Road Markers

Historical markers are everywhere in America. Some get history wrong

Tennessee…

REVEALED: Were Black people ‘oppressed’? Debate highlights racial divide in Tennessee House

It’s the same Republican supermajority that has passed laws saying teachers cannot take sides about hot-button issues, including slavery.

Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, explained in one debate that the law was “simply to ensure that when it’s presented, it’s presented in all facets — both for and against.”

Responding, Rep. Harold Love, D-Nashville, noted: “It’s kind of hard to be for or against slavery — you’ve either got to be against it or against it, I think.”

In a debate over capital punishment, Republican Paul Sherrell suggested bringing back lynching.

“Could I put an amendment on that that would include hanging by a tree also?” the Sparta Republican asked with a grin.”

The “We need to segregate public swimming pools” hatred is back… A twitter thread:

The forgotten history of segregated swimming pools and amusement parks

“Swimming pools and beaches were among the most segregated and fought over public spaces in the North and the South.

White stereotypes of blacks as diseased and sexually threatening served as the foundation for this segregation. City leaders justifying segregation also pointed to fears of fights breaking out if whites and blacks mingled. Racial separation for them equaled racial peace.

These fears were underscored when white teenagers attacked black swimmers after activists or city officials opened public pools to blacks. For example, whites threw nails at the bottom of pools in Cincinnati, poured bleach and acid in pools with black bathers in St. Augustine, Florida, and beat them up in Philadelphia. In my book, I describe how in the late 1940s there were major swimming pool riots in St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.”

I was one year old…

A Cool Dip & A Little Dignity

“In the summer of 1961, two young African-American men decided to go swimming at one of Nashville’s municipal pools — one that was reserved by Jim Crow for whites only. Days later, the city closed all its public pools — and left them shut for three years. Today, come with us to meet the men who first tried to integrate Nashville’s public pools — and explore the legacy of Jim Crow that still lingers over every public pool in the South 50 years later.”

Birmingham Officials Announce Plan to Close City Parks Rather Than Permit Racial Integration

“On October 24, 1961, in response to a federal court decision that Birmingham’s racially segregated parks, golf courses, and playgrounds were unconstitutional, Birmingham officials publicly announced that they would close all public parks and facilities rather than racially integrate them.

Under the Birmingham city code, interracial games of pool, cards, dice, dominoes, checkers, and billiards were illegal. Interracial play was not permitted in public parks including ball parks, tennis courts, golf courses, and football fields, as well as theaters, auditoriums, swimming pools, and playgrounds. After 15 Black leaders, including civil rights legend Reverend F. L. Shuttleworth, sued Birmingham’s Parks and Recreation board, a federal district judge ruled that Birmingham’s segregated facilities and parks were unconstitutional.

In response to the October 24 court ruling, Birmingham’s mayor, Art Hanes, and the city’s police commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, immediately announced the plan to close all city parks. By December, the city had eliminated funding to almost all of its parks and closed 67 of them, along with 38 playgrounds, four golf courses, and eight swimming pools.

Bull Connor defended the necessity of the city’s decision, insisting that integrating the parks “would only be the first step in total integration of our schools, churches, hotels, restaurants and everything else.” Mr. Connor received a flood of support from white Birmingham residents who wrote letters applauding the decision. One local newspaper, The Jeffersonian, applauded the closures and stated the move helped the white community “retain our white race and culture.”

1964:

A GREAT Twitter thread,

New York City, Robert Moses, bridges and beaches

‘The Wrong Complexion For Protection.’ How Race Shaped America’s Roadways And Cities

“When the urban planner Robert Moses began building projects in New York during the 1920s, he bulldozed Black and Latino homes to make way for parks, and built highways through the middle of minority neighborhoods. According to one biography, Moses even made sure bridges on the parkways connecting New York City to beaches in Long Island were low enough to keep city buses — which would likely be carrying poor minorities — from passing underneath.

But Moses was no outlier. The highways and public spaces that shape our cities were often intentionally built at the expense of Black, Latino and other minority Americans.”

Slavery?

John Oliver covers this in two videos (Dirty Words – HBO)

How 1930s Discrimination Shaped Inequality In Today’s Cities

“Today, the typical black family has just 8 cents of wealth – meaning bank savings, investment holdings or home ownership equity – for every dollar of wealth accumulated by their white neighbors. Today, 65% of “majority minority” communities are still in neighborhoods graded “hazardous” in the 1930s and colored red on HOLC maps. In these neighborhoods, credit, the lynchpin of economic mobility, became either unavailable or very expensive. In contrast, neighborhoods given the highest grade in the 1930s, marked in green, are today 91% upper income, and almost entirely white.”

Manhattan Beach Is Returned To The Black Family That Bought It In 1912

The Great Land Robbery

How the GI Bill’s Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans

African Americans Have Lost Untold Acres of Land Over the Last Century

I love the free US History lessons on twitter,

Some folks don’t read them:

When you talk reparations, there are two reasons we need to discuss reparations

1. Slavery – OVERT Repression
2. Jim Crow – COVERT Repression

Tommy Tuberville Decries Reparations as Payments for “People That Do the Crime”

On Saturday, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) implied Black Americans were “the people that do the crime” in comments railing against reparations.

Speaking at a Donald Trump rally for Republican candidates in Nevada, Tuberville described Democrats as engaged in a battle to take from white people and give to Black people whom he stereotyped as criminals. Democrats “aren’t soft on crime, they’re pro-crime,” Tuberville said, “[they] want crime because they want to take over what you got, they want to control what you have, they want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

“Bullshit!” he finished. The audience cheered.”

Florida teachers raise concerns about new civics training, say it downplays slavery, promotes originalism

The Case for Reparations

New research shows slavery’s central role in U.S. economic growth leading up to the Civil War

Slave reparations advocates hail historic California report

When Anti-Immigration Meant Keeping Out Black Pioneers

1917-1929 were some ugly times in America

The Red Summer of 1919, Explained

Red Summer of 1919

The Red Summer of 1919 in U.S. Cities

July 27, 1919: Riot in Chicago

HBO’s ‘Watchmen’ depicts a Tulsa race massacre that was all too real. Hundreds died.

Burning Tulsa: The Legacy of Black Dispossession

In Tulsa, an investigation finds possible evidence of mass graves from 1921 race massacre

Researchers Have Found Evidence of Mass Graves From the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Here’s Why That News Is Bittersweet for My Community

In a small Arkansas town, echoes of a century-old massacre

Hundreds of black Americans were killed during ‘Red Summer.’ A century later, still ignored

A Lost Work by Langston Hughes Examines the Harsh Life on the Chain Gang

Causes of the Great Migration

Kept being ugly,

Negro Boys Industrial School Fire of 1959

“On March 5, 1959, twenty-one African American boys burned to death inside a dormitory at an Arkansas reform school in Wrightsville (Pulaski County). The doors were locked from the outside.”

50 Years Later?

Kicked Off the Land

The Massacre That Spawned the Alt-Right

The Greensboro Massacre of 1979, Explained

How the Trail of American White Supremacy Led to El Paso

TRUMP HATE MAP

2022:

The Real Farm Subsidy Scandal? USDA’s Legacy of Racial Discrimination.

‘The land is still here’: A Black farmer’s fight for his legacy during Covid-19

How Did African-American Farmers Lose 90 percent of Their Land?

How John Deere is helping Black farmers and their descendents take back unjustly seized land

Elaine Massacre of 1919

The Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States. While its deepest roots lay in the state’s commitment to white supremacy, the events in Elaine (Phillips County) stemmed from tense race relations and growing concerns about labor unions. A shooting incident that occurred at a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union escalated into mob violence on the part of the white people in Elaine and surrounding areas. Although the exact number is unknown, estimates of the number of African Americans killed by whites range into the hundreds; five white people lost their lives.

The conflict began on the night of September 30, 1919, when approximately 100 African Americans, mostly sharecroppers on the plantations of white landowners, attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a church in Hoop Spur (Phillips County), three miles north of Elaine. The purpose of the meeting, one of several by black sharecroppers in the Elaine area during the previous months, was to obtain better payments for their cotton crops from the white plantation owners who dominated the area during the Jim Crow era. Black sharecroppers were often exploited in their efforts to collect payment for their cotton crops. The union had contracted with lawyer Ulysses S. Bratton, whose son, Ocier, was at this meeting.”

A new astroturf “issue” to energize the base,

The Fog of History Wars

“A new battle is being waged over how we teach our country’s past. But old feuds remind us that history is continually revised, driven by new evidence and present-day imperatives.”

A new project details newspapers’ role in lynchings post-1865. A historian says newspapers were a pillar to uphold the white-supremacist political economy.

‘There will be lynchings’: How the Advertiser failed victims of racial terror

Our shame: The sins of our past laid bare for all to see

Ambushed in Eufaula: Alabama’s forgotten race massacre

1954 Changed America

Brown v. Board of Education

Emmitt Till visited Mississippi in 1955

What Might Have Been

It would take almost two decades for some people to witness the change

Southern Governors and Representatives Organize Resistance to Racial Integration

BROWN V. BOARD: Timeline of School Integration in the U.S.

White Privilege?

“Critical Race Theory” is the latest GOP Catch Phrase, people complaining about Critical Race Theory have no clue what it is!

What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

Montana’s top prosecutor bans critical race theory programs

Veteran’s mic cut when he speaks of Black people’s role in Memorial Day creation

Texas bill limiting teaching of current events, historic racism appears headed for governor after Senate revives it

Times Uncovers Political Battlefields Hidden in Texas History Textbooks

How One State History Textbook Erases the Stories of Black and Hispanic Texans

The White League’s Violent Insurrection in Louisiana Was Almost a Success

Once overlooked in classrooms, Tulsa race massacre now seen as ‘important’ lesson in Oklahoma schools

The Burning of Black Wall Street, Revisited

Tulsa Race Massacre

BUT…

A new Oklahoma law bans K-12 schools from teaching topics that cause ‘guilt’ because of race or sex

The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth

HOW TO MARK JUNETEENTH IN THE YEAR 2020

This Speech Explains Our History:

I wish everyone would watch this:

History Then

Wilmington Race Riot

Try again Convert to link

2020!

10 Army Bases Named After Confederate Officers

Rename the Rebel Forts

Why Does the U.S. Military Celebrate White Supremacy?

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley Says South Carolinians Saw the Confederate Flag as ‘Service’ Before Dylan Roof ‘Hijacked’ It

Nikki Haley gets the history of the Confederate flag very wrong

Are You a Seg Academy Alum, Too? Let’s Talk

‘WHITE FLIGHT‘ REMAINS A REALITY

What It Looks Like to Reconnect Black Communities Torn Apart by Highways

Repeal Robert Moses

“HIGHWAYS ARE A RACIST LEGACY. IT IS TIME TO TEAR THEM DOWN. AND FOR ONCE, LET COMMUNITIES DECIDE WHAT GETS BUILT IN THEIR PLACE.“

Slavery in America: Some historical sites try to show the horrors. Others are far behind.

Great twitter thread:

This is 2019! NOT 1959!!!

No ‘Mixed’ or ‘Gay’ Couples, Mississippi Wedding Venue Owner Says on Video

Two arrested in racist attack on black student at University of Arizona

Teaching America’s truth

Our shame: The sins of our past laid bare for all to see

Segregation Now …

The 1619 Project

Conservative backlash to New York Times slavery study

MUST WATCH:

When Portland banned blacks: Oregon’s shameful history as an ‘all-white’ state

The deed to your Seattle-area home may contain racist language. Here’s how to fix it.

When you see a town named Whitehaven, Whitesburg or Whitestation they might be named after someone named White or them may not be…

The Hate has to stop happening!

Murfreesboro church vandalized with racist graffiti; 4 teens charged

Man pleads guilty to federal hate crime of burning crosses in black neighborhood in Mississippi

Michigan cop suspended after house hunter uncovers racist memorabilia

Teens wore masks during racist graffiti spree, but were IDed by cellphones via Wi-Fi

Bronx man who marked African Burial site with racist graffiti arrested again

Taggers leave racist graffiti in Northwest Reno

Investigators look into racial slurs spray painted on family’s home

Ohio House Explosion Investigated as Hate Crime After Racist Graffiti Is Found

Some white people don’t want to hear about slavery at plantations built by slaves

60% of Hate Crimes are Racially Motivated: FBI

What are the issues now?

This is UGLY:

This is Ugly!

George Takei on His Own Experiences in an Internment Camp and New Show The Terror: Infamy