Civil War Amendments

Civil Rights Movements & the People Behind Them: Document A0: Martin Luther King, Address to First Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 5, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama; Document A: Civil War Amendments (1865-1870); Document B: State Laws on Color (1865-1927); Document C: The Black Codes of Mississippi (1865); Document D: Jim Crow Laws (1896-1950; Document E: The Lynching of Richard Coleman (1899); Document F: Accounts of Women Lynched from the Crisis (1911-1918); Document G: Example of a Racially Restrictive Covenant; Document H: The Married Life of Georgia Peons. I. Lyrics Stevie Wonder, Living for the City (1973)

Document A0: Martin Luther King, Address to First Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 5, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama

My friends, we are certainly very happy to see each of you out this evening. We are here this evening for serious business. [Audience:] (Yes) We are here in a general sense because first and foremost we are American citizens (That's right), and we are determined to apply our citizenship to the fullness of its meaning. (Yeah. That's right) We are here also because of our love for democracy (Yes), because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action (Yes) is the greatest form of government on earth. (That's right)

But we are here in a specific sense because of the bus situation in Montgomery. (Yes) We are here because we are determined to get the situation corrected. This situation is not at all new. The problem has existed over endless years. (That's right) For many years now, Negroes in Montgomery and so many other areas have been inflicted with the paralysis of crippling fear (Yes) on buses in our community. (That's right) On so many occasions, Negroes have been intimidated and humiliated and oppressed because of the sheer fact that they were Negroes. (That's right) I don't have time this evening to go into the history of these numerous cases. Many of them now are lost in the thick fog of oblivion (Yes), but at least one stands before us now with glaring dimensions. (yes)

Just the other day, just last Thursday to be exact, one of the finest citizens in Montgomery-- (Amen) not one of the finest Negro citizens (That's right), but one of the finest citizens in Montgomery--was taken from a bus (Yes) and carried to jail and arrested (Yes) because she refused to get up to give her seat to a white person. (yes, that's right) Now the press would have us believe that she refused to leave a reserved section for Negroes (Yes), but I want you to know this evening that there is no reserved section. (All right) The law has never been clarified at that point. (Hell no) Now I think I speak with legal authority--not that I have any legal authority, but I think I speak with legal authority behind me--(All right) that the law, the ordinance, the city ordinance has never been totally clarified. (That's right)

There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July, and left standing amid the piercing chill of an a/pine November. There comes a time.

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. Civil Rights Movements & the People Behind Them: Document A0: Martin Luther King, Address to First Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 5, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama; Document A: Civil War Amendments (1865-1870); Document B: State Laws on Color (1865-1927); Document C: The Black Codes of Mississippi (1865); Document D: Jim Crow Laws (1896-1950; Document E: The Lynching of Richard Coleman (1899); Document F: Accounts of Women Lynched from the Crisis (1911-1918); Document G: Example of a Racially Restrictive Covenant; Document H: The Married Life of Georgia Peons. I. Lyrics Stevie Wonder, Living for the City (1973)

We are here, we are here this evening because we're tired now. And I want to say, that we are not here advocating violence.... I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that ... the only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all. And certainly, certainly, this is the glory of America, with all of its faults. This is the glory of our democracy....

As we stand and sit here this evening and as we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead, let us go out with a grim and bold determination that we are going to stick together.... Right here in Montgomery, when the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say, "There lived a race of people, a black people, ... a people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization." And we're gonna do that. God grant that we will do it before it is too late. As we proceed with our program, let us think of these things.

A. Civil War Amendments (1865-1870) Excerpts… Amendment XIII (1865) ection 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime Swhereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Amendment XIV (1868) ection 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction Sthereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. Amendment XV (1870)

ection 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by Sthe United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

B. State Laws on Race and Color (1865-1927) State constitutions and laws concerning the Negro made it necessary for the state to define “Negro” (colored). This selection is concerned with the various legal definitions of “Negro” agreed upon for the purposes of upholding and enforcing the state constitutions and laws.

Alabama Title 1, Sec. 2. Meaning of certain words and terms: …The word “Negro” includes mulatto. The word “mulatto” or the term “person of color” means a person of mixed blood descended on the part of the father or mother from Negro ancestors, without reference to limit of time or number of generations removed. (1927, p. 716)

Arkansas 41-808. “Persons of Negro race” defined: …defines “person of Negro race” as “any person who has in is or her veins any Negro blood whatever.” (Acts 1911, No. 320, Sec 3, p.295.)

Florida Sec. 1.01. Definitions: …The words “Negro,” “colored,” “colored persons,” “mulatto,” or “persons of color,” when applied to persons, including every person having one-eighth or more African or Negro blood. (Rev. Gen. St. 1920, Sec. 3939; Comp. Gen. Laws 1927, Sec. 5858.) Georgia Sec. 79-103 Persons of color, who are: All Negroes, mulattoes, mestizos and their descendants, having any ascertainable trace of either Negro or African, West Indian, or Asiatic Indian blood in their veins, and all descendants of any person having either Negro or African, West Indian, or Asiatic Indian blood in his or her veins shall be known in this state as persons of color. (Acts 1865-6, p. 239; 1927, p. 272.) Sec. 53-312. “White” person defined: The term “white person” shall include only persons of the white or Caucasian race, who have no ascertainable trace of either Negro or African, West Indian, Asiatic Indian, Mongolian, Japanese or Chinese blood in their veins. No person, any one of whose ancestors has been duly registered with the State Bureau of Vital Statistics as a colored person of person of color, shall be deemed to be a white person. (Acts 1927, p.277.) Kentucky

(Note: “Colored children,” within the meaning of Section 187 of Kentucky Constitution, include all children wholly or in part of Negro blood, of having any appreciable admixture thereof; and a child having one-sixteenth Negro blood may not attend a school with white children.) Mississippi (Note: Art. 14, Section 263 of the Constitution of Mississippi which prohibits marriage of a white person with a Negro or mulatto, or a person having one-eighth or more Negro blood, does not determine the status of a person as to whether he is white or colored under Art. 8, Section 207 of the Constitution, which provides for separate schools for children of the white and colored races. The word “white” under Section 207 means a member of the Caucasian race and the word “colored” includes not only Negroes but persons of mixed blood having any appreciable amount of Negro blood. [Moreau vs. Grandich, (1917) 114 Miss. 560, 75 Sp 434].) Virginia Sec. 1-14. Colored Persons defined: Every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood shall be deemed and taken to be a colored person.

C. Black Codes of Mississippi (1865) The following are excerpts from the Black Codes of Mississippi, which were called: An Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen and for Other Purposes.

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. Section 3. All freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes who do now and have herebefore lived and cohabitated together as husband and wife shall be taken and held in law as legally married, and the issue shall be taken and held as legitimate for all purposes; and it shall not be lawful for any freedman, free negro, or mulatto to intermarry with any white person; nor for any person to intermarry with any freedman, free negro, or mulatto; and any person who shall so intermarry shall be deemed guilty of felony, and on conviction thereof shall be confined in the State penitentiary for life; and those shall be freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes who are of pure negro blood, and those descended from a negro to the third generation, inclusive though one person in each generation may have been a white person. Section 6. All contracts for labor made with freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes for a longer period than one month shall be in writing, and a duplicate, attested and read to said freedman, free negro, or mulatto by a beat, city or county officer, or two disinterested white persons of the county in which the labor is to be performed, of which each party shall have one: and said contracts shall be taken and held as entire contracts, and if the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of his term of service, without good cause, he shall forfeit his wages for that year up to the time of quitting. Section 7. Every civil officer shall, and every person may, arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service without good cause; and said officer and person shall be entitled to receive for arresting and carrying back every deserting employee aforesaid the sum of five dollars, and ten cents per mile from the place of arrest to the place of delivery; and the same shall be paid by the employer, and held as a set off for so much against the wages of said deserting employee: Provided, that said arrested party, after being so returned, may appeal to the justice of the peace or member of the board of police of the county, who, on notice to the alleged employer, shall try summarily whether said appellant is legally employed by the alleged employer, and has good cause to quit said employer. Either party shall have the right of appeal to the county court, pending which the alleged deserter shall be remanded to the alleged employer or otherwise disposed of, as shall be right and just; and the decision of the county court shall be final.

D. “Jim Crow” Laws (1896-1950)

The following is a sampling of Jim Crow laws in the South. These laws were designed to keep African Americans from having equality with whites. The state listed is where the law as written is from, but most Southern states had similar laws to the ones below. (“Jim Crow” states not below included: Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Wyoming.)

Alabama Nurses—No persons or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed. Buses—All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races. Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 284-285 Source: From the New York Times, December 7, 1899, p. 1. Restaurants—It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the service of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment. Pool and Billiard Rooms—It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards. Toilet Facilities, Male—Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities. Arizona Intermarriage—The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void. Georgia Burial—The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons. Parks—It shall be unlawful for colored people to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the benefit, use and enjoyment of white persons…and unlawful for any white person to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the benefit, use and enjoyment of colored persons. Maryland Railroads—All railroad companies and corporations, and all persons running or operating cars or coaches by steam on any railroad line or track in the State of Maryland, for the transportation of passengers, are hereby required to provide separate cars of coaches for the travel and transportation of the white and colored passengers. Mississippi Education—Separate schools shall be maintained for the children of the white and colored races. Promotion of Equality—Any person…who shall be guilty of printing, publishing, or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fine or not exceeding five hundred (500.00) dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six (6) months or both. North Carolina Textbooks—Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. Oklahoma Teaching—Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college, or institution where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined in any sum not less than ten dollars ($10.00) nor more than fifty dollars ($50.00) for each offense.

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 284-285 Source: From the New York Times, December 7, 1899, p. 1. E. The Lynching of Richard Coleman (1899)

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 284-285 Source: From the New York Times, December 7, 1899, p. 1. ichard Coleman, colored, the confessed forward, striking at him with clubs, sticks, and Rmurderer of Mrs. James Lashbrook, wife of his whips until head and body were scarcely employer, expiated his crime in daylight to-day by recognizable. More dead than alive, he was dragged burning at the stake after suffering torture and fright along and forced to his feet. Several women joined beyond description at the hands of a mob of the men. High above the noise, the wretch could be thousands of citizens. heard pleading for his life. The spectacle continued The dreadful spectacle occurred on the peaceful until the grounds were reached where the final work Cricket Grounds on the outskirts of this, one of the of the mob, was accomplished. oldest and among the proudest cities of Kentucky. The place of execution had been selected weeks The barbarities inflicted upon this young negro are ago, in accordance with all the other arranged almost beyond belief, and can only be accounted for details of the programme mapped out by the leaders by the intense horror created by long consideration of the mob. The prisoner was dragged to the sapling of the atrocious crime of which full confession had and strapped against the tree, facing the husband of been made by Coleman. the victim. Large quantities of dry brush and larger Coleman had been told…to prepare to return to bits of wood were piled around him while he was the scene of his crime. He was stricken with fear, praying for speedy death. James Lashbrook, the and begged piteously to be permitted to remain in husband of the victim, applied the first match to the Covington until after his trial. He said he expected brushwood. A brother of the victim struck the to die, but he dreaded the vengeance of a mob. second match. Some one with a knife was slashing When he was handcuffed on leaving jail in at the prisoner’s chest. By a sort of cruel Covington he was almost paralyzed, and had to be concurrence of action on the part of the mob, not a assisted to the patrol wagon. The crowd about the single shot was fired. The purpose seemed to be to jail and there at the Covington station added to his give the wretch the greatest amount and duration of fear. On entering the train, he seemed unable to sit torture. As the flames arose Coleman’s horror down, until one of the guards forced him into a seat. increased and he made vain efforts to withdraw his It developed that in the crowd at Covington, and limbs from the encroaching fire. The ropes securing even on the train, there were some of the relatives of him to the tree burned and his body finally fell Mrs. Lashbrook, ready to convey information if any forward on the burning pile. Even then, although it attempt was made to secure the prisoner. was not certain whether he was living or dead, the The prisoner with his escort arrived [at vengeful purpose of the crowd led them to use rails Maysville] at 10:20 [A.M.]…. As the train pulled and long poles to push his body back into the slowly into the old station the mob formed on both flames. It is not certain how long life lasted. sides. Armed men stationed themselves at the During the process, while his voice could be platforms of all the cars and warned the frightened heard, he begged for a drink of water. At the end of passengers to remain quiet and not interfere. three hours the body was practically cremated. At the Court House a mob of over 2,000 men, During all that time members of the family of Mrs. headed by James Lashbrook, the husband, had been Lashbrook had remained to keep up the fire and hastily formed. A demand for the prisoner was keep the body in a position where it would continue made, accompanied by threats from the leaders. to burn. It is said that on the march through the city There was a brief struggle in which weapons were the prisoner’s eyes had been burned by acid thrown hastily drawn by the officers, and then the Sheriff in an eggshell. In all the thousands who constituted and his assistants were overcome by force of the mob there was not a single effort made to numbers, and the prisoner was pulled from among disguise or conceal identity. No man wore a mask. them. Up through the centre portion of town the All the leaders of the mob are well known and there mob marched, the prisoner being held by the are hundreds of witnesses who can testify to their vanguard and dragged along with the aid of ropes participation in the tragedy. They are all leading loosely attached to his body. He was the target of citizens in all lines of business and many are hundreds of missiles, and several times he sank half members of churches. conscious to the ground while the crowd pressed The coroner held an inquest on the charred remains of Richard Coleman and rendered the Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. simple verdict, “Death at the hands of a mob.” The kept up the fire around the blackened body by body was left lying there. Relic hunters took away throwing grass, brush, bits of boards, and teeth and bones and flesh and every fragment of the everything combustible that they could get together. body that they could lay hands on. All afternoon This kept up until dark. children, some of them not more than six years old,

F. Accounts of Women Lynched: The Final Solution (1911-1918) klahoma, 1911. At Okemah, Oklahoma, Laura Nelson, a colored woman, accused of murdering a Odeputy sheriff who had discovered stolen goods in her house, was lynched together with her son, a boy about fifteen. The woman and her son were taken from the jail, dragged about six miles to the Canadian River, and hanged from a bridge. The woman was raped by members of the mob before she was hanged. The Crisis, July, 1911 klahoma, 1914. Marie Scott of Wagoner County, a seventeen-year-old Negro girl was lynched by Oa mob of white men because her brother killed one of two white men who had assaulted her. She was alone in the house when the men entered, but her screams brought her brother to the rescue. In the fight that ensued one of the white men was killed. The next day the mob came to lynch her brother, but as he had escaped, lynched the girl instead. No one has ever been indicted for this crime. The Crisis, June, 1914 ississippi, 1918. On Friday night, December 20, 1918, four Negroes, Andrew Clark (15); Major MClark (20); Maggie Howze (20); and Alma Howze (16), were taken from a little jail at Shubuta and lynched on a bridge over the Chickasawha River. They were suspected of having murdered Dr. E.L. Johnston, a dentist. An investigation disclosed the following facts: That Dr. Johnston was living in illicit relations with Maggie Howze and Alma Howze. That Major Clark, a youth working on Johnston’s plantation wished to marry Maggie. That Dr. Johnston went to Clark and told him to leave his woman alone. That this led to a quarrel, made the more bitter when it was found that Maggie was to have a child by Dr. Johnston; and that the younger sister was also pregnant, said to be by Dr. Johnston. Shortly after this Johnston was mysteriously murdered. There were two theories as to his death; one that he was killed by Clark, the other that he was killed by a white man who accused him of seducing a white woman. It was generally admitted that Johnston was a loose character. Alma Howze was so hear to motherhood when lynched that it was said by an eyewitness at her burial on the second day following, that the movements of her unborn child could be detected. Investigation by the NAACP

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. Document G: Example of a Restrictive Covenant

Document H: The Married Life of Georgian Peons

Peonage in the South The Life Story of a Negro Peon

FROM "The Life Story of a Negro Peon," in The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves, ed. by Hamilton Holt (New York. 1906), pp. 183-99.

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. I am a Negro and was born sometime during the war in Elbert County, Ga., and I reckon by this time I must be a little over forty years old. My mother was not married when I was born, and I never knew who my father was or anything about him. Shortly after the war my mother died, and I was left to the care of my uncle. All this happened before I was eight years old, and so l can't remember very much about it. When I was about ten years old my uncle hired me out to Captain. I had already learned how to plow, and was also a good hand at picking cotton. I was told that the Captain wanted me for his houseboy, and that later on he was going to tram me to be his coachman. To be a coachman in those days was considered a post of honor, and young as I was, I was glad of the chance.

But I had not been at the Captain's a month before I was put to work on the farm, with some twenty or thirty other Negroes--men, women and children. From the beginning the boys had the same tasks as the men and women. There was no difference. We all worked hard during the week, and would frolic on Saturday nights and often on Sundays. And everybody was happy. The men got $3 a week and the women $2.1 don't know what the children got. Every week my uncle collected my money for me, but it was very little of it that I ever saw. My Uncle fed and clothed me, gave me a place to sleep, and allowed me ten or fifteen cents a week for "spending change," as he called it.

I must have been seventeen or eighteen years old before I got tired of that arrangement, and felt that I was man enough to be working for myself and handling my own wages. The other boys about my age and size were "drawing" their own pay, and they used to laugh at me and call me "Baby," because my old uncle was always on hand to "draw" my pay. Worked up by these things, I made a break for liberty. Unknown to my uncle or the Captain I went off to a neighboring plantation and hired myself out to another man. The new landlord agreed to give me forty cents a day and furnish me.one meal. I thought that was doing fine. Bright and early one Monday morning I started for work, still not letting the others know anything about it. But they found it out before sundown. The Captain came over to the new place and brought some kind of officer of the law. The officer pulled out a long piece of paper from his pocket and read it to my employer. When this was done I heard my new boss say:

"I beg your pardon, Captain. I didn't know this Negro was bound out to you, or I wouldn't have hired him."

"He certainly is bound out to me," said the Captain. "He belongs to me until he is twenty-one, and I'm going to make him know his place."

So l was carried back to the Captain's. That night he made me strip off my clothing down to the waist, ordered his foreman to give me thirty lashes with a buggy whip across my bare back, and stood by until it was done. After that experience the Captain made me stay on his place night and day--but my uncle still continued to "draw" my money.

I was a man nearly grown before I knew how to count from one to one hundred. I was a man nearly grown before I ever saw a colored teacher. I never went to school a day in my life. Today I can't write my own name, though I can read a little. I was a man nearly grown before I ever rode on a railroad train, and then I went on an excursion from Elberton to Athens. What was true of me was true of hundreds of other Negroes around me _'way off there in the country, fifteen or twenty miles from the nearest town.

When I reached twenty-one the Captain told me I was a free man, but he urged me to stay with him. He said he would treat me right, and pay me as much as anybody else would. The Captain's son and I were about the same age, and the Captain said that, as he owned my mother and uncle during slavery, and as his son

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. didn't want me to leave them (since I had been with them so long), he wanted me to stay with the old family. And I stayed. I signed a contract--that is, I made my mark--for one year. The Captain was to give me $3.50 a week, and furnish me a little house on the plantation--a one-room log cabin similar to those used by his other laborers.

During that year I married Mandy. For several years Mandy had been the house-servant for the Captain, his wife, his son and his three daughters, and they all seemed to think a good deal of her. As an evidence of their regard they gave us a suit of furniture, which cost about $25, and we set up housekeeping in one of the Captain's two-room shanties. I thought I was the biggest man in Georgia. Mandy still kept her place in the "Big House" after our marriage. We did so well for the first year that I renewed my contract for the sec ond year, and for the third, fourth and fifth year I did the same thing. Before the end of the fifth year the Captain had died, and his son, who had married some two or three years before, took charge of the plantation. Also, for two or three years, this son had been serving at Atlanta in some big office to which he had been elected. I think it was in the Legislature or something of that sort--anyhow, all the people called him Senator. At the end of the fifth year the Senator suggested that I sign up a con tract for ten years; then, he said, we wouldn't have to fix up papers every year. I asked my wife about it; she consented; and so l made a ten-year contract.

Not long afterward the Senator had a long, low shanty built on his place. A great big chimney, with a wide, open fireplace, was built at one end of it and on each side of the house, running lengthwise, there was a row of frames or stalls just large enough to hold a single mattress. The places for these mattresses were fixed one above the other; so that there was a double row of these stalls or pens on each side. They looked for all the world like stalls for horses. Since then I have seen cabooses similarl y arranged as sleeping quarters for railroad laborers.

Nobody seemed to know what the Senator was fixing for. All doubts were put aside one bright day in April when about forty able-bodied Negroes, bound in iron chains, and some of them handcuffed, were brought out to the Senator's farm in three big wagons. They were quartered in the long, low shanty, and it was afterward called the stockade. This was the beginning of the Senator's convict camp. These men were prisoners who had been leased by the Senator from the State of Georgia at about $200 each per year, the State agreeing to pay for guards and physicians, for necessary inspection, for inquests, all rewards for escaped convicts, the cost of litigation and all other incidental expenses.

When I saw these men in shackles, and the guards with their guns, I was scared nearly to death. I felt like running away, but I didn't know where to go. And if there had been any place to go to, I would have had to leave my wife and child behind. We free laborers held a meeting. We all wanted to quit. We sent a man to tell the Senator about it. Word came back that we were all under contract for ten years and that the Senator would hold us to the letter of the contract, or put us in chains and lock us up--the same as the other prisoners. It was made plain to us by some white people we talked to that in the contracts we had signed we had all agreed to be locked up in a stockade at night or at any other time that our employer saw fit; further, we learned that we could not lawfully break our contract for any reason and go and hire ourselves to somebody else without the consent of our employer; and, more than that, if we got mad and ran away, we could be nun down by bloodhounds, arrested without process of law, and be returned to our employer, who, according to the contract, might beat us brutally or administer any kind of punishment that he thought proper. In other words, we had sold ourselves into slavery--and what could we do about it? The white folks had all the courts, all the guns, all the hounds, all the railroads, all the telegraph wires, all the newspapers, all the money, and nearly all the land--and we had only our ignorance, our poverty and our empty hands.

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. We decided that the best thing to do was to shut our mouths, say nothing, and go back to work. And most of us worked side by side with those convicts during the remainder of the ten years.

But this first batch of convicts was only the beginning. Within six months another stockade was built, and twenty or thirty other convicts were brought to the plantation, among them six or eight women! The Senator had bought an additional thousand acres o f land, and to his already large cotton plantation he added two great big sawmills and went into the lumber business. Within two years the Senator had in all 200 Negroes working on his plantation--about half of them free laborers, so called, and about half of them convicts. The only difference between the free laborers and the others was that the free laborers could come and go as they pleased, at night--that is, they were not locked up at night, and were not, as a general thing, whipped for slight offenses.

The troubles of the free laborers began at the close of the ten-year period. To a man they all refused to sign new contracts--even for one year, not to say anything of ten years. And just when we thought that our bondage was at an end we found that it had really just begun. Two or three years before, or about a year and a half after the Senator had started his camp, he had established a large store, which was called the commissary. AD of us free laborers were compelled to buy our supplies--food, clothing, etc.--from that store. We never used any money in our dealings with the commissary, only tickets or orders, and we had a general settlement once each year, in October. In this store we were charged all sorts of high prices for goods, because every year we would come out in debt to our employer. If not that, we seldom had more than $5 or $10 coming to us--and that for a whole year's work. Well, at the close of the tenth year, when we kicked and meant to leave the Senator, he said to some of us with a smile (and I never will forget that smile-- I can see it now):

"Boys, I'm sorry you're going to leave me. I hope you will do well in your new places--so well that you will be able to pay me the little balances which most of you owe me "

Word was sent out for all of us to meet him at the commissary at 2 o'clock. There he told us that, after we had signed what he called a written acknowledgement of our debts, we might go and look for new places. The storekeeper took us one by one and read to us statements of our accounts. According to the books there was no man of us who owed the Senator less than $100; some of us were put down for as much as $200.1 owed $165, according to the bookkeeper. These debts were not accumulated during one year, but ran back for three and four years, so we were told--in spite of the fact that we understood that we had had a full settlement at the end of each year. But no one of us would have dared to dispute a white man's word--oh, no; not in those days. Besides, we fellows didn't care anything about the amounts--we were after getting away; and we had been told that we might too, if we signed the acknowledgement. We would have signed anyt hing, just to get away. So we stepped up, we did, and made our marks. That same night we were rounded up by a constable and ten or twelve white men, who aided him, and we were locked up, every one of us, in one of the Senator's stockades. The next morning it was explained to us by the two guards appointed to watch us that, in the papers we had signed the day before, we had not only made acknowledgement of our indebtedness, but that we had also agreed to work for the Senator until the debts were paid by ha rd labor. And from that day forward we were treated just like convicts. Really we had made ourselves lifetime slaves, or peons, as the laws called us. But call it slavery, peonage, or what not, the truth is we lived in a hell on earth what time we spent i n the Senator's peon camp.

I lived in that camp, as a peon, for nearly three years. My wife fared better than I did, as did the wives of some of the other Negroes, because the white men about the camp used these unfortunate creatures as their

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. mistresses. When I was first put in the stockade my wife was still kept for a while in the "Big House," but my little boy, who was only nine years old, was given away to a Negro family across the river in South Carolina, and I never saw or heard of him after that. When I left the camp my wife had had two children by some one of the white bosses, and she was living in a fairly good shape in a little house off to herself. But the poor Negro women who were not in the class with my wife fared about as bad as the helpless Negro men. Most of the time the women who were peons or convicts were compelled to wear men's clothes. Sometimes, when I have seen them dressed like men, and plowing or hoeing or hauling logs or working at the blacksmith's trade, just the same as men, my heart would bleed and my blood would boil, but I was powerless to raise a hand. It would have meant death on the spot to have said a word. Of the first six women brought to the camp, two of them gave birth to children after they had been there more than twelve months--and the babies had white men for their fathers!

The stockades in which we slept, were, I believe, the filthiest places in the world. They were cesspools of nastiness. During the thirteen years that I was there I am willing to swear that a mattress was never moved after it had been brought there, except to turn it over once or twice a month. No sheets were used, only dark-colored blankets. Most of the men slept every night in the clothing that they had worked in all day. Some of the worst characters were made to sleep in chairs. The doors were locked an d barred, each night, and tallow-candles were the only lights allowed. Really the stockades were but little more than cow sheds, horse stables, or hog pens. Strange to say, not a great number of these people died while I was there, though a great many came away mai med and bruised and, m some cases, disabled for Gfe. As far as I can remember only about ten died during the last ten years that I was there, two of these being killed outright by the guards for trivial offenses.

It was a hard school that peon camp was, but I learned more there in a few short months by contact with those poor fellows from the outside world than ever I had known before. Most of what I learned was evil, and I now know that I should have been better off without the knowledge, but much of what I learned was helpful to me. Barring two or three severe and brutal whippings which I received, I got along very well, all things considered; but the system is damnable. A favorite way of whipping a man was to s trap him down to a log, flat on his back, and spank him fifty or sixty times on his bare feet with a shingle or a huge piece of plank. When the man would get up with sore and blistered feet and an aching body, if he could not then keep up with the other men at work he would be strapped to the log again, this time face downward, and would be lashed with a buggy trace on his bare back. When a woman had to be whipped it was usually done in private, though they would be compelled to fall down across a barrel or something of the kind and receive the licks on their backsides.

The working day on a peon farm begins with sunrise and ends when the sun goes down; or, in other words, the average peon works from ten to twelve hours each day, with one hour (from 12 o'clock to 1 1 o'clock) for dinner. Hot or cold, sun or rain, this is the rule. As to their meals, the laborers are divided up into squads or companies, just the same as soldiers in a great military camp would be. Two or three men m each stockade are appointed as cooks. From thirty to forty men report to each cook. In the warm months (or eight or nine months out of the year) the cooking is done on the outside, just behind the stockades; in the cold months the cooking is done inside the stockades. Each peon is provided with a great big tin cup, a flat tin pan and two big tin spoons. No knives or forks are ever seen, except those used by the cooks. At meal time the peons pass m single file before the cooks, and hold out their pans and cups to receive their allowances. Cow peas (red or white, which when boiled turn black), fat bacon and old-fashioned Georgia cornbread, baked in pones from one to two and three inches thick, made up the chief articles of food. Black coffee, black molasses and brown sugar are also used abundantly. Once in a great while, on Sundays, biscuits would be made, but they

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. would always be made from the kind of flour called "shorts." As a rule, breakfast consisted of coffee, fried bacon, cornbread, and sometimes molasses--and one "helping" of each was all that was allowed. Peas, boiled w ith huge hunks of fat bacon, and a hoe-cake, as big as a man's hand, usually answered for dinner. Sometimes this dinner bill of fare gave place to bacon and greens (collard or turnip) and pot liquor. Though we raised corn, potatoes and other vegetables, we never got a chance at such things unless we could steal them and cook them secretly. Supper cons isted of coffee, fried bacon and molasses. But, although the food was limited to certain things, I am sure we all got a plenty of the things allowed. As coarse as these things were, we kept, as a rule, fat and sleek and as strong as mules. And that, too, in spite of the fact that we had no special arrangements for taking regular baths, and no very great effort was made to keep us regularly in clean clothes. No tables were used or allowed. In summer we would sit down on the ground and eat our meals, and in winter we would sit around inside the filthy stockades. Each man was his own dishwasher-- that is to say, each man was responsible for the care of his pan and cup and spoons. My dishes got washed about once a week!

Today, I am told, there are six or seven of these private camps in Georgia--that is to say, camps where most of the convicts are leased from the State of Georgia. But there are hundreds and hundreds of farms all over the State where Negroes, and in some ca ses poor white folks, are held in bondage on the ground that they are working out debts, or where the contracts which they have made hold them in a kind of perpetual bondage, because, under those contracts they may not quit one employer and hire out to an other except by and with the knowledge and consent of the former employer.

One of the usual ways to secure laborers for a large peonage camp is for the proprietor to send out an agent to the little courts in the towns and villages, and where a man charged with some petty offense has no friends or money the agent will urge him to plead guilty, with the understanding that the agent will pay his fine, and in that way save him from the disgrace of being sent to jail or the chain-gang! For this high favor the man must sign beforehand a paper signifying his willingness to go to the farm and work out the amount of the fine imposed. When he reaches the farm he has to be fed and clothed, to be sure, and these things are charged up to his account. By the time he has worked out his first debt another is hanging over his head, and so on and so on, by a sort of endless chain, for an indefinite period, as in every case the indebtedness is arbitrarily arranged by the employer. In many cases it is very evident that the court officials are in collusion with the proprietors or agents, and that they divide the "graft" among themselves. As an example of this dickering among the whites, every year many convicts were brought to the Senator's camp from a certain county m South Georgia, 'way down in the turpentine district. The majority of these men were charged with adultery, which is an offense against the laws of the great and sovereign State of Georgia! Upon inquiry I learned that down that county a number of Negro lewd women were employed by certain white men to entice Negro men into t heir houses; and then, on a certain night, at a given signal, when all was m readiness, raids would be made by the officers upon these houses, and the men would be arrested and charged with living in adultery. Nine out of ten of these men, so arrested and so charged, would find their way ultimately to some convict camp, and, as I said, many of the m found their way every year to the Senator's camp while I was there. The low-down women were never punished in any way. On the contrary, I was told that they always seemed to stand in high favor with the sheriffs, constables and other officers. There can be no room to doubt that they assisted very materially in furnishing laborers for the prison pens of Georgia, and the belief was general among the men that they were regularly paid for their work. I could tell more, but I've said enough to make anybody's heart sick. This great and terrible iniquity is, I know, widespread throughout Georgia and many other Southern States. But I didn't tell you how I got out. I didn't get out--they put me out. When I had served as a peon for nearly three years--and you remember that they claimed I owed them only $165--when I served for nearly three

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. years one of the bosses came to me and said that my time was up. He happened to be the one who was said to be living with my wife. He gave me a new suit of overalls, which cost about seventy-five cents, took me in a buggy and carried me across the Broad River into South Carolina, set me down and told me to "git." I didn't have a cent of money, and I wasn't feeling well, but somehow I managed to get a move on me. I begged my way to Columbia. In two or three days I ran across a man looking for laborers to carry to Birmingham, and I joined his gang. I have been here in the Birmingham district since they released me, and I reckon I'll die either in a coal mine or an iron furnace. It don't make much difference which. Either is better than a Georgia peon camp. And a Georgia peon camp is hell itself!

I. Stevie Wonder, Living for the City (1973)

A boy is born in hard time Mississippi Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty His parents give him love and affection To keep him strong moving in the right direction Living just enough, just enough for the city...ee ha!

His father works some days for fourteen hours And you can bet he barely makes a dollar His mother goes to scrub the floor for many And you'd best believe she hardly gets a penny Living just enough, just enough for the city...yeah

His sister's black but she is sho 'nuff pretty Her skirt is short but Lord her legs are sturdy To walk to school she's got to get up early Her clothes are old but never are they dirty Living just enough, just enough for the city...um hum

Her brother's smart he's got more sense than many His patience's long but soon he won't have any To find a job is like a haystack needle Cause where he lives they don't use colored people Living just enough, just enough for the city... Living just enough... For the city...ooh,ooh [repeat several times]

His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty He spends his love walking the streets of New York City He's almost dead from breathing on air pollution He tried to vote but to him there's no solution Living just enough, just enough for the city...yeah, yeah, yeah!

I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow This place is cruel no where could be much colder If we don't change the world will soon be over Living just enough, just enough for the city!!!!

Additional Documents

Document #1

“Well, before I ran for governor, I had been attorney general of Virginia for approximately ten years. And, with associates, I handled and argued all of those school cases, all the segregation cases, in the lower federal courts, district courts, Circuit Court of Appeals and Supreme Court of the United States. And I did everything I could as a lawyer—honorably, I trust--to get the Supreme Court to adhere to the separate but equal doctrine which had been announced in 1898, I believe, in the case of Plessey against Ferguson. I believed that was sound, the Plessey decision. And I fought with everything I had, and lost.

The decision caused very much unrest in Virginia. People were upset about it. And I led the fight as far as I could as attorney general to try to preserve the separate school system in Virginia, even after the Supreme Court’s decision. Mine was not a spirit of defiance.”

I was trying to find some legal avenue of accommodation, knowing full well as a lawyer that I was in a desperate situation to do When I carne in as Governor of Virginia I had been saddled with state statutes which had been enacted during the administration of my predecessor, Governor Stanley [Thomas B. Stanley]. I, as attorney general, had advised him that those laws would not stand up under attack in the federal courts. But notwithstanding that, the legislature, at the behest of the governor, enacted them. As governor, I was under an obligation to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of Virginia, and the laws of the United States and the laws of Virginia. I had two inconsistencies there. I’d taken an oath to uphold both of them. So having to make a choice, I decided I’d do all I could to uphold the laws of my state. And I did.

“ Then the crash came. My own supreme court knocked those laws out. As a lawyer I knew all the time that no governor or no public official could defy the law of the panel. I knew from past decisions of the states, that a governor who acted beyond law was acting as an individual and not as a governor, and he was subject to being restrained by law, by injunction, and if necessary by contempt process.”

Virginia Governor J. Lindsay Almond

Document # 2

Letterhead from the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Federated Auxiliaries to Virginia Governor J. Lindsay Almond, June 23, 1961

1840 Madrona Street North Bend, Oregon June 23, 1961

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317. We the undersigned understand that at one time in the history of the United States of America it was against the law to educate negroes, then classed as slaves. The negro has since been emancipated on paper if not in fact.

Depriving any person of an education with facilities are available is a disgrace to a so called democratic people.

The fact that Prince Edward County, Virginia has fully equipped schools except for students is a crime against man and God.

We the undersigned, deplore this continuing and are watching you to see that you dissolve the present situation.

In many areas schools are overcrowded which only adds that much more discredit to your state and community for permitting yours to go unused.

The whole world is watching our democracy at work.

Where do you stand?

Sincerely,

Source: RG 3, Executive Office, Governor James Lindsay Almond Papers

Williams, Yohuru ed. A Constant Struggle: African American History 1865-Present. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 2003: 42-45, 164-170, 284-285, 317.