Cosmopolitanism as Concealment

2018 ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Courtney Elizabeth Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Development ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Black Labor ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reconstruction Period

Chapter 3 continues this analysis through the ‘Jim Crow’ and Civil Rights eras. The chapter reveals critical double standards with respect to city planning and cultural development in Chattanooga; contradictions and inequalities that persist today. It also argues the historical conceptualization of black culture and community development as antithetical to urban progress was promulgated during and after the Reconstruction Period so that whites had a rationale to justify their ongoing subjugation and exploitation of Black labor across all areas of the Dynamo of Dixie’s rapidly expanding local economy. The long history of de facto and de jure Jim Crow laws and structural inequalities explored in this chapter are testament to these legacies of oppression.

Monumental Constructions: Statues, Identity, and Gabrielle Roy’s “L’arbre”

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Holly Collins
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Live Oak ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Significant Attention

Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans garnered significant attention for his book In the Shadow of Statues (2018), observing that many Confederate monuments were erected to buttress Jim Crow laws and serve as a warning to those who supported the civil rights movement. Likewise, there are a number of monuments in Québec that serve a particular political or religious purpose, seeking to reinforce a pure laine ideology. In this article, I explore the parallels between the literal and figurative construction and deconstruction of monuments that have fortified invented ideas on identity in francophone North America. Further, Gabrielle Roy’s short story “L’arbre,” which describes a “living monument,” tells the story of a racialized past in North America and unveils the falsities that have been preserved through the construction of statues that perpetuate racial myth. “L’arbre” examines the natural, unconstructed monument of the Live Oak: a tree that witnessed and holds the visible scars of the many terrible realities that took place in its shadows. I use Roy’s short story to show how she sought to deconstruct a whitewashed history of the post-Civil War American South and suggest that her broader corpus rejects determinism wholesale.

Trouble in My Way

2019 ◽  
pp. 133-160
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
University President ◽  
State University ◽  
Campus Environment ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Jackson State University ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the strained history of Jackson State University during the aftermath of World War II and leading up to the modern civil rights movement. Located in the heart of Mississippi, Jackson State students carved out space to express their militancy as the war came to a close. However, they quickly felt that space collapse around them as segregationists tightened their grip on the Magnolia State as the burgeoning movement for black liberation challenged the oppressive traditions of the most socially and politically closed state in the country. Administrators such as Jackson State University president Jacob Reddix quickly fell in line with the expectations of his immediate supervisors and squared off against outspoken scholar-activists such as famed poet and novelist Margaret Walker. The standoff resulted in a campus environment fraught with tension yet still producing students and faculty determined to undermine Jim Crow.

Race Women

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-100
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
New Negro ◽  
American Women ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the fascinating history of Bennett College – one of only two single sex colleges dedicated to educating African American women. Although Bennett would not make that transition until 1926, the institution played a vital role in educating African American women in Greensboro, North Carolina from the betrayal of the Nadir to the promises of a New Negro Era. The latter period witnessed Bennett, under the leadership of David Dallas Jones, mold scores of young girls into politically conscious race women who were encouraged to resist Jim Crow policies and reject the false principals of white supremacy. Their politicization led to a massive boycott of a theatre in downtown Greensboro and helped to set the tone for Greensboro’s evolution into a critical launching point for the modern civil rights movement.

An Earned Insurgency: Quality Education as a Constitutional Right

2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Moses
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quality Education ◽  
Educational Equality ◽  
Justice Department ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Lasting Change

In the following pages, Robert Moses tells the history of the early civil rights movement in Mississippi, focusing on the individuals, alliances, and strategies that brought about fundamental change in the United States and ultimately made possible the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Moses describes how the efforts of Justice Department officials working from the "top" of society combined with the day-to-day work of sharecroppers and organizers at the "bottom" to challenge Jim Crow. His story takes us from the front lines of the movement in Mississippi to his contemporary efforts to ensure that all children in this country receive a quality education. While working from the bottom of today's movement for educational equality, he calls on Obama to provide the leadership needed at the top to ensure lasting change. In this"illuminated story" he infuses his narration (in sans serif) with his own reflections and insights about the lessons this story offers.

“The Foul Odors of Blacks”

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Peter Irons
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
State Action ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
White Resistance ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
Reconstruction Period

This chapter covers the post-Reconstruction period and the Supreme Court’s rejection of laws to protect Blacks’ use of “public accommodations” on an equal basis with Whites, and the Court’s later upholding of Jim Crow laws that required segregation of Blacks and Whites. Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, barring discrimination against Blacks’ access to places such as restaurants, theaters, hotels, and railway coaches. Ruling in 1883 in five cases from Kansas, California, Tennessee, New York, and Missouri under the caption of Civil Rights Cases, the Court struck down the “public accommodations” provision, holding that “private” businesses could not be regulated without a showing of “state action” in their operation. This ruling drew a sharp dissent from Justice John Marshall Harlan, who argued that businesses serving the public are subject to regulation. The chapter also recounts violent White resistance to Black voting, with South Carolina senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman as leader of a White group known as Red Shirts in murdering Blacks. The chapter concludes with discussion of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1895, holding that Louisiana could provide “separate but equal” railway coaches for Blacks and Whites, over another solitary dissent by Justice Harlan, arguing the Constitution is “color-blind” and protects Blacks from state-imposed discrimination.

Race and Rape Prosecution in US History

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-104
Author(s):  
Matthew Barry Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Us History ◽  
Rape Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Defendants ◽  
Post Civil Rights

This chapter examines the current disproportion of Black defendants wrongly convicted of sexual assault through a historical lens. It notes the US history of statutorily separate sexual assault penalties based on race of the defendant and victim. Throughout US history the legal definition and societal response to rape (and rape allegations) have been influenced by considerations of race. These considerations were consistently made to the detriment of Black defendants charged with rape. The chapter reviews how race, rape law, and prosecution have been manifested in different historical eras (the period of race-based enslavement, the period of Jim Crow segregation, and the current post–civil rights period) and the mechanisms of racial bias against Black defendants in the post–civil rights era.

We Can! We Will! We Must!

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-199
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
College Presidents ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black College ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern University

The chapter discusses the explosive history of Southern University in the years leading up to the Black Power Movement. Baton Rouge, Louisiana was the setting for one of the largest student protests in the country as thousands of students flocked to the streets in protests against Jim Crow policies. Prior to this emergence, students were nurtured for years in a space cultivated by Joseph Samuel Clark, who served as the school’s first president and was succeeded by his son, Felton Grandison Clark. Like many black college presidents, Clark enjoyed the reputation of a fervent race man who embraced the tenets of the second curriculum. Yet as the modern civil rights movement approached, Clark succumbed to the pressures of the state and transformed into one of the most notorious HBCU presidents during the era – expelling students, firing faculty, and running the campus with a vise-like grip. Nevertheless, the Southern student body powered through these obstacles and created one of the most radical spaces for black youth in the deep south.

Freedom Claims

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-55
Author(s):  
Lynn M. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Codes ◽  
A Site

This chapter examines the history of California’s commitment to Jim Crow, a history that begins during the state’s earliest years. African Americans loomed large in the minds of California’s earliest legislators and politicians. Black codes became a prominent feature of the state’s legal system and developed in tandem with scientific racism. Black bodies as a site of difference became a staple of the public discourse of citizenship. Resistance to the state’s color line took place at parades, in court, in schools, on streetcars, and on stage, all places African Americans were discouraged or prohibited from occupying. Gendered politics infused this first western campaign for civil rights and women’s participation would be pivotal in the ongoing struggle for racial justice.

Prison Power

Prison Power ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 21-52
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The State ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Black Liberation Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Phase

This chapter traces rhetorical and political history of imprisonment before and after the birth of Black Power, focusing on major moments of activist imprisonment as well as movement discourses written from prison. In charting the role of prison in the movement, the chapter also discusses the emergence and legitimacy of Black Power as a slogan, as a theoretical device, and as a series of rhetorical strategies designed to be a particularly historical intervention into the stagnating discourses of “civil rights” and “law and order.” This chapter contends that incarceration became a major strategy used by both black activists and white conservatives during the Black Power era; consequently, the period following 1966 marked a new phase of Jim Crow as Black Power became a rallying cry against state repression. This chapter suggests that the legitimacy of Black Power as a term of art, as a series of vernacular signs, and as an organizing principle in a new phase of the black liberation movement, hinged upon whether the state or the activists controlled the frame and how closely it became associated with violence. Because the Black Power slogan and ideology were articulated by activists with extensive rap sheets as the state circumscribed their activism, Black Power ideology took up the relationship between state repression and incarceration as a place to excavate new arenas for the black liberation struggle, particularly in the memoirs of movement activists.

A Legal History of Mississippi

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Ranney
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Andrew Jackson ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal Response ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of

Sixty years ago, one historian described state legal history as a “wasteland,” a neglected but vitally important part of American history. Legal histories of individual states are now beginning to appear. With this book, Mississippi joins their ranks. The book describes the evolution of Mississippi’s legal system and analyses the changes in that system during the state’s first 200 years. The book examines the interaction of law and society during six key periods of change: (1) Mississippi’s colonial and territorial eras and early years of statehood, when the foundations for its legal system were laid; (2) the evolution of Mississippi slavery and slave law during the early nineteenth century; (3) the state’s role as a leader of legal reform during the age of Andrew Jackson; (4) the unfolding of the Mississippi’s legal response to emancipation and wartime economic devastation during the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow eras; (5) Mississippi’s legal evolution during the Progressive Era and its response to the crisis of the Great Depression; and (6) the state’s legal response to the civil rights and cultural revolutions that have unfolded since 1950.

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