Repressive Legislation: Slave Codes, Northern Black Laws, and Southern Black Codes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Middleton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Southern States ◽  
William Lloyd Garrison ◽  
Black Laws ◽  
Black Codes

Beginning in the 1630s, colonial assemblies in English America and later the new United States used legislation and constitutions to enslave Africans and deny free blacks civil rights, including free movement, freedom of marriage, freedom of occupation and, of course, citizenship and the vote. Across the next two centuries, blacks and a minority of whites critiqued the oppressive racialist system. Blacks employed varied tactics to challenge their enslavement, from running away to inciting revolts. Others used fiery rhetoric and printed tracts. In the 1760s, when whites began to search for political and philosophical arguments to challenge what they perceived as political oppression from London, they labeled their experience as “slavery.” The colonists also developed compelling arguments that gave some of them the insight that enslaving Africans was as wrong as what they called British oppression. The Massachusetts lawyer James Otis wiped the mirror clean in The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, stating “The colonists, black and white . . . are free-born British subjects . . . entitled to all the essential civil rights.” The Declaration of Independence polished the stained mirror by asserting, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” However, the Constitution of the United States negated these gains by offering federal protection for slavery; it was a covenant with death, as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison later asserted. After the Revolution, many states passed black laws to deprive blacks of the same rights as whites. Blacks commonly could not vote, testify in court against a white, or serve on juries. States barred black children from public schools. The Civil War offered the promise of equality with whites, but when the war ended, many southern states immediately passed black codes to deny blacks the gains won in emancipation.

Black and White Female Disproportional Discipline K–12

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-41
Author(s):  
Hamida Hussein Hassan ◽  
Vernon Brooks Carter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Black Female ◽  
White Female ◽  
Black And White ◽  
12Th Grade ◽  
K 12

The school-to-prison pipeline represents an educational environment that allows public schools to push many at-risk children out of school and into the juvenile justice or the adult criminal justice system. Consequently, this study explores the disproportionate rates of discipline when comparing Black and White female students in the national public-school system. Specifically, this research explored discipline outcomes for Black and White female students in kindergarten through 12th grade in five of the best academically performing states in the United States compared with five of the worse academically ranked states in the United States. Using the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) of 2013–2014 data, the exploration found Black female students were disproportionately suspended compared with White female students in both the high and low academically performing states. Similarly, Black female students experienced disproportionality rates (overrepresented) compared with White female students for school-related arrests. Overall, the disproportionality rates for Black female students suspended and arrested compared with White female students were higher in the academically higher ranked states.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Martin Luther King

The introduction includes Bible verses cited by ministers to defend segregation and verses to oppose segregation. There are slices of the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and African American history. The southern states, where white ministers confronted segregation, are identified. The term “minister” is explained as well as the variety of labels given these ministers ranging from “Liberal,” Progressive,” “Neo-Orthodox,” “Evangelical Liberal,” “open conservative,” ‘Last Hurrah of the Social Gospel Movement” to “Trouble Maker,” “Traitor, “ “Atheist,” “Communist,” “N_____ Lover.” Rachel Henderlite, the only woman minister mentioned in the book, is identified. Synopses of the book’s seven chapters are included. Comments by historians David Chappell, Charles Reagan Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Campbell, and Thomas Pettigrew are cited.

Plessy’s Long Shadow

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Equal Protection ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Race Riots ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Law

The supreme court’s 1896 Decision in Plessy v. Ferguson served to bring the law into a dismal harmony with the nation’s view of race in life. The Court decided that segregation in public facilities through “separate but equal” accommodations for black citizens would satisfy the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. The years since the sporadically enforced policies of Reconstruction ended in 1876 had been hard for those former slaves and their offspring whose slavery had legally ended with the passage of the Thir­teenth Amendment in 1865. To ensure their rights to due process and the equal protection of the law, the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 provided that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Despite legislation intended to provide enforcement of these rights, the laws were poorly enforced and most were subsequently declared unconstitutional. Corrupting law but relying on intimidation and violence, southern governments stripped blacks of political power. Given meaningful if unspoken assurances that the federal government would not protect black civil rights, conservative southerners regained power utilizing racial fear and hatred to break up competing populist groups of poor black and white farmers. In addition to the disenfranchisement of blacks, whites sought to secure their power through intensive anti-Negro propaganda campaigns championing white supremacy. Literary and scientific leaders published tracts and books intended to “prove” the inhumanity of the Negro. In this hostile climate, segregation laws that had made a brief appearance during Reconstruction were revived across the South, accompanied by waves of violence punctuated by an increase in lynchings and race riots. In an effort both to protest the indignity of segregation and challenge its validity, Homer Plessy, acting for a New Orleans civil rights group, attempted to ride in a railroad car reserved for whites. He was arrested and convicted of violating Louisiana’s 1890 segregation law. On appeal, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Fourteenth Amendment required absolute equality of the two races before the law, adding: “but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”

Exploring Disproportionate Discipline for Latinx Students With and Without Disabilities: A National Analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 019874292096135
Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Gage ◽  
Antonis Katsiyannis ◽  
Kelly M. Carrero ◽  
Rhonda Miller ◽  
Danielle Pico
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Mixed Effect ◽  
School Year ◽  
Mixed Effect Models ◽  
Academic School ◽  
National Analysis

The Latinx population is the largest group of racially and ethnically diverse students in the United States. Although disproportionality in school discipline has been documented for Latinx students, findings related to such disparities have been inconsistent. We examined disciplinary exclusion practices involving students with and without disabilities who are Latinx across the United States using risk ratios (RR) and weighted mixed-effect models. We leveraged data from the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) data set for the 2015 to 2016 academic school year, which included data from more than 94,000 schools. The CRDC is collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights every 2 years. All U.S. public schools are required to submit data to the CRDC. Results suggest that Latinx students with and without disabilities were statistically significantly more likely to receive exclusionary discipline than White students, but less likely than Black students. Implications for research and practice are provided.

Latino/a and African American Relations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian D. Behnken
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black And White

African Americans and Latino/as have had a long history of social interactions that have been strongly affected by the broader sense of race in the United States. Race in the United States has typically been constructed as a binary of black and white. Latino/as do not fit neatly into this binary. Some Latino/as have argued for a white racial identity, which has at times frustrated their relationships with black people. For African Americans and Latino/as, segregation often presented barriers to good working relationships. The two groups were often segregated from each other, making them mutually invisible. This invisibility did not make for good relations. Latino/as and blacks found new avenues for improving their relationships during the civil rights era, from the 1940s to the 1970s. A number of civil rights protests generated coalitions that brought the two communities together in concerted campaigns. This was especially the case for militant groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Mexican American Brown Berets, and the Puerto Rican Young Lords, as well as in the Poor People’s Campaign. Interactions among African Americans and Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban/Cuban American illustrate the deep and often convoluted sense of race consciousness in American history, especially during the time of the civil rights movement.

Haiti and the Black Intellectual Tradition, 1829–1934

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Christopher Cameron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Stereotypes ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Black Intellectual ◽  
Revolutionary Violence ◽  
David Walker ◽  
The World

In September 1829, David Walker published the first edition of his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a pamphlet that became a stirring call to arms for both slaves and free blacks alike. Walker's audience was blacks in the United States and his aim was to foster black unity and education, combat racial stereotypes, and make the case for the abolition of slavery. Like most abolitionists, black and white, Walker hoped that the end of slavery could come about through peaceful means. Unlike most other abolitionists, however, Walker openly called for slaves to violently resist their bondage, stating, “it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.” While advocates of pacifism and nonviolence often based their positions on their Christian faith, it was Walker's Christianity which lent support to his calls for revolutionary violence. “Does the Lord condescend to hear their cries and see their tears in consequence of oppression?” he asked. “Will he let the oppressors rest comfortably and happy always? Will he not cause the very children of the oppressors to rise up against them, and oftimes to put them to death?” Walker firmly believed that God would have his vengeance on blacks’ oppressors and that the vehicles for that vengeance might very well be the slaves themselves.

The Armenian Genocide, AKA the Elephant in the Room

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayda Erbal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Business ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Southern States

The summer of 2015 will perhaps be remembered as a watershed moment in the annals of racism in the United States. What had been normalized for decades by the southern states and giant retailers in “postracist” America was institutionally delegitimized almost overnight. Upping the ante, the department store giant Macy's announced it will discontinue Donald Trump merchandise because of Trump's racist remarks. A mere half century after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in a perfect act of Foucauldian governmentality and market regulation from above, American business interests aggressively interfered in redefining the discursive and symbolic boundaries of the new mainstream normativity and truth in the United States. One can safely say that symbolic and actual denial of slavery and racist essentialism as normalized discourses in mainstream US culture and scholarship took another institutional blow, even though some reactionary book review here and there can still make its way into the mainstream, and even though defeating “dog whistle politics” is much more difficult than defeating outright racist symbols or speech.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document