That chart still sums up well in my mind the nature of life for black people in America to this day. When times are good, they're given a little more room to breathe, when times are bad black folks are made to suffer the worst of it. The unequal lives of blacks in America is cultural and at the heart of it, I'd say that's what these ongoing protests are about: cultural togetherness. But beware: the pointless nonsense of politics (which is not gov't, by the way) always lurks in American culture and how the citizenry interprets what it sees varies wildly.
I've recently developed a whole new understanding of the importance of separating church from state in the early days of the Republic. The church was largely where the anti-British revolutionary fervor came from because of the inborn fear that the Church of England would seek to dominate religious expression in the colonies. But once the Revolution was won, the fears of Anglicization were assuaged and the Republic was in place, it was necessary for the founding fathers to cut that shit off in a hurry. By separating the church in a bold and public fashion, it removed all hint that the churches were being oppressed, thus their message of oppression was now neutered and the gains of the white colonists would not be mingled with ongoing talk of the abolition of slavery. The abolitionist movement in the early 19th century largely existed among the church-y types, who were now free (eh, free-ish) to keep the revolutionary fervor going but in a decidedly watered down context, where every church was free to interpret the ills of slavery in their own way rather than in a singular voice. By removing the gov't from church oversight, it set the churches against each other and kept a unified message from ringing out from the pulpits.
Legally speaking, slavery was a bargain the North were stuck with since before the Revolution (*) so they had to continue to endure it. The economic downturn of the 1830s and the great territorial expansion that followed war with Mexico in the 1840s kept the politics of the North engaged in other areas but slavery steadily pulled at the fabric of the nation. To my mind it was the Dred Scott decision (1857) that finally broke the whole system because the judiciary could no longer figure out how to incorporate slavery into the legal structure any more. It just didn't make sense, it spooked the population, the fugitive slave laws weakened northern governors and the component of slave labor infiltrates all markets making them at the very least unrealistic. Slavery had to go because by this point it pervaded the lives of people who didn't care about slavery--that's when social change becomes unavoidable.
Civil War...Emancipation Proclamation...Lincoln is assassinated...the Reconstruction....
And here we come back to the graph I mentioned above. During the period between the Civil War and World War II life is okay for black people in the good economic years and utterly terrifying in the bad years. In the post-Civil War economy 'good' periods and 'bad' periods were more pronounced than ever before (this is the large scale introduction of boom-and-bust into American economic cycles). Existing largely at the bottom of the economic scale, they would've felt the bad years worse than everybody else while feeling the good years the least. After the Civil War the North is more interested in controlling the political and economic paradigm shifts (such as the Credit Mobilier Scandal of 1872) than it is in properly enforcing the re-born Constitution in the South. It is the newly freed slaves that bear the brunt of that inattention, for though they were the bedrock of the new changes in American politics and culture, once the slaves were freed they no longer served any political purpose. The 'system' is newly re-built with a 'culture' that is not welcoming to the newly freed blacks.
During this time we see the birth of Ku Klux Klan, the Black Codes and the steady extension of Jim Crow laws specifically aimed at keeping blacks from voting and otherwise participating in the culture. One could point out that the subsequent sharecropper system (pretty much the only option for most of the freed slaves in the south) and the work farm prison structure were at least somewhat egalitarian in that whites would've been forced into these structures just as blacks were. This suggests that the social 'demonization' (for lack of a better term) is of the poor rather than any specific group of the poor while the legislation suggests that it is specifically designed to keep blacks in a state of permanent poverty. The State is reinforcing the Culture and while this is entirely un-Constitutional, the favored classes are cool with letting this slide as long as they are untouched by those living at the bottom of the scale. But we see quickly: the scourge of slavery has been replaced by the scourge of poverty.
So when the Supreme Court delivers Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the under girding laws and social mores are in place such that the doctrine of 'separate but equal' must've seemed an elegant legal remedy as opposed to the twisted logic necessary for the Dred Scott Decision some four decades (what Lincoln might've referred to as 'two score') earlier. Thinking the black people could be free within their pocket of the law is something that smart people probably patted themselves on the back for because it gives the appearance that the wretched underclass possesses the chance to grow on their own....except that it doesn't. In fact, it reinforces the inability of that underclass to participate in the larger society, while allowing the leisure classes to think they've done a good thing.
And again we come back to the aforementioned graph: in good times blacks may have luxuriated in their separateness, free from the attacks of aggressive mobs of people who felt themselves left out of the prosperity of the larger economy; but in the bad times, there was only, as Ida B. Wells famously suggested, the Winchester rifle separating black people from that collective (misplaced) anger. 'Separate but equal' was never equal and, actually, never even separate because the deprived population was always available as a target minority when times were bad--a circumstance willingly allowed by politicians who would rather feed Christians to lions than take any of the blame for a bad economy.
It is easy to paint this arrangement in the most harrowing of Biblical terms. But there is one thing still offered to the black population of USA: the economy. Economic growth lifts all boats--which is a phrase that ignores that all boats will still maintain the same relation to each other, such that when the poorest people are richer, they are still the poorest. But within the segregationist framework of the post-Reconstruction USA, there is still economic growth that allows for a hint of social mobility. So in the early 20th century there is the establishment of the NAACP and the faint stirrings of change in the form of the legal fund that finally found some success in the 1930s. Notice the fight for black people to be included in polite society with access to proper legal remedies and the larger economy takes decades of finding legal loopholes.
I've been watching films of the 1930s lately and one thing I've noticed is the seeming explosion of ethnic voices: Greta Garbo, Adolphe Menjou, Charles Boyer, Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, Bela Lugosi, just to mention a few. The pre-code years of cinema were a place where people who had largely been left out of the upper crust were able to find a footing and popularity in the American culture. (Morris Dickstein reinforces this observation in the novels, poetry and theater of the time, as well, in his book Dancing in the Dark) However, this clearly does not include black people. Sure, there are a handful of notable Hollywood titles with prominent black characters (Imitation of Life, for example), but blacks are certainly not a part of the new inclusion that Italians, Jews and other Europeans experience. Part of the reason would've been Plessy v Ferguson: since the movie theaters were segregated, it meant that blacks got their own movies, so there were 'race pictures' and other representations of art just for them. (**) White society didn't have to do anything for black people because they had their own 'equal' culture.
I bring this up to mention one of the few black images I've noticed so far from this time: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). There is one telling montage of this white man's descent into the horrors of work farm life: shots of men staring off in despair inter cut such that the white men and black men are equal in their despair. A moment of 'equality' that is actually quite the inverse: the white man's despair is that he is now equal to a black man. The black despair is normal, the white despair is horrific and that they are equal is the chill meant to run down your spine. And though we are to feel the injustice the white protagonist feels, it isn't meant to transfer to the blacks; indeed, the blacks are there to show just how horrible life can be even for whites. This is a specific image in a specific film but couldn't this have extended to how white Americans generally felt during the Great Depression of the 1930s?
December 7, 1941: the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. The next day Congress declared war on Japan and in the spring of 1942 began building up the military (***). In order to do this USA had to vastly increase the production of electricity (namely by damming every river west of the Mississippi for hydroelectric power).
I mention this because it is my contention that once the power is created, it is not turned off. And the subsequent economic growth after WWII came from this excess industrial production and that the social changes of the Civil Rights era were necessitated by this change in the supply of electricity. (Changes in the means of production yield changes in the relations of society...or something like that)
Soon after the war, Major League Baseball integrates with the appearance of Jackie Robinson in 1947. I would suggest the reason for integrating baseball earlier than pretty much everything else in America was purely economic. During the war baseball's biggest stars went off to fight in Europe and in their absence the Negro Leagues actually became quite popular. While the Negro Leagues weren't the only game in town, for a while there they were the best. After the war, when the white stars came back home, they were still struggling at the box office compared to the Negro Leagues. Black stars had been born, black talent had been identified and the white audiences didn't mind coming to their games. Major League Baseball was in crisis and the only solution was integration. The audience demanded the best talent and for the first time Major League Baseball was obliged to give it to them, as opposed to just the best white talent.
Even though the African-American community between the Civil War and WWII wasn't allowed to do much, it still managed to produce a number of fascinating writers, activists and artists; I would suggest this is due to the overwhelming economic growth in the late 19th century, which would've provided opportunities even to the lowest on the social scale. But Jackie Robinson was the first true black celebrity, the first to be able to shine in his chosen field in front of a nationwide audience. all because the economic opportunities in the black community were finally allowing for the ability to compete with white society: the price of cotton was no longer the key to social existence.
(*) In short: the North needed the Revolution, the South did not. The colonies were not able to develop their own international trade pacts because England held a monopoly on all colonial production. This hampered the northern colonies, which more or less produced all the same stuff England did; but this was no hindrance to the southern colonies that produced a variety of goods otherwise unavailable in England. If the northern colonies revolt and are successful, then they are just surrounded on all sides by still-British colonies (recall that the War of 1812 just a few decades later is a war with Canada, a group the northern colonies were unable to convince to join their revolutionary effort). The northern colonies needed allies, they needed the southern colonies to come along. The northern colonies had steadily removed slavery and disliked the practice but they needed the southern colonies, so they agreed to keep slavery in place.
(**) As a 21st century movie nerd, I ask the question: where are those race pictures now? Hardly any of them survive--for there surely must've been a lot more than are currently available. We've gotten loving restorations of Ernst Lubitsch and Josef von Sternberg, but where are the restorations of Oscar Micheaux and....well, I don't know any others (Micheaux being the exception that proves the rule)? What exactly did that parallel (separate but certainly not equal) representation of black entertainment look like? And where is it now?
(***) Which never stopped.
I bring this up to mention one of the few black images I've noticed so far from this time: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). There is one telling montage of this white man's descent into the horrors of work farm life: shots of men staring off in despair inter cut such that the white men and black men are equal in their despair. A moment of 'equality' that is actually quite the inverse: the white man's despair is that he is now equal to a black man. The black despair is normal, the white despair is horrific and that they are equal is the chill meant to run down your spine. And though we are to feel the injustice the white protagonist feels, it isn't meant to transfer to the blacks; indeed, the blacks are there to show just how horrible life can be even for whites. This is a specific image in a specific film but couldn't this have extended to how white Americans generally felt during the Great Depression of the 1930s?
December 7, 1941: the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. The next day Congress declared war on Japan and in the spring of 1942 began building up the military (***). In order to do this USA had to vastly increase the production of electricity (namely by damming every river west of the Mississippi for hydroelectric power).
I mention this because it is my contention that once the power is created, it is not turned off. And the subsequent economic growth after WWII came from this excess industrial production and that the social changes of the Civil Rights era were necessitated by this change in the supply of electricity. (Changes in the means of production yield changes in the relations of society...or something like that)
Soon after the war, Major League Baseball integrates with the appearance of Jackie Robinson in 1947. I would suggest the reason for integrating baseball earlier than pretty much everything else in America was purely economic. During the war baseball's biggest stars went off to fight in Europe and in their absence the Negro Leagues actually became quite popular. While the Negro Leagues weren't the only game in town, for a while there they were the best. After the war, when the white stars came back home, they were still struggling at the box office compared to the Negro Leagues. Black stars had been born, black talent had been identified and the white audiences didn't mind coming to their games. Major League Baseball was in crisis and the only solution was integration. The audience demanded the best talent and for the first time Major League Baseball was obliged to give it to them, as opposed to just the best white talent.
Even though the African-American community between the Civil War and WWII wasn't allowed to do much, it still managed to produce a number of fascinating writers, activists and artists; I would suggest this is due to the overwhelming economic growth in the late 19th century, which would've provided opportunities even to the lowest on the social scale. But Jackie Robinson was the first true black celebrity, the first to be able to shine in his chosen field in front of a nationwide audience. all because the economic opportunities in the black community were finally allowing for the ability to compete with white society: the price of cotton was no longer the key to social existence.
(*) In short: the North needed the Revolution, the South did not. The colonies were not able to develop their own international trade pacts because England held a monopoly on all colonial production. This hampered the northern colonies, which more or less produced all the same stuff England did; but this was no hindrance to the southern colonies that produced a variety of goods otherwise unavailable in England. If the northern colonies revolt and are successful, then they are just surrounded on all sides by still-British colonies (recall that the War of 1812 just a few decades later is a war with Canada, a group the northern colonies were unable to convince to join their revolutionary effort). The northern colonies needed allies, they needed the southern colonies to come along. The northern colonies had steadily removed slavery and disliked the practice but they needed the southern colonies, so they agreed to keep slavery in place.
(**) As a 21st century movie nerd, I ask the question: where are those race pictures now? Hardly any of them survive--for there surely must've been a lot more than are currently available. We've gotten loving restorations of Ernst Lubitsch and Josef von Sternberg, but where are the restorations of Oscar Micheaux and....well, I don't know any others (Micheaux being the exception that proves the rule)? What exactly did that parallel (separate but certainly not equal) representation of black entertainment look like? And where is it now?
(***) Which never stopped.
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