Post by jazzlover on Mar 29, 2007 18:00:08 GMT -5
A Virginia legislator created a stir recently when he said Whites living today shouldn’t apologize for slavery. The rancid stench of state-sponsored racism extended well into the 1960s. So, if there is to be an apology in Virginia or any other state, it should not be limited to slavery.
Consider the following taken from the National Park Service web site that I recount in some of my speeches:
From the 1800s into the mid-1960s, there were Jim Crow laws mandating separation of the races. They were comprehensive, covering every imaginable circumstance such as toilet facilities, railroads, buses, education, the selling of wine and beer, restaurants, housing, parks, hospital entrances, prisons, textbooks, libraries, circus tickets, theaters, reform school, fishing, lunch counters, theaters, telephone booths, cemeteries, and, above all intermarriage. See excerpts of Jim Crow laws at:
www.nps.gov/malu/documents/jim_crow_laws.htm
Let’s look at a few of them:
Mississippi: “There shall be maintained by the governing authorities of every hospital maintained by the state for treatment of white and colored patients, separate entrances for white and colored patients and visitors, and such entrances shall be used by the race only for which they are prepared.”
Georgia had one governing mental hospitals that provided: “The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be together.”
Blacks and Whites not only couldn’t interact on a normal basis while they were alive, they were even kept apart after they had died.
A Georgia law stated, “The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons.”
These Jim Crow laws were rigorously enforced against children as well as adults.
Not only could the Jim Crow laws not be violated, Southern customs were also enforced.
In 1958, in Monroe, N.C., two Black boys-—Fuzzy Simpson, age 7, and Hanover Thompson, age 9, were invited to join a group of five White children, including two girls. One of the girls remembered that she had played with Hanover when his mother worked as a maid in her family’s house. Overjoyed at being reunited with her old playmate, she kissed him on the cheek.
That wasn’t quite the kiss of death but it was close. When the girl innocently told her mother, the two boys were arrested, and convicted of attempted rape. The Juvenile Court judge sentenced Fuzzy to 12 years in jail and Hanover to 14. Fortunately, there was a public outcry and President Eisenhower got the governor to intervene [Kennedy, P. 197-198].
Yes, there is plenty to apologize for, but it doesn’t stop with slavery.
(George E. Curry is editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com. To contact Mr. Curry or to book him for a speaking engagement, go to his website, http://www.georgecurry.com.)
© Copyright 2007 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
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Consider the following taken from the National Park Service web site that I recount in some of my speeches:
From the 1800s into the mid-1960s, there were Jim Crow laws mandating separation of the races. They were comprehensive, covering every imaginable circumstance such as toilet facilities, railroads, buses, education, the selling of wine and beer, restaurants, housing, parks, hospital entrances, prisons, textbooks, libraries, circus tickets, theaters, reform school, fishing, lunch counters, theaters, telephone booths, cemeteries, and, above all intermarriage. See excerpts of Jim Crow laws at:
www.nps.gov/malu/documents/jim_crow_laws.htm
Let’s look at a few of them:
Mississippi: “There shall be maintained by the governing authorities of every hospital maintained by the state for treatment of white and colored patients, separate entrances for white and colored patients and visitors, and such entrances shall be used by the race only for which they are prepared.”
Georgia had one governing mental hospitals that provided: “The Board of Control shall see that proper and distinct apartments are arranged for said patients, so that in no case shall Negroes and white persons be together.”
Blacks and Whites not only couldn’t interact on a normal basis while they were alive, they were even kept apart after they had died.
A Georgia law stated, “The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons.”
These Jim Crow laws were rigorously enforced against children as well as adults.
Not only could the Jim Crow laws not be violated, Southern customs were also enforced.
In 1958, in Monroe, N.C., two Black boys-—Fuzzy Simpson, age 7, and Hanover Thompson, age 9, were invited to join a group of five White children, including two girls. One of the girls remembered that she had played with Hanover when his mother worked as a maid in her family’s house. Overjoyed at being reunited with her old playmate, she kissed him on the cheek.
That wasn’t quite the kiss of death but it was close. When the girl innocently told her mother, the two boys were arrested, and convicted of attempted rape. The Juvenile Court judge sentenced Fuzzy to 12 years in jail and Hanover to 14. Fortunately, there was a public outcry and President Eisenhower got the governor to intervene [Kennedy, P. 197-198].
Yes, there is plenty to apologize for, but it doesn’t stop with slavery.
(George E. Curry is editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com. To contact Mr. Curry or to book him for a speaking engagement, go to his website, http://www.georgecurry.com.)
© Copyright 2007 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
Top of Page