View allAll Photos Tagged Segregation
Garnet C. Wilkinson, the longtime assistant superintendent in charge of the District of Columbia’s segregated public African American schools, is shown in a portrait circa 1950.
Wilkinson was in charge of the black segregated schools from 1921 until 1954 when the school system was integrated and he became an assistant superintendent in the merged schools.
Wilkinson became the first African American in charge of black schools in the District after the resignation of Roscoe Conkling Bruce in the wake of the 1919 Moens’ child abuse scandal when so-called professor Moens was revealed to be taking nude photographs of African American school children.
While in charge of black schools, Wilkinson developed them into some of the best in the nation.
However working class African American parents challenged the deplorable conditions of their schools in the city and Wilkinson became a target when he instituted a plan where students went to school at the Browne Junior High for half a day, later amending the plan to have students walk half a mile to annexes during their school day to sit in small elementary school desks with no equipment or recreational facilities.
Wilkinson remained on the hot seat until lawsuits arising out of the uproar settled the issue once and for all when the Supreme Court ruled in May 1954 that District of Columbia school segregation was illegal in the Bolling v. Sharpe case.
For more information and related images, see www.flickr.com/gp/washington_area_spark/m2x047
Read the story of of DC desegregation from the pickets to the courts: washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/dcs-fighting-bar...
Photo by Scurlock Studios. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History: Archives Center.
Click the "All Sizes" button above to read an article or to see the image clearly.
These scans come from my rather large magazine collection. Instead of filling my house with old moldy magazines, I scanned them (in most cases, photographed them) and filled a storage area with moldy magazines. Now they reside on an external harddrive. I thought others might appreciate these tidbits of forgotten history.
Please feel free to leave any comments or thoughts or impressions... They are happily appreciated!
Parents picket demanding better schools for African American children outside the Franklin building at 13th & K NW where the school board met in Washington, D.C. in December 1947.
The group led by Gardner Bishop that became the Consolidated Parents Group staged a two-month strike of students demanding an end to double shifts at Browne Junior High on Benning Road that resulted in a part time education for children.
The other demand was an end to using two elementary schools as annexes, forcing children to make half-mile walks between schools only to sit in elementary school desks that were too small.
None of the Browne facilities had recreational facilities or equipment like the nearby white school.
Their efforts ended both double shifts and the annex facility arrangement at Browne. The group’s suits resulted in the 1954 Bolling v. Sharpe Supreme Court decision desegregating District schools.
For more information and related images, see www.flickr.com/gp/washington_area_spark/564wW3
Read the story of of DC desegregation from the pickets to the courts: washingtonspark.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/dcs-fighting-bar...
The photographer is unknown. Via Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History.
There is a TV drama forthcoming on WowWow TV on racial discrimination, segregation versus integration issues. Here is a collection of cast members taken in between production shooting. It was perfect weather as well being an unusually warm day (19ºC) for early February. Every one seemed to enjoy themselves, except there was a lot of excess standing, so our legs became quite tired and sore.
Shoot location was Showa Memorial Park near Nishi Tachikawa Station, Tokyo, Japan. Anyone who is a subscriber to Wow Wow and is interested in viewing the movie, please send me a personal message. Cheers…..
本日のプロダクションは人種差別の主テーマとしてWowWowテレビで近い将来に放映する予定です。この写真集は撮影ロケでその番組のキャストメンバーです。天気も最適で最高でした。19ºCは２月の昇順ごろとしてとても例外的です。皆さんは楽しんでいましたが立つことはかなりありましてメンバーの一部の足み疲れてきて痛くなりました。
撮影ロケは西立川の昭和記念公園です。その番組予定の詳細を知りたい場合はメッセージを送って下さい。
John Vachon
Although there was improvement in racial equality over all, there was still no end to segregation or discrimination, especially in the city. Atlanta for instance, was one of the most know areas in the nation when it came to racial disturbances. This is partly due to the elites desire to keep the economic system at the status quo and electing Eugene Talmadge as Governor. Talmadge was well liked by those who were benefiting from an economic system which took advantage of blacks and other minorities by paying them low wages. This was the way it had always been done. The New Deal in opposition was designed to help the very people the elites wanted to keep down and was seen as a threat to their lifestyle. In response, they elected Talmadge who drove hard against accepting the New Deal Programs which eventually became as powerful as the state government. In response, local officials in charge of relief often found excuses to give blacks less in the way of relief. A few years later, an excuse was found to clear a large African American neighborhood in order to push blacks toward and contain them within a certain area in the city. The excuse used was that the neighborhood was a slum and unattractive, especially as close as it was to the upscale shopping area downtown. After the the slums were removed though, nice apartments were built for the elite whites. These as well as the fear and panic about the unstable economy and the lack of jobs in the city all contributed to further segregation and discrimination in the city of Atlanta, and certainly in other cities.
Ferguson, Karen. Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Chapel Hill and London, 2002.
"Little Journeys into Storyland" or Stories that will Live and Lift by Louis B. Reynolds and Charles L. Paddock. Copyrighted in 1947 by The Southern Publishing Association, apparently for segregated schools.
A poster series [1 of 4] dedicated to the deterioration of a conformed society of the 1950s, events that would precede the turbulent 60s.
1956: Civil Rights // The Montgomery Bus Desegregation
November 15, 1956, almost a year after the boycott had begun, the Supreme Court judged the Montgomery bus-segregation law to be unconstitutional. On December 21, the city prepared to desegregate its buses.
Walter Francis White (July 1, 1893, Atlanta, Georgia – March 21, 1955, New York, New York) was a civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for almost a quarter of a century and directed a broad program of legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist. He graduated from Atlanta University in 1916 (now Clark Atlanta University). In 1918 he joined the small national staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York at the invitation of James Weldon Johnson, where he acted as Johnson's assistant national secretary. White later succeeded Johnson as the head of the NAACP, serving from 1931 to 1955.
White oversaw the plans and organizational structure of the fight against public segregation. Under his leadership, the NAACP set up the Legal Defense Fund, which raised numerous legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, and achieved many successes. Among these was the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal. White was the virtual author of President Truman's presidential order desegregating the armed forces after the Second World War. White also quintupled NAACP membership to nearly 500,000.
White was the fourth of seven children born in Atlanta to George W. White and Madeline Harrison. They belonged to the influential First Congregational Church, founded after the Civil War by freedmen and the American Missionary Association, based in the North. Among the new middle class of blacks, both of the Whites ensured that Walter and each of their children got an education. When White was born, George had graduated from Atlanta University and was a postal worker. Madeline had graduated from Clark University and became a teacher.
Of mixed race with African and European ancestry, White's appearance showed his high proportion of European ancestry. He emphasized in his autobiography, A Man Called White (p. 3): "I am a Negro. My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond. The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me." Five of his great-great-great-grandparents were black and the other 27 were white.
All of his family were light-skinned, and his mother Madeline was also blue-eyed and blonde. Her maternal grandparents were Dilsia, a slave, and Dilsia's master William Henry Harrison, who much later became president of the United States.
Madeline's mother Marie Harrison was one of Dilsia's mixed-race daughters by Harrison, and her father Augustus Ware was a white man. Despite his family's ancestry being mostly white and himself being blond-haired, blue-eyed, and very fair, White and his family identified as black and lived among the Atlanta black community. In the earlier stages of his career White took advantage of his features to make investigations in the South, passing for white to gather informations more freely and protected on violations of civil and human rights such as lynchings and hate crimes in socially hostile environments.
Sinclair Lewis' 1947 novel, Kingsblood Royal, about a man who appears to be white but learns late in life that he is black, has characters based in part on White and his professional circles, many of whom were of mixed race and among the educated elites of black society, with relatives or friends who had chosen to live as white based on appearance. Lewis consulted White on the novel and White helped him meet numerous professional acquaintances. While some white critics found the novel contrived, the prominent African-American magazine Ebony named it the best novel of the year.
After graduating in 1916 from Atlanta University, a historically black college, White's first job was with the Standard Life Insurance Company, one of the new and most successful businesses started by African Americans in Atlanta. He also worked to organize an NAACP chapter in Atlanta; the organization had been set up several years before and White was supportive of their work. He and other leaders were successful in getting the Atlanta School Board to support improving education for black children. At the invitation of James Weldon Johnson, White moved to New York and in 1918 started working at the national headquarters of the NAACP.
One of the first riots he investigated was that of October 1919 in Elaine, Arkansas, where white vigilantes and Federal troops in Phillips County killed more than 200 black sharecroppers. The case had both labor and racial issues. The white militias had come to the town and hunted down blacks in retaliation for the killing of a white man. He was killed in a shootout at a church where black sharecroppers were meeting on issues related to organizing with an agrarian union.
White was granted credentials from the Chicago Daily News. That enabled him to obtain an interview with Governor Charles Hillman Brough of Arkansas, who would not have met with him as the representative of the NAACP. Brough gave White a letter of recommendation to help him meet people, and his autographed photograph. White was in Phillips County for only a brief time before his identity was discovered; he took the first train back to Little Rock. The conductor told him that he was leaving "just when the fun is going to start", because they had found out that there was a "damned yellow nigger down here passing for white and the boys are going to get him."[6] Asked what they would do to him, the conductor told White, "When they get through with him he won't pass for white no more!" "High yellow" was a term used at the time to refer to white-appearing blacks, mostly those of mixed-racial descent.
White published his findings about the riot and trial in the Daily News, the Chicago Defender and The Nation, as well as the NAACP's own magazine The Crisis. Governor Brough asked the United States Postal Service to prohibit the mailing of the Chicago Defender and Crisis to Arkansas, while others attempted to enjoin distribution of the Defender at the local level. The NAACP put together a legal defense of the men convicted and carried the case to the Supreme Court. Its ruling overturned the Elaine convictions and established important precedent about the conduct of trials. The Supreme Court found that the original trial was held under conditions that adversely affected the defendants' rights. Some of the courtroom audience were armed, as were a mob outside, so there was intimidation of the court and jury. The 79 black defendants had been quickly tried: 12 were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death; 67 were condemned to sentences from 20 years to life. No white man was prosecuted for the many black deaths.
Bullers of Buchan, Aberdeenshire. Great views and very scenic, but with narrow paths and steep cliffs - defiitely not a place to take the kids.
A beautiful day, warm and sunny, with fantastic cloud formations.
Boarding houses at night along Douglas Street near Fannin St. in St. Paul's Bottoms, 19 Aug 1963. Coll. 393, Jacket 30501.
These scans come from my rather large magazine collection. Instead of filling my house with old moldy magazines, I scanned them (in most cases, photographed them) and filled a storage area with moldy magazines. Now they reside on an external hard drive. I thought others might appreciate these tidbits of forgotten history.
Please feel free to leave any comments or thoughts or impressions... They are happily appreciated!
Enjoy!
"Little Journeys into Storyland" or Stories that will Live and Lift by Louis B. Reynolds and Charles L. Paddock. Copyrighted in 1947 by The Southern Publishing Association, apparently for segregated schools.
Street vendor Hop-on hop-off city buses along EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) in Manila Philippines, merchandising citrus fruits. Side walk vendors and street vendors triples during the ber months and Holiday seasons that causes congestion and traffic in all major commercial areas in Metro Manila.
MMDA (Metropolitan Manila Development Authority) imposes yellow lane' rule, that designate loading and unloading zones with no more than 25 seconds to stay. Just recently a new Segregation Scheme will be implemented by December this year. Under the new scheme, buses are marked BUS A and BUS B and shall only upload and unload to its designated zone. Commuters will be able to reach his destination in shorter travel time and with fewer stops.
Girard College:
Following the Supreme Courts’ Brown v. Board decision ending de jure segregation in all public school systems, Philadelphia moved slowly to carry out the court’s ruling. In the public schools, several actions by the School Board including moving Northeast High School out of North Philadelphia, furthered segregation and limited opportunities for African-Americans children. In another public arena, the admissions policy of Girard College became one of the significant tests of school segregation in the City of Philadelphia.
In his will dated February 16, 1830, Stephen Girard, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant, stipulated the establishment of a school for white males between six and eighteen years of age. Under the will, Girard having “sincerely at heart the welfare of the City of Philadelphia” left the principal part of his estate to “the Mayor, Alderman and citizens of Philadelphia, their successors and assigns” money for a number of charitable purposes of which the school was one. The purpose of these gifts was to foster “the prosperity of the City, and the health and comfort of its inhabitants.” At the time of Girard’s death, Philadelphia had fewer than 9,900 black inhabitants, who under then existing law had their citizenship rights decimated by regressive state legislation. In January 1848 the Girard College opened for the education of white male orphans.
Although not part of the Philadelphia public school system, Girard College was administrated by the Board of City Trusts on behalf of a public entity that is required to abide by federal laws. The first plaintiffs to seek admission at Girard College were represented by Raymond Pace Alexander, a distinguished African American attorney and member of Philadelphia City Council. They held that the College presented itself as an institution that was “municipal in nature”, namely a public boarding school or orphanage. They further asserted that because the State associated with the school, the College’s racial discrimination was unconstitutional.
Mayor Joseph Clark and City Council President James Finnegan, both ex-officio members of the Board of City Trusts, tried to persuade the Girard College board to admit the young men and seek a later decision by the courts. However, the other board members did not agree and maintained Girard’s will superseded as well as antedated both the Brown decision and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Lengthy litigation ensued through state and federal courts in Pennsylvania. By the mid-1960’s this dispute produced tremendous public agitation in the community and resulted in numerous civic demonstrations outside of the Girard College “wall”.
More than thirteen years after Brown, a final ruling and affirmation by the Supreme Court of the United States found that Girard’s will was superseded by the Brown decision. The school’s trustees were “permanently enjoined from denying admission of poor male orphans on the sole ground that they are not white, provided they are otherwise qualified for admission”. The first African American students were eventually granted admission to the school in 1968.
www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/6679/news
unknown photographer
Joan Sexton is knocked down and nearly trampled by a mounted police officer after a melee broke out during an attempt to integrate the Anacostia swimming pool June 29, 1949.
Members of the local Progressive Party youth group led the attempt to integrate the facility.
The confrontation took place when 10 white and 10 black members and supporters of the Young Progressives entered the pool. Later, about 70 African Americans arrived and entered the pool area while about 100 waiting white opponents began a scuffle. Scattered fighting broke out both inside and outside the facility between the groups.
A white woman was chased by about 50 white youths who believed she was a “Wallacite” One in the crowd yelled, “Go back to Russia, you dirty red.”
An African American boy was corned by a white mob and sustained cuts when he attempted to climb over a barbed wire fence. Fighting continued between the two groups outside the pool area while the numbers of participants grew to about 1,000.
Two white students distributing Young Progressive handbills in favor of integration were arrested along with two African Americans who were alleged to be fighting with whites. One white youth was arrested for fighting with one of the white Young Progressives distributing handbills.
Several others among the Progressives were injured, including one African American hit in the head with a stone and a white woman trampled by a police horse.
The pool was temporarily closed as result of the clashes. The Interior Department had been scheduled to transfer the six pools to the District’s recreation department, but held off because DC insisted on segregating pools by race.
DC finally integrated its parks and pools in 1954 in the wake of the Bolling v. Sharpe school decision. The Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public parks nationwide in 1958.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskhNEzdC
The photographer is unknown. The image is an Associated Press photo obtained via an Internet sale.
Dr. William Monroe Wells accounting books show his "Gross from Dances" at the South Street Casino. Two thirds of the way down the page there is a Cab Calloway entry.
A somewhat closer view of the relatively obscure exhibition about the history of segregation. I recalled the segregated beach from my childhood in the 1950’s and 60’s. Since my family’s main interest was fishing and the Little Talbot Island State Park beaches didn’t allow fishing from the shore, we usually went past them to Big Talbot Island, but it was impossible to not see that there were separate signs for the ‘colored’ section and the unlabeled (therefore ‘white’) section. When I asked my parents why there were separate beaches, my father would say something along the line of “hush child, we don’t talk about that.”
Looking up the history of this (see the research article linked below), I was surprised to see that this had been a relatively radical effort by the state of Florida. Throughout the South state parks (and public beaches) were for whites and blacks were actively excluded. As pressures to provide public accommodations for blacks increased in the 1940’s and 1950’s, some states in the south (the article notes South Carolina) considered privatizing all of their state parks so that they would not have to allow for use by blacks. Florida’s state parks were also limited to use by whites, but pressures towards integration of beaches and other public areas resulted in the state deciding to develop separate and (relatively) equal facilities for blacks at a state park near Tallahassee and for this state beach. Little Talbot Island State Park opened in 1951 as two separate beaches, a black beach on the south end of the island and a white beach on the north end.
Both beaches did better economically than had been expected; while I didn’t see an explanation regarding the white beach’s success, apparently part of the reason for the success of the black beach was its accessibility to large black populations from south Georgia.
As it became clear in the mid 1960’s that ‘separate but equal’ did not work, state parks in other parts of the South began to integrate, though that often meant the end of the use of the parks by whites. Similarly, Florida State Parks began integration in 1964, not by an official declaration, but simply by not enforcing segregation. As was often the case, de facto segregation continued for quite some time. I do recall that when I was in high school (I graduated in 1965), the signs indicating separation of the beaches had disappeared, but the beaches were still essentially segregated. After high school I spent much less time in Jacksonville, so I don’t know when they were modified to what they are now, as one park.
Little Talbot segregation history: ejournals.unm.edu/index.php/historicalgeography/article/v...
(Part of a photo-essay series on personal history and race with keyword FlaAla0518)
This school was used back in the day for the residents of Eloy. Apparently Eloy was the first town in Arizona to desegregate, but this larger school house was for the whites and Mexican-Americans and the smaller school house was for the African-Americans. Even the brown people had to be separated, who knew.
The windows said a lot to me. You could still see light through the glass, but the opaqueness speaks to the history of this building.
C'è sempre qualcosa che ci separa, che ci divide dagli altri... a volte per colpa nostra che non alziamo gli occhi per vedere oltre quello che ci circonda... - There is always something that separates us, that divides us from the others... at times for guilt ours that we don't lift the eyes to see over what surrounds us... - Siempre hay algo que nos separa, que nos divide de los otros... a veces por culpa nuestro que no levantamos los ojos para ver más allá de lo que nos circunda...
"Little Journeys into Storyland" or Stories that will Live and Lift by Louis B. Reynolds and Charles L. Paddock. Copyrighted in 1947 by The Southern Publishing Association, apparently for segregated schools.
Nearly 10,000 youth and students marched on Washington, D.C. October 26, 1958 to demand integration of schools and other public facilities.
The protesters were addressed by entertainer Harry Belafonte and baseball star Jackie Robinson after marching down Constitution Avenue to the Lincoln Memorial.
This protest and the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom helped lay the groundwork for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
For more information and additional images, see flic.kr/s/aHska27CEb
Photographer is unknown. The image is an auction find.
March 17, 1950
Recently constructed replacement sits next to the old wooden structure of the original Fire Station 14. Fire Station 14 was an all black segregated company at the time this photo was taken. They utilized both houses for a short time before the old building was torn down. The lot was paved, a block wall erected to provide parking for the firefighter's personal vehicles.
Prior to World War II, when segregation divided Anglo and black residents in Dallas, African American commerce clustered in Deep Ellum. In the 1920s–30s, blues musicians Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith and Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins played in the district's clubs. Today, there are a number of shops, live music venues and sidewalk cafés in this area, where colorful and innovative murals decorate many of the walls.
Ross Robert Barnett (January 22, 1898 – November 6, 1987) was the governor of Mississippi from 1960 to 1964. He was a States' Rights Democrat, as well as one of many Democrats supporting segregation.
Born in Standing Pine in Leake County, Barnett was the youngest of ten children of a Confederate veteran.
He served in the United States Army during World War I, then worked in a variety of jobs while earning an undergraduate degree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1922. Four years later, he followed that with an LL.B. from the University of Mississippi in Oxford. In 1929, he married Mary Pearl Crawford, a schoolteacher, with the couple's long-time union producing two daughters and a son. Over the next quarter century, Barnett became one of the state's most successful trial lawyers, earning more than $100,000 per year while specializing in damage suits. He often donated his skills to causes, and served as president of the Mississippi Bar Association for two years beginning in 1943.
Using the income derived from his legal fees, Barnett sought to try his hand at politics, unsuccessfully running twice for Governor of Mississippi, in 1951 and 1955. On his third try in 1959, he won the election and was inaugurated on January 19, 1960. During his term in office he celebrated the centennial of the American Civil War. Barnett traveled to Civil War sites to pay homage to fallen "Sons Of Mississippi".
During his time as governor, Barnett, a staunch segregationist and Democrat, became noted for his tumultuous clashes with the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Barnett arranged for the arrest of Freedom Riders in 1961 and then imprisoned them in a brutal prison called Parchman Farm (now Mississippi State Penitentiary) in Parchman, Mississippi. While the offenses were minor, the Freedom Riders were stripped searched, had beds taken away, and were humiliated and brutalized in the prison. While this approach was popular in the state, it was done in part to blunt the criticism he was receiving for a variety of reasons: failing to follow through with promises of jobs for office-seekers; filling those jobs with acquaintances, and attempting to wrest control of state agencies from the legislature.
Barnett was a member of the white supremacist Citizens' Council movement as well.
In 1962, he actively opposed James Meredith's efforts to desegregate his alma mater, the University of Mississippi. As a result, Barnett was fined $10,000 and sentenced to jail for contempt but never paid the fine or served a day in jail. This was because the charges were terminated (civil) and dismissed (criminal) by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, due to "substantial compliance with orders of the court," and "in view of changed circumstances and conditions."
On the night before the Ole Miss riot of 1962 protesting Meredith's entry to the university, Barnett gave his famous fifteen-word "I Love Mississippi" speech at the University of Mississippi football game in Jackson. Ole Miss Rebels were playing Kentucky Wildcats. 41,000 fans cheered at the stadium waving thousands of Confederate flags. At halftime, a gigantic Confederate flag was unveiled on the field. The crowd shouted "We want Ross"! Barnett went to the field, grabbed the microphone at the 50-yard line and said to an enthusiastic crowd: "I love Mississippi! I love her people! Our customs. I love and respect our heritage."
Until the 1960s, Mississippians had known no alternative to segregation, and many linked the separation to the Bible. Barnett, a Baptist Sunday school teacher, declared "The Good Lord was the original segregationist. He put the black man in Africa. ... He made us white because he wanted us white, and He intended that we should stay that way." Barnett said that Mississippi had the largest percent of African Americans because "they love our way of life here, and that way is segregation."
Shortly after he left office, Barnett's looming presence was evident at the first trial of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in February 1964. De La Beckwith was on trial for the murder of African American civil rights activist Medgar Evers, but an all-white jury was unable to agree on a verdict in both this and a subsequent re-trial. In the second subsequent re-trial, former Governor Ross Barnett interrupted the proceedings—while Myrlie Evers was testifying—to shake hands with Beckwith. De La Beckwith was eventually convicted at a subsequent trial three decades later, a case chronicled in the movie Ghosts of Mississippi.
"Little Journeys into Storyland" or Stories that will Live and Lift by Louis B. Reynolds and Charles L. Paddock. Copyrighted in 1947 by The Southern Publishing Association, apparently for segregated schools.
Louis Redding, an African American attorney, successfully argued the case that ended racial segregation in public schools.
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.
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 light 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 still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles 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 languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our 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 the "unalienable 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 which 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. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no 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 promises 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 quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. 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. And 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. And 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 forever 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. And 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 self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites 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."¹
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution 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 northern 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.
And so 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 injustice, 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" -- one day right there 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 mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, 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, and this is the faith that I 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 stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the 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 fathers 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.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious 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 Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village 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 Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Two police officers hold a powwow near the demonstration against segregated bus lines, Jerusalem, July 21, 2009
(Since we were fewer than fifty people, we did not require a permit to demonstrate. Presumably, the two police officers are talking about this, and about the fact that they cannot legally ask us to leave.)
There is a TV drama forthcoming on WowWow TV on racial discrimination, segregation versus integration issues. Here is a collection of cast members taken in between production shooting. It was perfect weather as well being an unusually warm day (19ºC) for early February. Every one seemed to enjoy themselves, except there was a lot of excess standing, so our legs became quite tired and sore.
Shoot location was Showa Memorial Park near Nishi Tachikawa Station, Tokyo, Japan. Anyone who is a subscriber to Wow Wow and is interested in viewing the movie, please send me a personal message. Cheers…..
本日のプロダクションは人種差別の主テーマとしてWowWowテレビで近い将来に放映する予定です。この写真集は撮影ロケでその番組のキャストメンバーです。天気も最適で最高でした。19ºCは２月の昇順ごろとしてとても例外的です。皆さんは楽しんでいましたが立つことはかなりありましてメンバーの一部の足み疲れてきて痛くなりました。
撮影ロケは西立川の昭和記念公園です。その番組予定の詳細を知りたい場合はメッセージを送って下さい。
Wasting the City! A box for a box
There it goes! The Frappant Building in Hamburg Altona is teared down to build a new City Ikea. Wide range and long protest didn't help. People are not only scared that the new massive Ikea-Store in the residential area of Hamburg-Altona will bring way more traffic into the area, but also that Ikea is part of the gentrification that starts with higher rents and ends with residential segregation. At the end of the day..a box will be replaced by an even bigger box.
Police arrest an African American man at the Anacostia swimming pool June 29, 1949 after members of the local Progressive Party youth group attempted to integrate the facility.
The confrontation took place when 10 white and 10 black members and supporters of the Young Progressives entered the pool. Later, about 70 African Americans arrived and entered the pool area while about 100 waiting white opponents began a scuffle. Scattered fighting broke out both inside and outside the facility between the groups.
A white woman was chased by about 50 white youths who believed she was a “Wallacite” One in the crowd yelled, “Go back to Russia, you dirty red.”
An African American boy was corned by a white mob and sustained cuts when he attempted to climb over a barbed wire fence. Fighting continued between the two groups outside the pool area while the numbers of participants grew to about 1,000.
Two white students distributing Young Progressive handbills in favor of integration were arrested along with two African Americans who were alleged to be fighting with whites. One white youth was arrested for fighting with one of the white Young Progressives distributing handbills.
Several others among the Progressives were injured, including one African American hit in the head with a stone and a white woman trampled by a police horse.
The pool was temporarily closed as result of the clashes. The Interior Department had been scheduled to transfer the six pools to the District’s recreation department, but held off because DC insisted on segregating pools by race.
DC finally integrated its parks and pools in 1954 in the wake of the Bolling v. Sharpe school decision. The Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public parks nationwide in 1958.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskhNEzdC
The photographer is unknown. The image is an Associated Press photo obtained via an Internet sale.
A few miles from the Tule Lake Segregation (internment) camp, Camp Tulelake was first built as a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. During WWII, the camp was used to imprison several hundred Japanese American men who protested and refused to answer the loyalty questionnaire. It was used again to house Japanese American strikebreakers brought in from other internment camps to harvest the crops that Tule Lake strikers were leveraging to demand better living and working conditions. Between 1944 and 1946 the camp housed German and Italian Prisoners of War who worked for local farmers.
www.visitsiskiyou.org/culturehistorical/wwii-valor-in-the...