Trigger Warning: Quotations of language/imagery that is racially offensive

While I was scanning the pages of American newspapers published 100 years ago one headline caught my eye:

RACE WAR IN SOUTH IMMINENT: National Guard Rushed to Oklahoma Town One–Negro Is Lynched and Two Others Are Shot–Negroes Mustering Fight Force [Medford Mail Tribune (Medford, Oregon) Oct. 23, 1911, page 5]

The article below gave few details of the events that led to the \”troublesome negro\” being lynched. Coweta, Oklahoma was, according to the first paragraph, under virtual martial law as the National Guard had been called out due to \”threatened manslaughter on the part of the negro element.\”

My first thought was that the editor/publisher of that particular newspaper was overreacting to a vague report of unrest in Oklahoma. I decided to keep my eyes open for more news on the same story as I looked through the other newspapers. It turned out that in most cases, it would have taken more effort to miss the story than to find it.

The Arizona Republican put the same story above the fold on the front page:

SENDS CALL FOR TROOPS: National Guard Will be Needed in Ending Race War Which Broke Out Last Night in Black Belt of Oklahoma: NEGRO WHO RAN AMUCK WAS KILLED: Trouble Occurred at Coweta in Heart of District Which is Populated Largely by Blacks From Far South [October 23, 1911, page 1]

[NOTE: In 1911 it was the fashion of many papers to have nesting banks of headlines which told as much of the story as many of the public would ever read.]
The particular details of the case are repeated, in more or less the same words, across many of the newspapers. An African-American shoved a white women off the sidewalk. The white man who had been walking with the woman, along with another white man then assaulted the African-American (Ed Ruse.) The next day Ruse returned to the town armed with a knife and looking for the man who had helped in the assault. According to the town officials (all white as far as one can tell) Ruse shot the Marshall when he was ordered to hand over his knife and then another African-American man, Ed Suddeth, rushed out of a nearby house and shot and killed the Marshall. From this point on the story becomes a confusing one of Suddeth being captured by a mob, hung, rescued before he was dead (for fear that his lynching would lead to a race riot) and then later shot at least fifty times.

There is no way of verifying exactly who started things and who did what to whom in what order. What is clear from the various accounts as that the officials (and much of the white populace) of the area viewed all African-Americans as monolithic group that were liable to rise up at any moment, violently assault any white people they came upon and destroy the town they lived in.

Geographical distance did not seem to lessen the fear that the African-Americans of Oklahoma were poised to begin an armed assault on the white population of the state. The Times Dispatch of Richmond, VA, was another newspaper that ran the story on the front page above the fold

BLACKS THREATEN TOWN Of COWETA: White Men Are Patrolling Streets and Guarding Homes.

The Call of San Francisco managed to suggest by its headline (front page, above the fold):

Fearing Attack Lynchers Cut Rope and Hide Captive in Vacant Building

that stopping an extra-judicial killing was a symptom of breakdown of social order.

What I realize as I read one newspaper after another is that any individual act of violence/resistance by an African-American was seen as a potential assault on the social order and that any group of African-Americans males larger than 1 was a mob that threatened the safety of white Americans. All African-Americans were suspected of working towards an armed rebellion and the overthrow of the existing government.

The question I ask myself as I read these articles is \”why were the white authorities so sure that all African-Americans would rebel violently if given a chance.\” The answer is, of course, \”because they were well aware of how African-Americans had been treated in the past and were still be treated — and would themselves if treated the same way rebel violently against those who oppressed them.

The best evidence we have of how badly African-Americana had been treated was how much white Americans feared their vengeance.

Charities, like many other things in the modern world, go in and out of fashion. One week/month/year celebrities are lending their faces and names to one cause and a few years later the same celebrities are associating themselves with another. Some diseases are easy to dramatize. The story of the person looking for marrow donor or the matching kidney almost writes itself.

And then there are the causes and charities that quietly trudge along, never in the spotlight and yet for all that alleviating just as much misery as those that are better known.

This morning I couldn\’t find my glasses. I need my glasses to perform the routine tasks of life. I put them on before I get out of bed in the morning and I take them off only after I turn off the lights at night. Today I took them off to wash my face and when I reached out my hand for them they weren\’t were I expected them to be. I looked frantically at the things on the counter but I couldn\’t find them. Yes, I have a backup pair (which I keep in a spot I can reach even if I can see nothing) but the moment of terror remains with me. Without my glasses I would not be able to cook (I couldn\’t measure ingredients and nor could I safely use a knife.) I wouldn\’t be able to read (magnifying things won\’t solve the problem since I am severely astigmatic.) I couldn\’t drive. I couldn\’t knit unless someone else cast on the stitches and I couldn\’t crochet save by feel alone.

We who are privileged forget how life-changing the simple technology of \”glasses\” can be. There are hundreds of thousands of people who could live better, more comfortable, more remunerative lives with the aid of something we take so for granted that we know longer think of it as a medical technology.

Many optometrists and opthalmologists belong to groups that will accept old/used glasses. Groups of doctors go to areas of the world where people get no eye care or where most people can\’t afford glasses and provide the required necessary tests for free. They then match people up with the used eyeglasses closest to the prescription required. Yes, of course it would be better if everyone in the world had access to best of modern eye medicine but realistically that is not going to happen anytime soon. Just remember, the next time your replace your glasses to find a doctor/organization that can pass them on to someone whose life will be made, quite literally, clearer and brighter by an act of charity that cost you nothing.

One hundred years ago one of the stories on the front pages many of the newspapers in the United States told of the arrest of Rev. C. V. T. Richeson for the murder of Avis Linnell. Miss Linnell, whose body was found in the bathroom of the YWCA rooming house where she lived, was first thought to have died of natural causes and then, after the contents of her stomach were examined, was presumed to have committed suicide. Why, I wondered, would the police think that an attractive, talented and not noticeably depressed young woman would have committed suicide?

Miss Linnell. who was nineteen years old, and a student at the Conservatory of Music, was found dead in the bathroom of the Young Women\’s Christian Association home here. At first the police believed she had committed suicide, but later developments indicated that she had unknowingly taken cyanide of potassium sent her by some other person, in the belief that it would remedy her embarrassing physical condition. [The Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA) Oct. 21 1911, page 1]

At first the police believed that she had committed suicide but later developments indicated that she had unknowingly taken cyanide of potassium, which had been sent to her by some other person, and that she used it In the belief that it would remedy a certain embarrassing physical condition. [New York Tribune Oct 21, 1911, page 1.]

[Headline]AWFUL CHARGE AGAINST PASTOR NOW IN CELL
[SubHead]Cambridge Clergyman Accused of Murder of a Young Girl to Concel an Earlier Sin [The Bisbee Daily Review (Bisbee, Arizona) Oct 21, 1911, page 1]

Richeson is charged with furnishing a nineteen year-old girl, to whom he is said lo have been engaged to be married, and who in the course of six months would have become a mother, with cyanide of potassium and the inference is that he told her that by taking the deadly drug she bring about a desired change in her physical condition, when In reality he furnished the cyanide and deceived the girl as to the nature of its effect for the express purpose of causing her death so that no entanglement might exist which could prevent his marriage to Violet Edmonds of Brookllne, whose father is a rich man. [The Sun (New York) Oct 21, 1911, page 1.]

Clearly what is at issue is not the concepts it is the words. It is crystal clear from the various accounts that Miss Linnell was pregnant and Richeson (the presumed father) was suspected of giving her the potassium of cyanide and telling her it was an abortifacient.

At the same time words (and concepts) that we would now find deeply shocking can be found on the same pages where the word \”pregnant\” could not be written.

The halfbreed was found in the brush near the scene of the crime early today and brought to the Oroville jail. There is talk of lynching.[The Tacoma Times (Tacoma, Washington) Oct 21, 1911, page 1]

From reading that article it is clear that if an \”Indian\” was accused of murdering a white woman by other white people — then no one considered it necessary to go through the formality of having an actual trial. A lynching would do just as well.

Just as \”everyone knew\” that things such as premarital sex went on \”everyone knew\” that non-white and white Americans got treated differently by the American legal system. One hundred years they spoke circumspectly about sex and opening about legal inequalities. Today we speak openly about sex and circumspectly about legal inequalities.

But just as people were having sex then even if they weren\’t talking about it–bigotry and legal inequalities exist today even when we aren\’t willing to speak openly and honestly about them.

Trigger Warning: Quotations of language/imagery that is racially offensive

One hundred years ago today the University Missourian (Columbia, Missouri) ran the following article on the front page:
Head: Cinders Cause Suit
SubHead: Negro Woman Asks $300 Because Wabash Trains Soil Washing.

Emmeline Williams is not only identified in the subhead as a \”Negro Woman\” in the very first line of the article we are told that she is \”a negress.\” In the second paragraph of the same article she is referred to as \”Emmeline\” without an honorific and with no last name.

The article, which is a roundup of the various cases currently before the court, next moves on to the story of \”William Miller, a negro\” who is later referred to as \”Tude, as he is known in Columbia.\”

No one on the page is identified as \”white\” and no one not identified as \”negro\” is referred to only by their first name or not given an honorific on their first mention.

These are, no doubt, \”little\” things but it says much of what life was like for African-Americans that no matter what they did their \”racial identity\” was given as automatically as honorifics were given to whites and that the small dignities of life were accorded to white men and women but not African Americans.

Right now, in the United States, there are still places where people are being told that they have to ride at the back of the bus.
See:
City Human Rights Commission To Examine Sex-Segregated Bus Line

A driver observed and interviewed by The New York World did not intervene when a woman accompanying this reporter was forced to move to the back of the bus. The New York Post subsequently sent its own reporter, who was told by the driver, as well as passengers, that the front of the bus was reserved for men.

Women ride in back on sex-segregated Brooklyn bus line

The B110 bus travels between Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn. It is open to the public, and has a route number and tall blue bus stop signs like any other city bus. But the B110 operates according to its own distinct rules. The bus line is run by a private company and serves the Hasidic communities of the two neighborhoods. To avoid physical contact between members of opposite sexes that is prohibited by Hasidic tradition, men sit in the front of the bus and women sit in the back.

‘Back of bus’ furor

Rosa Parks must be spinning in her grave!

A Brooklyn bus contracted by the city to operate a Williamsburg-to-Borough Park route — catering to Orthodox Jews but open to the public — is under investigation for allegedly forcing women to sit in the back of the bus, authorities said yesterday.

At Front of Brooklyn Bus, a Clash of Religious and Women’s Rights

Even though a private operator runs the bus, it was awarded the route through a public and competitive bidding process. Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said the bus was supposed to be “available for public use” and could not discriminate.

[snip]

On Wednesday afternoon, the custom of women’s sitting at the back of the bus was evident, both in practice and in writing.

Guidelines, posted in the front and the back, said that “when boarding a crowded bus with standing passengers in the front, women should board the back door after paying the driver in the front” and that “when the bus is crowded, passengers should stand in their designated areas.”

If you read the articles (and the comments attached to them) the lack of outrage is noticeable. Why, I wonder, does forcing someone to sit at the back of the bus not spark massive anger and immediate reactions from government institutions? I suggest that the reasons are twofold: what group is the discrimination being carried out by and who is being discriminated against.

First, In certain areas of American politics today it is important to demonstrate that you are for Judeo-Christian ethics/beliefs and that you are a \”friend of Israel.\” Ironically your friendship for Israel may be based on your belief that Israel needs to be around to be destroyed at the right time, but until then you are a friend of Israel. Specifically (for a secular Israel will not result in the rebuilding of the temple) this involves supporting the those groups within Israel that are least supportive of western values/women\’s rights. This political \”third rail\” is not equally electric in all communities in the United States but it plays a crucial role in New York politics.

Second, Women rights are always negotiable. They are something that will have to wait. Brutal and unequal treatment of women can be included as one of many charges against another country or leader but that is never enough to spur western countries to action. If men are not being jailed then the jailing of women will not bring down upon you the wrath of the United States. If men are not being mistreated then the mistreatment of women will not bring down upon you the wrath of the United States. Women rights are the last rights that will be insisted on, the last rights to be granted and the first rights to be lost.

One hundred years ago yesterday (October 19, 1911) the Mayor of New York decided to not veto legislation that mandated that the New York City school system pay all women teachers the same wages as male teachers. The first several times such legislation was passed it was vetoed. As the mayor announced his intentions he reassured his constituents that paying women more would actually lead to more male teachers getting jobs.

Women\’s rights don\’t seem to have traveled as far as we had hoped over the last 100 years.

The World, New York New York, October 19 1911.

Headline: 14,000 WOMEN TEACHERS TO GET SAME PAY AS MEN

The newspaper reported that the legislature had passed the bill which mandated equal pay several times before and each time it had been vetoed. This time, according to the major

After careful consideration I see that I should accept this bill for the city. It gives the women teachers in our common schools equal pay with the men teachers in all the grades

and, as the mayor points out, this may actually redound to the benefit of men

Instead of lessening the number of men teachers it will increase it. The economical reason for appointing women teachers because they are paid less is removed.

Now, whatever the reasons the mayor had for not vetoing the bill it is interesting that he felt he had to (or wanted to) make the comment/reassurance that the bill would result in more men being hired. And it is important that in this day of fighting for equal pay for work of equal value that people be reminded just how recently in the United States one could openly and baldly pay a women less than a man just because she was a woman and he was a man. Laws had to be passed to prevent that from happening. And it would go on happening (and more laws would be required to be passed) for decades to come.

Why, one might ask, should we care about the troubles of the most fortunate? Why should we not mock, or even celebrate the things that try them?

Writers and artists have been dealing with that particular problem for as long as there have been writers and artists.

Timothy Daulton, in a comment to an earlier post, mentioned watching Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. In addition to the points Timothy made about the movie\’s relevance to circumstances today the movie also stands as a brilliant example of how the screenwriter/director/actors can deflect and channel possible oppositional responses to a narrative and (generally) successfully direct the audiences emotional responses in the desired directions.

Mr. Blandings began its life as an article in Fortune magazine in 1946 and was then published, in longer form, as a book. The movie is both faithful to and departs greatly from the original article. And the way in which it does both is instructive as to how an audience can be seduced and distracted into a dominant or acceptable negotiated reading of the text.

In the case of the movie this seduction/distraction might be argued to take place long before the movie begins with the selection of director, screenwriter and cast but I will defer the discussion of those choices until a later day and begin with first moments of the short story, the book and the movie.

Mr. Blandings, the short story, was published in 1946 and Mr. Blanding the movie was released in 1948. The United States was at the moment of publication and release in the midst of what was generally accepted to be a housing crisis. Housing starts had declined precipitously during the Great Depression and during the Second World War manpower and materials that might otherwise gone to building homes went instead into the war effort. With the end of the war hundreds of thousands of men returned to civilian life eager to get married, find a home and start a family but there were not available the hundreds of thousands of homes and apartments required for them to do so. So they lived with family or shared homes with other young couples in similar circumstances. So it is understandable that the \”money people\” in Hollywood would think that a movie about the troubles that beset a couple trying to build a house would evoke fellow-feeling among members of the audience. But the Blandings in the story, the book and the movie were very unlike most of the millions who desperately needed a home of their own.

If you check the US Census the median household income in the United States was $3200. Just over 3% of American households had an income of over $10000 a year. In the short story the reader learns that the final cost of the land and house was over $50,000 — a figure well beyond the reach of most of the people who would go to see the film. The Blandings are not rich but they are very wealthy compared to the majority of Americans. A the beginning of the film the audience is told that Blandings is he\’s as typical a New Yorker as anyone you\’ll ever meet. And then we are immediately given information that proves that Blandings is anything but a \”typical\” New Yorker. College graduate, ad business, lovely wife, two fine kids, makes about fifteen thousand a year. Yes, Americans who lived in large urban communities make somewhat more than Americans who live in smaller communities with the 1948 median income of $3200 for those living in cities of more than a million. So Blandings was not making a typical New York income. Nor was the typical New Yorker a college graduate. Indeed, directly after we are told that Jim Blandings is a typical New Yorker we are given ample evidence that he is not.

So, how did the movie-makers ensure that audience members would, for the most part, side with the Blandings even while taking delight in their travails? Over a number of posts I\’ll examine the skillful way in which they pulled of this feat.

One hundred years ago today The Logan Republican of Cache County, Utah published the obituary of President John Henry Smith. At the time of his death Smith was the Second Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The obituary is, not surprisingly, laudatory but as I read it over I felt that there must be something missing. Smith had been one of the people who worked behind (and in front of) the scenes to negotiate Utah\’s transition from territory to state. He had been born in Iowa in 1848 son of Gordon Smith (a leader in the LDS) and must have known in his childhood and his early adult life many of the towering (and many married) figures in the LDS. Including his own father.

Reading that obituary made me think about a statement made not to long ago by Mitt Romney, We’re going to call marriage what it’s been called for 6,000 years or longer: A relationship between one man and one woman. Surely Romney is (and his followers are) aware that not too many generations ago his co-religionists did not consider a marriage to consist of one man and one woman (unless, of course, you are making the rather sophistical argument that each of a polygamist\’s marriages are between one man and one woman. But each woman was only allowed one marriage at a time while a man might have as many as he liked/could afford.)

How \”hidden\” was the practice of polygamy (or plural marriage as the LDS often referred to it)? The death of Smith was recorded in The New York Times of October 14, 1911. The last sentence of the obituary was Two wives, fifteen children, and eight grandchildren survive him.

Mitt Romney has, of course, a right to his own beliefs about the what marriage \”should be\” but, as it has been said elsewhere \”you have a right to your own opinions but not a right to your own facts.\” It is not factually true that marriage has been called \”a relationship between one man and one woman\” for 6,000 years. Indeed in Utah it wasn\’t until President (of the LDS) Woodruff\’s manifesto of 1890 that Morman leadership stopped solemnizing plural marriages. Since those men who were already married to more than one woman were not called to separate from all but one the church leadership did not seem to be stating that those prior relationships had not been marriages and thus were acknowledging the fact that relationships that could be called marriages varied by place and time. If was, after all, not until 1904 the the leadership of the LDS issued a worldwide ban on plural marriage.

So, Mr. Romney, you have a right to your opinions, you have a right to your religion but you do not have a right to alter (or ignore) the historical record.

Many of the rights that women in the \”western\” world consider unquestioned and unquestionable are comparatively recent and thus, one might argue, have shallow roots and might be less secure than one might presume.

Consider this headline on the first page of The Washington Herald on October 16, 1911. \”Court may have women for jury\” with the subhead \”Suffrage victory affects McNamara Case.\” The reader is told that given the recent passage of the women\’s suffrage amendment,[1] \”Eminent legal authorities hold that women of the State are now on an equal footing with the men. so far as jury service is concerned,\” and given the fact that the court may find it difficult to seat a jury of men women \”may be peremptorily summoned.\” The ruling of the judge that \”there was nothing to prevent a woman serving on a jury.\” came after a \”demand by Mrs Johanna Engelman that she be given a place in the jury box.\”

It may seem strange to us today that even after the suffrage there were questions about whether women could serve on juries and it is clear from the text of the article that they would be only if men could not be found. This clarifies one of the basic underlying issues that made women\’s fight for the vote and other legal rights so difficult–women may have been seen as citizens for the purposes of paying taxes and apportioning congressional seats, but they were not seen as completely, fully functioning adult human beings in the eyes of the kyriarchy. Thus rights and duties which one might imagine would have flowed automatically from the passage of suffrage did not.

The same page of The Washington Herald also gives one a rather frightening insight into the treatment of and attitude toward African-Americans in 1911 and includes a laudatory piece about a lecture on eugenics that was schedule to be given by Willet M. Hays [2] at the local YMCA.

The offensively jocular page 1 article about \”Charles Charles\” attempting to rescue a beleaguered elderly African-American woman gives the reader a sense of just how \”free and equal\” life was for African-Americans in Washington D.C. in 1911. On page two of the same paper one finds the article Will Celebrate Freedom: Washington Negroes to Commemorate Abolition of Slavery just about the article Veterans Will Convene: Confederates of Virginia meet at Newport News tomorrow. The placement of the two pieces seems an appropriate commentary on the reality of their lives–whenever African-Americans gather to exercise their theoretical rights they need look over their shoulders for the men who are still celebrated and honoured for having attempted to deny them those rights.

And, of course, The Herald\’s Page for Every Woman includes the requisite advice and criticism of mothers without which few family newspapers ever went to print.

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[1] At the state level. The 19th amendment, which gave American women the right to vote, was not ratified until 1920. &#8617

[2] Not the Hays of the Hays Code. &#8617

Whether or not one agrees with Christopher HItchens\’ conclusions a surprising large number of people don\’t question the statements of \”fact\” on which he bases his argument. After all he is male, white, has what sounds to American ears a posh well-educated \”British accent.\” He went to the right schools and speaks with the tone of authority–so what more is there to say?

The first thing to say that HItchens not infrequently is wrong. By this I don\’t mean that frequently I disagree with HItchens\’ conclusions but rather that sometimes he is simply wrong on the facts. And since he is wrong on some facts for all I know he is wrong on many facts. And since he is well-educated enough (and has enough resources) that he can easily find out what the facts actually are then he is either consciously lying, unable to conceive of the fact he could be wrong, and feels that the point he is making is so important that fudging or overlooking a few facts is acceptable.

Case in point, in his Slate.com article Lord Haw Haw and Anwar al-Awlaki Hitchen\’s wrote:

The United States happens also to be almost uniquely generous in conferring citizenship: making it available to all those who draw their first breath within its borders.

Now that statement is a piece of arrant nonsense. Leaving aside the past actions the American government denying access to citizenship to some groups of immigrants the country is today far from being \”almost unique\” in granting birthright citizenship. The number of member nations in the UN is 193. Let\’s round up and say that there are at the moment 200 nations. Over 30 of those nations recognize birthright citizenship. So the United States is among a minority of nations there need to be far, far fewer before the phrase \”almost uniquely\” become appropriate.

Hitchens may be suffering here from \”old worldism.\” He himself was born and raised in Britain and most European nations do not grant birthright citizenship. However the United States, like most of the other nations in the Western Hemisphere, was built from immigrants and historically offered few bars to children of those immigrants becoming citizens. The mistake he makes here is not particularly relevant to the overall argument he is making however it warns the reader that he is arrogant and/or careless about facts.

A further, minor example of the same thing can be found later on in the same article when he writes of William Joyce:

He actually became rather a popular entertainment item in Britain, his arrogant drawling tones earning him the nickname “Lord Haw Haw.”

Despite that rather definitive statement as to why Joyce was known as \”Lord Haw Haw\” there is some question as which voice of German propaganda the original epithet \”Lord Haw Haw\” was used to describe. At least four different people were dubbed \”Lord Haw Haw\” during the war. We also know that some members of the British media simply used that phrase to describe any English language speaking German propagandists irrespective of their particular manners of speech.

Again, this is a minor point except that we become lazy listeners/readers and HItchens (like many other \”respected\” pundits\”) becomes a lazy writer/speaker thinker if the underpinnings of their arguments are not subjected to scrutiny.

Interestingly enough neither of these points is pertinent to the case Hitchens is arguing–indeed they obfuscate it. William Joyce (the Lord Haw Haw to whom HItchens is referring) argued as to his \”true\” citizenship as part of his defense against being executed as a traitor. He claimed that since he was actually an American citizen he could not be guilty of treason to Britain. al-Awlaki, unlike Joyce, was not tried in a court of law. al-Awlaki was not executed he was assassinated. In fact he was assassinated while outside the United States on the basis of the President \”deciding\” he was a traitor. In other words, the argument is not whether al-Awlaki was actually an American citizen but whether the President acted extra-judicially. To bring up any other points is to muddy the situation rather than make it clearer.

As George Orwell, one of Hitchens\’ favourite writers, put it. \”When there is a gap between one\’s real and one\’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”