Published on November 15, 2007
The Black Male Body: The Black Male Body Week three: Jan. 24, 2006 History Group 1 –Madhavi, Monique, Renee & Fahed Topics: Topics A history of black male presence in the United States as framed by four key figures and events. Marcus Garvey The Civil Rights Movement 1955-1969 Clarence Thomas OJ Simpson Marcus Garvey(August 17, 1887– June 10, 1940) : Marcus Garvey (August 17, 1887– June 10, 1940) Garvey was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, Black nationalist, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). The UNIA was the largest Pan-African movement ever. Born in St. Ann's Bay in Jamaica, he was an important proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement, which encouraged those of African descent to return to their ancestral homelands. This movement would eventually inspire a variety of other movements. Garvey said he wanted those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to be purged. Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/e_blackstar.html Slide4: During his travels, Garvey had become convinced that uniting Blacks was the only way to improve their condition, and so he formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League (ACL). As the groups' first president-general, his goal was to "unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their own.“ After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, Garvey arrived in the U.S. on March 23, 1916, for a lecture tour and to raise funds for establishment of a school in Jamaica modeled after Washington's Tuskegee Institute. The UNIA flag (also known as the Black Nationalist Flag) Marcus Garvey: Marcus Garvey Garvey set about the business of developing a program to improve the conditions of those of African ancestry "at home and abroad" under UNIA auspices. In New York, he organized the first UNIA chapter outside Jamaica and advanced ideas designed to promote social, political, and economic freedom for Blacks. He established the legendary Black Star Line Steamship Corporation in 1919. The Black Star Line was to be the UNIA's vehicle for promoting worldwide commerce among black communities. In Garvey's vision, Black Star Line ships would transport manufactured goods, raw materials, and produce among black businesses in North America, the Caribbean, and Africa, and become the linchpin in a global black economy. Marcus Garvey: "They said that the Negro had no initiative; that he was not a business man, but a laborer; that he had not the brain to engineer a corporation, to own and run ships; that he had no knowledge of navigation, therefore the proposition was impossible. Oh! ye of little faith. The Eternal has happened.“ - Marcus Garvey, on the launching of the Black Star Line The Black Star Line Corp. would eventually fail because of a variety of factors. The majority of ships that Garvey was able to buy were in poor condition and the business fell prey to all kinds of sabotage. Another venture of Garvey’s was the Negro Factories Corporation. His plan called for creating the infrastructure to manufacture every marketable commodity in every big U.S. industrial center, as well as those in Central America, West Indies, and Africa. Related endeavors included a grocery chain, restaurant, publishing house, and other businesses. Garvey has been credited with creating the biggest movement of people of African descent in history. At its height, the UNIA claimed over a million members. Garvey’s movement is said to have had more participation from people of African descent than the Civil Rights Movement. Marcus Garvey American Civil Rights Movement: American Civil Rights Movement 1955 – 1969 Framing Black as simultaneously resistive and passive. Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Rights_Movement_Timeline The Vote: The Vote 1870 February 3 - The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right of citizens of the United States to vote. February 25 - Hiram Rhodes Revels becomes the first black member of the Senate. 1907 At the time of admission of Oklahoma into the Union, that state adopted a constitution which allowed blacks to vote, in compliance with the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, a constitutional amendment soon followed which requiring voters to be literate; a loophole in the amendment allowed illiterates to vote if they could prove that their grandfathers had been voters or citizens of some foreign nation. As a result, illiterate whites were able to vote but not illiterate blacks, whose grandfathers had almost all been slaves. This and similar laws have been labeled as the grandfather clause. Toward Racial Equality: Harper's Weekly Reports on Black America, 1857-1874 Civil Rights Movement (very) Summarized: Civil Rights Movement (very) Summarized The American Civil Rights Movement usually refers to the events and reform efforts aimed at abolishing public and private acts of racial discrimination against African Americans. The combination in the southern states of overtly racial laws, public and private acts of discrimination, marginal economic opportunity, and racial violence became known as "Jim Crow". The Southern "Jim Crow" regime remained almost entirely intact into the early 1950s. The situation for African-Americans outside the South was usually somewhat better, though not always appreciably so. Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which overturned the "separate but equal" legal doctrine derived from Plessy and made segregation legally impermissible, but provided few practical remedies. …Continued : …Continued Acts of civil disobedience produced crisis situations between practitioners and government authorities. The authorities of federal, state, and local governments often responded violently to these situations. Some forms of civil disobedience employed included boycotts, beginning with the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the Greensboro sit-in (1960) in North Carolina; and marches, such as Selma to Montgomery (1965) in Alabama. Noted legislative achievements between 1955-1969 included passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (minor in its effects, but the first anti-discriminatory federal legislation since Reconstruction), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in employment practices and public accommodations, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that restored voting rights, the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965 that dramatically changed U.S. immigration policy, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. Civil Rights Timeline1955-1962: Civil Rights Timeline 1955-1962 1955 January 15 - Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in federal employment. May 31 - The Supreme Court rules in "Brown II" that desegregation must occur with "all deliberate speed". December 1 - Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 1956 • February 3 - Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. Whites riot, and she is suspended. Later, she is expelled for her part in further legal action against the university. 1957 • January - Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed. Martin Luther King is named chairman of the organization. • September - Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas is integrated. Federal and National Guard troops escort the Little Rock Nine. 1959 • April 25 - Mack Charles Parker, accused of raping a white woman, is taken from jail and lynched by a white mob in Poplarville, Mississippi. 1960 • February 1 - Four Black students sit at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking six months of the Greensboro Sit-Ins. 1961 • May 4 - The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends student volunteers on interstate bus trips: these are labeled the Freedom Rides. Riots ensue. 1962 • August 31 - Fannie Lou Hamer attempts to register to vote in Indianola, Mississippi. Civil Rights Timeline1963-1964: Civil Rights Timeline 1963-1964 1963 • January - Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address. • April 16 - Letter from Birmingham Jail written by Martin Luther King. • June 11 - "The Stand In The Schoolhouse Door": Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in front of a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation • June 11 – JFK makes his historic civil rights speech, promising a bill to Congress the next week. About civil rights for "Negroes," in his speech he asks for "the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves." • August 28 - March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held. Dr. Martin Luther King gives his I have a dream speech. • November 22 - President Kennedy is assassinated. The new President Lyndon Johnson decides that accomplishing JFK's legislative agenda is his best strategy, which he pursues with the results below in 1964-1965. 1964 • June 21 - Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders. • June 28 - Organization of Afro-American Unity is founded by Malcolm X, lasts until his death. • December 10 - Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. • unknown - The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenges the seating of all-white Mississippi representatives at the Democratic national convention. Civil Rights Timeline1965-1969: 1965 • February 21 - Malcolm X is shot to death in Manhattan, New York. • March 7 - "Bloody Sunday" on the Selma to Montgomery marches: civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama begin a march to Montgomery but are stopped by a massive police blockade as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many marchers are severely injured and one killed. • unknown - Bill Cosby co-stars in I Spy, a first for a black person on American television 1966 • October - Black Panthers founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California. • November - Edward Brooke is elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. He is the first Black senator since 1881. 1968 • February 8 - Orangeburg Massacre occurs during university protest. • April 4 - Dr. Martin Luther King is shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. • October - Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists to symbolize black power and unity after winning the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games. • November 22 - first interracial kiss on American television, between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner on Star Trek 1969 • December - Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party is shot and killed while asleep in bed during a police raid on his home. Civil Rights Timeline 1965-1969 Clarence Thomasborn June 23, 1948: Clarence Thomas born June 23, 1948 Clarence Thomas is an American jurist and has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1991. He is the second African American to serve on the nation's highest court, in addition to Justice Thurgood Marshall. Thomas's career in the Supreme Court has seen him take a conservative approach to cases and adhering to the postulates of originalism, alongside colleague Antonin Scalia In 1981, he began his rise through the Reagan administration. From 1981-1982, he served as Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights in the US Department of Education ("DOE"), and as Chairman of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") from 1982-1990. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush appointed Thomas to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Slide15: Toward the expected end of the confirmation hearings, based on a leaked Judiciary committee FBI report, NPR's Nina Totenberg reported that a former colleague of Thomas, University of Oklahoma law school professor Anita Hill, had accused him of sexually harassing her when the two had worked together at the DOE and EEOC. However, seemingly contradictory statements by Anita Hill and additional testimony for Thomas by former female associates weakened the case against him. Of the Committee's investigation of the Hill claims, Thomas said: ...as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate rather than hung from a tree. The content of the hearings, particularly Senator Orrin Hatch's questions "[D]id you ever say in words or substance something like there is a pubic hair in my Coke?" and "Did you ever use the term Long Dong Silver in conversation with Professor Hill?" rapidly became fodder for the nation's comedians. Thomas as “Uncle Tom”: Thomas as “Uncle Tom” According to Stephen Presser, in his review of Judging Thomas by Ken Foskett: Few in the legal academy have had good things to say about Clarence Thomas or about his jurisprudence. The criticism started in 1991 when Thomas, who had served as a federal court of appeals judge for under two years, was nominated, at the age of 43, to the highest court in the land. He was confirmed by the Senate by 52 to 48, the slimmest margin of anyone who has prevailed in the process. Since then, Thomas has been lambasted as a "handkerchief-head," a "chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom," and even "a little creep," by other African-Americans with whose philosophy Thomas does not agree. Slide17: The Tom Caricature The Tom caricature portrays Black men as faithful, happily submissive servants. The Tom caricature, as with the Mammy Caricature, was born in ante-bellum America in the defense of slavery. How could slavery be wrong, argued its proponents, if Black servants, males (Toms) and females (Mammies) were contented, loyal servants? The Tom is presented as a smiling, wide-eyed, dark skinned server: fieldworker, cook, butler, porter, or waiter. Unlike the Coon, the Tom is portrayed as a dependable worker, eager to serve. Unlike the Brute, the Tom is docile and non-threatening to Whites. The Tom is often old, physically weak, psychologically dependent on Whites for approval. Black political conservatives, especially Republicans, are often labeled "Uncle Toms" or "Toms." Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Alan Keyes, the Republican presidential candidate; Shelby Steele, the professor and author; Thomas Sowell, the economist; and Walter Williams, the neighborhood activist, have all been publicly called "Uncle Toms." They are accused of being White-identified opportunists. Their motives are impugned. The November 1996 issue of Emerge magazine had a cover with Justice Thomas dressed as a lawn jockey and these words: "Uncle Thomas, Lawn Jockey for the Far Right." Inside the magazine a grinning Justice Thomas shines Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's shoes. Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson born July 9, 1947: Orenthal James (O.J.) Simpson born July 9, 1947 Retired football star O.J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. He was however found liable for their murders in a civil trial in 1997. O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown were married in 1985 and had two children, they were divorced in 1992 after Simpson pleaded no-contest to a domestic violence charge. Guerrero on O.J.Source: The Black Man on Our Screens and the Empty Space in Representation, Callaloo, Vol. 18, No. 2. (Spring, 1995), 395-400.: Guerrero on O.J. Source: The Black Man on Our Screens and the Empty Space in Representation, Callaloo, Vol. 18, No. 2. (Spring, 1995), 395-400. Ed Guerrero has commented that “when we see black men in our media, their representations generally fall into two reductive, disparate categories. On the one hand, we are treated to the grand celebrity spectacle of black male athletes, movie stars and pop entertainers doing what all celebrities are promoted as doing best, that, conspicuously enjoying the wealth and privilege that fuel the ordinary citizen’s material fantasies.” While such images represent black males at the “pole of celebrity,” a second form of image constructs black males at the “pole of pathology.” These images represent the violence, the destruction and the slaughter of a stream of black faces. Representations of O.J. Simpson straddled both worlds, but also brought these two realms together. O.J. as Star: O.J. as Star He was a superstar, the winner of the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award, and the Walter Camp Award in 1968 when he played for the University of Southern California. He was named NFL Player of the year in 1972 and 1973 and was inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. Following his retirement from the sport, he landed endorsement deals, including one with Hertz, he had an acting career and also worked as a commentator for Monday Night Football and The NFL on NBC. O.J. as Pathology: O.J. as Pathology On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside Brown’s condominium just before midnight and Simpson was accused of the double murder. What followed was a media circus that telecast the low-speed pursuit of Simpson in a white Ford Bronco along I-405, his subsequent arrest and the most publicized criminal trial in US judicial history. In the coverage of the trail, O.J. was both the celebrity and the suspected criminal. Ed Guerrero argues that the O.J. case, irrespective of its outcome, exemplifies the two poles of representation that are often used for black males: “The color conscious manipulation of O.J.’s spectacular fall from one polarity (celebrity) to the other (pathology) is best expressed by the symbolically darkened mug shot on the cover of Time. Resorting to political blackface, the magazine moves to expel O.J. from the lighter, celebrity realm of affluent Brentwood, returning him to the darker, underworld of black crime and the L.A. County Jail.” O.J. Today: O.J. Today Most recent controversy surrounding O.J. has focused on a book titled If I Did It. Fox News was set to telecast a two-part interview of Simpson with the publisher of the book, Judith Regan. Following criticism, Fox announced that it had cancelled the book and the interview and Regan was fired soon after.