The Hundred Years

If I was white I would probably be a Republican. After growing up in Alabama during the 1960’s and 1970’s I would probably be a bigot too. I would have compared myself and my personal circumstances to African Americans and I would probably say, “Come on man, the civil war ended slavery in 1865. That was a hundred and fifty years ago. Quit crying and making excuses. Take some responsibility for your issues. Is it my fault you don’t have a decent education? Is it my fault that so many of you are so poor, live in rundown neighborhoods, go to prison in ridiculously high numbers, can’t find a job, or simply refuse to work? Why should I be blamed if you don’t respect your women and refuse to take care of your children?” I would probably point to the wealthy, high profile, and middle class minorities and insist that they were proof positive that anybody can make it in America if they get up off of their lazy asses and work for it. I would challenge anybody to name any aspiration, any field of endeavor that a Black person has not been ridiculously successful at in the United States, and while they were stuttering, I would say, “I rest my case”.

If I were white, I would feel this way because of my education, formal and informal. I would be blissfully ignorant of what happened between 1865, when Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, and 1965, when Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act and handed the pen he signed it with to Martin Luther King Jr. If I were white, I would have gone to very good schools while growing up in Alabama. I would have graduated from an outstanding university as well. My home would have had many books and magazines, my parents would have taken me on vacations and to museums, but what was done to the African Americans during those hundred years would be a mystery to me.

So, what the hell happened?

  

After the war the South was a mess. Their property values had collapsed, the transportation system, primarily the railroads, were mangled, and their greatest asset, slave labor for agriculture, was no longer available.

Blacks now had newly acquired rights and opportunities, including the thirteenth amendment, ending slavery, the fourteenth amendment, granting all the rights of citizenship to the former slaves, and the fifteenth amendment, granting the former slaves the right to vote. There was rabid resistance to all of these laws by southern whites, but the Union army was still present in the south, and the federal government used the army to enforce the new laws. Less than ten years after the war more than 500,000 former slaves were in school for the first time in their lives. Almost 600 Blacks had been elected as state legislators, and many others had been elected as mayors, judges, and sheriffs. On the federal level, 14 blacks served in the House of Representatives and 2 served in the Senate. Ulysses Grant was elected President in 1868 with a plurality of 300,000 votes. He received more than 500,000 votes from Blacks, accounting for his margin of victory.

The response from southern whites was venomous terrorism, embodied by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, with the support of local white communities, did everything in their power to terrorize and intimidate Blacks and their supporters, including burning their homes, beatings, mutilations, and lynching. The Klan was eventually subdued by the Union Army, but the threat of violence remained.

The turning point was the election of 1876. The contest was between Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican from Ohio, and Samuel J. Tilden, a Democrat from New York. Tilden received 300,000 more popular votes than Hayes and was only one electoral vote from election. However, there were 20 electoral votes in dispute from three southern states, Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Eventually, a deal was made that would award the Presidency to the Republican, Hayes, if the Republicans agreed to withdraw all of the federal troops from the south. 

Once the troops were gone, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments became null and void. The Ku Klux Klan would rise again and become the last word in southern justice. The south was now free to institute and enforce the “Black Codes”. The codes were a web of formal laws and informal customs that were used to restrict a Black person’s right to vote, own property, or move freely from place to place. For Blacks, petty crimes became felonies. Vagrancy laws were particularly insidious, making any Black man without a job a criminal. Peonage and sharecropping subjected thousands to endless debt and involuntary servitude. Many thousands of Black men were arrested and put in prison because they did not have a job. They were then leased out to planters and industrialists for as little as $9.00 per month, which was paid to the state. The prisoners got nothing, but were forced to work until they could work no longer. Many were literally worked to death, with no consequences for their murderers, who simply notified the state they needed another prisoner to replace the one that had died.

Some of the states did not allow Blacks to own guns. Many states also instituted an annual tax on Blacks. This was literally a “freedom tax”, because if they could not pay it they could be imprisoned. Another law allowed the state to take custody of Black children from parents that could not support them. The children would then be “apprenticed” to their former white owners, and forced to work just as they did prior to emancipation.

“Jim Crow” laws were legalized by the 1896 Supreme Court case, “Plessy vs Ferguson” which declared “separate but equal” facilities and accommodations to be legal. As a result, virtually all southern states required racial separation in all facets of life, public and private. This would include churches, schools, lodging, dining, hospitals, public restrooms, transportation, and marriage. Until 1964, all would be separate, and none would be equal.

My mother was born in 1922, just fifty seven years after the end of the civil war. She was 43 years old in 1965. For most of her life, this is the America she knew. Was it her fault that she did not finish high school? Did not go to college? Did not own a home to bequeath to her children? Is it a missing father’s fault if he was put in a state prison for vagrancy because he did not have a job? Should I condemn my grandmother because her education ended in 8^th grade?

America would be a better place if our schools taught our students what really happened in our country after the civil war. I have a feeling that a lot of bigots wouldn’t be bigots if they had a little more knowledge.

The hundred years after the end of slavery changed very little in the south. The fifty years since the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act has changed a lot.

I’m confident, that God isn’t finished with us yet.   

Dr. King's Nightmare

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968. He was 39 years old. On Monday, January 19, 2015 the United States of America will celebrate his birth with a national holiday. Dr. King is one of only two Americans whose birthdays are designated as national holidays. The only other American so honored is George Washington. Dr. King is also one of only five Americans that have major monuments in their honor on the National Mall. The others so honored are Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. Dr. King is the only one that was not a President of the United States.

I was fifteen years old when Dr. King was killed. I remember how controversial he was during the time he lived. In Alabama where I grew up, many white people literally hated him, but in reality, I knew many Black people that resented him as well. Some disagreed with his tactics. Some felt that he created an atmosphere that made it more difficult for them to get a job or to keep the job they had. It was within this framework that my admiration for the man was born and continued to grow.

I was so impressed by his intelligence, as well as his eloquence. But more than anything else, I was moved by his courage. He had something that so few others have, the courage to say and do things that many others disagreed with, that may have put him in mortal danger, but to do those things because of an unshakeable belief that those things were morally right.

Many have reduced Dr. King’s life to the March on Washington and the iconic speech given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But there were so many other speeches that were given before smaller audiences, but they were just as prophetic, illuminating, and inspiring. One of those were delivered In December, 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where Dr. King served as co-pastor with his father. Dr. King talked about the world being a single community, how the ends do not justify the means, peace, and how his “Dream” that had been so beautifully expressed just four years earlier, was now a nightmare.

Some of Dr. King’s words follows;

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific Islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality….

There have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means, that the means really aren’t important. The important thing is to get to the end, you see. So, if you’re seeking to develop a just society, they say, the important thing is to get there, and the means aren’t really important; any means will do so long as you get there – they may be violent, they may be untruthful means, they even may be unjust means to a just end. There have been those that have argued this throughout history. But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree….

The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were akin in seeking a peaceful world order. If you will read Mein Kampf closely enough, you will discover that Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany was for peace…..

They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends…..

In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, D.C. and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw my Black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negro’s problem of poverty. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my Black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem…..

I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because you know, you can’t give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers. I still have a dream this morning that one day every Negro in this country, every colored person in the world, will be judged on the basis of the content of his character rather than the color of his skin, and every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. I still have a dream that one day the idle industries of Appalachia will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at the end of a prayer, but rather the first order of business on every legislative agenda. I still have a dream today that justice will roll down like water, and righteousness like a might stream. I still have a dream today that in all of our state houses and city halls men will be elected to go there and will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God. I still have a dream today that one day war will come to an end, that men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, that nations will no longer rise up against nations, neither will they study war any more. I still have a dream that the lamb and the lion will lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. I still have a dream today that one day, every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low, the rough places will be made smooth and the crooked places straight, and the glory of the lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. I still have a dream that with this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when there will be peace on earth and good will toward men. It will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing together, and the sons of God will shout for joy.”

We’re working on it Dr. King, we’re working on it.

Happy Birthday.

Free College for Everybody

President Obama would like to make community college available free of charge to everybody. He will provide details of the proposal during his state of the union address later this month. The cost will be approximately $60 billion dollars over the next 10 years. Students will be required to attend classes at least half-time and maintain a 2.5 (C+) grade point average.

Let the fighting begin.

I think the President may be on to something, simply because the criticism is coming from the liberals and the conservatives. Whenever that happens, there has to be something in there for everybody to like.

The conservatives are pissed because Obama has something to do with it, but they are also complaining about “federalizing higher education”, “another entitlement program”, and “spending money we don’t have”.

The liberals are complaining because they feel that the program should be for “those that need it most, the economically deprived, not the middle and upper income Americans that can afford to send their kids to college.”

Brilliant. The seeds of compromise have been sown, and in spite of a brand new, fired up, hostile Republican congress, this thing might have a chance.

According to the New York Times, the average 30 year old American born in 1880 had less than 8 years of education. Those born in 1910, increased that to almost 10 years of education. For those born in 1940, when they were thirty the average education had increased to 12 years. If you were born in 1970, the average education of American adults when you were 30 had increased to 14 years. That is where it remains today.

America’s economic power and standard of living has improved with the rising levels of education of its people. That is the basis of the economic argument for the President’s proposal. Who can argue that the jobs of the 21^st century will not require a higher level of education than the jobs of the 20^th, 19^th, or 18^th centuries?

For those complaining about federalizing higher education, how is this different from the GI Bill, that helped to fund my education, or the Pell Grants and other federally insured financial assistance programs that have assisted millions of Americans past and present to finance their college education? As for the “another entitlement program” and “spending money we don’t have” rants, the federal government currently spends almost $68 billion dollars a year on financial aid for education, and states spend billions more each year on scholarships. How hard would it be to find $10 billion of that each year for an investment that would benefit everybody?

For those complaining that the program should be for “those that need it most”, try to remember that “separate schools are inherently unequal”. The worst thing that could happen to community colleges would be for them to become economically segregated. “Free” community colleges would and should attract the middle class and the wealthy. They should attract the full racial spectrum of American students. If they do they will not only be academically viable but equitably funded by the local governments that control that funding.

The high school that I was Principal of in Prince George’s County, Maryland was unique in many ways. Almost 75% of our students were eligible for free and reduced meals, but we were also approved as an International Baccalaureate school, had a robust advanced placement program, and received national recognition for sending a large percentage of our students to college. But in addition to all of that, our school had a technical academy that trained our students and allowed them to graduate with professional licenses in the following skills; Cosmetology, Cisco Networking, Culinary Arts, Barbering, Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning, Electrical Wiring, Masonry, Printing, Automobile Technology, Drafting, Nursing Assistants, and Electronics.

We were able to give our students an opportunity to succeed. Not a guarantee, but an opportunity to succeed at a variety of educational and career options that might be best for them. Most of America’s high schools fail to do that.

President Obama understands that high school is not enough, not for our students, not for our nation. I suspect that the politicians in Washington, the democrats and the republicans, the liberals and the conservatives, know it too.

Ossie Davis, with a little help from Spike Lee, would say “Do the right thing…. Just do the right thing”