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Show V The Deseret Sampler W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Niagra Movement, said in 1906: "The problem of the twentieth century will be the problem of the color line. AT THE TIME, most people laughed. Black men and women, their countless contributions to the history of the United States hidden beneath prejudice and suppression, were second class citizens, victims of Jim Crow laws and grandfather clauses, lynch mobs and menial Black History Week: Feb. 10-1- 6 . jobs. But in the decades of the 50s and 60s, a new s, order was formed. Supreme Court - decisions, freedom rides and marches, nonviolent demonstrations and eventually the rhetoric of Black Power wrought sweeping changes in the publics ideas and attitudes toward the Black community. In this period, significant changes to the established patterns of discrimination were made. Legislation on voting rights, equal employment, educational opportunities and housing opportunities were passed, and equally important, the plight of the Black American was presented from the Black mans viewpoint to the American Black sit-in- The Negro Speaks of Rivers (To IV.E.B. DuBois) i Vve known rivers: Vve known rivers ancient as the world and older than public. THE 70S FACE continuation of the struggle. The Black fight for equality goes on, and progress is still being made, especially in the political arena, where the Black vote has placed mayors in cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Detroit. But the struggle is far from over. national During Black History Week, Feb. 10-1attention will turn to the myriad contributions of the Black race to the history of America When you read Black history, rememlrer that it is a history of contribuand of suffering and triumph. As the Kemer Retion port of 1968 noted, it traced Black history "not to justify, but to help explain, for Black and white Americans, a state of mind. In the aftermath of the Watts riots and several other civil disorders. President Lyndon Johnson on July 29, 1967 appointed Illinois governor Otto Kemer to head a national commission to determine the causes of racial strife and disorder and to suggest solutions to the problem. Following are excerpts from the Commissions the flow of human blood in human veins . My soul has grown deep like the rivers . 6, I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young . I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep . I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lin- coln went down to New Orleans and Vve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. 9 TWENTY YEARS after Columbus reached the New. World, African Negroes, transported by Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese traders, were arriving in the Carri bean Islands. Almost all came as slaves. By 1660, there were more than half a million slaves in the Western Hemis- Vve known rivers: Ancient , dusky rivers. phere. In Colonial America the first Negroes landed at Jamestown in August 1619. Within 40 years Negroes had become a group apart, separated from the rest of the population by custom and law. massive importation, their numbers inThrough creased rapidly. By 1776, some 500,000 Negroes were held in slavery and indentured servitude in the United States. Nearly one of every six persons in the country w&s ft slave. THE CONDITIONS in which Negroes lived had already led to protest. Throughout the 8lh century, the danger of Negro revolts obsessed many white Americans. Slave plots of considerable scope were uncovered in New York in 1712 and 1741, and they resulted in bloodshed-whi- tes and Negroes were slain. Racial violence was present almost from the beginning of the American experience. Negroes were actively involved in the struggle for independence. Crispus Attucks, a Boston Negro, was perhaps the first American to die for freedom, and Negroes had already fought in the battles at Lexington and Concord. They were among the soldiers at Bunker Hill. FEARING THAT Negroes would enlist in the British Army, which welcomed them, and facing a manpower shortage, the Continental Army accepted free Negroes. By the end of the war, about 5,000 Negroes had been in the ranks of the Continental Army. Those who had been slaves became free. An escaped slave who joined the Union Army during the Civil War poses in full uniform and field pack. (Library of Congress photo.) The situation was hardly better for free Negroes. A few achieved materiel success, several owned slaves themselves, but the vast majority knew only poverty and suffered the indignity of rejection by white society. In both North and South, they were regularly the victims of mobs. In 1829, for example, white residents invaded Cincinnatis "Little Africa killed Negroes, burned their property, and ultimately drove half the colored population from the city. and Jefferson SOME AMERICANS, Washington the advocated them, gradual emancipation of the among slaves, and in the 19th century, a movement to abolish slavery grew in importance and strength. Most Americans, were, in fact, against abolishing slavery. They refused to rent their lulls for meetings. They harrassed abolitionist leaders who sought to educate white and Negro children together. They attacked those involved in the movement. Mobs sometimes killed abolitionists and destroyed their property. Spreading rapidly during the first part of the 19th century, the institution enslaved less than one million Negroes in I860, but almost four million in 1860. anti-slave- ry NOT UNTIL A shortage of troops plagued die Union Army late in 1862 were segregated units of United States Colored Troops formed. Not until 1864 did these men receive the same pay as white soldiers. A total of 186,000 Negroes served. Reconstruction was a time of hope, the period when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were adopted, giving Negroes the vote and the promise of equality. But campaigns of violence and intimidation accompanied these optimistic expressions of a new age, as the Ku Klux Klan and other secret organizations sought to suppress the emergence into society of the new Negro citizens. NEVERTHELESS, Reconstruction reached a legis- lative climax with passage of the first civil rights law. faNegroes now had the right to equal accommodations, cilities and advantages of public transportation, inns, theaters and places of public amusement, lmt the law had no effective enforcement provisions and was in fact, poorly enforced. Although no bills to provide federal aid to education for Negroes were prepared, none passed, and educational opportunities remained meager. THE 1850S BROUGHT Negroes increasing despair, as the problem of slavery was debated by the nations leaders. The Compromise of 1850 and the Act of 1854 settled no basic Issues. And the Dred Scott case in 1857 confirmed Negroes in their understanding that they were not "citizens and thus not entitled to the constitutional safeguards enjoyed by other Americana UnBut the alrolistionlst movement was growing. cle Toms Cabin appeared in 1852 and sold more than 300,000 copies that year. Even the alrolitionist movement had disappointed perceptive Negroes who saw that the white leaders were less than altogether sincere. A few were genuinely interested in the Negro, lrut most were paternalistic and prejudiced. Whites were motivated at Irest by pity, at Kansas-Nebras- ka The first man to die in the American Revolution was Crixpus Attucks, an escaped slave. He was killed while leading a crowd of protesting men and boys down King (now State) Streetf Boston on March 5 , 7 770. The ' event quickly became known as the Boston Massacre. Attucks is laying left of center. (Library of Congress engraving by Paul Revere.) Massachusetts abolished slavery few Negroes lived in these states. Crowing numliers of slaves in the South liecame permanently fastened in bondage, and slavery spread into new Southern regions. SLAVES COULD OWN no property, could enter no into contract, not even a contract of marriage, and had no right to assemble in public unless a white person was present. They had no standing in the courts. Without legal means of defense, slaves were susceptible to the premise that any white person could threaten their lives or take them with impunity. Y AS SOUTHERN WHITE governments returned to power, beginning with Virginia, in 1869 and ending with Louisiana in 1877, the program of relegating the Negro to a subordinate place in American life was accelerated. The suffrage provisions of state constitutions were to disenfranchise Negroes who could not read, understand or interpret the Constitution. In 1896, Negroes registered in Louisiana totalled 130,344. In 1900, after the state rewrote the suffrage provisions of its constitution, Negroes on the registration books numbered only 5,320. Essentially the same thing happened in the other states of the former Con- WHEN THE SUPREME Court, in 1883, declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, Southern states began to enact laws to segregate the nation. Segregation invariably meant discrimination. Some Northern states enacted civil rights laws in the 1880s, but Negroes in fact were treated little differently in the .North than in the South. That Northern whites would resort to violence was made clear in anti-Neg- ro riots in New York, 1900; Springfield, Ohio, Indiana, 1908; Springfield, Illinois, 190s! By the 20th century, the Negro was at the bottom of American Society. self-intere- THE NATIONAL Negro Convention Movement, founded in 1830, held conferences to publicize on a national scale the evils of slavery and the indignities heaped on free Negroes. The American Moral Reform Society, founded hv Negroes in 1834, rejected racial separatism and advocated uplifting "the whole human race, without distinction as to . . . complexion. Frustration, disillusionment, anger and fantasy marked the Negro protest against the place in American society assigned to them. "I was free, Harriet Tubman said, Tnit there was no one to welcome me in the laud of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land. In 1870 and 1871, after the 15th Amendment was ratified. Congress enacted several, laws to protect the rights of a citizen to vote. They were seldom enforced, and the Supreme Court struck down most of the important provisions in 1875 and 1876. ' I in 1783, and Con- necticut. Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York soon provided for gradual lilreration. But relatively 1870. federacy. . worst by economic Opposition to Negroes in state and local government was always open and bitter. In the press and on the platform they were described as ignorant and depraved. Negroes who voted or held office were refused jolrs or punished by the Ku Klux Klan. One group in Mississippi boasted of having killed 116 Negroes and of having thrown their bodies in the Tallahatchie River. In a single South Carolina county, six men were murdered and more than 300 whipped during the first six months of 55th Massachusetts Regiment triumphantly march into Charles-toWar. Virginia, during the Civil (Library of Congress engraving.) The all-Blac- k n, ment. DuBois and his followers stressed political ac as the basis of the Negros future, insisted upon tl equity of Jim Crow laws, and advocated agitation protest. DuBois and the Negro radicals, as they called, enlisted the support of a small group of influ white liberals and socialists. Together, in 1909-theformed the National Association for the Adv ment of Colored People. THE NAACP HAMMERED at the walls of Hice by organizing Negroes and w by aiming propaganda at the whole nation, by takir gal action in courts and legislatures. y well-dispos- |