Schindler and Rusesabagina: Ordinary Men Who Made Extraordinary Decisions that Saved Lives

"The persecution of Jews in the General Government in Polish territory gradually worsened in its cruelty. In 1939 and 1940 they were forced to wear the Star of David and were herded together and confined in ghettos. In 1941 and 1942 this unadulterated sadism was fully revealed. And then a thinking man, who had overcome his inner cowardice, simply had to help. There was no other choice." Oskar Schindler, 1964 interview.

Oskar Schindler was an unlikely hero. An ethnic German living in Moravia, Czechoslovakia, he joined the Nazi party in 1939. In the wake of the German invasion of Poland, Schindler went to Krakow. He assumed responsibility for the operation of two formerly Jewish-owned manufacturers of enamel kitchenware and then established his own enamel works in Zablocie, outside Krakow. Through army contracts and the exploitation of cheap labor from the Krakow ghetto, he amassed a fortune. Dealing on the black market, he lived in high style.In 1942 and early 1943, the Germans decimated the ghetto’s population of some 20,000 Jews through shootings and deportations. Several thousand Jews who survived the ghetto’s liquidation were taken to Plaszow, a forced labor camp run by the sadistic SS commandant Amon Leopold Goeth. Moved by the cruelties he witnessed, Schindler contrived to transfer his Jewish workers to barracks at his factory.

In late summer 1944, through negotiations and bribes from his war profits, Schindler secured permission from German army and SS officers to move his workers and other endangered Jews to Bruennlitz, near his hometown of Zwittau. Each of these Jews was placed on "Schindler’s List." Schindler and his workforce set up a bogus munitions factory, which sustained them in relative safety until the war ended.

Oskar Schindler’s transformation from Nazi war profiteer to protector of Jews is the subject of several documentaries, the best-selling novel Schindler’s List (1982) by Thomas Keneally, and an Academy award-winning film directed by Steven Spielberg.

"There are stories to be told that must not be forgotten." - Paul Rusesabagina

Paul Rusesabagina was not born, raised, nor educated to be a hero or a humanitarian. In fact, he still believes that he was just doing his job, as hotel manager; yet, Paul’s bravery, compassion, and quick thinking during the 100-day stand exemplify heroism. Rusesabagina worked as the assistant manager of the Hotel des Milles Collines, before being promoted to manager of the Diplomate Hotel. At the time of the 100-day genocide, Paul was managing both hotels, as the Belgian owners of the Collines had appointed him temporary manager so that they could flee for safety.
One early April day in 1994, Hutu militants rounded up Paul, his family, and other Tutsis (whom the Hutu guards called “cockroaches”), and put them on a bus. One guard handed Paul a gun and told him to shoot all the cockroaches on the bus. The idea of killing people, even if it would be to save his own life, was unacceptable to Paul, and so his mind raced to find a way to save the people on the bus. He offered the guards money if they would take him and the others to the Diplomate Hotel. They accepted the offer and drove the bus to the hotel. Paul took money from the hotel safe to give to the guards. They left, and Paul took over driving the van, reaching the relative safety of the Hotel des Milles Collines. That day was only the start of a daily routine of appeasing and bribing the guards in order to stave off killings in his hotel.
Despite every death threat, the loss of water and electricity, and the constant watch of Hutu guards, Paul remained determined to care for and protect the 1200-plus people under his watch. When the water supply was cut off, Paul resorted to the pool to quench the thirst of the people. When the guards cut the phone lines, Paul found one line that they missed. From that phone, he made desperate calls to international agencies to help end the stay, but to little avail. He needed to rely on his own intelligence, craftiness, and charm to appease the militia and help the refugees survive, even though he knew that his scheming could bring about his own death. Paul’s plan worked. Out of the 1200 refugees who spent the 100 days in the hotel no one was killed or beaten.

For more information about Oskar Schindler, click the links below:

Interviews with Schindlerjuden

A 50-Year-Old Article about Oskar Schindler, which was not published when it was written because newspaper were tired of "good German" stories

For more information about Paul Rusesabinga, click the links below:

"My Hero" Essay
NPR Interview

Photos

Oskar Schindler (third from left) at a party with local SS officials on his 34th birthday. Schindler attempted to use his connections with German officials to obtain information that might protect his Jewish employees. Krakow, Poland, April 28, 1942.
— Leopold Page Photographic Collection

Paul Rusesabagina with Don Cheadle, who portrayed him in Hotel Rwanda

Solidarity

Lech Walesa was born in Popowo, Poland. His father died shortly after World War II; he and his brothers and sisters were raised by their mother, aunt and uncle. The Soviet Union occupied Poland after the war, and the Soviet-imposed communist government controlled almost every aspect of life in Poland, except for the Catholic Church.

Walesa trained as an electrician and mechanic, and as a young man went to work at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. Walesa was an outspoken critic of the shipyard management and of the communist regime. He was involved in the shipyard strike of 1970, and throughout the next decade played a role in organizing the shipyard protests. In 1976 he was fired for his political activities. Although he was only sporadically employed for the next four years, he persisted in his organizing.

In 1980 the shipyard workers were ready to strike again, and Walesa emerged as a leading spokesman of Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Eastern Bloc. A series of strikes spread throughout the country, forcing the government's recognition of Solidarity, but this victory was short-lived. When Solidarity called for free elections, the government outlawed the union. Fearing Russian military intervention, Poland's puppet government declared martial law in December 1981. Walesa was arrested and held for months without trial. When he was finally released in September 1982, he remained under government surveillance.

The outside world recognized Walesa's courage, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1983. The encouragement of the Polish-born Pope John Paul II kept Solidarity's hope alive underground, and the ascension of reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union presented another opportunity for the Polish dissidents to press their case.

By 1989 Gorbachev had made it clear that he would not intervene to prop up communist governments in Eastern Europe. Nationwide protests at last forced the communist regime to hold free elections and Solidarity quickly formed a new coalition government. In 1990 Lech Walesa was elected to a five-year term as President of Poland. Although he was defeated in his bid for re-election, he has remained an outspoken figure in the life of the country he helped free from dictatorship. His autobiography, The Struggle and the Triumph, first appeared in English in 1992.

From http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/wal1bio-1

SUNRISE ON THE GOLD COAST

"Through the streets of Accra, capital of the Gold Coast, democracy ran joyously wild. The women in the parade were slim and graceful, furled like striped umbrellas into acres of colorful cotton cloth. The men wore shirts open at the neck and hanging outside their shorts. Everyone in the procession was black and proud of it.
Suddenly, the noisy crowd parted. Through a forest of waving palm branches, an open car bore a husky black man with fine sculptured lips, melancholy eyes, and a halo of frizzy black hair. The Right Honorable Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister of the Gold Coast, waved a white handkerchief to his people as they sought to touch the hem of his tunic.
Nkrumah’s 4.5 million countrymen speak a range of languages and are scattered across a rectangular patch of jungle, swamp, and bushland. Seven out of ten are illiterate, more than half believe in witchcraft, yet the happy-go=-luck Gold Coasters have been chosen by imperial Britain to pioneer its boldest experiment in African home rule. In 1951 the British gave the Gold Coast its first democratic constitution; lat year they designated Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister.
Nkrumah was born in the mud-hut village of Nkroful, where his father hammered out gold ornaments for local woodcutters. Nkrumah studied at a Catholic mission school and a Gold Coast college. Then a generous uncle paid his way to the United States. He spent eight years at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he earned three degrees. From there he went to England to take a law degree at London University.
While he was in London, the cause of African nationalism was heating up at home. Nkrumah was picked to head the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), which was demanding home rule. Soon the British were presented with a new constitution that called for popular elections. The UGCC’s slogan had been “self-government in our time.” Nkrumah wanted more. He demanded “self-government NOW.” He formed the Convention People’s Part (CPP).
Last March, the British government approved Kwame Nkrumah as full prime minister. Now he feels the full responsibility of leading his people to complete self-government. Of the Gold Coasters, he says, “They must not make me go too fast – and I must not go too slow. If I tried to stop their urge to be free, they would turn on me. My job is to keep things level and steady.”
It is in the jubilant Gold Coast, and in its hero Nkrumah, that some of Africa’s awakening millions see the early light of freedom dawning over the continent."

Abridged version of article printed Feb. 9, 1953 in TIME Magazine

“Without forgiveness, there's no future.”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have
chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot
on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the
mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

“Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits
of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

“Without forgiveness, there's no future.”

Desmond Tutu – Forging Equality in South Africa

Desmond Tutu was born in Klerksdorp, in the South African state of Transvaal on October 7, 1931. The family moved to Johannesburg when he was 12, and he attended Johannesburg Bantu High School. Although he had planned to become a physician, his parents could not afford
to send him to medical school. Tutu's father was a teacher, he himself trained as a teacher at Pretoria Bantu Normal College, and graduated from the University of South Africa in 1954.

The government of South Africa did not extend the rights of citizenship to black South Africans. The National Party had risen to power on the promise of instituting a system of apartheid -- complete separation of the races. All South Africans were legally assigned to an official racial group; each races was restricted to separate living areas and separate public facilities. Only white South Africans were permitted to vote in national elections. Black South Africans were only represented in the local governments of remote "tribal homelands." Interracial marriage was forbidden, blacks were legally barred from certain jobs and prohibited from forming labor unions. Passports were required for travel within the country; critics of the system could be banned from speaking in public and subjected to house arrest.

When the government ordained a deliberately inferior system of education for black students, Desmond Tutu refused to cooperate. He could no longer work as a teacher, but he was determined to do something to improve the life of his disenfranchised people. On the
advice of his bishop, he began to study for the Anglican priesthood. Tutu was ordained as a priest in the Anglican church in 1960. At the same time, the South African government began a program of forced relocation of black Africans and Asians from newly designated "white"
areas. Millions were deported to the "homelands," and only permitted to return as "guest workers."

Desmond Tutu lived in England from 1962 to 1966, where he earned a master's degree in theology. He taught theology in South Africa for the next five years, and returned to England to serve as an assistant director of the World Council of Churches in London. In 1975 he became the first black African to serve as Dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg. From 1976 to 1978 he was Bishop of Lesotho. In 1978 he became the first black General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches.

This position gave Bishop Tutu a national platform to denounce the apartheid system as "evil and unchristian." Tutu called for equal rights for all South Africans and a system of common education. He demanded the repeal of the oppressive passport laws, and an end to
forced relocation. Tutu encouraged nonviolent resistance to the apartheid regime, and advocated an economic boycott of the country. The government revoked his passport to prevent him from traveling and speaking abroad, but his case soon drew the attention of the world. In the
face of an international public outcry the government was forced to restore his passport.
In 1984, Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, "not only as a gesture of support to him and to the South African Council of Churches of which he is leader, but also to all individuals and groups in South Africa who, with their concern for human dignity, fraternity and
democracy, incite the admiration of the world."

Two years later, Desmond Tutu was elected Archbishop of Cape Town. He was the first black African to serve in this position, which placed him at the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa, as the Archbishop of Canterbury is spiritual leader of the Church of England. International economic pressure and internal dissent forced the South African government to reform. In 1990, Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress was released after almost 27 years in prison. The following year the government began the repeal of racially
discriminatory laws.

After the country's first multi-racial elections in 1994, President Mandela appointed Archbishop Tutu to chair the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, investigating the human rights violations of the previous 34 years. As always, the Archbishop counseled forgiveness and cooperation, rather than revenge for past injustice. In 1996 he retired as Archbishop of Cape Town and was named Archbishop Emeritus. Today he is a Professor of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Published collections of his speeches, sermons and other writings include Crying in the Wilderness, Hope and Suffering, and The Rainbow People of God.

From http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tut0bio-1

Namaste

The Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1869-1948

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always."

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

"There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for."

1869
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born in Porbandar in Gujarat.

1893
Gandhi leaves for Johannesburg for practicing law and is thrown out of a first class train car because he is colored.

1906
Mohandas K. Gandhi, 37, speaks at a mass meeting in the Empire Theater, Johannesburg on September 11 and launches a campaign of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) to protest discrimination against Indians. The British Government had just invalidated the Indian Marriage.

1913
Mohandas Gandhi in Transvaal, South Africa leads 2,500 Indians into the in defiance of a law, they are violently arrested, Gandhi refuses to pay a fine, he is jailed, his supporters demonstrate. On November 25, and Natal police fire into the crowd, killing two, injuring 20.

1914
Mohandas Gandhi returns to India at age 45 after 21 years of practicing law in South Africa where he organized a campaign of “passive resistance” to protest his mistreatment by whites for his defense of Asian immigrants. He attracts wide attention in India by conducting a fast --the first of 14 that he will stage as political demonstrations and that will inaugurate the idea of the political fasting.

1930
A civil disobedience campaign against the British in India begins March 12. The All-India Trade Congress has empowered Gandhi to begin the demonstrations (see 1914). Called Mahatma for the past decade, Gandhi leads a 165-mile march to the Gujarat coast of the Arabian Sea and produces salt by evaporation of sea water in violation of the law as a gesture of defiance against the British monopoly in salt production

1932
Gandhi begins a "fast unto death" to protest the British government's treatment of India's lowest caste "untouchables" whom Gandhi calls Harijans -- "God's children." Gandhi's campaign of civil disobedience has brought rioting and has landed him in prison, but he persists in his demands for social reform, he urges a new boycott of British goods, and after 6 days of fasting obtains a pact that improves the status of the "untouchables" (Dalits)

1947
India becomes free from 200 years of British Rule. A major victory for Gandhian principles and non-violence in general.

1948
Gandhi is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic at a prayer meeting

Timeline from http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/mkgtimeline.htm

Unsung Hero

Without the Montgomery bus boycott, we would not know the name "Rosa Parks." Without the people standing before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, we might now know Martin Luther King's Dream. If hundreds of thousands of families with school children had not chosen integration across the South, the "Little Rock Nine" would be a distant memory.

The trails of the trailblazers will fade if their path is not followed by others; every leader requires followers for their vision to become reality. The civil rights movement, in fact all movements that attack injustice, became a movements when everyday people, most whose names will never make it into history books, dedicates their lives to it, sacrificed so that justice would in fact roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

In Pearl, Mississippi, the Jenkins family, faithful Christians, took the opportunity to take a stand for justice and enrolled their children, starting with their third grader, in the public school system, becoming the first African-American family in that town to do so. Their decision made them the target of great hatred; they received threats, a fire bomb was thrown at their home, bullets were fired into their walls. Mrs. Jenkins was a housekeeper, and even her employer was treated to a yard full of white crosses when he refused to fire her. Perhaps the worst terror came from a group of white teenagers who would race their car down the Jenkins' street without regard to the toys of the children playing there, hurling insults and slurs the whole time. One night, as they prepared to spray dust as they turned to leave the neighborhood, the only sputter they heard was their engine as they ran out of gas. The teenage Jenkins' saw their opportunity, as the white teenagers who had so terrorized them became the ones in need of mercy. Rev. Willi Jenkins, their father, came out with a shotgun, wondering what was going on. As he stood on his porch, the driver of the car asked for help. Rev. Jenkins, recognizing the opportunity for justice, chose mercy. Silently, he went to his car, siphoned gas, and filled the tank of the white teenagers, and they left. I don't know if Rev. Jenkins ever marched in a protest or held a picket sign, but can only imagine that his children and grandchildren could not help but be different people, different kinds of Christians, different kinds of Americans, because of his actions.

Mohandas Gandhi, whose sculpting of nonviolent civil resistance transformed the history of the 20th century, and particularly influenced the American civil rights movement, once said, "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always." That's what happened one night in Pearl, Mississippi.

Champion Gone Awry

Jack Johnson became the first African American to earn boxing's heavyweight title when he defeated reigning champion Tommy Burns of Canada in 1908. Johnson's victory made him a hero to the black community but sparked outrage among many whites, who found it impossible to accept a black man as the heavyweight champ. Boxing promoters scrambled to find a "white hope" capable of wresting the crown from Johnson, but he continued his dominance by besting all of his challengers. Outside of the ring, however, Johnson's personal conduct and run-ins with the law severely damaged his reputation, and in 1913 he left the country following his conviction for violation of the Mann Act. After twice defending his title in Europe, Johnson surrendered his crown in Havana in 1915 when white boxer Jess Willard won by a knockout in the twenty-sixth round of their title bout.

From http://nmaahc.si.edu/section/programs/view/35

Mississippi John Hurt

Mississippi John Hurt

Charmian Reading's portrait of "Mississippi" John Hurt (1893-1966) pictures the celebrated blues guitarist performing in 1966, in conjunction with the March Against Fear, a 220-mile march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, to champion civil rights reform. Hurt spent most of his life in a small town not far from the marchers' route, and when he learned of their presence he came out to lend his support. Prior to appearing at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, an event that led to widespread acclaim, Hurt lived in relative obscurity in Mississippi, playing occasionally for local audiences. Although he had recorded a selection of songs back in 1928, he worked principally as a farmer and a laborer, supporting his wife and fourteen children. His "rediscovery" in the 1960s led to new opportunities to record and to perform, and prompted a nationwide blues revival.

From http://nmaahc.si.edu/section/programs/view/22

Wildfire - "Forever Free"

EDMONIA "WILDFIRE" LEWIS (1843-1911)

Lewis, whose mother was Chippewa Indian and whose father was a freeman of African descent, was born in upstate New York in 1843. Upon entering Oberlin College, where she studied literature, she changed her name from Wildfire to Mary Edmonia. In 1863, Lewis moved to Boston to study under a portrait sculptor. Funds from the sale of a medallion of John Brown, leader of the rebellion at Harpers Ferry and a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the all African American 54th Massachusetts Infantry of the Union Army, enabled Lewis to study in Europe. Lewis continued her studies of neoclassical forms in Italy where she made "Forever Free," her most famous work. Lewis' last known major work, "Death of Cleopatra," was presented at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. Lewis's focus on African Americans and Native Americans - -deemed questionable at the time - -as well as the disappearance of abolitionist patronage may have contributed to her decline in popularity as an artist.

From http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/lewis.html

Images - 

“Edmonia Lewis,” c. 1870, Henry Rocher, albumen ailver print (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution) - http://nmaahc.si.edu/attachments/41/motto_edmonia_lewis_original_medium.jpg

“Forever Free,” 1867, marble - http://english.uiowa.edu/courses/boos/galleries/afamgallery/image/lewisfree1867.jpg

"Let Your Motto Be Resistance"

Henry Highland Garnet, a abolitionist and preacher, famously said in 1843,

"Strike for your lives and liberties....

Let your motto be Resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!....

What kind of resistance you...make you must decide by the circumstances that surround you...."

This quotation became the theme of the inaugural exhibit of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the newest of the Smithsonian Institution's museums in Washington, D.C.  Curators assembled portraits from the National Portrait Gallery's collection of African-Americans who have chosen resistance through a large variety of means, in their daily lives.  These week's selections will be taken from the exhibit.

Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing

Nearly everyone has heard the song "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," and most have been inspired by it. However, the product of Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Fells Savage's inspiration is considerably more beautiful than most. Her piece, "The Harp," created in 1939 for the New York World's Fair, does with sculpture what the song does with language. Combined with the fact that it was created the same year that Marian Anderson sang before thousands at the Lincoln Memorial, it gives new meaning to the vision of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

The lyrics, by James Weldon Johnson, in 1900 and performed by his brother for an elementary school celebration of Lincoln's birthday -

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Image of "The Harp" taken from http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/community/text4/savagetheharp.pdf

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Today we celebrate the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln and the 100th birthday of the NAACP!



“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Image from http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/lincoln/pop-ups/02-18.html

Freedom of speech and criticism. - An unfettered and unsubsidized press. - Manhood suffrage. - The abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color. - The recognition of the principle of human brotherhood as a practical present creed. - The recognition of the highest and best training as the monopoly of no class or race. - A belief in the dignity of labor. –
United effort to realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership.
- Founding platform of the NAACP
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Niagara_movement.png and http://www.naacp.org/about/history/howbegan/index.htm

The Man Who Killed Jim Crow

“This fight for equality of educational opportunity (was) not an isolated struggle. All our struggles must tie in together and support one another. . .We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might."

Charles Hamilton Houston (September 3, 1895 - April 22, 1950) was a lawyer who helped play a role in dismantling the Jim Crow laws and helped train future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. Known as "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow", he played a role in nearly every civil rights case before the Supreme Court between 1930 and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Houston's brilliant plan to attack and defeat Jim Crow segregation by using the inequality of the "separate but equal" doctrine (from the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision) as it pertained to public education in the United States was the master stroke that brought about the landmark Brown decision.

Born in Washington, D.C., Houston attended Dunbar High School in Washington, then Amherst College. From 1915 to 1917, Houston taught English at Howard University. From 1917 to 1919, he was a First Lieutenant in the United States Infantry, based in Fort Meade, Maryland. Houston later wrote:

"The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in my dying for a world ruled by them. I made up my mind that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back."

In the fall of 1919, he entered Harvard Law School; in 1922, he became the first African-American to serve as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Beginning in 1935, Houston served as the first special counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and therefore was involved with the majority of civil rights cases from then until his death on April 22, 1950.

He later joined Howard Law School's faculty, establishing a long-standing relationship between Howard and Harvard law schools. While at Howard, he was a mentor to Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board of Education and was later appointed to the Supreme Court. Houston also used his post at Howard to recruit talented students into the NAACP's legal efforts (among them Marshall and Oliver Hill, the first- and second-ranked students in the class of 1933, both of whom were drafted into organization's legal battles by Houston).

By the mid-1930s, two separate anti-lynching bills backed by the NAACP had failed to gain passage, and the organization had won a landmark victory against restrictive housing covenants that excluded blacks from particular neighborhoods only to see the achievement undermined by subsequent legal precedents.

Houston struck upon the idea that unequal education was the Achilles heel of Jim Crow. By demonstrating the failure of states to even try to live up to the 1896 rule of "separate but equal," Houston hoped to finally overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had given birth to that phrase.

His target was broad, but the evidence was numerous. Southern states collectively spent less than half of what was allotted for white students on education for blacks; there were even greater disparities in individual school districts. Black schools were equipped with castoff supplies from white ones and built with inferior materials. Black facilities appeared to be part of a crude segregationist satireto make black education a contradiction in terms.

Houston designed a strategy of attacking segregation in law schools, forcing states to either create costly parallel law schools or integrate the existing ones. The strategy had hidden benefits: since law students were predominantly male, Houston sought to neutralize the age-old argument that allowing blacks to attend white institutions would lead to miscegenation, or "race-mixing". He also reasoned that judges deciding the cases might be more sympathetic to plaintiffs who were pursuing careers in law. Finally, by challenging segregation in graduate schools, the NAACP lawyers would bypass the inflammatory issue of miscegenation among young children.
The successful ruling handed down in the Brown decision was testament to the master strategy formulated by Houston.

From http://www.naacp.org/about/history/chhouston/ (with some editing)

"Ain't I a Woman?"

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain't I A Woman? - the Frances Gage version, 1863
Delivered 1851 - Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio
"Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say."

Photo: Carte de visite of Sojourner Truth, which she sold to support herself
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carte_de_visite.jpg)
Text: 1851 speech, recorded in 1863 by Frances Gage from the Fordham University archives
(http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.html)

Jacob Lawrence and the Great Migration

"I paint the things I know about and the things I have experienced. The things I have experienced extend into my national, racial and class group. So I paint the American scene."

Jacob Lawrence (1917 – 2000) was one of the first African-American artists who was trained by other African-Americans as part of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Atlantic City but growing up mostly in New York, Jacob Lawrence spent most of his life’s work on the theme of African-American migration. A large portion of his work is devoted to the experience of African-Americans in Northern cities in the twentieth century, looking at the discrimination they yet faced, the pillars of strength they needed to survive and thrive, and also pictures of daily life. Jacob Lawrence used a vibrant color palette and distinctive shapes in his work.

Clicking on the pictures above will take you to more information about them.

More information on Jacob Lawrence can be found at the Whitney's exhibit on him.

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired"

Fannie Lou Hamer was born into a sharecropping Mississippi family (some accounts say she was the yougnest of 20 children) in 1917. When a SNCC representative first came to her town for a voter registration drive, she was surprised to learn that African-Americans' right to vote was protected by the Constitution. She was immediately drawn into the civil rights movement, organizing voting drives and becoming a field representative for SNCC. During a voters' registration drive at the Montgomery County courthouse she was arrested and taken to the cuonty jail where she was beaten nearly to death, sustaining lifelong injuries. She later said of that time, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember." She continued with the voter registration drives, as one of they key organizers of Freedom Summer in 1964.

Fannie Lou Hamer was also famous as a songleader. She considered the civil rights struggle a deeply spiritual one and saw singing as a way to endure hardships and persist in the fight for civil rights. Two of her favorite songs were "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "This Little Light of Mine."

Fannie Lou Hamer's introduction to the national stage came during the Democratic National Convention of 1964. As a delegate for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, she protested the all-white delegation there. She insisted the MFDP delegation be seated: "All of this is on account we want to register.To become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, The Star-Spangled Banner, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?" Her group was eventually seated.

Fannie Lou Hamer continued working on other projects, including HeadStart and the Freedom Farm Cooperative, until cancer brought her death in 1977. The epitaph on her tombstone reads one of her favorite sayings, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

"The Freedom Rider A Nation Almost Forgot"

"Irene Morgan was feeling poorly the muggy July morning when her refusal to bow to bigotry would alter history. Still recovering from a miscarriage, she boarded a crowded Greyhound bus at a crossroads stop in Gloucester, Va., bound for Baltimore. She walked back to the fourth row from the rear, well within the section where segregation laws required black passengers to sit. She picked an aisle seat beside a young mother holding an infant. A few miles up the road, the driver ordered the two black women to stand so a young white couple could take their seats. But Irene Morgan said no, a bold and dangerous act of defiance and dignity in rural Virginia or anywhere in the South of 1944. "I can't see how anybody in the same circumstances could do otherwise," recalled Morgan, brushing off suggestions that she did something brave. "I didn't do anything wrong. I'd paid for my seat. I was sitting where I was supposed to." Eleven years before Rosa Parks refused to cede her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus and sparked a new chapter in the civil rights movement, Irene Morgan's spirited and unflinching "No" was a stick of dynamite in a cornerstone of institutionalized segregation. Her arrest and $10 fine were appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court by a young NAACP lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, resulting in a landmark 1946 decision striking down Jim Crow segregation in interstate transportation. She inspired the first Freedom Ride in 1947, when 16 civil rights activists rode buses and trains through the South to test the law enunciated in Morgan v. Virginia."

Article excerpt from
“The Freedom Rider a Nation Nearly Forgot”
by Carol Morello
Published in the Washington Post - 30 July 2000
Found at http://www.citizensmedal.com/IreneMorgan.htm

Freedom Riders

In 1961, hundreds of people from all over the country boarded buses throughout the South to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision integrating interstate buses and facilities.  Of every age and color they came.  Many were arrested.  Adopting the motto, "Jail, no bail," they chose to stay in prison in order to clog the justice system southern states.  Many were beaten, by angry onlookers before they got to jail, and sometimes once they arrived there.  John Lewis, now a Congressman from Georgia, was one of the first Freedom Riders brutally beaten (you may remember him from inauguration day 2009 - he had a front row seat).  The mug shots of riders arrested in Mississippi were recently unclassified, and photographer Eric Etheridge went through them and then found the people in them and took their photos.  His book Breach of Peace puts the 1961 mug shots alongside modern photos.  Here are some examples.  

A video about the Freedom Riders can be seen by clicking the "Riding to Freedom" link at this Smithsonian Magazine website.

Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial

If the video above is not showing, there is another link to the video in the Penn Special Collections Library's online exhibit.

The English Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign also has great link for more information about and photos of Marian Anderson.

"I, Too"

“I, Too” (1925)

by Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Black History Month

During Black History Month, each day we are going to read a poem, hear a speech, analyze a photo, view a piece of art, or discover an unsung hero relating to the African-American story.  As we go along, we will post our thoughts and responses to these pieces on this post.  At the end, we will each create something new to add to the story.  Also, because our teacher thinks it good for us, we are going to write essays about what we've learned.  By posting our studies and responses to this blog, we invite you to tell the story with us.