How Has Racial Inequity Persisted in American Life? Anti-Black Racism In

$2 DONATION REQUESTED SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re- neighborhoods. This caused many African American Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to families who otherwise could afford to move into Race and Racism: How have these terms evolved over time? Anti-Black World War II, (New York, NY, Anchor Books, 2008) better lodging to remain stuck in overcrowded, Deneen L. Brown, “Remembering ‘Red Summer,’ when resource-deprived neighborhoods or take on THE SHIFTING MEANING OF “RACE” insisted on further distinctions to whiteness. Beginning descended peoples; and the violent and oppressive in the mid-1800s, they subdivided the category “White” treatment of other people of color – all for the benefit White mobs massacred Blacks from Tulsa to D.C.,” predatory loans that often led to bankruptcy. The The meaning of “race” has changed over the centuries. Racism in into sub-groups – Saxons, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Southern of generations of Whites. That legacy of history affects National Geographic, June 19, 2020 federal government created programs for soldiers Racial categories were created as a means of classifying Europeans, etc. – with the aim of limiting the naturalization all of us, an inheritance we must become aware of if we California Newsreel, 2003 “Race–The Power of an Illusion” humans into groups and relating those groups to systems returning from World War II, such as the GI of “White” immigrants to the more desirable Western are to free the present and future from its inequities and of power. While the word “race” initially referred to America Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, Bill, to support further education and subsidize Europeans. injustice. June 2014. planned residential communities like Levittown in speakers of a common language and followers of a particular religion or set of cultural practices, over time Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Long Island. This Bill was structured by southern In 1897, African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois Structured from the very beginning to privilege Whites its meaning was broadened to include people affiliated Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban was one of the first scholars to maintain that the ranking and disadvantage Black and Brown people, American legislators using Jim Crow laws, making it difficult with a particular tribe or nation-state, and to people with America, (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2010) of humankind by physical traits has no basis in science. He society and economy continue to do so in both blatant for most Black veterans to benefit. distinctive physical features. Lawrence Goldstone, Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal asserted that a “race” is constituted by a common history, and hidden but powerful ways. Examples include legal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865-1903, (New traditions, and other social and spiritual features, not by and de facto segregation, exclusion from the full benefits 1954 – “SEGREGATION UNLAWFUL” In the Middle Ages, with increasing global exploration, York, NY, Walker & Company, 2011) “blood” or biology. This argument made little headway in of government programs (e.g. loans to military veterans), It would be more than half a century before an Europeans began to reduce the varied peoples of the the early 1900s, as the popular writers on race continued underfunded schools, discrimination in employment Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., “The 1619 Project,” The New Americas and Africa into two racial groups – Indians and NAACP (National Association for the Advancement refining racial categories, establishing a hierarchy that and housing, and arbitrary law enforcement, resulting York Times Magazine, 2019 Africans. They saw both groups as subject to conquest and of Colored People, founded 1909) lawsuit resulted in placed Europeans at the top, Africans at the bottom, and in disproportionate rates of arrest and conviction, and Travis Hartman, Sam Hart, Jonnelle Marte, and Howard enslavement initially because neither group was Christian, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. This 1954 all other groups somewhere in-between, with devastating in harsher sentences for similar crimes committed by Schneider, “Black White–The Race Gap: from birth and also because they judged African and indigenous Supreme Court decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson social, political, and economic consequences. By the Whites. Systemic racism also incites and supports daily, to death, black people face systemic disadvantages in cultural practices and technologies as inferior to their 1940s, popular and scientific thought had consolidated individual, person-to-person actions that denigrate American life more than 150 years after slavery was and declared racial segregation in public schools own. They also argued that the dark skin of Africans was abolished,” Reuters Graphics humankind into three or four groups identified principally people of color and reinforce White privilege. unconstitutional. Brown v. Board paved the way for a sign that they were descended from Ham, a Biblical by physical characteristics rooted in biology: “Caucasian” Martha S. Jones, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and the dismantling of White supremacy in American figure whose father, Noah, cursed his descendants to be (White), “Mongolian” or “Mongoloid” (including THE EVOLVING VOCABULARY OF “RACISM” How has Rights in Antebellum America, (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge law during the 1960s and 70s. enslaved (“Ham” was associated with the Hebrew word University Press, 2018) Indigenous Americans), “Negroid,” and sometimes “hum,” meaning dark colored.) The so-called “curse of “Racism” refers to beliefs and actions based on the “Australoid.” Such notions were widely accepted by Meilan Solly, “158 Resources to Understand Racism in Ham” was used as a further justification for capture and notion that “race” is the primary, innate, and unalterable 1960s – TODAY historians, scientists, and other academics, although they racial inequity America,” Smithsonian Magazine, 2020 enslavement of Africans. determinant of human traits and capacities, and that Sadly, in the years following the successes of the were not founded on fact. John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the 1960-70s Civil Rights Movement, a quiet movement racial differences account for the inherent superiority American North 1730-1830, (Philadelphia, PA, University of of one race – usually the “White” race – over all others. began in the nation’s legislatures, courts, schools, The United States embarked on nationhood by restricting In recent years, the Human Genome Project and advances Pennsylvania Press, 2007) The word “racism” did not exist until 1902; before that, persisted in banks, and other institutions to dismantle the many the privileges of citizenship to a single category of people. in human genetics have proved conclusively that “race” is “prejudice” was the term used to describe these beliefs CONTENT REVIEWERS Under the 1790 Naturalization Act, “free White persons” a scientifically invalid construct. Biologists estimate that gains African Americans had made and to whitewash and actions. Robert Bellinger, Suffolk University, Black Studies Program or mute continued challenges in Black communities, were the only people welcomed as immigrants and all human beings share 99% of their DNA, the genetic American life? eligible for citizenship. Even though the concept of White blueprint of our species. In fact, there is so little genetic Director placing new barriers in the way of social, political, and Today, “prejudice,” like “bias,” is defined as the inclination as a racial group had been around for over a century, it difference between “races,” and so much variation within Robert Gross, University of Connecticut, History Professor economic advancement. Today, the disproportionate to attribute inherent characteristics to other people and BY JOANNE POPE MELISH, UNIVERSITY was Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus who, them, that two people of European descent may be more Emeritus, author of The Minutemen and Their World to treat them accordingly. One can be prejudiced in favor imprisonment of young Black men, unpunished in 1735, first used color-coded races to classify the genetically similar to an African or Asian person than they OF KENTUCKY, ASSOCIATE HISTORY of tall women or biased against vegetables. But racial Elon Cook Lee, Public Historian and Director of Education police shootings, persistence of gerrymandering human world and ascribe stereotypical characteristics are to each other. Important cultural differences separate PROFESSOR EMERITA, AUTHOR OF and Interpretation, National Trust for Historic Preservation stereotypes are not individual quirks; they are the building and other forms of Black voter suppression, along to its inhabitants: “Whites” were from Europe, “Blacks” groups with a common geographical origin, history, or blocks of the collective beliefs that have supported DISOWNING SLAVERY: GRADUAL with health, housing, career, pay, educational, and originated in Africa, “Yellows” came from Asia, and traditions; these are differences to be respected and often White dominance, denied equality in American life, and EMANCIPATION AND “RACE” IN NEW “Reds” were indigenous to the Americas. celebrated, but they are not “racial” differences. many other inequities, show that a great deal of work sustained the inequity that has limited the life chances of ENGLAND, 1789 – 1860

remains to eliminate racial disparities and establish millions of citizens. If we are to achieve democracy for Photo by Arthur Edelman on Unsplash equity and justice in American life. The televised The laws and social practices in the newly formed United Yet the false notion that racial differences are “real” all, Americans must take active steps to dismantle the coverage of George Floyd’s choking death under the States thus set people of European ancestry apart from persists, and is deeply embedded in the systems of racism structured into every aspect of American society: knee of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, the Indigenous inhabitants of North America and peoples power and lived realities of people in the United States to seek its history by visiting African American museums followed by coverage of similar events, has generated of the rest of the world, and endowed the relatively and globally. Tragically, it has been used to rationalize and historic sites; to educate themselves about its sources new category of White people with privileges denied to oppressive practices: the expulsion and near genocide and role in today’s society and economy; and to vote and a growing movement to end systemic racism. others. Self-identified “Anglo-Saxon” elites, as the most of Indigenous peoples; the importation, enslavement, advocate for public policies that support the rights and powerful group to settle in the North American colonies, lynching, imprisonment, and forced labor of African- dignity of all people. © THE ROBBINS HOUSE, INC. 7 Students at Fisk University, an all-Black school created six 1860 Jack Garrison carte de visite, age c. 91. months after the Civil War ended, in morning prayers. Nashville, Juvenile convicts at work in the fields, c. 1903. Ph Courtesy Concord Museum Dred Scott portrait. Courtesy Missouri History Museum Tennessee, 1900. Courtesy Library of Congress Courtesy Library of Congress 1931 Alabama railroad plaque on worthpoint.org Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash oto by Clay Banks at Unsplash

EARLY 1800s – NORTHERN “FREEDOM” lawsuits, and petitions by African Americans, including U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent 1877 – “BLACK CODES” The Ku Klux Klan (founded 1865), often with the approval Pasadena, California, there was no refuge anywhere When Robbins House resident Jack Garrison Ellen Garrison, ultimately led the Massachusetts were not citizens and “had no rights which the white But Whites in the former Confederate states fiercely or actual participation of local White officials, waged a from the pervasive institutional racism that poisoned emancipated himself from slavery by heading north legislature to forbid assigning students to separate schools man was bound to respect.” Dred Scott’s enslavers moved resisted these changes. Reconstruction was brought to a terrorist war on African American men daring to vote. In American life. In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. from New Jersey to Concord, Massachusetts in about by race. Elsewhere in New England, some attempts to from Missouri to the free areas of Illinois and Wisconsin, sudden end with the Compromise of 1877 and the removal spite of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, people of color, including Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of racial 1810, he was fleeing a state where slave laws were still integrate schools met with violence. then back to Missouri – at which point Scott sued for his of Federal troops from the South. Black congressmen Ellen Garrison in Maryland, continued to be refused segregation in public transportation, a case that in force. By living free in Concord, he found refuge freedom. The resulting U.S. Supreme Court decision denied and senators were swept, often violently, out of office service in public facilities. Almost 3,500 African Americans legitimized segregation in public facilities of all kinds, in a state where slavery was nearly extinct. But New Laws violated the civil rights of northern people of color in Blacks citizenship. and all-White legislatures across the South passed new were lynched between 1882 and 1968 for “offenses” such as including schools, under a doctrine that came to be England was no promised land. As slavery gradually many ways. In the early 1800s, when northern states began “Black codes” nearly identical to the regulations that had drinking from a “Whites only” water fountain, sitting in known as “separate but equal.” Even though Black disappeared from the region and the area became a to eliminate property requirements for voting to enable As Hosea Easton, a Massachusetts man of African American oppressed the lives of enslaved people. Because the 13th “Whites only” spaces, being seen in the company of a White citizens paid equal and in some cases more in taxes than haven for individuals escaping bondage further south, “universal manhood suffrage,” most of them explicitly and indigenous descent, argued passionately in a pamphlet Amendment forbade servitude or enslavement “except as woman, attempting to vote or register others for voting, or their White neighbors, local tax-supported resources the population of free people of color steadily rose, and limited suffrage to White men. Massachusetts was one of published in 1837, “It is a remarkable fact, that the minute the a punishment for crime,” courts prosecuted Black men for demanding justice for another lynching victim. like textbooks, science lab equipment, money for their reception was decidedly mixed. While some Whites the few states that still allowed African American men to colored people show signs of life… an unrelenting hatred arises in “crimes” such as speaking loudly in the presence of a White building repairs, and teacher salaries that were allocated welcomed their new neighbors, the dominant reaction, vote. “Universal manhood suffrage” was, in most states, for the mind which is inhabited by that foul fiend, prejudice [racism].” woman and walking beside a railroad track. Too poor to By the end of Reconstruction in 1877, southern states had to African American schools were usually fewer and of in law and in society, was to denigrate and restrict Whites only; in most of the country “democracy” was only The failure to acknowledge, and reluctance to patent pay fines for these “crimes,” Black men were incarcerated created a racist regime of Jim Crow. “Jim Crow” laws, named poorer quality than what was provided to White schools. freedom for African Americans, often in systematic for White men. and reward, the many critically important contributions and then leased to plantation and mine owners to serve for a racist minstrel show character played by a White actor ways that differed from town to town and state to state. of Blacks, from agricultural innovations to mechanical long sentences of forced labor – a practice that has been in blackface, segregated public institutions and private EARLY 1900s – SYSTEMIC RACISM GROWS Public transportation was segregated, despite the protests inventions, demonstrates the truth of Easton’s insight. called “slavery by another name.” accommodations. Discriminatory voting regulations Legal support for segregation also seemed to foster new Jack Garrison was never able to vote in Concord. and petitions of African Americans, including Ellen effectively barred African Americans from the polls. rounds of anti-Black practices, including outright mob Slavery left him too poor to meet the property-holding Garrison. White passengers and proprietors used force 1865-1877 – RECONSTRUCTION ERA On several occasions White citizens voted to purge their violence. The Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, requirement. Nonetheless, Jack was subject to the poll to bar people of color from public conveyances (i.e. Between 1865 and 1870, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments counties of Black leaders and ordinary citizens alike. Even Lynchings, mob attacks on Black communities, and other the wealthiest Black community in the U.S., often called tax, a tax required of every voter since the colonial stagecoaches, steamships, etc). The new railroads assigned to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery. The Constitution in majority Black districts, White citizens would arm race-based violence drove many African Americans to seek “Black Wall Street,” was attacked by Whites in 1921, era. Within one generation Jack’s son John met the tax Black travelers to filthy “Jim Crow” cars. Marriage between subsequently guaranteed all people “independent of race, themselves, join forces with the local police or militia, freedom elsewhere, with some, such as Ellen Garrison, resulting in 300 deaths and the destruction of 35 blocks. requirement and cast ballots, as did Robbins House Blacks and Whites was illegal in Massachusetts until 1843 color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary and threaten Black residents with loss of jobs, businesses, joining the late 1870s-1880s “exodus” to Kansas. On the Nearly 100 years after the massacre many Tulsa natives resident Peter Hutchinson. Even so, before the Civil and in Rhode Island and Maine until the 1880s. Black servitude,” birthright citizenship and due process of and their lives. According to newspaper accounts, towns Great Plains they founded safer Black communities – on are just now learning of this history. In 1923, the largely War, men of African descent were barred from full neighborhoods in Boston, Providence, and Hartford all law, and voting rights for all Black men. During the brief voted to “hunt down and kill every Negro” through mob lands from which Native Americans had been violently Black town of Rosewood, Florida was destroyed, with citizenship. They could not serve on juries or participate suffered multiple deadly attacks by White mobs. These postwar Reconstruction era, 2,000 Black men were elected attacks such as the Clinton Massacre of 1875 (Mississippi) removed to reservations barely a decade before. At the same several of its residents killed and the rest driven out. No in militia trainings. events led to the loss of Black-owned businesses, homes, to public office, including two senators and fourteen and the Colfax Massacre in 1873 (Louisiana). No Whites time, job and housing discrimination, along with other Whites were convicted of these crimes and the survivors and in some cases whole neighborhoods and the lives of congressmen. In 1866 the first African American men, were charged for these violent crimes. School lessons on political and social conventions, effectively segregated were forced into silence or escaped to northern cities By the 1820s and 1830s the Garrison children attended women, children, and men. Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell, were elected local history ignored these events, and communities were northern schools, cities, and towns. with larger Black populations that might protect them. the Concord public schools with White children, which to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. By 1870, terrified into silence. Corruption in President Grant’s had become the norm in most small Northern school 1857 – DRED SCOTT CASE: “NO RIGHTS” over 30 institutions of higher education were established administration led to the destruction of the Freedman’s 1896 – “SEPARATE BUT EQUAL” Federal, state, and local governments with the help districts with relatively few Black children. In Boston, Racist social conventions, laws, and judicial decisions for African Americans (now known as Historically Black Savings Bank, financially devasting the newly freed Throughout the post-Civil-War years, African Americans of banks “redlined” Black neighborhoods, refusing which boasted multiple Black enclaves, education was hardened throughout the antebellum period. These Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs). African Americans who had entrusted their life’s savings to resisted all of these forms of racism and discrimination. mortgages to people seeking to purchase homes there segregated until the 1850s. After that time, protests, culminated in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, when the the institution. Congress recommended indictments of the But by the time Ellen Garrison left Kansas in 1890 for and to Black residents looking to move into White responsible officials, but no action was taken. : names in bold are associated with the Robbins House Robbins the with associated : names in bold are *NOTE

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