Evils Of Racism Mirror Dark Days Of Jim Crow
Lost in the fog of trump and the wave of righteous indignation among Republicans over the FBI seizure of documents from Mar-a-Lago is the far more serious matter involving growing support of cancerous white supremacist groups both in the halls of Congress and on the streets of America.
It is a movement that has never faded in America but has metastasized in a time of unapologetic racists like trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and others who have openly supported white supremacist groups and their leaders.
It is shown in the white mob of trump supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and the many Republicans who have supported the rioters as patriotic Americans. These same Republicans cheered and offered jobs to avowed, white supremacist Kyle Rittenhouse after he was found not guilty of killing two protesters and wounding another during demonstrations in Kenosha, Wis.
It is shown in the attacks against teaching critical race theory in schools, a school of thought that shows how racism and enslavement reverberate throughout present day America. It is clear in the growing acceptance of the so-called, great replacement theory, the name given to the right wing fear of whites being overtaken by people of color. It is evident in those who espouse Christian nationalism and denigrate the Black Lives Matter movement. It is the real reason for the various Republican efforts to limit voter participation.
The growing power of white supremacy was evident in July when Congress approved an amendment to press government officials to report instances of white supremacy among the military and law enforcement. The amendment requires the FBI director, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Secretary of Defense to publish a report analyzing White supremacist and neo-Nazi activity within their ranks and present ways to root it out of the respective organizations. It passed without one, single Republican vote.
A popular argument by right wing Republicans opposes educating children on the true history of enslavement, racism and its continuing legacy. Legislation adopted in Florida bars such topics claiming that children should not be taught that some races or sexes are inherently oppressed or privileged. Ignoring the past will only make it possible to repeat the evils.
These white supremacists in the highest levels of government would turn the clock back to a time known as the Jim Crow era, a period when African Americans were commonly lynched for violating numerous laws that were passed to curtail the rights of African Americans in the post Civil War era. They don’t have to turn the clock back very far because Jim Crow is not a nightmare of a distant American past. It was a time when African Americans were terrorized by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, not unlike today’s neo-Nazi, domestic terrorists who intimidate and murder people of color.
Many of the Jim Crow laws were aimed at stopping miscegenation and preventing African American men from have relations with white women and bearing children and potentially outnumbering white rule.Today the same white fears play out in the so-called great replacement which claims that Democrats are encouraging immigration to further eviscerate the white majority.
One of many nadirs of racism in America involved the violent expulsion of African Americans from at least 50 towns, cities and counties. Most came in the 60 years following the Civil War but continued until 1954.
Among the dozens of examples of such expulsions, some of the 20th century incidents included in 1954, Jack Williams, owner of a sawmill in Sheridan, Ark., threatened to burn down the homes of all his black employees unless they accepted a buyout offer and relocated to Malvern, a city in nearby Hot Spring County.
Also in 1954, white residents of Vienna, Ill., incinerated all the homes owned by African Americans in Vienna and nearby areas outside city limits. The expulsion was sparked by the murder of an elderly white woman and the attempted rape of her teenage granddaughter by two black men.
The Manhattan Beach, Calif. City Council passed ordinance 263, on Jan. 3, 1924, claiming eminent domain for a public park, in order to seize properties owned by black residents and eliminate the African American resort, Bruce’s Beach.
The African American community of Ocoee, Fla., was burned to the ground on Nov. 2–3, 1920, and its 500 black residents were killed or expelled after black men killed two whites in self-defense.
In the fall of 1919, 200 black workers in Corbin, Kent., were forced to leave town during a labor dispute.
In September 1912, the 1,000 African American residents of Forsyth County, Ga., were forced out of town after two alleged attacks on white women allegedly committed by black men.
In November 1909, the 40 African American families living in Anna and Jonesboro, Ill., were coerced to move away after the lynching of William “Froggie” James in nearby Cairo.
Housing discrimination was not only a southern phenomenon. Whites in the North felt their way of life was threatened by the growth of African American populations, a sentiment clearly heard today.
Another common method to exclude African Americans and maintain Jim Crow segregation was through the creation of so-called Sundown towns, where various laws were passed, and blacks were intimidated or worse to bar them from buying homes. Often, the all-white suburbs did not allow black children to attend local schools, forcing parents of black children to locate in the cities where schools were available. The practice was often overlooked because most sundown towns did not have significant black populations to begin with.
A more recent iteration is the so-called “second generation sundown towns” where African Americans have been blocked through law enforcement, political decisions and other factors. An example is Ferguson, Mo., where the black population dwindled to only 15 while the total population grew to over 22,000 by 1960. The exodus of African Americans came about, in large part, because of a largely white police force that practiced blatant racial profiling.
The creation of entire sundown counties and suburbs was not a southern practice. New Jersey has been described as equally inhospitable to black travelers until at least the early 1960s.
A particularly successful effort at excluding African Americans occurred from 1850 to 1860, when Oregon passed exclusion laws that saw its black population increase by just 75, compared to an increase of 4,000 in neighboring California. Oregon’s black exclusion laws have been linked to the current, below-average black population. The last of the exclusion laws was repealed in 1926.
Excluding African Americans from housing was included in the Code of Ethics for Realtors in Seattle, Wash. It advised that “a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.” The code was rescinded in 1950 but voluntary agreements between Realtors and homeowners continued well into the 1960s. In 1964, Seattle voters rejected a referendum that prohibited housing discrimination but in 1968, the city council passed an open housing ordinance that made restrictive covenants illegal.
Jim Crow laws prohibited blacks from using white fountains and restrooms, made them enter circuses through black only entrances, barred blacks from public schools, from playing baseball with whites and segregated blacks from whites in prisons and movie theaters. But the basis of most Jim Crow laws was to prevent intermarriage, concubinage, and miscegenation with laws enacted in 21 states in the years following the Civil War. In Arizona, laws that prohibited blacks, Indians and Asians from marrying whites were not repealed until 1962. Other Arizona laws that weren’t ended until 1962 included two school segregation statutes and a statute that required voters to pass a literacy test.
Anti-miscegenation laws were not repealed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967.
In California, laws were enacted from 1866 through 1947 that barred miscegenation, making it unlawful for white persons to marry “Mongolians.” Other California laws required all Chinese residents to live in one area of the city.
In Colorado, marriages between “Negroes and mulattoes, and white persons were absolutely void” with a penalty of a fine between $50 and $550, or imprisonment between three months and two years, or both. The anti-miscegenation law was repealed in 1957.
In Florida, “All courtships between a white person and a Negro person, or between a white person and a person of Negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited” and “Any Black man and white woman, or any white man and/or Negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars.” The last of the miscegenation laws was repealed in 1967.
Sarasota, Fla., passed a law in 1967 that said that “Whenever members of two or more races shall be upon any public…bathing beach within the corporate limits of the City of Sarasota, it shall be the duty of the Chief of police or another officer…in charge of the public forces of the City… with the assistance of such police forces, to clear the area involved of all members of all races present.”
One of the most insidious aspects of racism involved criminal trials. Federal law required that convictions could only be granted by a unanimous jury for federal crimes, but states were free to set their own jury requirements. Oregon and Louisiana allowed juries to vote at least 10–2 to decide a criminal conviction, leading to many convictions despite minority juror disagreements. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that unanimous jury votes are required for criminal convictions at state levels.
Persecution of African Americans has always been a national phenomena, not just in the South. President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat from New Jersey, was born and raised in the South. He appointed Southerners to his Cabinet and some pressed for segregated workplaces. The Wilson administration introduced segregation in federal offices, and Wilson appointed segregationist Southern politicians because of his own belief that racial segregation was in the best interest of black and European Americans alike.