Using comprehensive lynching data from the Beck-Tolnay Inventory, I analyzed Southern episodes of lynching from 1877-1950 using Tableau software.
In the storyboard, you can play around with a few important variables (state, race, sex) to see differences in where lynchings took place, and the demographics of the victims. With the maps, you can identify the number of lynchings in an area down to the county level.
If clicking on the map below doesn’t take you to the story, just click here.
The University of Mississippi’s Critical Race Studies Group, for which I am currently co-chair, has created a petition through Change.org demanding our Governor, Phil Bryant, amend or retract his proclamation that April 2016 be Confederate Heritage Month. You can click the above link to sign and share the petition. Below is the full text:
On February 10th, 2016, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant declared the month of April 2016 ‘Confederate Heritage Month.’ Governor Bryant has issued similar proclamations in the past, yet this year carries special significance. The murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a white supremacist with an affinity for Confederate imagery led to protests and calls for the removal of Confederate iconography from public spaces across the nation. In addition, Bryant’s proclamation preceded the Mississippi Legislature’s failure to act upon nineteen different bills proposing a change to the stage flag. It remains the only state flag in the US that bears the Confederate battle flag in its emblem.
In his proclamation, Governor Bryant declares that “it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities that lie before us.”
The 1861 Mississippi Declaration of Secession stated plainly “our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” In spite of this, Governor Bryant’s proclamation makes no mention of the millions of enslaved men, women, and children who suffered and died in captivity, or the Confederate cause to keep them in bondage. As citizens of this State, we ask that Governor Bryant clarify what specifically about our nation’s past he intends that we reflect on; what insight is to be gained from the error of owning other human beings and, in turn, fighting for that right; and to make clear the specific mistakes and successes of the Confederacy, so that we can not only come to a fuller understanding of our shared heritage, but learn from it.
Therefore, whereas the history of the Confederacy consisted of the victimization of state enslaved men, women, and children of African descent in the four-year period of 1861-1865; and
Whereas the influence of the Confederacy allowed the continuation of the victimization of millions of black Americans within Mississippi and elsewhere following their emancipation in 1865; including state-sponsored denial of economic, educational, health, and socio-political rights; and
Whereas Confederate Heritage Month, Confederate Memorial Day, and other commemorative events surrounding the Confederacy and its legacy risk the perpetuation of false values and narratives without well-defined grounds, goals, or necessities for such proclamations;
Now, Therefore, we, as citizens of Mississippi, and friends across the world, call upon Mississippi’s elected officials to recognize the pain and suffering of its enslaved population, and honor their survival; while also recognizing the continued effects of this dreadful past on our present. We call upon Governor Bryant and other elected officials to make good on their claims of civic enlightenment through economic and political support for statewide efforts to tell richer and more factually accurate narratives of our state history, through social science public education, creative arts programs, and cross-racial dialogues. We insist that only a deliberate and intentional reckoning with this shameful legacy of injustice will carry us through to a better tomorrow. Until that reckoning, we reject the validity of Governor Bryant’s proclamation, and call upon Governor Bryant to either (1) clarify his intentions or (2) retract it entirely.
Sincerely,
The University of Mississippi Critical Race Studies Group and The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation
**Note: Much of this history has been covered elsewhere, and much more substantively. I’ve provided links to the sources I consulted while writing this piece. For a strong academic treatment of Sharp End, see Jason Jindrich’s 2002 Master’s Thesis for the University of Missouri’s Department of Geography. This thesis serves as the foundation for how local papers and historians discuss Sharp End and the history of racial exclusion in Columbia, Missouri.[1]
With so much coverage over recent racial unrest at my alma mater, the University of Missouri, I thought it would be appropriate to provide a bit more context—historical and geographical—for those interested in understanding the underlying conditions of racial inequality that many students, faculty, and staff are calling attention toward. However, I want to broaden the perspective, and situate the demands for inclusivity and equity within the larger narrative of Columbia, Missouri.
A few days ago, a Facebook friend declared, “Never in our lifetime have we had any real racism that represented a large portion of our society as a whole…I’ve lived in Columbia my entire life and never has there been a real race problem until now.”
This person is near my age (I’m 33), so I was shocked to hear him claim that Columbia is an exemplar for racial tolerance. I’m a three-time alum from the University of Missouri, and spent roughly twelve years living, working, and going to school in the city. My instincts tell me that this friend’s statement is more a reflection of a failure to understand what racism actually is. This wouldn’t be uncommon. Numerous sociological studies show that often, when people discuss racism, they frame it as individual acts of hatred toward members of a racial or ethnic minority group. Shouting racial slurs, or proclaiming your own individual hatred of a certain racial group, are familiar tropes.
While these acts of intolerance are racist in the sense that they articulate a set of beliefs about a particular group’s inferior status based on that group’s racial membership, racism isn’t just a set of beliefs or attitudes. Racism also refers to the actions and practices guided by these beliefs and practices. Ideologies are the cement from which a whole architecture of policies and practices arise. Democracy, for example, isn’t just a belief in representative government, it’s also how that belief is put into practice. Racism, then, is not just a set of beliefs in the inferiority of other racial groups. It also includes practices at the individual and collective levels that flow from those beliefs.
One set of practices that has received incredible attention among scholars and journalists alike is urban renewal, and the displacement of low-income and nonwhite residents that typically follows. Columbia’s history of redevelopment is no different than that of many other cities, yet I’m surprised it has received so little attention by national and local media, who seem to think the recent racial unrest at the University of Missouri is new, and in sharp contrast to the perceived serenity of this popular college town. So, allow me to introduce many of you to a brief history of Sharp End, a once-thriving black business district in the heart of downtown Columbia, that was completely wiped out by Columbia’s first foray into ‘urban redevelopment’ in the mid 1950s.
Sharp End was located within the historic Douglass neighborhood, an area that was once home to Columbia’s business center—Market Square—in what is now the Flat Branch area. Figure 1.1 shows the approximate location of Douglass, marked by the red square. Within the southern border of Douglass is Sharp End, denoted by the smaller black rectangle. The larger, black shape to the south of Douglass and Sharp End is a rough approximation of the University of Missouri (per 2010).[2]
Figure 1.1: Columbia, Missouri 1950
Around the turn of the 20th century, city planners recognized that this bottomland was prone to flooding, and relocated Market Square to present-day 8th and 9th streets in downtown Columbia. Because Columbia was still highly segregated due to Jim Crow laws, free blacks could not live in white neighborhoods, or frequent many white establishments. The newly deserted area in Flat Branch was one of the few areas in the city where free blacks could live. As whites left, free blacks moved in, and began building what would soon become a commercial and cultural hub for black residents. Sharp End was solidified as a black business district sometime after 1910, and over the next forty years was home to a collection of thriving black-owned shops, bars, and restaurants that stretched along Walnut St., and between 4th and 6th streets. During Jim Crow, these were important alternatives to white-owned businesses that blacks were prohibited from patronizing.
Nevertheless, the city’s neglect of the Douglass neighborhood through the first half of the twentieth century was blatant, and had severe consequences. City officials refused to pave or repair roads, and Douglass residents were denied many city services enjoyed by whites. As late as the 1930s, the city was dumping its refuse into Flat Branch creek, which ran through the western edge of Douglass. The city gas plant was also found to have leaked oil into the water of the creek, which accumulated human and livestock waste as it passed between black residences on Park and Ash streets. Finally, intense segregation—both residential and occupational—made for high concentrations of poverty among Columbia’s black residents in the inter-war years.
As a result, many Douglass residences consisted of wooden shacks, often without plumbing or electricity. Few black residents were able to afford city sewage, so their waste from their privies often flowed into the neighborhood creeks. A survey of Columbia’s waste management in 1919 revealed that, city wide, only 5% of black residences were connected to a sewer, compared to 80% of white residences.[3] Landlords often regarded Douglass-area property as a lost cause because it was black-occupied. For example, one landlord is quoted as saying, “Negro property is a fine investment because you don’t have any upkeep expense. All you have to do is pay taxes and insurance, and the taxes are very low on that property. Then besides, the niggers pay their rent, they don’t get behind like other people do.”[4]
As a teaching point, we should recognize that while this landlord’s statement reflects racism, it isn’t racism simply because the landlord uses the word “nigger.” The landlord’s statement, rather, reflects the dominant ideology of the time: blacks are less than human, and therefore do not require humane conditions or treatment. Importantly, this ideology cemented itself through specific actions (or in this case, inaction), resulting in massive racial disparities in the distribution of resources and opportunities. The practice of neglecting predominantly black neighborhoods on account of them being predominantly black—a practice that was institutionalized and supported by local government— is racist with or without the use of a racial epithet.
Importantly, the historical neglect of the Douglass neighborhood by city officials and local realtors alike laid the foundation for justifying the forced removal of its residents and black businesses in the 1950s. Following the 1949 Federal Housing Act, Columbia, like many other cities across the country, took advantage of redevelopment loans and grant programs by the Housing and Home Finance Administrator. Title I of this act authorized local public agencies to purchase or condemn areas of the city deemed “blighted or deteriorating.” Cities were then authorized to clear that land and “make it available, by sale or lease, for private or public redevelopment or development in accordance with predetermined local redevelopment plan for the area.”[5] In the case of Douglass and Sharp End, any ‘blight’ within that neighborhood was a direct consequence of the intentional and explicit denial of basic city services, including proper sewage and road maintenance.
Columbia twice failed to pass an ordinance for the creation of a local housing authority in 1952. However, in 1956 voters approved the formation of the Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority, and its first meeting took place that June.[6] Records from the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, housed at the University of Missouri, show the authority had, as its objective, “slum clearance and urban renewal.” The authority selected 126 acres within the Douglass neighborhood for its first project, including within it the Sharp End district. Under the U.S. and Missouri constitutions, the city of Columbia was allowed to condemn Douglass under eminent domain laws. Though the law requires that the taking of private property must be justified for a public purpose, and that property owners must be compensated fairly, this was not the case for black residents and business owners. In 1958, a consultant hired by the LCR Authority had estimated the total worth of the 126 acres at more than $1 million. Yet, the city managed to only pay $591,000 for the land; or, less than 60 cents to the dollar.[7] Residents who refused to sell had their properties condemned under eminent domain, and were forcefully removed.
The Douglas School Urban Renewal Project began in May of 1959, and was completed by July of 1966.[8] When it was finished, more than three hundred structures were completely eradicated, including at least eighty black-owned businesses. A portion of the Douglass neighborhood was rebuilt as public housing. However, many former black homeowners were not eligible for residency. Yet, because they were black, they were unable to secure loans for new homes. Local lenders still operated under revised models of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which had pioneered a ‘risk rating’ system that incorporated race as a marker of credit-worthiness as well as property value. By the logic of HOLC, and later FHA, black homebuyers ‘invaded’ neighborhoods, and compromised the value of surrounding properties.[9] Realtors and lenders were discouraged from showing black renters and homebuyers potential properties in predominantly white areas, denying even blacks with capital the opportunity to purchase affordable homes that would retain their value over time.
Consider the following racial dot map of Columbia, Missouri in 1970. Just over a decade after the initial razing of Douglass and Sharp End, we can see the extreme residential segregation of black residents in relationship to whites. Each orange dot in the map represents two black residents; each green dot represents two white residents. According to data from the U.S. Census, there were a total of 3,863 blacks living in Columbia in 1970.[10] More than half (~56%) were concentrated in Tract 8, which encompassed the former Douglass neighborhood. Though, as the map shows, the southern edge of Douglass, including Sharp End, were nearly devoid of residents, indicating this land was in the midst of being redeveloped for primarily commercial interests.
Figure 1.2: Racial Dot Map, Columbia, Missouri 1970
By 2013, the former Douglass area had a lower concentration of black residents. However, if we take into account the two neighboring census tracks directly to the north and the tract directly to the west, those four tracts (including the one that encompasses the historic Douglass neighborhood) accounted for nearly 35% of all black residents in Columbia, Missouri (Figure 1.3).[11]
Figure 1.3: Racial Dot Map, Columbia, Missouri 2013
Complimenting the racial dot map is the following map of average gross rent for black-occupied units in Columbia, Missouri, in 1970 (Figure 1.4). As this figure illustrates, blacks were primarily concentrated directly to the west and north of the former Douglass Neighborhood. Because so few blacks were able to rent in any other area of Columbia at the time, there is no available data for the average amount of money black residents paid in rent throughout the rest of Columbia. Average rent for blacks ranged from $74 per month in the former Douglass neighborhood and encompassing census tract, to $153 per month just to its South, where the current University of Missouri campus now extends.
Figure 1.4: Average Gross Monthly Rent, Black-Occupied Units, Columbia, Missouri, 1970
Now, let’s overlay that with the composite gross monthly rent, irrespective of race (Figure 1.5). Here, the story becomes even more interesting. The blue shaded tracts are spaces where blacks’ gross monthly rent exceeded the composite gross monthly rent of that same area. In the tract directly to the north of the former Douglass neighborhood, the average gross monthly rent for blacks was 1.3 times higher than the composite gross monthly rent ($112 to $99). Directly to the south of the former Douglass neighborhood, overlapped by the south side of the present-day campus, monthly rent for blacks was nearly 1.4 times higher than the composite gross monthly rent ($153 to $112). This data suggests that, despite federal laws prohibiting such practices, Columbia realtors and landlords were still engaging in racist rental practices in 1970.
Figure 1.5: Gross Monthly Rent for Blacks vs Composite Gross Monthly Rent, 1970
Finally, let’s look at the median value of homes in these areas. In 1970, the median value of homes in Columbia, Missouri was $21,900.[12] In the areas in which blacks were primarily concentrated, the median value of homes ranged from a low of $10,824 in the former Douglass neighborhood, to a high of $15,627 just to its west (Figure 1.6). Put differently, the median value of homes in neighborhoods in which blacks were primarily concentrated ranged from 49%-71% of the median home value for the rest of the city.
Figure 1.6: Median Home Value, Columbia, Missouri, 1970
By 2013, not much had changed (Figure 1.7). The median value of a home in Columbia, Missouri was $169,800. In the former Douglass neighborhood, it was $101,400 (59% of the median value). Just to the north, it was $66,500 (39%).
Figure 1.7: Median Home Value, Columbia, Missouri, 2013
My goal with this very brief analysis of the Sharp End District and its demise at the hands of city government is two-fold. First, I want to illustrate that Columbia, Missouri is far from a racial paradise. Like most other cities in the United States, it has a long history of institutionalized racism, clearly identifiable in the local politics and decision-making among city officials, planners, and developers. Second, I hoped to demonstrate with this analysis that the effects of this institutionalized racism do not simply disappear because we wish for it. Without intentional, deliberate anti-racist policies and practices, racism and its effects will continue to fester. In the case of black residents of Columbia, Missouri, a multi-generational community, and its wealth, were nearly eradicated through deliberate practices by local government and developers.
As of 2015, the north side of the former Sharp End district houses the Columbia Post Office. The south side of Sharp End was converted into a parking lot upon the first phase of urban renewal. It remained so for nearly fifty years, until in 2011 it was converted into a ten-deck parking garage.
Footnotes
[1] Jason Jindrich, “Our Black Children: The Evolution of Black Space in Columbia, Missouri” (M.A. Thesis, University of Missouri, 2002), Microfilm, University of Missouri Libraries.
[2] All maps and figures derive from data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and were created using Social Explorer.
[3] August F. Larson, A Housing Survey of Columbia, Missouri (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 1919).
[4] Audrey Nell Kittel, The Negro Community of Columbia, Missouri (University of Missouri, 1938), 44.
[5] United States Senate, “Housing Act of 1949” (United States Government Printing Office, 1949), 2, https://bulk.resource.org/gao.gov/81-171/00002FD7.pdf.
[6] Arcenia Harmon, “Columbia’s Sharp End,” Columbia Daily Tribune, April 4, 2004, http://archive.showmenews.com/2004/apr/20040404feat009.asp.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Phillip Sitter, “Sharp End District Remembered for ‘Togetherness,’” Columbia Missourian, May 19, 2015, http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/sharp-end-district-remembered-for-togetherness/article_cdb41a50-fe83-11e4-83cf-c715d4cd44fe.html.
[9] Colin Gordon, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 92.
[10] United States Department of Commerce, “1970 Census of Population and Housing, Columbia Missouri, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce and the Bureau of the Census, 1972).
[11] United States Bureau of the Census. “American Community Survey, 2009-2013 (5 year estimates.” Washington, DC. 2014. Accessed via Social Explorer.
[12] United States Department of Commerce, “1970 Census of Population and Housing, Columbia Missouri, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area.”
I’m very proud to be a part of the University of Mississippi’s Critical Race Studies Group. Below is the link to our open letter to the University concerning Confederate iconography on our campus. Please share widely!
An Open Letter to the University of Mississippi Community On Wednesday, September 30th, 2015, student leaders from the University of Mississippi’s College Democrats and the UM Chapter of the NAACP called, separately, for the disavowal of Confederate iconography across our campus, including, but not limited to, the Mississippi state flag. Evoking the University of Mississippi’s own declaration that the flag and what it represents no longer aligns with our community’s core values, these student leaders showed the courage and conviction required to make this campus safe and inclusive for all students, faculty, and staff.
Since September 30th, many other student organizations have also publicly condemned the display of the Mississippi state flag and other Confederate iconography on campus, including: the Black Student Union, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the University of Mississippi Pride Network, the University of Mississippi Black Law Students Association, and the International Student Organization. The Critical Race Studies Group, an interdisciplinary body of faculty and staff committed to racial justice and equity, is proud to declare our public support for these and any other student organizations for whom these symbols represent a threat, whether overt or subtle. We are here for you, and we want to work with you.
The near-daily presence of Confederate flags on cars and pick-up trucks parked on campus property, the continued display of Confederate merchandise in faculty and staff offices, the proud display of large Confederate flags in the historic Grove at every home football weekend, the continued playing of “Dixie” by the University band at home sporting events, and the referencing of our University as ‘Ole Miss’ (a term used by slaves to refer to white slaveholding women) over the University of Mississippi (the name of the institution) is not aligned with our institution’s stated commitment to inclusivity. Furthermore, these symbols serve as concrete barriers in our quest to truly transcend our institution’s legacy of racism.
As our state’s flagship public institution of higher education, the University of Mississippi has a unique responsibility to lead proactively on all matters of racial justice. As a leading institution of higher education committed to intellectual debate and discussion, we call on our University administration to show the same courage and conviction as these brave students.
In addition to an immediate disavowal of all Confederate iconography, we ask that our University leadership follow through on the recommendations provided by two outside consultants last year, and the ‘action plan’ from former Chancellor Dan Jones. Taken together, the Critical Race Studies Group asks the University to:
• Discontinue displaying the current state flag on campus.
• Give faculty, staff and students the option to use um.edu instead of olemiss.edu
• Take an active and public role in supporting the efforts of Mississippi legislators, including House Speaker Phillip Gunn, U.S. Senator Thad Cochran, and U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, who are demanding the removal of the battle flag emblem from the state flag.
• Reinterpret and modify our physical landscape to accurately reflect our institution’s historic involvement with slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the University’s challenges and achievements in the post-Civil Rights era.
• Make a tangible investment on the part of University leadership into ongoing research by faculty on matters related to race and racism.
• Catalogue and promote all past and present race- and racism-related research conducted at the University
• Condemn publicly and officially the use of all Confederate symbols on university property, including their display in faculty and staff offices, in the Grove, and on vehicles parked on campus property
• Organize a public forum to allow for a debate on the merits of these symbols on our own campus. Such a conversation should be the hallmark of a leading liberal arts institution.By confronting openly the presence of emblems of the Confederacy and white supremacy on our campus, we would be acting in concert with other leading public institutions such as Clemson University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Texas at Austin. The above changes, when combined, help tangibly demonstrate an ongoing, public recommitment to end the legacy of white supremacy on our campus.
After the Civil War, prominent Mississippi segregationists such as L.C.Q. Lamar and James K. Vardaman, both of whom have campus buildings named in their honor, continued to reinforce white supremacy. A critical rethinking of who and what we want to represent may help the campus community address how our racist past continues to affect campus life today. We recognize that these small changes alone will not disestablish the legacy of white supremacy on our campus. However, they are necessary first steps in moving towards a more inclusive, respectful, and enriching university community.
Sincerely,
The Critical Race Studies Group
University of MississippiThe Critical Race Studies Group is an interdisciplinary group of scholars and staff dedicated to the identifying and dismantling of racial and other inequalities at the University of Mississippi and elsewhere. For more information, see http://socanth.olemiss.edu/critical-race-studies-group/
Posted by University of Mississippi Critical Race Studies Group on Thursday, October 15, 2015
My colleague and dear friend, Jennifer Correa, and I recently had our article on Latino border patrol agents and the dynamics of racial power published in the new American Sociological Association journal, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
Entitled, “The Rebirth of the U.S.-Mexico Border”, in it Jennifer and I expand upon Nick Crossley’s “phenomenology of power” to articulate the dynamic interplay between race, space, and power as it’s practiced in the policing of brown bodies by brown bodies along the U.S.-Mexico border. We describe a phenomenology of racial power as
“the cultural and social “thickness” of racial embodiment [which] recognizes that power is a fluid force within ‘institutions, laws, [as well as the] practices of political officials, law enforcers, and practitioners” (Crossley 1994:197). It is through these sets of relations that the body’s materiality is produced. Further, it is through the body’s materiality that we apprehend the world or accomplish being-in-the-world. These processes are interdependent and inseparable in the unfolding of everyday life. Each action of the body reconfigures the spaces it inhabits, enabling and/or constraining its ability to expand beyond those spaces.”
Our focus on the phenomenology of racial power aims to address my previous call for a more dynamic account of culture in the enabling and constraining of contemporary racialization by centering the experiences of Latina/o state agents who function as both enforcers and targets of racial power.
Jennifer and I are currently working on a book together, with Rowman and Littlefield, entitled Affective Labour: (Dis)Assembling Difference and Distance, in which we theorize affective labor as both producer and product of phenomenologies of power.
My book is out! It’s available on Amazon.com, or directly through the Rowman and Littlefield website. If you buy from Rowman and Littlefield, use the promo code “LEX30AUTH15” for a 30% discount.
If you’re unsure about ordering a personal copy, be a good colleague and ask your library to order one!
Thomas, James M. Working to Laugh: Assembling Difference in American Stand-Up Comedy Venues (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015)
Like many, I was hurt and horrified by the death of eighteen-year old Mike Brown, of Ferguson, Missouri, this past weekend. Growing up in the central city of Kansas City, Missouri, I was not unfamiliar with police violence against black and brown communities of color. However, it appears many Americans are unfamiliar with these experiences. For example, stories about Sunday night’s riot are now being framed as “just another example” for why black and brown communities need policing, rather than as a response to a collective memory of state-sanctioned violence against those communities, including the death of Mike Brown.
Motivated by the ignorance and garden-variety tropes of white racism I’ve seen this morning on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve put together a VERY brief and INCOMPLETE history of St. Louis Police Brutality over the past one hundred years. I used the archives of The Chicago Defender from 1905 through 1975, and the Lexus Nexus database for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1989 to the present, I ran a search for the term “police brutality”. The information below was compiled based on this very narrow search.
I would love for others to help crowd-source more information here, especially if there are any incidents I’ve missed, or failed to accurately summarize.
My goal with the timeline below is to demonstrate that incidents like what happened in Ferguson do not stand on their own. They represent a greater historical narrative, whereby collective memories — and responses — are shaped by the totality of these incidents. A great quote that, I think, captures the response of the rioters last night is from the late Martin Luther King, Jr., in a 1966 interview with Mike Wallace:
I contend that the cry of “black power” is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.
May, 1917: Three thousand white men gathered in downtown East St. Louis and began attacking blacks. Nonresponse by the police led to the Illinois governor to call in the National Guard. Some evidence of police participating in attacks.
July, 1917: A car occupied by white males drove through East St. Louis, firing shots at a standing group of blacks. Shortly thereafter, another car driving through the same area was mistaken for the previous car, and black residents shot at it, killing two police officers in the car. Thousands of whites marched into the black neighborhood of East St. Louis and began burning entire sections, shooting residents as they tried to escape the fires. Rioters lynched several black residents, claiming, “Southern negroes deserve a genuine lynching.” National guardsmen who were called in participated in the rioting, rather than helping to squash it. The Chicago Defender, led by Ida B. Wells, estimates between 40-150 blacks were killed that July. Six thousand blacks were left homeless.
November, 1923: Reports emerge that “whenever a crime has been committed and the perpetrator wishes to conceal his guilt, or the authorities are at a loss to solve the riddle,” St. Louis police often report that the crime was committed by a black person.
November, 1928: Grand jury ordered to convene as the result of a fatal shooting of a 20-year old man by a St. Louis patrolman. Three eye witnesses voluntary appeared to testify against the officer.
October, 1929: Black leadership calls upon then-Missouri Governor Henry Caulfield to end the “murdering of our people and the numerous brutalities they suffer at the hands of the police” in St. Louis
September, 1933: Members of the Clothing Workers Union complained to Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann that they had been beaten by police during a parade
September, 1941: A STL cop beats a black hospital patient. This attack led to the STL branch of the NAACP beginning a movement against police brutality against blacks.
July, 1965: About 40 demonstrators paraded in front of a city police station protesting alleged police brutality. The John Birch Society denounced a proposed investigation into the charges.
July, 1967: Dance choreographer Katherine Dunham begins legal action against East St. Louis police charging they “manhandled and arrested” her on false charges.
August, 1971: Joseph Lee Wilson, 37, had been drinking heavily and had passed out shortly after midnight in the back yard of his mother’s house in the Third Police District. After she called for assistance, she and others contend, police beat him. An employee of old City Hospital said that Wilson, already suffering from massive injuries, was even beaten by St. Louis policemen when he was on a hospital table. Wilson was found dead in the holdover at 5:45 a.m. An autopsy showed that he had suffered seven fractured ribs, a punctured lung, a ruptured pancreas and lacerations of the liver. The official police version, adopted by the coroner, was that Wilson had fallen from a stool in a tavern on Chippewa Street. Syndicated columnist Mike Royko likened that to falling from a bar stool atop Chicago’s 100-story, 1,127-foot John Hancock Tower.
March, 1977: Following a car chase, two young men who had been in the car that led the chase were beaten. It was estimated that as many as 50 police officers were on hand to see at least part of the beating. Two Third District police officers were indicted for assault with intent to maim with malice. Other police officers were suspended for not cooperating with a grand jury investigation. Circuit Attorney George Peach was furious with departmental obstruction. He called it a ”conspiracy of silence.” And, in the end, it was impossible to prove who actually had administered the beatings. One of the indicted police officers was later acquitted; he is now a lieutenant in the department.
January, 1989: Seventy five people gather in front of the 6th District police station to protest a St. Louis police attack on a 15-year old girl.
June, 1991: University City police arrest a man for illegally skateboarding on a sidewalk in the Delmar Loop. Four witnesses report the man was handcuffed and beaten by a group of at least five officers.
October, 1993: Harry B. Hegger, Internal Affairs officer, claims his division handles roughly a hundred or more cases of physical abuse per year.
October, 1993: The Organization for Black Struggle, along with other community groups and activists, charges that for at least 10 years incidents of police brutality are rampant in St. Louis city and the metropolitan area. These allegations include: The continued employment of racist officers on the St. Louis and University City police departments, beatings and Russian roulette games police play with suspects, a special anti-black unit in the Belleville Police Department, and rampant car and property seizures.
October, 1993: In a hearing sponsored by the NAACP, Clarence Harmon, the first black police chief of St. Louis, stated police officers often project fears onto black residents: ‘There are tensions related to sometimes unrealistic fears of officers who traverse high crime areas . . . unrealistic fears as to their safety, which cause for not a great relationship between themselves and the community.” In that same meeting, Joyce Armstrong, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, said 52 percent of the complaints made to her office were against police departments in Florissant, Jennings, Beverly Hills, Breckenridge Hills, Dellwood and Maplewood. She said 30 percent were complaints against the city police.
October, 1993: About a dozen people picketed two St. Louis police stations Sunday night, alleging brutality by police officers in the arrests of three suspects earlier in the day.
October, 1993: Frontenac Police Chief Benjamin Branch has taken an administrative leave to investigate allegations of police brutality and civil rights violations by his department. That June, Branch, 16 Frontenac police officers and five dispatchers were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to answer questions about police brutality in Frontenac.
January, 1996: Garland Carter Jr., 17., shot and killed, in the back, by a St. Louis police officer.
January, 1997: Post-Dispatch reports that at least 11 people have died in police custody in the St. Louis area since 1990 while in the throes of a mysterious, often violent medical condition called agitated delirium, a review of death records shows. In all, at least 20 people have died from the syndrome here over the last decade – 14 of those after police restrained them.
April, 1997: Gregory Bell, suffering from a developmental disability, is beaten by police officers until bloody. As many as 12 police officers were in his home during the beating, which included five blows to the head with an ASP baton. only one officer was charged with a crime. He was acquitted in May.
May, 1999: Two officers charged with the death of a nineteen year old. The police report — which made no mention of blows to the teenager’s head — is inconsistent with the medical examiner’s report that the victim suffered a massive skull fracture caused by a blow with an object to the back of his head.
May, 1999: A review showed that between 1994 and 1998, sixty people were shot by city officers, with twenty four of them dying. Brutality was charged in many of those cases
March, 2001: The St. Louis County Council on Tuesday appointed a 10-member committee to review two incidents in the past year involving county police that led to the deaths of three people.
June, 2002: Leaving a Coalition Against Police Crimes and Oppression meeting, Victor McKinney, 25, was hand-cuffed and body-slammed to the ground by two officers. Roughly 100 people gather at police headquarters to protest the incident.
September, 2002: A Kinloch police officer said he accidentally shot a motorist during a traffic stop. The officer suspected the motorist, a 24-year-old man from Bridgeton, was involved with a drug transaction. Police did not find any drugs on the suspect. The suspect was unarmed.
November, 2002: Aldermen Terry Kennedy, D-18th Ward, proposed forming a panel to investigate police shootings and allegations of brutality and other misconduct
May, 2003: About 50 protesters gathered outside the Pine Lawn City Hall and Police Department Thursday night, claiming police officers there have abused African-Americans in the city. “They are here to protect us, not beat us,” Brian Brooks told the crowd. “We’re paying their salaries.” Brooks said police beat him with a metal baton or flashlight and sprayed him with Mace in his driveway after he got into an argument with his wife on May 4. He said he was later beaten for several hours at the Police Department, where a gun was pointed at his head by a police officer. Another man, Willie Payne, said he was beaten by officers, including one accused of attacking Brooks, after his car was stopped in Pine Lawn. He said officers choked him, held his mouth open and sprayed Mace into it, pulled his shirt over his head and beat him. Justin Meehan, an attorney assisting the men, said they had made complaints to the Police Department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also looking into the claims, Meehan said.
October, 2003: Protesters demanding better treatment from police blocked traffic on downtown streets Wednesday night and burned an effigy of “white racist power” in a park across the street from St. Louis City Hall. The crowd swelled to about 200 people, as several activist groups led by the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression called for the city to establish a board to review complaints of police brutality. A bill proposing such a board is locked in a battle between aldermen and Mayor Francis Slay over who would appoint the board members and what powers they would have.
February, 2006: About 40 people gathered outside Maplewood City Hall to seek justice for a man whose beating and kicking by Maplewood and St. Louis police has been televised coast-to-coast.
September 2013: A former Velda City police officer is facing federal charges of excessive force and lying to FBI agents. A federal indictment alleges Stan Lee Stanback, 47, used unreasonable force using a police baton to hit and injure two juveniles and an adult on Sept. 17, 2008. Stanback is also accused of lying to FBI agents by claiming he was surrounded by 15 men in the Velda City Police Department parking lot and was forced to draw his gun. He actually encountered four to five people and he never drew his gun, authorities said. Velda City’s police chief says the two 16-year-olds and one 26-year-old man he is accused of hitting were already in police custody when Stanback struck them with his baton.
August, 2014: Mike Brown, 18 years old, shot multiple times by Ferguson police. Eye witnesses claim initial shots were fired into Brown’s back.
One of my current research projects investigates competing meanings of diversity and inclusion within contemporary institutions of higher education. One component of this project is a historical examination of the discursive formation of ‘diversity and inclusion’. In their widely-cited article in the American Sociological Review, “Diversity in Everyday Discourse: The cultural ambiguities and consequences of happy talk,” sociologists Joyce Bell and Douglass Hartmann make two interesting observations that peaked my initial interest in the historical questions for this project. First, they claim that, to date, no scholar has produced an exhaustive account of when diversity first emerged in American discourse. Second, they claim that diversity discourse may be the first racial project of the 21st century (2007: 910).
Let me make it clear here, I think the world of Bell and Hartmann’s research, and the Mosaic Project more generally. However, when reading that article I was skeptical of both of those terms. In some of my earlier work, I’ve argued for an approach to social and cultural history that moves away from linear progression from one epoch or episode to the next. Instead, I argue that social and cultural history often unfolds through what Walter Mignolo (1995) describes as a clustering process, where clusters of social history overlap with one another, shaping emergent clusters, and our memories of prior ones. What I’ve found in many of the sociological writings on diversity/inclusion in higher education is this taken-for-granted assumption that diversity discourse emerged from both civil rights legislation and post-civil rights discourse in the 1960s and 1970s as more colleges and universities established cultural centers, academic programs, and student organizations centered on celebrating the achievements of historically marginalized populations. I just wasn’t convinced this was the beginning of modern day efforts to achieve ‘diversity and inclusion’.
I began by trying to move backwards from some of the values held by advocates of the contemporary ‘diversity and inclusion’ initiatives in higher education, and trying to identify any historical overlaps. I came across a brilliant, but largely neglected, piece of scholarship by the historian Nicholas Montalto entitled, A History of the Intercultural Educational Movement, 1924-1941 (New York: Garland, 1982). Though Montalto does not connect the dots between the intercultural education movement of the interwar period, and the movement toward diversity and inclusion within higher education in the post-civil rights era. However, in reading through his work, and the work of a few others, I’ve come to recognize a major ‘clustering’ between the inter-war period and the post-civil rights period concerning the discursive elements of intercultural education and diversity/inclusion. My goal for several upcoming posts in this blog is to flesh out some of these findings as I prepare the historical write-up of my research project.
Below are just some small pieces of the larger narrative I’m writing on the relationship between contemporary discourses of diversity and the discourse of the intercultural education movement from the inter-war period. I welcome feedback!
Origins
“A part of the emphasis on the model of diversity that posits diversity as a celebration of multiple cultures arose from the coopting of psychological theories of identity and self-esteem in the early 20th century. At the time, it was widely believed that an individual’s self esteem was dependent upon the status of their membership group. Rejection of that group, then, was believed to be the cause of self-hatred. Social workers employing these psychological frameworks began to argue that the way to solve the ‘second generation problem was to raise the status of the immigrant group through public recognition and praise of immigrant cultures for their unique contributions…
The Commission on First Generation Americans, established in 1925 to study the second-generation problem, issued its final report in 1930. In it, the authors recommended the formation of clubs along nationality lines for second generation persons “wherever there is lack of security, manifested either by intense nationality concern in the first generation or by blatant, extreme, and noisy disregard for nationality in the second generation…
Much of the diversity educational framework that is employed today harkens back to the early multicultural and intercultural education programs advocated by Rachel Davis DuBois in the 1920s and 1930s. Partnering with major teacher-training colleges and universities, the American Association of University Women, the New Jersey Race Relations Survey Committee, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews, DuBois designed assemblies and courses marked by a strong international focus, immediate antecedents in the pacifist movement, and a strong concern to change the attitudes of the majority rather than alter the self-concept of racial and ethnic minorities…
By the mid 1930s, national interest in ethnic diversity was intensive and widespread. The new commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier, was carrying out plans to revitalize tribal arts, language, and culture through reservation schools. In Pittsburgh, one of the first efforts in higher education to incorporate diversity education was taking place at the University of Pittsburgh. There, seventeen Nationality Rooms in the University’s ‘Cathedral of Learning’ had opened, with the intention to use these spaces as classrooms where regular use would produce a “building up [of] respect for the historic traditions” of the major groups residing in the city. In 1935, spurred by its imminent merger with the Service Bureau, the widely-reputable Progressive Education Association passed a resolution for intercultural education stating, “there is no more important or appropriate task for this association…not only for the education of our thirty million new Americans and other minority groups, but also for the enlightenment of the children of the old Americans whose ignorance of other cultures is an equally great menace to our community life.”In December of that same year, the PEA Board of Directors voted to establish a “Committee on Intercultural Education” – marking the first time the term ‘intercultural education’ entered the education profession’s lexicon…
In the late 1930s through the early 1940s, the American Jewish Committee underwent a major transformation in how they thought about combatting anti-Semitism through educational programming. This transformation was due, in large part, to a growing body of evidence in the social sciences that suggested spikes in anti-Semitism were closely correlated with economic downturns and increases in anti-democratic behaviors. Increasingly, it became less popular to back programming centered on educating the general public on Jewish culture and history. Instead, it was argued by members of the AJC that anti-Semitism could only be extinguished by championing democracy more generally. The task of intercultural education, for the AJC, became one where open-mindedness, critical thinking, respect for the individual, and equality of opportunity were to be encouraged. Their commissioning of the now famous Studies in Prejudice series, of which the widely-read and cited The Authoritarian Personality was the first volume, was the apex of their new approach to “sterilizing the soil” from which anti-Semitism and group prejudice grew…”
Check out my newest article, ‘Laugh Through it,’ available online first through the journal, Ethnography
Abstract
Through an examination of a Midwestern professional comedy club, this article theorizes stand-up comedy as part of the broader affective-cultural assemblage that is nightlife entertainment. Using the Deleuzian notion of assemblage, this analysis builds on poststructural accounts of the dynamic and transient properties of culture, and the relationship between space, culture, and affect. As a specific affective-cultural assemblage, stand-up comedy operates as both constrainer and enabler of racial and heteronormative order through the bringing together of a variety of diverse logics and practices. I argue that stand-up comedy should no longer be thought of strictly in discursive or symbolic-interactionist terms that over-determine the roles of particular agents (i.e. comics). Instead, when described as emergent, transient, and fundamentally affective, stand-up comedy and other cultural forms can be seen for their openness and multiplicity, both contributing to racial and heteronormative order as well as upending it.
On Tuesday, October 1st, members of an audience of University of Mississippi students, including an estimated twenty members of the University football team, disrupted the Theater Department’s production of “The Laramie Project.” The audience used derogatory slurs, like ‘fag’, and heckled both cast members and the characters they were portraying.
On Thursday, The Critical Race Studies Group, an interdisciplinary group of scholars committed to fostering an inclusive campus environment at the University of Mississippi, issued the following statement:
“We are members of the University community who are committed to promoting an environment of acceptance and support for difference at the University of Mississippi. As such, we reject expressions of intolerance and bigotry of all types, such as the recent display of homophobia during a performance of The Laramie Project on our campus. We pledge our ongoing, active support for students and other members of our community who are hurt by such incidents. As educators and scholars, we vow to contest all forms of hatred that manifest in expressions like those Tuesday night. We reject the notion that Tuesday’s event was an isolated one. Instead, we encourage an open dialogue among members of our community, including the administration, faculty, and staff, to interrogate our complicity in maintaining an environment where such forms of hatred are even possible, and how they may be tied to other forms of prejudice, discrimination, and inequality.”
As a member of The Critical Race Studies Group, I am so proud of our efforts, and our stated commitment during such a time. That we were able to coordinate this statement among almost two dozen members and allies, all through an email exchange, and in less than three hours, is a demonstration of our undying willingness to fight injustice on our own turf.
Please check out our Facebook page, and stay tuned for more updates.
Politics and Pedagogy 