Clement Gibson
Editor-in-Chief
WJSU 88.5 “Cool and Current” is presenting and producing a four-part radio series titled, “Field
to Factory every Sunday in February at 7 p.m. ET.
The series was developed by several published forums culminated with a national
symposium held on the campus of Jackson State University in the summer of 1989.
Part four of the series takes an in depth look at the social conditions of African-Americans, the Klu Klux Klan, social institutions and all that was used to establish them as sub-citizens.
Since the slave trade, African-Americans were treated as sub-citizens and these adverse social conditions bred the fight for human rights and social change
These conditions were very meager and of course, not acceptable to African-Americans.
Former Dean and history professor at JSU, Bennie Reeves, spoke about the everyday struggle black families dealt with.
“The family conditions bred some of the social conditions because blacks as families were not permitted into the political, economic and social structures as whites were. Blacks tried to better their conditions even to the point that they ran away from slavery and revolted against their slave owners. Every day the struggle came in small acts—chopping in the field, but chopping down cotton instead,” said Reeves.
The African-American family was not allowed to exist because they were sold off by their white slave owners and treated as property, not as human beings.
Furthermore, African-Americans were stripped of their cultural and social heritage.
According to Reeves, the social conditions in which the African-Americans faced were validated by several court decisions.
He stated, “All of the conditions stemmed from blacks serving as slaves. Even when emancipation was a reality, the black codes, actions of the Klu Klux Klan, the separation by law that came out of the Plessy vs. Ferguson. In fact, it goes back even further than that to Dred Scott vs. Sandford. Chief Justice Taney said that blacks were not anymore citizens of the United States than a zebra was a horse. That you could take a zebra from Africa and erase the stripes it would still be a zebra and that is the way blacks would remain substandard. That the black man had no rights that white people were bound to respect.”
Even as America entered the 20th century, conditions continued to deteriorate for African-Americans, thus causing thousands to free the south in search of better conditions and opportunities in the north.
But wherever African-Americans were, they had to fight for justice and equality. Violence against black Americans continued to escalate.
In New York City, a silent parade was conducted by 15,000 African-American’s three months into WWI. They carried signs to protest the race riots and lynchings in American cities.
By the end of WWI, about 200 blacks had been lynched.
“Blacks were lynched in the streets with their army uniforms on after returning from fighting abroad in Europe. But then the lack of provincialism because Americans moved abroad to fight a war affected black status and many blacks did not come back home to the south. They remained in northern cities,” stated Reeves.
Whites tried to erase from the black veteran’s minds any notion of social equality they might have learned in France.
Blacks were flogged, branded with acid, tarred and feathered, chained and burned. More than 70 blacks were lynched in the first year after the war.
It was during this period that the Klan enjoyed an increase in their membership after years of decline. This growth had been partly stimulated by the 1915 movie, “Birth of a Nation.”
The KKK soon developed other goals that included intimidating those who disagreed with them. The flaming cross served as a warning to all who opposed.
The Klan managed to limit the social mobility of blacks. Blacks were intimidated, denied the opportunity to serve in offices, to move in certain sections of town and denied the opportunity to defend themselves in court.
These social conditions rendered black people as second-class citizens.
Noted actor and playwright, Ossie Davis recalls a childhood experience when the Klan threatened his father.
“My father was a railway engineer. A man with no formal training but taught himself how to lay railroad tracks. He had a job working with a section gang and was the only black man in that part of Georgia doing so…The Klan did not take kindly to the idea of my father—a black man being the head of a section on the railroad. To them, that was a white man’s job… One day, my momma and I came out and there was a stick in the yard and it had been split and in the split was a letter…When she opened it, there was a pistol and a bullet going into a heart and the heart going into a coffin…My mother took the letter, a pistol and walked two miles to the railroad to give them to my father…Nothing happened, but it was growing up in the presence of the threat that made me secure from the threat. That determined my life,” said Davis.
By the time the war in Europe had ended, the Klan had extended their campaign to include Catholics, immigrants, Jews, Orientals, union leaders and radicals of all types.
Klan officials claimed a membership of five million and branches were set up in north cities and towns as well.
In the midst of violence, African-American’s had to look to their own social institutions for hope. The family and church early on became the channels for which blacks could show expression and release.
Before blacks were permitted to have their own churches, they would sit in the balconies of the white churches.
Then they were brought down to sit in front so that the whites could watch them and the minister would pray and preach a sermon separately— one for the blacks, one for the whites.
Blacks then began to organize what was known as invisible church in the woods. They met there to sing their spirituals, gospels and songs that relieved them of frustrations and gave them hope for a life beyond America.
Although the church represented a symbol of unity, it also reflected the class structure within the black community.
Former professor of journalism at JSU, Doris Saunders, chimed in on the social structures of black churches.
Saunders stated, “The church the people went to usually reflection the class structure…The Episcopal Church in the south had a very small number of black people, but they were generally speaking the higher-class economical lens socially. Next in terms of the social strata was the AME— African Methodist Episcopal church, which attracted to a large degree professionals, educators and those who were in other lines of employment that permitted them to have a certain degree of status and economic security…Then the CME (Colored Methodist Episcopal initially before changing colored to Christian), Baptist and COGIC— Church of God in Christ, were more evangelical in their approach, and often filled country, less financially secure members. All of them had a great deal of influence on their membership and looked to their pastors for leadership.”
There were other social institutions and outlets blacks turned to besides the church like aid societies, virial societies, masons and eastern stars.
These institutions provided social interactions with each other as well as saving the race from self-destruction.
In every major city, there was a coming together of blacks in specific places— Farish Street in Jackson, Moccasin Bottom in Vicksburg, Beale Street in Memphis or Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
Social programs were a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s new deal. It was the first time in the 20thcentury that federal officials showed concern for the plight of blacks
Black assistant secretaries were appointed to be the liaison to the black community.
The new deal was good for some, but not for all blacks, especially those in the rural south. Roosevelt’s death in 1985 served as the end to the new deal.
The Supreme Court of the United States threw out the new deal. War and post par periods struck down laws that denied equality for African-Americans.
The court found unconstitutional a Virginia law that required a Negro on an interstate bus had to move to the rear to make way for a white passenger in 1946.
In 1950, it ruled that a Negro could not be denied a seat in a dining car in an interstate train.
The full integration of the armed forces occurred during the Korean War. African-American replacements were channeled into previously white units.
Black men and white men fought side by side on all fronts to stem the advances of Korean and Chinese forces.
Two African-Americans were among those who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Saunders credits former black U.S. Congressman from Illinois, William L. Dawson, for influencing President Harry Truman to desegregate the armed forces.
“Dawson showed him through demonstration by giving him facts and figures and not pushing him, showed him where the armed services as long as they remained separate could not serve the American public well. That it was expensive, counter-productive and increased the differences between people rather than bringing them together because it is very hard to fight for one world if you are fighting it with two separate and unequal armies,” said Saunders.
While important progress had been made towards securing equality in America, both silent resistance and open opposition to African-American advances continued.
Christmas night, 1951, Harry T. Moore and his wife died when a bomb exploded beneath their Florida home.
Both were leaders in the state NAACP to register more blacks to vote. Those guilty of this crime has never been brought to justice.
Southern blacks who fought in the integrated army in Korea knew their hometowns would deny them a cup of coffee in a diner, decent public restroom or home in a white neighborhood.
Northern blacks who returned from battle knew that segregation by custom would return them to the worst schools and lowest paying jobs.
This was just as damaging as segregation by law in the south. The African-American’s growing pride in himself as an American and mounting anger with those who denied him his rights, were moving him to dramatic and decisive actions by the 1950s.
