My post about my family history in the U.S. was just the Primer for what is the real cause for problems of African Americans that are much different than other races in this country. There has always been a very concerted effort to undermine the efforts of Blacks to improve themselves in any way and it continues to this day. This post is for any who don't really know U.S. History.
Whenever Blacks made efforts to improve their situation they were thwarted by Whites in Power.
After the Civil War Blacks had the vote for the 1st time and they did vote and build schools to educate themselves. Things were going well and then...
1. The Ku Klux Klan was originally organized in the winter of 1865-66 in Pulaski, Tennessee.
The Klan spread beyond Tennessee to every state in the South and included mayors, judges, and sheriffs as well as common criminals. The Klan systematically murdered black politicians and political leaders. It beat, whipped, and murdered thousands, and intimidated tens of thousands of others from voting. Blacks often tried to fight back, but they were outnumbered and out gunned. While the main targets of Klan wrath were the political and social leaders of the black community, blacks could be murdered for almost any reason. Men, women, children, aged and crippled, were victims. A 103-year-old woman was whipped, as was a completely paralyzed man. In Georgia, Abraham Colby, an organizer and leader in the black community, was whipped for hours in front of his wife and children. His little daughter begged the Klansman, "Don't take my daddy away." She never recovered from the sight and died soon after. In Mississippi, Jack Dupree's throat was cut and he was disemboweled in front of his wife, who had just given birth to twins. Klansman burned churches and schools, lynching teachers and educated blacks. Black landowners were driven off their property and murdered if they refused to leave. Blacks were whipped for refusing to work for whites, for having intimate relations with whites, for arguing with whites, for having jobs whites wanted, for reading a newspaper or having a book in their homes.. Or simply for being black. Klan violence led one black man to write: "We have very dark days here. The colored people are in despair. The rebels boast that the Negroes shall not have as much liberty now as they had under slavery. If things go on thus, our doom is sealed. God knows it is worse than slavery."
2. The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were European-American paramilitary groups that were active in the late 19th century after the end of the Reconstruction era of the United States. They first appeared in Mississippi in 1875, when Democratic Party private militia units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both white and freedmen. Similar groups in other states also adopted red shirts.
Among the most prominent Red Shirts were the supporters of Democratic Party candidate Wade Hampton during the campaigns for the South Carolina gubernatorial elections of 1876 and 1878.[1] The Red Shirts were one of several paramilitary organizations, such as the White League in Louisiana, arising in the continuing efforts of white Democrats to regain political power in the South in the 1870s. These groups acted as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."[2]
While sometimes engaging in violence, in contrast to secret vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, the White League and similar groups in the late nineteenth century worked openly and were better organized: they had one goal, the restoration of the Democrats to power by getting rid of Republicans, which usually meant repressing civil rights and voting by the freedmen.[3] During the 1876, 1898 and 1900 campaigns in North Carolina, the Red Shirts played prominent roles in intimidating non-Democratic voters.
3. Atlanta Race Riot (1906)
When the Civil War ended, African-Americans in Atlanta began entering the realm of politics, establishing businesses and gaining notoriety as a social class. Increasing tensions between Black wage-workers and the white elite began to grow and ill-feelings were further exacerbated when Blacks gained more civil rights, including the right to vote.
The tensions exploded during the gubernatorial election of 1906 in which M. Hoke Smith and Clark Howell competed for the Democratic nomination. Both candidates were looking for ways to disenfranchise African-American voters because they each felt that the Black vote could throw the election to the other candidate.
Hoke Smith was a former publisher of the Atlanta Journal and Clark Howell was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Both candidates used their influence to incite white voters and help spread the fear that whites may not be able to maintain the current social order.
The Atlanta Georgian and the Atlanta News began publishing stories about white women being molested and raped by Black men. These allegations were reported multiple times and were largely false.
On Sept. 22, 1906, Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults on local white women. Soon, some 10,000 white men and boys began gathering, beating, and stabbing Blacks. It is estimated that there were between 25 and 40 African-American deaths; it was confirmed that there were only two white deaths.
4. Greenwood , Tulsa, Oklahoma “Black Wall Street” (May 31 – June 1, 1921)
During the oil boom of the 1910s, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished, including the Greenwood neighborhood, which came to be known as “the Black Wall Street.” The area was home to several lawyers, realtors, doctors, and prominent black Businessmen, many of them multimillionaires.
Greenwood boasted a variety of thriving businesses such as grocery stores, clothing stores, barbershops, banks, hotels, cafes, movie theaters, two newspapers, and many contemporary homes. Greenwood residents enjoyed many luxuries that their white neighbors did not, including indoor plumbing and a remarkable school system. The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community.
The neighborhood was destroyed during a riot that broke out after a group men from Greenwood attempted to protect a young Black man from a lynch mob. On the night of May 31, 1921, a mob called for the lynching of Dick Rowland, a Black man who shined shoes, after reports spread that on the previous day he had assaulted Sarah Page, a white woman, in the elevator she operated in a downtown building.
In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Black Tulsa was looted, firebombed from the air and burned down by white rioters. The governor declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assisted firemen in putting out fires, removed abducted African-Americans from the hands of white vigilantes, and imprisoned all Black Tulsans, not already confined, into a prison camp at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.
In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, over 800 people were treated for injuries and estimated 300 deaths occurred.
5. Chicago Race Riots (1919)
The “Red Summer” of 1919 marked the culmination of steadily growing tensions surrounding the great migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North during World War I. Chicago was one of the northern cities that experienced violent race riots during that period.
Drawn by the city’s meatpacking houses, railway companies and steel mills, the African-American population in Chicago skyrocketed from 44,000 in 1910 to 235,000 in 1930. When the war ended in late 1918, thousands of white servicemen returned home from fighting in Europe to find that their jobs in factories, warehouses and mills had been filled by newly arrived Southern Blacks or immigrants.
On July 27, 1919, an African-American teenager drowned in Lake Michigan after he challenged the unofficial segregation of Chicago’s beaches and was stoned by a group of white youths.
His death, and the police refusal to arrest the men who caused it, sparked a week of race rioting between Black and white Chicagoans, with Black neighborhoods receiving the worst of the damage.
When the riots ended on Aug. 3, 15 whites and 23 Blacks had been killed and more than 500 people injured. An additional 1,000 Black families had lost their homes when they were torched by rioters.
President Woodrow Wilson castigated the “white race” as “the aggressor” in the Chicago uprising.
6. Rosewood Massacre (1923)
Rosewood was a quiet, self-sufficient whistle-stop on the Seaboard Air Line Railway in Florida. By 1900 the population in Rosewood had become predominantly African-American. Some people farmed or worked in local businesses, including a sawmill in nearby Sumner, a predominantly white town.
In 1920, Rosewood Blacks had three churches, a school, a large Masonic Hall, turpentine mill, a sugarcane mill, a baseball team and a general store (a second one was white owned). The village had about two dozen plank two-story homes, some other small houses, as well as several small unoccupied plank structures.
Spurred by unsupported accusations that a white woman in Sumner had been beaten and possibly raped by a Black drifter, white men from a number of nearby towns lynched a Rosewood resident. When the Black citizens defended themselves against further attack, several hundred whites combed the countryside hunting Black people and burning almost every structure in Rosewood.
Survivors hid for several days in nearby swamps and were evacuated by train and car to larger towns. Although state and local authorities were aware of the violence, they made no arrests for the activities in Rosewood. At least six Blacks and two whites were killed, and the town was abandoned by Black residents during the attacks. None ever returned.
I could go on and on like this with more events and other laws and efforts which all served to destroy the progress of African Americans. To this day there's still a system against Minorities.
4/29/2014 2:09 PM