Class Notes 2/28

Here are my notes from today's class on the Depression Era.

2/28
  1. Class Discussion
    1. Discussion Questions
      1. What factors shaped the evolution of NAACP strategy from its founding to WWII?
      2. How did the Great Depression impact race relations in the South?
      3. Why did the Scottsboro case become a major issue in American public life?
      4. How did the groups interested in African-American rights––the Communist Party, the NAACP, etc.––use it to further their goals?
    2. Proper path for African-Americans
      1. Washington vs Dubois
        1. Dubois delivers a speech at Harpers Ferry in 1905
          1. John Brown, a radical abolitionist, believed that god had directed him to free the slaves
            1. Believed that he needs to lead an armed
            2. Murders slave owners as as symbol to others
            3. Wanting to use the arsenal at Harpers Ferry to arm the slaves so they can start their own war
            4. Is executioner and lies as a martyr to the slaves
          2. Address to the Nation
            1. Want the law enforced equally
            2. Fourteenth Amendment
              1. One of the reconstruction amendments
              2. Arguing for the fifteenth amendment which is the right for all men to vote
            3. Right to education
              1. It should occur with the national government stepping in
              2. “Either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States.
            4. Big problems that require national solutions
            5. Black men should be allowed to be manly
              1. #2 on the list
                1. We won't cease to protest until we get every single right that belongs to a freeborn American
            6. Meeting in Springfield previously in February 12th, 1909
              1. NAACP is formed on Lincoln’s 100th birthday
                1. The great emancipator who freed the slaves
              2. But it is also linked to the unfulfilled promise of the fourteenth amendment was not fulfilled
          3. NAACP main goals
            1. Around 14th and 15th amendment
            2. Goals
              1. Ending lynching
              2. Ending segregation
              3. Securing voting rights
          4. Not accidental that these are the same things that Dubois is arguing for in the Niagara statement
            1. To be a member of the talented tenth, class is economic but instead it is performative
              1. You have to be a race man
                1. Someone who is active in the community, belongs to the NAACP, working towards African-American rights
      2. World War 1 Problems for African-Americans
        1. Why should i fight to save democracy when i live in a culture that is segregated, when i cant vote, where people that look like me get lynched everyday
          1. Countering
            1. Fighting would demonstrate citizenship
      3. Editorial
        1. Dubois is switching sides a little bit, you have to link arms with your fellow soldier, that is your brother in a sense as you fight side by side
          1. Figuratively speaking to set aside your differences because you both are in the same war
          2. “We of the colored race have no ordinary interest in the outcome. That which the German power represents today spells death to the aspirations of Negroes and all darker races for equality, freedom and democracy.” (The Crisis Editorial vol. 16- no.3)
            1. If the germans win, things will be very bad for darker skinned people
        2. Sounds like something that Washington would say
          1. Bury your ill feelings towards these people and fight for this country
        3. How do we make sense of this switch in position from Dubois?
          1. He sees the Germans as a bigger problem than American white people.
        4. Through military service, comes the patriotism and service that would win the minds of the white people
        5. Do we put aside our domestic issues to fight in these global issues instead?
        6. Images of
          1. Black masculinity
          2. Man and his woman
            1. To prove that they can be like the white man who goes home to his wife at the end of the war
            2. Appropriate masculinity
          3. Heteronormative couple
        7. 1919 summer
          1. Two race riots in cities
          2. African american veterans are lynched for wearing their uniform in public
          3. Stops the idea in the photos
        8. Back to black militancy and end of nonviolence
          1. If we are going to die, lets fight back
            1. Claude mckay “if we must die”
          2. Ramping of an aggressive response
            1. The more conciliatory approach isn't really going to be the effective approach is an idea in this time
        9. 1919 increased in lynching
          1. African Americans are wanting their rights but whites are responding with violence
    3. The 20s
      1. Rebirth of the KKK
        1. To terrorize black southerners
        2. Simmons
          1. Lousy minister and fails
          2. Rebuilds KKK as a membership organization in 1915
            1. Major social movement
            2. About 50% of white americans agree with the platform called 1000% Americanism
        3. Very visible and ‘acceptable’
          1. People could produly and openly display their membership in the Klan
            1. The anxiety that the country was being overrun by immigrants, catholics, and POC
              1. Country needed to return to those who were Nortics
                1. Anglo Saxon in heritage
                2. ‘Only people who could claim to be American citizen’
      2. Vehement racism and antisemitism and also matched with migration of African-Americans out of the South
        1. The second great migration
          1. 6 million African-Americans moving north
            1. 1915-1917
          2. Moving because there’s no work
            1. North is industrializing
              1. Auto, steel, etc
          3. The unmet promises of the South
            1. About the failure of the reconstruction amendments
              1. “It was the first act of independence by people who were in bondage than longer than they have been freed”
        2. Is leaving the South an act of resistance?
          1. Yes, they aren’t helping the economy anymore
            1. Leaving all of the while people to fend for themselves
              1. Going back to Ida Wells
              2. If you want to end lynching, leave the South and hit them in the pocketbook
          2. You won’t have to deal with blatant racism each day
            1. North doesn’t have that type of violence
            2. North is more strategic whereas the South was all over the place
          3. A lot of African-Americans left the South thinking that it was going to be much better
            1. Urban neighborhoods that they can’t get out of
          4. Common trope about how good is the institution at helping those adapt
      3. African-American labor
        1. The foundational role that African-American labor played in capitalism
          1. The exploitation of black bodies is at the core of american capitalism and democracy
          2. How do we force the system to change?
            1. One way is to say we are not going to participate in the system
  2. Readings for today
    1. Scottsboro Case
      1. Showing the flaws of the judicial system
        1. A trial might be a lynching in a disguise (125).
        2. “The Scottsboro verdicts suggested that it was not simply lawlessness that jeopardized black safety
But lawfulness as well. The CP referred to the prosecution as the “persecution,” and to the Scottsboro trials as lynchings. The Scottsboro cases shook the ASWPL’s founder, Jessie Daniel Ames, and she began to confront what she called “the Prostitution of the Court” in these instances. The world's scrutinizing of the Scottsboro cases focused attention on the flaws in the southern judicial system rather than on the mythical flaws in southern black men.”(Gilmore 125).

      1. The communist party
        1. Picking up saying that there is no class system and no racism
          1. ‘Communism in the americanism of the 20th century’
        2. Take up the scottsboro case
          1. Shows the corruption of the american democracy for them
      2. NAACP
        1. Sits back and sees what the facts are before they dive in
        2. Quote in the page middle paragraph of 123 (important quote)
          1. They don’t want to responsible for the outcome
            1. If they win, the case will go away
            2. If they lose, everyone will think that the NAACP could have done so much better
          2. Painting walter white in a very bad light
        3. Illustrates that the communist party is more radical
        4. The moment when NAACP realizes that a legal strategy is the best strategy
        5. White and Houston
          1. Train lawyers to attack the segregation of African-Americans in legal cases
      3. Lynchings continue throughout in 1930s
        1. Increase in number due to economic competition blacks pose to whites
        2. Anti-lynching bills introduced to Congress
          1. Dyer bill (1922)
          2. Costigan-Wagner act(1935)
            1. Federal crime to fail to investigate lynching
            2. Us government couldn’t have done anything to punish those who participated but this bill would have helped police investigate
            3. Filibuster by the South to oppose this

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