This Day in History

 

 Proclaiming it was one thing, ensuring it something else. The North had to win the war first!

On June 19, 1865, that war finally having been won in the North's favor, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, took command of 2,000 federal troops in Texas, the last place in the former Confederate States of America where slavery still was practiced, and informed the people in that state that the practice was now over: 

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

Idleness? Jeez, stereotypes start early, don't they? If they're as lazy as all that, what was the point in making them slaves in the first place? However, let's end this on an audaciously hopeful note with a quote by a man who was anything but idle:

Juneteenth has never been a celebration of victory or an acceptance of the way things are. It’s a celebration of progress. It’s an affirmation that despite the most painful parts of our history, change is possible—and there is still so much work to do.

--Barack Obama

The Greening of America

 

Since it's Black History Month, we should be reminded that along with a host of other problems they had to deal with in the first six or so decades of the 20th century, African-Americans had to be very careful when it came to taking a simple vacation. Many hotels and motels wouldn't let them stay the night. In fact, there were whole villages and towns (especially in the South) that wouldn't let them stay the night, at least not if they still wanted to be around in the morning. So to make sure that the black traveler seeking a break from their concerns didn't end up running into even bigger concerns, a Harlem African-American postal worker by the name of the Victor Hugo Green scrounged some money together in 1936 and began publishing his own travel guides, invariably titled The Negro Motorists Green Book or The Negro Travelers Green book, or more informally, as the books became more and more popular (allowing Green to retire early from the post office), the Green Book. These books listed a variety of business, as well as whole neighborhoods and towns, that could be counted on not to give a hard time to black travelers. The guides were put out annually for 28 years, finally ceasing publication upon passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. These days, African-Americans are free to rely on the same AAA triptiks as white folks, as well as in more recent years the Internet. All well and good, though don't be too surprised if in the near future something very much like the Green Book makes a...

...comeback.

Vital Viewing (What Happens to a Dream Deferred Edition)

 

Now, just what the hell is that monstrosity? An early Mac? Maybe some postwar PC that ran on Windows 0000000.1? Could it be a protype laptop that a succession of crushed thighs sent back to the drawing board? No, it's actually a 1935 IBM Model 01, one of the first electric typewriters.

Here it is from another angle. Not to be confused with an iPad.

Of course, it's not the writing machine but the writer writing on the writing machine that matters, in this case playwright Lorraine Hansberry, born on this day in 1930 (she died in 1965.) In the following clip, Hansberry expounds on what kind of subject matter makes for the best plays:

Seemingly reductive but ultimately expansive, I dare say.

Except why dare say it when I can show it? Not the original 1959 Broadway production, which except for a few photos is lost forever, but the next best thing, the 1961 film version. Watch and listen as Sidney Poitier, Diana Sands, and Cleveland native Ruby Dee, all original cast members of that Broadway production, recite Hansberry's disquieting dialogue:

Very powerful scene, but if the always compelling Poitier is Lorraine Hansberry's idea of a "most ordinary human being", then where does that leave me?

I'm just below that big yellow dude, right scoop, center row, third from the left.

 

 

Flesh and Fantasy

Middle-earth

Middle East.

Different hues for different views. It all evens out in the end.

Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

Selma, 1965

See that man in the overcoat in the lower right of the above picture? He's clearly run afoul of the law, and is now about to receive his punishment in the form of an Alabama State Trooper's billy club. Well, you know what they say, crime does not pay. Except...exactly what was his crime? Did he try to rob that Haisten's in the background, the only company I know of that specializes in both mattresses AND awnings? No, that wasn't his crime. Maybe he tried to mug that man in the middle of the picture, that big dude carrying what looks like a bag (I've blown up the picture to size of the computer screen and still can't tell you what it is.) But no, that's not his crime either. Maybe he tried to rape that kneeling woman in the lower left of the picture. Except then why isn't any of those cops helping her back up on her feet? Blow up the picture, and she looks a little afraid to get up, and it ain't the guy in the lower right of the picture nor that big dude with the bag that she's afraid of. I think we can rule out rape. Lessee, what other crimes are there? Did he rob a bank, steal a car, kick a dog, spit on the sidewalk, or remove a tag from a pillow? No, none of those things. His only crime was exercising a First Amendment right, as he and others had peaceably assembled on a bridge to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. At least it was peaceable until the cops showed up, thus greatly increasing the grievances that needed redressing.

Now, this wasn't the man in the overcoat's first run-in with the law, and maybe not even the first time he got his skull cracked. When he was still in high school he had closely followed the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and made it a point to meet both Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, which he did before he had even reached the age of 20. When he was in college, he became one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, seven whites and six blacks who rode several buses from Washington D.C. to New Orleans as a way of testing a Supreme Court ruling that proclaimed segregated interstate bus travel to be unconstitutional. At a stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the young man walked into  a whites-only waiting room and got kicked in the ribs by a couple of those whites. Nevertheless, he continued with that Freedom Ride and several others throughout the early 1960s, one of which got him a 40-day stay in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. All this might seem a difficult way to spend one's young adulthood, but he had now earned the respect of many of his peers, and was elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In that role he became one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, where he made a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial--at 23 he was the youngest speaker that day--and, along with a bunch of other Civil Rights leaders, got invited to the White House  (that's him in the above photo, fourth from the left, and to the immediate right of the aforementioned King.) All well and good. Then, two years later, came that Bloody Sunday in Selma, but even that didn't stop him. By the late 1970s, he had become a member of the Carter Administration. In 1981, he ran for and won a seat on the Atlanta City Council. In 1986 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, serving Georgia's 5th congressional district for 17 consecutive terms, right up until the day he died. Before that day arrived, however, he had lived long enough to see a black man elected President. He also lived long enough to see that black man succeeded in the same office by a racist, and witness yet another round of racial violence. Live long enough and you get to see the good and the bad, played out in what seems like an endless loop.

John Lewis 1940-2020

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In the July 20 issue of The New Yorker, the always-readable academic Jill Lepore has an article about the history of policing titled "The Long Blue Line". Y'all should check it out.