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NEWS & LETTERS, May-June 2005Black/Red ViewThe 'color-line'by John Alan "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line," wrote W.E.B. Du Bois at the start of the century. More than a century later, most African Americans are living in the cities, the schools are racially integrated by a decision of the Supreme Court and the Civil Rights Movement brought an end to race segregation on Southern public transportation. Yet this nation still has an unquestionable "color-line." According to the National Urban League's April 6, 2005 report on the social status of African Americans: "gaps [remain] between blacks and whites in economics, housing, education, health, social justice and civic engagement...despite societal progress, the overall status of black Americans is just 73%, compared to the conditions of their white counterparts, marginally unchanged from 2004 index results." The National Urban League used their percentage numbers as an analysis of the "color-line" and offered a political solution to wipe it out. This sociological thinking leaves out of the struggle the great masses of African Americans who suffer directly from the many forms of racism. Until the organization of the CIO in the 1930s, there was only a minimal social and political relationship between African-American masses and the white American working class. Before the birth of the CIO, in many areas of this nation the two races were legally separated by enforceable segregation laws and lynching of African Americans happened often. To escape from this dreadful social situation of segregation and lynching in the South, many African Americans migrated to the North during World War I. Jobs were plentiful there, because the war had stopped the influx of European workers. Ford Motor Co. has an ad in the current THE CRISIS, intimating that they created the Black middle class with their 1913 offer of $5 a day wages aimed at those African-American workers escaping the South. In just three years, 1914-17, at least 400,000 African Americans quickly organized themselves and went North. Their departure depopulated entire communities in the South. In its extent this movement was without a parallel in American history for it drew African-American inhabitants from places in the South from Florida to Texas. This migration created new elements in the American culture and also gave a new meaning to the concept of freedom. At the same time, the migration inflamed many white people living outside of the South. During this Great Migration many areas in the country experienced the "Red Summer of 1919," so called because of the blood in the streets after race riots in 20 cities. African Americans were killed and beaten by white mobs who saw Blacks as a threat to the self perceived white superior social status and economic security. RACE WAR The race conflict that exploded in Tulsa, Okla., on the evening of May 31, 1921 was not a race riot but a part of this race war. According to Andrew Meier: "The 1921 Tulsa race riot owes its name to an older American tradition, to the days when white mobs, with the consent of local authorities, dared to rid themselves of their black neighbors. The endeavor was an opportunity 'to run the Negro out of Tulsa'" ("Time is Running Out on Reparations for the Tulsa Race Riot," Financial Times, Feb. 19, 2005). The usual way to start race wars in the U.S. is to circulate an allegation that a Negro has sexually assaulted a white woman. Walter White, the NAACP official who arrived in Tulsa at the height of riot told what he thought happened in an article he wrote for THE NATION. According to White: "A young Black messenger named Dick Rowland called for an elevator in a downtown Tulsa building. The operator, a young white woman named Sarah Page, on finding she had been summoned by a Black man, started the car on its descent when Rowland was only half in. To save himself from injury, Roland threw himself into the car, stepping on the girl's foot in doing so. Page screamed and, when a crowd gathered outside the elevator, claimed she had been attacked. The police arrested Rowland the following day but with little enthusiasm, perhaps because they knew the reputation of his accuser." Nevertheless, Rowland was charged with rape and the lynching call was sent out. This lynching didn't happen because armed Black men, veterans of the First World War, came out in the streets and cancelled the lynching idea. Those veterans lived in the prosperous African-American Greenwood district of Tulsa. Tulsa's African-American community would pay a severe price for saving Rowland's life. That great humanitarian deed activated the murderous racists. They thought, if we can't lynch Rowland, we will burn down the prosperous "n----r town" Greenwood. BURNING OF GREENWOOD Two weeks after Greenwood was plundered and set on fire by a white mob, the attorney general of the state, during an address to the Tulsa City Club declared: "The cause of this riot was not Tulsa. It might happen anywhere for the Negro is not the same man he was 30 years ago when he was content to plod along his own road and accept the white man as his benefactor." Tulsa riot survivors are still seeking reparations for the wrongs done them as well as fighting to fully uncover the evidence of the mayhem that befell their community 84 years ago. The continuing race divide reported by the Urban League and the resistance to fully facing up to this country's racist history are part of the same story. The thoroughly racist character of U.S. capitalism is shown in their eagerness to hire African-American labor when they are desperate as well as the continued suppression of the aspirations for full freedom of those same African-American masses. Those aspirations keep resurfacing to push the idea of freedom forward in American history. |
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