Random Civil Rights Moments: James Leonard Farmer Jr.

James Leonard Farmer Jr. was born on January 12th, 1920 in Marshall Texas. He was a damn good student in school and became the first Black to get a doctorate in his state, and was even a college freshman at 14 years old. He earned a divinity degree (didn't know that was a thing) from Howard University, choosing to follow his fathers path. He began to learn about Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings regarding non-violence. 

Eventually Farmer ended up living in Chicago and become a TV screenwriter and writing for a magazine. In 1942 he and some other similar thinking people did a sit-in at a segregated restaurant. They ended up creating the Committee of Racial Equality (CORE) which then became the Congress Of Racial Equality which at the start consisted mostly of Northern Whites. Farmer then began working on the Freedom Rides which were trying to stop segregation while traveling on interstates. The first ride they made in May of 1961 ended with the bus being firebombed after it reached Alabama because 1960's. Members of the group were also beaten and attacked and thanks to television the nation was able to see this. The Interstate Commerce Commission, enforced by Robert Kennedy, an attorney general, made it so that segregation was no longer allowed on public transportation in the South. Farmer resigned after a few years and deaths of his colleagues. He began teaching at Lincoln University, ran for Congress, and eventually worked for the Richard Nixon administration but left that.

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Random Civil Rights Moments: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois also known as W.E.B Du Bois was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was identified as mixed and grew up attending schools with White students in a mostly White town. By 1885 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee and was like “Oh. Black people have it rough.” Jim Crow Laws were in full effect and he was getting his first taste of it. After getting a bachelor degree he went to Harvard. After getting his master's degree he headed to Germany and while speaking with social scientists he learned different ways of looking at the world. 

By 1895 he became the first Black to earn a Ph. D. from Harvard. In 1899 he published The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study that examined what he called “the talented tenth” which was a term regarding one in ten Black men becoming leaders of their race. While working at Atlanta University he opposed Booker T. Washington and his Atlanta Compromise. This got him a lot of attention as he felt that Blacks should be granted equality based on the 14th Amendment. He began fighting for the rights of women and the idea of White superiority and in 1909 he co-founded the NAACP. 

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Random Civil Rights Moments: Jim Crow Laws

In my last post I mentioned the Jim Crow Laws. Now I never really quite learned what these were about in school so I decided to give a jackass version of it that hopefully I'll understand as well as you.In 1892 the phrase Jim Crow was attributed to the song and dance character “Jump Jim Crow.” In it a White actor by the name of Thomas D. Rice wore blackface and performed as well as a comic strip making fun of Andrew Jackson's views. These laws were used to enforce segregation in the South. During the Reconstruction period these laws started and kept on going until the mid 1960's. That's fucking nuts. In 1890 a separate but equal status was given to Blacks. This meant that schooling, housing, banking, and anything else that was given to Whites were scarce or unavailable for Blacks by law. Even though Blacks were being put into public offices more laws were being made to slow this down or flat out stop it.

All public transportation, schools, and public places were segregated. This is the whole Blacks in the back of the bus stuff. The all Black schools if any. Whites only water fountains. During the mid 1950's these laws were considered unconstitutional but that didn't stop Blacks from being attacked or killed if they tried to act as if they were equal. The rest of the Jim Crow laws were changed by the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Still, that did not stop attacks and discrimination though committees were started to track the amount of Blacks that turned out to vote to ensure that they were not being kept away. There are some saying that the new anti-drug laws being used in the U.S are the new Jim Crow Laws as they specifically target Black men.

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Random Civil Rights Moments: Ella Jo Baker

One thing I am noticing while looking through civil rights people for these posts is that there were a lot of women involved. This one is about Ella Jo Baker. She was born on December 13th 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia. Hearing stories about her grandmother that was a slave inspired her to fight for justice. While studying at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina she fought against unfair school policies. She graduated as a valedictorian and continued fighting not just for Black rights but rights for women as well by joining Young Negroes Cooperative League. This was a battle that women like her had that sucked because she was dealing with two strong social issues at once. 

By 1940 she was involved with the NAACP as a field secretary and then as a director of branches for a few years. In 1955 she co-founded In Friendship which was an organization to fight Jim Crow Laws (I'll have to do a whole 'nother post about those). There is a quote of her that I really like and think people can take a lot from today. “You didn't see me on television, you didn't see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.”

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Random Civil Rights Moments: Claudette Colvin

For the past few years for Black History month I have done posts like Famous Black Firsts as well as Cool Shit Black People Invented. This year I decided to look into some people and moments in civil rights history. Not sure of a title yet but by the time I finish this I'll have come up with something. Hopefully. This post is going to be about Claudette Colvin. I didn't know that this girl existed until watching an episode of Drunk History. Sows how well they were teaching this stuff in school. 

Claudette was 15 years old on March 2nd, 1955 when while riding the bus in Montgomery, Alabama she refused to leave her seat. Again. 1955. Doing something like that back then was extremely dangerous especially if you were some 15 year old Black girl in Alabama. In school she was learning about Black leaders and felt all kinds of inspired. Today kids learn about Drake and get inspired to...I don't know. Go to Canada?

Claudette was arrested and put in jail. She and a few other women had done this at the time but all we know about is Rosa Parks and her refusal to leave her seat when asked. Why? Politics, man! The NAACP, whom Parks was a secretary for at the time, thought that Parks would be a better representative for the fight against these laws. So there you have this 15 year old girl doing something because she felt she was fighting the good fight and getting hardly any recognition and then you have a 42 year old woman who is married to a member and working for this huge organization that planned out the whole thing. Didn't help she was pregnant by a married man at the time. She once said “Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all.”