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May 20, 2004

Time to move on

A growing schism is developing between some African Americans who actually lived through America’s apartheid and those too young to have personally experienced the critical events of the civil rights period. The 50th anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education is a good time to reflect on those events which charged the psyches of so many blacks.

Prior to the decision in the Brown case on May 17, 1954, African Americans were forced to accept the indignity of being second-class citizens in their own homeland. This was not only true in the South, but also in Topeka, Kansas and many other places including Boston, Massachusetts. The legitimacy of the concept of second-class citizenship had been established by the US Supreme Court in 1896 in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson. “Separate but equal” was the law of the land.

Complaints by black citizens about public education turned on the question as to whether the racially separate schools were really equal. American society in many places had actually accepted the concept of second-class citizenship for blacks. The great elation in black America with the announcement of the Brown decision was that the Court had specifically struck down the Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling. There was no longer any legal support for blacks’ status as second-class citizens.

As was often the case, the hearts and minds of bigoted whites were not informed by the Supreme Court decision. A spate of obstructionist lawsuits were filed and the segregationists in the South seemed more determined than ever to hold onto their depraved customs. A little more than a year after Brown the nation was horrified by the brutal murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi.

The moral depravity of the murder of Till on August 28, 1955 so offended African Americans across the country that there was a national resolve to fight racial discrimination until it was destroyed. Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam who were charged with the murder were exonerated by a racist jury. They later confessed their complicity to journalist William Bradford Huie, but were never charged with the violation of Till’s civil rights, although they could not be tried again for murder.

On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery. Her courage launched the bus boycott which precipitated a drive for civil rights that culminated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It is understanding how there could be a disconnect between those African Americans who are old enough to have lived in America as second-class citizens and the “affirmative action babies” who have experienced a much more receptive society. The difference in attitude between these two groups has created a political conflict that will stymie the political progress of blacks in America.

In his letter to the editor below, City Councilor Chuck Turner clearly demonstrates the problem. Certainly he has personally experienced the legal marginalization of blacks, but he seems to be unable to get over it and move forward. He seems to believe that the civil disobedience tactics of Martin Luther King during the civil rights movement are appropriate to enable blacks to create wealth. It is questionable that a majority of blacks are now “in a worse economic situation today than in the 1960s.”

If Turner’s assertion were so, this would demonstrate that the old tactics are ineffective. Despite the anguish inflicted by history, it is time to move on.

 

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