The 1950s in America… not the greatest time

The full 1950 Census results have been released–each Census is made completely available 75 years after it was taken. You can access them at The United States Census Bureau website.

We were scanning a collection of highlighted data and were depressed to see this roundup of questions:

One notes, of course, that “he” is used for “person” throughout, until that last question: “If female and ever married, how many children has she ever borne, not counting stillbirths?”

No questions about how long a woman has been working or how much money she has earned, or her potential service in the Armed Forces during the wars, or anything about her being a head of household. Of course women did all of these things, as the actual Census data makes clear. For women to have to answer questions clearly meant to exclude them, to make ridiculous or fantastical the idea that they might work or serve their country, was painful. But they did it. They refused to be turned into objects of reproduction whose only purpose or “service” to their country was to be pregnant.

It’s still painful today for women to be acknowledged as heads of household and breadwinners, but subjected to economic, physical, and mental discrimination and violence. And it’s frightening as well as painful to endure the hysterical insistence that’s been rising since the 80s to force women “back” into an existence as birthing objects. As we face the seemingly inevitable reversal of Roe v. Wade, the battle against sex education, and the refusal of many health insurers and employers to cover birth control, it’s very frightening to see how much some people want women to be pregnancy vessels and nothing else.

These “pro-birth” people demand that every pregnancy be carried to term, but then steadfastly refuse to offer any supports for the baby that is born, voting against free school breakfast and lunch, government-funded preschool programs, after-school programs, and affordable health care. Once a baby is born, the people who demanded that birth do their utmost to make sure the child does not thrive.

An important step in continuing the battle against sexism is to reject the myth that the Fifties were a golden age in America. Start that work today! Fight back against any and all programs and laws that relegate women to child-bearers, and so many children to lives of want.

Why did Americans fight in wars?

There are many correct answers to this question, from the noble to the mundane to the misguided. But we feel confident claiming that making it hard for Americans to vote was never a stated purpose for going to war in the United States.

Texas state representative Jack Enfinger does not agree. We’ll get to him in a moment. For now, the background. We were listening to a story on the radio about Texas Senate Bill 1, which is titled thusly:

An act relating to election integrity and security, including by
preventing fraud in the conduct of elections in this state;
increasing criminal penalties; creating criminal offenses;
providing civil penalties.

It is one of the many state bills that have been or are about to be passed to stop non-white people from voting in the name of correcting election fraud. It’s not a leap to make this statement, as the decisions of the Supreme Court has been openly stating since 2013 and its Shelby County decision that times have changed, non-white Americans no longer suffer from institutional discrimination, and there is no need to keep the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

We posted about this at the time – see The Supreme Court strikes down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 4 of the VRA sets out the criteria for determining when a state/local jurisdiction is violating fair elections and voting. As we said back then,

the Court was reviewing two things: whether racial minorities still face voting intimidation and restriction nearly 50 years after the 1965 Act; and whether it was unfair to keep singling out Southern states for closer inspection than other states. The answer to both these questions was “no”. The current system, says the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, is “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day. Congress—if it is to divide the states—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current condition. It cannot simply rely on the past.”
That is, we can’t say that since Southern states prevented black citizens from voting during Reconstruction, in the 1870s, those states should still be identified as requiring federal oversight. The problem with this logic is that one does not have to go back to the 1870s to find voter repression in the Southern states singled out (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia). These states were preventing black people from voting in the 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, and today. The history of intimidation, arson, and murder used to prevent black Americans from voting in those states is unbroken from 1865 to 2013.
The proof of this claim is in the hundreds of proposed changes to state voting laws in the Southern states currently pending at the U.S. Department of Justice. It’s in the statements made yesterday by Republican leaders in those states that they will take “immediate action” to not only introduce new laws restricting voting rights, but to revive and pass old laws that were rejected by the Justice Department as infringing on the right to vote.
“After the high court announced its momentous ruling Tuesday, officials in Texas and Mississippi pledged to immediately implement laws requiring voters to show photo identification before getting a ballot,” reports the Houston Chronicle. “North Carolina Republicans promised they would quickly try to adopt a similar law. Florida now appears free to set its early voting hours however Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP Legislature please. And Georgia’s most populous county likely will use county commission districts that Republican state legislators drew over the objections of local Democrats. …Laughlin McDonald, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights office, said he agrees that pending submissions to the Justice Department are now moot. It’s less clear what happens to scores of laws that the feds have already denied since the 2006 reauthorization.”
The Southern Republicans in question say that the ruling is a validation of their states’ move away from racial discrimination, an acknowledgement that times have changed. In one way they are right: over the past 20 years, Southern politicians widened the scope of their ambition to attempt to prevent not just black Americans from voting, but the poor, elderly, and Latino as well—all groups they perceive as voting for Democratic party. They have moved away from purely racial discrimination to a much broader discrimination.
Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, said, “Voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that. The question is whether the Act’s extraordinary measures, including its disparate treatment of the States, continue to satisfy constitutional requirements. As we put it a short time ago, ‘the Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.’”

There are many things to question here:

If, as the Court claims, voter discrimination still exists, but southern states are no longer the single source of that voter discrimination, then why didn’t the Court expand the VRA to include northern states, rather than kill the VRA?

If the states that wanted the VRA overturned have representatives publicly stating that they would immediately introduce laws that restricted voting, how can the Court state that overturning the VRA will not make voter discrimination worse?

If the VRA is outdated because it’s not current, then what just happened with the Court’s decision in Brnovich v Democratic National Committee?

We won’t go into all of the details of this decision here – you can find an objective, very detailed explanation here at BallotPedia. What we will focus on is the decision’s selection of 1982 as the standard for judging state voting laws: here’s a clear reference from the decision itself:

(B) The degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard practice when §2 was amended in 1982 is a relevant consideration. The burdens associated with the rules in effect at that time are useful in gauging whether the burdens imposed by a challenged rule are sufficient to prevent voting from being equally “open” or furnishing an equal “opportunity” to vote in the sense meant by §2.

If the problem in 2013 was that an Act from 1965, and thus 48 years old, was too outdated to be relevant (a dubious claim), then how is 1982 okay in 2021? That was 38 years ago, and will only get older.

This discrepancy is just a token for the overall violation of voting rights that the Brnovich decision represents.

Now to circle back to our question about why Americans fought in wars. When we were listening to the radio, we heard many Texas residents saying their piece for and against the legislation. Then we heard state rep Jack Enfinger, of San Antonio, say this:

“This thing about voter suppression is a major false claim—a joke.”
Jack Enfinger, a San Antonio Republican, testified that Texas offers multiple ways to vote, including two weeks of early voting.
“How much more does Texas have to bend over backwards for… the voters? Voting is not supposed to be easy. That’s what our men died for.”

The disdain and incomprehension in Enfinger’s voice when he said “the voters” was remarkable. He makes it very clear that “voters” are a subspecies of American that somehow cannot be equated with “citizens.”

But it’s his claim that American men [sic] fought to prevent Americans from being able to vote easily is so alarming and cray that it takes your breath away. What can it mean? Because the bill in Texas makes it harder for non-white people to vote, the only possible answer seems to be that he’s saying white American men fought and died in foreign wars to make sure that only white American men could ever vote here at home. Americans fought and died in WWII to keep America white.

This is, by now, mainstream, often-heard white fascist content in America (we never thought we’d be saying this in our lifetimes). It hardly causes a stir anymore–since 2020, we’ve become used to fascism in the mainstream. This comment will win Enfinger more Republican support, and otherwise disappear.

But the Supreme Court is on his side, and that’s a problem that’s larger than Texas, and won’t go away. The Shelby decision and the Brnovich decision and the decisions that are coming soon don’t use Enfinger’s direct language, but they are of a piece, and they shore him up and support him.

We seem to end every post the same way lately – do what you can on your local level, vote, protest, get involved in local politics. The minority of people who are passionately devoted to destroying democracy in America are active every day in these ways. SIgn a petition, go to a speech by your representative or a candidate. America has a long tradition of making this relatively easy to do… for now.

Go watch Rutherford Falls

We have a simple message to all HP readers! Watch the new series Rutherford Falls.

Created by Michael Schur (who brought us The Good Place, Parks and Rec, and Brooklyn 99) and Sierra Teller Ornelas (who brought us Superstore), and actor Ed Helms, RF has all the amazing characteristics of these shows: deeply engaging with very difficult and complex intellectual and spiritual topics with humor and ease.

We particularly think of The Good Place, which engaged fundamental moral questions, including what it means to be “good”, what will and intention have to do with morality, the purpose of an afterlife, how to make valid moral judgments, and moral relativism, while definitively solving (at least for one member of the HP) The Trolley Problem. All while being very funny, very humble, not preachy, and very brave. Few prime-time sitcoms would dare to question the validity of the Christian afterlife; fewer still (none?) would dare to conclude that it is so deeply flawed as to be immoral in itself.

Rutherford Falls takes on the big, big topic of American history. Just to write that is pretty mind-blowing. Nathan Rutherford, played by Ed Helms, is the 12th-generation descendant of Lawrence Rutherford, a puritan colonial settler who founded the town through a “fair and honest” deal with the Minishonka people who lived on and tended the land. The location is deliberately blurred, but seems to be western Connecticut. We won’t give away the plot, which unfolds very quickly, but Nathan is depicted as a great guy who is passionate about his family’s history and proud of “his” town. Nathan’s best friend from childhood is Reagan Wells, a Minishonka woman who, as Nathan says, “gets it.” His nemeses are Terry Thomas, a Minishonka man and CEO of the Minishonka casino, and mayor Deirdre Chisenhall, the first black and first female mayor of “Nathan’s” town.

The unbelievably good writing moves immediately into extremely complex issues: whose history is told and preserved; whose history is buried or left untold or deliberately destroyed; what native people are “supposed to be like”/what is “authentically” native; and, importantly, how seemingly good, nice people can hold beliefs that are extremely harmful and hateful.

When does unknowing ignorance–the unquestioning acceptance of white-washed histories–cross over into deliberate ignorance–refusal to listen to those who tell the truth? How are those who suffer at the hands of that ignorance made to feel like it’s “not nice” to challenge it? Why do we let myths about the past dictate our actions? The show artfully illustrates how short a walk it is from “good person who doesn’t know the whole truth–what’s the harm in letting him believe what he believes?” to “person who, confronted with unpleasant truths they really have no excuse for not knowing about, fights to preserve the myth.”

Making public history–acts that impacted hundreds, and eventually thousands and millions of people living in what became America–the untouchable private property of individuals/descendants who get to control the narrative that perpetuates inequality is an action that goes on everywhere in America. Nathan’s passionate desire to honor “his family” makes any attack on their bad actions an attack on him–a nice guy. This is the trap set for those who seek to reclaim history from the victors.

We won’t spoil the plot–go watch it! The majority-native cast is a relief, it’s funny, and it’s the most powerful education in the history of this continent that you could ever get.

(And then start reading Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, by Abenaki scholar Lisa Brooks.)

The Great American Experiment goes on

Way back in November 2008 we posted “The Great American Experiment”, an essay describing the election of Barack Obama as president as an instance of the triumph of our ongoing experiment in creating true democracy in the United States and the world.

We re-run it today, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take their oaths of office, with a few updates for 2021.

______

America is an experiment. From at least the time of its first white settlement, and likely for centuries before that, America has been a place where people came to experiment with doing things differently. It’s been a place to gamble, to see if you could be one of the lucky ones who could buy land, support yourself, marry and create a new life and a new family future in a stable, new land. You gambled on the weather, politics, your own skills, and your own ability to commit to the experiment of living in America, and being an American.

During the 18th century, the experiment deepened, as Americans began to speculate that they could form the first democratic nation in modern times. Intense experimentation went on from the 1760s to 1787, as Americans adapted and invented forms of government fit for the scope of their needs, the gaping hole of their inexperience, and the high and intense expectations for their future.

On and on went the experiment: could we create a strong and stable centralized government? Could we grow without destabilizing? Could we solve the problem of slavery? Could we truly create a melting pot in which to forge Americans out of peoples of all nations? Could we give women the vote? Could we accept Jewish people as true Americans? Could we desegregate? Could we assure civil rights regardless of sexuality?

Every time Americans experienced failure, or had the rug pulled out from under them, whether by natural disaster or human disaster (like stock market crashes, Depressions, war, and injustice), they had to stop and think: is it worth it? Do our high expectations just set us up for disappointment? Is it really possible to have a strong, wealthy, powerful, modern country that is also just, fair, free, and equal?

Our momentum from the Founding onward propelled us to believe that it is possible. We took pride in attempting the unlikely, in dedicating ourselves to making the seemingly impossible possible. We did it because we knew our history began when we committed ourselves to the biggest experiment humans can attempt: liberty and justice for all.

America’s story is one of constantly tackling the big—the biggest—problems, ahead of everyone else, with very little to guide us but those Founding principles that nag at our conscience. And each time we’ve made progress, extending civil rights to more and more people, it’s been because that old spirit of taking a gamble, of performing the ultimate experiment, took over and led us to the right decision.

As we think today about what divides Americans, we think it boils down to the fact that some Americans no longer want to experiment. They want to close the lab down. We’ve gone far enough into the unknown, making it known, they say; now let’s stop—let’s even go backward. We were wrong to conduct some of our experiments in liberty, and that’s the source of all our problems. Gay people shouldn’t be treated equally. Black people shouldn’t run the country. Women shouldn’t hold high office. Muslims shouldn’t be granted habeas corpus. Democracy itself is weak and corrupt–we need a military and religious dictatorship to undo every advance in civil rights and the pursuit of happiness, because somehow freedom and happiness are destroying America.

Whenever one of those Americans talks about the problem with our country today, they talk about how we should be like we once were, back when white people who defined marriage as one man-one woman and were Protestant veterans built this nation. They feel they are losing their birthright, their legacy.

But those Americans are wrong. What their ancestors really were was scientists. Experimenters. Radicals who always considered the impossible possible. A people with near-supernatural qualities of optimism and defiance and willingness to go into the unknown and make it their home, to make the amazing the norm. They defied the status quo. That’s how they built America.

Americans who want to end the experiment are few, but boisterous. They clamor at the national microphone. But Americans who know that there is no America without the experiment will keep at it, and they will persevere. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are such Americans, and their election is proof that the lab is still open, and that America in general will always be at the drawing board, expanding its concept of liberty and justice and equality until we finally fulfill the founding principles that created this nation so long ago.

A call to action, January 2021

Our democracy is under open attack. Americans who have long considered our system of government to be the source of all our nation’s problems have at last acted to overthrow it by invading the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the certification of a fair and legal presidential election.

These people have been taught to hate “the government” at least since the days of President Reagan, who claimed in his January 20, 1981 inaugural speech that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

This was the official start of an alternate American history, one that identifies all government, but particularly our federal government, as the enemy of American freedom and individuality. This imaginary history describes a “great” America that was controlled by white Christian men, where there were no homosexuals, non-Christians, or feminists, and all immigrants were “honest, hard-working” white Christians.

Those of us who study and love actual American history have always had to fight against this fantasy American history.

We’ve done our best to teach the people we talk with about the real history of race, sex, religion, immigration, and politics in America.

We do this tirelessly because the study of real American history is always the study of the struggle to fulfill the unique mandate of our founding documents, which commit Americans to promoting the general welfare by acknowledging the self-evident truth that all men are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We take pride and pleasure in helping people understand the importance of the pledge of allegiance they make to stand up for liberty and justice for all.

We are ever-ready to show other Americans how the language “all men are created equal”, with its assumed meaning of “white men”, was a starting point from which generation after generation of Americans expanded rights to include women, non-white Americans, and all citizens of this country.

We don’t pretend that American history is a rose garden of justice and triumph. But we help people understand that we have a unique national conscience that drives us, each generation of Americans, to live up to our founding principles, that won’t let us settle for less, that makes us despair over injustice and recommit, over and over, to creating a more perfect union.

Today, in 2021, we must do even more.

Today, we must rise up to take real action against the terrorists who would destroy our democratic government. Not just by issuing statements of dismay, but by actually mobilizing protests in the streets and online.

There is no line between “history” and “current events”, between “studying history” and “talking about politics.” Today’s political event is tomorrow’s history. We can’t divorce our study of American history from political activism in the name of justice.

This is a time for action as historians. What can we do?

We must first demand that emergency actions be taken to remove a treasonous president, and the treasonous members of Congress who voted to overturn a legal election.

We must fearlessly identify anti-democratic, racist, nativist activities and groups and explicitly call them out as enemies of our democracy. This is not the time to call for “trying to understand.” If we pretend not to understand tyranny and terrorism after studying it for years, we are part of the problem.

We must acknowledge the magnitude of the terrorist overrunning of our Capitol and Congress. We cannot tell the public this is just another in a long history of anti-democratic activism. If we minimize what happened on January 6, we help Americans to normalize it, and we are part of the problem.

We must teach Americans their real history, which does not include a once-great America in the undefined past that only a dictatorship can restore. We must teach Americans that our history is one of success and failure in the never-ending pursuit of liberty and justice for all, and that only when we do that work are Americans truly great.

We must speak out to interrupt lies and hate speech. If you are called on to give commentary in any public forum, speak bravely and clearly about the anti-democratic terrorism taking place in the United States, and make it clear that we are bound as Americans to call it by its name and fight against it.

We must refuse to find, provide, or tolerate excuses or justifications for hate speech and for physical acts of terrorism.

We must give talks and write articles and have discussions where we explicitly connect what we learn in American history to the politics of the present day, and the American mandate to create a just and democratic state.

There is open war in America today. If historians can’t or won’t take action in this moment, then we really are just useless “history nerds” and academics, escapists who hide our heads in the sand of the past.

Votes for women, sexual consent, and the revolution we need to continue

There’s a very interesting article in the Smithsonian Magazine about “What Raising the Age of Sexual Consent Taught Women About the Vote”. It’s hard for us to believe today, but the age of consent for females was set by each state, and in 1895, 38 of those states set the age of consent at 21 or younger–in Delaware, the age of consent for a female was 7 years of age.

Most states set it at 12 or 13, considering this the age most girls began to menstruate, which meant, according to male lawmakers, that sexually she was an adult and would of course always consent to sex. And as the article points out, the consent age gave men complete freedom to rape girls and say the girl had consented; that’s all that was required if (and only if) the man was questioned. “She consented,” he could say, and that would be that.

Women who wanted to change this found allies in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU and “the temperance movement” were and still are reviled and mocked as frigid, frustrated, idiotic old maids who didn’t want people to have fun. What the WCTU really did was attempt to change state laws and business practices that sanctioned and even promoted drunkenness–for men only–that led to disastrous consequences for women, especially their wives. Many taverns made deals with factories to have the factory send male employees’ pay envelopes directly to the tavern, in hopes that the men would not be able to resist the temptation and end up drinking their entire salary away. Men staggered home drunk and broke, meaning their families went hungry, and, worse, that women asking where the pay was were often beaten and sometimes killed. Worse, in most states a man who killed his wife while drunk could be let off because he was drunk–a sort of “not guilty by reason of intoxication”–and no man could be held accountable for something he did while he was drunk. (See “Part 1: Roots of Prohibition” of Ken Burns’ documentary Prohibition for details on the climate of drunkenness in 19th century America and why it happened.)

So the WCTU fought alcohol manufacturers and distributors (i.e., bar and tavern owners), not alcohol itself, for what they did to women. They were a natural ally for women seeking to raise the age of sexual consent in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

It was tough going. Women petitioning their state governments were ridiculed and sometimes removed. In the south, rape was openly acknowledged as a way to maintain white male power over black women, and the idea that a black woman might be able to successfully accuse a white man of rape and he might go to jail was out of the question. As the Smithsonian article points out, white male legislators perverted the age of consent drive to write abominable laws against black men accused of rape, guaranteeing they were tortured, mutilated, and/or killed.

With great tenacity and bravery, American women pressed on. They realized that for as long as legislators were always and only men, there would never be justice for women. They organized themselves to gain the vote, which is remarkable. Women pressing for a right they had been denied were already targets for harassment and violence. Women talking openly about sex and rape and child rape and rape as a tool of racism were a hundred times more vulnerable to attack. Brick by brick they scaled the wall of sexism and won the vote in 1920. Once women began to vote, female legislators began to exist, and like “magic”, somehow, the age of consent rose in all existing states to between 16 and 18.

We owe these women a tremendous debt that can only be repaid by exercising the right they had to fight for at the cost of their lives: women voting. American women have been steadily told that sexism is at once not that big a deal and all over, a thing of the past. It’s like telling non-white Americans that we’re living in a “post-racism” society. American women are being urged not to be strident, angry, hysterical… like women have been told for centuries.

So much more work needs to be done to end sexism, and so much of it is being done in the court of public opinion–a man who preyed on women is forced to resign from his job. And it ends there. But American women at the turn of the 20th century didn’t win the vote so men who prey on women could remain safely outside the legal system. Freedom is maintained by law. We need to vote for legislators who will fight for enforcement of existing laws against rape and sexual discrimination. We need to vote for legislators who don’t let cases of rape and sexual discrimination be tried in the court of public opinion. We all–men and women–need to fight like Temperance women and Suffragettes for real justice.

Sean Purdy et. al v. Vauhxx Booker

Purdy and his companions attempted to lynch Booker. That’s all there is to it. They attacked Booker, a black man on the Fourth of July at Lake Monroe in Indiana and after beating him, explicitly said they would kill him.

Here is a still from a video someone took of the incident that speaks volumes:

Screen Shot 2020-07-20 at 9.00.55 AM

The man in the red tank top seems to be telling the person with the camera to stop filming while a woman attempts to calm him down. The man behind him is also pointing at the camera person in a threatening way, while the woman in the foreground (whom we assume is Caroline McCord) has an expression that’s hard to read. Almost hidden is Booker, being pinned to a tree by the red tank top man whom we assume is Purdy.

What happened once this story broke? What always happens. Booker, the black victim, was accused of provoking the attack, and the white attackers were presented as victims. The IndyStar reports it this way:

In a press conference held in Indianapolis Monday, an attorney for two people involved in a racially charged incident near Bloomington said his clients are victims of a smear campaign perpetuated by Vauhxx Booker.

…David Hennessy, a criminal defense attorney, represents Sean Purdy and Caroline McCord, two of the white people captured on videos that show parts of the incident.

Hennessy said Booker has been “putting forth a false narrative” about the events and that his clients “want the truth to come out.”

“Mr. Booker was the instigator and the agitator,” Hennessy said. He alleged that Booker punched Purdy three times and had to be restrained.

According to Hennessy, the incident began when Booker and his friends trespassed on private property. He said Purdy gave Booker a ride to the property line and Booker gave Purdy a beer before leaving.

Hours later, Booker returned and claimed to be a county commissioner, Hennessy said. It was during this second encounter that Booker punched Purdy three times, he claims.

“Mr. Booker threw the punches. He was then restrained — not beaten, restrained,” Hennessy said.

Hennessy also accused Booker of “race baiting” and encouraging one of the men involved to use racist language. A man is seen in the video calling Booker a “nappy headed (expletive).” Booker is heard asking the man what he “really (want) to call” him. The man repeats the insult.

…Hennessy said he and his clients wanted Booker and the people with him to tell the truth about the incident and to “apologize to the real victims of racial injustice and racism.”

Private property, trespassing, innocent whites protecting themselves against a violent intruder–it’s all too familiar a process to turn a black victim into a black predator. Let’s say, for a moment, that Booker really was intruding on private property, and knew it, and did it deliberately, to break the law and threaten or hurt white people. Let’s say Booker began assaulting the Purdy without provocation. Let’s say Booker is a criminal.

Does that mean he should be lynched? Is that how the United States legal system works? That black people who break the law can be murdered by private citizens?

There’s little doubt that murder was the goal, and a real possibility. The look on the face of the woman trying to calm the man we assume is Purdy is eloquent. She is scared that her friends are going to kill someone, on camera, and she’s attempting to prevent that, whether out of concern for Booker or, more likely, concern for her friends. Her face is all we need to know that this was an attempted killing–the kind of vigilante killing of black people by white people that we call lynching.

The idea that criminals can be killed by private citizens, or by the police, without due process is being deliberately sown and encouraged by un-American residents of this country in order to subvert rule of law. These people aren’t inventing something new: they have a well-worn playbook that was first and most powerfully called out by the great American hero Ida B. Wells, a black American woman born in 1862 who devoted her life to publicly documenting lynchings in the south. It was unbelievably dangerous work. She was forced out of Memphis, TN by attempts on her life and the physical destruction of her newspaper office, but continued her work from Chicago.

Wells began her life’s work as… a “criminal” who “broke the law” and “deserved punishment”. Here’s a short version of the story:

In 1884 she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered her into the smoking or “Jim Crow” car, which was already crowded with other passengers. Despite the 1875 Civil Rights Act banning discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color, in theaters, hotels, transports, and other public accommodations, several railroad companies defied this congressional mandate and racially segregated its passengers. It is important to realize that her defiant act was before Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court decision that established the fallacious doctrine of “separate but equal,” which constitutionalized racial segregation. Wells wrote in her autobiography:

“I refused, saying that the forward car [closest to the locomotive] was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies’ car, I proposed to stay. . . [The conductor] tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand. I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out.”

Wells was forcefully removed from the train and the other passengers–all whites–applauded. When Wells returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case in the local circuit courts, but the railroad company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, and it reversed the lower court’s ruling. This was the first of many struggles Wells engaged, and from that moment forward, she worked tirelessly and fearlessly to overturn injustices against women and people of color.

We have put Wells’ crime in bold: she bit a train conductor so badly that he had to recruit help to enforce the “law” followed by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company. Even if the company was violating the 1873 Civil Rights Act, it’s still illegal for an adult to bite someone. When Wells was carried off the train the white passengers applauded. Of course they did–a scary black woman who bit a train conductor was given the treatment she deserved. Those white passengers were likely confirmed in their belief that all black people were animals who needed to be “kept down” by law enforcement, or any available white men.

And Wells was scary in that moment. She was a criminal. But she was breaking the law in the name of justice. While violent protest like biting someone is not the ideal, and non-violent protest remains the goal, and the most effective means of changing a society, we see that in that moment, Wells believed she had no other way of stopping the conductor from violating her rights and breaking the law passed by Congress. In that moment, she chose violence to defend herself by taking a very visceral public action.

And so Booker may also have chosen violence when surrounded by angry white men claiming he was trespassing, like Wells was trespassing on the private property of a white train car. Wells had to be restrained, just as Purdy’s and McCord’s lawyer says Booker had to be restrained. This is not how Booker reports it. But even if he did, this doesn’t mean that Booker should go to jail, let alone be murdered by his “victims”.

Vengeance has been getting a makeover from a petty act that only rises to the level of moral duty once in a thousand instances to the first and only response to any kind of attack, real or perceived, serious or minor. Revenge killing is the mark of a society without law. In the same vein, the United States cannot allow the police to murder people because those people seemed scary and the police were afraid. We must live by rule of law, and our laws must provide liberty and justice for all, or we cease to be the United States of America.

BLM protests are patriotic

We’ve noticed this week that one of our posts–The Boston Tea Party and a tradition of violence–which we posted back on November 21, 2011, has been getting a lot of traffic. We wonder if this is connected with people searching for historical justifications or damnations of public protest currently taking place in America. Let us say unequivocally that nonviolent protest in the name of liberty and justice for all is one of the greatest acts of patriotism that any person, anywhere, including the United States of America, can make. Black Lives Matter protestors are patriotic Americans desperately trying to save this country from those un-American citizens who would turn it into a race-based dictatorship.

We at the HP are taking part in Black Lives Matter protests nightly in our towns. It’s the very least we can do to fight against those who want an end to America as a land of liberty and justice for all.

The U.S. is founded on the Third Article of the Bill of Rights added to our Constitution, which says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Peaceful protests (“assemblies”) which demand change from our government (“petition the government for a redress of grievances”) are not just some kind of inheritance from the past. The right to peaceful protest against injustice is fundamental to our form of government, and our rights as citizens.

Gradually since the 1980s, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan, we’ve built a harmful paradox in America: the government is at once “the problem,” and needs to be utterly dismantled so people can be free of taxes and laws they don’t like; but at the same time, people who protest publicly against the government are ridiculed or threatened as dangerous outliers.

To be frank, it’s a specific kind of protestor who is threatened as un-American: the non-white, non-male, non-Christian, and/or non-straight protestor. As racist, sexist, and homophobic people attempt to make white straight Christian male the definition of “American”, the only American who has the right to protest because he’s protesting all those other “non” people, we find that neo-Nazi marchers are basically unopposed by police while everyone else (the “nons”) are met with military-level shows of force.

These anti-“non” protestors usually claim that they are the majority and therefore have the right of tyranny over everyone else. This claim grows in ferocity as white men steadily slip into the minority of the U.S. population, and is transformed into a call for oligarchy–government by the minority, oppressing the majority.

Just two months after the birth of this blog, in May 2008, we posted the first version of our tyranny of the majority post, in which we pointed out that our three-part government is set up specifically to prevent tyranny of the majority by empowering the judiciary to protect and uphold the rights of minority citizens. We’ve reposted this almost a dozen times since then, as gay marriage was legalized in individual states, and as Americans were heard wondering why the courts “pass laws” they don’t like. America is not an oligarchy. It’s a democracy. That’s the torch you must accept as it is passed to you if you want to claim that you are patriotic.

So when we see people searching out our post on the riots that characterized pre-Revolution Boston, we feel uneasy because we fear that our condemnation of those riots will be used to condemn Black Lives Matter protests. It should not be. Here’s why.

As we put it in our post,

When you read about the events leading up to the Tea Party, you quickly become a little uncomfortable with the readiness of Bostonians to physically attack people and destroy their property as the first means to their ends.

…This willingness to use violence got mixed reviews from patriot leaders. Some felt it was justifiable because it was in protest of an unfair government. Others felt it gave the patriot cause a bad name, and attracted lowlifes who weren’t fighting for democracy. All of them knew it had to be carefully managed to keep it under control: at any moment a mob nominally in the service of colonial leaders could become a force that knew no loyalty and could not be controlled by anyone.

It is certainly unsettling for modern-day Americans to read about the tactics our ancestors were ready to use when they believed themselves to be crossed. Mob violence is not something we condone today, and so much of the violence in colonial Boston seems to have been based not in righteous anger but in personal habit and popular tradition that it’s hard to see it as truly patriotic.

Patriot leaders like Samuel Adams knew they would have to keep violence out of their official platform, disassociating the decisions of the General Court from the purveyors of mob violence. The Tea Party would be a triumph of this difficult position.

The problem with pre-Tea Party Boston was that it relied on mob violence–people tearing down the houses of men who they felt were unjust, throwing bricks at them, pouring hot tar over their naked bodies and covering them with feathers, then forcing them to run through the streets or be beaten. That is mob violence. Those are acts of revenge. They do not further the cause of justice. They can never be actions taken in the name of justice.

Public protest is different from mob violence. Public protest can be violent or non-violent. Violent public protest is just one half-step above mob violence, because it cannot be controlled in a way that promotes justice. It is about revenge, not change.

Non-violent public protest is, by its very nature, controlled to force change rather than take revenge. Building are not burned, people are not beaten. It is the ultimate in democracy, and a legacy given to Americans by their Founders.

Unfortunately, there are always low-lifes who attach themselves to a non-violent protest, wait until it is peacefully ending, then start looting and throwing smoke bombs and forcing violence. Some do this to further their own ends of looting and/or expressing their contempt for human suffering and individual liberty. Some do it to make the protestors–the “nons”–look bad. People who have contempt for, and fear of, liberty and justice for all infiltrate the crowd to destroy the movement.

Those who protest against racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious bigotry are patriotic Americans, and the true inheritors of the American Revolution.

Truth and myth and the first Thanksgiving

It’s almost Thanksgiving, and what would our national celebration be like if the HP didn’t run its time-honored post on this American holiday, which debuted on November 15, 2010? Related is our short series on the NatGeo made-for-TV movie Saints and Strangers, in which we painstakingly debunk a pack of myths about the Pilgrims and the Americans they lived in relation to and dependence on. Enjoy, as you enjoy the holiday.

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This is the time of year when people take a moment to wonder about the Pilgrims: why were they so cruel to the Indians? The Thanksgiving celebration is marred by this concern. There are many reasons why it shouldn’t be. First, Thanksgiving has only been a holiday since 1863. Second, it had nothing to do with the Pilgrims whatsoever.

President Lincoln instituted this holiday during the Civil War to unite the U.S. in thanks for its blessings even in the midst of that terrible war. Here’s how he put it:

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

—Britain and France have refused, in the end, to support the Confederacy, the U.S. itself is still intact and strong, and the U.S. Army and Navy are driving back the enemy.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

—The U.S. economy has not fallen apart for lack of slave-produced cotton, as the South had always predicted it would. Industry and agriculture are stronger than ever and the U.S. continues to expand.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

—God has punished the U.S. with this war for the sin of slavery, but is showing encouraging signs of his support for the U.S. war effort.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

—While thanking God for his mercies to the U.S. so far, Americans should also offer up prayers asking for his care for all those who have lost someone in the war, and asking for his help in ending the war as quickly as possible.

So the First Thanksgiving in the U.S. was held in November 1863 and inaugurated for a good cause. The first lower-case “t” thanksgiving in what would become the U.S. was held in November 1621 and was merely the first of many, many days of thanksgiving observed by the Pilgrims and was not celebrated as an annual holiday at all. Let’s go back to the original article to learn the real story:

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The first Thanksgiving: it’s a hallowed phrase that, like “Washington crossing the Delaware“, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” or “Damn the torpedoes!”, does not bring up many solid facts. Unfortunately, “the first Thanksgiving” is usually either completely debunked, with people saying no such thing ever happened, or used as a weapon against the Pilgrims—i.e., they had a lovely Thanksgiving with the Indians and then killed them all.

The truth about the first Thanksgiving is that it did happen, in the fall of 1621. The Pilgrims had landed in what is now Massachusetts the previous November—a terrible time to begin a colony. Their provisions were low, and it was too late to plant anything. It is another myth that they landed so late because they got lost. They had intended to land south of Long Island, New York and settle in what is now New Jersey, where it was warmer, but their ship was almost destroyed in a dangerous reef area just south of Cape Cod, and the captain turned back. They then had to crawl the ship down the Cape, looking for a suitable place to land. Long story short, they ended up in what is now Plymouth.

Most Americans know how so many of those first settlers died from starvation and disease over the winter, and how it was only by raiding Wampanoag food caches that the colony survived at all. By the spring, there were not many colonists left to plant food, but they dragged themselves out to do so. They had good luck, and help from the Wampanoags, who showed them planting techniques—potentially just to keep the Pilgrims from raiding their winter stores again. By November 1621, a very good harvest was in, and Governor William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims often had days of thanksgiving. In times of trouble, they had fasts, which were sacrifices given for God’s help. In celebration times, they had thanksgivings to thank God for helping them. So thanksgivings were a common part of Pilgrim life, and calling for a thanksgiving to praise God for the harvest would not have been unusual, and would have been a day spent largely in church and at prayer.

So the men went out to shoot some “fowls” for the dinner, and perhaps they ran into some Wampanoags, or maybe a few Wampanoags were visting Plymouth, as they often did, and heard about the day of celebration. At any rate, here is the only—yes, the one and only—eyewitness description of what happened next:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

That’s Edward Winslow, writing about the thanksgiving in his journal of Pilgrim life called “Mourt’s Relation”, published in 1622. We see that Massasoit and 90 of his men arrived at some point, having heard about the feast, and the Pilgrims hosted them for three days, and had some rather traditional Anglican sport firing their guns. Certainly the Wampanoags had a right to feel they could join in, since it was their help that had led to the good harvest. A one-day thanksgiving turned into three days of feasting and games.

And that was it. People often wonder why there wasn’t another thanksgiving the next year. We have seen that thanksgivings were not annual events, but came randomly when the people felt they were needed as a response to current events, and the idea of celebrating the harvest every year didn’t make sense to the Pilgrims. They had only held a thanksgiving for the first good harvest because it was a life-saving change from the previous fall. Once they were on their feet, they expected good harvests, and didn’t have to celebrate them. It was also against their Separatist beliefs to celebrate annual holidays—like the Puritans, they did not celebrate any holidays, not even Christmas. Holidays were a human invention that made some days better than others when God had made all days equally holy. So to hold a regular, annual harvest thanksgiving was not their way. When things were going well, Separatists and Puritans had days of thanksgiving. When things were going badly, they had days of fasting. None of them were annual holidays or cause for feasting (of course fast days weren’t, but even thanksgivings were mostly spent in church, with no special meal).

That one-time harvest thanksgiving was indeed a happy event, shared in equally by Pilgrim and Wampanoag. If only that first thanksgiving–an impromptu, bi-cultural celebration–had set the tone for the rest of the interactions between the English colonizers and the Indigenous peoples of North America. Since it did not, we can only think happily of the Thanksgiving called for by President Lincoln, who made an annual Thanksgiving a holiday in 1863.

The hype around the Pilgrims’ first thanksgiving only began after 1863, when historians noted the tradition of impromptu thanksgivings in the 1600s and made an unwarranted and improper connection to the new holiday to make it seem less new and more traditionally American. Before then, their many days of thanksgiving and fasting were completely forgotten. The Pilgrims certainly weren’t the inspiration for the holiday we celebrate today—they were retroactively brought into that in the worst, most ironic way: after the Civil War, southerners resented Thanksgiving as a “Union” holiday celebrating U.S. victories in the war and so the focus was changed from fighting slavery to the Pilgrims… who supported slavery.

This year, spend Thanksgiving however you like, and share the truth about where the holiday really comes from—the depths of a terrible war fought for the greatest of causes. Let Thanksgiving inspire you to stand up for the founding principles of this nation and re-commit to upholding them in your own daily life of good times and bad.

The American workplace in 1950: no yawning!

We were roaming around YouTube and found this educational filmstrip, as they used to call them, from 1950 called Office Etiquette. This Encyclopedia Britannica artifact begins as you’d expect: rows of white high-school girls typing away in typing class so they can be secretaries. But then a few real surprises are introduced. Seconds in, the camera pans out a little and you see two white boys on the other side of the room. Boys? Learning to type? Are they going to be secretaries? You’re so surprised to see the boys that at first you don’t notice what next becomes apparent: not only are the boys mixed in with the girls, but at least three black girls are mixed into the class. A filming location is never given, but the opening credits say that Office Etiquette is an “EBF Human Relations Film”; we were happily surprised to see sex- and race-integration in at least one U.S. high school in 1950.

That’s one of the reasons we always love watching these forgotten little films–they almost always reveal some challenge to your blanket presuppositions.

We follow our narrator, Joan Spencer, after graduation and into the job market. When she fills out her application, we see her write “None” under the “Experience” section. We instantly remembered the smarting embarrassment of this painful, first-time job applicant experience from our own past work lives. (We did notice, by stopping the film, that Joan writes “South High, Ridgeton” under “Education” – does any HP reader know where this was?)

Joan is hired, and quickly sizes up the office. We do, too. Was there anything worse than the early- and mid-century American office? Even at this small operation, there are 12 desks crammed into one open space, and everyone is just so exposed. The desks are pushed together to make long tables, so your desk isn’t even private. Each desk has a phone and a typewriter and nothing else. No personal items on your desk. No privacy. No way to do anything but work–no private phone calls, no drinking coffee, no eating, nothing at that desk. Everyone can see everything you do. And the noise; the racket of 12 people typing at once would have been deafening. Welcome to the real reason why the boss had an office with a door that closed. How would you be able to talk on the phone with all that cacophony of key-clacking?

On Joan’s first day, her supervisor meets her in the boss’ office and takes her to the place where she can leave her things. It’s hard to imagine going to work in an office and leaving your hat (of course) and coat and purse in an employee common area. Again, no access to any personal item at any time during the work day. It’s so dehumanizing. When Joan puts in extra time at home, after work, to learn all the forms the company uses, she sits at a desk or table with a lovely bouquet of flowers in a crystal vase. No such luck at work.

Joan is shown to her seat and is so nervous she can barely look at the woman who is working one foot away from her at “her” desk. But she reports that “the girls” took her to lunch that first day, and one can’t help but sigh for the days when office workers took an hour for lunch, offsite, rather than eating at their desks while they worked. Joan makes friends, and is quickly written into the list of the office bowling team members.

Joan’s first screw-up is one that, again, we can all relate to: she makes an error in her dictation, and when the unbelievably genial executive who dictated it shows her the error, Joan argues with him about it, saying she is right. She quickly learns to own her mistakes “instead of arguing about them or offering alibis. I learned to ask when I wasn’t sure, instead of making a wild guess.” This is indeed workplace wisdom.

So is the hilarious scene where one of the “girls” eats a candy at her desk in the most incredibly messy way, with great bravado.

But then we get into lessons from the past as a foreign country. The lesson “use office hours to do office work” is illustrated by an older man slyly lifting up the corner of an enormous ledger to read a newspaper hidden underneath. He reads the sports page for approximately 2.3 seconds, then puts the ledger back down. Again, we can’t emphasize enough that you are no longer a human being once you sit down to work, and every second that isn’t spent at lunch must be spent working. This is easier to enforce when everyone can see everything you’re doing at all times.

One young woman types a love letter, one makes a personal telephone call. At least both these people are truly wasting company time. But then a man is shown–brace yourself–stopping his writing for 1.4 seconds to yawn. He did not “manage his time so he could put in a full day’s work.” Stopping work to yawn is an unforgivable demonstration of slacking.

Joan has to bust on Jimmy later on, who reads something on her desk in a nosy way. “You know you shouldn’t do that, Jimmy,” she says, and he responds “Do whaaaaat?” in a very annoying way.

She works her way up the ladder to become the boss’ personal secretary, then head of HR. Again, it’s refreshing to see a young woman negotiate a business call while the boss is busy, and be promoted to top management. It’s sad that this is as uncommon in 2019 as it was in 1950. The film ends with Joan accepting the meager application of another young woman fresh out of typing class. We have the feeling that this new girl will also succeed, and the overall attitude of the film is uplifting. The office was physically oppressive, but in this filmstrip, it at least offers some equality.