The times they are enragin

I started writing this on Oct 19 2020 and I couldn't help but think

we have so many fires in the world and a shortage of buckets!

So I'm going to look at a few of the issues which I think are important to North Americans specifically and the world in general. It'll be over a half dozen posts and this one has been very educational and that is what I aim to do educate myself. 

LOL

Today I'll focus on the history of racial violence in the USA and why? Because I started to look at this subject starting with the Watts riot of 1965 and just kept going back and my lack of knowledge embarrassed me. 

As a white Canadian boy the history of the black population to the south was not in my frame of reference. The only thing I knew about black history was that the civil war freed the slaves and the modern condition of the Afro-American was shown to me through sit coms like The Jefferson's. I had no reason to explore the inequities of blacks in America because from what I saw the Black population was "Movin on up"! 

Modern KKK

BTW the last documented lynching by the KKK was in 1981 while the Jefferson's were on the air. 

Low class white

Now the social problems to the south are not exclusively about race and these problems exist in other places, remember I'm Canadian we have race issues here too but today I am making a  condensed history of racial violence in the USA.

We won't bother with the first hundred years of out right slavery, skip the civil war and start in... 

1908 in Lincoln's home state of Illinois and the Springfield riot. 

It all started because two black men were accused of raping a white woman  and a mob of white folk wanted to lynch them so the sheriff moved the accused to a jail in another  jurisdiction.

#2 Springfield 1908

This made the crowd go wild, their numbers grew to an estimated 5000 and the partially armed mob descended on the black neighborhood of about 3000 destroying homes and businesses and satisfying their bloodlust along the way.

The Mayor called in the state Militia to restore order. A day later they arrived and when it was all over there were a total of 16 reported dead.

8 black men, one black child and 7 white guys, 2 of whom committed suicide, a couple that were killed by their own mob and a couple taken out by the Militia. The two accused men went to trial one was hanged and one acquitted. 

2000 black citizens were made homeless by the riot and it  became a part of the white propaganda saying the white men who died over those two days were killed by black men.

The riot was not just about the two accused men it happened because of virulent racism. the fear of having large numbers of black people "invade" their towns which leads to segregation and dehumanization which in turn creates social inequality which makes it easier for the white supremacists agenda to be fed to followers and that leads to indiscriminant mob violence whenever the supremacy is being challenged.  Such is the case with the twisted history of boxer and the first black man to hold the World heavyweight title Jack Johnson.  

Jack Johnson

1908 and Johnson does the unthinkable, he takes the heavyweight title from Tommy Burns a Canadian but a White man! You see at the time the boxing federation would not invite a black boxer to enter the championship no matter how good he was it was a "White only" title. Now Jack the "Galveston Giant" was a hella boxer but never could go for the heavy weight title unless a title holder challenged him to a fight. Tommy Burns challenged Jack to a fight in Australia and lost the title to get the details click on this link. The white population was protesting calling Johnson's win a mistake, a travesty,  something that needed a remedy.

James Jefferies

It took two years to find a remedy for the "Black Giant"! 1910 and former heavyweight champ James Jefferies comes out of retirement  to take the belt off  Johnson and put it where it belonged around a white mans waist! 

The fight went 15 rounds and ended in Johnson's favor. It's important to note that a film had been produced of the "Great White Hope" losing. 

As the black population celebrated Johnsons win the whites decided to take revenge for Jefferies loss.  Race riots broke out all over the country leading the President and amateur boxer, Teddy Roosevelt  to ban showing the film so the white population would calm the fuck down! 

Jack Johnson was a racial trailblazer in and out of the ring but the white population weren't buying it. Many believed if a black was successful it was because of a criminal act or some form of larceny or trickery.

Johnson Jeffries fight

Johnson's victory added to the feeling that some white folk had of losing ground. The Republican Roosevelt and Socialist Eugene Debs were too sympathetic to the blacks and it seemed impossible to dislodge the Republicans in the south so it was in 1915 that KKK2.0 was created 

Teddy Roosevelt

There were chapters everywhere and splinter groups like the red shirts formed but no major racial violence had occurred since 1910.  That's probably because the focus of the new KKK was the rise of Socialism and immorality so the working class started to take it on the chin but it would only be a matter of time.

1919  and the biggest difference between 1919 and 1908 would be who was leading the country. In 1908  it was Teddy Roosevelt a Republican and a supporter of civil liberty. In 1919 it was Woodrow Wilson a Democrat who supported segregation and also , no surprise, supported white supremacists within his own cabinet.

Woodrow Wilson

No one can say for certain as to how many black lives were lost during the "Red Summer" of 1919 but it was at least several hundred.

#3 1919 Chicago

36 cities had race riots because  the blacks coming home from WW1 were looking to be treated equally with the white servicemen and I know that's oversimplified but this and other racial factors  brought hysteria to the whites who did not want blacks taking jobs or moving into their neighborhoods and they were supported by the President by his views on segregation. The young black soldiers well it made them organize and without them the death toll would've been higher. It goes without saying that Wilson's Government did nothing to stop the death and destruction.      

Just when I thought things would get better we go two years and yeah it gets worse.

1921 and we go to Tulsa Oklahoma.

The Tulsa riot is different in that the City council was totally on board by deputizing many members of the mob and with whites reportedly dropping incendiary bombs from private aircraft not to mention the severity of death and destruction.

Black Wall Street

 How severe? Read on. 

There  was a district in Tulsa called Greenwood which was almost exclusively black becoming so successful it was called "Black Wall Street" that would end on May 31st when Dick Rowland was arrested for attempted assault of a young white girl.  

Word spread that a group of white men were at the jail wanting to lynch the lad.  This caused about 75 men from the Greenwood community, some of whom were armed, to go to the jail and make sure the young man was safe. The Sherriff said hey look I can handle the situation and asked them to leave which they did. While filing out of the jail one of the white guys tried to take one the black guys guns, a shot went off and the fire fight was on! When the dust cleared there were 10 white and two black men laying dead. 

Greenwood burnt to the ground

When the news broke mobs of white people went through Greenwood on a16  hour rampage that left 36 confirmed dead, over 800 injured 100 seriously, 35 square blocks destroyed leaving 10,000 homeless and costing in todays dollars over 32 million. 

The zinger is Tulsa buried the memory of that night filled with death and destruction. The local history was cleansed to the point where people who had lived there all of their lives knew nothing about the severity of this massacre.

Watts

While researching what has struck me is that the number of deaths are as low as they are compared to the destruction that was unleashed in these communities. . The "sure you deserve to live but not here" people believe they aren't racist. Of course they are but they fly the banner of a segregationist both racial discrimination and segregation had been rectified, except in the south, by Federal law but we will see that those segregationist policies remained intact in many cities of the USA and that was the fuel that fed the Watts riots the spark that ignited that fuel was the institutional racism of the LAPD.  

Watts is a black district in Los Angeles and in August of 65 a  black man was pulled over for drunk driving. He was a few doors away from his home and his mother and a group of neighbors gathered around and an altercation occurred. Someone in the crowd started the rumor that the police had in the scuffle beaten a pregnant black woman. The community lost it's shit and started to tear down what the whites owned which carried on for several days. This wasn't the result of one arrest or from a rumour of police brutality. It was a reaction a boiling over of rage towards the segregation of blacks and the institutionalized racism of the LAPD.

Fast forward to 1991 and Rodney King getting beaten in the streets of Los Angeles. When I saw the video footage I was appalled that a few cops could be so bad and thought like most people that they would be punished but in April of 1992 they walked away free and clear.

In April and May of 1992 L.A. was on fire! The public was angry with the conduct of the police and the not guilty verdict.  Blacks and whites all over the world were outraged causing one of the largest and deadliest riots in US history. 

Here we are 29 years after the LA riots and the police have become more militarized, lethal force has become more common and the officers involved still, for the most part, walk away conviction free. 

 

Before moving on to police brutality I want to add one more link this is a list  of all the racial/class violence that has occurred in the US check it out!

PS I screwed up saving the links for the photos. So sorry.