Jackson, MS (est. 1821, pop. 165,000)

 

Marker:

 

front

"On May 28, 1961, a Greyhound bus with nine Freedom Riders aboard arrived here, the third group of Riders into Jackson. The first two came on Trailways buses May 24. That summer 329 people were arrested in Jackson for integrating public transportation facilities. Convicted on "breach of peace" and jailed, most refused bail and were sent to the state penitentiary. Their protest worked. In September 1961, the federal government mandated that segregation in interstate transportation end."

 

back

"Greyhound Bus Station This former Greyhound bus station was the scene of many historic arrests in 1961, when Freedom Riders challenged racial segregation in Jackson’s bus and train stations and airport. The Freedom Riders, part of a campaign created by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), pressured the federal government to enforce the law regarding illegal racially separate waiting rooms, rest rooms, and restaurants—common in public transportation facilities across the South.

 

"On May 4, 1961, thirteen Riders—blacks and whites, men and women—left Washington, D.C., on two buses. Trained in nonviolent direct action, they planned to desegregate bus stations throughout the South. They integrated stations in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia with few incidents but were attacked by vicious mobs in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama. The Kennedy administration implored them to stop, a call echoed by the media and some civil rights leaders. The Riders, however, reinforced with new volunteers from the Nashville Student Movement, were determined to continue.

 

"On May 24, two buses of Freedom Riders left Montgomery bound for Jackson, with highway patrolmen and National Guardsmen as armed guards. Instead of a protest mob, policemen met them in Jackson, urging them to “move on” when the Riders tried to use facilities denied them. When the Riders refused, they were arrested, charged with “breach of peace,” and quickly convicted.

 

"Embracing the "jail-no bail" tactic, they invited new Riders from around the country to join them in Jackson. Within three weeks the city’s jails were full, and the Riders were transferred to the state penitentiary at Parchman, where most served six weeks, suffering indignities and injustices with fortitude and resolve. Between May 24 and September 13, 329 people were arrested in Jackson—half black, half white, and a quarter of them women. Most were between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They came from thirty-nine states and ten other countries; forty-three were from Mississippi.

 

"On September 23, the Interstate Commerce Commission mandated an end to segregation in all bus and train stations and airports. The victorious Freedom Riders left a legacy of historic changes, proving the value of nonviolent direct action, providing a template for future campaigns, and helping jump-start the movement in Mississippi."

 

Old Greyhound Station History

 

• in the mid-1930s, as America struggled through Great Depression, Greyhound Lines adopted a Streamline Moderne design for their buses & terminals, echoing the speed lines of their Super Coaches which, like the Greyhound logo, promised a swift, state of the art ride • brought in engineer Dwight Austin (1897-1960) to create the new Super Coach design & Louisville architect William Strudwick Arrasmith (1898-1965) to reimagine Greyhound terminal design

 

• in 1937, Greyhound Lines contracted for a Streamline Moderne style terminal in jn Jackson, topped by a vertical, illuminated "Greyhound" sign • the bldg. was faced with blue Vitrolux structural glass panels and ivory Vitrolite trim • included a coffee shop with a horseshoe-shaped counter & bathing facilities for women (a bath tub) and men (a shower)

 

• the design is widely believed to be one of the ~60 Moderne Greyhound stations credited to Arrasmith, although photographic evidence suggests that Memphis architect William Nowland Van Powell (1904-1977) — working with George Mahan Jr. (1887-1967) — was responsible for the design, with or without Arrasmith as the consulting architect

 

• restoration architect Robert Parker Adams acquired the then threatened bldg. in 1988, moved in after restoration, retaining the original neon sign —Wikipedia

 

The Farish Street Historic District

 

“but out of the bitterness we wrought an ancient past here in this separate place and made our village here.” —African Village by Margaret Walker (1915-1998)

 

• during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War, white Southerners struggled to reclaim their lives as millions of black Southerners sought new ones • with the stroke of a pen, the Emancipation Proclamation had transformed African slaves into African Americans & released them into hostile, vengeful & well-armed white communities amid the ruins of a once flourishing society

 

• the antebellum South had been home to over 262,000 rights-restricted "free blacks" • post-emancipation, the free black population soared to 4.1 million • given that the South had sacrificed 20% of it's white males to the war, blacks now comprised over half the total population of some southern states • uneducated & penniless, most of the new black Americans depended on the Freedman's Bureau for food & clothing

 

• the social & political implications of this disruptive shift in demographics fueled a violence-laced strain of American racism • in this toxic environment, de facto racial segregation was a given, ordained as Mississippi law in 1890 • with Yankees (the U.S. Army) patrolling Jackson & Maine-born Republican Adelbert Ames installed in the Governor's Mansion, the Farish Street neighborhood was safe haven for freedmen

 

• as homeless African American refugees poured into Jackson from all reaches of the devastated state, a black economy flickered to life in the form of a few Farish Street mom-and-pops • unwelcome at white churches, the liberated slaves built their own, together with an entire neighborhood's worth of buildings, most erected between 1890 & 1930

 

• by 1908 1/3 of the district was black-owned, & half of the black families were homeowners • the 1913-1914 business directory listed 11 African American attorneys, 4 doctors, 3 dentists, 2 jewelers, 2 loan companies & a bank, all in the Farish St. neighborhood • the community also had 2 hospitals & numerous retail & service stores —City Data

 

• by mid-20th c. Farish Street, the state's largest economically independent African American community, had become the cultural, political & business hub for central Mississippi's black citizens [photos] • on Saturdays, countryfolk would come to town on special busses to sell produce & enjoy BBQ while they listened to live street music • vendors sold catfish fried in large black kettles over open fires • hot tamales, a Mississippi staple, were also a popular street food —The Farish District, Its Architecture and Cultural Heritage

 

“I’ve seen pictures. You couldn’t even get up the street. It was a two-way street back then, and it was wall-to-wall folks. It was just jam-packed: people shopping, people going to clubs, people eating, people dancing.” — Geno Lee, owner of the Big Apple Inn

 

• as Jackson's black economy grew, Farish Street entertainment venues prospered, drawing crowds with live & juke blues music • the musicians found or first recorded in the Neighborhood include Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson II & Elmore James

 

• Farish Street was also home to talent scouts & record labels like H.C. Speir, & Trumpet Records, Ace Records • both Speir & Trumpet founder Lillian McMurry were white Farish St. business owners whose furniture stores also housed recording studios • both discovered & promoted local Blues musicians —The Mississippi Encyclopedia

 

• Richard Henry Beadle (1884-1971), a prominent Jackson photographer, had a studio at 199-1/2 N. Farish • he was the son of Samuel Alfred Beadle (1857-1932), African-American poet & attorney • born the son of a slave, he was the author of 3 published books of poetry & stories

 

• The Alamo Theatre was mainly a movie theater but periodically presented musical acts such as Nat King Cole, Elmore James & Otis Spann • Wednesday was talent show night • 12 year old Jackson native Dorothy Moore entered the contest, won & went on to a successful recording career, highlighted by her 1976 no. 1 R&B hit, "Misty Blue" [listen] (3:34)

 

• in their heyday, Farish Street venues featured African American star performers such as Bessie Smith & the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington & Dinah Washington —Farish Street Records

 

• on 28 May, 1963, John Salter, a mixed race (white/Am. Indian) professor at historically black Tougaloo College, staged a sit-in with 3 African American students at the "Whites Only" Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Jackson • they were refused service • an estimated 300 white onlookers & reporters filled the store

 

• police officers arrived but did not intercede as, in the words of student Anne Moody, "all hell broke loose" while she and the other black students at the counter prayed • "A man rushed forward, threw [student] Memphis from his seat and slapped my face. Then another man who worked in the store threw me against an adjoining counter." • this act of civil disobedience is remembered as the the signature event of Jackson's protest movement —L.A. Times

 

"This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things." —John Salter

 

• the Woolworth Sit-in was one of many non-violent protests by blacks against racial segregation in the South • in 1969 integration of Jackson's public schools began • this new era in Jackson history also marked the beginning of Farish Street's decline —The Farish Street Project

 

"Integration was a great thing for black people, but it was not a great thing for black business... Before integration, Farish Street was the black mecca of Mississippi.” — Geno Lee, Big Apple Inn

 

• for African Americans, integration offered the possibility to shop outside of the neighborhood at white owned stores • as increasing numbers of black shoppers did so, Farish Street traffic declined, businesses closed & the vacated buildings fell into disrepair

 

• in 1983, a Farish St. redevelopment plan was presented

• in 1995 the street was designated an endangered historic place by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

• in the 1990s, having redeveloped Memphis' Beale Street, Performa Entertainment Real Estate was selected to redevelop Farish St

• in 2008, The Farish Street Group took over the project with plans for a B.B. King's Blues Club to anchor the entertainment district

• in 2012, having spent $21 million, the redevelopment — limited to repaving of the street, stabilizating some abandoned buildings & demolishing many of the rest — was stuck in limbo —Michael Minn

 

• 2017 update:

 

"Six mayors and 20 years after the City of Jackson became involved in efforts to develop the Farish Street Historic District, in hopes of bringing it back to the bustling state of its heyday, the project sits at a standstill. Recent Mayor Tony Yarber has referred to the district as “an albatross.” In September of 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sanctioned the City of Jackson, the Jackson Redevelopment Authority, and developers for misspending federal funds directed toward the development of the Farish Street Historic District. Work is at a halt and "not scheduled to resume until December 2018, when the City of Jackson repays HUD $1.5 million." —Mississippi Dept. of Archives & History

 

• Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District, National Register # 80002245, 1980

Just like so many abandoned building around town, I like to imagine them when they were in their prime. During the segregation period down here in the South this was an African-American hotel, The Lincoln, near a then functioning but now, long demolished, train station. They also had a lunch room where, rumor has it, many famous performers like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong enjoyed a meal. Nearby is the Prince Masonic Lodge that hosted many of the premier acts of the 1950 and 60's in their amazing, balconied, top-floor, ball room. There is even a rumor that Ornette Coleman's performance was so avant-guard that the dissatisfied crowd took his saxophone into the street in front of the Prince and stomped it flat. Such is the life of the touring musicial iconoclast.

 

You can get a peak in to that venue as you drive over the North Boulevard overpass. So far as I can tell, this is main reason for the North Boulecard overpass to exist because its the construction destroyed the much loved Rose and Thomas' Soul Food restaurant, Tabby's Blues Box and spelled the end of Romano's Grocery and plate lunch emporium. Such is the cost of meager progress, I suppose.

 

Anyway, I like to imagine this stalwart and elegant brick hotel when it was in its heyday. Well dressed men and women visiting the barber shop next door, taking the family out to dinner after church or folks ducking in for a little bite after a wild night of dancing and music at the Prince. I am too young to have ever seen the Prince or the Lincoln Hotel in their prime, though the Prince has been remodeled and is still in use. I did once drunkenly watched a Mike Tyson match in their ground floor barber shop in what ended up to be a singularly surreal evening. But, that is a story for another day.

 

When I first moved back to Baton Rouge after college I ate many a plate lunch of white beans and sausage with a smothered pork chop under a velvet painting of Jessy Jackson in Rose and Thomas' soul food joint. I heard great bands play the night away in a haze of smoke and cheap bottled beer taken from ice-chests behind the bar at Tabby's; I was 15 and this was back when people cared much less about underage drinking. I paid my money there to a plump woman working a cash registerer with a .38 special strapped to it. Maybe that is when I fell in love with my city, when I interloped into the separate, but no less vibrant, black half of the community from which I had been carefully isolated since birth... with the exception on incident where Ida, our old house-keeper, took me to her cousin's bar and I danced on the jukebox, aged about 4.

 

All that shameful Jim Crow era segregation is gone. But, the un-codified barriers are still very much in place. I would not dream of going into Webb's barber shop, near the now moldering Hotel Lincoln, without one of my black neighbors. Not because of any fear of violence but because I know there are separate and special places where people come together to congregate and they prefer to do so away from prying eyes or the voyeuristic lens of a culturally interested transgressor like myself. So, imagination is what remains. Imagination about what was and what continues to be.

 

Check out more at my blog, Lemons and Beans, for lots of photos, recipes, travel writing and other ramblings. I appreciate any feedback but, please do not post graphic awards or invitations in your comments.

This street in downtown Columbus MS was, in the days of segregation, the economic and cultural center of the Afro American community in the town. This mural is meant to reflect that. As you recede into the background of the mural you recede backwards in time as the cars and clothing reflect an earlier time. The street is indeed named Catfish Alley. Columbus celebrates a festival every spring to honor the history and cultural significance of this site.

Text of the historic "I Have A Dream" speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on August. 28, 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC....

 

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

 

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

 

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

 

In a sense we have come to our Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

 

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

 

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

 

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

 

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.

 

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

 

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

 

Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children.

 

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of it's colored citizens. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

 

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

 

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

 

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

 

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

 

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

 

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

 

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

 

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for white only."

 

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

 

No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

 

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

 

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

 

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

 

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

 

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

 

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

 

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

 

I have a dream today.

 

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

 

I have a dream today.

 

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

 

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

 

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

 

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

 

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

 

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

 

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

 

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

 

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

 

But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

 

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

 

And when this happens, when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

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Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was a Baptist minister and American political activist who was the most famous leader of the American civil rights movement. King won the Nobel Peace Prize before being assassinated in 1968. In 1977, King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Jimmy Carter. For his promotion of non-violence and racial equality, King is considered a peacemaker and martyr by many people around the world. Martin Luther King Day was established in his honor.

 

King was born in Atlanta, Georgia (on 501 Auburn Avenue) to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. (Birth records for Martin Luther King Jr. list his name as Michael.) He graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 1948. At Morehouse, King was mentored by President Benjamin Mays, a civil rights leader. Later he graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. In 1955, he received a Ph.D. in Systematic theology from Boston University.

 

Two years after District of Columbia schools integrated, black and white children play together October 11, 1956 at the formerly all-white West Elementary School at 13th and Farragut streets NW.

 

The students were identified as Patricia Smith (facing camera) and Debbie (jumping).

 

The District’s integration took place following the Supreme Court’s Bolling v. Sharpe decision in May 1954 that was brought about by the Consolidated Parents Group.

 

Consolidated represented parents and students living in Northeast quadrant of the city and led a seven year fight that began with a boycott of deplorable conditions at the all black Browne Junior High on Benning Road in 1947.

 

White students, aided by some parents, staged a student strike October 4-5, 1954 at a few District of Columbia high schools and junior highs when the schools were desegregated, but overall went fairly smoothly

 

However after integration, the school system quickly implemented a track system where black students were placed in the lowest tracks that included no college preparation courses and effectively segregated most black students within the schools.

 

The June 1967 Hobson v. Hansen court decision broke up the track system, but by then white flight to the suburbs had effectively re-segregated District of Columbia public schools.

 

For a background post on the fight to break up D.C.’s Jim Crow schools and obtain better education for black students, see washingtonareaspark.com/2015/08/20/dcs-fighting-barber-th...

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskivJu7g

 

The photographer is unknown. The image is Washington Daily News photograph courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

 

"Der Wind der Veränderung blies bis in die Ruinen unserer Republik. Der Sommer kam und Berlin war der schönste Platz auf Erden. Wir hatten das Gefühl im Mittelpunkt der Welt zu stehn. Dort wo sich endlich was bewegte. Und wir bewegten uns mit." - Alexander “Alex” Kerner(Daniel Brühl) – From Goodbye Lenin

 

Wonderful Berlin

 

The innovation of an instrument of segregation, division and terror to an symbol of joy, free expression, and unity. The Berlin Wall

Picket signs protesting Jim Crow at the Uline Arena at 1140 3rd Street NE are stacked against the doors of the building circa 1947.

 

The facility had been the subject of an active three-year picket, petition and boycott campaign demanding that the arena desegregate until owner Mike Uline gave in February 1948.

 

When Uline desegregated, it was perhaps the largest performing facility in the city to desegregate that had been formerly run Jim Crow up to that point in time.

 

A year before his capitulation, Uline was frank in his racial views. “Other people don’t want to mix with them, so why should I admit them? I want to do what the majority does.”

 

When questioned in 1945 about his refusal to admit black people to his Ice Capade shows while permitting them to attend professional boxing, Uline said “Boxing is savagery and Negroes can appreciate anything savage, but the ice shows are too educational and Negroes cannot understand educational sports.”

 

The first attempts at a boycott began in 1941 under the leadership of Dr. C. Herbert Marshall, president of the local NAACP.

 

Marshall denounced Uline’s cynical promotion of black professional fights while barring black Americans from other area events and called for a boycott.

 

Said Marshall, Uline’s policies are “an attempt to exploit the colored population of Washington on special occasions and still subject them to humiliation and discrimination when they attempt to attend other events” held at the arena.

 

Uline briefly desegregated in 1941 when Paul Robeson was permitted to hold a concert that benefited the National Negro Congress and the Washington Committee for Aid to China and both black and white patrons were admitted.

 

However Uline immediately went back to barring black patrons except at professional boxing events.

 

With the onset of World War II, the campaign against Uline took the back burner, but was revived after the war ended and was led by Dr. Edwin B Henderson, the superintendent of black physical education in the D.C. school system and NAACP activist.

 

The boycott campaign built slowly, but the NAACP, the Committee for Racial Democracy, the People’s Action Committee and the Committee Against Segregation in Recreation organized the picket lines and petition campaigns.

 

They were also supported by the YMCA and the Police Boys Club No. 2 who provided pickets.

 

The pickets concentrated the boycott on professional fights to which black people were admitted, urging them to boycott the events.

 

When the AAU desegregated amateur boxing in 1947, Uline began permitting mixed amateur fights, but still barred black people from attending the amateur fights.

 

Two events buoyed the protesters cause. It was announced that the D.C. National Guard Armory would begin hosting integrated events. While at 5,000 seats it was not quite as large as the Uline’s 8,000 seats, but it was in the same ballpark. The small Turner’s Arena at 2,000 seats was integrated, but had been too small to host premier events.

 

The integrated events at the Armory would cut into Uline’s business. At the same time the AAU pressured Uline to drop the ban on black patrons at AAU events.

 

On January 21, 1948, Uline threw in the towel and opened the gates to black people for the St. Louis-Washington Cap basketball game.

 

“The trend of the times affected my decision,” Uline said. He added that poor attendance at his arena was also a major factor.

 

“Negroes will be as welcome as anyone else,” Uline said. “There will be no segregation and they will receive the same attention as other spectators.”

 

Under pressure from pickets, Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University desegregated, in part, the same year. Private groups renting Lisner could still discriminate.

 

While efforts continued elsewhere, it would take the Mary Church Terrell’s Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the District of Columbia Anti-Discrimination Laws to finally break the barriers during a campaign 1950-53.

 

The Terrell-led group used a sit-in to seek to enforce the D.C. anti-discrimination laws of 1872 and 1873. They staged pickets and boycotts of downtown restaurants and other public facilities, winning many battles before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1953 that the so-called “lost laws” banning discrimination in public accommodations were still valid in the city.

 

Uline sold the arena in 1959. It was renamed the Washington Coliseum. During its life as an arena, it hosted professional boxing, hockey, basketball and wrestling, ice shows, the circus, one of President Eisenhower’s inaugural balls, a Nation of Islam rally, the Beatles first U.S. concert and a Bob Dylan concert, among dozens of other prominent events.

 

After closing, it was used as a detention facility during the 1971 Mayday protests and later as a trash transfer station. It was renovated in 2016 and partially occupied by an REI store.

 

For a history of the effort to desegregate performing arts venues in Washington, D.C., see washingtonareaspark.com/2013/03/14/dcs-old-jim-crow-rocke...

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmJWczcL

 

The photographer is unknown. The original source is unknown. The image was obtained via an Internet sale.

 

Arrested Civil Rights protesters charged with trespass for protesting segregated lunch counters at Woolworth's, Cameron Village at Raleigh jail, February 12, 1960.

First Nations, Metis Indian and Inuit children were removed from their families and sent to Residential Schools.

 

Brother and sisters were separated in segregation and forbidden contact. Forbidden to speak their native language they were schooled in English. The Government reports that this was intended as a Policy of Assimilation.

 

Separated from their culture, their families back home, the children were subjected to violence and abuse, both physical and sexual.

 

The schools began operating in the 40s but the last one was shut down only in 1996.

 

Prime Minister Harper issued an offical apology and financial compensation for the victims. It's not enough. A whole generation has been scarred for life.

 

Some other issues of the Protest include: pipelines, pollution and fish farms.

 

Here above a shaming ceremony is directed at the Canadian Government at the Centre Block of Parliament on Parliament Hill.

 

I'm just a white guy. Sure wish I had a First Nations Guide who could explain to me what I am seeing. Oh, well.

 

Here's my photoset of the event HERE: www.flickr.com/photos/mikeygottawa/sets/72157646024468431

 

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by gender..

Walk to the Balcony, a colorization of a 1939 black and white photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Here's a link to the source image: www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c15416/

In the fall of 1947, Martin Luther King delivered his first sermon at the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Ebenezer’s congregation voted to license King as a minister soon afterward, and he was ordained in February 1948. King went on to serve as Ebenezer’s associate minister during his breaks from Crozer Theological Seminary and from his doctoral studies at Boston University School of Theology through early 1954. He returned as co-pastor with his father, Martin Luther King, Sr., serving from 1960 until his assassination in 1968.

 

The church was founded in 1886 by its first minister, John Andrew Parker. In 1894 Alfred Daniel Williams, King, Jr.’s maternal grandfather, became Ebenezer’s second pastor. Under Williams the church grew from 13 members to nearly 750 members by 1913. Williams moved the church twice before purchasing a lot on the corner of Auburn Avenue and Jackson Street and, announced plans to raise $25,000 for a new building that would include an auditorium and gallery seating for 1,250 people. In March 1914 the Ebenezer congregation celebrated the groundbreaking for its new building. After the death of Williams in 1931, King, Sr., who had married Williams’ daughter Alberta in 1926, became pastor.

 

With King, Sr. as pastor and his wife, Alberta Williams King, serving as musical director, the King family spent much of their time at Ebenezer. King, Jr. later described how his earliest relationships were formed at church: ‘‘My best friends were in Sunday School, and it was the Sunday School that helped me to build the capacity for getting along with people’’ (Papers 1:359). While in seminary, King often preached at Ebenezer. He delivered some of his most enduring sermons for the first time at Ebenezer, including ‘‘The Dimensions of a Complete Life,’’ ‘‘What Is Man?’’ and ‘‘Loving Your Enemies.’’

 

After King accepted the pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, members of Ebenezer’s congregation attended his October 1954 installation service, prompting King to express his gratitude: ‘‘Your prayers and words of encouragement have meant a great deal to me in my ministry; and you can never know what your presence in such large numbers meant to me at the beginning of my pastorate. I want you to know Ebenezer, that I feel greatly indebted to you; and that whatever success I might achieve in my life’s work you will have helped to make it possible’’ (Papers 2:314).

 

In November 1959, King accepted Ebenezer’s call to join his father as co-pastor, a move that brought him closer to the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His first sermon as copastor at Ebenezer was ‘‘The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.’’ After King’s assassination in 1968, his brother, A. D. Williams King, was installed as Ebenezer’s co-pastor. King, Sr. continued as pastor until 1975, and Coretta Scott King continued to attend services at Ebenezer until her death.

 

Magliana Camp, Rom Settlement, Suburbs of Rome

 

April 2011

 

Italy’s Roma still segregated and without prospects

 

Discriminatory laws, policies and practices which marginalize Italy’s Roma must be urgently changed, Amnesty international said in a briefing published today.

 

On the edge: Roma, forced evictions and segregation in Italy, exposes the continuing systematic failure of Italian authorities to uphold Roma rights.

 

In the 10 months since Italy’s highest administrative court ruled the emergency laws targeting the Roma, the “Nomad Emergency”, unlawful, neither reparation nor effective remedy has been given to Roma whose rights were violated because of the three-and-a-half-years long state of emergency.

 

“The Italian government is not living up to its international obligations and to its commitments to the European Commission. Children, women and men living in camps continue to be evicted without adequate consultation, notice and alternative housing. Inhabitants of informal camps are the worst affected and continue to be kicked out at every opportunity,” said John Dalhuisen, Director of the Europe and Central Asia Programme.

 

“The recent opening of a new segregated camp, La Barbuta, outside Rome, is a very obvious example of the authorities’ failure to change.”

 

“Monti’s cabinet does not use the derogatory language of their predecessors. But when it comes to a transition from words to deeds, no real difference can be detected.”

 

Regardless of promises to promote equal treatment and improve Roma’s living conditions, included in the National Strategy for Roma Inclusion that the Italian government presented to the EU in February 2012, hundreds of Romani people in Rome and Milan have been forcibly evicted and left homeless this year.

 

Plans to close authorized or ‘tolerated’ camps continue despite a lack of genuine consultation, and adequate legal safeguards. Living conditions in most authorized camps remain very poor; conditions in informal camps are even worse, with little access to water, sanitation and energy. Ethnic segregation is perpetuated; and Roma remain largely excluded from social housing.

 

In many cases repeated forced evictions have led Roma to set up shacks in locations where they are exposed to extremely precarious conditions, with very poor access to water, sanitation and other services, and little if any protection from the weather, and infestations of rats and mice.

 

“I am mighty upset. I lived in an authorized camp, I worked, my children were going to school, and now I have nothing,” said Daniel who has lived in Italy for 12 years and was a resident of the authorized camp of Via Triboniano in Milan until he and his family were forcibly evicted from it in May 2010. He is currently living in an informal camp in Milan.

 

According to local authority sources in Rome, in the first six months of 2012, more than 850 people were evicted from informal camps. Emergency shelter was offered only in 209 cases –all of them mothers and children. Only five mothers and their nine children accepted the offers, as the majority refused to be separated from their families.

 

“Roma in Italy remain trapped in bureaucratic hurdles ensuring they won’t qualify for the scarce social housing,” said Dalhuisen.

 

“Only last week, the Italian government co-hosted the sixth World Urban Forum which highlighted a need to improve quality of life. It’s high time for Italian authorities to stop flouting their international obligations and improve the quality of life for the Roma living in authorized and informal camps by providing them with adequate housing, which is their right. Romani families must be enabled to integrate and become equal members of society.”

 

Amnesty International also recommends that the European Commission starts an infringement procedure against Italy under the Race Equality Directive for its discriminatory treatment of the Roma in relation to their right to adequate housing.

 

Judicial developments

Some hope for the rights of Roma in Italy comes from two recent court decisions related to forced evictions and segregation of Roma.

 

On 31 July 2012 the mayor of Rome ordered the closure of the camp of Tor de’ Cenci, home to Roma from Bosnia and Macedonia since 1996, officially because of the lack of hygiene and related risks to the health of the inhabitants.

 

The only alternative housing offered was in the segregated camps of La Barbuta and Castel Romano, both located at a great distance from the city and isolated from services.

 

Following a request by some of Tor de’ Cenci camp’s remaining families, on 27 August the Lazio administrative tribunal temporarily suspended the mayor’s eviction order and reminded the authorities that they are responsible for maintaining adequate health and safety conditions in the camp until the court can take a definitive decision on the eviction.

 

In the meantime, between the end of July and the beginning of August 2012, approximately 200 people were transferred from Tor de’ Cenci to La Barbuta, an isolated stretch of land sandwiched between railway tracks, Rome’s orbital road and the runway of Ciampino airport.

 

Then on 4 August 2012, Rome’s Civil Court accepted a request by local NGOs to stop new transfers of Roma to La Barbuta as a precautionary measure, while it considers claims about the discriminatory nature of the housing provided at the new camp.

 

www.amnesty.org/en/news/italy-s-roma-still-segregated-and...

One of two remaining instances of graffiti inscribed in pencil on the walls of Tule Lake Segregation Center Jail.

 

Tule Lake Segregation Center Jail

 

Tule Lake National Monument

 

National Historic Landmark

Exposition : The color line

Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017

 

Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.

 

—————

 

« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».

 

Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.

 

Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.

Departing Rothesay Bay, Isle of Bute, Scotland.

 

Continuing the Lewis and Clark-class tradition of honoring legendary pioneers and explorers, the Navy's replenishment ship recognizes civil rights activist Medgar Evers (1925-1963) who forever changed race relations in America. At a time when US wrestling to end segregation and racial injustice, Evers led efforts to secure the right to vote for all African Americans and to integrate public facilities, schools, and restaurants. On June 12, 1963, the Mississippi native was assassinated in the driveway of his home. Evers' death prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask the Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill. Medgar Evers was launched on 29 October 2011, and christened on 12 November, sponsored by Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams. Military Sealift Command accepted delivery of Medgar Everson 24 April 2012,

 

Designated T-AKE-13, Medgar Evers will be the 13th ship of the class, and was built by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego. As a combat logistics force ship, Medgar Evers will help the Navy maintain a worldwide forward presence by delivering ammunition, food, fuel, and other dry cargo to U.S. and allied ships at sea.

 

As part of Military Sealift Command's Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force, Medgar Evers is designated a United States Naval Ship (USNS). A dry cargo ship and will be crewed by 124 civil service mariners and 11 Navy sailors. The ship is designed to operate independently for extended periods at sea, can carry a helicopter, is 689 feet in length, has an overall beam of 106 feet, has a navigational draft of 30 feet, displaces approximately 42,000 tons, and is capable of reaching a speed of 20 knots using a single-shaft, diesel-electric propulsion system.

  

Displacement: 23,852 light; 40,289 full; 16446 dead.

Length: 210m (689ft) overall; 199.3m (654 ft) waterline,

Beam: 32.3m (106ft)extreme; 32.3 (106ft) waterline

Draft: 9.1m (30ft) maximum; 9.4 (31ft) limit.

Speed: 20kn (37kph)

 

Armament: 2-6 x 0.5 (12.7mm machine guns; or 7.62 medium machine guns

Aircraft: 2xhelicopter, either Sikorsky MH60-S Knighthawk or Aerospatiale Super Puma.

Troops: 36 military; 13 helicopter detachment.

Rapid stratification in soft sand

Rapid strata formation in soft sand (field evidence).

 

Stratified, soft sand deposit. demonstrates the rapid stratification principle.

Photos of strata formation in soft sand on a beach, created by tidal action of the sea.

 

Formed in a single, tidal event of turbulent, high tide.

 

See other examples: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/

Rapid stratification. Field evidence.

 

This natural example of rapid, simultaneous stratification refutes the Superposition Principle, the Principle of Original Horizontality and the Principle of Lateral Continuity.

 

Superposition only applies on a rare occasion of sedimentary deposits in perfectly, still water. Superposition is required for the long evolutionary timescale, but the evidence shows it is not the general rule, as was once believed. Most sediment is laid down in moving water, where particle segregation is the rule, resulting in the simultaneous deposition of strata/layers as shown in the photo.

Where the water movement is very turbulent, violent, or catastrophic, great depths of stratified sediment can be laid down in a short time. Certainly not the many millions of years assumed by evolutionists.

The composition of strata formed in any deposition event. is related to whatever materials are in the sediment mix. Whatever is in the mix will be automatically sorted into strata/layers. It could be sand, or material added from mud slides, erosion of chalk deposits, volcanic ash etc. Any organic material (potential fossils) will also be sorted and buried within the rapidly, formed strata.

 

Location: Sandown beach, Isle of Wight. Formed 07/12/2017, This field evidence demonstrates that multiple strata in sedimentary deposits do not need millions of years to form and can be formed rapidly. This natural example confirms the principle demonstrated by the sedimentation experiments carried out by Dr Guy Berthault and other sedimentologists. It calls into question the standard, multi-million year dating of sedimentary rocks, and the dating of fossils by depth of burial or position in the strata.

 

Strata lines/layers and folding and faulting are clearly visible in these photos.

 

Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/) and field studies of floods and volcanic action show that, rather than being formed by gradual, slow deposition of sucessive layers superimposed upon previous layers, with the strata or layers representing a timescale or even a particular, environmental epoch, particle segregation in moving water or airborne particles can form strata or layers very quickly, frequently, in a single event. Such field studies and the experiments show that there is no longer any reason to conclude that strata in sedimentary rocks relate to different geological eras and/or a multi-million year timescale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnBaqqQw8&feature=share&amp.... It also shows that the relative position of fossils in rocks is not indicative of an order of evolutionary succession. Obviously, the uniformitarian principle, on which the geologic column is based, can no longer be considered valid. And the multi-million, year dating of sedimentary rocks and fossils needs to be reassessed. Rapid deposition of stratified sediments also explains the enigma of polystrate fossils, i.e. large fossils that intersect several strata. In some cases, tree trunk fossils are found which intersect the strata of sedimentary rock up to forty feet in depth. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lycopsi... They must have been buried in stratified sediment in a short time (certainly not millions or even thousands of years), or they would have rotted away. youtu.be/vnzHU9VsliQ

 

In fact, the vast majority of fossils are found in good, intact condition, which is testament to their rapid burial. You don't get good fossils from gradual burial, because they would be damaged or destroyed by decay, predation or erosion. The existence of so many fossils in sedimentary rock on a global scale is stunning evidence for the rapid depostion of sedimentary rock as the general rule. It is obvious that all rock containing good intact fossils was formed from sediment laid down in a very short time, not millions, or even thousands of years.

 

See set of photos of other examples of rapid stratification: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/

 

Carbon dating of coal should not be possible if it is millions of years old, yet significant amounts of Carbon 14 have been detected in coal and other fossil material, which indicates that it is less than 50,000 years old. www.ldolphin.org/sewell/c14dating.html

 

www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm

 

Evolutionists confidently cite multi-million year ages for rocks and fossils, but what most people don't realise is that no one actually knows the age of sedimentary rocks or the fossils found within them. So how are evolutionists so sure of the ages they so confidently quote? The astonishing thing is they aren't. Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by radiometric methods*, and fossils can only be dated to less than 50,000 years with Carbon 14 dating. The method evolutionists use is based entirely on assumptions. Unbelievably, fossils are dated by the assumed age of rocks, and rocks are dated by the assumed age of fossils, that's right ... it is known as circular reasoning.

 

* Regarding the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which is claimed to be relevant to the dating of sedimentary rocks, in an occasional instance there is an igneous intrusion associated with a sedimentary deposit -

Prof. Aubouin says in his Précis de Géologie: "Each radioactive element disintegrates in a characteristic and constant manner, which depends neither on the physical state (no variation with pressure or temperature or any other external constraint) nor on the chemical state (identical for an oxide or a phosphate)."

"Rocks form when magma crystallizes. Crystallisation depends on pressure and temperature, from which radioactivity is independent. So, there is no relationship between radioactivity and crystallisation.

Consequently, radioactivity doesn't date the formation of rocks. Moreover, daughter elements contained in rocks result mainly from radioactivity in magma where gravity separates the heavier parent element, from the lighter daughter element. Thus radiometric dating has no chronological signification." Dr. Guy Berthault www.sciencevsevolution.org/Berthault.htm

 

Visit the fossil museum:

www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/

 

Just how good are peer reviews of scientific papers?

www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

www.examiner.com/article/want-to-publish-science-paper-ju...

 

The neo-Darwinian idea that the human genome consists entirely of an accumulation of billions of mutations is, quite obviously, completely bonkers. Nevertheless, it is compulsorily taught in schools and universities as 'science'.

www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/35505679183

Julius Hobson (left) reads a landmark decision on his civil rights suit against Washington, D.C. public schools along with attorney Bill Higgs June 20, 1967.

 

Hobson, a long-time school and civil rights activist, filed the suit charging that the District of Columbia had failed to desegregate under the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Bolling v. Sharpe by segregating teachers, putting black students in lower “tracks” that denied them the ability to go to college and left black schools overcrowded while white schools were underutilized.

 

U.S. Court of Appeals Judge James Skelly Wright ruled that the city practiced “criminal” discrimination against poor black children and that any discrimination by intent or by “accident” are equally unconstitutional.

 

Wright outlawed the track system that placed students in one of four tracks: vocational, general, college-bound and honors. The overwhelming majority of black students were placed in vocational and general.

 

The court also ordered the school system to “substantially integrate” faculties. White teachers had been assigned to schools west of Rock Creek Park while black teachers were assigned in black neighborhoods.

 

Further Wright ordered the school system to file a plan with the court to increase student integration.

 

Mainstream civil rights leaders and groups had distanced themselves from Hobson whom they regarded as a radical and he financed the $13,000 cost of the suit by soliciting small donations.

 

At one point he had to file for relief from the court because he didn’t have the money to print 40 copies of an appeal as required by law.

 

Prior to the decision, Hobson attempted to organize a boycott of the city’s schools on May 1st, attempting to reprise the 1947 boycott in Northeast Washington by Gardner Bishop that ultimately led to the Bolling v. Sharpe decision.

 

Mainstream civil rights leaders roundly condemned the planned boycott and fewer than 1,000 students boycotted school that day.

 

Biography:

 

Julius Wilson Hobson was a crusading civil rights activist and self-described socialist in the District of Columbia who was later elected to the D.C. school board and city council.

 

Hobson was born in Birmingham, Alabama where as a child he cleaned floors in a public library, but was unable to borrow books due to race laws in the Jim Crow south.

 

After graduation from high school, he attended Tuskegee Institute but was called away from his studies due to World War II. During the war, he served in the United States Army in Europe where was awarded three bronze stars for his many piloting missions for artillery observers.

 

After returning from the war, Hobson graduated from Tuskegee Institute and briefly attended Columbia University before moving to Washington, D.C. to attend graduate school in economics at Howard University.

 

In the early 1950s, he walked his son past the all-white neighborhood school to Slowe elementary in the Brookland area and became increasingly angry.

 

“That was just about the first fight I got involved in,” Hobson said years later. He became president of the local PTA arguing that students at overcrowded black schools should be permitted to go to under-utilized white schools.

 

This was the era of pickets, demonstrations and a student strike that was organized by Consolidated Parents over the same issue in another part of Northeast Washington that resulted in the Bolling v. Sharpe U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1954 that ordered desegregation of D.C. schools.

 

Hobson became increasingly active—first in his local civic association and rising to become vice president of the Federation of Civil Associations and also becoming a member of the executive committee of the local NAACP.

 

In 1961, the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) asked Hobson to be its president. For three years he led pickets—primarily directed at businesses that failed to hire black personnel. When the picketing was over, 120 businesses had hired black workers.

 

While Washington’s transit system first opened the operator job to African Americans in 1955, the company dragged its feet on hiring any substantial number of black drivers. After Hobson threatened a boycott, the D.C. Transit Company hired 44 black operators and clerks.

 

CORE conducted a sit in at the Washington Hospital Center and not long afterward, the facility desegregated its wards.

 

He led a march of 4,500 people to the District Building (now John Wilson) demanding an end to segregated housing in the city. Shortly afterward the appointed commissioners outlawed segregation in housing rental units.

 

Hobson’s confrontational style made enemies not only of white supremacists, but within the civil rights movement itself. In 1964 the national leadership of CORE expelled him for running a dictatorship in the Washington, D.C. chapter.

 

Hobson formed his own group and, if anything, engaged in even wilder theatrics. To dramatize the rat problem in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, Hobson drove around the city with possum-sized rats in cages and threatened to release them in Georgetown unless the city focused on eradicating rats in poor and working class neighborhoods.

 

His greatest accomplishment though came through meticulous research into the school system’s expenditure of resources.

 

Despite the Bolling v. Sharpe decision in 1954, the city schools spent far more proportionately on white students than on black students.

 

Hobson took aim with a lawsuit at the city’s tracking system where black students were channeled into vocational education while white students were targeted for academics.

 

On June 19, 1967, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Skelly Wright agreed with Hobson and abolished the track system and ordered schools integrated even if it meant busing students from overcrowded black schools to white schools west of Rock Creek Park.

 

Hobson was an outspoken foe of freeway construction and supporter of building the Washington Metro system. He was a leader of a bus boycott in 1968 protesting an increase in the fare.

 

Hobson turned his attention to the District’s newly created elected positions, running for and winning an at-large seat on the school board in 1968. The following year he ran for a ward seat and lost.

 

Next he ran for D.C. Delegate to Congress in 1971 under the Statehood Party banner, but lost to Democrat Walter Fauntroy.

 

He was the People’s Party, a loose-knit left wing party, candidate for Vice President in 1972 with pediatrician Benjamin Spock as the Presidential candidate.

 

He was elected as an at-large councilmember in the District in 1974 again under the Statehood Party banner and served until his death in 1977 after a long bout with spinal cancer.

 

His reputation was tarnished after his death in 1981 when the Washington Post obtained his FBI file under a Freedom of Information request that revealed he had been a source of information for the government for more than five years.

 

The Post article reported that FBI Agent Elmer Lee Todd "said he met regularly with Hobson — sometimes as often as twice a month — from about 1961 to late 1964, mostly to discuss and assess potentially violent or disruptive demonstrations, organizations and individuals in the civil rights movement."

 

Specifically, Hobson apparently was paid $100 to $300 in expenses to monitor and report on civil rights demonstration plans at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.

 

On another occasion, he reported on a 1965 meeting in Detroit involving the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM)—a short lived black liberation group that advocated armed self-defense; and, on still another, he warned agents of possible violence at a Philadelphia demonstration that same year, according to the file.

 

Friends defended him saying that he often joked about telling the FBI stories but others condemned the incongruous behavior as a stain on his otherwise exemplary record.

 

Many of those who knew him preferred to ignore the FBI allegations and remember him more fondly.

 

Longtime friend and ally Sam Smith quoted Hobson on the black church:

 

"I was asked to speak at his church one Sunday. I went over there and when I went there I looked over the congregation.”

 

“I would say the average person in there had on a pair of Thom McAn shoes, that their suits cost an average $35 a piece, that their shirts were from Hecht’s basements and that they were very poor and very illiterate - almost illiterate - people who were emotionally shocked just came to the church to let out this scream.”

 

“[The minister] took up a love offering, he took up a minister's travel offering and then he took up a regular - he took up five or six offerings.”

 

“So when he got to me to speak, I got up and said, 'God damn it, if this is Christianity, I want no part of it.' And 'this son of a bitch is stealing from you and the thing is, he's not just stealing your money, he's stealing your minds. And I refuse to be a part of this.' And I walked off.”

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskSX8PSt

 

Photo by Joseph Silverman. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

Exposition : The color line

Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017

 

Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.

 

—————

 

« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».

 

Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.

 

Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.

Jackson, MS (est. 1821, pop. 165,000)

 

Marker:

 

front

"On May 28, 1961, a Greyhound bus with nine Freedom Riders aboard arrived here, the third group of Riders into Jackson. The first two came on Trailways buses May 24. That summer 329 people were arrested in Jackson for integrating public transportation facilities. Convicted on "breach of peace" and jailed, most refused bail and were sent to the state penitentiary. Their protest worked. In September 1961, the federal government mandated that segregation in interstate transportation end."

 

back

"Greyhound Bus Station This former Greyhound bus station was the scene of many historic arrests in 1961, when Freedom Riders challenged racial segregation in Jackson’s bus and train stations and airport. The Freedom Riders, part of a campaign created by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), pressured the federal government to enforce the law regarding illegal racially separate waiting rooms, rest rooms, and restaurants—common in public transportation facilities across the South.

 

"On May 4, 1961, thirteen Riders—blacks and whites, men and women—left Washington, D.C., on two buses. Trained in nonviolent direct action, they planned to desegregate bus stations throughout the South. They integrated stations in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia with few incidents but were attacked by vicious mobs in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama. The Kennedy administration implored them to stop, a call echoed by the media and some civil rights leaders. The Riders, however, reinforced with new volunteers from the Nashville Student Movement, were determined to continue.

 

"On May 24, two buses of Freedom Riders left Montgomery bound for Jackson, with highway patrolmen and National Guardsmen as armed guards. Instead of a protest mob, policemen met them in Jackson, urging them to “move on” when the Riders tried to use facilities denied them. When the Riders refused, they were arrested, charged with “breach of peace,” and quickly convicted.

 

"Embracing the "jail-no bail" tactic, they invited new Riders from around the country to join them in Jackson. Within three weeks the city’s jails were full, and the Riders were transferred to the state penitentiary at Parchman, where most served six weeks, suffering indignities and injustices with fortitude and resolve. Between May 24 and September 13, 329 people were arrested in Jackson—half black, half white, and a quarter of them women. Most were between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They came from thirty-nine states and ten other countries; forty-three were from Mississippi.

 

"On September 23, the Interstate Commerce Commission mandated an end to segregation in all bus and train stations and airports. The victorious Freedom Riders left a legacy of historic changes, proving the value of nonviolent direct action, providing a template for future campaigns, and helping jump-start the movement in Mississippi."

 

Old Greyhound Station History

 

• in the mid-1930s, as America struggled through Great Depression, Greyhound Lines adopted a Streamline Moderne design for their buses & terminals, echoing the speed lines of their Super Coaches which, like the Greyhound logo, promised a swift, state of the art ride • brought in engineer Dwight Austin (1897-1960) to create the new Super Coach design & Louisville architect William Strudwick Arrasmith (1898-1965) to reimagine Greyhound terminal design

 

• in 1937, Greyhound Lines contracted for a Streamline Moderne style terminal in jn Jackson, topped by a vertical, illuminated "Greyhound" sign • the bldg. was faced with blue Vitrolux structural glass panels and ivory Vitrolite trim • included a coffee shop with a horseshoe-shaped counter & bathing facilities for women (a bath tub) and men (a shower)

 

• the design is widely believed to be one of the ~60 Moderne Greyhound stations credited to Arrasmith, although photographic evidence suggests that Memphis architect William Nowland Van Powell (1904-1977) — working with George Mahan Jr. (1887-1967) — was responsible for the design, with or without Arrasmith as the consulting architect

 

• restoration architect Robert Parker Adams acquired the then threatened bldg. in 1988, moved in after restoration, retaining the original neon sign —Wikipedia

 

The Farish Street Historic District

 

“but out of the bitterness we wrought an ancient past here in this separate place and made our village here.” —African Village by Margaret Walker (1915-1998)

 

• during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War, white Southerners struggled to reclaim their lives as millions of black Southerners sought new ones • with the stroke of a pen, the Emancipation Proclamation had transformed African slaves into African Americans & released them into hostile, vengeful & well-armed white communities amid the ruins of a once flourishing society

 

• the antebellum South had been home to over 262,000 rights-restricted "free blacks" • post-emancipation, the free black population soared to 4.1 million • given that the South had sacrificed 20% of it's white males to the war, blacks now comprised over half the total population of some southern states • uneducated & penniless, most of the new black Americans depended on the Freedman's Bureau for food & clothing

 

• the social & political implications of this disruptive shift in demographics fueled a violence-laced strain of American racism • in this toxic environment, de facto racial segregation was a given, ordained as Mississippi law in 1890 • with Yankees (the U.S. Army) patrolling Jackson & Maine-born Republican Adelbert Ames installed in the Governor's Mansion, the Farish Street neighborhood was safe haven for freedmen

 

• as homeless African American refugees poured into Jackson from all reaches of the devastated state, a black economy flickered to life in the form of a few Farish Street mom-and-pops • unwelcome at white churches, the liberated slaves built their own, together with an entire neighborhood's worth of buildings, most erected between 1890 & 1930

 

• by 1908 1/3 of the district was black-owned, & half of the black families were homeowners • the 1913-1914 business directory listed 11 African American attorneys, 4 doctors, 3 dentists, 2 jewelers, 2 loan companies & a bank, all in the Farish St. neighborhood • the community also had 2 hospitals & numerous retail & service stores —City Data

 

• by mid-20th c. Farish Street, the state's largest economically independent African American community, had become the cultural, political & business hub for central Mississippi's black citizens [photos] • on Saturdays, countryfolk would come to town on special busses to sell produce & enjoy BBQ while they listened to live street music • vendors sold catfish fried in large black kettles over open fires • hot tamales, a Mississippi staple, were also a popular street food —The Farish District, Its Architecture and Cultural Heritage

 

“I’ve seen pictures. You couldn’t even get up the street. It was a two-way street back then, and it was wall-to-wall folks. It was just jam-packed: people shopping, people going to clubs, people eating, people dancing.” — Geno Lee, owner of the Big Apple Inn

 

• as Jackson's black economy grew, Farish Street entertainment venues prospered, drawing crowds with live & juke blues music • the musicians found or first recorded in the Neighborhood include Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson II & Elmore James

 

• Farish Street was also home to talent scouts & record labels like H.C. Speir, & Trumpet Records, Ace Records • both Speir & Trumpet founder Lillian McMurry were white Farish St. business owners whose furniture stores also housed recording studios • both discovered & promoted local Blues musicians —The Mississippi Encyclopedia

 

• Richard Henry Beadle (1884-1971), a prominent Jackson photographer, had a studio at 199-1/2 N. Farish • he was the son of Samuel Alfred Beadle (1857-1932), African-American poet & attorney • born the son of a slave, he was the author of 3 published books of poetry & stories

 

• The Alamo Theatre was mainly a movie theater but periodically presented musical acts such as Nat King Cole, Elmore James & Otis Spann • Wednesday was talent show night • 12 year old Jackson native Dorothy Moore entered the contest, won & went on to a successful recording career, highlighted by her 1976 no. 1 R&B hit, "Misty Blue" [listen] (3:34)

 

• in their heyday, Farish Street venues featured African American star performers such as Bessie Smith & the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington & Dinah Washington —Farish Street Records

 

• on 28 May, 1963, John Salter, a mixed race (white/Am. Indian) professor at historically black Tougaloo College, staged a sit-in with 3 African American students at the "Whites Only" Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Jackson • they were refused service • an estimated 300 white onlookers & reporters filled the store

 

• police officers arrived but did not intercede as, in the words of student Anne Moody, "all hell broke loose" while she and the other black students at the counter prayed • "A man rushed forward, threw [student] Memphis from his seat and slapped my face. Then another man who worked in the store threw me against an adjoining counter." • this act of civil disobedience is remembered as the the signature event of Jackson's protest movement —L.A. Times

 

"This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things." —John Salter

 

• the Woolworth Sit-in was one of many non-violent protests by blacks against racial segregation in the South • in 1969 integration of Jackson's public schools began • this new era in Jackson history also marked the beginning of Farish Street's decline —The Farish Street Project

 

"Integration was a great thing for black people, but it was not a great thing for black business... Before integration, Farish Street was the black mecca of Mississippi.” — Geno Lee, Big Apple Inn

 

• for African Americans, integration offered the possibility to shop outside of the neighborhood at white owned stores • as increasing numbers of black shoppers did so, Farish Street traffic declined, businesses closed & the vacated buildings fell into disrepair

 

• in 1983, a Farish St. redevelopment plan was presented

• in 1995 the street was designated an endangered historic place by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

• in the 1990s, having redeveloped Memphis' Beale Street, Performa Entertainment Real Estate was selected to redevelop Farish St

• in 2008, The Farish Street Group took over the project with plans for a B.B. King's Blues Club to anchor the entertainment district

• in 2012, having spent $21 million, the redevelopment — limited to repaving of the street, stabilizating some abandoned buildings & demolishing many of the rest — was stuck in limbo —Michael Minn

 

• 2017 update:

 

"Six mayors and 20 years after the City of Jackson became involved in efforts to develop the Farish Street Historic District, in hopes of bringing it back to the bustling state of its heyday, the project sits at a standstill. Recent Mayor Tony Yarber has referred to the district as “an albatross.” In September of 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sanctioned the City of Jackson, the Jackson Redevelopment Authority, and developers for misspending federal funds directed toward the development of the Farish Street Historic District. Work is at a halt and "not scheduled to resume until December 2018, when the City of Jackson repays HUD $1.5 million." —Mississippi Dept. of Archives & History

 

• Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District, National Register # 80002245, 1980

Rapid strata formation in soft sand (field evidence).

Photos of strata formation in soft sand on a beach, created by tidal action of the sea.

Formed in a single, tidal event of turbulent, high tide.

 

See many other examples of rapid stratification with geological features: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/

 

This natural example of rapid, simultaneous stratification refutes the Superposition Principle, the Principle of Original Horizontality and the Principle of Lateral Continuity.

 

Superposition only applies on a rare occasion of sedimentary deposits in perfectly, still water. Superposition is required for the long evolutionary timescale, but the evidence shows it is not the general rule, as was once believed. Most sediment is laid down in moving water, where particle segregation is the rule, resulting in the simultaneous deposition of strata/layers as shown in the photo.

Where the water movement is very turbulent, violent, or catastrophic, great depths of stratified sediment can be laid down in a short time. Certainly not the many millions of years assumed by evolutionists.

The composition of strata formed in any deposition event. is related to whatever materials are in the sediment mix. Whatever is in the mix will be automatically sorted into strata/layers. It could be sand, or material added from mud slides, erosion of chalk deposits, volcanic ash etc. Any organic material (potential fossils) will also be sorted and buried within the rapidly, formed strata.

 

Stratified, soft sand deposit. demonstrates the rapid, stratification principle.

Important, field evidence which supports the work of the eminent, sedimentologist Dr Guy Berthault.

(Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/)

And also the experimental work of Dr M.E. Clark (Professor Emeritus, U of Illinois @ Urbana), Andrew Rodenbeck and Dr. Henry Voss, (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/)

 

Location: Sandown beach, Isle of Wight. Formed 17/11/2016, This field evidence demonstrates that multiple strata in sedimentary deposits do not need millions of years to form and can be formed rapidly. This natural example confirms the principle demonstrated by the sedimentation experiments carried out by Dr Guy Berthault and other sedimentologists. It calls into question the standard, multi-million year dating of sedimentary rocks, and the dating of fossils by depth of burial or position in the strata.

 

Strata lines/layers and cross bedding is present in this example.

 

Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/) and field studies of floods and volcanic action show that, rather than being formed by gradual, slow deposition of sucessive layers superimposed upon previous layers, with the strata or layers representing a timescale or even a particular, environmental epoch, particle segregation in moving water or airborne particles can form strata or layers very quickly, frequently, in a single event. Such field studies and the experiments show that there is no longer any reason to conclude that strata in sedimentary rocks relate to different geological eras and/or a multi-million year timescale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnBaqqQw8&feature=share&amp.... It also shows that the relative position of fossils in rocks is not indicative of an order of evolutionary succession. Obviously, the uniformitarian principle, on which the geologic column is based, can no longer be considered valid. And the multi-million, year dating of sedimentary rocks and fossils needs to be reassessed. Rapid deposition of stratified sediments also explains the enigma of polystrate fossils, i.e. large fossils that intersect several strata. In some cases, tree trunk fossils are found which intersect the strata of sedimentary rock up to forty feet in depth. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lycopsi... They must have been buried in stratified sediment in a short time (certainly not millions or even thousands of years), or they would have rotted away. youtu.be/vnzHU9VsliQ

 

In fact, the vast majority of fossils are found in good, intact condition, which is testament to their rapid burial. You don't get good fossils from gradual burial, because they would be damaged or destroyed by decay, predation or erosion. The existence of so many fossils in sedimentary rock on a global scale is stunning evidence for the rapid depostion of sedimentary rock as the general rule. It is obvious that all rock containing good intact fossils was formed from sediment laid down in a very short time, not millions, or even thousands of years.

 

See set of photos of other examples of rapid stratification: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/

 

Carbon dating of coal should not be possible if it is millions of years old, yet significant amounts of Carbon 14 have been detected in coal and other fossil material, which indicates that it is less than 50,000 years old. www.ldolphin.org/sewell/c14dating.html

 

www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm

 

Evolutionists confidently cite multi-million year ages for rocks and fossils, but what most people don't realise is that no one actually knows the age of sedimentary rocks or the fossils found within them. So how are evolutionists so sure of the ages they so confidently quote? The astonishing thing is they aren't. Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by radiometric methods*, and fossils can only be dated to less than 50,000 years with Carbon 14 dating. The method evolutionists use is based entirely on assumptions. Unbelievably, fossils are dated by the assumed age of rocks, and rocks are dated by the assumed age of fossils, that's right ... it is known as circular reasoning.

 

* Regarding the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which is claimed to be relevant to the dating of sedimentary rocks, in an occasional instance there is an igneous intrusion associated with a sedimentary deposit -

Prof. Aubouin says in his Précis de Géologie: "Each radioactive element disintegrates in a characteristic and constant manner, which depends neither on the physical state (no variation with pressure or temperature or any other external constraint) nor on the chemical state (identical for an oxide or a phosphate)."

"Rocks form when magma crystallizes. Crystallisation depends on pressure and temperature, from which radioactivity is independent. So, there is no relationship between radioactivity and crystallisation.

Consequently, radioactivity doesn't date the formation of rocks. Moreover, daughter elements contained in rocks result mainly from radioactivity in magma where gravity separates the heavier parent element, from the lighter daughter element. Thus radiometric dating has no chronological signification." Dr. Guy Berthault www.sciencevsevolution.org/Berthault.htm

 

Visit the fossil museum:

www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/

 

Just how good are peer reviews of scientific papers?

www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

www.examiner.com/article/want-to-publish-science-paper-ju...

 

The neo-Darwinian idea that the human genome consists entirely of an accumulation of billions of mutations is, quite obviously, completely bonkers. Nevertheless, it is compulsorily taught in schools and universities as 'science'.

www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/35505679183

Jackson, MS (est. 1821, pop. 165,000)

 

Marker:

 

front

"On May 28, 1961, a Greyhound bus with nine Freedom Riders aboard arrived here, the third group of Riders into Jackson. The first two came on Trailways buses May 24. That summer 329 people were arrested in Jackson for integrating public transportation facilities. Convicted on "breach of peace" and jailed, most refused bail and were sent to the state penitentiary. Their protest worked. In September 1961, the federal government mandated that segregation in interstate transportation end."

 

back

"Greyhound Bus Station This former Greyhound bus station was the scene of many historic arrests in 1961, when Freedom Riders challenged racial segregation in Jackson’s bus and train stations and airport. The Freedom Riders, part of a campaign created by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), pressured the federal government to enforce the law regarding illegal racially separate waiting rooms, rest rooms, and restaurants—common in public transportation facilities across the South.

 

"On May 4, 1961, thirteen Riders—blacks and whites, men and women—left Washington, D.C., on two buses. Trained in nonviolent direct action, they planned to desegregate bus stations throughout the South. They integrated stations in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia with few incidents but were attacked by vicious mobs in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama. The Kennedy administration implored them to stop, a call echoed by the media and some civil rights leaders. The Riders, however, reinforced with new volunteers from the Nashville Student Movement, were determined to continue.

 

"On May 24, two buses of Freedom Riders left Montgomery bound for Jackson, with highway patrolmen and National Guardsmen as armed guards. Instead of a protest mob, policemen met them in Jackson, urging them to “move on” when the Riders tried to use facilities denied them. When the Riders refused, they were arrested, charged with “breach of peace,” and quickly convicted.

 

"Embracing the "jail-no bail" tactic, they invited new Riders from around the country to join them in Jackson. Within three weeks the city’s jails were full, and the Riders were transferred to the state penitentiary at Parchman, where most served six weeks, suffering indignities and injustices with fortitude and resolve. Between May 24 and September 13, 329 people were arrested in Jackson—half black, half white, and a quarter of them women. Most were between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They came from thirty-nine states and ten other countries; forty-three were from Mississippi.

 

"On September 23, the Interstate Commerce Commission mandated an end to segregation in all bus and train stations and airports. The victorious Freedom Riders left a legacy of historic changes, proving the value of nonviolent direct action, providing a template for future campaigns, and helping jump-start the movement in Mississippi."

 

Old Greyhound Station History

 

• in the mid-1930s, as America struggled through Great Depression, Greyhound Lines adopted a Streamline Moderne design for their buses & terminals, echoing the speed lines of their Super Coaches which, like the Greyhound logo, promised a swift, state of the art ride • brought in engineer Dwight Austin (1897-1960) to create the new Super Coach design & Louisville architect William Strudwick Arrasmith (1898-1965) to reimagine Greyhound terminal design

 

• in 1937, Greyhound Lines contracted for a Streamline Moderne style terminal in Jackson, topped by a vertical, illuminated "Greyhound" sign • the bldg. was faced with blue Vitrolux structural glass panels and ivory Vitrolite trim • included a coffee shop with a horseshoe-shaped counter & bathing facilities for women (a bath tub) and men (a shower)

 

• the design is widely believed to be one of the ~60 Moderne Greyhound stations credited to Arrasmith, although photographic evidence suggests that Memphis architect William Nowland Van Powell (1904-1977) — working with George Mahan Jr. (1887-1967) — was responsible for the design, with or without Arrasmith as the consulting architect

 

• restoration architect Robert Parker Adams acquired the then threatened bldg. in 1988, moved in after restoration, retaining the original neon sign —Wikipedia

 

The Farish Street Historic District

 

“but out of the bitterness we wrought an ancient past here in this separate place and made our village here.” —African Village by Margaret Walker (1915-1998)

 

• during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War, white Southerners struggled to reclaim their lives as millions of black Southerners sought new ones • with the stroke of a pen, the Emancipation Proclamation had transformed African slaves into African Americans & released them into hostile, vengeful & well-armed white communities amid the ruins of a once flourishing society

 

• the antebellum South had been home to over 262,000 rights-restricted "free blacks" • post-emancipation, the free black population soared to 4.1 million • given that the South had sacrificed 20% of it's white males to the war, blacks now comprised over half the total population of some southern states • uneducated & penniless, most of the new black Americans depended on the Freedman's Bureau for food & clothing

 

• the social & political implications of this disruptive shift in demographics fueled a violence-laced strain of American racism • in this toxic environment, de facto racial segregation was a given, ordained as Mississippi law in 1890 • with Yankees (the U.S. Army) patrolling Jackson & Maine-born Republican Adelbert Ames installed in the Governor's Mansion, the Farish Street neighborhood was safe haven for freedmen

 

• as homeless African American refugees poured into Jackson from all reaches of the devastated state, a black economy flickered to life in the form of a few Farish Street mom-and-pops • unwelcome at white churches, the liberated slaves built their own, together with an entire neighborhood's worth of buildings, most erected between 1890 & 1930

 

• by 1908 1/3 of the district was black-owned, & half of the black families were homeowners • the 1913-1914 business directory listed 11 African American attorneys, 4 doctors, 3 dentists, 2 jewelers, 2 loan companies & a bank, all in the Farish St. neighborhood • the community also had 2 hospitals & numerous retail & service stores —City Data

 

• by mid-20th c. Farish Street, the state's largest economically independent African American community, had become the cultural, political & business hub for central Mississippi's black citizens [photos] • on Saturdays, countryfolk would come to town on special busses to sell produce & enjoy BBQ while they listened to live street music • vendors sold catfish fried in large black kettles over open fires • hot tamales, a Mississippi staple, were also a popular street food —The Farish District, Its Architecture and Cultural Heritage

 

“I’ve seen pictures. You couldn’t even get up the street. It was a two-way street back then, and it was wall-to-wall folks. It was just jam-packed: people shopping, people going to clubs, people eating, people dancing.” — Geno Lee, owner of the Big Apple Inn

 

• as Jackson's black economy grew, Farish Street entertainment venues prospered, drawing crowds with live & juke blues music • the musicians found or first recorded in the Neighborhood include Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson II & Elmore James

 

• Farish Street was also home to talent scouts & record labels like H.C. Speir, & Trumpet Records, Ace Records • both Speir & Trumpet founder Lillian McMurry were white Farish St. business owners whose furniture stores also housed recording studios • both discovered & promoted local Blues musicians —The Mississippi Encyclopedia

 

• Richard Henry Beadle (1884-1971), a prominent Jackson photographer, had a studio at 199-1/2 N. Farish • he was the son of Samuel Alfred Beadle (1857-1932), African-American poet & attorney • born the son of a slave, he was the author of 3 published books of poetry & stories

 

• The Alamo Theatre was mainly a movie theater but periodically presented musical acts such as Nat King Cole, Elmore James & Otis Spann • Wednesday was talent show night • 12 year old Jackson native Dorothy Moore entered the contest, won & went on to a successful recording career, highlighted by her 1976 no. 1 R&B hit, "Misty Blue" [listen] (3:34)

 

• in their heyday, Farish Street venues featured African American star performers such as Bessie Smith & the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington & Dinah Washington —Farish Street Records

 

• on 28 May, 1963, John Salter, a mixed race (white/Am. Indian) professor at historically black Tougaloo College, staged a sit-in with 3 African American students at the "Whites Only" Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Jackson • they were refused service • an estimated 300 white onlookers & reporters filled the store

 

• police officers arrived but did not intercede as, in the words of student Anne Moody, "all hell broke loose" while she and the other black students at the counter prayed • "A man rushed forward, threw [student] Memphis from his seat and slapped my face. Then another man who worked in the store threw me against an adjoining counter." • this act of civil disobedience is remembered as the the signature event of Jackson's protest movement —L.A. Times

 

"This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things." —John Salter

 

• the Woolworth Sit-in was one of many non-violent protests by blacks against racial segregation in the South • in 1969 integration of Jackson's public schools began • this new era in Jackson history also marked the beginning of Farish Street's decline —The Farish Street Project

 

"Integration was a great thing for black people, but it was not a great thing for black business... Before integration, Farish Street was the black mecca of Mississippi.” — Geno Lee, Big Apple Inn

 

• for African Americans, integration offered the possibility to shop outside of the neighborhood at white owned stores • as increasing numbers of black shoppers did so, Farish Street traffic declined, businesses closed & the vacated buildings fell into disrepair

 

• in 1983, a Farish St. redevelopment plan was presented

• in 1995 the street was designated an endangered historic place by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

• in the 1990s, having redeveloped Memphis' Beale Street, Performa Entertainment Real Estate was selected to redevelop Farish St

• in 2008, The Farish Street Group took over the project with plans for a B.B. King's Blues Club to anchor the entertainment district

• in 2012, having spent $21 million, the redevelopment — limited to repaving of the street, stabilizating some abandoned buildings & demolishing many of the rest — was stuck in limbo —Michael Minn

 

• 2017 update:

 

"Six mayors and 20 years after the City of Jackson became involved in efforts to develop the Farish Street Historic District, in hopes of bringing it back to the bustling state of its heyday, the project sits at a standstill. Recent Mayor Tony Yarber has referred to the district as “an albatross.” In September of 2014, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sanctioned the City of Jackson, the Jackson Redevelopment Authority, and developers for misspending federal funds directed toward the development of the Farish Street Historic District. Work is at a halt and "not scheduled to resume until December 2018, when the City of Jackson repays HUD $1.5 million." —Mississippi Dept. of Archives & History

 

• Farish Street Neighborhood Historic District, National Register # 80002245, 1980

Alternate title: doin' hard time

Persistent URL: floridamemory.com/items/show/267341

  

Local call number: TD01484M

  

Title: Civil rights activist Priscilla Stephens being arrested - Tallahassee

  

Date: June 16, 1961

  

Physical descrip: 1 photonegative - b&w - 60 mm.

  

Series Title: Tallahassee Democrat Collection

  

Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida

500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL, 32399-0250 USA, Contact: 850.245.6700, Archives@dos.myflorida.com

Persistent URL: floridamemory.com/items/show/266474

  

Local call number: TD00773A

  

Title: Sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter - Tallahassee

  

Date: February 13, 1960

  

Physical descrip: 1 photonegative - b&w - 4 x 5 in.

  

Series Title: Tallahassee Democrat Collection

  

Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida

500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL, 32399-0250 USA, Contact: 850.245.6700, Archives@dos.myflorida.com

On December 1, 1955, 42-year old African-American seamstress Rosa Parks was returning home when she boarded this bus on the Montgomery, Alabama public bus system. She sat in the middle, the furthest forward after the ten seats reserved for white people under Montgomery's racist Jim Crow Laws of segregation. Under those laws, the middle seats were to be given up to a white person if they chose to sat there. When the front seats were filled, and a white person headed back, the driver told the black riders to move to the back of the bus. Four blacks did move back, but Rosa Parks refused. She was eventually pulled off of the bus, arrested, and convicted of violating the laws of segregation.

 

The spontaneous act was stunning. Rosa Parks was a motherly-looking, well respected middle-class figure in the African-American community. Just as importantly, she had experience working with Civil Rights movements in the 1940s and a strong sense of right and wrong. While African-American Civil Rights leaders were building up to a wholesale confrontation of the system of segregation throughout the 1940s, here was a blatantly obvious case of the fundamental unfairness of the system. The Black community immediately moved in solidarity to Parks and in Montgomery local activists launched a boycott of the bus system. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., new to Montgomery and so said to be unable to be intimidated by government pressure.

 

The boycott quickly showed its effects. Electrified by the incident, almost the entire African-American community walked or shared rides, and the bus system, which had a ridership of 75% black, quickly began losing revenue. Black churches throughout the country contributed funds to support the boycott, holding back the city's attempts to force its failure. White Citizens Councils formed and began attacking boycotters and firebombing homes of leaders. King and other leaders were arrested for violating city ordinances, which became a PR disaster for the city when they immediately turned themselves in. As the country turned its focus on Montgomery, things began to change. Browder v. Gayle (1956) passed the United States Supreme Court, stating that segregation of buses were illegal, which quickly followed an order for Alabama to desegregate its buses. After 381 days, the boycott officially ended with the end of the racial divide in municipal transportation.

 

Still the victory was a bit Pyhrric. The Montgomery City Council quickly emphasized greater segregation laws throughout the city to compensate for the defeat, and Citizen's Councils continued to harass blacks and firebomb homes. Rosa Parks left Montgomery due to death threats and blacklisting. Still, with this victory, people throughout the country were inspired to act out against the racist laws that had governed their communities for so long. The Civil Rights Movement would move into full gear.

 

In 2001, the bus, long since forgotten and abandoned in a field in Alabama, was traced to be the one where Rosa Parks was forcibly evicted from so long ago (2857 as stated in a newspaper). It was bought at auction and restored in 2003.

The Henry Ford, Dearborn, Michigan

Protesting white parents and students gather outside Poolesville Elementary school September 5, 1956 to call for a boycott on the first day of integration of Montgomery County’s Poolesville school.

 

Two years after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation of public schools by race, Montgomery County, Md. began a phased integration of its schools. In the upper county area this meant sending 14 select, upper grade black students to the K-12 school in Poolesville.

 

The integration effort went on without organized opposition throughout the rest of the county, but staunch segregationists organized a school boycott and a series of demonstrations and protest meetings in an attempt to halt black students from attending the all-white school in Poolesville.

 

On that first day of classes about 150 parents gathered outside the school to encourage the students and other parents to keep their children out of school. About 300 children were held out on the first day.

 

One woman in the crowd shouted out, “We oughta make so much noise that they can’t teach.”

 

School principal Robert T. Crawford estimated that about 173 of 340 elementary students were absent and 125 of the 260 pupils in the high school were not in class.

 

The 14 black students, all assigned to the seventh, eighth and ninth grades, were escorted into the school by police and teachers.

 

One of the organizers of the boycott was Everette Severe of the Maryland Petition Committee, a white supremacist group seeking a referendum vote to block integration of schools throughout the state.

 

Severe a well-known white supremacist having written letters to newspapers opposing integration and speaking at pro-segregation rallies. He lived in Kensington, Md. and did not have children.

 

Severe told the crowd outside the school, “We’re not supposed to send our kids to school until we have a hearing. Keep your kids out of school every day this week.”

 

Severe circulated a petition to demand a hearing on the issue. It said in part that the admission of the black students placed “in serious jeopardy” the “security and welfare” of their children.

 

Severe also helped organize a meeting of the segregationists at a Poolesville hall that night where they vowed to continue the fight.

 

Previous to the Poolesville boycott Severe on September 3rd told a Charlottesville, Va. rally opposed to integration that the people “are the law of the land, not the Supreme court.”

 

The day before Montgomery County schools opened, Severe attended a white supremacist meeting in Wayson’s Corner to urge a boycott of Anne Arundel County schools telling the crowd that the U.S. Supreme Court decision was invalid because, “Their total legal background hardly adds up to one good country lawyer.”

 

He called for an organization to halt integration adding, “God grant that it will happen quickly.”

 

The Poolesville group attempted to keep pressure on the school board to hold a hearing by staging a march on the county seat in Rockville.

 

On September 7, 1956, county police disbanded a gathering of about 60 people at 10:30 p.m. assembled at Jefferson Street beside the county courthouse. The march was called in an attempt to spread the school boycott beyond Poolesville.

 

The white supremacists kept up picketing at the school through the week, but attendance began to rise and by Friday had reached 70 percent. School superintendent Edward Norris warned that school officials' patience with the protesters was wearing thin and that Maryland law may be used against the parents.

 

The law called for a $20 fine, a 30-day jail term or both for disturbing public school sessions. Another section carried a $50 fine for inducing or trying to induce absenteeism.

 

By September 12th, attendance at the school had reached 582 students or about 90 percent when normal absenteeism was accounted for.

 

The county announced that three road workers had been suspended 10 days without pay for participating in the protests during working hours.

 

The school board, which had been resisting any meeting with the segregationists, agreed to grant an audience to hear specific objections to the integration policy, but not a challenge to the overall plan.

 

Meanwhile at a meeting at the Poolesville town hall that evening, 100 adults met and agreed to send their children back to school while they organized private schooling for their children.

 

Severe had problems of his own. He was suspended from his job by NBC radio over his public role in the protests and had his contract for part-time work for the Voice of America terminated.

 

There were more meetings of the dwindling number of parents participating in the boycott where calls were made to challenge the integration in court, but the boycott and organized opposition had largely dissipated.

 

The die-hards views were adequately expressed by parent Katherine Mills who wrote a letter to the Washington Post published October 3, 1956. Some excerpts follow.

 

Mills began by explaining that the segregationists “bitterly resent the treatment received at the hands of school and county authorities.”

 

“We resent the fact that our elected county school board not only permits Negroes to enter white schools, but actually encourages them to enter white schools.”

 

“I have no doubt that in the minds of some people we are pictured as a bunch of poor, ignorant yokels who’ve been carefully taught by “outside agitators” to fear and hate racial integration.”

 

“As a matter of fact, we do fear and hate racial integration, but our fear stems from our knowledge of local Negroes…”

 

“Negro parents as a whole are not so careful as their white neighbors in looking after the cleanliness and health of their children. We do not favor the joint use of school washrooms by colored and white. We just don’t want to take risks of any kind with our children.”

 

“The marital habits of some of our Maryland Negroes are, to say the least, very casual. They are like the marital habits of the often-divorced white persons in northern café society.”

 

“Of course some colored couples don’t bother with divorce, because there was no actual marriage in the first place.”

 

“We believe the morals of our own race are lax enough as it is without exposing our children to an even more primitive view of sex habits. Furthermore, we abhor any steps that might encourage interracial mating.”

 

“Until the cultural gaps between them are completely filled in, the white and colored races should not be mixed in the public schools of Montgomery County.”

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskquzhMu

 

The photographer is unknown. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

 

Worldwide Rally For Freedom. Melbourne CBD.

Anti-Lockdown Anti-Medical Segregation March 20th November 2021.

Fighting for the Right to Fight: African American Experiences in World War II

 

Oregon Historical Society

 

"In the years leading up to World War II, racial segregation and discrimination were part of daily life for many in the United States. For most African Americans, even the most basic rights and services were fragmented or denied altogether. To be black was to know the limits of freedom — excluded from the opportunity, equality, and justice on which the country was founded."

 

"Yet, once World War II began, thousands of African Americans rushed to enlist, intent on serving the nation that treated them as second-class citizens. They were determined to fight to preserve the freedom that they themselves had been denied. This is their story."

=====================

Edward Carter Jr. was born in Los Angeles but raised in India and China by his missionary parents. He ran away at 15 and fought with

the Chinese against Japan He then fought against fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

 

Returning to the United States, Carter joined the army. He was assigned to the role of cook, despite having fought in two wars.

 

He volunteered for combat in 1944 and was Assigned to the 12th Armored Division On March 23, 1945, Carter's unit came under attack while advancing towards Speyer, Germany, Carter led a patrol towards the town, but all of his men were killed or wounded. Despite being hit five times, Carter destroyed two enemy positions killed several German soldiers and captured two others, who provided valuable intelligence that allowed US forces to advance.

 

Carter remained in the army after the war, but he was denied reenlistment in 1949 due to unfounded suspicions linked tom his upbringing in China- that he was a Communist.

ohs.org/museum/exhibits/fighting-for-the-right-to-fight.cfm

bewilderment at 21st century lifestyle - technology, pace of life, relationships, insular segregation, lack of community and distrust.

Well we think it's Needle Ice, awaiting confirmation. It's another first for us which also means another tick off the lifetime bucket list. Found on the South Downs in West Sussex near a small stream which had overflowed and flooded the area, then it froze overnight, possibly over two nights or more given they all seem to look of being two tiered. This phenomena is known as Ice Segregation, when we found Frost Flowers back in 2017 in Decatur Alabama we made contact with Dr. Carter and he sent us this article which he had published a few years prior, it's probably the best explanation we've found for all the forms of Ice Segregation.

 

link to Dr. Carter's article

www.jrcarter.net/ice/segregation/?fbclid=IwAR2Xy8AShWF9Pc...

 

on the South Downs, South Downs National Park, West Sussex England

Well we think it's Needle Ice, awaiting confirmation. It's another first for us which also means another tick off the lifetime bucket list. Found on the South Downs in West Sussex near a small stream which had overflowed and flooded the area, then it froze overnight, possibly over two nights or more given they all seem to look of being two tiered. This phenomena is known as Ice Segregation, when we found Frost Flowers back in 2017 in Decatur Alabama we made contact with Dr. Carter and he sent us this article which he had published a few years prior, it's probably the best explanation we've found for all the forms of Ice Segregation.

 

link to Dr. Carter's article

www.jrcarter.net/ice/segregation/?fbclid=IwAR2Xy8AShWF9Pc...

 

on the South Downs, South Downs National Park, West Sussex England

Curtis Lucas - Forbidden Fruit

Beacon Books B-119, 1953

Cover Artist: Warren King

 

"She was white – he was not!"

 

"A daring discussion of today's most explosive problem—love breaking the color barrier."

04 September, 1957

This photo

Photographer: Douglas Martin

Winner of 1957 World Press Photo of the Year)

Dorothy Counts, age 15, the first and at the time only black student to enroll in the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (NC), is mocked by protestors on her first day of school. Bystanders threw rocks and screamed at Dorothy to go back to where she came from.

The man walking beside her is probably Dr. Edwin Tompkins, a friend of the family and a professor at the black college Johnson C. Smith University. After a string of abuses, Dorothy's family withdrew her from the school after only four days. Children had been enrolling for the new school year and tension was particularly high in the south for districts trying to comply with the US Supreme Court's ruling that states should desegregate their schools with deliberate speed.

 

Source:

www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo-contest/1957/dou...

 

For more about this American civil rights pioneer, please visit:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Counts

 

Alcatraz

 

Info en español, Alcatraz

 

Robert Stroud, who was better known to the public as the "Birdman of Alcatraz," was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. He spent the next seventeen years on "the Rock" — six years in segregation in D Block, and eleven years in the prison hospital. In 1959 he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield.

 

When Al Capone arrived on Alcatraz in 1934, prison officials made it clear that he would not be receiving any preferential treatment. While serving his time in Atlanta, Capone, a master manipulator, had continued running his rackets from behind bars by buying off guards. "Big Al" generated incredible media attention while on Alcatraz though he served just four and a half years of his sentence there before developing symptoms of syphilis and being transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in Los Angeles.

 

George "Machine Gun" Kelly arrived on September 4, 1934. At Alcatraz, Kelly was constantly boasting about several robberies and murders that he had never committed. Although this was said to be an apparent point of frustration for several fellow prisoners, Warden Johnson considered him a model inmate. Kelly was returned to Leavenworth in 1951.

 

Arthur Barker better known as Doc Barker was born in Aurora, Missouri. He was born to George E. Barker and Ma Barker and was one of seven children. By the 1920s and 1930s, Barker with his mother and Alvin Karpis started to commit crimes such as theft, robbery, murder, and kidnapping. His mother Ma Barker started the Barker-Karpis gang. On July 18, 1918 Doc Barker was arrested for stealing a car on the highway and was sent to serve prison time in Joplin, Missouri. On February 19, 1920 Arthur Barker escaped prison in Joplin, Missouri. After the escape he held up many armed robberies and murdered two people. On January 15, 1922, Doc Barker held up an armed robbery at a bank in Muskogee, Oklahoma and sent to the Oklahoma State Prison but was released five months later on June 21, 1922. On January 16, 1935, Ma Barker was killed by the police and a year later Arthur Barker with Alvin Karpis were sent to Alcatraz. Barker became Alcatraz inmate #AZ268 in 1936.

 

Alvin “Creepy” Karpavicz

Offense: Conspiring to Kidnap and Transport. Sentence: Life. A habitual criminal, “Creepy Karpis” served 26 years on Alcatraz, the longest tenure of any Alcatraz inmate. He was released from the Federal Prison system in 1969 and deported to Canada; ten years later, he committed suicide in Spain.

 

Johnson was a former associate of mob boss Stephanie St. Clair. He was one of the leading organized criminals in Harlem to fight an unsuccessful war against Dutch Schultz, who incorporated the city's organized crime into the Jewish and Italian mobs of the day. He was later hired as an enforcer by the Genovese crime family to protect Mafia operations in Black neighborhoods against local Harlem criminals.

 

Johnson was arrested more than 40 times and would eventually serve three prison terms for narcotics-related charges before dying of a heart attack in 1968 at Harlem's Wells Restaurant. Frank Lucas claimed to be with Bumpy at his death, but Johnson's widow disputes this account and claims Lucas has exaggerated his relationship with Johnson. Lucas claims to have been mentored by Bumpy as his driver and enforcer of 15 years. [1] At the time of his death, Johnson's case was pending for another narcotics violation that could have earned him a possible fourth prison term.

  

During Prohibition, Cohen moved to Chicago and became involved in organized crime working as an enforcer for the Chicago Outfit, where he briefly met Al Capone. During this period Cohen was arrested for his role in the deaths of several gangsters in a card game gone bad.

 

After a brief time in prison, Cohen was released and began running card games and other illegal gambling operations. He later became an associate of Mattie Capone, Al Capone's younger brother. While working for Jake Guzik, Cohen was forced to flee Chicago after an argument with a rival gambler.

 

In Cleveland, Cohen again worked for Lou Rothkopf, an associate of Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. However, there was little work available for Cohen in Cleveland, so Rothkopf arranged for him to work with Siegel in California.

 

[edit] From syndicate bodyguard to Los Angeles kingpin

 

Mickey Cohen was sent to Los Angeles by Meyer Lansky and Lou Rothkopf to watch Bugsy Siegel. During their association Mickey helped set up the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and ran its sports book operation. He also was instrumental in setting up the race wire, which was essential to Las Vegas betting, a Nevada attraction perhaps only second to the Hoover Dam. In 1947, the crime families ordered the murder of Siegel due to his mismanagement of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas; most likely because he or his girlfriend Virginia Hill was skimming money. According to one account which does not appear in newspapers, Cohen reacted violently to Siegel's murder. Entering the Hotel Roosevelt, where he believed the killers were staying, Cohen fired rounds from his two .45 calliber semi-automatic handguns into the lobby ceiling and demanded that the assassins meet him outside in ten minutes (Nash; pg. 741). However, no one appeared and Cohen was forced to flee when the cops arrived. After Siegel's death, Cohen was given control of the Las Vegas gambling operations

 

In later years, the Los Angeles crime syndicate was taken over by Frank Carbo of the Dragna family. Despite this changeover, Mickey Cohen continued to run its gambling operations. However Cohen's violent methods came to the attention of state and federal authorities investigating Dragna operations.

 

During this time, Cohen faced many attempts on his life, including a bombing of his home on posh Moreno Avenue in Brentwood. Cohen soon converted his house into a fortress, installing floodlights, alarm systems, and a well-equipped arsenal kept, as he often joked, next to his 200 tailor-made suits. Cohen also briefly hired bodyguard Johnny Stompanato before his murder by actress Lana Turner's daughter. Cohen bought a cheap coffin for Stompanato's funeral and then sold Lana Turner's love letters to Stompanato to the press.

 

Stompanato ran a sexual extortion ring as well as a jewelry store. He was one of the most popular playboys in Hollywood. One time singer Frank Sinatra visited Cohen at his home and begged him to tell Stompanato to stop dating Sinatra's actress friend, Ava Gardner.

[edit] Later years

In 1950, Mickey Cohen was investigated along with numerous other underworld figures by the US Senate Committee known as the Kefauver Commission. As a result of this investigation, Cohen was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to prison for four years.

When he was released, he started up all over again, and became an international celebrity. He sold more newspapers than anyone else in the country, according to author Brad Lewis. His appearance on television with Mike Wallace in the late 50s rocked the media establishment. He ran floral shops, paint stores, nightclubs, casinos, gas stations, a men's haberdashery, and even an ice cream parlor on San Vicente Blvd. in Brentwood proper, according to author Richard Lamparski.

 

In 1961, Cohen was again convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz. During his time on "the Rock", another inmate attempted to kill Cohen with a lead pipe. In 1972, Cohen was released from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he had spoken out against prison abuse. He had been misdiagnosed with an ulcer, which turned out to be stomach cancer. After his bout with surgery, he continued touring the U.S., including television appearances, once with Ramsey Clark.

As an elder statesman, he even appeared on The Merv Griffin Show. Cohen knew everyone in Hollywood, from the entire Rat Pack to Marilyn Monroe. In politics, he befriended Richard Nixon. His pal Billy Graham once asked him to appear at an evangelistic rally in Madison Square Garden.

 

Six of the nine Black students affected by Judge Albert V. Bryan’s order to end segregation in Alexandria, Va. public schools play together February 4, 1959, days before entering formerly all-white schools.

 

From left to right are Kathryn Turner, 11; Patsy Ragland, 14; Sarah Ragland, 8; James Ragland, 13; Gerald Turner, 6; and Sandra Turner, 7.

 

Not pictured are James Lomax, 8; Margaret Lomax, 6; and Jesse Mae Jones, 8.

 

The school board appealed Bryan’s order to admit the students to federal judge Simon Sobeloff who quickly ruled against the city of Alexandria.

 

Referring to Alexandria school officials, Sobeloff told their attorneys, “They say they are through with resistance—massive or retail. They are not going to clutter up the courts any longer. You don’t do that. You wait until each plaintiff fights his way through and, when he prevails, you say ‘give us more time.’”

 

Attorneys for the children were Frank Reeves, Otto Tucker and James Nabritt.

 

On February 10th, five of the children entered the Ramsay school, two entered the Hammond school and James and Margaret Lomax entered the Ficklin school and which became the first public elementary school in the state of Virginia to be integrated.

 

The three previous school districts that had been integrated under court order in the state involved junior high or high schools.

 

The schools were integrated without demonstrations or overt student strikes that plagued some other school systems in the area when they integrated. However, there were some minor incidents.

 

One student was withdrawn by his mother from Hammond and absences were slightly higher at all three schools.

 

School officials reported that another white supremacist taboo was broken: the five newcomers to the Ramsay school shared tables with other students for lunch while the two students at Ficklin did the same.

 

Ragland seemed to get the most negative reaction from other students.

 

When he sat for lunch at a large table with two white boys, the boys got up and moved to another table. In another instance two white boys in study hall moved their desks to rear of the room when he sat down.

 

When a boy gave Ragland a copy of the school newspaper to read on his first day, another youth grabbed it away.

 

However, during the press event, Ragland told reporters that “Everybody was friendly and nice.”

 

Virginia was one of a number of southern states that openly defied the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in public schools.

 

In the late 1950s, the state of Virginia started its policy of “massive resistance” that involved closing any public school that integrated and providing state aid to all white private schools.

 

It would take Alexandria until the fall of 1968 to achieve at least token integration at all its schools.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskWK3q68

 

Photo by Walter Oates. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

 

Columbia, South Carolina

Listed 1/14/2021

Reference Number: 100006020

Leevy’s Funeral Home built in 1951, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2020 for its significance in black history and the system of segregation in Columbia, South Carolina. The funeral home was part of a community effort by the city’s Black citizens, to create alternative spaces to gather and provide one another with essential services, including funerary services. The building’s significance expands beyond funeral services as it was also a site for politics as it assisted in African American voter registration and education. The funeral home was owned and operated by Isaac Samuel (I. S.) Leevy, a prominent local political activist and community leader. The funeral home was Leevy’s home, place of business, and the center of his political actions. Leevy was heavily involved in South Carolina politics as a registered Republican who advocated for the two-party system and voter registration.

 

Black-owned funeral homes like Leevy’s that emerged in the early twentieth century did so out of both necessity and a desire for the African American dead to be afforded the same respect as whites. Around the turn of the twentieth century, few American communities had a Black-owned funeral home. African Americans who sought out mortuary services therefore had to seek the services of white undertakers. Some simply refused to serve African Americans altogether. Black funeral homes offered African Americans the full range of services associated with caring for the dead, including embalming, burial, and, in some cases, even casket manufacturing. Leevy’s itself was ultimately among the Black funeral homes that placed emphasis on the ambulance services they offered to the local community and the respectful services they deserved.

 

National Register of Historic Places Homepage

 

Leevy's Funeral Home Columbia, South Carolina

 

National Register of Historic Places on Facebook

Bucklin Moon - The Darker Brother

Bantam Books 737, 1949

Cover Artist: Robert Stanley

 

"He came up North for freedom and got—Harlem!"

A brief biography that in no way does "justice" to Thurgood Marshall's career:

 

Thurgood Marshall was the first African-American member of the U.S. Supreme Court. He served on the court from 1967 until he retired in 1991. Earlier in his career, Marshall worked as a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and helped win the 1954 landmark desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Throughout his life, Marshall used the law to promote civil rights and social justice.

 

Some highlights of Marshall's life :

 

* 1930 - Thurgood graduates with honors from Lincoln University, PA (cum laude).

* 1934 - Thurgood receives law degree from Howard University (magna cum laude); begins private practice in Baltimore, Maryland.

* 1934 - Begins to work for Baltimore branch of NAACP.

* 1935 - Worked with Charles Houston, wins first major civil rights case, Murray v. Pearson.

* 1936 - Becomes assistant special council for NAACP in New York.

* 1940 - Wins Chambers v. Florida, the first of twenty-nine Supreme Court victories.

* 1943 - Won case for integration of schools in Hillburn, New York.

* 1944 - Successfully argues Smith v. Allwright, overthrowing the South's "white primary".

* 1946 - Thurgood Marshall received a medal from the NAACP.

* 1948 - Wins Shelley v. Kraemer, in which Supreme Court strikes down legality of racially restrictive covenants.

* 1950 - Wins Supreme Court victories in two graduate-school integration cases, Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents.

* 1951 - Visits South Korea and Japan to investigate charges of racism in U.S. armed forces. He reported that the general practice was one of "rigid segregation."

* 1954 - Wins Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case that demolishes legal basis for segregation in America.

* 1956 - Wins Browder v. Gayle, ending the practice of segregation on buses and ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

* 1957 - Founds and becomes the first president-director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., a nonprofit law firm separate and independent of the NAACP

* 1961 - Defends civil rights demonstrators, winning Supreme Court victory in Garner v. Louisiana; nominated to Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President J.F. Kennedy.

* 1961 - Appointed circuit judge, makes 112 rulings, none of them reversed on certiorari by Supreme Court (1961-1965).

* 1965 - Appointed United States Solicitor General by President Lyndon B. Johnson; wins 14 of the 19 cases he argues for the government (1965-1967).

* 1967 - Becomes first African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court (1967-1991).

* 1991 - Retires from the Supreme Court.

* 1992 - Receives the Liberty Medal recognizing Marshall's long history of protecting individual rights under the Constitution.

* 1993 - Dies at age 84 in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.

 

sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall (wiki)

chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/marshall.htm

www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/aa/marshallthrgd

 

A truly great American whose memory we celebrate during Black History Month.

 

Justice Marshall is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.

 

A Xhosa, Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, South Africa. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, Mandela and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. He was appointed president of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state.

 

Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure and fears of racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Economically, his administration retained its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist beliefs, also introducing measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty and expand healthcare services. Internationally, Mandela acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as secretary-general of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. He declined a second presidential term and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation.

 

Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the far left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid's supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism. Globally regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Thembu clan name, Madiba, and described as the "Father of the Nation".

 

Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

The Amsterdam suburb Bijlmermeer has a rather controversial reputation. Designed by the Indonesian-born city planner Siegfried Nassuth in the 1960's, it was one of the most radical interpretations of Le Corbusier's functional city, with a strict segregation of housing, offices and recreational facilities and an equally strict segregation between roads, bicycle paths and footpaths. The Bijlmermeer was also an example of excessive egalitarianism. When one of the architects designed windows in the sidewalls, the Burma Railroad survivor Nassuth dismissed this as an extravagant privilege for those who rented the outermost flats.

 

Although the flats were considered an improvement upon the crammed housing of the 19th century and pre-war era, the uniformity of the Bijlmer never became popular. In 1971 the first Dutch erotic film Blue Movie juxtaposed the standardised concrete blocks of the Bijlmer with the lusts a released prisoner satisfied with lonely single women in the suburb. Nassuth had hoped that the people would liked the park-like surroundings and walk barefeet in the grass like he had done in the Javanese city of Pekalongan, but Amsterdammers opted for houses with private gardens outside the city. Consequently, the area became a haven for many immigrants in the mid 1970's. Eventually, this would be the death knell for parts of the plan. The anonymity caused by the scale of the Bijlmer and the segregation of traffic streams reinforced the lack of social cohesion. Drug addicts and dealers roamed the concrete garages that the original inhabitants found so expensive. In the 1990's the city knew no better solution than to knock down a large part of the blocks.

 

Enough of the original plan remains to make it a potentially interesting subject for photography. In a way, the Bijlmer looks like the old-fashioned futurism in Jacques Tati's film Playtime. I have tried it a few times, but I find it very difficult to find interesting angles and get beyond purely documentary pictures. During the day, the area has become quite successful in offering the "light, air and space" that the planners had hoped to offer. Sedateness is a difficult subject to photograph.

Waste segregation