Discussion

85

3

Preventing Black Excellence between Plessy and Brown

“I am just as much opposed to Booker Washington as a voter, with all his Anglo-Saxon reinforcements,  .  .  . as I am to the coconut-headed, chocolate-covered, typical little coon, Andy Dotson, who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither is fit to perform the supreme function of citizenship.”

—Senator James Vardaman of Mississippi, 19031

D U R I N G R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , B L A C K S had been promised the equal- ity guaranteed in the Constitution.2 Yet, by 1896, on the eve of the Plessy decision, that promise seemed to have been completely destroyed. Black political participation had been dismantled in southern states, where 90% of blacks resided.3 Post-Reconstruction governments had blocked politi- cal participation by blacks, and educational opportunities for blacks had been greatly reduced.4 In order to solidify and maintain false notions of white superiority/black inferiority, blacks would have to be separated from whites, unless they were obviously subservient. Laws were formulated that reflected the notion that blacks were inferior, and demonstrations of black excellence were suppressed because they stood to shatter the racial hierarchy.5

Black opportunities to compete with whites were eliminated.6 Racial segregation, through physical separation, became the method by which black excellence was denied.7 During Reconstruction, having held absolute power in America since the time of its colonization, whites felt threatened by new laws and opportunities for blacks. They responded by crushing those prospects even before they materialized.

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 3 . N Y U P r e s s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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86 Creating the Paradigm

Who Is Jim Crow?

“Jim Crow,” the term identifying discriminatory laws and policies that separated blacks after Reconstruction, was, allegedly, named after a real person—an elderly, physically handicapped black slave on a horse farm in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by a Mr. Crow.8 In 1828, a white entertainer, Thomas Dartmouth Rice, observed the elderly Jim Crow as he sang and danced with an unusual hopping and shuffling maneuver.9 As Jim Crow danced, he sang in slave vernacular, “Wheel about, an’ turn about, an’ do jis so; eb’ry time I wheel about, I jump Jim Crow.”10

Rice immediately memorized the song, added a few verses, copied the dance steps, and, apparently without any compensation or attribution to Jim Crow, tried out this new act on stage in Louisville. He dressed in blackface and called the routine “Jump Jim Crow.”11 It was an immediate hit. Soon, Rice was performing to sell-out audiences of whites in New York City’s theater district.12

Rice’s Jim Crow character propelled him to international fame and im- mense wealth, and inspired other white performers to create similar ma- terial. In 1842, four entertainers named the Virginia Minstrels13 staged a full-length show focused exclusively on Jim Crow–type characters. For the next hundred years, minstrel shows were one of the most popular forms of entertainment in America.14 The Jim Crow song was played so often that one foreign ambassador thought it was the national anthem.15

The Jim Crow minstrel shows demeaned and degraded blacks, while up- lifting whites, through song, dance, and acting.16 The shows created several stereotyped characters, including the happy plantation slave and the inept, corrupt, and foolish northern urban free black.17 Every skit, song, joke, or dance reinforced these images.18 Black minstrel characters in southern slave plantation settings were given endearing names like Uncle Remus and were portrayed as happy, healthy, obedient, and excessively loyal to their white owners, while the white masters were portrayed as compassion- ate, benevolent, and fair-minded.19 In contrast, black minstrel characters in northern urban settings were given pompous names like Count Julius Caesar Mars Napoleon Sinclair Brown.20 These characters were portrayed as ignorant fools or frivolous spectacles, often saved from disaster or self- destruction by whites who felt pity for them.21 Such portraits of blacks and whites conveyed an unequivocal message that the proper place for blacks was a southern slave plantation, thereby asserting that freed blacks could not and would not be productive free citizens.22 Minstrel shows were not

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Preventing Black Excellence 87

only hugely profitable; they systematically promoted a message of white superiority.23 These portrayals had an insidious effect: condoning pub- lic mockery and denying the humanity of blacks by relegating them to a “harmless” form of entertainment. Consistent with the creation and main- tenance of black separation through de jure rules, minstrel shows were the first, and in some cases the only, exposure many whites would get to the black experience in America. Most did not know the actual conditions that blacks had to endure. The demeaning images created and reinforced supe- rior attitudes toward blacks.

As minstrel shows saturated the country with notions of black inferi- ority, and as large audiences of whites embraced them, it is not surpris- ing that racial segregation laws came to be named after the first and most famous minstrel character of all: Jim Crow.24 The name of a handicapped slave was now recognized nationwide; it was a label, an entertainment sensation, and a mindset.25 W hile there are no historical references iden- tifying who first applied the term “Jim Crow ” to segregation laws, the term caught on fast. By 1900, Jim Crow was widely used as the informal term to describe any law, custom, or practice that intentionally separated racial minorities from whites.26 Physical separation allowed negative ra- cial stereotypes to flourish, and Jim Crow laws mandated such separa- tion.27 For the next fifty years, Jim Crow laws proliferated in America.28 The “harmless” humor on the minstrel stage created an atmosphere that accepted and justified segregationist laws. Those laws maintained and exacerbated physical and psychological distance between the races. Seg- regation spread and got ever stronger during the latter half of the 19th century, fueled by the notions of black inferiority celebrated in Jim Crow minstrel shows.

Jim Crow laws provided a combination of government hindrance of economic opportunities for blacks and empowerment for whites. The notion of white superiority/black inferiority was strengthened in many forms—eliminating blacks from sporting competition with whites; pre- venting educational opportunities for blacks; generating housing segrega- tion such as all-white towns or designated black areas; excluding blacks from certain jobs; creating government programs, like farm assistance, of which poor and middle-class whites were the primary beneficiaries; and refusing to acknowledge or recognize black inventions and technological advancements.29

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88 Creating the Paradigm

The Supreme Court Embraces Jim Crow: Plessy v. Ferguson

While black separation practices existed prior to Reconstruction, consti- tutional sanction of race separation, allowing for widespread and compre- hensive coverage, would not occur until the end of the 19th century.30 In 1896, the Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson,31 upheld a Louisiana statute that prohibited black passengers from riding alongside whites in railway cars. In doing so, the Court placed its imprimatur on discrimination— even the justice who disavowed race separation embraced notions of white superiority.32

Complainant Homer Adolph Plessy was born in Louisiana in 1862.33 His parents were free, French-speaking, and of mixed Spanish, French, Native American, and African ancestry.34 Plessy had only one-eighth African an- cestry and appeared to be entirely white.35 By 1896, Plessy was a success- ful businessman, earning a substantial living by selling shoes.36 He often traveled in the first-class car on trains; the Jim Crow car was usually dirty and in disrepair.37 Plessy belonged to a citizens’ group composed of lead- ing blacks from New Orleans who opposed all forms of racial segregation, including the 1890 Louisiana statute that segregated passengers on local railway cars.38 The group decided to challenge the statute under the Four- teenth Amendment.39 They chose Plessy as their plaintiff, hoping that his white ancestry and appearance would reveal the arbitrariness of segrega- tion laws in Louisiana.40 By preapproval with the railroad company, which opposed the segregation law because it increased transportation costs, Plessy boarded a white train car and was arrested by the conductor and a railroad security guard.41

Plessy’s lawyers argued that segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.42 The Court not only rejected this claim under a “separate but equal” theory of equality but scolded Plessy for attributing an invidious motive to Louisiana lawmakers.43 Seg- regation, the Court said, was enacted “in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class.”44

In the justices’ view, the separation law did not discriminate; blacks who opposed the law were merely being too sensitive.45 As Justice Henry Brown explained, “We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy’s] argu- ment to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored

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Preventing Black Excellence 89

race chooses to put that construction upon it.”46 Segregation, of course, was designed precisely for the purpose of demeaning blacks, and everyone, including the justices, knew it. Justice John Harlan referenced this reality in his dissent, where he alluded to the fact that such discriminatory intent was apparent to everyone.47 Justice Harlan explained,

It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discrimi- nate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this argument does not meet the difficulty. Everyone knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of [ac]commodation for travelers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while travel- ing in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary.48

Despite the transparency of the motives behind the effort to separate blacks, the Court declared that the Constitution sanctioned the racial di- vide in all social activities.49

According to the majority reasoning in Plessy, separate but equal facili- ties on the train did not imply legal inferiority but merely recognition of a social distinction.50 According to the political/social rights distinction in the Equal Protection Clause first identified by the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Cases, the clause guaranteed only political equality, not social equality.51 Unlike racial distinctions in voting or serving on a jury, separa- tion on a train did not constitute an infringement on any political right.52

Plessy’s distinction between “social rights” and political rights also con- firmed the true intent behind segregation.53 This distinction, like the statu- tory exception for subservient blacks, provided whites with an opportu- nity to reaffirm superiority to blacks.54 The argument that social segrega- tion did not emanate from notions of white superiority but instead grew out of benign concern for the “natural affinities” of both whites and blacks to socialize separately enabled the Court to endorse discriminatory laws without having to acknowledge the racist presumptions behind them.55 Even Justice John Harlan, who alone dissented from the majority decision, insisted that whites historically had been, and forever would be, socially

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90 Creating the Paradigm

superior to blacks:56 “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage. . . .”57 In truth, however, segregation laws were created by whites for the sole purpose of reaffirming such superior- ity by demeaning and degrading blacks and, thus, benefiting and uplifting whites.

The Plessy mentality of racial separation was also embraced by the high- est elected government officials, including presidents, governors, and members of Congress.58 For example, when the moderate black leader Booker T. Washington informally, and for the first time in history, had lunch with President Theodore Roosevelt, in 1901,59 the public reaction revealed the extent of the nation’s separatist mentality, as in the following indictment by the Memphis Scimitar: “The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was commit- ted yesterday by the President, when he invited a nigger to dine with him at the White House.”60 Similarly, Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Caro- lina said, “Now that Roosevelt has eaten with that nigger Washington, we shall have to kill a thousand niggers to get them back to their places.”61

Jim Crow on Steroids

Perhaps no event better demonstrates the extent of violence by white su- premacists in order to secure complete political domination, after Recon- struction ended, than the 1898 Wilmington race riot.62 During the riot, white men in Wilmington, North Carolina, gunned down black men, seized the armory building, and burned down a local newspaper owned by blacks.63 Two thousand white men assembled at the armory of the Wilm- ington Light Infantry and, led by former Confederate officer and United States congressman Alfred Waddell, proceeded to march through the city.64 Blacks on the street were killed or wounded by the mob, with estimates of the death toll as high as one hundred.65

After a sweeping Democratic victory in the elections that followed the 1898 riot—victory that was achieved primarily by fraud and intimidation, including stuffing the ballot boxes and scaring black voters away from the polls—supporters of white privilege met at the Wilmington court- house and presented a “White Declaration of Independence.”66 This dec- laration made demands of the black community, including the immediate

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Preventing Black Excellence 91

resignation of Wilmington’s black mayor, even though he had several months remaining in his term, as well as that of the police chief and the editor of the local newspaper.67 Whites threatened violence if the demands were not met.68 As a result, many blacks left the city,69 which of course en- trenched physical separation of the races even deeper.

For the blacks who remained in Wilmington, the intimidation contin- ued in the elections two years later. After public threats of violence and bloodshed, black voters stayed away from the polls, resulting in resound- ing victories in support of the racist Democratic Party ticket.70 The winner of the North Carolina gubernatorial election that year, Charles Aycock, vowed to prevent blacks from voting, making this the state’s primary obli- gation to its white residents.71

By 1899, all southern state governments were comfortably in the hands of white Democrats committed to separation of blacks. Many members of Congress openly sought to exclude black politicians. By 1903, Congress had not one black member in its House or Senate. This disparity directly reflected the success of the schemes introduced decades earlier. At the 1901 Virginia Constitutional Convention, delegate Carter Glass accurately char- acterized the disparity: “Discrimination! Why, that is precisely what we propose. . . . That, exactly, is what this Convention was elected for—to dis- criminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limitations of the Federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every negro voter. . . .”72

Over a dozen black members of Congress served during Reconstruc- tion, but by 1903, that double-digit number had dwindled to zero.73 In a democracy, how was that possible when in some states 40% of the popula- tion was black? The short answer, as we saw in chapter 2, is that the dem- ocratic process was perverted through the use of such devices as grand- father clauses, in which voting eligibility was limited to those who voted or whose grandfathers voted in 1867;74 poll taxes, in which eligibility was based on a fee;75 and literacy tests, in which blacks, who in the not-too- distant past had been executed for learning to read, were required to meet insurmountable reading comprehension standards.76 When these devices failed, many who resisted voting by blacks preferred to kill them rather than allow them to vote.77

Presidents and members of Congress, like governors and state legis- latures, were often either patently hostile or coldly unsympathetic to the muted and cautious requests by blacks for some slight improvement of their lot.78 Even the false rumor that a black had been present at an official

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92 Creating the Paradigm

White House function was sufficient to drive President Grover Cleveland into a frenzy.79 He stated, “It so happens that I have never in my official position, either when sleeping or waking, alive or dead, on my head or on my heels, dined, lunched, or supped, or invited to a wedding reception any colored man, woman, or child.”80

In keeping with his predecessors, Woodrow Wilson had no qualms about the plight of blacks. A black newspaper, The New York Age, warned that Wilson, “both by inheritance and absorption . . . has most of the prej- udices of the narrowest type of southern white people against the Negro.”81 As president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, Wilson headed the only major northern school that excluded black students.82 Moreover, when he was governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1912, Wilson’s “progres- sivism” did not embrace blacks. His “New Freedom” had been “all for the white man and little for blacks.”83 According to Professor Rayford Logan, President Wilson had not visited “any colored school, church, or gathering of colored people of any nature whatever.”84 During Wilson’s administra- tion there was a steady “expansion of segregation in the federal department buildings in Washington, a policy which President Taft had begun.”85

Color was the mark of inferiority, and neither wealth, fame, education, nor skill altered that notion. As Thomas Dartmouth Rice so accurately portrayed in his minstrel shows, wherever blacks came in contact with whites, whether in public accommodations, schools, or job training pro- grams, they were made to “weel about, turn about, and do jis so,”86 result- ing in segregation laws well into the next century. From the Plessy decision, in 1896, to the Brown decision, in 1954, most governments and private en- tities would separate blacks and whites except when black presence ben- efited whites, as when blacks performed services like cleaning or cooking on behalf of white employers.

Jim Crow Housing

In 1911, at a time when many blacks were trying to break away from ru- ral poverty by moving into urban areas, Richmond, Virginia, passed an ordinance that legally sanctioned the segregation of all white and black residents.87 Richmond was one of several Virginia cities to establish such requirements.88 These laws gave municipalities the right to divide the land within their boundaries into segregated districts.89 The city coun- cils were authorized to prepare maps “showing the boundaries of all such

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Preventing Black Excellence 93

segregation districts, and showing the number of white persons and col- ored persons residing within such segregation district[s]. . . .”90 Thereafter, those newly defined Jim Crow districts were designated “white” or “black” depending on the race of the majority of the residents. Twelve months af- ter the passage of such ordinances, it became a crime for any black person to move into and occupy a residence in an area known as a white district. Similarly, it was a crime for any white person to move into a black district. Many other states and cities across the country also instituted Jim Crow housing segregation in the early 20th century.91

For example, Baltimore passed the first racial housing segregation or- dinance directed exclusively at blacks, in 1910.92 Similar ordinances were passed in thirteen other cities, including Louisville, Winston-Salem, and Atlanta. The Baltimore ordinance’s93 passage was a direct response to at- tempts by blacks to move into neighborhoods that, by 1910, had become all white.94 The plight of George McMechen and his family is a typical example.95

In 1910, George McMechen purchased a house in the previously all- white section of Baltimore known as Eutaw Place.96 The family was sub- jected to harassment and required police protection.97 Shortly after the McMechens moved into their new neighborhood, over ten thousand members of the community petitioned the city council in the hope of pre- venting any such future intrusions.98 In response to this petition, the city council implemented the “Baltimore idea.”99

The ordinance provided for residential segregation by street block. It prohibited blacks from moving into or assembling in residences located on blocks that were completely occupied by whites, prohibited whites from moving into or assembling in residences located in blocks that were com- pletely occupied by blacks, and applied those same restrictions to schools and churches.100 The ordinance was inapplicable to mixed blocks where both black and white persons lived.101 Domestic servants, however, were exempted from this housing ordinance’s coverage, just as they had been by segregation laws on trains.102

Residential segregation was not relegated to the South. Historically, Irish, Jews, and other white immigrant groups had been separated in hous- ing in the North.103 Ethnic colonies, or “ghettos,”104 were created whenever new European immigrants arrived in large numbers. Typically, immigrants were impoverished, were poorly educated, and tended to crowd into low- rent areas with others of similar background or language.105 As these immi- grants accumulated money or became educated and informed about other

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94 Creating the Paradigm

opportunities, they left these ethnic areas and, no longer handicapped by their background, moved into more diverse communities.106 However, the experience of the massive wave of blacks who entered the metropolitan North from the rural South in search of opportunity between 1905 and 1930 was altogether different. City and state laws relegated blacks to the least desirable areas and prevented them from meaningful opportunities to get out of those areas, while whites, even impoverished ones, were not sep- arated.107 Moreover, whites who improved their economic circumstances could move into wealthier white areas, thus moving up the ladder of suc- cess.108 Blacks, however, were denied that opportunity under housing sepa- ration laws and practices.109

After the invalidation of residential segregation ordinances, many urban whites, in favor of black separation, turned to the Klan for help.110 The Klan became extremely popular in northern cities like Detroit, Michigan, where a Klan member was elected mayor.111 Violent Klan tactics were utilized in these cities, just as they had been earlier in southern rural areas, to main- tain black separation.112

Other methods included steering, wherein real estate sales agents only show blacks houses for sale in black areas, and intimidation, wherein blacks who bought houses in white neighborhoods were threatened and harassed by white residents. One of the most popular methods was the racially re- strictive covenant.113 Of the myriad of devices implemented by whites to prevent blacks from buying property, the racially restrictive covenant re- ceived the first legal challenge.114 As blacks tried to move from the less de- sirable areas of cities relegated to them through private and governmental practices, racial covenants were placed on houses in the more desirable areas.115 Because of these covenants, the few blacks economically capable of owning such property were prevented or discouraged from doing so.

When housing segregation laws were prohibited by the Supreme Court, similar mandates were instituted by white vigilantism practices.116 For ex- ample, certain cities excluded blacks from living within the city limits. Af- ter 1948, by practice, over three thousand “sundown towns” existed in the country. The term “sundown town” was derived from requirements that all blacks having business in the town had to leave by nightfall or risk bodily harm.117 Blacks were not permitted to live or own property within the city or county limits. Some “sundown towns” prohibited only blacks, while others prohibited all minorities.118 In a few towns and counties such as Pierce City, Missouri, and Anna-Jonesboro, Illinois, blacks were completely banished

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Preventing Black Excellence 95

from the areas.119 Confiscation of black-owned property was rampant, and such banishment was enforced by violence and intimidation.

Jim Crow Education

In response to demands by poor and middle-income whites in the begin- ning of the 20th century, most southern states began providing universal public education, albeit on a segregated basis.120 The education provided to blacks was, keeping in line with Plessy, both separate and unequal. Afflu- ent southern whites considered blacks cheap labor, good for one thing: the proper growing of cotton and tobacco.121 These whites believed that educa- tion spoiled a good domestic or field hand,122 preferring their laborers to be illiterate or semiliterate at best.123 Southern white legislators claimed that blacks were not capable of higher learning and, therefore, were relegated to studying subjects dealing with manual labor. Money for educating blacks was often contingent on limiting their education to expansion of the man- ual labor force.124 In 1900, the federal commissioner of education estimated that in sixteen former slave states, the average black child received half as much educational funding as the average white child.125 Many states were worse.126 South Carolina reports indicate that blacks, who represented 61% of the school population, received 20% of school funds (barely one-fifth as much as the average white child).127

Black children suffered other educational disadvantages as well. School terms in black institutions were significantly shorter.128 Black schools were also fewer in number, and, therefore, were spread out, making travel to and from school more difficult, particularly in rural regions with poor roads and bridges.129 Making it more challenging for blacks to acquire an education impeded the performances of those who tried. This reinforced inferiority notions, and provided false justification for expending fewer re- sources on black education.

The educational divide between black and white schools drastically in- creased as the 20th century moved forward.130 By 1915, the funding disparity had grown so large that blacks received only one-twelfth as much money for education.131 Moreover, most southern school boards, unlike those in the North, did not offer public secondary education to black youths.132 Black school children, at best, received an elementary school education only. On the rare occasions when secondary schools were provided, those

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96 Creating the Paradigm

schools were drastically underfunded.133 Typically, black southerners were not provided with public secondary schools until after World War II.134 In 1909, Mississippi governor James Vardaman spelled out the white view of educating blacks:135

Money spent today for the maintenance of public schools for negroes is robbery of the white man, and a waste upon the negro. You take it from the toiling white men and women, you rob the white child of the advan- tages it would afford him, and you spend it upon the negro in an effort to make of the negro what God Almighty never intended should be made, and which men cannot accomplish.136

Under the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” doctrine articulated in Plessy, states that adopted Jim Crow were obligated to provide separate educational facilities for blacks.137 Many states in the North left the deci- sion on whether to segregate public primary and secondary schools to lo- cal school boards.138 While some local jurisdictions rejected Jim Crow, a majority, particularly the large urban school districts, chose to require ra- cial separation.139 Yet no state or local jurisdiction came close to satisfying the equality component of the doctrine, especially with regard to college, graduate, and professional school training.140

The Land-Grant Act, enacted in 1890, required that states using federal land-grant funds open their schools to both blacks and whites or allocate funds for black schools as an alternative to white ones.141 The act gave states a choice, and the Plessy decision sanctioned that choice.

After 1896, most states provided an undergraduate institution for blacks to attend, but no states provided any graduate or professional schools for blacks.142 Blacks who wanted to attend graduate or professional school had only two options: they could attend the limited number of private institu- tions throughout the country, like Howard University in Washington, DC, created by the federal government in 1867 to educate blacks, or they could hope to secure one of the token spots reserved for blacks at state, private, or federal institutions located in northern and western states.143

Many states attempted to satisfy the Plessy doctrine by choosing not to provide black students with an educational institution, and instead identi- fied existing institutions in neighboring states as legitimate alternatives.144 One of the most popular methods was providing scholarships for black students to attend Howard University, or another historically black insti- tution located in another state.145 These states reasoned that providing a

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Preventing Black Excellence 97

scholarship to attend an out-of-state school was the same as providing a school within the state. Many black professionals, including a large num- ber of black lawyers and doctors, were educated in this fashion.

Widespread use of this approach greatly limited the number of place- ments available for blacks at state schools. This explains why there were so few black professionals prior to the civil rights movement.146 Graduate and professional placements nationally were limited to a couple of hundred per year.

This practice served to reinforce notions of black inferiority by limiting opportunities for blacks to become professionals. Those few blacks admit- ted, under a quota of one or two per year, to college or graduate and pro- fessional schools for whites, in northern or western states, were subjected to racist and discriminatory treatment.147

White students at military academies also pressed for black separa- tion. In 1932, a young black male, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., entered West Point Military Academy in New York.148 Like Henry Flipper before him, he was the only black cadet enrolled at West Point during that term, and just the fourth since the school had been established in 1802.149 Shortly af- ter his arrival, Davis accidentally witnessed a meeting of the other cadets in his class.150 The subject of the meeting was, “What are we going to do about the nigger?” “From that meeting on,” Davis recalled, “the cadets who roomed across the hall, who had been friendly earlier, no longer spoke to me. In fact, no one spoke to me except in the line of duty.”151

The cadets at West Point “silenced” Davis for the duration of his four- year education.152 This method of social exclusion meant that no cadet was permitted to speak or interact with Davis under threat of similar treatment by the rest of the academy.153 Although the administrators at West Point, like most northern white leaders in the early 20th century, denied order- ing, sanctioning, or even condoning this practice, the treatment Davis suffered was not prevented, nor were the culprits punished by academy officials.154 Despite the “silent treatment,” Davis became a skilled combat pilot during World War II and the commander of an all-black air corps unit called the “Red Tails” that achieved numerous combat records in spite of Jim Crow practices.155

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98 Creating the Paradigm

Jim Crow Military

From the Spanish-American War in 1908 through the ending of World War II in 1945, blacks served in racially segregated units commanded by white officers.156 Most often, black soldiers were excluded from skilled leadership positions and served overwhelmingly in labor and service capacities.157 To discourage black participation, the military placed a strict cap on the num- ber of black enlistments.158

When World War II began in Europe in 1939, only 3,640 black soldiers were in uniform.159 By the time Pearl Harbor was bombed, that number had increased to 97,725.160 By the end of 1942, the number of black soldiers had swelled to 467,833 men.161 Despite this increase, the army pledged to main- tain the practice of segregation and to keep the proportion of blacks in uniform the same as the proportion of blacks in the general population.162 Thus, the military continued deliberately to relegate the vast majority of black soldiers to manual labor positions in support and supply units.163 The primary task of the service troops included road building, stevedoring, laundering, and fumigating.164

The military’s policies of parity in population percentage and racial seg- regation were difficult to maintain. Despite the cap on enlisted soldiers, the army did not have enough segregated facilities to house and train the unprecedented number of black recruits.165 In addition to these logistical problems, most of the war was waged while black soldiers, a valuable and powerful resource, remained on the sidelines.166 As in earlier wars, black soldiers were denied the right to fight until their manpower became a ne- cessity.167 Black infantry units were assigned to combat duty late in the war, but only when necessary to replace white units who had lost large num- bers of soldiers.168

Eugene Bullard, a black American, fought with the French Foreign Le- gion in the early 20th century.169 Bullard left the United States for France at the age of seventeen, after witnessing an attempted lynching of his fa- ther in Georgia in 1906.170 A stellar soldier, Bullard was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the highest combat award, for heroics at the Battle of Verdun during World War I.171 Opportunity presented itself when he was asked by French officers to volunteer for the Eagle Squadron, a group of Ameri- can volunteers in the French Air Force.172 Known as the “black swallow of death”173 for his daring and courage, he was the first black aviator to fly suc- cessful missions for the French Air Force during the early stages of World War I.174 In 1917, the United States entered World War I, and the United

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Preventing Black Excellence 99

States Army took over the squadron; Bullard applied to transfer to the newly formed American squadron.175 Of the twenty-nine applicants, he was the only one denied transfer.176 Instead, Bullard was ordered to report to a maintenance troop, a decision based solely on his race.177 In spite of his decade of flying expertise, Bullard was excluded from serving his country in the way he was best qualified; instead, he was relegated to a low-level, menial position.178

Not one black was awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for bravery during combat, in either World War I or World War II, even though several clearly qualified on the basis of meritorious and heroic deeds.

Jim Crow Employment

In the late 1800s, 75% of blacks lived in the South.179 Most were underedu- cated and without capital. As a result, agricultural jobs served as the pri- mary means for earning a living. Without money to buy land, blacks were limited to labor arrangements with low wages and no equity or equitable profit sharing. Such circumstances led to perpetual poverty.

Blacks who could not be coerced to work for unduly low wages were forced, through the legal system, to work without pay. Thousands of blacks, in the early 1900s, were arrested and convicted on false charges and leased out to corporations by southern state governments, as convict la- bor.180 Unjustly forced to labor in coal mines, lumber mills, or road main- tenance, these blacks were always exploited by being underfed and poorly housed, often injured or afflicted by illness, and sometimes overworked to the point of exhaustion and death.181

For those few blacks who could access capital, productive farm land was still not accessible. Few whites were willing to sell land to blacks. Where white purchasers existed, a sale of fertile land to blacks was less likely to transpire.182

Black employment in southern urban areas was not much better. Even as economic opportunities improved in the last decade of the 19th century, blacks were not permitted to benefit economically. Even in service positions such as maids, cooks, and barbers, blacks were refused employment due to the sentiment of many whites that these jobs were too good for blacks.183

For those blacks who remained in rural areas, the 1920s brought tre- mendous economic hardship. Agricultural cycles of overproduction and

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100 Creating the Paradigm

dwindling prices, coupled with frequent crop destruction from insects, caused widespread losses and infrequent payment to workers.

After the Civil War, most blacks lived in southern states.184 By the turn of the 20th century, however, due to political and economic developments, including the denial of civil rights and high rates of unemployment, many blacks decided to leave the South for better opportunities in the North.185 This process came to be known as the Great Migration.186 Lasting twenty- five years, beginning in the late 1800s, it became the largest migratory shift in American history.187 Blacks who participated encountered racist prac- tices similar to those they had escaped in the South.

Intense conflicts occurred between white and black job seekers. Com- petition from skilled black laborers was particularly resented. Most blacks seeking employment as blacksmiths, furniture makers, or painters met hostility from whites who possessed similar skills.188 This was exacerbated, within the union movement, when white workers attempted to organize to strengthen negotiating power with management over wages and hours, and black workers, denied union membership due to their race, were brought in as strike breakers. Companies exploited this dynamic to their own advantage. As far back as 1867, in Boston, Massachusetts, black ship- builders were brought from Virginia to undermine white laborers’ efforts to obtain shorter working days,189 demonstrating once again how those in positions of influence used race divisively. Black desires for employment and economic independence were used to reduce the economic clout of white workers, perpetuating racial division.

Many blacks headed for northern industrial areas, motivated by the same aspirations as white immigrants who came before them—to obtain better educations for their children and higher wages for themselves and to avoid brutal treatment from oppressive governments.190 Black culture embraced a strong work ethic, and the Great Migration reflected blacks’ strong desire for better employment opportunities.191 Unlike white immi- grants, however, black migrants were already Americans—they knew the language, understood America’s social customs and class structure, and in a sense were at home in the North before they ever set foot in New York, Detroit, or Chicago.192 Yet, blacks faced stronger opposition than white for- eigners in many areas of life.193

Once white immigrants became “Americanized”—knowledgeable in the ways of America—they were allowed to become American citizens not subject to separation laws.194 Despite the fact that European im- migrants had much in common with black workers, as they were both

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Preventing Black Excellence 101

exploited by employers with low wages, long hours, and poor work en- vironments, white immigrants united along racial lines with their white employers to support discriminatory laws.195 The lure of white privilege, it seems, was more unifying than common social or economic class characteristics.196 Whites born in the United States, and those emigrat- ing from Europe, united to withhold economic and other opportunities from black Americans.197 From the start of the trade union movement in the late 19th century, blacks were excluded from membership. In 1915, immigration from Europe stopped suddenly with the outbreak of World War I.198 As a result of white immigration being halted, many blacks were hired in war-related industries that had been heavily dependent on im- migrant labor.199 Blacks worked in industries from shipbuilding to iron and steel to automobile and trucks to electrical supplies to coal mines and to railroads.200 Hundreds of thousands of blacks found employment during the war.201 In 1917, as World War I came to a close, the Ameri- can Federation of Labor (AFL), one of the largest labor organizations in the country, considered opening its membership to blacks in order to prevent them from being used as strikebreakers as they had been prior to the war.202 Nevertheless, most AFL-affiliated unions denied black membership.203

The number of blacks and whites seeking employment in the urban North outnumbered available employment opportunities. Employers tended to favor white workers over blacks, so the latter had difficulty secur- ing all but the most onerous and lowest-paying jobs.204

The racial divide in employment reflected the paradigm’s racial hier- archy. Service and menial jobs were reserved for blacks, if they could get jobs at all. Most of the blacks who came to the North during the Great Migration were unskilled industrial laborers or farmers.205 With only the most menial jobs available to blacks, these migrants formed the bulk of the working poor in cities throughout the North.206 Black political lead- ers, like W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, encouraged business enterprise so that blacks could become their own employers and secure wealth and economic independence.207 Blacks established a wide range of businesses located in northern cities, from restaurants to grocery stores to funeral homes and banks. The hair and beauty care industry was one of the most successful areas of black enterprise, producing the wealthiest black woman of the early 20th century, C. J. Walker, whose business employed thousands of black women as salespersons in the beginning decades of the 20th century.208

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102 Creating the Paradigm

The lack of employment opportunities for blacks in white-owned busi- nesses necessitated creative approaches on the part of blacks in order to further economic opportunities. One of the most successful approaches was to involve black churches in business enterprises in black neighbor- hoods. Because of limited access to capital from white-owned banks, black churches, the most prosperous entities of the time, exercised a more diverse responsibility than simply providing religious support. Black churches got involved in various economic enterprises to benefit the larger black community, such as building and loan organizations, newspapers, and restaurants.209 Many of these church-affiliated businesses made steady progress and performed valuable economic services for blacks during the first three decades of the 20th century.

The economic depression of 1929, however, devastated most of these businesses; because they had little or no capital reserves, failure rates were high and only a few businesses survived. Black laborers were the first to lose their jobs or to have their wages lowered to poverty levels.210 New Deal legislation in the late 1930s and early 1940s lowered unemployment numbers for blacks.211 By 1940, over a million black laborers in the North owed their employment to New Deal work programs.212 Nevertheless, in a majority of localities, blacks received less financial assistance than similarly situated whites, or no assistance at all.213 In the early 1940s, industrial hir- ing began to pick up, particularly in war-related industries. Yet, first prefer- ence was given to white workers unemployed since the Depression.214 Few black workers were hired until federal legislation required it in 1941.215 As a result of this unequal treatment, whether skilled or unskilled, black work- ers in the North were subjected to discriminatory treatment if they were fortunate enough to be hired at all. In 1934, Paul Robeson, a black scholar and athlete, graduated from Columbia Law School.216 As a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Rutgers University and as the College Football Player of the Year, he was a uniquely gifted individual.217 Offered legal employment at a white law firm in New York City, a first for a black lawyer, he quit after sev- eral months, frustrated because a white secretary refused to take dictation from him.218 Robeson would later become an internationally celebrated singer, opera performer, and movie star.219 While “white-collar” blacks like Robeson were demeaned and degraded, most blacks, even those few who were highly trained or skilled, received no opportunities at white-owned or -controlled institutions, including federal and state governments.220

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Preventing Black Excellence 103

Jim Crow and Economic Growth

In the decades after World War I, business opportunities for blacks had worsened, with widespread disparities existing in government assistance programs. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) sent mil- lions of dollars to all-white county committees to pay for farm land retired from cultivation, thus reversing a drastic fall in prices caused by overpro- duction.221 AAA subsidy checks never reached a sizeable percentage of black farm owners, and because white administrators and landlords kept the checks for themselves, when they did disperse funds appropriately, dis- criminatory discrepancies existed.222 Comparable workers received widely disparate subsidies. A black sharecropper received an average of $295 from the AAA, while a white farmer received $417.223 A black field hand received $175, while a white one received $232.224

While blacks were being forcibly displaced and denied housing oppor- tunities, many whites were able to purchase their first homes with mort- gages secured through the G.I. Bill, which was passed after World War II to allow veterans to secure government loan assistance. Many of the homes purchased in 1945 for ten thousand dollars were subsequently valued at more than one hundred thousand dollars, a tenfold increase in value.225 The few blacks who qualified for assistance faced discrimination, with state government officials failing to deliver their earned benefits.226 Even the G.I. Bill, which provided college tuition assistance for those who had served in the military, failed to provide benefits to most black veterans,227 because racist southern state officials administered and controlled the distribution of the funds.228 A substantial number of white males attend- ing college after World War II did so with government assistance under the G.I. Bill.229 That same opportunity was denied to many black veterans who had fought under the very same conditions.230 Other government as- sistance programs, like Social Security and farmer assistance, had equally racist administration.

The Social Security program—designed to provide monetary assistance to retirees—excluded farm laborers and domestics from its coverage, due to concerns by white southern legislators that blacks would benefit from the program.231 These legislators knew that 60% of all employed blacks na- tionwide fell within those two job categories.232

Jim Crow government programs and practices created a staggering dis- crepancy in wealth and resources among blacks and whites. Large numbers of whites, for example, were able to purchase homes or farm land while

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104 Creating the Paradigm

a majority of blacks remained renters in the North and sharecroppers in the South.233 Approximately 75% of the black farmers in the South, in 1900, were sharecroppers or tenant farmers.234 But in the Mississippi Delta, for example, Professor Leon Litwack explained that “black owners comprised only slightly more than 2% of the farm operators.  .  .  .”235 By 1940, 75% of white farmers owned their land while few blacks did so.236 In the North, disproportionate white home ownership was maintained and perpetuated by racial covenants that prevented many whites from selling their homes to blacks.237 By 1940, fewer than 5% of blacks owned homes in the North.238 The lack of home ownership for blacks kept them in a weak economic state, especially during periods of inflation, when housing became easier to afford for those who owned real property and held a fixed-rate mortgage.239 Renters, in contrast, usually saw their housing expenses increase. As a re- sult, large numbers of whites would inherit valuable assets from deceased relatives. On average, one in four white families received an inheritance after a parent’s death averaging close to $150,000.240 In contrast, only one in twenty black families inherited valuable assets with an average worth of around $40,000.241

Jim Crow Sports

Separation in sports was necessary to prevent blacks from defeating whites, even if only in a game. Contrary to what most Americans have been led to believe today, there were integrated sports competitions as far back as the mid-1800s.242 In fact, at that time, blacks participated in, and often excelled in, the major sports of the day—cycling, horse racing, and boat racing.243 For example, in the first Kentucky Derby in 1875,244 fourteen of the first fifteen jockeys were black, and ten of the Derby’s first seventeen winners were black.245 Soon after, in 1894, the Jockey Club was formed to license jockeys, and it denied licenses to blacks.246 The main reason for this discrimination was that many horse owners believed that most whites did not want to see black jockeys winning races, making money, and getting newspaper coverage.247 These owners felt that it would be more profitable to have white jockeys winning the races.248 Similar separation practices were implemented in increasingly popular professional sports such as foot- ball, baseball, basketball, and in boxing after Jack Johnson249 became the first black heavyweight champion of the world in 1910. After his defeat of Jim “The Great White Hope” Jeffries250 inspired race riots, no black was

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Preventing Black Excellence 105

allowed to fight for the heavyweight title from 1915 to 1937.251 Some states even had statutes that prohibited whites and blacks from boxing one an- other in amateur bouts or social settings.252

The plight of Jack Johnson is particularly instructive as to the lengths that some white government officials would go to prevent black excel- lence.253 As the first black heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson was placed in one of the most high-profile positions symbolizing physical excellence. While he was heavyweight champion, members of the federal government targeted Johnson and attempted to have him incarcerated so he could not hold the title or fight anymore. Due to Johnson’s extrava- gant lifestyle of traveling extensively and dating many women, including women who worked as prostitutes, government officials felt that he could be convicted under a recently enacted law, the Mann Act, which made it il- legal to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes.254 After a two-year investigation of Johnson culminating in his arrest in 1912, the case collapsed when it became clear that the woman in question, Lucille Cam- eron, had been a prostitute long before she met Johnson.255 The govern- ment, however, refused to abandon their obsession with targeting Johnson for criminal investigation.256 The government went to great lengths to se- cure a criminal conviction against Johnson.

Disappointed that Johnson had avoided conviction in 1912, Assistant United States Attorney Harry Parkin was determined to indict Johnson for his involvement with white prostitutes.257 Parkin requested that the Justice Department investigate whether Johnson had ever transported any other women across state lines for allegedly immoral purposes.258 Although the Mann Act was designed to apply to pimps and brothels or other busi- ness establishments promoting money for sex, Parkin insisted that the law could be used to convict Johnson.259 One of Johnson’s former companions, Belle Schreiber, whom he dumped for another woman, became a primary witness in the government’s new case against Johnson.260 Soon after Sch- reiber came forward, indictments were issued against Johnson for Mann Act violations relating to involvement in prostitution by transporting women out of state for sexual purposes in exchange for money.261 Johnson was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison.262

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106 Creating the Paradigm

Black Entrepreneurship under Jim Crow

Due to severe discrimination in education, housing, employment, and gov- ernment benefits, the black entrepreneurial spirit was encouraged by black leaders as a way to combat discriminatory treatment. Many blacks estab- lished self-sustaining black towns in an attempt to minimize contact with and reliance on hostile and unresponsive state governments. Allensworth, California—along with Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and Nicodemus, Kan- sas—was one such place.263 Started by Colonel Allen Allensworth in 1906, after he retired as an army chaplain, the thriving community grew to over four hundred residents and included a bakery, lumber yard, restaurant, liv- ery stable, and blacksmith shop.264 After being denied participation in a wa- ter cooperative agreement by neighboring white towns, Allensworth was abandoned in 1918.265

The National Patent Office was one of the few federal institutions that did not discriminate; it accepted patents irrespective of the race of the ap- plicant.266 As a result, thousands of blacks, including Elijah McCoy, who held fifty patents connected to automatic machine lubricators, and Gran- ville Woods, who held several patents later assigned to the General Elec- tric Company and American Bell Telephone Company,267 successfully ob- tained patents between 1900 and 1954. Garrett Morgan was also one of the many black patent applicants.268

Morgan was born in 1877, the seventh of eleven children in his family.269 As was typical of rural blacks, his formal education ended at grade five, and he subsequently sought work to help his family financially.270 Eventually, Morgan found a job as a sewing machine adjuster for Roots and McBride, a clothing manufacturer.271 Morgan became so good at repairing and fine tuning sewing machines that he found steady work fixing and adjusting them.272

Recognizing the high demand for his services, Morgan opened his own sewing retail and repair business in 1907.273 This began a long and prosperous career of inventions, beginning with several patents that im- proved the sewing machine.274 Morgan conceived his greatest idea in 1911, when he read newspaper reports of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Com- pany fire in New York City.275 The thick, deadly smoke prevented firefight- ers’ efforts to save victims, which led to the death of 146 workers in the factory.276 Shortly thereafter, Morgan designed and patented a helmet that could help firefighters survive in such dangerous environments.277 Mor- gan named his invention the “gas inhalator,” and it consisted of a durable

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Preventing Black Excellence 107

hood that fit over the head and two long tubes that ran from the hood to the floor.278

Marketing his invention as “the Morgan Helmet,” Morgan recognized that the best way to sell his invention was to demonstrate it.279 Yet, when he traveled around the country displaying his invention in a dramatic tent demonstration equivalent to a magic show, where Morgan would use his device to amazingly survive a smoke-filled chamber, Morgan ran into hos- tility from white audiences due to his race.280 Morgan realized that sales dropped off dramatically when he presented himself as the inventor.281 As a result, Morgan staged a show where he had a white friend pose as the inventor, and Morgan posed as his assistant.282 Sales improved dramatically when the invention was no longer associated with a black inventor.283

Garrett Morgan’s experience is a prime example of how notions of white superiority/black inferiority hinder black excellence. It was difficult for Morgan to sell his invention to whites when Morgan identified himself as the inventor. The fact that Morgan was black caused many whites to ques- tion the quality of the device or the authenticity of the claims as to what the device could accomplish. Moreover, the lack of sales to whites may also re- flect the sentiment that even if the device was effective and the claims were authentic, support of black businesses would undermine white competi- tors. In contrast, when Morgan posed as the assistant to the white inventor, sales to whites soared.284 These whites could accept and embrace purchas- ing a technologically advanced product created by a white person but dem- onstrated by a black servant serving as the “guinea pig” for the experiment.

In the white mind, blacks were thought of as servants, cooks, maids, butlers, and field hands. Blacks could be successfully associated with prod- ucts that reflected their rightful place in American society, such as “Aunt Jemima” selling pancakes or “Uncle Ben” selling rice—in those types of positions, blacks were serving whites in areas of labor where whites chose not to perform. But designing technology to be used in sophisticated min- ing operations or firefighting rescues moved into a realm deemed unsuit- able for black control or supervision. Rejecting these inventions was the ultimate exhibition of racial insanity, for those whites would prefer to ig- nore or dispute the success of a device that could save thousands of lives, most of them white lives, rather than acknowledge that a black inventor may have accomplished a feat that whites had not been able to accomplish. Morgan had to acknowledge and make use of false notions of white supe- riority by having a white person pose as the inventor in order to get whites to even consider using Morgan’s creation.

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108 Creating the Paradigm

Unfortunately, this was not a rare occurrence. Notions of racial hierar- chy were frequently reinforced through black/white interpersonal relations throughout the Jim Crow period. Many blacks had to falsely play roles in- ferior to whites in order to fit into the racial paradigm. Blacks whose activi- ties or roles fell outside of the paradigm, by demonstrating excellence or beating white competitors, made many whites uncomfortable and under- mined the notion of black inferiority.

Paul Williams, one of the first black architects in California, took a dif- ferent approach from Morgan in overcoming white racism against black entrepreneurs.285 Instead of camouflaging the fact that he was the building designer, Williams developed methods that would allow whites to utilize his services while maintaining a degree of black separation.286 For instance, sensitive to white clients who might feel uncomfortable sitting next to him, Williams developed the ability to draw upside down.287 This allowed cli- ents to examine his designs right-side-up as he drew them from the op- posite side of the table.288 This tactic worked as Williams completed over three thousand projects, most of them for white clients.289 Nevertheless, Williams was forbidden from visiting the Beverly Hills Hotel—a hotel he had designed—due to the hotel’s policy excluding black customers.290

Often, denial of black excellence involved taking credit away from blacks and giving it exclusively to whites. In housing, schools, business, politics, and sports, the presence of and performances by blacks were devalued. Such devaluation occurred even in medicine, where lives were at risk. For example, Vivien Thomas, a black man with a high school diploma, created and perfected a complicated heart surgery procedure that saved thousands of lives.291 In 1944, headlines across the world announced that Johns Hop- kins University chief of surgery Dr. Alfred Blalock had repaired the heart of a nine-pound baby.292 However, although Blalock actually performed the heart procedure, it was Thomas, his surgical assistant, who instructed him.293 As Blalock scrubbed in for the procedure, he looked around the operating room and realized his guide, Thomas, was not present.294 Despite the confusion of the other medical personnel in the room, Blalock insisted that Thomas be permitted into the operating room to advise him.295 At the time of the sur- gery, Blalock had little experience with the procedure, while Thomas had successfully completed the procedure dozens of times on animals.296 As the white doctor maneuvered the baby’s heart, the black laboratory technician sat behind him, whispering instructions.297 Because he was black, Thomas would not ordinarily have been permitted in the operating room, and was

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Preventing Black Excellence 109

forced to use a separate door to enter the university hospital.298 Furthermore, Thomas’s official job title was initially “janitor.”299 But, Blalock’s successful research and pioneering medical innovations were the result of Thomas’s work.300 Not only did Thomas perfect the procedure; he designed new sur- gical tools for Blalock.301 Unfortunately, while Blalock was able to negotiate reasonable compensation for Thomas, he did little to acknowledge Thom- as’s contributions in the operating room—Blalock unfairly took credit for Thomas’s work and innovations.302 It was not until the 1970s, almost thirty years after the initial groundbreaking surgery, and several years after Blalock’s death, that Thomas was finally recognized for his accomplishments—a por- trait of Thomas was presented and hung at the hospital, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Johns Hopkins, as well as being appointed to a po- sition on the Hopkins medical school faculty.303

When laws proved ineffective in suppressing black entrepreneurial ex- cellence, economic incentives were offered for blacks to deny their excel- lence. During the early 20th century, A. Philip Randolph gained recogni- tion as the head of the first black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP).304 Consistent with Jim Crow employment practices, na- tional labor organizations, such as the American Federation of Labor, ex- cluded black members. In 1925, Randolph agreed to help start and head a union for the black employees of the Pullman Train Car Company (Pull- man Company), which provided the most expensive and luxurious ac- commodations for overnight train travel.305 A majority of employees at the Pullman Company were blacks employed as service attendants.306 Despite strong opposition by the Pullman Company’s management, the employ- ees voted to support the BSCP.307 In 1929, the Pullman Company sent Ran- dolph a check for ten thousand dollars as a thinly veiled bribe to discon- tinue his work as head of the BSCP.308 Disgusted by the proposition, Ran- dolph returned the check. In a later speech to the BSCP, Randolph said, “I will not take Pullman gold.”309 According to one BSCP member, in refusing the company’s bribe, Randolph sent the message that “negro pride [was] not for sale.”310

Preventing Black Excellence with Incarceration and Violence

Many blacks who challenged separation practices were either incarcerated or killed. During the first half of the 20th century, threats and intimidation

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110 Creating the Paradigm

against blacks were widespread.311 Torture, used to coerce confessions, was prevalent in detentions of blacks,312 and arrests for violating Jim Crow laws sharply increased incarceration rates. Under Jim Crow laws, in the early 1900s, blacks were arrested, imprisoned, and forced into labor.313 Moreover, longer sentences for blacks were encouraged in order to extend their labor commitment. For example, 1913 court records from Arkansas indicate ex- cessive sentences for convicted blacks—180 days for disturbing the peace; three years for stealing clothing from a clothesline; and thirty-six years for forging documents to buy whiskey.314 If a local industry needed work- ers, vagrancy arrests increased proportional to the need for labor, in some cases rising by 800%.315 Trials of blacks took place without legal representa- tion, or with an all-white jury,316 or without any jury at all. An offense such as hitching a ride on a train often quickly turned into years of forced labor on a prison-run plantation.

This is exactly what happened to John Davis, a black man from Goodwa- ter, Alabama.317 In 1901, Davis was arrested and convicted on a false charge of failure to pay a forty dollar debt.318 The sheriff, Robert Franklin, claimed, as he did with numerous other blacks, that Davis owed him money.319 A wealthy white landowner, John Pace, paid the fictitious debt plus a fine and, pursuant to Alabama law, Davis, under duress, signed an agreement to work for Pace for ten months in order to avoid a prison sentence.320

While vagrancy arrests could in theory affect both blacks and whites, officials generally targeted blacks. Many states had curfew laws that were applied to blacks only. The resulting disparity in incarceration was well documented. For example, in Texas in the early 1900s, blacks represented 20% of the state population but 60% of the prison population.321 In 1917, in Mississippi, 90% of the prison population was black.322

Once convicted of a crime, blacks were frequently forced to work on chain gangs or prison-run plantations or factories. The largest and most no- torious was Parchman Farm, a 20,000-acre prison camp plantation in Mis- sissippi.323 Life at Parchman Farm was particularly brutal.324 Black prisoners would rise before dawn and march, at gunpoint, all the way to the fields, sometimes a mile or more, with prison guards trailing on horseback.325 Once workers arrived at the fields, they were divided into squads and led by the fastest worker, who would “set the pace” for the entire group.326 Any prisoner who did not keep up with the pace received severe punishment, and prisoners who tried to run or escape were shot on sight no matter what the reason.327 Prisoners at Parchman Farm generally worked until they

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Preventing Black Excellence 111

dropped dead or experienced sunstroke.328 On several occasions, prisoners attempted to avoid work by “knockin’ a joe,” which referred to self-muti- lation by cutting off a limb.329 It was common to see a one-legged or one- armed man who had chopped off his own foot or hand with an ax or hoe to avoid the prison labor of the South.330 Prisoners at Parchman realized that pardons were nonexistent, so self-injury became the only alternative available for them to get out of the laborious and torturous tasks.331 Other prisoners drank poison, slit their wrists, or severed Achilles tendons to free themselves from the agony of working in the fields.332 However, those who were unable to work due to severed limbs soon became guinea pigs for the state in medical experiments instead.333

Worse than incarceration and forced labor, the fate of death by white vigilantism befell some who challenged Jim Crow laws. One example was Lloyd Gaines, a black man who graduated from Lincoln University, in Missouri, in 1935 and wanted to go to law school.334 Gaines sought to at- tend law school in Missouri, so he applied to the only law school within the state—the University of Missouri.335 The university conceded that Gaines was qualified but would not permit him to enroll because he was black.336

The NAACP represented Gaines and sued the University of Missouri, alleging that Gaines had been denied admission in violation of equality provisions in the Constitution.337 During the trial, the university claimed to have satisfied its obligation under the Equal Protection Clause of the Con- stitution by providing Gaines with a scholarship to attend a law school in an adjacent state that accepted blacks.338 It was odd indeed to hear the law- yers for the University of Missouri advocating for the greatness of one of its competitors, the University of Illinois Law School.339 The University of Missouri also contended that Gaines should have applied to Lincoln Col- lege, the Jim Crow school in Missouri, and asked Lincoln officials to create a law school for him and other blacks.340

The United States Supreme Court heard the case in 1938.341 As Charles Hamilton Houston stood in front of the Court to argue the case, Justice James McReynolds, a declared supporter of white superiority, reversed his chair and turned his back to Houston.342 Houston subsequently made his arguments and, not surprisingly, Justice McReynolds did not agree with Houston’s position.343 Yet, McReynolds’s vote was inconsequential be- cause seven justices agreed with Houston.344 Led by Chief Justice Charles Hughes, the Court held that the University of Missouri had violated

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112 Creating the Paradigm

Gaines’s equal protection rights and affirmed that, unless an equal school in the state was available immediately, he had to be admitted to the Univer- sity of Missouri.345 On March 19, 1939, several months after the decision, but prior to his enrollment in law school, Gaines suddenly disappeared346— one afternoon, Gaines left the fraternity house where he resided to buy some stamps, and he was never seen again. Many believe that Gaines made the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life to bridge the racial divide.

While black separation was rigidly maintained under Jim Crow laws, those laws were frequently challenged within the judicial system and, sometimes, said challenges were successful. But even when those chal- lenges succeeded, vigilantism by whites often prevented the racial divide from being bridged and black excellence from being fulfilled.

Crossing the Jim Crow Line

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, blacks who attempted to cross the racial divide of Jim Crow segregation or who demonstrated ex- cellence while interacting with whites faced systematic atrocities. The prac- tice of lynching—a form of public murder without trial—was frequently utilized against blacks who attempted to vote during Reconstruction and continued and expanded from the late 19th century well into the 20th cen- tury, especially in the South.347 Perpetrators were rarely tried or convicted. Thousands of blacks were tortured and murdered through public specta- cles held in town centers and attended by hundreds of spectators.348

Historians estimate that between 1880 and 1951, more than three thou- sand lynchings took place in America.349 Lynching was supported by all levels of society, including law enforcement agents, who were sometimes active participants.350 In nearly all historical records, the victim was falsely accused of a crime and assaulted by a violent mob, while police and the justice system made no efforts to restore order.351 The key, however, in al- most all lynchings, was the belief by some whites that a black perpetrator had wrongly crossed the racial divide, such as drinking from the white- designated water fountain, or committed an offense challenging notions of white superiority, such as engaging in sexual relations with a white female.352

It is important to note that lynchings were not unique to the South. In the summer of 1930, James Cameron, a sixteen-year-old from Marion,

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Preventing Black Excellence 113

Indiana, and two of his teenage friends were arrested and held in the Grant County Courthouse Jail, accused of murdering a white man and raping a white woman.353 Over the course of several days a mob surrounded the jail, led by the Ku Klux Klan and urged on by local newspapers and radio broadcasts.354 The sheriff and law authorities made no effort to control the crowd, which grew to several thousand and used sledgehammers to pulver- ize the brick frames around the iron doors of the jail.355 For hours the unre- lenting pounding of their hammers tore away at the brick frames, sending shock waves of terror into the souls of the prisoners within the holding cells.356 The mob tore the iron doors from their frames, surged in, and be- gan pounding down the inner doors.357

Reaching the cell of Thomas Shipp, the mob dragged him out, beat him into unconsciousness, and cheered as they hung him from a tree on the courthouse lawn.358 As his lifeless body swung from the tree branch, they desecrated and mutilated it.359 The mob reentered the jail to repeat the process on their second victim, Abe Smith.360 In his cell, Cameron heard a second crescendo in the crowd outside, and he knew that Abe had been murdered. Smith was hung next to Shipp.361

The mob surged again into the jail, taking Cameron from his cell.362 In his book, A Time of Terror, Cameron describes how he was punched, spit on, bitten, clubbed, and stabbed as his body was dragged through the crowd.363 He recognized the faces of many of his attackers: some had been his friends during his lifetime in that town.364 He noted how people urged each other on, teaching each other the expressions of hatred.365 An adult told a child to bite Cameron’s leg as he passed by.366 The violent crowd dragged him toward the tree where the dead bodies of Tom and Abe hung.367 As the rope was already placed around Cameron’s neck to hang him, he heard a woman’s voice above the din of the crowd, saying “Take this boy back. He had nothing to do with any raping or killing.”368 The booming voice knocked back the crowd, stopping them cold in their tracks.369 They fell back stunned, suddenly motionless; time stood still for a moment.370

Though the crowd stopped momentarily, Cameron was not yet safe. A deputy and two assistants rushed him back into the jail and from there into a car that snuck him out of town.371 For the next fifty hours Cameron had no food or rest, fleeing to safety in another prison.372

From the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century more than three thousand individuals were brutally murdered through lynching.373

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114 Creating the Paradigm

Cameron is the only known survivor of such an attempt.374 Although he was innocent, Cameron served four years in prison before gradually re- building his life.375 Many years later, Mary Ball, the woman who had ac- cused the boys of rape, testified that, in fact, she had not been raped.376 More than sixty years later, in 1993, Indiana governor Evan Bayh granted Cameron an official pardon.377

In other cases, where the violence was planned well in advance, specific exemplars of black excellence were targeted, such as veterans, clergy, and especially civil rights leaders, whose actions were designed to change state and national laws and policies on discrimination and, thus, threatened Jim Crow segregation in all its forms. On Christmas night, 1951, Harry T. Moore, the head of the NAACP in Florida, and his wife were killed in a bombing that destroyed their home in Mims, Florida.378 At the time, Moore was leading an investigation stemming from an incident in which a group of black men were accused of raping a white woman in Groveland, Florida.379 At trial, the three defendants were found guilty.380 However, in April of 1951, in a rare demonstration of judicial intervention, the Supreme Court overturned two of the convictions and death sentences on grounds that “Lake County’s method of jury selection had ‘discriminated against the Negro race.’”381 The exonerated defendants’ claim to innocence, how- ever, was ignored when they were shot by the local sheriff.382 He claimed they were trying to escape—behavior that would be rather illogical for a group whose conviction had just been overturned.383 Witness accounts of the event affirmed that the sheriff shot without cause; evidence illus- trated that it was highly unlikely that the two men were, in fact, trying to escape.384 Moore spearheaded the investigation and, just months later, was killed.385 The sheriff was never prosecuted.386

Conclusion

Woven through this rampant victimization, lynching, and exclusion, Jim Crow laws provided the systematic framework that expanded the sepa- ration of blacks and sustained the racial hierarchy. Black separation was maintained through government policies in education and housing, which perpetuated the physical separation of blacks and whites. The racial hierar- chy was reinforced by preventing black advancements in virtually all walks of life: employment, housing, education, military service, sports, and business. The pervasive practice of separating blacks in these areas of life

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Preventing Black Excellence 115

directly increased the proliferation of notions of black inferiority. By the early 1950s, the racial divide was rigidly maintained throughout the coun- try by government enforcement and private acts. In this way, the second pillar of the paradigm—separation of blacks—became firmly entrenched in American society. The resulting long-term racial isolation made blacks extremely susceptible to economic and political victimization.

As we have seen throughout this chapter, blacks were kept separate in order to eliminate their competition with whites and to control the per- ceived threat of their integration into society. Central to this method of controlling blacks was the ruling in the Plessy case, introducing the harm- ful “separate but equal” doctrine.387 This infamous case, in which the Su- preme Court sanctioned segregation in public accommodations, resulted in decades of blatant segregation of blacks in public settings. In this way, the racial hierarchy was intensified and expanded, and segregation was given a false patina of judicial legitimacy.

Separation intensified throughout this grim period of history. Govern- ments segregated education to separate blacks and to continue subjugating black labor to menial jobs. Segregated educational facilities were grossly unequal, and on the average, black schools received half the funding of white schools. Flagrant discrimination in housing saturated the United States, both in the South and in the North, sustaining the paradigm of black separation and white isolation. Such discrimination was legally sanc- tioned in most states, by laws, such as the Virginia statute on racial compo- sition, or by policy, such as the “Baltimore idea.”388 By 1910, Jim Crow laws maintained black housing separation, even as blacks migrated out of south- ern rural areas. The paradigm persisted despite efforts to reduce it: courts invalidated housing segregation laws in 1917, but private racial covenants maintained black separation; as courts invalidated racial covenants, white flight maintained black separation. As a result, white isolation in housing persisted even as Jim Crow laws were invalidated. Black separation and vic- timization became more insidious, strengthening the paradigm. Gradual improvements in court rulings had no impact because the paradigm was so entrenched in the minds of individuals and the practices of society.

Throughout this period, government programs and societal practices openly excluded blacks from economic and educational opportunities. Whites refused to accept black inventions, unless they were attributed to whites, as we saw in the case of Garrett Morgan.389 Whites took credit for the work done by blacks, as we saw in the case of Alfred Blalock taking credit for the discoveries made by Vivien Thomas.390 Blacks were excluded

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116 Creating the Paradigm

from educational opportunities, by law and by violence, as we saw in the case of Lloyd Gaines.391 During a period when positive growth could have been possible, victimization intensified. As victimization became ubiqui- tous, the paradigm took its most evil incarnation: lynching was the ulti- mate form of exclusion and violent victimization.

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