Jim Crow

“Three-fourths of the 900,000 African-American veterans who served during World War II were coming home to communities in the old Confederacy.  This was the world of Jim Crow, where black citizens were relegated to the margins of American democracy and expected to be the bootblacks and mudsills of the nation’s economy.” Richard Gergel, “Unexampled Courage”

A recent Washington Post Sunday magazine carried a lengthy article adapted from Steve Luxenberg’s “Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation” titled” The North, the South, and the Origins of Jim Crow.”  During the 1830s numerous white entertainers donned black face and sang in a parody of what they claimed was black dialect.  The most famous, Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, dressed in mismatched shoes and threadbare gold pants and billed himself as the “Original Jim Crow.”  “Daddy” Rice performed a ludicrous off-balance jig during a ditty called “Jump Jim Crow” that contained the lines,“Weel about and turn about and do jis so/Eb’ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.” By the end of the decade “jumping Jim Crow” became a synonym for compromising one’s principles and Jim Crow a synonym for separate accommodations in public facilities, such as locomotives.  Historian Luxenberg found an October 12, 1838 notice in the Salem Gazettereferring to the “Jim Crow car at the end of the train.”  Even after the Civil War, in the North as well as Dixie, African Americans were often segregated on trains and steamships; as Luxenberg wrote, “the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson ruling [was] written by a New England-born justice for a 7-1 majority dominated by Northerners.”

Prudence Crandall

In 1832 Canterbury, Connecticut schoolteacher Prudence Crandall, the wife of a minister, admitted 17 year-old African-American Sarah Harris to her private school for girls.  When white parents withdrew their daughters, Crandall, with the support of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, turned her institution into exclusively a boarding school for young women of color until retaliatory actions by townspeople, including nuisance lawsuits and the poisoning of the school’s well, forced the Crandalls to leave town.

Growing up in Fort Washington, PA, I was aware of a small cluster of homes three blocks from us inhabited by black folks who took in foster children from Philadelphia. Some went to my elementary school, and I’d see them wearing clothes my brother and I had outgrown that Midge had given to our cleaning lady Ada Jenkins. In fifth grade my safety patrol corner was a block from where they lived, and I knew many by name.  Bernard Johnson was a playmate. My first encounter with racism, I believe, was when the principal left Charlie Gaskins, the best player in our class, off the softball team.  In seventh grade at Upper Dublin were classmates from the black community of North Hills, and I became friends with Percy Herder and Bernell Nash and had fantasies about five-foot-ten, full-breasted Beatrice Addie Green (even the names seemed exotic, given my white bread suburban upbringing). In the gym locker room I gaped upon spying Percy’s silk, yellow briefs with tiger stripes.  My first epiphany regarding Jim Crow realities was a year later when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.  A neighbor from Alabama blamed outside agitators, but scenes on TV exposed that as a lie.

 C. Vann Woodward

In grad school at Maryland, C. Vann Woodward’s “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” (1955), based on lectures delivered at the University of Virginia, was must reading and led many of us to Woodward’s more substantial “Origins of the New South, 1877-1913” (1951). In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education(1954) Woodward traced the history of Jim Crow laws, which until the 1890s were more common in the North than in the South, where racial separation in public places was custom rather than law.  Then when Populists began looking to bring African Americans into their movement, conservative “Bourbon” Democrats passed legislation to create, in Woodward’s words, “legally prescribed, rigidly enforced, state-wide Jim Crowism.”

Photographer of urban ruins Cindy C. “Cupcake” Bean, whose shot of a Lake Michigan sunset with steel mills in the background appears in “Gary: A Pictorial History,” wrote: “Crouching in the darkness of an abandoned house, I sat in the middle of a room filled with toys. The sun was sinking casting ominous shadows in the room. I sat next to the horse on springs and looked at it…it sadly stared into nothingness as I photographed it. I felt lost…lost in a room full of toys.”  At first glance the horse on springs appears quite lifelike.

abandoned Glen Park church; photo by Cindy Cupcake

In the Jeopardy category “the 1870s,” I knew four of five answers, including Boss William Marcy Tweed and cartoonist Thomas Nest as the first to  draw images of a donkey for Democrats, but fanned on one about a botanist who developed the russet potato, so-named due to its reddish-brown color.  It was Luther Burbank, but I guessed George Washington Carver.  Known as the “Peanut Man,” Carver also did research on sweet potatoes at Tuskegee Institute but not russet potatoes.  One contestant guessed “Russet.”  Along with Boston Massacre victim Crispus Attucks and educator Booker T. Washington, Carver was extolledduring the Jim Crow era as a nonthreatening Negro, but that should not detract from his remarkable discoveries.

At Chesterton library Steve Luxenberg’s “Separate” was in the New Books section, but I opted for Richard Gergel’s “Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sergeant Isaak Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring.”  On February 12, 1946 (“The Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln’s birthday), Sergeant Isaak Woodard, wearing his army uniform, was returning on a Greyhound bus to his home in Augusta, Georgia upon receiving an honorable discharge after three years of military service as a longshoreman in the Pacific and came under intense fire in New Guinea.  Sitting with a white G.I., passing a bottle back and forth, and talking too loudly to suit a passenger nearby, he was removed by the driver and arrested by Batesburg, South Carolina police chief Lynwood Shull.  While having him in custody, Shull and other police beat Woodard severely with nightsticks, and later Shull jabbed him in the eyes with a billy club for answering “Yes” rather than “Yes sir.” The beating permanently blinded Woodard.    

Isaac Woodard after beating; below, Julian Bond

The outrage mobilized black veterans and led to President Truman desegregating the military by executive order.  After an all-white jury acquitted Shull, conscience-stricken Federal Judge Waring began issuing landmark decisions that challenged Jim Crow laws.  His dissent in a 1951 case pertaining to segregated schools became the model for the unanimousBrown v. Board of EducationSupreme Court judgment overturning the Plessy “separate but equal” precedent  and ordering the Topeka, Kansas school board to desegregate its schools.  The role of the NAACP was crucial in publicizing and litigating the Woodard case.  In “We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal team That Dismantled Jim Crow” (2018) Margaret Edds highlights the role of two NAACP attorneys who developed a legal strategy that found a receptive audience in federal judges in key civil rights cases.

Similar atrocities against returning World War I veterans occurred without such dramatic repercussions.  Woodard’s blinding was not an isolated incident.  In a chapter titled “Reign of Terror” Gergel documents horrendous occurrences in Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee. In the course of his research Gergel came across a statement by Julian Bond that the Isaac Woodard incident triggered the modern civil rights movement. Interviewing the civil rights icon and University of Virginia History professor, Gergel wrote:

 Bond recalled from memory the story of Woodard’s blinding and described a photograph he remembered from his childhood. As Bond described the image, he began to weep openly.  Composing himself, he apologized for the tears but stated that after all the years, “I still weep for this blinded soldier.”

A decade later, a photo of Emmett Till’s mutilated body would shame the nation and provide propaganda for the Soviet Union.

Gergel’s use of the word mudsills, meaning those at the lowest social level, led me to this quotation by Abraham Lincoln, whose background was not far removed from those whom he described:

 By the 'mud-sill' theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be -- all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all.

Before being inducted into the army Woodard had laid railroad tracks, delivered milk, took construction jobs for two dollars a day, and got hired at a sawmill, Doolittle’s Lumber.  Gergel wrote: "He worked as a 'log turner,' a backbreaking and dangerous job that earned him but $10 a week.  Because they faced such dismal employment options, it is not surprising that despite the perils of service in the armed forces, Woodard and many other African Americans residing in the rural South viewed military service as a promising alternative."

Bill Hudnut

In the Winter 2019 Traces Editor’s Note, Ray Boomhower described his 28-year association with the magazine, including playing a role in soliciting reader opinion on what to call it, finally settling on a name similar to Steel Shavings.  Pictured are numerous past covers, almost half of which contain articles of mine, including my one cover story on Gary pugilist Tony Zale.  My most recent pays tribute to Gary civil rights pioneer Reverend L.K. Jackson, the self-styled “Hell-raiser from the East,” “Servant of the Lord’s Servant,” and “Old Prophet.”  A current article describes the civil rights contributions of Republican Bill Hudnut, who served as mayor of Indianapolis for 16 years, beginning in 1976. At a time when most downstate politicians shunned Gary mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher Hudnut embraced him as a valuable ally and in 1980 supported Hatcher’s successful bid to become president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Several African Americans compete in Unit 154 duplicate bridge events, though not commonly in Chesterton, including Richard Hatcher’s wife Ruthellyn, and the Gary game has far more tables than ours.  In 1932 blacks formed the American Bridge Association (ABA) due to being barred from American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) events, especially in the South. In 1967 the ABCL included in its by-laws a rule stating that nobody could be denied membership on the basis of race, color or creed.  The ABA still exists and holds biannual tournaments.

At Chesterton YMCA I played duplicate for the first time in over a month, partnering with Charlie Halberstadt.  Director Alan Yngve said, “Welcome back,”and sassy Dottie Hart quipped, “Where have you been?”  When I commented on Sally Will’s green outfit being early for St. Patrick’s Day, she said she decided to wear green all week and pointed to her earrings shaped like leprechauns.  In the hand I wish I could play over, Dottie Hart opened a Heart, Charlie overcalled to 2 Clubs, and Terry Bauer and I passed.  Dottie bid 2 Hearts, and both Charlie and Terry passed.  I held 8 high card points, Queen, spot, spot of Clubs, and King, Jack, spot, spot of Spades.  Aware that Charlie sometimes overcalls light, I took Terry’s pass as a sign that my partner either had a strong Club suit or opening count and figured that even going down one would produce a better score than if Dottie made 2 Hearts.  I bid 3 Clubs and Charlie went down three. Result: low board.

photos by George Sladic, above, and Paul Kaczocha

George Sladic and Paul Kaczocha posted photos of the Lake Michigan lakefront, reminding me that visitors still don’t have free access to Mount Baldy due to possible sinkholes and that this is a dangerous season for intrepid or naïve visitors wandering onto ice formations that often break off from the shoreline.  In fact Paul’s dog had to swim to shore when trapped that way.

Julian Bond

“Most of those who made the Movement were the nameless, the marchers with tired feet, the protesters beat back with fire hoses and Billy clubs, and the unknown women and men who risked jobs and home and life.” Julian Bond

Julian Bond in 1966 and 2007

Civil Rights icon Julian Bond passed away.  A leader with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Southern Poverty Law Center, and, most recently the NAACP, Bond was a professor at the University of Virginia whom I ran into several times at Oral History Association conferences.  Bond’s father was a university president and his mother a librarian.  Ray Smock said he personified what W.E.B. DuBois labeled the “Talented Tenth” of potential African-American leadership, and he risked life and limb on behalf of the dispossessed.  I recall vividly his excitement that the Birmingham, Alabama, Civil Rights Institute had a “Memory Book” for ordinary folks to describe their participation in the 1963 demonstrations that paved the way for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.   Bond was co-director of an oral history project entitled “Explorations in Black Leadership.”  Eulogizing Bond as “a hero and, I’m privileged to say, a friend,” President Barack Obama stated: “Justice and equality was the mission that spanned his life.  Julian Bond helped change this country for the better.  And what better way to be remembered than that.”

In 1977, in an inspired move by producer Lorne Michaels, Julian Bond hosted Saturday Night Live. Famous Julians include John Lennon’s son, a musician in his own right, and controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.  Julian the Apostate, so-named because he renounced Christianity, ruled the Roman Empire between 361 and 363.  A learned philosopher and brilliant military commander, Emperor Julian was the subject of a 1964 novel by Gore Vidal, who, along with William F. Buckley, is featured in a new documentary, “Best of Enemies,” about their televised debates during the 1968 national conventions.  The liberal Vidal and reactionary Buckley had a visceral hatred for what the other stood for.  When Vidal labeled Buckley a “crypto-fascist,” Buckley lamely retorted by calling Vidal a “fag.”

Fifty years ago the Watts ghetto in Los Angeles went up in flames, set off by an incident involving the nearly all-white police force. A blue-ribbon committee concluded that the uprising, which critics dismissed as a commodity riot, was a result of rising expectations and blocked opportunities.  Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page wrote:

   Watts was a pivotal event in shaping the polarized racial and political landscape through which we Americans struggle today.

   Coming on the heels of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s historic civil rights bills and the early days of his “war on poverty,” Watts helped spur a conservative backlash that continues to push back against similar progressive reforms today.

   You can even hear echoes of the Watts debate in today’s “Black Lives Matter” protests over fatal encounters between unarmed black men and white police officers – although without today’s cellphone cameras.

A day after Watts erupted, looting broke out in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood after a fire truck veered out of control and uprooted a street sign that struck and killed 23 year-old African American Dessie May Williams.  The all-white crew left the station without a tillerman, whose responsibility was to control the ladder that had knocked over the sign.  Unconfirmed rumors spread that the tillerman had been drunk at the time of the accident.

below, Mamie Gummer and Rick Springfield

In “Ricki and the Flash,” the best movie I’ve seen this year, Meryl Streep plays a small-time musician who after many years returns home to deal with a suicidal daughter and two resentful sons.  Her brother having died in Vietnam, Ricki has an American flag tattoo on her back and twice voted for George W. Bush.  The musical numbers are awesome, beginning with Streep belting out Tom Petty’s “American Girl.”  Eighties heartthrob Rick Springfield played her band mate and love interest and Kevin Kline her decent but square ex.  At one point Julie, played by Streep’s real-life daughter Mamie Gummer, says, “Hey, you guys are fighting; it’s like the 80s all over again!”

In John Updike’s “Rabbit Remembered” plug ugly Ronnie Harrison, now married to Harry’s widow Janice, has a middle-aged son who’s a gay dancer struggling to survive in New York City as a hawker of Broadway tickets.  At a 1999 Thanksgiving dinner he tells Harry’s love child Annabelle, “The most amazing production I’ve seen lately has the rather embarrassing title ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ a one-woman show by Eve Ensler, and it’s really more serious than it sounds.  It’s about us and our bodies.  All of us.  Men, women, and in-between.” 

Taylor Swift, on the cover of Vanity Fair’s style issue, seems to have jettisoned her distinctive eyebrows that contributed so much to her uniqueness.  Ryan Adams recently announced that he would record a complete cover version of Swift’s “1989” CD.  Swift, tongue in cheek, supposedly declared, “COOL.  I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight or ever again, and I’m going to celebrate today every year as a holiday.”  Adams promised his version of the celebratory “Welcome to New York” would be the “saddest ever.”  Proclaiming “the lights are so bright but they never blind me,” the song also includes these lines:

“When we first dropped our bags on apartment floors

Took our broken hears, put them in a drawer

Everybody here was someone else before

And you can want who you want

Boys and boys and girls and girls.”

When I saw “The Vagina Monologues” at IUN, its large cast included Sociology professor Tanice Foltz.  The sexual candor caused one secretary to storm out in disgust.  The play has been performed in 140 countries with such celebrities as Jane Fonda. Glenn Close, Cyndi Lauper, Whoopi Goldberg, and Oprah Winfrey.  The most controversial skit, “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could,” involved a teenage girl given alcohol and then seduced by a 24 year-old woman, which is portrayed as “a good rape” – in other words, a positive experience in contrast to sex with abusive men. 

front, Oliver, Ben, Bella; back, Mary Ann, Toni, Jimbo, Lisa

Toni and I visited nieces Lisa and Mary Anne in Granger, the affluent South Bend suburb.  Lisa’s sister Mary Anne and husband Derik Cavignano had just returned from Iceland and showed us striking photos of the rugged terrain through which they hiked.  During the trip Bella and Ben, whom we hadn’t seen in several years, stayed with Lisa and Fritz Teuscher, who had lost 40 pounds in the past year.  Fritz recently picked up a 40-pound weight and shuddered at having carried around that much excess baggage.

Saturday I watched “Birdman” on HBO, bought a steak taco for $2.50 at Chesterton’s European Market, and at the library read a review of David McCullough’s account of Orville and Wilbur Wright and the dawn of the airplane age, a follow-up of sorts to McCullough’s books about such engineering marvels as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal.   After dining at Miller Bakery Café eight of us played bridge at Hagelbergs, four hands each with the seven others.  I won first place, $4.00, thanks to a hand Toni played as my partner.  An opponent holding over 20 points doubled our two-spade bid, and with a couple singletons and brilliant cross-roughs, Toni made the game contract plus an overtrick.

Nicole Garza and Michael Cunio; below, Cunio with producers Krysten Ester, Charlie Blum & Dawn Stokes

At the Star Plaza Becca performed in the sold-out production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”  Playing Jesus was Michael Cunio, who is in the vocal group Under the Streetlamp and has starred on Broadway in Hairspray and in the Chicago cast of Jersey Boys.  Providing comic relief as King Herod was Hoosier Marc Summers, host of Double Dare on Nickelodeon and the Food network hit Unwrapped.  Local talent Nicole Garza shined as Mary Magdalene.   In the Playbill my buddy, former IUN Fine Arts major Stevie Kokos, was listed both as Maintenance Manager and part of the set construction crew.  I’d love to see Star Plaza CEO Charlie Blum and General Manager Mark Bishop stage Henry Farag’s “The Signal” in the same manner as “Jesus Christ Superstar,” combining local talent (i.e., the ensemble already assembled by Farag) with established star Michael Cunio and maybe an Oldies performer such as Lou Christie or even Frankie Valli.

I agree with David Bromwich’s critique of online education.  In the New York Review of Books “Trapped in the Virtual Classroom,” he concluded:

In the age of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, it is not a foregone conclusion that our society will continue to support teaching at all levels as one of the honorable professions, a respected calling on a par with medicine and law.  The support will continue only if – against the allure of the most seductive of technologies – we remind ourselves how much the contact between teacher and student can matter in the physical classroom.  I can’t see what is risked by this conservative approach.  Without embracing online education, we can still choose to take the help it offers.

IUN grad and incoming law student Marla Gee wrote from Valparaiso:

  Hitting the ground running.  Orientation week is winding down, we've been going 9:00-5:00 all week.  Assignments are already due for next week, reading cases and writing briefs. Meanwhile, I'm liking Valpo!  With my I.D., THE BUS IS FREE: magic words for me, whose world revolves around public transportation.  There is a V-Line bus stop about a block and a half from my place.  So far so good with school stuff.  Law students have 24/7 ACCESS TO THE LIBRARY, simply swipe the I.D. at the front door. This was amazing news to me, such a privilege.