Is anyone knowledgable about how prominent racism was in the early 1900s through 1960s?

[Levgreee]

I am interested because I was discussing the "typical white person" comment Obama made about his grandmother, and said that it was a reasonable statement because the good majority of people were racist, either outright or latent, during much of her life. Initially when I made the remark I thought she would've been born more around 1900, but I forgot about Obama's mom having had Obama so early, so the grandma was actually born in 1922.

Regardless, I think the statement still holds. I know segregation was still quite rampant, and that people alive at that time had lived in the era where black people had not even been able to vote, racist violence was largely accepted, and black people were openly mocked in movies and other media.

I googled, but I have not been able to find much analysis for the time period of approximately 1900-1960. Could anyone give some insight for that time period?
More specifically for African Americans, rather than racism against other groups...

[Beaverhausen]

1. Is this a joke?

You can't find anything on racism in early 20th century america?

[Levgreee]

5. I didn't say I couldn't find anything. But it is mostly the major events and broader things, rather

than analysis of everyday racism, how many people were racist, and so on.

Knowing about the attitudes of racist politicians, racist policies, and some of the events, does not necessarily give insight into the variety of attitudes that everyday people had.

[Xipe Totec]

2. You haven't been paying attention to the news, I gather...

Army apologizes for WWII convictions of black GIs

SEATTLE - The Army formally apologized Saturday for the wrongful conviction of 28 black soldiers accused of rioting and lynching an Italian prisoner of war in Seattle more than six decades ago.

"We had not done right by these soldiers," Ronald James, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, said Saturday. "The Army is genuinely sorry. I am genuinely sorry."

Relatives of the soldiers joined elected officials, military officers and one of the defense lawyers to hear James give the apology before hundreds of people in a meadow near the old Fort Lawton parade grounds and chapel in Discovery Park.

In addition, the soldiers' convictions were set aside, their dishonorable discharges were changed to honorable discharges and they and their survivors were awarded back pay for their time in the brig.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080727/ap_on_re_us/wwii_convictions

[no_hypocrisy]

3. It depended where you lived.

Down South, racism was a philosophy, a way of life, a societal order, a caste system. Every one knew who they were, with whom they could associate, and where they could live. You couldn't go anywhere without acknowledging racism. In the Amherst County Administrative Building in Virginia, they didn't get rid of the "Colored" set of restroom doors until about 13 years ago.

If you want to do some reading on racism in the South during the Twenties and Thirties, read up on the arrest and trial of the Scottsboro Boys. That should explain a few things.

In other parts of the country during that era, there were barriers that weren't as obvious. In some deeds, for example, there were provisions that forbid owners from selling their property to "coloreds", "Hebrews", etc. You had racism in cities where blacks migrated from the South, such as Newark, Paterson in New Jersey. The threat of devaluation of real estate as they moved in was a big thing back then.

[Radical Activist]

26. Segregation wasn't just in the South.

You seem to imply that. My mother remembers restaurants that wouldn't serve black people except at the back window, and segregated theaters etc. That was in the 50's in the north. The Supreme Court case that legalized segregation was upholding it for public transportation in New York City.

[no_hypocrisy]

31. Agreed. The Supreme Court even had two different standards of segregation:

de jure (legislated by some government body or agency), and
de facto (independent pattern of segregation, such as segregated neighborhoods by unaffordable property)

[Maddy McCall]

4. You are asking for an analysis of something VERY complex.

In a nutshell, after emancipation, poor whites and poor blacks were in competition for jobs. Elites were afraid of them uniting, which would have been a formidable political alliance that would have replaced elite southerners in important political positions with poor people who would look out for their own interests instead of securing the interests of the wealthy.

So the elites turned to racebaiting to foment a division between poor blacks and poor whites. Poor whites were manipulated by racist rhetoric (look up Theodore Bilbo--he was a master of this) to hate their black neighbors.

By doing so, blacks and whites were kept from forming political alliances. Indeed, if you want to see how well this worked, look at the Populist Movement--the most promising truly little-d democratic movement in the history of the United States. Besides silver advocacy, the main thing that killed this movement was racial antagonisms which were planted by wealthy whites.

If you know this much about the planting of the racist seed, then the rest of the story, through 1960, is easier to understand.

[valerief]

6. It was real in every part of the country. Segregation was a way of life.

The N word (I hate to sissify it but I don't want to get censored) was tossed around freely. Catholics didn't live near Protestants and neither of those lived near Jews. It was ridiculous, truly ridiculous, and still is.

[BlooInBloo]

7. HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

[BlooInBloo]

8. It's especially funny because obviously it all ended in the 60s....

BWAHAHAHA!!!!!!

[Levgreee]

10. wow. I was not making that inference whatsoever, and I don't know how you got it

from my post. I guess you are trying especially hard to be demeaning.

Since you are the expert, explain the variety of attitudes when it came to every day racism. What percent of people would you say were outright racist?

[TexasObserver]

A typical OLDER white person usually carries some seriously embedded racism.

There is a divide in America for white people. It's about 1965. White people who graduated high school before 1965 tend to have seriously embedded racism toward blacks. They went to schools that were segregated, in a world before a Civil Rights Act, through their first 18 years.

After that year, you tend to seen white people who are less than way. It's not just race. It's notions about marriage, living together, divorce, having kids out of wedlock, homosexuality, drug usage, and being anti war that also see the mid 1960s as a dividing point.

Of course, this is not something that applies to all white people, but the reality is that the typical white person in this country over 60 is racist and homophobic, at a most fundamental, ingrained level. That's why they didn't vote for Obama in the primary, and it is why they won't vote for him in the general election.

Those raised in those racist times (and I am one) either went 180 degrees out of that typical white person from the 1950s and 1960s, or they accepted it. Many of us rejected that racism, but we are still in the minority of white people growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. The vast majority of such white people are so racist they could never vote for any black man for president. EVER.

[Thothmes]

14. Your proof for these assertions is?

or are they figments of your imagination.

[TexasObserver]

18. I've watched it happen.

No, they're not figments of my imagination.

Are you always such an annoying person?

This is a message board, not a court of law. I don't need to tender proof of my assertions. If you don't want to believe, I don't care. Put me on ignore. I can promise you that your opinion does not matter to me.

[Thothmes]

32. self deleted

[TexasObserver]

25. Please see posts # 3, 4, 6, 11, 12, 15, 20, 21, 23 in this thread for more edification.

Thanks. That'd be great.

[LostinVA]

9. Racism was institutionalized but not everyone was racist

My grandmother was born in 1922, in a very racist area to a very racist family. She isn't, and doesn't allow racist talk in her house. There are many people like her and many people not like her.

And, as someone else said, it depends on what area of the country, what type of background, etc. It's very complex.

Sexism, homophobia, etc. were also much worse than today and also institutionalized (I include legal institutions in this).

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. In the 1920s, about 1 in 6 Americans were klan members.

In 1968, 72% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage.

Oh, and when Obama was discussing his grandmother, he wasn't talking about her racism.

[Kutjara]

12. My mother was born in 1915 and my father in 1921.

They were lifelong racists of the "genteel" sort. What I mean by this is that racism was such an integral part of their makeup that, for them, believing a black person was dishonest or lazy was the equivalent of believing the sky was blue. It was an immutable fact of existence. My mother's top lip would unconsciously curl with disgust whenever a black person appeared on TV who wasn't a criminal. If that person's character dominated the scene in any way (particularly at the expense of white people), she'd nod knowingly and say something like, "they always have to put themselves out front, don't they?"

Interestingly, they never to my knowledge used the "N-word," never went into long diatribes about "the blacks," never joined a far-right organization. But racism was such a central component of them that they didn't have to overtly express it. They would no sooner have given a black person an even break as reach up and pluck their own eyes out.

I remember when my father, who was Church of England, was dying. My mother, a staunch Catholic, wanted him to be converted to Catholicism before he died ("so he won't go to Hell"). She dragged the poor parish priest to my comatose father's bedside and directed that he should be baptized. The priest said that, normally, the baptizee has to be conscious and give his consent, but, given the circumstances, he would perform the ceremony and my father could "give his consent to St. Peter." It was a touching way for the priest to grant an old lady's wish, while staying within the rules. When the lovely little ceremony was finished, my mother thanked him in the nauseatingly saccharine tones she reserved especially for members of the clergy, to which the priest responded, "regardless of our faith, we are all children of God." My mother was taken aback by this for a moment, then she "clarified" his statement by saying, "Yes, Father. Except the blacks, of course." The priest quickly corrected her: "No, my child. We are all God's children." She ignored this and saw the priest to the door. After he left, she turned to me and said, "of all the priests in the world, I had to get one of those." What "one of those" meant required no explanation. The only thing worse in my parents' hierarchy of humanity than a "black" was a person who "loves blacks."

You might think my parents were ignorant backwoods folk who knew no better. In fact, my fater had a PhD in Nuclear Engineering, had worked and lectured all over the world (as a result of which, I grew up in about 70 countries), and was as well-read a person as you're likely to find anywhere. My mother was somewhat less well-educated, but had similarly lived in a wide variety of countries and been exposed to many people of different races and cultures. None of their experiences penetrated their essential racism, however. It was in the blood.

What's worse, all their friends were the same, to the extent that every afternoon tea party or game of golf could take on the aspect of a Klan rally at the drop of a hat.

[OHdem10]

13. Total Segregation, Lynchings, racism more open and in plain

view.

[SteveM]

23. Lynching, removed from a political context, ended by the 60s...

There were a number of murders of civil rights activists, bombings, beatings and such. But the strategic power of the Ku Klux Klan was waning by the 1930s, and the last true "race riot" may have been in Jacksonville in 1960, "race riot" being defined as one race invading and committing a pogrom on another race. Armed reaction by blacks may have been a factor in this.

I remember in Miami Beach during the late 1950s there was little evidence of de jure segregation of public accommodations. This may have been due to the strength of the Jewish community there.

LeRoy Collins, governor of Florida during the latter 50s, spoke out against segregation and he and other Florida governors began withdrawing from the "Southern Governors' Conference" during this time as this outfit was often a platform for George Wallace and other ranting "segs."

Another note: according to my Dad, the president of the University of Alabama during Wallace's "school house door stand" (1963?) was in favor of letting the university be integrated. He authority was usurped by George C. Wallace who had a pathological fear of the Klan.

[boomerbust]

15. It was rampant in the 60's

Just from the language that was seen as accetable. I remember sitting around with my Dad and Uncles listening to WW2 stories and the lingo that was used wasn't pretty.

[darius15]

16. Lots and lots

mainly in the South. This was the time that the KKK was very popular

during the 1920's and 1930's 38% of white males who lived in the Confederacy states (now known as the South) were in the KKK.

[jobycom]

17. What do you mean by prominent?

It was assumed that white people were superior to black people. Science backed this up, with the concept of the dominance of the white race. Woodrow Wilson praised the film "Birth of a Nation" about the KKK, and helped to encourage the re-emergence of the KKK. A couple of presidents were supposedly KKK members. There was a rumor that's never been completely confirmed nor denied that Warren G Harding was sworn into the KKK on the White House lawn.

In the early 1900s, President Roosevelt dined with a black man in the White House. It caused a national outrage. One paper said it was worse than dining with a dog, then the next day ran a retraction, claiming that they had not meant any insults to dogs. Roosevelt once court martialed an entire troop of black soldiers over a crime he knew they did not commit, and ordered the proof classified for 100 years. The documents were opened about twenty years ago, and a public apology issued.

The town of Tulsa once had a three day race riot, where whites in town burned, slaughtered, and terrified the black part of town. At one point a plane was used to drop explosives on the black part of town. This was almost completely covered up by the media until historians decades later dug the story back up.

Lynchings were common. A black man would be accused of a crime, anything from cheating at cards to murder--although it frequently involved him looking at a white woman wrong. The normal course of a lynching was that the whites in town would publicize the event, sometimes printing fliers and selling tickets. After the lynchings people would pose with the body, including children and local law enforcement. When state investigators would question people, no one would identify anyone in the pictures. Eventually enough pressure was put on state governments by the federal government that the states would fire or even arrest law enforcement who took part, so the pictures began showing law enforcement at lynchings with their hands loosely tied in front of them, while they smiled and posed. That way they could claim they were captured and forced to watch. They could never identify any of the culprits, though.

This was most common in the South, but not exclusive to it. The North was segregated, too, and the segregation strictly enforced by law and custom. A black man who was in the wrong part of town after dark would be lucky to be arrested only--it might mean he would survive. The fear was very real. One story that stuck in my mind was of a group of kids caught in the white part of town as the sun was setting. A group of older white boys threw rocks at them until they jumped into a river or canal to get away. The boys continued to throw rocks until each of the kids had drowned. There was no real punishment for this. I think that was Chicago, or Cincinnati, maybe.

The federal government had no jurisdiction, aside from the often ignored Civil Rights Act of 1866, which didn't really apply. Congress continually tried to pass legislation making lynchings or racial murders a federal crime, since state and local governments wouldn't prosecute. But southern states, and some northern Congresscritters, blocked the legislation every time.

Schools and colleges were under the "Separate but Equal" doctrine, meaning schools could be segregated as long as a black school was provided. These black schools were underfunded, understaffed, and frequently turned out graduates without even a rudimentary education, which meant that even if a black person could find a white employer willing to hire him or her, the lack of education meant they weren't qualified. Universities also segregated. When a court order forced the University of Texas to admit black students--one of the first steps of the carefully planned strategy of the NAACP to overturn "Separate but Equal" (the law of the land since the SCOTUS decisions in the Civil Rights Cases and Plessy vs Ferguson)--UT allowed one black student into classes, but required him to sit in a separate section of the classroom, literally roped off from the rest of the class.

One of my history professors discovered that during that period in the black communities--which were completely segregated, so that black parts of town had completely different businesses than white parts of town--the richest businesspeople where usually bar owners and cabinet makers. It took him a long time to realize why cabinet makers were so often so wealthy, until he realized that they made coffins as well as cabinets.

A black man could become successful in his community, and even wealthy by white standards. There were entrepeneurs who owned several businesses, and as long as they paid their bribes to the white authorities and kept to their part of town, they were fine, usually. Even so, a rich black man scared some white people, and some of them were known to just disappear. There was an old saying that there was northern racism and southern racism: southern racists didn't care how close a black man got, as long as he didn't get rich, and northern racists didn't care how rich a black man got, as long as he didn't get close.

Aside from financial success, there were other areas of success. Sports, jazz, poetry, art... There was always a layer of successful African Americans, who while never allowed to get too close to white society, were sometimes admired and towards the end of that period emulated by white society. Some have said that every significant cultural achievement in America began in the black communities and was taken over by whites.

Life was life. Not everyone was filled with hate. Not everyone liked the way things were. Not every black person lived in a shack on the outskirts of a small town. The bigger the city, the more the intermingling. But the constant oppression and even slaughter was a reminder to all African Americans to not get comfortable, to not turn their backs, to not get uppity. That was a big word, in fact. Uppity. That was the reason for most lynchings. That's why kids were stoned to death. That's why a black man couldn't look at a white woman or talk to her or make her laugh. It meant he thought he was as good as white folk. He could get very wealthy, even famous. But he couldn't get uppity. He had to know his place.

Of course your fifty year period is not steady. Lynchings had died down by 1950. Federal legislation and the FBI helped--though not completely, and not without a price. Changes were happening by 1950, and continued through 50s and 60s, though battles were hard fought and often costly. Heroes like Medgar Evers, who refused to bow, who got uppity, wound up dead, but at least by that time, people were noticing, and some white people even cared.

That's the short answer.

[Bullet1987]

22. GREAT post Jobycom!!

[Eyes_wide_ open]

24. I'll second that

Well done *thumbsup*

[Catherine Vincent]

30. Excellent bit of history! Thanks!

Interesting how the black guy couldn't even look at a white woman and now that's all you see together.

[annabanana]

33. Thank you. It is astounding to this old girl that so few young people

seems to have any idea about "the way we were".. And then I realize that no one is telling them. The pervasive ugliness is edited out of the history books and it is rarely addressed with any accuracy in the media.

I realized this about the pervasive condition of women, and all the unstated but universally recognized prejudices when I started watching the series Mad Men...

[jobycom]

41. I always hear comments like "Black people should just get over slavery"

from people who think that after slavery there were no more race problems. These things aren't taught in school, but school boards are notoriously conservative and religious, and don't want to teach anything that undermines the idea of American progress on all issues. What happened to Native Americans is another example of this--Americans are clueless, aside from a few ideas that some American policies were bad.

In one course I took on American history, the professor went into horrific detail on the Holocaust. There was a German man in the class who was always rather quiet, but during this lesson he sat with his hands over his head. There was a woman who was always making traditional conservative pro-America comments, usually getting on everyone's nerves, and she asked the professor how the German people could have let it happen, whether there was something evil about them. "That could never happen in America," she said, word for word. The German student barely raised his head, and said, very softly, "What about the Indians?" Half the class applauded him, but this woman honestly had no idea what he was talking about. The professor spent the next ten minutes or so talking about what had happened to the Indians, pointing out that Hitler had even mentioned the American "solution" to the Native American "problem" as part of his inspiration. At the end, the woman accused the professor of hating America.

People don't know these things because white politicians don't want them to. The notorious Texas textbook commision rejected a history book that went into detail on the Native American genocide and on race relations in America, saying "the purpose of history courses is to make Americans feel good about their country." They left off the implied "not to tell the truth about their country."

Even so, the stories and evidence are out there. Americans choose not to see it, learn it, or remember it when they do learn it.

[Marrah_G]

35. Wow, thank you- I wish I could recommend such a terrific post.

[Arkansas Granny]

37. You've summed it up pretty well. Racism just was and very few people questioned it.

As you mentioned, science had "proven" that whites were superior to blacks and there were several biblical quotes that could be chosen that showed that it was "God's will" that the races should stay separate and that blacks should be subservient to whites.

I was fortunate in that my parents were a little more enlightened than many people during that era and I wasn't exposed to as much of the prevailing attitude as many that I grew up with. Even so, it was impossible to avoid altogether because it was so pervasive, even in our little rural community that had a 100% white population. Most of the racist attitude was based on fear and ignorance.

[AngryAmish]

39. Where did you get that story about Roosevelt?

I nevber heard that.

[jobycom]

40. Which story? There were two.

I got both from an African-American history course I graded for, at Texas.

Here's a summary of the Brownsville soldiers, though it doesn't go into much detail. It's often called the "Brownsville Affair."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsville_Affair


The man Roosevelt dined with was Booker T Washington. I thought it was, but I typed the other post from memory and wasn't sure, so I left out his name. Here's the first entry I found Googling for it. It doesn't mention the "dog" comment.

* On October 16, 1901, Booker T. Washington entered the White House to talk with President Theodore Roosevelt. A month earlier, on the day William McKinley succumbed to an assassin's bullet and Roosevelt became chief executive, Roosevelt had sent a note to Tuskegee imploring, "When are you coming north? I must see you as soon as possible."

Routinely, whenever the two men communicated, they canvassed different federal appointments, and pondered a Southern strategy for the Republican Party. Washington would propose candidates for jobs -- moderate whites or Bookerite blacks -- and explain the tricky and tortuous race politics in the Black Belt, while Roosevelt weighed the moral claims and political consequences of each federal action. This time, though, Roosevelt added a social element, leading Washington into the White House dining room where his wife, daughter, and three sons awaited.

Southerners were outraged. The headline in the Atlanta Constitution blasted, "President Roosevelt Proposes to Coddle Descendants of Ham." When Roosevelt accepted the "learned negro" at his table, the Chattanooga Times grumbled, he "went out of his way to offend the American idea of propriety and social distinction." The New Orleans Times-Democrat complained that Roosevelt had acted as if "the negro is the social equal of the white man," and the Richmond Dispatch declared, "We do not like Mr. Roosevelt's negrophilism at all." Republican Senator Foraker of Ohio cited the Washington dinner and called Roosevelt a man "of whom we may all be proud," but Ben Tillman, future senator for South Carolina, thundered, "Social equality means decadence and damnation." Alabama leaders thought Washington "had better sense than to share a meal with the president's wife and daughter," and one Southern congressman grumbled, "I confess, Booker Washington is a smart 'nigger' and way above the average, but at the same time he is a 'nigger' just the same."

http://www.skidmore.edu/~mstokes/227/BTW.html

[TahitiNut]

42. Very good post. One thing needs more emphasis: How racism was "enforced."

Given that blacks had almost no political power (due to a variety of disenfranchisement techniques), any white advocacy was quelled by social ostracism. The only thing "worse than a n_____ was a n_____-lover." Any white seen treating blacks as equals or advocating equal treatment would be quickly and unequivocally 'disciplined.' That might include loss of employment, brutalizing their children, excommunication (barred from social clubs), and bricks through the windows at night. Indeed, "night riders" were a relatively common thing in both the north and the south. Growing up, such nighttime 'terrorism' was common enough that I was never surprised to hear of it.

Born in 1943, I grew up on the cusp of change and saw it up close and personal. Once my parents finally split, my father moved to Mobile, Alabama, where his half-sister lived in the mid-1950's and started a 'new' family. My half-sister is 100% 'southern.' As a kid growing up in a blue collar working class family, I saw racism almost daily, including the Jim Crow south and the red-lined (ghettoized) north. My favorite privately-owned public swimming pool was Crystal Pool on the northeast corner of Greenfield and Eight Mile Road. Eight Mile Road was the 'boundary' between black and white, Wayne County and Oakland County, affluent and poor. No blacks were permitted to swim in Crystal Pool. Verboten. When, however, we dressed up for Easter Sunday (or other special occasions) I was taken by my stepfather for a shoeshine ... on the south side of Eight Mile Road. It was regarded as 'genteel' for a white boy to have his shoes shined by a black man. Lawn jockeys were common in affluent white neighborhoods. I recall when my father was digging up the yard to install a sprinkler system, he called it "n______-work" as he sweated in the sun and got tanned. The constant, almost daily references was like air pollution.

When the U.S. Coast Guard Academy marched in John F. Kennedy's inaugural parade in 1961, he asked the Commandant of the Coast Guard, who was standing nearby, why there weren't any black cadets. True. No black had ever been admitted to the USCGA ... until 1962. The reaction of the Coast Guard to his query was immediate. But THAT'S how pervasive racism was ... like the air we breathed.


One more thing deserves mention. These days we're most likely to hear from others about how "my parents were different" and how so many people in the 'Greatest Generation' weren't racists. Well, that's really revisionism. What passed for 'enlightened' in those days would be regarded today as rampant bigotry. The most common 'enlightened' attitude I encountered was akin to ASPCA ... don't be cruel to the 'animals.' I lived in MANY neighborhoods growing up - and didn't EVER go to the same grade school for more than 2 years. So, I had more than the average exposure to people in Michigan, Alabama, and California in just my grade school years. Then as now, the kids know more about what was happening in the neighborhood than the adults. I would guess that I never knew about more than 1-in-20 adults that openly advocated civil rights. Even that might be generous. At the same time, I'd guess about twice as many would actively participate in "night rides" or venom spewing activism against blacks. It was like the air we breathed.

[jobycom]

48. Excellent post of your own.

I grew up in Gulfport, MS, not far from Mobile, in the 70s, and that assumption of inferiority wasn't gone. It was more hidden, and there were more people who spoke out. The classic line was from the Lynard Skynard song Sweet Home Alabama: "Now we all did what we could do." On the other hand, the KKK still collected donations on street corners, like the fire departments do now. I remember a friend of mine trying to run one over, and getting applause from nearby cars. Heck, that was the 80s.

Things have changed so dramatically, but how far we've come sometimes masks how far we have to go.

[Love Bug]

49. You make some excellent points, TahitiNut

My parents were part of the Greatest Generation too, and although groups like the Klan were abhorrent to them, they still had some attitudes that were racist (although they would deny that). My mother would never allow use of the n-word but she believed all Black men were good singers and dancers. Stuff like that. Maybe that's a kind of benign racism (if there is such a thing) but it's racism all the same.

[valerief]

19. You know how the oil/auto industry got people to buy SUVs they didn't

need and didn't know they wanted until they were told they did? That's how racism was sold. The type of people who bought SUVs were the same type of people who bought racism. There were a lot of them.

[SteveM]

20. I will treat your question seriously, and thanks for asking...

I was born in Pasco County, Florida in the 40s. Pasco County (just north of Tampa) was a major KKK center. My folks are old Crackers, moving to frontier Florida before the Civil War; they farmed and raised livestock. My great-Grandmother was about half American Indian.

My grand-mother (b. 1873), held racist views and would from time-to-time express them when integration was coming about in the early 1960s, esp. when inter-racial dance acts appeared on "Hullabaloo" and other T.V. shows of that type. But she knew times were changing and stood aside. A beloved uncle occasionally expressed racist views, but said that was the way he was brought up and said no more; he too knew things were changing.

An incident, related to me by my Grandmother and my Mother, since they both experienced it at the same time: when the family went to a rural "tent revival" at night in a rural area during the Depression to watch and clap with the "holy rollers," the KKK marched in, silencing the crowd. After arraying themselves before everyone, they railed against blacks, Jews, and notably Catholics (part of an anti-Papist movement in Florida during that time). Then they left up the aisle where my Grandfather was seated. Every now and then one of the completely hooded Klansmen reached out and touched him on the shoulder. That's terrorism.

My mother called us down when as children we unwittingly recited racist lyrics and slogans, and we stopped. It's a lot better, now, due in measure to a lot of hard work by a lot of whites raising their kids differently.

[TrogL]

21. I was there

Racism was Standard Operating Procedure even in the 60's. That's what the whole Black Power revolution was all about.

I saw the race riots live on TV (I lived across the Niagara River so I got US television).

[Radical Activist]

27. People scoffing who were alive then should take this seriously.

You can't take it for granted that things are passed along to the next generation. Schools might talk about segregation, Brown v. Board of Education, and MLK. But Americans don't like to own up to their mistakes, so you can't expect anyone to learn about this in the school system or on TV. Basic history classes aren't very good at showing what daily life was like for people. If you don't tell young people exactly what it was like then don't expect them to somehow know by osmosis.

[annabanana]

34. (very very good point). . . .n/t

[redstate_democrat]

28. Emmett Till

He was a 14 year old boy visiting his relatives in Mississippi one summer. After a day of work, he and his cousins went to a candy store that catered to the sharecroppers in the area. Emmett supposedly whistled at the white woman who ran the store. She said he said some "unprintable" words to her, but Emmett had a stuttering problem, a condition left over from when he once had polio. The white woman spread the rumor around that a black boy from up north had grabbed her arm and asked her on a date. (Now, does that EVEN sound plausible for 1955?). A few days had passed and the whole county had gotten whipped up in a frenzy about it. The woman's husband returned from off the road and she told him the outlandish story.

The husband and his half brother went to Emmett Till's relatives house, where he was staying, and dragged him out of the house. The wife identified Emmett as the boy who had dared speak to her and they then threw him in the car and took him off to a shed. At the shed on an old plantation, they severely beat him and shot him. Then they tied a fan around his neck with barbed wire and threw him in the river.

The all-white jury, made up of 12 males, acquitted both defendants. Deliberations took just 67 minutes; one juror said, "If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long."

The fact that they didn't go to jail, was not an uncommon occurrence. Violence against blacks at the hands of white people was not seen as something punishable by a court of law. The fact the jury was all white was not uncommon either. Justice was not blind when it came to blacks. And it still isn't.

That is just one story.

[WinkyDink]

29. Books may be more helpful than Google.

[SwampG8r]

36. as a child in tennessee

i saw it all
klan rallies held in downtown parks
segregated water fountains and restaurants
movie theatre balconies for colored only
harrassment of blacks for walking main street

it was not a pretty time
my grandmother said that to hold down the "coloreds"(1963 speak)socially that white folks allowed themselves to be held down spiritually

[old mark]

38. It was institutional.

Segregation by race was the law in many states.
Truman officially integrated the US military in the late 1940's, to much pissing and moaning.

Where have you been that you have not heard of this stuff?

mark

[H2O Man]

43. I would suggest

reading any number of good books on the subject. It isn't a topic that one can master by reading a few things off the internet.

A couple recommendations: Taylor Branch wrote a series about America in the King years. They are easy to read, and will hold your interest.

[polichick]

44. I think you've misread what he meant by "typical white person"...

imo he meant that she was a good person who was raised with certain fears ~ not that most white people were racist.

We have a long way to go ~ yesterday a car pulled up beside me, only a few inches away in a no-passing zone (putting us both in danger of a wreck) ~ so that the passenger could hold up a handwritten sign that read: "Nigger Lover," in response to my Obama bumper stickers.

[On the Road]

45. A Good Source for This Kind of Information is

James Loewen, author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me." Here's his homepage:

http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/

Apparently he has a new book on "sundown towns." As a sociologist, he is good at giving a feel for the spirit of the times and digging up enlightening incidents.

[treestar]

46. The school busing issue

might be a area to look into.

In the 60s, in some areas, like mine, the schools were not officially segregated, but the school district lines were drawn very cleverly so as to in the end, really segregate the schools effectively. In my school, we had one black family, because they had managed to buy real estate in the "white" area. The school would tolerate that for the sake of pretending that the school districts were physically drawn up by neighborhood and nothing else.

In the 70s, we often debated busing in high school - teachers could let us discuss those sorts of things in classrooms back then. My class graduated just before a court order took effect implementing a plan for desegregation in public schools. Catholic schools saw much greater demand, from white parents (private schools were immune, of course).

In our area, the busing seemed to have worked to the extent the younger kids grew up with each other and were more accepting. One area where is seemed to be a mistake was trying integration at the high school level - at that age, they just got more hostile to each other. But those classes graduated quickly.

Around the early 90s the courts deemed the schools to be integrated, and lifted the busing order. It does seem to have worked, and the schools are no longer geography bound completely, and the residential patterns are no longer so strict that the students always end up in segregated areas/schools.

[izzybeans]

47. watch or read A Raisin in the Sun and then visit it the African-American Holocaust museum on the

internet. You'll see the two ends of the spectrum when it comes to "the typical white person" and their impact on real human beings.