American History Month-The Legend of Bass Reeves

February 25, 2018 / oleblacklady / 1 Comment

Bass-Reeves-Internet Born enslaved in 1838, Bass Reeves became a renowned frontier hero in the American West as the first black US Deputy Marshal west of the Mississippi. Some believe he is actually the model for the Lone Ranger, bleached white for mass consumption.

After George Reeves, son of his Arkansas slave master, picked tall and funny Bass from the fields as his personal companion, Bass served the white Reeves as he battled for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Legend has it that Bass beat up George Reeves after a card game during the war, a crime punishable by death. Others think that rumors of freedom for the enslaved and the opportunities presented by life with Confederate troops lured Bass to escape to Indian territory. There he found refuge with the Seminole and Creek Indians, taking the opportunity to perfect quick draw skills with a pistol fired with deadly accuracy.

Bass left Indian territory after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 to buy a ranch in Arkansas, to marry and start his family of 10 children. But in 1875, US Marshal James Fagan recruited Reeves to become a US Deputy. Reeves’ reputation for detailed knowledge of Indian terrain and the fact that he spoke several Indian languages made him an ideal candidate to enforce the law in Indian Territory. Lawlessness in Indian territory was then epidemic as thieves, murderers and anyone fleeing law enforcement was finding refuge there.

Bart reeves with marshalls Bass rode the Oklahoma territory in search of outlaws, with a wagon, a Native American companion and a cook covering the area between Fort Reno, Fort Sill and Anadarko, about 800 miles round trip. Atop a big white stallion, head tucked under a large brimmed hat, the 6 foot 2 Black man painted an imposing picture. He was a snappy dresser who kept his boots polished to a high shine. Two Colt pistols, handles forward, always stood ready holstered at his side. He was renowned for his quick draw and accurate shooting, no doubt aided by his ambidexterity. He was cunning, indulging in disguises to capture his fugitives, often returned under their own steam to collect his bounty. He was famous not only for his exploits, but also for his highly successful rate of capture.

Because Reeves had never learned to read or write, he memorized the warrants he carried with him read to him by others. After being on the road for months at a time, he would return to Fort Smith with several outlaws in tow, collect his bounties, spend time with the wife and kids and then head out again.

Once Bart left his posse over 25 miles from a home where 2 outlaws were hiding with their mother. He walked the distance to the house, disguised as a tramp, wearing old shoes, dirty clothes, carrying a cane, so uncharacteristic of his usual appearance. He pleaded with the woman to let him rest his achy weary feet as he was trying to escape a posse that had shot 3 bullets through his hat, which the woman could easily see for herself. She let him in, and while preparing him something to eat, she began talking about her 2 outlaw sons, even suggesting that he join them.

Bart was settling in to spend the night, when he heard a sharp whistle which the mother went out to answer. In no time at all, 2 riders appeared at the house. The two sons entertained Bart with tales of their crimes before they settled down to sleep. Once the pair fell asleep, without waking them, Bart handcuffed them, kicked them awake and hustled them out the door. Pursued by the mother for the first 3 miles, he marched the duo back to camp and later collected the $5000 reward.

One of the tragedies in Reeves’ career was the search for his own son. On returning from another manhunt, the marshal found a warrant on his desk issued for his son accused of the murder of his wife. Fearful, no other marshal had wanted to pursue it; but as a dedicated lawman, Reeves took on the task and returned his son to face trial. After he was convicted, his son was sentenced to Leavenworth Prison, but was later pardoned and remained a law abiding citizen for the rest of his life.

When law enforcement duties were assumed by state agencies in 1907, Reeves retired from the deputy marshals to join the Muskogee Oklahoma police as a patrolman. He died in 1910 of Bright’s disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys. Over his career as a US Marshal, he apprehended over 3000 criminals, making him one of the most effective lawmen in the Indian Territory.

Was Bart Reeves the model for the radio and TV series “The Lone Ranger”? Some think the key similarities between the Reeves legend and the TV hero are striking but others disagree. That’s a question that will probably remain open.

American History Month: The Port Royal Experiment, South Carolina

February 21, 2018February 21, 2018 / oleblacklady / Leave a comment

Port Royal and the surrounding South Carolina Sea Islands was an early site for an experiment to test the competence of Freedmen to conduct their lives, begun during the Civil War. Although, African Americans, just like white, farmers were succeeding in producing crops, even as they were being manipulated as pawns in political games by several different interests, the Port Royal Experiment was brought to a halt in the interest of reconciling Confederates to return to the Union.

Ultimately, the goal of Reconstruction was to revive the southern economy to contribute to the growth of the American economy. To accomplish that, the confederacy was allowed to resurrect the same labor system, this time enslaving African Americans under a different name, sharecropping and the Black codes. The two combined to threaten, torture and intimidate Black citizens and strip them of their citizenship rights. Laws that made it a crime (vagrancy) for any Black person to stand around idle or to walk next to a railroad track or to violate sunset curfews, provided a steady stream of Black prison labor under the convict leasing system which supported growing industries like brick making, turpentine, timber, coal, as well as farming while it proved to be a financial bonanza for law men throughout Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Virginia and Florida. Misdemeanors, upgraded to felonies, like the theft of a pig worth as little as a dollar, or a fence rail worth 8 cents, were punishable by at least 5 year prison sentences. Women were not an exception, making up about 10% of convict laborers. The southern states essentially created a system of peonage, which was in fact illegal in the US. The Civil War was fought not to resolve the fate of the enslaved but to retain the United States of America as it stood in 1860. In the end, the country turned a blind eye on African Americans and embarked on the path of explosive economic growth in the Industrial Gilded Age.

The Port Royal Experiment demonstrated that African Americans worked hard without inspiration from the lash or club, to the surprise of most whites, including most abolitionists. The stereotype of lazy, ignorant colored people was firmly implanted in the minds of most Americans who had very little interaction with “coloreds”.

Port Royal South Carolina, as the largest deep water port along the southeastern coast, was attacked by Union Commodore Samuel Du Pont in November 1861 who successfully seized Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard in short order. From there it became the base for the successful blockade of the ports at Charleston and Savannah. As troops advanced up the river toward Beaufort, home to some of the wealthiest plantation owners in the country, the occupants abandoned their plantations in the nightmare that the war had arrived at their doorstep. The enslaved left behind were overjoyed when presented with this opportunity for their emancipation. In their jubilation, they ransacked the mansions, destroyed the cotton gins and more importantly, partitioned off self-surveyed plots for future homesteads.

Port Royal was also the epicenter for import and export of Sea Island cotton an exceedingly valuable crop. Attorney General Edward Bates saw the potential of the cotton as a source of much needed federal revenue, so when the town fell, the cotton was confiscated to be sold to Northern factories. But the disposition of enslavers’ property was a more complicated issue. Lincoln had refused to interfere with the institution of slavery, for fear that it would anger Northern conservatives and alienate the border states, perhaps sparking more secessions.

Months earlier, Major General Benjamin Butler, commander at Fort Monroe in Virginia, had created a plausible approach to escaping slaves. When a Confederate officer petitioned Major Butler for the return of 3 enslaved men to whom he granted refuge, Butler declared them contraband of war and therefore property of the federal government, and refused. This prompted the passage of the Confiscation Act of 1861 which authorized the seizure of any property, including the enslaved, being used to aid the Confederate war effort. By designating them “property”, this action avoided the question of emancipation, at the same time making clear that the action was applicable only during the war and would not affect the status of the enslaved after the conclusion of the war. Northern conservatives had no objections. The enslaved however were left in limbo, not free but still property, this time of the federal government.

Salmon Chase, Secretary of the Treasury and staunch abolitionist, sent Colonel William Reynolds to Beaufort to commandeer the remaining cotton but also recognized that a cotton crop could be grown the next years, but only with sufficient labor to grow and process it. As an abolitionist, he recognized that Port Royal might present an opportunity to advance the cause. He asked Edward Pierce who was supervising the refugees at Fort Monroe to assess the condition of the formerly enslaved at Port Royal and determine if they would be willing to go back to work.

Pierce reported the contraband/freedmen were very willing to work and would be industrious if “properly organized” with “proper motives.” He proposed the creation of a free labor enterprise with white superintendents managing cotton cultivation and setting up “colored” schools. He proposed that wages be paid to laborers organized by family units or individuals rather than in gangs as used by slaveholders. Lincoln approved the proposal which would free these Black men and women under the terms of the Port Royal Experiment enterprise.

Because the educational component was beyond the funds allotted to Pierce, he recruited Northern missionaries, educators and doctors to essentially volunteer to oversee the Freedman’s schools and churches and in some cases manage cotton cultivation and growth on the plantations after he covered expenses for supplies and their travel. From abolitionist communities in Boston and New York, Pierce commissioned the National Freedman’s Relief Association. Many of these volunteers viewed slavery from the perspective of the Free Soil Movement which saw the system as detrimental competition for free labor not the sinful stain on the nation that Garrisonians espoused. They assumed that the project would demonstrate the superior productivity of free labor and individual initiative. Still there were some who were fired with evangelical fervor who prioritized humanitarian relief and religious instruction over imbuing a labor ethic. This chism would cause ongoing problems in management of the project.

The freedmen needed no instruction in a work ethic; they had worked hard all their lives and only wanted now to benefit from their own labor as they perceived it to be. Abolitionist ignorance of the enslaved and paternalistic naivete prevented the abolitionists from understanding the men and women they would supposedly elevate.

A total of 88 New Yorkers and Bostonians who came to be known as the Gideonites by the locals, landed on the South Carolina coast in the spring of 1862. Most were ill prepared for the tasks at hand; few had experience in plantation management. While they struggled to organize themselves, they found that the “colored” were not receptive to resuming cotton farming. Now thinking themselves free, they wanted to plant food and grain crops as they saw fit.

In addition, whites, primarily Northerners, already on the island were antagonistic to the venture. The army was hostile to the African American men and women; some soldiers felt they impeded military operations, others were simply driven by racist attitudes. Numerous crimes were committed against formerly enslaved men and women. Similarly, their antagonism toward the Gideonites centered around an antipathy against their meddling in military affairs.

Since William Reynold’s cotton agents had been charged with requisition not just of cotton but any merchandise from the plantations that could be sold, they maliciously obstructed the Gideonites’ humanitarian mission. The agents, veterans of the cotton trade, considered them incompetent in cotton cultivation, which in many cases they were. They were also intolerant of the leniency abolitionists showed toward the formerly enslaved which was considered by them to be indulgence of the undeserving. This led to constant bickering between the army, the abolitionists and the cotton agents each arguing for the prioritization of their missions. Chase opted to remain neutral to the appeals, thinking that the whole project was short lived.

Unaware that cotton production was the primary outcome by which the Port Royal Experiment would be evaluated, the freedmen were reluctant to return to cotton planting, a symbol of their bondage, just like the plantation homes they had ransacked and the gins they had destroyed. For them, it was regression to the past, rather than the autonomy to chart their own futures that came with white skin. They wanted to plant staples like corn and sweet potatoes for their own subsistence; these were crops that had kept them from starving. The objective for the Gideonites was a return to the level of prewar cotton production to demonstrate that a free labor system was equally as productive as enslaved labor had been. This led to a series of ongoing negotiations between African Americans and their supervisors that were usually resolved on each individual property being farmed.

The gap in communication between the abolitionists and their labor force reflected different attitudes toward labor. Wages were not a particular incentive for the freedmen, who valued economic autonomy to work using their own habits by their own timetables, like all yeoman farmers. The Gideonites, believers in the concept that wages were the universal incentive driving production were incredulous, as Bostonians and New Yorkers grounded in small business and manufacturing industries rather than agrarian pursuits. Theirs was a Protestant-capitalist ethic; they believed that the free labor system instilled the discipline, thrift and respect for both social rank and order that was a prerequisite for independence and thence citizenship and ultimately, the preservation of democracy. If the freedmen did not capitulate to the free labor system, Gideonites reasoned that it would mean their outright rejection of this American ethic, discrediting the Republican vision that the North hoped would become the foundation for restructuring the vanquished Confederacy, including African Americans that had shown demonstrable readiness for the rights of citizenship. In the end, the freedmen acquiesced to a return to cotton cultivation.

While Blacks living in the Sea Islands were wary of the plantation supervisors, they were enamored with the educators. The formerly enslaved hungered for literacy, second only to locating and reuniting with family members. They understood the importance of reading and writing in the absolute prohibition of literacy that slaveholders had demanded, even to the point of death. They understood the power of written communication and saw it as a means of self-protection. While prioritizing the work schedule, efforts in education took several different forms. The most common was night classes, held from 4 to 9pm about 3 times a week although the traditional school classes were open to both children and adults. Individual instruction was also available, usually held in the white educator’s home but in some instances, tutors visited laborers in their homes. Sabbath School, the traditional Sunday school, used Bible study to promote literacy as well. Sea Islanders released their children from field labor to attend school and the children became an army of mini-instructors, teaching the other members of their households.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton appointed Brigadier General Rufus Saxton to assume the position of Military Governor of the Department of the South. Under Saxton, jurisdiction of the Port Royal Experiment and the army was consolidated under the War Department. This move relieved Chase of the bickering complaints from the Gideonites and the cotton agents and in theory, eliminated them, shifting the balance of power to the army. Rufus Saxton, an anti-slavery writer in his own right used Robert Smalls, an AFrican American hero who had seized a Confederate steamer, to help convince Stanton to authorize a new regiment of African Americans, perhaps with foreknowledge of the Emancipation Act then being discussed in the Cabinet.

Smalls, born on a Beaufort plantation, had worked on a steamer in Charleston before the war and knew how to navigate. When Civil War was declared, the Confederates had seized the ship, the Planter, as an armed transport. In 1862, while the crew was on furlough, Smalls, with several other Black crew members, steamed across the harbor to pick up his wife and children and then piloted the ship to the federal blockade of Charleston Harbor, flying a white bed sheet for a flag of surrender once he reached Union lines. Smalls later purchased the plantation home, owned by his rumored father, in which he had once worked with part of the money he received in compensation for his seizure of the Confederate ship. Smalls went on to serve in the state legislature and for 5 terms in Congress. Among his other accomplishments, he ran a newspaper and helped build the state Republican party organization.

In the meantime, in May, the Union commander of the Department of the South, David Hunter, initiated his own draft, without specific authorization from Washington. After he emancipated the enslaved of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, he ordered all able bodied Black men of the Sea Islands between Port Royal and Hilton Head to report for military training. While many of the men were anxious to serve, the first reaction of many wives was that the order represented a betrayal that would result in their detention and exportation for sale in Cuba. The Gideonites protested that the drain on their labor force would be devastating to their cotton crop.

Even after Lincoln rescinded the order, Hunter continued to drill his units of over 500 Black men, but without funds for wages, the units disbanded by August. However, fairly quickly, Saxton’s regiment was approved and eventually included 800 soldiers drawn from not only the Sea Islands but also Georgia and Florida. Unlike Hunter’s army, this regiment was a volunteer force. The Gideonites opposition was tempered by not only the enthusiastic response from the men but the realization that military service and bravery on the battlefield was an equally powerful argument for the humanity, even nobility of the Black man. By the time of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 authorizing the general enlistment of Black soldiers in the Union army, the 1st South Carolina Volunteers had begun establishing a reputation as a lethal force against Confederate war works and guerrilla fighters.

The Port Royal Experiment was expanded through the influx of over 3000 refugees from inland areas of conflict, with the number swelling to over 30,000 by the end of the war. The Gideonites were unprepared for the influx, further taxing their managerial skills and supplies.

The freedmen would be disappointed in their desire to own the land they plowed, the ultimate step to economic self-determination. Saxton and the Gideonites planned for distribution of land plots to freed slaves as compensation for both the ardorous trials of bondage and their work tilling the land that many had worked for years before their masters had fled. Some of the negotiated work contracts in the former plantations included provision for eventual individual family ownership. Initially, an 1862 tax on the states resisting the authority of the federal government seemed a first step in that direction. Tax commissioners were tasked with determining the value of each estate and eventual confiscation and sale of the property if the tax plus a delinquent penalty went unpaid after 60 days.

By February of 1863, the federal government decided to sell the Port Royal lands. Saxton argued that the formerly enslaved should be given the first option on the land, financed by a downpayment and monthly payments. Tax commissioners wanted outright sale to the highest bidder, opening up the prospect of land speculators looking to position themselves in the postwar cotton trade. One Gideonite, Edward Philbrick, proposed a paternalistic alternative where the African Americans, not yet prepared to assume ownership in his estimation, would continue to be supervised on lands purchased by the Gideonites who would then determine when they were ready to assume ownership.

Saxton failed to delay the sales with an appeal to military necessity and the first round of 47 of 197 confiscated plantations were sold, with six purchased by consortiums of freedmen who pooled their resources. Philbrick himself purchased 11 properties that were later resold to a number of African American families, but the other thirty were sold to land speculators.

A different approach to formerly enslaved land distribution occurred under Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 of January 1865 which confiscated a 30 mile wide strip of the south Atlantic coastline from Charleston to the St. Johns River in Jacksonville Florida and ordered it distributed to the Freedmen in 40 acre plots. This is the origin of the storied “40 acres and a mule”. These lands, known as the Sherman reserve provided a home for the 17,000 Black refugees who followed his march through Georgia. Sherman found the accumulated mass of refugees so offensive during his march through the South, which liberated the largest number of people until the Allied advance through Europe in WWII, that one of his commanders, General Jefferson Davis abandoned their fate to Confederate troops at Ebenezer Creek.

After General Davis’ troops built a pontoon bridge to ford the creek, the troops forbade the African Americans from following, under the guise that they would rebuild it when they had secured the area from the Confederate forces pursuing them. Seeing the bridge being destroyed, “colored” men and women, most of whom could not swim, drowned in their attempts to cross. Some of the Union troops on the far shore tried to rescue those people who managed to get close to them, but they were ordered to withdraw as the Confederate scouts arrived to begin firing on them. Those left on the shore were either drowned, killed or captured by the Confederate troops to be returned to enslavement.

Under Field Order 15, freed families could pre-empt a plot of land at a reasonable price with final settlement overseen by military officials until a formal title could be written. White persons were banned from residence in the lands, precluding land speculators. Congress codified the program into the Freedman’s Bureau Bill of March 1865. However the order had been quickly rescinded after Lincoln’s assassination by President Andrew Johnson, an ardent white supremacist who pursued an executive approach to Reconstruction that he contended did not require Congressional action. He proceeded while Congress was not in session, to promulgate executives orders to accomplish just that. Although known as a champion of the yeoman farmer and rabid anti-aristocrat, the egomaniacal Johnson succumbed to the flattery that the southern gentry delivered through a campaign of visits to the White House. Johnson held that Reconstruction was to be short and sweet and essentially restore the same secessionist government representatives to power; secessionists need only acknowledge emancipation and accept the primacy of the federal government to restore ownership of the properties, excepting of course recently freed Black men and women whose antebellum value ironically exceeded that of the land. Johnson’s reconciliation was for whites only. By mid- Reconstruction, the Confederates, by sacrificing almost a quarter of the white male population, had essentially won the Civil War.

Saxton and the new head of the Freedmans Bureau tried to delay land reclamation in the hope that Congress would strengthen the Freedmans Bill when it reconvened. Johnson vetoed the bill and even though the veto was overridden, the final bill did not contain the mechanisms for Black men and women to secure titles around Port Royal or injunctions against seizure of land by former plantation owners. By the time the era of Radical Republican Reconstruction began in 1867, the issue of land of ownership had already been settled.

While the Gideonites were disappointed, having witnessed for themselves the capabilities of “colored” people, that their efforts would amount to nothing, African Americans were the obvious losers. They were not just disillusioned in the missionaries, they felt betrayed by the federal government yet again. Port Royalist opposition was revitalized with the Reconstruction Act of 1867, but ironically, the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments proved a deathknell to the cause. Northerners were satisfied they had given enough, perhaps too much, to the people who had been held in bondage for over 100 years.

The Port Royal Experiment did leave the Black community there well organized, self-sufficient and independent under the leadership of Robert Smalls. Residents remained actively involved in electoral politics into 1895 when South Carolina disenfranchised Black voters. The brief 30 year period of near full citizenship must have made the ensuing 120 years all the more intolerable. African Americans could not secure their freedom without land ownership and moreover, they would be stripped of their freedom, held hostage on the land they could never own in constant fear for their lives whether by beating, lynching or entry into the prison labor system.

American History Month-The Negro Motorist Green-Book

February 13, 2018 / oleblacklady / 1 Comment

In the 1930s, the country was taking to the roads, as roadways improved and more highways were being built. African Americans too, increasing owners of automobiles, were equally bitten by the travel bug, wanting to visit family more easily than by bus or train. After all, every train or bus travelling southward meant a change in seating to specifically assigned areas of segregated seating, often more crowded than seating allowed whites. Blacks were infatuated by a freedom of movement that was denied them in the police state that was the Jim Crow South. As the Great Migration unfolded in the 40s, people travelled North to find new jobs or returned home to visit family and friends or to leave their kids with relatives. Soldiers stationed at military bases in the mobilization and demobilization for WWII found it useful in their new settings, particularly with the preponderance of bases located in the South.

But travel on southern routes was inherently dangerous. Finding a place to eat, which allowed African Americans simply to take out food from the back door, let alone eat in the kitchen was complicated. No matter what the monetary costs, there was the ultimate humiliation and subservience that came with such an encounter. It was enough to blunt the appetite. Long stretches of deserted road could become suddenly populated with the KKK or just another vehicle full of white vigilantes. Finding a gas station that would serve Blacks was imperative because running out gas left the travellers prey to hostile white drivers in isolated areas. Some drivers carried extra gas along. Esso was the only national chain of service stations that reliably served all races. A wrong turn could lead the car past a “N—-r, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On You.”, an indicator of a “sundown town” where African Americans were forbidden out after dark with the penalty being lynching. Lodging was another problem; one couldn’t sleep on the roadside in the car. Often, the homes of friends or family offered a safe haven; there were also known Black run boarding houses.

Lest one assumes that sundown towns were exclusive to the south, they were a feature of the American landscape, even on Route 66. Segregation reigned over many areas, perhaps not codified into law, but practiced widely above the Mason Dixon line as well. Lynchings occurred in midwestern states like Indiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Missouri, actually the majority of states, not just the south. Beyond lynchings, there were beatings and acts of torture, like being dragged tied to a car bumper. Castration seemed to be a favorite form of assault often performed during lynchings or after beatings, as if the daily social castration of African Americans was not enough. For women, there was the specter of rape.

Some examples of attitudes outside the south include regulations in Oklahoma required separate telephone booths for whites and Blacks as well as fishing, and bathing facilities. An editorial in the 1925 Chicago Tribune suggested that “Negroes could make a definite contribution to good race relations by remaining away from beaches where their presence is resented” after observing that white bather were irritated by the presence of Black swimmer, no matter how “well-behaved”.

Victor Green, a Harlem postal worker, got the idea for his travel guide, the “Negro Motorist Green-Book” after a personal experience with discrimination on one of his automobile trips. His first guide in 1936 featured safe places in metropolitan New York, including restaurants, hotels, gas stations, drugstores, barbershops and beauty parlors, cabs, nightclubs and funeral homes. The overwhelming response to his first guide sparked a national version which could be purchased from Black run businesses in locations around the country or ordered from Green’s office in Harlem. The cost varied from $0.75 to $1.50, depending on the year. Esso Standard Oil Co became a major distributor of the Green Book, with an introduction written by a company representative in the 1949 edition.

The Green Book was published annually until 1967, except during World War II years. After air travel was affordable for the general public, the title was changed to “The Negro Travelers’ Green Book”. This was three years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act which outlawed discrimination in public accomodations. It goes without saying that the law did not end discrimination in many locations; it simply broadened the choice of nondiscriminating businesses, diminishing the demand.

There were several other guides published, none of which had the staying power of the Green Book. There were 2 editions of the “Hackley & Harrison’s Hotel and Apartment Guide for Colored Travelers: Board, Rooms, Garage Accommodations, etc) in 1930 and 1931. The “Go Guide to Pleasant Motoring” was published from 1952 to 1966 by Andrew Jackson in Washington DC.

As a kid growing up in Cincinnati in the 1950s and 60s, I dreamed of travel to all the places I read about. My parents, transplanted from Kentucky, thought nothing of hopping into the car to drive 110 miles to Louisville for lunch at a favorite restaurant and to visit friends. My mother loved history and was always on the lookout for some small museum or memorial to little known figures to visit. My parents knew the roads throughout northern Kentucky and Indiana well, but on one trip, we stopped at a Howard Johnsons for lunch and spent about 3 hours waiting to be served in the dining room. Perhaps we should have been grateful to be seated among the other white customers before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. My parents refused to budge, despite 3 hungry kids antsy to eat. They did eventually serve us. In retrospect, I looked on their stance with great pride; it was our small lunch counter like stand. But a safe outcome did not make it any less dangerous. I did not patronize another Howard Johnsons for many years afterwards.

I could never understand why our vacations were always spent at the homes of friends. Familiar with segregation from time spent Louisville, I wasn’t naive. I had not escaped the discrimination that all African Americans face. The high school I attended in a wealthy Cincinnati suburb held its school dances at a civic club that did not allow Blacks to enter, despite at least a 10% African American student body, until I graduated in 1966. Having never been inside it, I can’t say if the wait staff and housekeepers were Black, but I suspect they were. Perhaps I was less sophisticated than I thought, for it is only now that it occurs to me that it was caution about our safety rather than economics that limited their travel plans to primarily day trips and short excursions to friends. I don’t know if they had a Green Book and now, I can’t ask.

Sadly, Victor Green who looked forward to the day when the Green Book would become obsolete, died in 1960, 4 years before the legal justification for discrimination in public accomodations ended.

American History Month- Portland in a Different Light

February 12, 2018 / oleblacklady / Leave a comment

Most people think of Portland Oregon through “Portlandia” eyes: a quirky community of everything organic, untouched by the stain of chemicals, inhabited by artistic freethinkers and environmentalists. Sadly for many, the “Portlandia” series is coming to an end, no longer a reflection of the city, a casualty of gentrification with the accompanying increase in real estate prices brought by millennials involved in the computing industry and tech start-ups. But that image obscures a somewhat darker past.

Portland remains the country’s whitest large city with a population less than 6% Black and almost 78% white according to a 2015 Census report.

Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “The prejudice of race…no where is it as intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.”

In 1844, Oregon Country, the territory that stretched from the Pacific coast to the Rocky Mountains, passed what later became known as the Peter Burnett Lash Laws at the behest of its then provisional leader. The law allowed for slaveholders to keep their slaves for 3 years after which all Black people would be expelled. Women were required to leave within 3 years, men in 2. Those who refused to leave, would be punished by 25-39 lashes, to be repeated every 6 months until they left. The laws were amended and quickly repealed so that no individual was punished. But this was the first of a series of exclusion laws that accomplished essentially the same goal, passed in the years leading to statehood. Oregonians rightly understood that plantations and slavery that sustained them threatened the ability of white small landholders to make a living. Similarly free Blacks represented only competition for free land giveaways.

In 1848, a law banned all Negro and mulattoes from residing in Oregon, followed in 1850 by the Oregon Donation Land Act which excluded all nonwhites except half breed Indians from ownership of a 650 acre government land allotment. A year later, the state expelled Jacob Vanderpool, a restaurant and boarding house owner from Oregon Country for being black in Oregon, an order that was upheld by a territorial judge.

The draft state constitution of 1857 banned slavery but stated that no free black or mulatto, not in residence at the time of the constitution went into effect could enter, reside in, own property or make contract or suit in the state, subject to removal by public officials as prescribed by penalties determined by the legislature. When Oregon entered the Union in 1859, the state was essentially lily white except for a small number of Blacks who stayed in the decidedly hostile environment by unofficial recognition. It remained illegal for African Americans to move to the state until 1926.

Technically, the state constitution should have been overridden by the 14th Amendment which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, which the state ratified in 1866. The state rescinded ratification in 1868, merely symbolic from a legal perspective since there is no opting out of the Constitution as amended. The state did not re-ratify the 14th amendment until 1973. Similarly, the state was one of six which refused to ratify the 15th amendment which it did not do until 1959. In any case, Negro citizenship and voting rights were a nonissue in a state essentially with without African Americans residents; any one living there surreptitiously was unlikely to step out of the shadows to register to vote.

Amendments, after all, do not affect citizens’ attitudes which were decidedly anti-nonwhites. Segregation was practiced across the state, reinforced by an Oregon Supreme Court ruling in 1906 that ruled that Negroes could be legally segregated from whites in public places. Oregon was the Pacific northwest extension of the Jim Crow South, despite a minuscule population of African Americans. Even into the 1950s, there were restaurants in the Portland area that catered to “White Trade Only” as signaled by signs in the window.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the state used its lily-white population as an appeal to attract new settlers to it’s white utopia. Officials tailored their promotions to appeal to southerners as well as midwesterners, fleeing devastating conditions following the war. The desire to have a homogeneously white population targeted the Chinese and Japanese as well. In the 1890s, Chinatowns in numerous cities were burned and residents were forced to board trains out of town and often deported.

The movie, Birth of A Nation which debuted in 1915, inspired an explosion of the Ku Klux Klan with the membership growing to over 14,000, with over 9,000 in Portland. Some estimates suggest as many as 50,000 men passed through the organization in its 10 year heyday. A population that was nearly 85% native-born with a history of antagonism toward African Americans, Eastern Europeans and Asians seemed ripe for the picking. The Klan thought Oregon was the near-perfect homogeneous American state. The KKK found success in appeals to the pioneer spirit, Protestantism and American nationalism becoming the largest KKK organization west of the Mississippi. With such a small population of minorities, anti-Catholicism and anti-semitism were a prominent part of their propaganda. The KKK was well integrated into the political life of the state, with both a governor, Walter Pierce, elected in 1922 and state senators as openly acknowledged members. KKK members also served as mayors and elected municipal officials. Traditionally hooded and white robed members were photographed in community organizations and at events. But by 1926, the organization fizzled, not because of unpopularity but because it was wracked with financial problems and infighting. Pierce remained popular enough to be elected as a Congressman in 1932, serving for another 10 years.

Even after the KKK faded, segregation remained. When WWII brought an influx of Black workers to the Kaiser shipyards, the company built a city, Vanport, between Vancouver and Portland to house the laborers. Portland officials wanted it demolished and took the opportunity presented by a looming flood in 1948. Despite telling residents they would be warned to evacuate if dikes failed to prevent the area from flooding, they did not send out warnings when the dikes first became compromised. The whole area washed away, leaving 18,000 people homeless, but remarkably only 18 people dead. Most survived by ignoring official advice to stay put until warned; the refusal to notify Black residents in this segregated area seemed to have arisen from genocidal intent. Housing for African Americans in Portland remained severely limited while Kaiser struggled with furnishing alternative housing for its workers.

Against this backdrop, the Pacific Northwest has long been on the radar of white supremacists, attracting ex-southerners to its conservatism, gun culture, and its racial homogeneity, what 1920s KKK leader, Richard Butler, saw as the potential of the region to become an Aryan utopia. In the 1980s and 90s, the state was flooded with skinheads hoping to achieve the goal that had eluded the KKK. Portland became a dangerous place for people of color. In 1988, skinheads used baseball bats to brutally beat an Ethiopian immigrant to death.

Today, it is no coincidence that sightings of Confederate flags are a common occurrence across the state. White supremacists and Trump supporters frequently carry them in their demonstrations and rallies; after all, 45 is their guy, broadcasting their message from the presidential pulpit. The large number of white supremacists in Oregon has been the draw for the burgeoning anti-fa movement. This loose federation of vigilantes, hoodlums and anarchists has found a wealth of targets to attack through counter demonstrations, often physically. Their activity has been somewhat disruptive for routine political activity in Portland as some anti-fa have focused on attacking MAGA hat wearers.

In a quote in the Washington Post, Emeritus Professor Darrell Millner of Portland State’s Black Studies program summarized feelings in the minority community in response to a 2017 attack by a white supremacist on defenders of 2 minority women, one wearing a hijab, that he was harassing on a Portland train, “It reinforced the subterranean awareness all people of color in Oregon have that something like that could happen to them at any time and in place,” he said. “That is reflective of what people of color in Oregon live with. It is on a subconscious level daily. You are constantly aware that is a possibility.”

American History Month Celebrates Alberta Jones

February 10, 2018 / oleblacklady / Leave a comment

alberta jones 2 Alberta O Jones was a civil rights activist who was the first woman to become a prosecutor in the city of Louisville. On August 5, 1965 she was beaten unconscious with a brick and thrown into the Ohio River to drown. It will come as no surprise that no one was ever arrested or prosecuted for her murder. Her skin color, the year and place insured that end to this story.

Ms Jones was born and raised in Louisville. She was one of the first students to integrate the University of Louisville and after finishing third in her class, she went on to Howard University Law School, where she finished fourth. In breaking more ground, she was the first Black women to pass the Kentucky state bar. Early in her legal career, she negotiated the contract for Muhammad Ali’s, then called Cassius Clay, first fight. As part of that contract, she had 15% of the winnings placed in trust for Ali until he turned 35, naming herself as a co-trustee.

Ms Jones was a member of the NAACP and the Louisville Urban League. She was actively involved in African American voter registration efforts through the Independent Voters Association that she founded. Their efforts registered over 6,000 Black voters who were able to elect a new mayor and several aldermen in 1961. At the time, public accommodations, movie houses and restaurants in Louisville were segregated and Blacks were not allowed to try on clothing in department stores. Under the new city government 2 years later, the city passed the first public accommodation law of its kind in the South, outlawing segregation in businesses.

When Alberta assumed her job as prosecutor, she began working on domestic violence prosecutions which resulted in jail terms for some white men. But her tenure was cut short only months after she’d begun. After visiting a former client that evening, she disappeared. Eyewitnesses said they saw two men throwing a body off a bridge spanning the Ohio River.

Lee Remington began researching the murder of Alberta Jones in 2001, but did not begin extensive investigation until 2013, as part of research for a book. She found that the police were not anxious to close the case; police had simply ignored evidence in the files which she obtained through open records requests. She located witnesses very much alive despite police assertions that they had died. She found detectives who had worked the case still alive after the police said they were dead. In 2008, the FBI notified Louisville police that a fingerprint in Ms Jones’s rental car matched a man who had been 17 at the time the murder was committed. The police files reported his polygraph test as suspicious but there appeared to be little follow up. It was 43 years after the murder.

The New York Times recently reported the circumstances and evidence in the case differently. Their article reported that witnesses saw 2 Black men drag a woman screaming into a car similar to one Ms Jones had rented. A large amount of blood was found in the backseat of the car. For a time, the police seemed to be working on a theory that she was dumped from a boat ramp on the river, despite the witness testimony about a body being dropped off the Sherman Minton Bridge where her purse was found three years later. Another theory is that the Nation of Islam had her murdered in order to access the Ali trust fund. Police found no evidence to support that. In any case, her sister firmly believes someone hired the killers. The Times recently interviewed the now 70 year old owner of the fingerprint and he denied any knowledge.

So, the prosecutor declined to prosecute for lack of evidence and the loss of key witnesses. Those decisions are the prerogative of local prosecutors, so the case was effectively at a dead end. And to ensure that, by 2016, all the evidence had disappeared from the police labs, despite a police spokesman’s assurance that the case remains open. He contends that they are out of leads. But it does appear that any case that could have been brought with new evidence has been effectively undermined. Lee Remington has turned her findings over to the civil rights division of the Justice Department, but given the department’s penchant under Jeff Sessions, little effort can be anticipated from that quarter. Beyond a sense of injustice and her family’s grief, there can be little incentive to invest law enforcement resources in a 53 year old case without physical evidence.

While the murderers continue to evade punishment, probably until they themselves are dead, if they aren’t already, what is clear is that an already accomplished young Black prosecutor, Alberta Jones, lost her life before she had reached her prime. For now, her life is being celebrated with a portrait banner hanging on the side of a bank on Muhammad Ali Boulevard in Louisville.

American History Month

February 9, 2018 / oleblacklady / Leave a comment

BHMblog-image

It’s February and Black History Month has rolled around again. Not for the first time, it must be pointed out that Black history is American history. Americans have consistently parsed their history into discrete bundles in order to support their myths, desperately trying to avoid a central American truth; the country was born from pillaging not empty open spaces but a land inhabited by hundreds of thousands of natives with their own long rich history. To do the work of establishing their wealth, white men, having killed or run off the natives, turned to importing Africans in large numbers who worked for free. As an added bonus, that workforce reproduced itself with assistance from their masters. Americans have refused to learn about, understand and confront that central nugget of their history: slavery and its aftermath is the story of the country, with all of its cankers and warts.

The question of what to do with the descendants of the enslaved infiltrates every cranny of life in the United States although many white people and other minorities are completely mystified by such an assertion. Immigrant groups have their own ancestral histories of bigotry and mistreatment, unmindful that in this country, those relationships all intersect with the mistreatment of African Americans. Often the mistreatment of other immigrant groups was assuaged by their knowledge that they were not the low man on the totem pole. That understanding was leveraged to transform them into the instruments, often violent, of assaults on the colored. They joined in electing and supporting government action at the local, state and federal level that at best excluded African Americans from the benefits they enjoyed or at worst punished them for their mere presence in a country they were forced to make home for many years before many of these immigrants arrived.

So this month I hope to expand our knowledge of our shared American history, away from celebrities or figures that were almost universally vilified in their time but have come to be called heroes in the years since. The stories of Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe, Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan will not be here. Beyonce, Miles Davis, Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Halle Berry, Lorraine Hansberry, Ralph Ellison will not be mentioned either. Because as wonderful as it is that these people have succeeded against obstacles that are uniquely conflated with their race, it is the darker parts of American history that have been buried under mountains of rubble.

This first story comes compliments of Samantha B on Full Frontal and Code Switch Word Watch by Theodore R Johnson III. Back in the day, traveling ice cream trucks rode through neighborhoods playing a jingle to attract kids to their cones and pops. That jingle was written by Harry C Browne to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw”. The song, “N—-r love a watermelon” became a smash minstrel hit in 1916 after it was released by Columbia Records. The lyrics are short and sweet, if somewhat nonsensical. It begins with a call and response

Browne: “You n—–rs quit throwin’ them bones and come down and get your ice cream!”

Black men: “Ice cream?”

Browne: “Yes, ice cream! Colored man’s ice cream: watermelon!”

The chorus follows

N—-r love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!

N—-r love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!.

For here, they’re made with a half a pound of co’l

There’s nothing like a watermelon for a hungry coon.

I've_been_disturbing_the_piece Minstrel shows, comic skits intended to mock and comically vilify Black men and women, began in the 1830s in Northeastern cities. The shows were performed by whites in blackface makeup, although later, troupes of Black performers playing in blackface were formed and run by white managers. By 1848, minstrel shows were an American artform, enjoying their highest popularity until they began fading during the Civil War. These shows propagated the myth of the dumb, lazy, happy-go-lucky coon, childlike in their simplistic approach to life. This was a sharp contrast to the flip side image of the violent, sex crazed Black hunter of the fragile, virtuous white woman presented most vividly in the movie “BIrth of a Nation”. The mythology obviously failed to capture the reality of enslaved men and women working dawn to dusk in the hot sun under the threat of the whip and torture. As the abolitionist movement gained steam, the minstrel was put forth as a counter to the harshness of the slave narrative. Minstrel images were critical in forming national white perceptions of freedmen and the enslaved as well as postbellum, to support the construction and maintenance of the Jim Crow South and racial segregation as practiced in the North.

By the turn of the 20th century, minstrel shows had been mostly displaced by vaudeville, variety shows and the exotica of P. T. Barnum. But even as late as 1919, there were still 3 touring minstrel companies. And “N—-r love a watermelon” was a runaway hit in 1916. There were other remnants as well; one of the most popular collectibles in the country was the coon card, a baseball like trading card picturing archetypal coon figures, thick rosy lips ,big bug eyes, playing banjos, eating watermelon. Minstrel figures remained in the national psyche, eventually forming the basis for the Amos and Andy radio shows begun in 1928, which ran until 1960.

How then did the song find its way to ice cream trucks? The jingle left ice cream parlors where minstrel songs had been played from the 1900s on to add a familiar note to the ice cream trucks that followed their customers into the suburbs financed through the post WWII largess of the GI bill and federal home mortgage programs. The heart of the link between the jingle and ice cream lies within lyrics themselves.

Next time you see an ice cream truck, have an ice cream sandwich on me.

2008_Obama_Buckwheat_WatermelonTN PS: Someone still likes this image (from 2008).

The Economy’s Humming

February 8, 2018February 8, 2018 / oleblacklady / Leave a comment

45 is riding high on the booming economy. The bulk of the $80 billion plus wealth that Trump bragged in his State of the Union address had been generated in the stock market under his watch disappeared in a matter of 3 days. Ah, the vagaries of the stock market, always ticking up and dipping down, tripped him up. Trump got smacked with the biggest single day drop in the Dow Jones in stock market history. The strength of an economy is not seated in a wily stock market or it would be in serious trouble as Sarah Huckabee Sanders reminded us. There’s no sense in pointing out that over the long term, the market is always rising and it was doing so at a more rapid rate under Obama. Republicans are hard pressed to admit anything under Obama was good or right. That is the historical fate of a Black man.

For the working man or woman, stock market trends have little significance. The richest 10% of Americans own 84% of stocks, and more than 50% of stocks are held by foreigners. The only intersection between the stock market and the average American struggling to stretch their money to meet their needs is a 401K or IRA. According to the Census Bureau, only 14% of employers offer such plans with a mere 32% of the workforce invested in 401K accounts. Because fund participants skew toward higher income levels, the cashier at the local grocery or drug store probably isn’t one of them. More likely, they are probably among the vast majority of Americans with less than $1000 saved or the half with no savings at all. Only 13% of Americans have pension plans, but those too may make some investments in the stock market.

Republican legislators are also making a victory lap for the tax cuts. Yes, they will help the working man and the middle class! Paul Ryan tweeted the $1.50 a week increase in a secretary’s paycheck as proof. In contrast, the corporations that have announced bonuses for their employees are making a bigger impact; one that they see as welcome testimony to the power of the tax cuts to trickle down to the common man. Why have they done what the vast majority of economists predicted that they would not? AT&T, Comcast, Wells Fargo, BB&T, Fifth Third banks, Alaska and American airlines are among those who have announced bonuses. Apple will repatriate part of its $252 billion in overseas cash and invest $350 billion in the economy over the next few years, although in making their announcement they mentioned that they had plans in the works for sometime. They were shooting the gap between stroking the conservative administration and their liberal consumer base.

Taking advantage of the tax cut hullabaloo, Walmart announced that it will increase minimum wages as well as give out bonuses. So too, did JP Morgan Chase that will spend $20 billion in increasing hourly pay. But Walmart had been increasing pay for months in response to a tighter labor market where labor shortages are cropping up as the overall unemployment rate has dropped to 4%, long considered statistically full employment. Low unemployment is driving the wage increases that now large corporations, including BB&T, Fifth Third, and PNC Financial have seized on to promote public support for the Great Tax Cuts. It goes without saying that they’re also promoting their brand. They’re advertising their generosity and patriotism by letting the public know that they have their customers best interest at heart, kind of like Dodge hawking Ram trucks behind a Martin Luther King Jr speech.

Make no mistake, corporations are run by the people who have for years financially supported the Republican politicians who enacted the Great Tax Cuts. They are the donors who swore they would desert the dudes if they didn’t deliver. So of course, they want to reinforce that feedback loop by first congratulating their enrichers and then by playing their part in demonstrating the truths of trickle down economics. They don’t want these guys to be kicked out of office, so they are helping build political support. They’re also trying to enhance their lobbying profile. From the short list above, it is apparent that a majority of corporations announcing bonuses and wage increases are banks, utilities, airlines, telecom and broadcast companies seeking relief from regulation, some with decisions coming up before the administration in the near future.

Caught up in the generosity vibe and in some cases feeling patriotic in doing their part to support their party, smaller businesses have joined in rewarding workers, in anticipation of the upcoming business tax windfall. Americans for Tax Reform have tracked 332 businesses that have announced either wage increases, bonuses or higher 401K contributions. For instance, Aflac, of duck commercial fame, is giving a one time $500 contribution to employees’ 401Ks and increasing their company match percentage.

There is one other advantage for businesses giving bonuses in 2017. This will allow them to take the tax deduction under the much higher 2017 tax rate rather than the new low 2018 rates. They’re just being smart businessmen.

Still, the benefit for employees, especially the one time bonus recipients, pales in comparison to the tax savings for many of these businesses and international corporations which will continue until they can be repealed in the future. Apple will save $47 billion in the taxes for transferred overseas funds alone, paying a $38 billion tax bill. Compare their pay raises to the $233 billion Apple has returned to shareholders in dividends and stock buybacks.

In the meantime, the richest Americans will continue to benefit from disproportionate savings on taxes, even as individual tax reductions result in higher taxes for many in the middle class before they expire in 2026. With the shortfall in federal income, government services to the less than wealthy will be curtailed or cut, even as corporate benefit programs, such as agricultural and energy subsidies, continue. The elimination of regulations on financial institutions and workers safety, food processing, housing and environmental concerns represent substantial savings for the business community, further enhancing already record profits. Dollars rocket up as pennies trickle down.

Immigrants Must be Meritorious!

February 5, 2018 / oleblacklady / 1 Comment

The press, spurred by leaked remarks made by the RealityPresident about DACA participants, reveled in multiple opportunities to repeat the word “shithole”, diverting their attention from the actual policy issues involved. The press fell for a common Trumpism. Again. The words used are far less important than the assumptions that support them. 45, while being briefed in a meeting on the composition of DACA participants, found out that they are not just Mexicans, but also Haitians, Nicaraguans and Filipinos. Trump, in a comfortable forum, vented his rage straight from his core. ”Why are we taking people from all these shithole (or shithouse) countries [Haiti, Africa]; why don’t we get people from Norway.” The obvious oversight here is that Norwegians have no reason to come to the US. They are among the happiest on the globe, with a high standard of living spread without significant disparity across the population. But that’s beside the point. While Trump’s minions have tried to pretty it up, there can be no mistaking that these comments are racist following in a standard decades long stream of similar remarks by the president meant to disparage African Americans, Mexicans and other nonwhite groups.

It is no surprise that 45 is a bundle of white supremacist ideas as well as class prejudices; they are the natural outgrowth of his own ambitions to be welcomed and admired by the super-wealthy. His insecurities about travelling in those circles are the reason he must dominate every setting, gobbling up all the attention and demanding adulation. That is what fuels his braggadocio. Consider that the Huckster in Chief is afraid of being unmasked; he’s peddling the schtick that he’s a successful and smart businessman purportedly worth billions. His record, however, tells a different story. It is littered with welched contracts and unpaid contractors, three bankruptcies which forced him out of construction into selling his name to decorate buildings and his financial dealings into the shadowy netherworld of shell corporations and Russian mafia associated businessmen along with several snake oil business ventures like Trump University and Trump Steaks. He seems more capable of writing books about deals than actually making smart ones. His drive to overwhelm and direct the media is a desperate effort to orchestrate enough frenetic energy to keep away too close a look behind the hype.

Trump’s prejudices are also an outgrowth of his transactional viewpoint of all relationships. After all, he’s a balance sheet kind of guy even if he doesn’t know how to read one himself. He sees immigration as a process being forced upon the nation rather than part of the American credo. Like many a bully, Trump naturally assumes the posture of a victim, take his statements like foreign countries have taken advantage of the US in trade or countries are dumping their unwanted citizens on this country or NATO countries have unfairly taken US money for the defense they can’t provide for themselves. All of those statements posit the US as being duped instead of those are commitments that our government maintained for decades as the leader of the free world. Those policies are what have made this country a superpower respected or feared throughout the world. The US has been generous, with the caveat many of those policies were driven by ruthless self-interest, nefarious political manipulation in other countries affairs and misguided cold war paranoia against communism. No doubt, the country has exploited its military dominance and economic hegemony to dishonorable ends, but it has at the same time invested in beneficial programs internationally as well, including the UN.

Magnanimity is as foreign to 45 as baklava is to his diet. Despite his supposed wealth, he has not been a charitable benefactor; he has donated only where he saw advantage for his business interests and tax deductions. He contrasts his perceptions of the cost of immigration to the nation against what he believes it deserves, not against the benefits, the traditional counterweight. From his perch among the wealthy white elite, he is incapable of seeing the potential of individual immigrants, much like segregationists were incapable of imagining a Kathryn Johnson, who calculated the earth orbits that brought John Glenn back from space or Barack Obama as president. The benefit to the economy and the country is the yet untapped potential of each new immigrant to contribute to their neighborhood or a state or the nation. Not to mention their economic output and taxes paid to local, state and federal governments. No, all immigrants are not on public assistance as Republicans would have us believe; they work and pay taxes like the rest of us. We see them at work all around us.

45 lacks the vision that immigrants and refugees of all skin colors can make measurable contributions to this country. This is the essence of MakeAmericaWhiteAgain.

45 lacks the vision that immigrants and refugees of all skin colors can make measurable contributions to this country. This is the essence of MakeAmericaWhiteAgain. Trump’s ideas are not new, they are recycled from darker periods of American history. This one comes from 1924, when eugenics reigned supreme; immigration policy was based on allowing particular white Europeans in while limiting or excluding “undesirables”. In that age, the designation of “white” was far more limited, not yet including Slavs, Greeks, Spaniards and Italians. All Asians, including the Southeastern countries, Japan and Asian islands were excluded. It was not until the Johnson administration, in the name of nondiscrimination, that new immigration laws moved to the type of system we have now, based more on quotas for specific countries and unification of families. The family unification program was specifically designed to increase immigrants from Ireland, but as it turned out, the number of Irish family members too limited reach targeted immigrant numbers. The visa lottery was the next programmatic attempt to allow more Irish immigration.

In the area of bigotry, the president has been singularly consistent throughout his career. Most of his staff admit privately that he uses the language of racial epithets in private all the time. They were just surprised that it slipped out in more formal mixed Democratic/Republican company. Here again we should be suspicious that the leaks surrounding Trump’s behavior are initiated by the president himself and his staff. The leaks serve as platforms to keep diverting corporate news outlets and provide stories for the conservative news media to create oppositional positions and generate conspiracy theories. The CelebrityPresident has always held that any publicity is good, no matter how ugly. Each incident fires up his base, who glory in his speaking their truth; they applaud his battling their culture wars. Concurrently, it shifts the conversation to parsing words rather than DACA or immigration policy issues urgently in need of resolution. Discussion slides squarely into the culture war arena. The media response shows he’s got their number.

GOP spokesmen dispatched to both divert and cleanse hateful words that they thought to nullify by denial, explained that their approach is to shift immigration policy to one where an individual’s education and skill level would determine who should legally enter the country rather than country of origin and family relationships, so-called “chain migration” by the GOP and family reunification by the Democrats. However those statements make the president’s racist attitudes even more obvious. The underlying assumption is that Africans, Haitians and immigrants from countries considered undesirable as a group have no skills or education. This is the definition of racism; to assign inferior characteristics to a group based on their race.

The idea of untalented hordes storming American shores is patently absurd. One example is that critical nursing shortages in the US over the last 20 years prompted hospitals to have an influx of nurses from Nigeria a country with both enormous wealth and mind numbingly abject poverty sandwiched around a thriving middle class. Many smaller hospitals have recruited directly from the Philippines and the UK as well. In the hospital where I worked, the majority of Labor and Delivery nurses were Nigerians. Because the Nigerian culture is very family and tribal centric, they have created their own recruiting networks. For them, the advantages of working in the US are a much larger number of hospitals compared to their homeland and higher pay which allows Nigerians to accumulate what become hugh fortunes in Nigerian currency. At home, they are wealthy enough to acquire property, have servants and ultimately establish lucrative privately run hospitals that cater to the middle class and the wealthy in a country where all medical care must be prepaid before it is provided. Unlike the US, there are no emergency exceptions; people literally bleed to death if they can’t pay for a transfusion or find a relative who can donate blood. Hospitals owned by these newly wealthy individuals boast administration by American trained providers with modern equipment, distinguishing them from Nigerian based institutions. Nigeria in the meantime experiences a constant talent drain of educated healthcare providers off to find their fortunes abroad.

A parallel can be seen in the many Indian physicians who have immigrated for decades to train and practice here, providing enclaves for additional colleagues and relatives. They too build lucrative private hospitals back in India. Many of these physicians provide medical care in rural areas which have difficulty recruiting American trained physicians. Both of these narratives are carved from the Great American dream; individuals that are inspired by the Trumpian entrepreneurial spirit, except that they offer authentic services rather than name branded travesties.

Beyond the racist assumptions, the bullshit contention that Trump’s immigration policy is race neutral is belied by his initial executive order to ban Muslim immigration completely, which when challenged in court, morphed to specific Muslim countries. There are no criteria to assess individual merit but a blanket exclusion based on religion and skin color under the guise of excluding that one person who might become a terrorist despite extensive vetting programs. After all, there are no guarantees on human behavior; just ask parents from Columbine or Sandy Hook.

Trump minions have staunchly protested accusations of his racism. They have their own self evident blind spots for bigotry, but their weak defenses border on the laughable. Eric Trump insisted that his father can’t be a racist because the only color he cares about is green. Oops, for the AmericaFirst president not to worship the red, white and blue over green is a faux paux, but it was just Eric after all. Lindsey Graham said that Trump couldn’t be racist because the only thing he cares about is whether people like him. That must be why he studiously avoids meeting with groups of minorities; he’d have to waste time trying to ingratiate himself with people he doesn’t give a damn about. He only hobnobs at Mar-a-lago where people have ponied up $200,000 for the opportunity to pay monthly dues for a random chance run into the president. Otherwise, he is completely isolated from the world; he travels in private accomodations, never spends the night in any location other than foreign diplomatic trips. He stands atop a stage surrounded by Secret Service when he talks to a rally crowd. His only other encounters with the “little people” are stage managed in his White House palace setting. He simply doesn’t meet with anyone who isn’t a supporter or who advocates for interests other than his own. Hold on, I forgot the staff at Mar-a-lago and his other clubs; we know they are Black and brown because he uses H-2B visas to hire them from Mexico and the Caribbean.

Even more revealing are the accounts from a number of sources of the meeting now infamous for the “shithole” remark. Dick Durbin, the only Democrat in the room, agreed with other Republicans that the language in the room was “tough talk”. What is tough talk? It is a euphemism for a session with hot tempers where participants were cursing like sailors. Durbin has said he thought that the other Republicans forgot he was in the room and acted like they do among themselves. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has called it “kitchen table talk”. One wonders if the talk when the blessing at her evangelical table is complete wanders into expletive laced rants about people of color. Is that what passes for discussions over meals in most households?

What is “tough talk”? Or “kitchen table talk”?

Kirstjen Nielsen, the latest Homeland Secretary, was reticent to call a spade a spade in her testimony before a Senate committee. Again the description of “tough talk” in the room, but when asked to say what that meant, she couldn’t recall a single word. That seems strange; she can’t remember words like bullshit or bastards or was she afraid the words would be censored on the news coverage? But then again, how much stock can you put in the testimony of someone of Scandinavian origin who doesn’t know that Norway is a majority white country? The head of Homeland Security should at least be familiar with the countries in the world. Or was she just falling in line to cover Trump’s ass?

GOP spokesmen, ingrained in their own racially prejudiced philosophy, can’t appreciate that their political spin exposes that vulnerable underbelly, or at least we can hope it is vulnerable. (Of this, I am not at all convinced). But they know their dog whistle rhetoric has been successful enough to have placed them in the White House for 4 of the last 6 presidencies and to control Congress for at least a part of 2 Democratic administrations, despite the fact that there are fewer Americans who identify and vote as Republicans than Democrats. They have driven their equation train on a rail into the highest houses of power. Criminal=Black and brown; drug addict=Black (every other drug now except opioids to heroin, but not the straight up heroin addicts); welfare/Medicaid=Black (hence the urgency to end Medicaid extensions under Obamacare); illegal immigrant=Mexican (how about the Chinese and Indians who overstay their visas)

Trump ripped the thin covering off the essential truth of his immigration goal to lower legal immigration by 50% by clearly identifying his bigotry toward “shithole or shithouse countries”, actually whole continents. It appears the heart of these rationales have an underside: that immigrants steal jobs from Americans (code for brown and Black people), that terrorists threaten our safety (code for brown and Black Muslims while the term terrorist is never applied to white nationalists, responsible for the vast majority of terrorist attacks in the US while mostly white psychologically disturbed attackers account for the others). He didn’t bother to camouflage remarks about crime coming over the border; he just called everyone rapists and murders. That’s a long established staple conservative dog whistle, so it could be spoken straight up. All this when the largest flow of illegal immigrants these days, Chinese and Indian, overstay their visas and ain’t no wall gonna stop that.

45’s attacks on the visa lottery and “chain migration” ( family unification) are based in a flood of misinformation, whether from ignorance or for rhetorical effect. While Trump described the visa lottery as picking names from a bowl filled by foreign governments with undesirables they’re trying to remove from their own countries, Nothing could be further from the truth. He keeps leaving out the part where the state department decides which visas are granted. All visa applications are filed by individuals without assistance from their governments. These applications are already submitted with the associated fees when during a limited window, the lottery is opened for specific countries in any one year; but winning the lottery is only an opportunity to have the application further vetted for the possibility of obtaining a green card. There are no guarantees here. A maximum number of 50,000 people from low immigration countries will be approved; those rejected will have to wait until the next window opens in the next several years. One example is the current waiting list for the Philippines is 15 years. Some countries like China and Mexico are excluded altogether.

GOP dubbed “chain migration” refers to the ability of an individual approved for a green card to sponsor relatives after they become permanent residents. Steven Miller, the sultan of zero immigration has described the program more like hordes of immigrants and their relatives. He’s said that one person can bring an elderly relative, having immediately gone on public assistance, can bring in a relative who can bring in another, etc. The USCIS, US Citizenship & Immigration Service, the federal agency that administers immigration regulations, tells a very different story. One person with a green card can only bring their spouse and unmarried children with them. Once that person becomes a legal resident, an application for an adult child can take up to 9 years. Once and if they become a citizen, the average wait time for an adult relative (mother, sister, brother) is 13 years, and as much as 7 years longer if the origin country is China, India, Mexico or the Philippines.

Once again, the objective of this propaganda is to move fear of illegal immigrants to fear of legal immigrants to ultimately eliminate all immigration, with the obvious exception of the wealthy where a dollar trumps philosophy. The State of the Union deftly illustrates this transition. Trump front-loaded the subject of immigration with “open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable neighborhoods. They have allowed millions of low wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans. Most tragically, they have caused the loss of many innocent lives.” Then he introduced a family of victims of the MS-13 gang, a small isolated organization actually created by US intervention in El Salvador, as if MS-13 gangs are operating in the neighborhood near you. Deportations back to their native country have created an international MS-13 organization reeking violence on residents who are now fleeing to the US illegally. Then a border agent who had been threatened and later ran a raid arresting some, just so we know he’s defending us against this threat. Then smoothly into the four pillars of his immigration policy. First the proposal to allow the Dreamers a path to citizenship in exchange for the border Wall, stopping family reunification and ending the visa lottery. After first mischaracterizing both programs, he then linked them to two terrorist bombings in NY, without mentioning that both men were radicalized while living for a long time in the US. Perhaps discriminatory treatment was a big factor in creating the sense of hopelessness that formed the bedrock of his radicalization. There are no guarantees on human behavior.

Keep in mind, part of the genius of the Trump administration is to move from laws and regulations to the fuzzy areas of agency oversight, implementation and enforcement, far from public scrutiny. Visa decisions are handled exclusively by the State Department. As Tillerson has stripped agency personnel to the bone, sheer lack of personnel can slow down the processing of visas as limited numbers of personnel must cope with other issues. Development of new regulations and procedures in the wake of either executive orders or new legislation can bring the whole process to a halt for an interval that only they will determine.

Although Senator Dick Durbin was the first to comment on the remarks during the meeting, he told a NY Times reporter in The Daily podcast that he did not leak the story about the remarks. It’s worth noting again that Republicans were doing the leaking to gin Democrats down the path of identity politics which Bannon has said is deadly for the party. But Durbin stirred up a pot of 45 vengeance anyway. It seems that animosity toward “Dickie” Durbin may be part and parcel of the rush of conservatives away from the bipartisan effort from Durbin and Lindsey Graham.

There are however, some ironic contradictions to the party’s new populace stance. The “forgotten working class” who see 45 as their fearless leader invariably links all of the following factors with immigration- the plateau in wages (actually individual business decisions), the collapse of manufacturing in this country (actually individual corporate decisions), declining numbers of jobs (attributable to automation and increased productivity), and the transition to a service economy with a large number of part-time and self-employed labor without traditional employee benefits (attributable to the recession and the global economy among other factors). The miscreant immigrants are primarily Mexican, South American and Middle Eastern, all symbols eliciting fear of drugs, terrorism and Islamophobia. But conservative right wing media have already broadened the circle of Islamists to African countries like Somalia and Libya, keeping in mind that facts are not a prerequisite for their articles or inference, for that after all is the landscape of conspiracy theories.

The Trumpophants are less concerned about the how of shutting off immigration then shutting it off. To their mind, they are eliminating labor competition that “places a downward pressure on wages” as one GOP Congressman declared while making America safe from rapists, terrorists and drug dealers. They would be happy with no immigration at all; but if they have to accept some people, the Irish, Canadians and Norwegians seem safe enough. Unfortunately, the misinformation they have been fed omitted some important information.

Immigration is the primary reason the US workforce has grown for a couple of decades and has been an important factor in the growth of US economic might. Like many economically stable European countries, immigration has grown the labor force. Today, the census bureau has calculated that the country’s birth rate equals the death rate and that for every three births, one immigrant arrives. Without immigration, it is difficult to envision an adequate supply of labor for the GOP envisioned explosion of new jobs. This trend will accelerate as baby-boomers continue to leave the workforce, opioid epidemic death rates remain and the life expectancy of white males declines, in part due to the opioid epidemic. In addition, younger workers are being lost to employment because of addiction.

The deportations, voluntary exits, constriction of immigration through day-to-day operations by Homeland immigration agencies, could increase already developing labor shortages that are pushing wages upward and bringing some of those considered less desirable for positions in the previous employers’ market. A recent article in the NY Times highlighted a manufacturing plant that was employing, at full wages, prisoners from a nearby minimum security jail and once their sentence is complete, they continue to work there as private citizens.

The difficulty with the assertion that immigration puts downward pressure on blue collar worker wages lies in the definition of blue collar worker. Immigrants are a portion of the blue collar workers. Maybe not in the eyes of the dog whistlers, who use blue collar to mean white working men seen through a traditional lens looking back to times when laws and hiring policies were in place to make it so. But the traditional concept of the blue collar worker has changed; those manufacturing jobs propelled many workers into the middle class; auto workers and coal miners were making $80,000 a year. And the racial composition of the workforce expanded to become multiracial. But as manufacturing in the US declined, those workers had to find employment in jobs that paid less, many in service industries. Others who watched their towns collapse but stayed found disability or worked around the edges of the economy or dropped out of the labor force. In contrast, most unauthorized immigrants, many refugees and asylum seekers come without skills, often with limited English language proficiency; they get low skilled jobs that most Americans don’t want or they work for relatives or become self-employed by creating small businesses. They are migrant fruit and vegetable pickers; they process chickens in packaging plants; they are Uber and Lyft drivers. Others are merchants or accountants and even with limited English, can establish businesses within their own immigrant communities. Most immigrants who are willing to leave their lives and language behind are the super-motivated from their countries, not the dregs.

The Republicans, claiming that their new tax cuts for the rich will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, perhaps, intended their immigration policies to augment or substitute for new jobs if corporations don’t deliver on new production, preferring to invest their tax bonanza in their CEOs, stock dividends and stock buybacks as they have done with their blooming profits for the last couple of years. Certainly, a tide of rising wages from labor shortages would be welcome, unless it sparks new inflation which will cause the Federal Reserve to bump up interest rates which will slow economic growth which will further increase the national debt already slated to mushroom with the tax cuts. Rising interest rates will increase the cost of federal borrowing and the portion of the budget paying for the debt service. The specter of inflation will dampen economic growth, increasing the cost of living which effectively softens the effect of wage growth. And so on as the economic cycle precedes on its merry way. Simultaneously, labor shortages will spur new innovations that can increase productivity and disrupt new industries, much like online merchandising decimated mercantile giants like Sears, Kmart, Gimbels, malls and small retail stores. That is, after all, the price of progress.

But middle class voters might be more reticent about the implications of encouraging immigration of comparatively skilled professional workers, presumably with similar English language skills to compete in their arena. Of course, the overall anticipated number of legal immigrants will be slashed in half and with the shiny new border wall, the number of illegal immigrants from South of the border will be nonexistent. Overstayed visas will then be the primary source of illegal immigrants; these people tend to be more educated, often at US schools. The middle class are less susceptible to fear over immigration untethered to terrorism and crime, primarily because they are typically confident in their innate abilities to leverage enough power to defend themselves and take charge of their own destinies. But they might feel squeezed by rising prices with inflation.

Some Republicans are not completely unaware of the problem of a shrinking workforce. Their solution is increasing the number of American births. Paul Ryan spoke of the intention for increasing the child tax credit in the tax reform law was to encourage people to have more children. The expanded role of forced childbirth proponents in the HHS, the rewriting of public health information to include the mystical life begins at conception while removing valid scientific information and ending sex education and contraceptive counseling programs with reliance on abstinence only will lead to more native births, whether unintentional or intentional. Aggressive campaigns to deny abortion services to those who make that choice is another plank in the strategy, although it must be said that most of those involved have no understanding of how these movements conspire, the objective result will be higher birth rates. However, the larger proportion of the births will be among minorities and those least capable of providing for more children, given the socioeconomic conditions in which they live. Inadequate education, poor nutrition, underdeveloped neighbors are only a few of the obstacles they will have to overcome to become productive citizens. From the GOP perspective, that adds up to more dependent people clamoring for a dole as more and more wealth is redistributed upward to the top 10%.

Trump is banking that supporters won’t care that after he’s cut immigration to the bone, the supply of illegal drugs hasn’t diminished at all, the terrorist attacks from white nationalists and deranged loners have continued, that malls and retail store chains continue to close and that crime rates remain unchanged. Just like they didn’t notice or care about the racist origins of his immigration policy or his racism.

Chief Executive Unforeseen by the Founding Fathers

February 4, 2018 / oleblacklady / Leave a comment

founding fathers

Congress legislates. It is the branch of government that establishes the law of the land. Its power has been eroded to some extent by the complexities of the modern world, both the issues and the solutions. The intricacies of government policies and programs demand a detailed approach that can only be delivered by agency regulations and the bureaucracy. There were over 3400 new federal rules added in 2015 rules contrasts with the fewer than 100 bills signed by 45 thus far. These make up the substance of government that keeps the wheels rolling no matter what is happening in the legislature or changes in chief executives.

Once enacted, changes in execution of legislation may come as the Supreme Court interprets the law. Many on both the right and the left have accused the Court of activism in its interpretation of the law. But Congress has the option to rewrite legislation to achieve its intentions, within any restrictions imposed by Supreme Court decisions.

These are the two branches of government the Founding Fathers intended to provide checks and balances on the Chief Executive. these were the protections they sought to instill in government against the rise of despots. They did not foresee the explosion of executive powers in the modern era or the creation of “media bubbles” courtesy of the internet.

Donald Trump has refused again to follow the law. Congress voted to sanction Russia for interfering in our elections and Trump is flatly refusing to execute new sanctions. Secretary of State Tillerson has said that voting for the sanctions was enough to frighten the Russians. Clearly it was not; the 600 Russian bots who pushed the #release the memo to trending is but one example as is their entry in opposition to net neutrality on the FCC comments page. Despite the administration’s incorrect assertion that the problem is fixed, the sanctions remain the law and the executive branch is required to execute the law. But Congress has no way to implement sanctions; the Treasury and State Department are the arm of the executive branch that should do that. What can Congress do?

Congress might enlist its financial powers to withhold funding from executive agencies, but with funds currently appropriated through continuing resolutions, the impact would have to fall on future funding in a new budget. Shifting money from one allocation to another would minimize any disruption. Given the overwhelming majority that passed the sanctions bill (only 15 members voted nay), a majority should be willing to pass a bill to pressure the State Department to comply. On the other hand, the State Department, fast becoming a minimal diplomatic mission staffed by a small core, may not care about further budget cuts. Alternatively, a suit could be filed in federal court, but an organization or party that would have standing to file a case is difficult to imagine.

The Founders likely did not envision a president who would simply refuse to enforce the law.

The Founders likely did not envision a president who would simply refuse to enforce the law. The only mechanism at the legislative branch’s disposal to discipline the chief executive is impeachment for “high crimes”. A single piece of legislation seems hardly to apply; this is an option that has only been used as an extreme last resort.

And yet, Trump continues to extend his power and test boundaries to determine what those in power will tolerate. Thus far, Republicans in Congress are hog-tied by fear of upsetting the Trumpophants, tiptoeing around Trump in a headstrong rush to ram theirs and the Kochopusian donors’ legislative agenda down the country’s throats before midterm elections can disrupt their majority. By rallying around Trump to discredit the FBI and the Mueller investigation with the publication of the politically motivated Nunes memo, Republicans have chosen to side with Trump against the security of the United States. To undermine the FBI is make it less effective in countering terrorist plots. The FBI is compromised in all of its investigative functions, including federal crimes and organized crime as well. Far more important is the lapse in security that leaves the country vulnerable to continuing Russian interference in our politics. Without a punitive response to Putin through espionage and cyber countermeasures as well as publicly, Putin will become more aggressive in future elections, not just with social media mischief but also hacking state polling places and election officials as attempted in 2016. What would prevent him from doubling down on this very inexpensive strategy that is wildly successful. It may not have affected the outcome, and we can not be sure of that because many state election systems are not equipped to determine that, but it could the next time around. Certainly Putin’s campaign has been effective in eroding popular confidence in US elections. His agents will continue to churn out chum in a sociocultural ocean teaming with sharks.

Americans should beware now that the Pandora’s box is open. Despots throughout the world use secretive police forces to remove rivals and curtail political unrest. A quick look back in history shows that it can happen here as well. J Edgar Hoover under Johnson and the FBI under Nixon ruthlessly pursued radical Black groups and civil rights and antiwar activists without any political costs to the Chief Executive. It was serendipitous that Nixon finally got his due, primarily because of John Dean’s testimony revealing the White House tapes. Recall that Nixon was the chief executive who ordered his operatives to steal Democratic Party documents, his opposition and then used the CIA to disrupt the FBI investigation and cover it up. Without the tapes, Nixon continued to have popular support, winning reelection even while the Watergate scandal unfolded. Many conservatives screaming #releasethetape may find themselves slotted in the enemies list in the future, given the vagaries of the CelebrityTVPresident, and become the objects of Trump’s future vindictive ire.

oleblacklady

"GET IN GOOD TROUBLE, NECESSARY TROUBLE!" John Lewis "If now isn't a good time for truth, I don't see when we'll get to it." Nikki Giovanni.

Month: February 2018

American History Month-The Legend of Bass Reeves

American History Month Celebrates Alberta Jones

American History Month

The Economy’s Humming

Chief Executive Unforeseen by the Founding Fathers

The Founders likely did not envision a president who would simply refuse to enforce the law.

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45 lacks the vision that immigrants and refugees of all skin colors can make measurable contributions to this country. This is the essence of MakeAmericaWhiteAgain.

What is “tough talk”? Or “kitchen table talk”?

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The Founders likely did not envision a president who would simply refuse to enforce the law.

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