This Week in People’s History, Apr 9–15
New Dealers Say No to Racism, or Do They?
85 YEARS AGO, on April 9, 1939, world-famous soprano Marian Anderson gave an open-air performance at the Lincoln Memorial in the middle of Washington, D.C. The event is well-remembered particularly because it is often recalled as an important moment in the struggle against white racism. Anderson had been scheduled to make her appearance in Constitution Hall, which was, at the time, Washington's premier concert hall. But the owners of the hall, the so-called Daughters of the American Revolution, refused to allow the performance because Anderson was African-American. When the DAR enforced its long-standing Jim Crow policy, the Roosevelt administration declared its opposition to racism and invited Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial, where she thrilled a huge, integrated audience of 75,000 in addition to millions who listened on the radio.
But details somewhat diminish the warm anti-racist glow of the event's memory. Before Anderson got the offer to use the Lincoln Memorial, she had tried to rent the large auditorium at Central High School, which was the property of the D.C. Board of Education. The B of E refused her application on the same ground as the DAR. Washington public schools were segregated in 1939, and Central High was for whites only. The D.C. Board of Education was controlled by the U.S. Congress, which had complete authority to overrule the Board or to even take the opportunity to put an end to the segregation of D.C. schools. Not only did Congress do nothing in 1939, but federally-controlled D.C. schools remained segregated until 1954. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Anderson
¡Rachel Corrie, Presente!
45 YEARS AGO, on April 10, 1979, Rachel Corrie was born in Olympia, Washington. As a college student in her home state, Rachel, who had become a peace activist and anti-imperialist, became a member of the International Solidarity Movement. In January 2003, at the age of 23, she joined other activists in their efforts to prevent the Israeli Army from reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble. Not long after she arrived, she lay down in front of an Israeli Army bulldozer to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home. The driver acted as though she was not there and crushed her. Two weeks before her untimely death, Rachel had written these words to her mother in Olympia:
When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible. https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/rachel-corries-letters-and-ques…;
A Jury Votes the Way the Klan Wants
60 YEARS AGO, on April 11, 1964, some 75 Mississippi racists, "tough-looking men, some linked with Klan activity" put on a display of authority at the trial of Byron De La Beckwith, who was accused of the 1963 murder of NAACP official Medgar Evers. They filled nearly every seat in the Jackson, Mississippi, courtroom in order to exclude other spectators. A mistrial was declared a week later when the all-white jury was unable to agree on a verdict. No doubt some of the jurors thought the evidence of De La Beckwith's guilt was beyond a reasonable doubt, but they feared the wrath of the Klan more than they feared violating their oath to follow the evidence. When De La Beckwith was tried for the murder a third time, in January 1994, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died. https://lithub.com/did-medgar-evers-killer-go-free-because-of-jury-tamp…
What Next for Anti-Racist Non-Violence?
60 YEARS AGO, on April 12, 1964, Malcolm X delivered a speech -- "The Ballot or the Bullet" --that cemented his reputation as a leading radical voice in the struggle against Jim Crow. As soon as he delivered it, the speech became the subject of wide discussion. As if to emphasize its importance, Malcolm delivered the same speech to massive audiences on successive Sundays in two different cities, Cleveland and Detroit.
"The Ballot or the Bullet" came at a crucial moment, when a bill that had the potential to become the most significant federal civil rights legislation of the era had already passed the House by a comfortable margin but was blocked by a seemingly insurmountable filibuster in the Senate. In the speech, Malcolm said that the legislative stalemate raised the question, "What next?" and suggested that the answer was "the ballot or the bullet," that is, if elected officials could not find their way to follow an anti-racist course of action, then the non-violence of the civil rights movement was at risk.
"Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic Party," said Malcolm. "If he's for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and declare himself. Let him go in there right now and declare himself. Let him go in there and denounce the Southern branch of his party. Let him go in there right now and take a moral stand -- right now, not later. Tell him, don't wait until election time. If he waits too long, brothers and sisters, he will be responsible for letting a condition develop in this country which will create a climate that will bring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking like something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it's the ballot or the bullet."
The reaction among civil rights activists was mixed, but the overwhelming majority either applauded Malcolm's position or refrained from attacking it. It required many weeks to sink in, but the well-publicized threat that the strategy of non-violence had the desired result. The Senate took the unexpected step of voting to end the filibuster, and a few weeks later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. Read the entire speech here: http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malcolm_x_ballot.html
Jim Crow Shows the Supreme Court Who's in Charge
80 YEARS AGO, on April 13, 1944, South Carolina's racist state legislature had a problem. The U.S. Supreme Court had just ruled that it was unconstitutional for a state government to make it illegal for African-Americans to vote in a primary election. Okay, said the South Carolina state legislature, we'll do what almost every other state in the Deep South is already doing; we won't make any laws about who can vote in the primaries. We'll let the political parties make the rules about who is eligible to vote. The political parties have no legal obligation to follow the constitution, so they are free to prevent African-Americans from voting.
But they still had a small problem, which was that South Carolina had 147 laws about primary elections on the books. It took six days for the South Carolina legislature to repeal every one of those laws, leaving the parties with complete authority to continue the state's decades-old policy of running whites-only primaries. https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/south-carolina-plan/
If the Shoe of Inhumanity Fits, Wear It
85 YEARS AGO, on April 14, 1939, John Steinbeck published what is surely one of the greatest U.S. radically conscious novels, The Grapes of Wrath. It was so effective in its depiction of the fate that awaited the refugees from the Dust Bowl that only 18 weeks after it was published, it was banned from the schools and libraries of Kern County, which was one of the California counties where some of the victims of the Dust Bowl sought refuge. The county's resolution to ban the book stated that the ban was necessary because Steinbeck had presented the officials, farmers and citizens of the county as “inhumane vigilantes, breathing class hatred and divested of sympathy or human decency.” https://www.jstor.org/stable/25549126
Operators' Strike Shuts Down Telephone Service
105 YEARS AGO, on April 15, 1919, some 9000 telephone operators, almost all of them women, went out on strike against New England Telephone to enforce their demand for higher wages and union recognition. Their leader was Julia O'Connor.
O'Connor, who had joined the Boston Telephone Operators Union when she became an operator in 1912, was elected president of Local 1A of the National Telephone Operators in 1918. The 1919 strike that O'Connor led came close to eliminating New England Telephone's operations for five days. It was settled when the company agreed to both of the union's demands: that the union be recognized as the worker's bargaining agent, and a five percent pay increase. O'Connor continued to lead telephone operators' unions until she retired in 1957. https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/telephone-operators-strike.h…