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Video about Having Courageous Conversations in “Brave” Spaces In this 2020 Seattle
Video about Having Courageous Conversations in “Brave” Spaces
In this 2020 Seattle TEDx talk, “What white People can do to Move Race Conversations Forward,” Dr. Caprice Hollins explains why we often fail to have productive conversations about race, race relations, and racism in this country. Her talk sheds light on why People of Color and White people take different approaches to these conversations and what White people can do to move race conversations forward.
Click this link: What White People can do to Move Race Conversations Forward
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Or, copy and paste this URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iknxhxEn1o&t=2s
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Dr. Caprice Hollins is a professor of graduate students at Mars Hill Graduate School, a co-owner of Cross Cultural Connections, and the author of Inside Out: The Equity Leader’s Guide to Undoing Institutional Racism. She has post graduate degrees in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Multicultural and Community Psychology
Defining Social Justice/Studies
First, watch this short video, because it helps us to explain our aim in this class; note that the ideas apply to students in K through 12 and to students in college: “Social Justice Belongs in Our Schools
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.”
Note that Social Justice Studies and Ethnic Studies are not the same, but they do converge in many ways.
Second, review the ideas listed below:
Social Justice Studies focuses on:
exposing the social political context that people experience.
raising consciousness about inequity in everyday social, environmental, economic, and political situations. Anti-racist endeavors are driven by this centering.
creating a lens to recognize and interrupt inequitable patterns and practices in society.
fostering critical consciousness.
Social justice is a political and philosophical theory and practice that focuses on equality and equity among individuals and institutions in society. That is, social justice refers to having equal access to opportunities, resources, wealth, participation, privileges, and human rights–plus, working toward understanding diversity and maintaining equity for everyone.
The United Nations uses this definition: “Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.”
These are some of the most common issues that social justice work addresses often:
conflicts and struggles about cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity
human dignity
equality and equity
classism
sexism and heterosexism
institutional and systemic racism
poverty
war, state violence
colonialism and imperialism
racial environmentalism
globalization
impacting social and political change
White Supremacy is one of the most important topics examined in Social Justice Studies and Ethnic Studies.
Studying White Supremacy entails examining the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races.
When you study social justice you learn about the problems that impact quality of life for certain populations; you also study how people have worked to solve those problems.
When you study social justice you examine your own background, beliefs, biases, actions, and aspirations: you learn about yourself, others, and the world. You accomplish the following:
understand why it is important to be an informed and engaged member of your community,
identify the social injustices affecting you and your community,
identify how to be an effective agent for justice,
identify a plan for how to fight injustice.
Here are Some Principles of Social Justice
Recognizing intersectionality (that race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and other factors that mark individual identities intersect with one another)
Sustainability and stewardship of our earth and environment
Full and equal participation in decision making
A society mutually shaped to meet the needs of members of that society
Equitable distribution of resources
Physical and psychological safety for all members of society
Self determination for all members of society
Opportunity to develop one’s potential available to all members of society
Organization of society provides a sense of agency for its members
Organization of society provides a sense of social responsibility toward others and toward the world
Organization of society does not marginalized groups of people
Watch this short video titled “What is social justice?
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11 Ordinary Things AMERICAN Women Weren’t Allowed to Do in the 1950s and 1960s
An article by Jess Catcher
Published in Lifestyle on 10 Oct 2016
In school, we all learned about how hard women worked to earn their right to vote during the suffrage movement, before the constitutional amendment was finally passed in 1920. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an entire gender being faced with oppression over the years.
We’re obviously still battling against several issues today, but seeing the things my mother and grandmother were forced to endure has really opened my eyes. I mean, I always knew things were different back in the day, but I can’t believe how long it took for a wife to not be legally classified as “subordinate” to her husband — much less, how difficult it was for a single gal to get her own bank account and credit card.
Take a look to see just how many surprising things women weren’t allowed to do back in the day.
Some of these setbacks were cleared up in the 1970s and ’80s, but I was shocked by how recently a few of these restrictions were still in place.
1. Open A Bank Account
At least, not without their husband or a male relative’s permission until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.
Serve Jury Duty
Slowly, states separately allowed women to sit in the jury box over the years until Mississippi finally became the last state to legalize it in 1968.
3. Practice Law
Even if they had gone through all the years of school and passed every test, women could still be denied the right to plead a client’s case until 1971.
4. Take Birth Control Pills
The contraceptive was approved in 1960, but it was still banned in several states for the next few years.
Defining Ethnic/Studies
Here I give you highlights of what scholars and activists mean by “ethnic studies.” Consider these highlights critically as a place to begin your semester-long study of ethnicity and justice.
Note that Ethnic Studies and Social Justice Studies are not the same, but they do converge in many ways.
The word “ethnic” means belonging to a population group, or a subgroup, made up of people who share a common cultural background, a heritage. That cultural background includes race, religion, language, nationality, and tribe.
The archaic definition of “ethnic” meant that a person was neither Christian or Jewish. It meant that a person was pagan.
The words “ethnic” and “race” are NOT the same: race refers to the concept of dividing people into categories based on their physical characteristics (such as skin color, type of nose, type of hair).
The United States Census Bureau defines “race” as a person’s self-identification with one or more social groups. Currently, those groups include:
White,
Black or African American,
Asian,
American Indian and Alaska Native,
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or
some other race.
“Ethnic Studies” is the interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity as understood through the perspectives of major underrepresented groups. That study draws from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, literature, psychology, law/criminal justice, and political science. The aim in drawing from various disciplines is to understand the sociocultural and intellectual experiences of underrepresented people.
In the United States, those underrepresented groups are:
Black/African American
Asian American
Chicano/Latino/Latinx,
Native American and other indigenous people.
Ethnic Studies
focuses on counter storytelling to include marginalized voices, diverse American experiences radicalized by settler colonialism, and oppressed by capitalism and imperialism.
centers people’s critical consciousness, becoming politicized, decolonizing structures, and finding liberation for marginalized peoples; anti-racism and anti-colonization efforts are driven by this centering.
concerns itself with creating a culturally relevant educational experience that can empower people to solve problems and strengthen their communities.
According to Minnesota Ethnic Studies leader Brian Lozenski,
“Ethnic Studies… helps us understand how our social worlds are constructed.
Ethnic Studies helps young people make connections between anti-Black racism and environmental crises, between ableism and mass incarceration, between labor exploitation and heteropatriarchy. It represents an educational paradigm that demands young people not only think, but act.
Ethnic Studies centers the heritage knowledge and lived experiences of those who have borne the brunt of colonial devastation, including global Indigenous communities, women and genderqueer people, neurodivergent and the dis-abled, and those living in poverty.
Ethnic Studies de-centers those of European descent and, for instance, inquires about the relationships between Black and Indigenous peoples, and dives into the formation and complexities of Afrolatinidad and Mestizaje.
Ethnic Studies explores the colonial roots of the dispossession of Palestinian land and the creation of Zionism.
Ethnic Studies deconstructs the radicalization of Asian peoples and asks questions about colonization and conflict among Asian nation-states and the displacement of indigenous Asian populations such as the Hmong.
Ethnic Studies demands language reclamation.
Ethnic Studies demands an account of racial capitalism and its environmental impacts on the Global South.
Ethnic Studies helps us connect so many struggles together in nuanced and complex ways. (“Fight for Ethnic Studies Moves to K-12 Classrooms” by Tintiangco-Cubales et al. in Convergence: Arts and Culture, 19 September 2022.)
“Ethnic Studies” became a discipline in its own right during the 1960s right here in California.
The study of ethnicity is the result of the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice movements in the United States and then the world.
White Supremacy is one of the most important topics examined in Ethnic Studies and Social Justice Studies.
Studying White Supremacy entails examining the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races.
Other important topics examined in Ethnic Studies and Social Justices studies include inequities still perpetrating radicalized peoples by these institutions:
the school to prison pipeline,
mass incarceration,
redlining,
and voter suppression.
Engaging Ethnic Studies is important because it allows you to:
understand underrepresented peoples from a non-Eurocentric perspective,
understand the impacts that race and ethnicity have made in American society (and in other societies),
understand how discriminatory practices that target and harm underrepresented people still exist today,
recognize that racial disparities still exist today,
understand power, equity, equality, cultures, racism, justice, and people who are different than you,
forge partnerships,
develop strong critical thinking skills,
grow in awareness, empathy, and the ability to value others and yourself.
Ethnic Studies Pedagogy
“Pedagogy” means the way that a professor teaches, the theory, method and practice of teaching. Ethnic Studies pedagogy centers on the following:
acknowledging that there are diverse ways of knowing,
historically marginalized communities,
identifying the cultural wealth of marginalized communities (as opposed to focusing on “deficits”)
learning from resistance movements to empower everyone with the skills to disrupt current patterns of oppression and/or to build allyship
Watch this 2014 personal and revealing TEDx talk by Ron Espiritu, a high school teacher in Los Angeles, who speaks eloquently about Ethnic Studies
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.
5. Go On Maternity Leave
If they were able to have a job, they most often lost it when they became pregnant until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.
6. Breastfeed In Public
Public areas were still able to prohibit mothers from breastfeeding until a bill was finally passed by Congress, making this discrimination illegal.
7. Attend An Ivy League University
Harvard would not allow women applicants until 1977, but Yale and Princeton were only slightly ahead by admitting their first female students in 1969.
8. Attend A Military Academy
The first female students at West Point Academy were not accepted until 1976.
9. Run The Boston Marathon
The legendary marathon was an all-male event until 1972.
10. Serve In Combat
Despite all of the hard work women have put into the military for decades, they weren’t allowed on the front lines until very recently in 2013.
11. Become An Astronaut
NASA denied women until Sally Ride broke the mold in 1978.
Defining Equality, Equity
Watch this short video to help you understand the terms Equality, Equity, Social Justice
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Definitions of these terms in relation to living in a society:
Equality: is about getting the same things, being equal, having equal access to rights, opportunities, and resources.
Equity: is about providing what individuals need in order to access rights, opportunities, and resources, which means that equality may look different for each person; equity is about fairness and justice by.
Defining Intersectionality-2
Read these short articles and think through how “intersectionality” has evolved in the last 32 years since Kimberlé Crenshaw described what the term means.
Coaston, Jane. “The intersectionality wars
Download The intersectionality wars
,” Vox 28 May 2019.
Creshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review vol 43, no 6 (July 1991), pp. 1241-1299 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039?seq=1
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Steinmetz, Katy. “She Coined the Term ‘Intersectionality’ Over 30 Years Ago. Here’s What It Means to Her Today
Download She Coined the Term ‘Intersectionality’ Over 30 Years Ago. Here’s What It Means to Her Today
.” Time 20 February 2020.
The Urgency of Intersectionality–video
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. The Urgency of Intersectionality
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. TEDWomen, October 2016.
What can I do?
Intersectionality may seem theoretical, but it is meant to be utilized. No matter how or when you have become involved with equity work, it is always possible to more fully integrate intersectionality into your view of these issues.
Is your work toward social equity intersectional? Check out these tips and reflect:
Recognize difference.
Oftentimes, it is easier to believe and to explain to others that “all women feel” a certain way or that “LGBTQ+ people believe” some common understanding, but this does not reflect reality. We must recognize that all unique experiences of identity, and particularly ones that involve multiple overlapping oppressions, are valid.
Do not shy away from recognizing that people experience the world differently based on their overlapping identity markers. Because of the way we have been socialized to continue feeding systems of oppression, we often feel it is rude to formally recognize others’ difference. We see this in how people are uncomfortable naming another person’s perceived race or asking for someone’s preferred pronouns. However, we must recognize these identities as a way to step beyond our assumptions that our experience is common. One way of doing so is when you attend rallies, take a look at the signs that others hold — how do they assert their identity and how does this inform the issues they care most about?
Avoid oversimplified language.
Once we recognize this difference, we can move away from language that seeks to define people by a singular identity. You may have heard after the Women’s March that many trans folks and allies felt uncomfortable with the vagina-centric themes of the march. Assuming that all women have vaginas or are defined by their bodies is an oversimplification that erases the experiences of those who exist beyond the gender binary. By avoiding language that assumes our own experiences are baseline, we can open ourselves up to listening to others’ points of view.
Analyze the space you occupy.
Becoming comfortable recognizing difference also involves recognizing when that difference is not represented in the spaces you occupy. Diversity of all kinds matter in your workplace, your activism, your community spaces, and more. If you are meeting with a local LGBTQ+ organization, is there representation of LGBTQ+ people of color? You may feel that your workplace is racially and ethnically diverse, but is it accessible to people with disabilities? Take note of the welcoming or distancing practices of the spaces you frequent.
Seek other points of view.
Explore the narratives of those with different interlocking identities than you. This includes surrounding yourself with others with differing interwoven identities, but keep in mind that oftentimes, even when you have a diverse group of people in an activist space, it falls on people to educate others about the oppressions they face. When these people share their experiences, take the opportunity to listen. However, do not expect people with identity markers other than your own to be there or to want to educate others. In your own time, seek out existing intersectional narratives, from your podcasts to your television. If you are unsure about a concept or want to learn more about a specific intersection of identity, Google it! This will help you be better prepared to enter into conversations with others and progress together.
Show up.
Do not expect people who face different systems of oppression than you to rally for causes you care about if you do not rally for theirs. As you hear about issues others face, learn about the work that is currently being done around these topics. Listen and defer to those who live with these intersectional identities each day. As you do, you will likely deepen your understanding of your own identity and the subjects you care about most.
Defining Critical Race Theory
Right now, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a political weapon, the focus of lots of debate–and, truly, very misunderstood. By August of 2021, eight state legislatures banned the discussion of CRT in their schools: Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona, and South Carolina. Twenty other states have legislation pending. There are actual laws now that forbid teachers from even mentioning race and racism (and in some cases gender and sexism). That means that in some states, this very class is illegal, and that I, your professor, would be breaking the law.
Here, I present you with a definition, a brief history, some of the opposing ideas, and some rebuttals. Then I ask you to make connections between CRT and Social Justice. It is up to you to determine why CRT is under attack, and why it is a political weapon; that is your intellectual work.
Start by reviewing, discussing, and reflecting on this 2-minute video done by Education Week: “What is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?
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“
And then listen to Kimberlé Crenshaw speak in At Liberty podcast, episode 168: “On Teaching the Truth about Race in America
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” (5 August 2021). (You can add the podcast on your phone or click on the link.)
Definition of CRT
CRT is a theoretical framework, an approach–an academic and legal concept–designed for students in law schools and advanced graduate programs to examine the reality that the history of white supremacy in the USA has made a lasting impact on our society and institutions.
CRT states that racism is embedded in American institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, healthcare system, housing market), and that consequently rules, regulations, and procedures lead to different outcomes by race. That is, CRT posits that institutions in the USA are inherently, systemically, and structurally racist and riddled with unconscious bias, privilege, discrimination, and oppression rooted in racism.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a noted law professor and a founding scholar of CRT, explains that “Critical race theory just says let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes, so we can become that country that we say we are. So, critical race theory is not anti-patriotic. In fact, it its more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because we believe in the 13th” anddd the 14th and the 15th Amendment, we believe in the promises of equality. And we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality” (transcript of CNN interview
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, 22 May 2021; here is the video version
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).
In other words, CRT asks all of us to look honestly and comprehensively at the realities of who we have been, who we are, and who we want to be as Americans.
CRT is NOT a program, a training, or a curriculum. It is a way of understanding our America–and really, a way of understanding equity in the world.
History of CRT
Conversations and scholarship about CRT began in the late 1970s with the work of legal scholars such as Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Cheryl Harris, and Kimberlé Crenshaw.
The scholars named above were influenced by and continued to work with the ideas stemming from the Civil Rights, Chicano, Feminist, and Black Power movements–as well as scholars of Critical Theory such as W.E.B. DuBois and Antonio Gramsci, and scholars of Critical Pedagogy such as Henry Giroux and Ira Shor.
By the 1980s CRT scholars began to consider how and why legal institutions–and the very structure of those institutions–are infused with racist policies and procedures.
CRT began formally in 1989 with a workshop called “New Developments in Critical Race Theory” that was organized by Kimberlé Crenshaw. Participants tried to connect the theoretical underpinnings of critical legal studies (CLS) to the day-to-day realities of American racial politics.
In the mid-1990s, scholars began to expand CRT by exploring issues such as segregation, relations between races, gender, and academic achievement, pedagogy, and research methodologies.
Since the early 2000s, CRT has been used additionally in college courses in the disciplines of education, political science, women studies, queer studies, Latinx studies, ethnic studies, communication, sociology, American studies, and very recently in disability studies.
Why there is Opposition to CRT (and some rebuttals)
Opponents believe that all white people are being attacked and identified as oppressors, and that Black and Brown people are being classified as victims.
Many people believe that CRT blames all White people living today for slavery and other injustices perpetrated on people of color.
Some White people claim that CRT indoctrinates and advocates discriminating against White people, and that therefore it demoralizes and damages White people’s self-perceptions.
CRT is not a commentary on individual Americans, and opponents don’t understand that racism in American institutions can exist without individual racists.
Some Jewish people claim that CRT is anti-semitic, because CRT is aligned with people who are progressive (“liberal”) and since Jews tend to be principally white, they too are being accused of oppressing others.
Many people believe that racism in the USA is a thing of the past (“we even had a Black president,” they say) and that we now have an equitable society.
Those people refuse to see that the USA is not equitable and just to everyone of its people.
Some people claim that CRT is teaching people to hate the USA and each other’s race.
CRT explains that race is socially constructed–is socially invented–because there is no biological or scientific justification for creating racial categories.
Connection between CRT and Social Justice?
Precepts of CRT aim to eliminate forms of subordination of all people and to create more inclusive and equitable societies. That is, CRT is committed to achieving social justice.
Single family zoning in housing perpetuates segregation because zoning makes it more difficult to build affordable houses that is more accessible to a larger percentage of the population, especially people of color who tend to be poorer than everyone else. Owning a house, after all, is the single most important way to create generational wealth. As you know, people of color in the USA lag dramatically behind White people when it comes to accumulated wealth.
Housing insecurity: as of January 2020 there are 581,000 Americans who are homeless, and the large majority are males, blacks, veterans, and the disabled (State of Homelessness: 2021 Edition
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).
Black-White generational wealth gap: in 2019 the median wealth of Black households in the USA was $24,100 as compared to $189,100 for white households (“Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap is a Generational Challenge
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“).
Gender Wage Gap: in the USA women get paid 84% of what men earn (Pew Research Center
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).
Read Further
Delgado, Richard. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (third edition), NYU Press, 2017.
Kruse, Kevin M. “Texas’ ban on critical race theory in schools process the GOP still doesn’t understand MLK’s message
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.” MSNBC Opinion, 17 June 2021.
Ray, Rashawn and Alexandra Gibbons. “Why are states banning critical race theory?
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” Brookings, August 2021
Jim Crow: Ordinary Things Black Americans Weren’t Allowed To Do
The following information is from the Jim Crow Museum
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at Ferris State University.
Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-black racism.
Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that whites were the Chosen people, blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial segregation. Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists, and Social Darwinists, at every educational level, buttressed the belief that blacks were innately intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. Pro-segregation politicians gave eloquent speeches on the great danger of integration: the mongrelization of the white race.
Newspaper and magazine writers routinely referred to blacks as niggers, coons, and darkies; and worse, their articles reinforced anti-black stereotypes. Even children’s games portrayed blacks as inferior beings (see “From Hostility to Reverence: 100 Years of African-American Imagery in Games”
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). All major societal institutions reflected and supported the oppression of blacks.
The Jim Crow system was undergirded by the following beliefs or rationalizations: whites were superior to blacks in all important ways, including but not limited to intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior; sexual relations between blacks and whites would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America; treating blacks as equals would encourage interracial sexual unions; any activity which suggested social equality encouraged interracial sexual relations; if necessary, violence must be used to keep blacks at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.
The following Jim Crow etiquette norms show how inclusive and pervasive these norms were:
A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a white woman, because he risked being accused of rape.
Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them.
Under no circumstance was a black male to offer to light the cigarette of a white female — that gesture implied intimacy.
Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended whites.
Jim Crow etiquette prescribed that blacks were introduced to whites, never whites to blacks. For example: “Mr. Peters (the white person), this is Charlie (the black person), that I spoke to you about.”
Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma’am. Instead, blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.
If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person sat in the back seat, or the back of a truck.
White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.
Stetson Kennedy, the author of Jim Crow Guide (1990), offered these simple rules that blacks were supposed to observe in conversing with whites:
Never assert or even intimate that a white person is lying.
Never impute dishonorable intentions to a white person.
Never suggest that a white person is from an inferior class.
Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence.
Never curse a white person.
Never laugh derisively at a white person.
Never comment upon the appearance of a white female.
Jim Crow etiquette operated in conjunction with Jim Crow laws (black codes). When most people think of Jim Crow they think of laws (not the Jim Crow etiquette) which excluded blacks from public transport and facilities, juries, jobs, and neighborhoods.
The passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution had granted blacks the same legal protections as whites. However, after 1877, and the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, southern and border states began restricting the liberties of blacks. Unfortunately for blacks, the Supreme Court helped undermine the Constitutional protections of blacks with the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case, which legitimized Jim Crow laws and the Jim Crow way of life.
In 1890, Louisiana passed the “Separate Car Law,” which purported to aid passenger comfort by creating “equal but separate” cars for blacks and whites. This was a ruse. No public accommodations, including railway travel, provided blacks with equal facilities. The Louisiana law made it illegal for blacks to sit in coach seats reserved for whites, and whites could not sit in seats reserved for blacks.
In 1891, a group of blacks decided to test the Jim Crow law. They had Homer A. Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black (therefore, black), sit in the white-only railroad coach. He was arrested. Plessy’s lawyer argued that Louisiana did not have the right to label one citizen as white and another black for the purposes of restricting their rights and privileges.
In Plessy, the Supreme Court stated that so long as state governments provided legal process and legal freedoms for blacks, equal to those of whites, they could maintain separate institutions to facilitate these rights.
The Court, by a 7-2 vote, upheld the Louisiana law, declaring that racial separation did not necessarily mean an abrogation of equality. In practice, Plessy represented the legitimization of two societies: one white, and advantaged; the other, black, disadvantaged and despised.
Blacks were denied the right to vote by grandfather clauses (laws that restricted the right to vote to people whose ancestors had voted before the Civil War), poll taxes (fees charged to poor blacks), white primaries (only Democrats could vote, only whites could be Democrats), and literacy tests (“Name all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout America’s history”).
Plessy sent this message to southern and border states: Discrimination against blacks is acceptable.
Jim Crow states passed statutes severely regulating social interactions between the races. Jim Crow signs were placed above water fountains, door entrances and exits, and in front of public facilities. There were separate hospitals for blacks and whites, separate prisons, separate public and private schools, separate churches, separate cemeteries, separate public restrooms, and separate public accommodations.
In most instances, the black facilities were grossly inferior — generally, older, less-well-kept. In other cases, there were no black facilities — no Colored public restroom, no public beach, no place to sit or eat.
Plessy gave Jim Crow states a legal way to ignore their constitutional obligations to their black citizens.
Jim Crow laws touched every aspect of everyday life. For example, in 1935, Oklahoma prohibited blacks and whites from boating together. Boating implied social equality. In 1905, Georgia established separate parks for blacks and whites. In 1930, Birmingham, Alabama, made it illegal for blacks and whites to play checkers or dominoes together.
Here are some of the typical Jim Crow laws, as compiled by the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site Interpretive Staff:
Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or women (Georgia).
Blind Wards. The board of trustees shall…maintain a separate building…on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race (Louisiana).
Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons (Georgia).
Buses. All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races (Alabama).
Child Custody. It shall be unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in this State, having the control or custody of any white child, by right of guardianship, natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or surrender such white child permanently into the custody, control, maintenance, or support, of a negro (South Carolina).
Education.The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately (Florida).
Libraries. The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals (North Carolina).
Mental Hospitals. The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be together (Georgia).
Militia. The white and colored militia shall be separately enrolled, and shall never be compelled to serve in the same organization. No organization of colored troops shall be permitted where white troops are available and where whites are permitted to be organized, colored troops shall be under the command of white officers (North Carolina).
Nurses. No person or corporation shall require any White female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed (Alabama).
Prisons. The warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the negro convicts (Mississippi).
Reform Schools. The children of white and colored races committed to the houses of reform shall be kept entirely separate from each other (Kentucky).
Teaching. Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined… (Oklahoma).
Wine and Beer. All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine…shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room at any time (Georgia).1
The Jim Crow laws and system of etiquette were undergirded by violence, real and threatened. Blacks who violated Jim Crow norms, for example, drinking from the white water fountain or trying to vote, risked their homes, their jobs, even their lives. Whites could physically beat blacks with impunity.
Blacks had little legal recourse against these assaults because the Jim Crow criminal justice system was all-white: police, prosecutors, judges, juries, and prison officials. Violence was instrumental for Jim Crow. It was a method of social control. The most extreme forms of Jim Crow violence were lynchings.
Lynchings were public, often sadistic, murders carried out by mobs. Between 1882, when the first reliable data were collected, and 1968, when lynchings had become rare, there were 4,730 known lynchings, including 3,440 black men and women. Most of the victims of Lynch Law were hanged or shot, but some were burned at the stake, castrated, beaten with clubs, or dismembered.
Watch this video of famous Blues Jazz African American singer and activist, Billie Holiday, singing a daring protest song, “Strange Fruit” (which is about lynching African Americans):
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Strange Fruit
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by American Billie Holiday
Photo by Herman Leonard
Billie Holiday: “One day, we were so hungry we could barely breathe,” she told Downbeat magazine in 1939. “I started out the door. It was cold as all hell and I walked from 145th to 133rd down Seventh Avenue, going in every joint trying to find work. Finally, I got so desperate I stopped in the Log Cabin Club, run by Jerry Preston. I told him I wanted a drink. I didn’t have a dime. But I ordered gin (it was my first drink — I didn’t know gin from wine) and gulped it down. I asked Preston for a job … told him I was a dancer. He said to dance. I tried it. He said I stunk. I told him I could sing. He said sing. Over in the corner was an old guy playing a piano. He struck “Travelin’” and I sang.
The customers stopped drinking. They turned around and watched. The pianist, Dick Wilson, swung into “Body and Soul.” Jeez, you should have seen those people — all of them started crying. Preston came over, shook his head and said, ‘Kid, you win.’ That’s how I got my start.” It was in a Harlem nightclub that a 22-year-old jazz enthusiast and future record producer named John Hammond first heard Holiday sing. Hammond was so taken with the young singer, he returned several times to see her. “I heard a singer who was an improvising horn player,” he later said. “That’s how she sounded.”
Holiday concurred: “When I was a little girl, there was a lady on the corner that had a record machine and I could hear Bessie Smith and Louie Armstrong and I always wanted to sing like Louie Armstrong played, I always wanted to sing like an instrument.” By then Elenora Fagen had become “Billie Holiday,” in part to honor her favorite actress, Billie Dove. Frank Sinatra told Ebony magazine, “Billie Holiday is the greatest single musical influence on me. Lady Day is unquestionably the most important influence on American popular singing in the last 20 years.”
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In the mid-1800s, whites constituted the majority of victims (and perpetrators); however, by the period of Radical Reconstruction, blacks became the most frequent lynching victims. This is an early indication that lynching was used as an intimidation tool to keep blacks, in this case the newly freed people, “in their places.” The great majority of lynchings occurred in southern and border states, where the resentment against blacks ran deepest. According to the social economist Gunnar Myrdal (1944): “The southern states account for nine-tenths of the lynchings. More than two thirds of the remaining one-tenth occurred in the six states which immediately border the South” (pp. 560-561).
Many whites claimed that although lynchings were distasteful, they were necessary supplements to the criminal justice system because blacks were prone to violent crimes, especially the rapes of white women. Arthur Raper investigated nearly a century of lynchings and concluded that approximately one-third of all the victims were falsely accused (Myrdal, 1944, p. 561).
Under Jim Crow any and all sexual interactions between black men and white women was illegal, illicit, socially repugnant, and within the Jim Crow definition of rape. Although only 19.2 percent of the lynching victims between 1882 to 1951 were even accused of rape, lynch law was often supported on the popular belief that lynchings were necessary to protect white women from black rapists.
Myrdal (1944) refutes this belief in this way: “There is much reason to believe that this figure (19.2) has been inflated by the fact that a mob which makes the accusation of rape is secure from any further investigation; by the broad Southern definition of rape to include all sexual relations between Negro men and white women; and by the psychopathic fears of white women in their contacts with Negro men” (pp. 561-562).
Most blacks were lynched for demanding civil rights, violating Jim Crow etiquette or laws, or in the aftermath of race riots.
Lynchings were most common in small and middle-sized towns where blacks often were economic competitors to the local whites. These whites resented any economic and political gains made by blacks. Lynchers were seldomly arrested, and if arrested, rarely convicted. Raper (1933) estimated that “at least one-half of the lynchings are carried out with police officers participating, and that in nine-tenths of the others the officers either condone or wink at the mob action” (pp. 13-14).
Lynching served many purposes: it was cheap entertainment; it served as a rallying, uniting point for whites; it functioned as an ego-massage for low-income, low-status whites; it was a method of defending white domination and helped stop or retard the fledgling social equality movement.
Lynch mobs directed their hatred against one (sometimes several) victims. The victim was an example of what happened to a black man who tried to vote, or who looked at a white woman, or who tried to get a white man’s job. Unfortunately for blacks, sometimes the mob was not satisfied to murder a single or several victims. Instead, in the spirit of pogroms, the mobs went into black communities and destroyed additional lives and property. Their immediate goal was to drive out — through death or expulsion — all blacks; the larger goal was to maintain, at all costs, white supremacy.
These pogrom
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-like actions are often referred to as riots; however, Gunnar Myrdal (1944) was right when he described these “riots” as “a terrorization or massacre…a mass lynching” (p. 566). Interestingly, these mass lynchings were primarily urban phenomena, whereas the lynching of single victims was primarily a rural phenomena.
James Weldon Johnson, the famous black writer, labeled 1919 as “The Red Summer.” It was red from racial tension; it was red from bloodletting. During the summer of 1919, there were race riots in Chicago, Illinois; Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; Omaha, Nebraska; and two dozen other cities. W.E.B. DuBois (1986), the black social scientist and civil rights activist, wrote: “During that year seventy-seven Negroes were lynched, of whom one was a woman and eleven were soldiers; of these, fourteen were publicly burned, eleven of them being burned alive.
That year there were race riots large and small in twenty-six American cities including thirty-eight killed in a Chicago riot of August; from twenty-five to fifty in Phillips County, Arkansas; and six killed in Washington” (p. 747).
The riots of 1919 were not the first or last “mass lynchings” of blacks, as evidenced by the race riots in Wilmington, North Carolina (1898); Atlanta, Georgia (1906); Springfield, Illinois (1908); East St. Louis, Illinois (1917); Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921); and Detroit, Michigan (1943). Joseph Boskin, author of Urban Racial Violence (1976), claimed that the riots of the 1900s had the following traits:
In each of the race riots, with few exceptions, it was white people that sparked the incident by attacking black people.
In the majority of the riots, some extraordinary social condition prevailed at the time of the riot: prewar social changes, wartime mobility, post-war adjustment, or economic depression.
The majority of the riots occurred during the hot summer months.
Rumor played an extremely important role in causing many riots. Rumors of some criminal activity by blacks against whites perpetuated the actions of the white mobs.
The police force, more than any other institution, was invariably involved as a precipitating cause or perpetuating factor in the riots. In almost every one of the riots, the police sided with the attackers, either by actually participating in, or by failing to quell the attack.
In almost every instance, the fighting occurred within the black community. (pp. 14-15)
Boskin omitted the following: the mass media, especially newspapers often published inflammatory articles about “black criminals” immediately before the riots; blacks were not only killed, but their homes and businesses were looted, and many who did not flee were left homeless; and, the goal of the white rioters, as was true of white lynchers of single victims, was to instill fear and terror into blacks, thereby buttressing white domination.
The Jim Crow hierarchy could not work without violence being used against those on the bottom rung. George Fredrickson (1971), a historian, stated it this way: “Lynching represented…a way of using fear and terror to check ‘dangerous’ tendencies in a black community considered to be ineffectively regimented or supervised. As such it constituted a confession that the regular institutions of a segregated society provided an inadequate measure of day-to-day control” (p. 272).
Many blacks resisted the indignities of Jim Crow, and, far too often, they paid for their bravery with their lives.
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Listen to another daring protest song sung by African American Jazz singer, Ella Fitzgerald: It’s Up to Me and You. This song is her response to the murder of Martin Luther King.
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NOTE
1 This list was derived from a larger list composed by the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site Interpretive Staff. Last Updated January 5, 1998. The web address is: http//www.nps.gov/malu/documents/jim crowlaws.htm.
References
Boskin, J. (1976). Urban racial violence in the twentieth century (2nd ed.). Beverly Hills, CA: Glencoe Press.
Dubois, W. E. B. (1986). Writings. N. Huggins, (Ed.). New York NY: Literary Classics of the United States.
Kennedy, S. (1959/1990). Jim Crow guide: The way it was. Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic University Press.
Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma: the Negro problem and modern democracy. New York, NY: Harper.
Raper, A. F. (1933). The tragedy of lynching. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
How America Turned Skin Color into Power
“The History Of White People In America, Episode Three: How America Turned Skin Color Into Power”
By Stacy Buchanan
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July 8, 2020
Watch the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZyKV02y9so
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WORLD Channel
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, in partnership with PBS’ Independent Lens
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, presents a new animated musical series about America’s reckoning with race and injustice. The History Of White People In America takes the audience on a journey through American history, starting in the 17th century, and in particular looks at how the crafting of the idea of the white race — of whiteness — helped shape the nation’s history, designating other groups for subjugation and having wide-ranging ramifications on social class and life experience that exists to this day.
In Episode 3, “How America Made Skin Color Power,” an animated President Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and one of their five children share illuminating insights on how skin became color, color became race, and race became power. In just a few short minutes, it captures the truth of what it means to be “American,” and why our racial history deserves further contemplation.
I spoke with director/musician Pierce Freelon to learn more about creating the series and how he and his mother, Nnenna Freelon — the legendary jazz singer and six-time Grammy Award nominee — worked together to play Sally Hemings and her son, Eston; an experience that, for several reasons, became sacred and daunting for them.
How did you decide on these specific moments in history for the series?
Pierce Freelon: The story of Sally Hemings is important because the voices of Black women are often silenced in HIStory. Jefferson was a wealthy white man — so we have access to his thoughts, papers, ideas, and values — but we don’t often hear the voices of the enslaved folks. Telling the story of Sally Hemings and her son with Jefferson, Eston Hemings, was an intentional attempt to center the voices of important Americans who have been marginalized and silenced by historians and biographers. There are many other stories left to cover in the series: eugenics, confederate monuments, immortal cells, assimilation, and reparations are all on my mind when I think about the History of White People in America.
How do you balance the noble “Founding Father” narrative around Thomas Jefferson with the facts of his life, as shown in this episode?
Pierce: I didn’t feel a need to perpetuate the narrative that Thomas Jefferson was a noble man. He was an aged white man who had children with a Black teenage girl, whom he had enslaved since birth. There were obvious contradictions between his rhetoric about Black people and his actions towards them. He was a complicated man. He was an eloquent writer. He was a powerful “Founding Father.” But I would not call him noble. I reserve Harriet Tubman was noble.
The music in these episodes is incredible. What made you decide to use that as a focus?
Pierce: Thank you! Music is powerful. When journalist Ida B. Wells exposed the ruthless practice of mass lynchings of Black folks in the south, it sent shockwaves through the American psyche. Her storytelling was amplified by musicians such as Billie Holiday, whose song “Strange Fruit” (adapted by a poem by Abel Meeropol) helped expose ritual violence against Black bodies and fueled an anti-lynching movement in this country. Music opens portals of feeling and creativity, which are important for us to begin to process complicated structures such as white supremacy. With this series, I hope to stand in the legacy of storytellers such as Billie Holiday, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Gil Scott Heron, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, and Tupac Shakur and use music as a tool to transform the way we look at systems of oppression.
Is there anything else you want the audience to think about as they watch the series?
Pierce: Working on The History of White People in America with my mother, Nnenna Freelon, was very powerful. As mother and son, we did our best to honor Sally Hemings and her son Eston in this episode. Embodying their voices was a sacred and daunting experience. We both had weird dreams and powerful conversations throughout this collaboration. While we were working on this episode, my father, Phil Freelon, was suffering from a disease called ALS. He died on July 9th, 2019. Phil was the lead architect of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and has designed more Black museums than any other architect in this country. He was so excited that mom and I were involved in this project — using our music raise to teach people about American history and raise up the voices and stories of our ancestors. I think it’s special that the series is finally airing publically on the one-year anniversary of his death, and just wanted to take this opportunity to thank him for the wonderful legacy he left our family and all Americans. Love you, Dad!
How America Invented Race
“The History Of White People In America, Episode One: How America Invented Race”
By Meghan Smith
Links to an external site.
July 6, 2020
Watch the short video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppvbBY3ce8Y
Links to an external site.
WORLD Channel
Links to an external site.
, in partnership with PBS’ Independent Lens
Links to an external site.
, presents a new animated musical series about America’s reckoning with race and injustice. The History Of White People In America takes the audience on a journey through American history, starting in the 17th century, and in particular looks at how the crafting of the idea of the white race — of whiteness — helped shape the nation’s history, designating other groups for subjugation and having wide-ranging ramifications on social class and life experience that exist to this day.
Episode One, “How America Invented Race,” explores how the white “race” was invented by rich Virginians in 1676 in the aftermath of a populous rebellion of impoverished, indentured, and enslaved Africans and Europeans now known as Bacon’s Rebellion.
I spoke with producer/writer Jon Halperin and animator Ed Bell to learn more about how they created this series and developed its unique visual style.
How did you decide on these specific moments in history for the series?
Ed Bell and Jon Halperin: Each episode in the series illuminates a crucial moment in the American story where “American” and “white” were conflated. This is about the struggle to make “American” mean more than “white.” We have twelve more episodes in the series. In the series, we will bring the history up to the present moment — this incredible moment, which could be white people’s great awakening to the nation’s racial sins.
This line from the episode is so powerful: “How skin became color, color became race, and race became power.” Who benefits from not teaching the origins and creation of race and racism in America?
Ed and Jon: The History of White People in America will reveal who we are as a nation and how we got to this moment of crisis — of the 400-year transmogrification of skin color into an economic, political and social caste system with whiteness at the top of the pecking order. Race as we know it in America was invented by wealthy colonialists — of European background — as a means of social and economic control. They divided poor people by skin color. The wealthy benefited from this division, then and now.
Building on more than 30 years of scholarship on the creation and evolution of racial categories and identity in the United States, we explore the combination of ideologies, laws, policies, scientific theories, and even “racial performances” that created what we now understand as “white” and “non-white.” Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, Catholics: until recently in our history, none of these groups were considered white by law, custom, or culture. Whiteness has always been an ever-shifting notion. What does it mean in America to be non-white today? What will need to change in our country for Black and brown people to have the power of “white”?
This animation style is so unique in how it brings together movement, color, and text to tell a story set to incredible music. How did you develop that style, and what artistic inspiration did you pull from? Why was animation fitting to tell this specific story?
Ed and Jon: We are attempting to communicate some of our own cognitive dissonance with being animation artists in this culture. Animation dares to go to those uncomfortable places we all need to deal with. We dare to use animation to lift an audience out of the shameful ignorance of our own culture.
Ed: The visual universe of The History of White People in America is born from the visual media that the creators grew up with. As an African American boy I lived for comics, manga, games, New Yorker covers and animated features. At the same time as I was forming an identity as an artist — an artist in a world that keeps telling me I’m a second-class citizen.
Most media placed me in a pretty bleak place in the world: Stamped from the beginning as “less-than,” despite my people proving our excellence in every area of American life. Stamped, in part, by powerful visual propaganda throughout the 20th century. But some of that same media pointed me to profound truths that opened my heart and increased my empathy. So this is what the artist does with their life conditions — we use the existing tropes to express our pain and passion.
Drew Takahashi [the series’ animator and editor] and I are students of 20th century illustration, graphic design and animation. We see it in all its glory and ugliness, and make it our own. These forms of media had everything to do with how the current culture views people, both inside and outside the “normal” world of affluent white life. So we make them colors on our digital palette and paint the picture the historians plugged us into.
Is there anything else you want the audience to think about as they watch the series?
Ed and Jon: Since before the Revolution, “American” has equaled “white.” Enslaved African people understood this. Indigenous people knew this. And wealthy “white” landowners made sure that each new wave of immigrants knew it too. For America to fulfill its greatest ideals — justice and equality for all — “American” has to be more than a code word for “white.”
Those early ideas, which were codified into laws, led to generational acceptance of a false hierarchy, an illusion of superiority and inferiority. If there’s to be a reckoning for America, it starts with breaking that illusion. We know that the public always benefits from confronting the hardest truths about our way of life. In the case of the Black filmmakers on our team, this confrontation with hard truths will be the difference between being allowed to live or die at the hands of police. It’s urgent that we face the issues at the heart of injustice.
Probe Further– Haiti and François Dominique Toussaint Louverture
Every week I provide a “tid-bit” about activists who have impacted the world. The aim is to provide models for you, and to peak your interest and joy in learning.
The image below is a rendering of François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803) wearing a red headband. He was born a slave when France was the imperialist ruling power in the former colony that is now called Haiti. He led a slave rebellion that fought for and won independence for Haiti, and that by 1794 forced France to abolish slavery throughout its colonies. Consequently, Haiti is the first Black republic in the world.
In “The End of the Plantocracy” (a review of three books),
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Pooja Bhatia writes that from “the outset the fight against slavery was [Louverture’s] guiding principle: he wasn’t fighting for independence or to make Haiti a Black republic; on the contrary, he envisaged a multiracial polity, claiming that nature ‘takes pleasure in diversifying the colours of the human species'” (London Review of Books, Vol. 42 No.22, 19 November 2020).
Here is a short interesting article: Sorman, Guy. “Why Toussaint Louverture Needs to Be Taught in School.
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” France-Amérique, 17 August 2021.
Think about Haiti’s condition today–being the poorest country in the western hemisphere–and ask yourself, why is this country and its people in this condition. To help you understand the answer, read this short piece (here I give you the link and I copy the article below): “‘The Greatest Heist in History’: How Haiti Was Forced to Pay Reparations For Freedom
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.”
“The U.S. left Haiti in 1934, after 19 years of violent occupation, but continued to control its public finances until 1947, siphoning off around 40% of Haiti’s national income to pay the island’s debts — including forced reparations to French slaveholders.”
The image above is an (1804/1805) oil on canvas portrait of Louverture painted by Girardin à Nantes.
“‘The Greatest Heist in History’: How Haiti Was Forced to Pay Reparations For Freedom”
October 5, 2021 NPR report by Greg Rosalsky
The Baron de Mackau of France presenting demands to Jean-Pierre Boyer,
President of Haiti, in 1825 (drawing from Wikipedia)
In recent weeks, thousands of refugees from Haiti have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, desperate for a better life. Most left Haiti years ago, after a 2010 earthquake ravaged what was already one of the most dismal economies in the world. They had originally settled in places like Chile
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, but the politics
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of the region have made them feel unwelcome, discriminated against, and fearful of the future.
The Haitian refugees hoped the United States, under President Biden, would offer them a lifeline. They were wrong. The Biden administration has been sending thousands
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back to Haiti, even though Haiti is a disaster zone, and many of the refugees fled it years ago. Some of those the U.S. government forcibly sent to Haiti are kids
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who have never lived there.
Ambassador Daniel Foote, who was appointed by President Biden as the U.S. special envoy to Haiti in July, resigned in protest against his administration’s policy. “I will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees,” Foote wrote in his resignation letter
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.
Tens of thousands of migrants, many of them Haitians previously living in South America, have arrived in recent weeks in Mexico hoping to enter the United States. (Picture: ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty Images)
The Haiti that refugees are being sent back to is a nation in crisis. With its unlucky coordinates on the map and its poor infrastructure, Haiti has been devastated by multiple hurricanes and earthquakes in recent years, including a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in August
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. In July, Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated by Colombian mercenaries, some of whom had received U.S. military training
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. A Florida-based security company reportedly
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connected whoever wanted Moïse killed with the mercenaries, but the details of why Moïse was killed and who directed the mercenaries are still murky
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.
What is clear, however, is that Moïse’s assassination continues Haiti’s centuries-long political instability. In 2015, the World Bank concluded that Haiti’s biggest political problem is that “a social contract is missing between the state and its citizens.” Ambassador Foote, in his resignation letter, blasted the United States and other nations for contributing to this problem for the umpteenth time by unabashedly backing Moïse’s unelected replacement, Ariel Henry. Henry was appointed Prime Minister by Moïse in July, and took on the additional role of President after Moïse’s assassination. Haiti’s chief prosecutor said he found evidence
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linking Henry to the president’s killing, and Henry promptly fired him
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. Some Haitian authorities have asked Henry to step down
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and pleaded with the international community to stop supporting him. “This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has consistently produced catastrophic results,” Foote wrote.
Haiti is one of the poorest nations
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in the world, and rich countries have their fingerprints all over the nation’s stunted development. The United States worked to isolate a newly independent Haiti during the early 19th century and violently occupied
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the island nation for 19 years in the early 20th century. While the U.S. officially left Haiti in 1934, it continued to control Haiti’s public finances until 1947
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, siphoning away around 40%
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of Haiti’s national income to service debt repayments to the U.S. and France.
Much of this debt to France was the legacy of what the University of Virginia scholar Marlene Daut calls “the greatest heist in history”: surrounded by French gunboats, a newly independent Haiti was forced to pay its slaveholders reparations. You read that correctly. It was the former slaves of Haiti, not the French slaveholders, who were forced to pay reparations. Haitians compensated their oppressors and their oppressors’ descendants for the privilege of being free. It took Haiti more than a century to pay the reparation debts off.
The Tragic Hope of Revolutionary Haiti
Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, and it was almost immediately made a pariah state by world powers. It was an independent, black-led nation — created by slaves who had cast aside their chains and fought their oppressors for their freedom — during a time when white-led nations were enforcing brutal, racist systems of exploitation around the world.
Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, had been the crown jewel of the French empire. It was the most lucrative colony
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in the whole world. French planters forced African slaves to produce sugar, coffee, and other cash crops for the global market. The system seemed to work well. That is, until the French and American revolutions helped to inspire, in 1791, what became the world’s largest and most successful slave revolt. Against all odds, the slaves won. Former slaves sent slaveholders scurrying to France and America — and Haitians successfully fought back subsequent efforts to re-enslave them. Haiti was the first nation
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to permanently ban slavery.
But as a nation of freed black slaves, Haiti was a threat to the existing world order. President Thomas Jefferson worked to isolate
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Haiti diplomatically and strangle it economically, fearing that the success of Haiti would inspire slave revolts back home. With the invention and spread of the cotton gin, slavery was becoming much more lucrative
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at the very same time a free Haiti was coming into existence, and slaveholders in the United States and other countries clung to and expanded the inhumane means of production. Haitian success was perceived as a threat to this system for decades, and the United States didn’t officially recognize Haiti until 1862, as slavery began being abolished.
During Haiti’s critical period of development, France intervened even more directly than the U.S. to thwart its success. In July 1825, the French King, Charles X, sent an armed flotilla of warships to Haiti with the message that the young nation would have to pay France 150 million francs to secure its independence, or suffer the consequences. That sum was 10 times
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the amount the United States had paid France in the Louisiana Purchase, which had doubled
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the size of the U.S.
Almost literally at gunpoint, Haiti caved to France’s demands in order to secure its independence. The amount was too much for the young nation to pay outright, and so it had to take out loans with hefty interest rates from a French bank. Over the next century, Haiti paid French slaveholders and their descendants
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the equivalent of between $20 and $30 billion in today’s dollars. It took Haiti 122 years
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to pay it off. Professor Marlene Daut writes it
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“severely damaged the newly independent country’s ability to prosper.”
Righting The Wrongs
After the 2010 earthquake completely devastated Haiti, scholars and journalists wrote a letter
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to the French president demanding that France pay back Haiti. The French economist Thomas Piketty resurrected the idea
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in 2020, arguing that France owes Haiti at least $28 billion. The French government, under multiple presidents, has balked at the idea
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, and it is unlikely to pay Haiti back anytime soon.
But if the rich world wants to help right the wrongs done to Haiti in the past, perhaps the most effective policy right now would be to accept more Haitian refugees. This wouldn’t only be a humane policy that would improve their and their future families’ lives. It would also likely be a boost to the Haitian economy. According to the World Bank, Haitian expatriates sent $3 billion
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in remittances back home to Haiti in 2018, which was almost one-third of the island nation’s entire GDP.
Inside the Kingdom of Haiti, “the Wakanda of the Western Hemisphere”
by Marlene Daut
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, Professor of French and African American Studies, Yale University
The Conversation
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, January 23, 2919 . Updated November 16, 2022
An 1811 wood engraving depicts the coronation of King Henry. Fine Art America
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As a historian of Haitian literature and culture, I was excited to learn that Haiti plays a central role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
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.” There are two lengthy scenes that take place in the Caribbean nation and feature original footage shot in the country.
It’s a fitting gesture: The fictional kingdom of Wakanda has a real-life corollary in the historic Kingdom of Hayti, which existed as a sort of Wakanda of the Western Hemisphere from 1811 to 1820.
The Haitian Revolution
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led to the creation of the first free Black state in the Americas. But the world was hardly expecting a former enslaved man named Henry Christophe to make himself the king of it.
Media accounts from the era, some of which I’ve collected in a digital archive
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, serve as a window into a brief period of time when the kingdom stood as a beacon of Black freedom in a world of slavery. Yet, like Wakanda
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, the Kingdom of Hayti wasn’t a utopia for everyone.
A new kind of kingdom
On Jan. 1, 1804, an army led by former enslaved Africans
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in the French colony of Saint-Domingue staved off France’s attempt to bring back slavery, and declared themselves independent and free forever.
The leader of the revolutionaries, General Jean-Jacques Dessalines
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, had defeated Napoleon’s famous army and made himself emperor of the newly-renamed Haiti.
But in October 1806, Dessalines was assassinated by political rivals, leading the country to be divided into two separate states: General Henry Christophe named himself president of the northern part of Haiti, while General Alexandre Pétion governed a completely separate republic in the southern and southwestern part of the country.
‘I am reborn from my ashes’ was the motto of Henry I, the former slave who became king. Wikimedia Commons
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, CC BY-SA
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In March 1811, President Henry Christophe surprised everyone when he anointed himself King Henry I and renamed the northern republic, the Kingdom of Hayti. Henry I soon had a full court of nobles that included dukes, barons, counts and knights to rival that of royal England.
Haiti’s first and only kingdom immediately attracted the attention of media outlets from around the world. How could there be a republic on one side of the island and a monarchy on the other, they wondered
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? Was the new Black king trying to mimic the same white sovereigns who had once enslaved his people, others asked
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?
The edicts establishing the royal order of Haiti were immediately translated into English
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and printed in Philadelphia, while many American and British newspapers and magazines ran celebrity profiles of the Haitian king.
One newspaper
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described him as “the elegant model of an Hercules.” Another described him
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as “a remarkably handsome, well-built man; with a broad chest, square shoulders, and an appearance of great muscular strength and activity.”
The ‘First Monarch’ of the ‘New World’
In 1813, construction of the opulent Sans-Souci Palace
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– meaning literally “without worry” – was completed.
The palace was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 1842; today, its remains have been designated a world heritage UNESCO site
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.
During its heyday, the palace dazzled.
There were the elegantly manicured gardens and a unique, domed cathedral
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. The structure was flanked by a dramatic double staircase
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leading to the entryway and two arches detailed with etchings and inscriptions. One acknowledged Henry, rather than Jean-Jacques, as the country’s “founder.”
A woman climbs the stairs on the remains of Sans-Souci Palace in 2017. Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters
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There were also two painted crowns
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on the principal palace façade, each of which stood at 16 feet tall. The one on the right read “To the First Monarch Crowned in the New World.” The one on the left said “The Beloved Queen Reigns Forever Over Our Hearts.”
King Henry lived in the palace with his wife, Queen Marie-Louise
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, and his three children
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, Prince Victor Henry, and the princesses, Améthyste and Athénaire.
An April 1815 issue of The Gazette Royale details how the Kingdom of Hayti foiled France’s attempt to reconquer its former colony.
Newspapers around the world reprinted articles from the monarchy’s official newspaper, the Gazette Royale d’Hayti
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, detailing the royal family’s lavish dinners, replete with bombastic speeches
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and lengthy toasts to famous contemporary figures such as King George III of England, U.S. President James Madison, the King of Prussia, and the “friend of humanity,” the “immortal” British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson
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.
The Gazette also recounted
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the decadence of Queen Marie-Louise’s August 1816 official birthday celebration, which lasted for 12 days and had 1,500 people in attendance. On the final day of the party, 12 cannons fired after the Duke of Anse toasted the queen as “the perfect model of mothers and wives.”
A free island in a sea of slavery
There was much more to King Henry’s reign than luxurious parties.
On March 28, 1811, King Henry installed a constitutional monarchy, a move lauded by many in the British elite. The famous British naturalist Joseph Banks championed Henry’s 1812 book of laws, titled the “Code Henry,” calling it
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“the most moral association of men in existence.”
“Nothing that white men have been able to arrange is equal to it,” he added.
Banks admired the code’s detailed reorganization of the economy, from one based on slave labor to one – at least in theory – based on free labor
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. This transformation was wholly fitting for the formerly enslaved man-turned-king, whose motto was “I am reborn from my ashes
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.”
The code provided for shared compensation between proprietors and laborers at “a full fourth the gross product, free from all duties,” and it also contained provisions for the redistribution of any land
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that had previously belonged to slave owners.
“Your Majesty, in his paternal solicitude,” one edict reads, “wants for every Haytian, indiscriminately, the poor as well as the rich, to have the ability to become the owner of the lands of our former oppressors.”
Henry’s stated “paternal solicitude” even extended to enslaved Africans. While the Constitution of 1807
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had announced that Haiti would not “disturb the regimes” of the colonial powers, royal Haitian guards regularly intervened in the slave trade to free captives on foreign ships that entered Haitian waters. An October 1817 issue
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of the Gazette celebrated the Haitian military’s capture of a slave ship and subsequent release of 145 of “our unfortunate brothers, victims of greed and the odious traffic in human flesh.”
Too good to be true?
Yet life in the Kingdom of Hayti was far from perfect.
Henry’s political rivals
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noted that people frequently defected to the southern Republic of Haiti, where they told stories of the monarch’s favoritism and the aristocracy’s abuse of power.
Worse, Henry’s famous fortress, the Citadelle Laferrière
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, was, according to some accounts, built with forced labor
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. For this reason, Haitians have long debated
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whether the imposing structure, which was restored in 1990, ought to symbolize the liberty of post-independence Haiti.
Henry’s dreams of a free Black kingdom would not outlive him. On Aug. 15, 1820, the king suffered a debilitating stroke
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. Physically impaired – and fearing a fracturing administration plagued by the desertion of some its most prominent members – Haiti’s first and only king killed himself on the night of Oct. 8, 1820.
Illustrator Mahlon Blaine depicts King Henry on the cover of the 1928 book ‘Black Majesty.’ @paulclammer/Twitter
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Despite some questions about living conditions in the Kingdom of Hayti, its ruler can still be recognized as a visionary. Even one of his most ardent rivals from the south, Charles Hérard Dumesle, who often referred to Christophe as a “despot,” nonetheless praised the remarkable “new social order” outlined in the Code Henry. Dumesle appeared to lament
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that the king’s “civil laws were the formula for a social code that existed only on paper.”
For all those who still dream of Black liberation
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, strong – if ultimately flawed
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– leaders, like both the King of Hayti and Black Panther, have always been central to these visions.
King Henry was even depicted as a sort of superhero in his time. As one article from 1816 noted
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of Henry,
“History demonstrates that no people has ever done anything great entirely by themselves; it is only ever in collaboration with the great men who become elevated in their midst that they raise themselves up to the glory of accomplishing extraordinary deeds.