insisted the touch be deleted, but Clark stood firm, destroyed all other takes of the song, and delivered the completed program to NBC with the touch intact. On April 4th, Dr. Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray.
1991
On March 3rd, four white police officers are videotaped beating African-American Rodney King. In April, Los Angeles riots erupt after the officers accused of beating Rodney King are acquitted.
2008
Barack Obama receives enough delegates by the end of state primaries to be the presumptive Democratic Party of the United States nominee, making it likely that he will become the first African-American presidential nominee of a major party in United States history.
I found these points in history to be very important, and the fact that many forms of racial prejudice are behind us today is extremely noteworthy. But in 2008, people in the south will tell you that the times of racial prejudice are not completely behind us. In Los Angeles, problems between black and Hispanic cultures are bloody and deadly. I think the hysteria over so-called "illegal immigrants" has driven a lot of the problems in southern California.
Hopefully a black President will inspire the American people to leave prejudice at the door, and to move toward finding the list of solutions for so many problems unaddressed and out of control over the last seven years.
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