Crump Plantation

            For centuries, America and the West have been propagating a socially constructed white supremacy.  The grounds for “whiteness” have varied over the years as has the level of systematic oppression enforced by whites in power.  The early 20^th century in America, known as the Jim Crow era, was one of several climactic periods in the history of “white supremacy.”  It was during this period that the “plantation mentality” informed the attitudes towards white supremacy.

In Memphis, a city rooted in agrarianism up until the last quarter century, the Jim Crow era represented the validation of the secondary effects recalled from the slavery era just 50 years previous.  While blacks could no longer work at the hands of whites as property, they could legally be lynched without cause, brutally beaten by police, or unjustly removed from their job under Jim Crow laws.  Despite efforts at unionization, black political organization, and interracial Populism, for all intents and purposes, the plantation still existed in Memphis during the Boss Crump regime period.  Boss Crump, though not always in the spotlight, was the “plantation owner” generating profits from his self-designed system of power and governance.  The poor migrant black population served as interchangeable “slaves” fueling the Memphis economy in cotton mills and shipyards.  Boss Crump was one of the more benevolent plantation owners as he kept his “slaves” healthy enough and secure enough to be productive workers.  Under his regime, black schools, social clubs, and businesses developed and prospered.  However, Memphis Police, made up of middle-class whites, served as “overseers” punishing any lower-class black who stood in the way of Boss Crump’s larger political objectives. 

Although the Crump “Plantation” was racially motivated on the surface, his regime was very much grounded in class.  Poor whites were pitted against poor blacks in the arms race for “equity” in schooling, job availability, and access.  However, true to the master narrative of “White Supremacy,” poor whites emerged victorious thanks to “Presidents, university professors, and the mass media constructing white supremacy as a good thing, and ‘social equality’ or integration, as dreadful evil” (Honey 17).  Contrary to the Antebellum Era, some blacks known as “the talented tenth” were able to reach middle-class economically and assume power amongst a separated black society in 20^th century Memphis.  However, there was deep class divide amongst all blacks.  The “talented tenth” advocated for and partnered with Boss Crump for business and civility in exchange for mobilizing less educated black voters to elect Crump’s puppets to political office.  Nonetheless, there were many, especially those who were daily battling the violent oppression and brutality of Crump’s “overseers” who retaliated with militancy and protest with hopes of creating change in their society.  Students at LeMoyne Owen were major parts of this militancy in the Jim Crow era.

Are students in our era fulfilling the role of “conservative integrationists” or “radical militants” concerning the issues that plague our generation?  Should we be doing more of one or the other?  What issues will historians be writing about in 100 years that required a Movement?

MLK ideology vs Malcolm X ideology?

This blog idea is one that developed mainly out of curiosity of the different views and opinions of the individuals in our class. As we develop a more well rounded understanding of african american history and the fight for civil rights, we often begin to put ourselves in the shoes of civil rights activists fighting for equality to better understand where they were coming from, and what they were trying to achieve. With that being said, I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about what I would have been doing as a civil rights activist during this time of struggle. The more we study the more I have begun to develop an understanding that has led me to think that there were two main ways that the war for equality was fought.

The first I would consider the "MLK" way, where we fight for equality and integration in the american society. Followers of MLK put a heavy emphasis on wanting to create a color blind community that would strive together regardless of race or ethnicity. The second approach would incorporate the ideology presented by Malcolm X. This idea takes an approach that says the corrupt, racist, segregated aspects of american culture are woven in to the very fabric of how american democracy works. The result of this is that there is no way to change it, the core values of the foundation of our system was flawed. Therefore, Malcolm says screw integration. He is not a die hard advocate for integration but rather supported the idea that the black community should create- within itself - a community that is vibrant, educated, and successful all separated from rest of the country. For X, segregation was not necessarily a bad thing.

So the question is, if you were fighting for your rights during the civil rights movement, would you have aligned yourself with the ideas of Malcolm X, or MLK? Would you be willing to play by the rules and push for legal change and equality, despite the countless efforts of activists who have played by the rules, but have still been turned down by the government or people? Or would you run with crowd that says integration is not a necessity, and that although this immoral segregation and discrimination is wrong and unjust, you'd rather build up a community within where rich new culture and happiness can be created?

This idea came to me while reading our first reading assignment "Duty of the Hour" where there were three groups: The talented tenth, the accomodationalists, and the migrants. The first two groups seemed to be more closely aligned with the MLK ideology, whereas the migrants were more prone to act in a Malcolm X type of way. When reading this I began to ask myself which group I would have probably fallen in to (with the absence of social status), and was curious to know what the position of my peers would have been in this case.

How Ida B. Wells used Journalism to Mobilize the Anti-Lynching Movement in Post-Reconstruction America

Ida B. Wells was extraordinary. An African-American woman living in the post-reconstruction era was unlikely to achieve much at all due to the legal, social, and political restrictions in the United States on African-Americans and women at the time. Regardless of these limitations, Wells served as a leader both in her family life and in her community- whether that was her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi, or when she moved in with her aunt in Memphis, Tennessee, or New York City, where she sought refuge after having to go into exile when her newspaper offices were destroyed and her life was threatened by the attackers.

The achievement which stands out the most to me though, was her ability to mobilize the anti-lynching movement after others before her who seemed to have more ease in being heard and executing the movement were unsuccessful in doing so.

Southern Horrors says, “She began asking herself basic questions- ‘How can this be? What’s really going on here?’- and collecting data on lynchings more systematically. Her findings were eye-opening, and she was energized to launch an anti-lynching campaign in order to counter misconceptions and encourage the application of justice” (18).

After moving to New York, Wells explains, “Having lost my paper, had a price put on my life, and been made an exile from home for hinting at the truth, I felt that I owed it to myself and to my race to tell the whole truth now that I was where I could do so freely.” Royster explains after this move, “Wells’s anti-lynching campaign gained momentum” (18).

Both the Afro-American League and the Equal Rights Council attempted to implement an anti-lynching campaign but were unable to see it through. “Fortune established the Afro-American League, envisioned as an all-black, self-help organization. At the beginning the league established lynching as a central issue, but after the first convention, attention shifted to antidiscrimination activities, agitating for social equality as well as political and economic opportunity” (13).

“By 1893, however, the national organization no longer functioned. A central problem was that Fortune and the other editors were unable to garner a base of support among the masses of African Americans in critical sectors of community activity; for example, within the black church and among black Republicans” (13).  

Fortune did not necessarily care or try less than Wells to make the anti-lynching movement work but instead, Wells’ approach of utilizing her writing skills to her advantage seems to be a differentiation that made a real distinction between the two efforts.

Wells prioritized making her writing accessible to common people in the United States, so that the thousands of African-Americans who were uneducated, were able to understand what she was saying, and could still learn about the issues and find strength in being politically involved even on that small level.

Journalism allows writers to make a quiet, but impactful change in people. By reading something, a person has no risk- they are not making a public statement, or making any sort of commitment- they are simply reading what someone else has to say about a topic. In a time when African Americans were afraid for their lives, reading was a much safer and viable option for them instead of publically associating with a group such as Fortune’s Afro-American League.

Wells’ strategy was not complicated. She was an educated African American woman who had strong convictions based on her intense dedication to community and her personal loss of friends who had fallen victim to lynching. She wrote what she felt and learned and was able to educate people in her communities on the issues and mobilize them towards an anti-lynching movement better than others who tried to organize it before her.

Wells’ journalism, which asked basic questions and allowed her to express her often times controversial outlook on the society she lived in, provides our country today with honest and informative records of America during the post-Reconstruction era and emphasizes the value of education in our country. While political involvement is often messy, confusing, and more passionate than productive, the power of writing proves strong here and Wells’ pure dedication to sharing her knowledge and ideas with others made a real impact that leaves us with documentation and the ability to continue learning from her today.

Lynching, Fatherhood, and George Clooney

            When I think of lynching, the scene from the end of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? comes to mind starring George Clooney.  In it, three fugitives in southern Mississippi find themselves standing on a box awaiting the nooses that hang from a tree (for the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsrIYleq2KY).  Ironically, in comparison to the readings on Ida B. Wells, these three men were white, guilty of their crimes, and three black men stood before them digging their graves.  Fortunately for the movie’s protagonists a great flood came and washed through the valley saving them by a stroke of God from impending death.  Not so fortunately in real life, Wells, Watkins, and Royster frequently cite the unjust and untried lynching of 3 prominent black businessmen in Memphis on March 9, 1892.

Both Watkins and Royster condone the “Killing at the Curve” on the grounds of jealousy and fear of black power—though not to be confused with Malcolm X’s mid-20^th century Black Power movement.  A white store owner nearby felt threatened by the successful “People’s Grocery” to the point that he put matters into his own hands, violent hands at that.  As discussed in class last week, history textbooks often gloss over the experiences of blacks between Reconstruction and the “Civil Rights Movement.”  Perhaps an advanced textbook, like my AP American History book, will have a paragraph and a half about the lynchings and the Jim Crow laws that oppressed Blacks for decades.  That’s 60 years compartmentalized to about the length of this post while single days, like the Boston Tea Party, get pages and plenty of images.  Clearly our “standard” textbooks are the victim of bias and are instead a history Whiteness with intentional omissions to the times when the power of Whiteness was not so civil. 

Indeed Ida B. Wells was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement just as much as Rosa Parks and other more heralded figures were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement.  Wells was a Southerner, and proud of her Southern roots as they “set the stage for a life of committed revolutionary activism.” (Watkin 123).  Wells may not have been successful in changing statutory laws, but her efforts emblazoned the embers of activism on a national and international scale.  Her exile from Memphis in 1892 proved fortunate and empowering in the people she would meet, but if Wells had not been exiled, Memphis African-Americans may have overcome many more of the injustices raised against them.  Wells’ leadership and her dexterity with words combined to both enfranchise blacks with the tools to withstand oppression and irate whites to the point of frivolous mob violence. 

As a counter to the perspective of the readings, perhaps some violence was warranted.  Of the 241 lynchings in 1892, nearly one-sixth were charged on accounts or allegations of murder (Wells, Red Record, 86).  Surely some of the 58 lynched were guilty of murder and under the historical and contextual premise of “an eye for an eye,” death may have been an appropriate punishment.  However, the dehumanization and ritualization of the lynching process certainly gives Wells and other plenty of reason for outcry.  As if hanging was not enough, Wells explains that many bodies were also shot and then burned.  Last time I checked, You can Only Die Once.  As such, Wells is not over-reaching to say “the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning” (Wells Southern Horrors, 50).

Finally, I cannot let one of Watkins’ statements stand unaddressed.  She writes: “In chapter thirty of Iola Leroy, the protagonist delivers a stirring speech, ‘Education of Mothers,’ arguing the fate of the race depends on the development of ‘enlightened’ mothers” (Watkins 121).  I immediately was struck at the transformation from an urgent need for developing mothers a century ago to the pressing need for developing fathers in African-American communities today.  In Wells’ day, were black fathers a consistent part of the home?  What made women fall short?  On the other hand, the development of mothers paid off as many impoverished African-American communities encountered an epidemic of fatherlessness in the last half of the 20^th century.  I would appeal, now in 2014, that the fate of not just the African-American race, but all races currently depend on the development of “enlightened” fathers capable of empowering and strengthening the family unit just like Wells and others empowered and strengthened their families at the turn of the 20^th century.

Welcome!

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Welcome to our blog! I know it's pretty no frills, but it gets the job done. I'm looking forward to your thoughtful insights, comments, questions and musings. Here's to a great semester!