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List of unarmed African Americans killed by law enforcement officers in the United States - Wikipedia

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In Memoriam

The universe shrank
when you went away.
Every time I thought your name,
stars fell upon me.
- Henry Dumas (poet, social activist, teacher)

Updated June 9, 2021

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Note

This memorial is in honor of those unarmed black and brown people killed by the police, sheriff deputies, and security guards. The list is organized by most recent incident of police brutality (David McAtee and George Perry Floyd) and then moves back in time. I have listed each person by their name; birth and death dates; the location of their death; the means of death, date of death, and name of the police department.

I culled the names from a variety of online sources including Black Lives Matter's protests; Wikipedia; Black Past; Dangerous Objects, a website run by Mercy Garriga, that investigates cases of excessive use of force and death by the police force; and Professors Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson's essay "Armed and Dangerous? An Examination of Fatal Shootings of Unarmed Black People by Police." I have included women from the #SaveHerName project because we often ignore the injustices and violence that black women experience from the police: police brutality is real for women as it is for men.

At the age of twenty-four, a friend introduced me to the radical and astonishingly beautiful poetry and writing of Henry Dumas. His poetry serves as the epitaph for this memorial; Dumas is the last entry on this list, shot by New York City Transit Police on May 23, 1968.

- Renée Ater, May 29, 2020

** Many thanks to Cecilia Wichmann and Mary Savig for their fact checking of this list, including adding birth dates from the Social Security Death Index and links to additional news stories.

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Sources

Fatal Force, Washington Post
2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/
2018: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police-shootings-2018/
2017: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/
2016: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/
2015: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/

"What We've Learned About Police Shootings 5 Years After Ferguson," Washington Post, August 9, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/09/what-weve-learned-about-police-shootings-years-after-ferguson/?arc404=true

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list of unarmed black people killed by police - On Monuments - Renée Ater

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The universe shrank when you went away.Every time I thought your name,stars fell upon me. - Henry Dumas (poet, social activist, teacher) Updated June 9, 2021 ************************************************* This memorial is in honor of those unarmed black and brown people killed by the police, sheriff deputies, and security guards.

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Protests against racism and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have re-ignited demands in many places around the world to destroy or revise symbols of those who engaged in slavery, who were often honoured in their lifetimes and whose names and faces often remain in the public eye as statues, buildings or institutions.

In the U.S.A., statues of explorer Christopher Columbus and Confederate generals, who fought against the abolition of slavery in the Civil War, have been attacked and criticised.

On 7 June, people in Bristol, England, protesting about George Floyd's death, physically removed a statue of former slave trader Edward Colston, one of many slave traders who made their fortunes in one of the busiest slave ports in the world.

Colston was honoured with a statue not because of his slave trading but his philanthropy: he left his considerable fortune to city charities, but the fortune was of course made literally on the backs of slaves.

Cecil Rhodes is another controversial figure whose name has lived on through his philanthropic legacies. Rhodes was British imperialist who supported the annexation of South African land rich in mineral resources, and founded the De Beers diamond company. He left his fortune in scholarships that bear his name and that have allowed thousands of overseas students to obtain an education and at Oxford, his alma mater. (One of them former U. S. President Bill Clinton.)

There have been calls for the removal of Rhodes' statue from Oxford for years, and one in South Africa has been removed. But one perhaps surprising opponent of writing Rhodes out of our cultural memory was Nelson Mandela. He instead chose to work with Rhodes' foundation, creating the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, which awards scholarships to young people considered to have potential to be future African leaders to study in South Africa. Since 2003, more than 800 students have benefited from the scholarships. Mandela explained that he considered the joint foundation a suitable way to return some of Mr Rhodes' wealth to South Africa and Africa in a symbolic act of reconciliation and reparation in tune with South Africa's new constitution.

If Nelson Mandela were alive today, he would no doubt argue that it is better to have the positive outcome of the scholarships rather than a symbolic but empty gesture of effacing a statue or name. Protesters in Bristol, meanwhile, propose not just removing the statue of Ernest Colson but replacing it with one of someone who hasn't previously been honoured: civil-rights campaigner Dr Paul Stephenson, who led a bus boycott in Bristol in the 1960s, which resulted in a ban on ethnic minorities working on city buses being overturned on the day Dr Stephenson's hero, Dr Martin Luther King, gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Gone with the Wind?
It's not only physical manifestations of slavery and racism that are under attack. Just as a new translation of the 1936 novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was published in France, HBO announced it was temporarily removing the film version from its streaming platform. The company stated, "These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible."

The 1939 film won 10 Oscars and is the highest grossing movie ever. But, like the book, the African American characters are passive and seem happy to continue serving the same owners after the end of slavery. Its image of the pre-Civil War South is rose-tinted to say the least. Yet, it was also the first time that an African American won an Oscar: Hattie McDaniel for the role of Mammy. For a role that many would consider demeaning, but it was a form of opening. The Academy didn't, however push innovation as far as allowing Ms McDaniel to sit with the rest of cast for the Awards ceremony, which remained segregated for another 20 years.

This article would work well with Shine Bright 2e File 19: "Breaking the Chains", about how American society remembers slavery.

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Protests against racism and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have re-ignited demands in many places around the world to destroy or revise symbols of those who engaged in slavery, who were often honoured in their lifetimes and whose names and faces often remain in the public eye as statues, buildings or institutions.

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Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African American child to attend formerly whites-only William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960. She is the subject of a 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With, by Norman Rockwell.

Bridges was the eldest of five children born to Abon and Lucille Bridges. As a child, she spent much time taking care of her younger siblings, though she also enjoyed playing jump rope and softball and climbing trees. When she was four years old, the family relocated from Tylertown, Mississippi, where Bridges was born, to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1960, when she was six years old, her parents responded to a request from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and volunteered her to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system, even though her father was hesitant.

Background

Bridges was born during the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. Brown v. Board of Education was decided three months and twenty-two days before Bridges' birth. The court ruling declared that the establishment of separate public schools for white children, which black children were barred from attending, was unconstitutional; accordingly, black students were permitted to attend such schools. Though the Brown v. Board of Education decision was finalized in 1954, southern states were extremely resistant to the decision that they must integrate within six years. Many white people did not want schools to be integrated and, though it was a federal ruling, state governments were not doing their part in enforcing the new laws. In 1957, federal troops were ordered to Little Rock, Arkansas, to escort the Little Rock Nine students in combating violence that occurred as a result of the decision. Under significant pressure from the federal government, the Orleans Parish School Board administered an entrance exam to students at Bridges' school with the intention of keeping black children out of white schools.

Integration

Bridges attended a segregated kindergarten in 1959. In early 1960, Bridges was one of six black children in New Orleans to pass the test that determined whether they could go to the all-white William Frantz Elementary School. Two of the six decided to stay at their old school, Bridges went to Frantz by herself, and three children (Gail Etienne, Leona Tate and Tessie Prevost) were transferred to the all white McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School. All four 6-year-old girls were escorted to school by federal marshals during the first day they attended the two schools. In the following days of that year, federal marshals continued to escort them.

William Frantz Elementary School building in 2010

Bridges' father was initially reluctant, but her mother felt strongly that the move was needed not only to give her own daughter a better education, but to "take this step forward ... for all African-American children". Her mother finally convinced her father to let her go to the school.

Judge J. Skelly Wright's court order for the first day of integrated schools in New Orleans on Monday, November 14, 1960, was commemorated by Norman Rockwell in the painting, The Problem We All Live With (published in Look magazine on January 14, 1964). As Bridges describes it, "Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras." Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very very proud of her."

U.S. Marshals escorted Bridges to and from school.

As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers except for one refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only one person agreed to teach Bridges, and that was Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, and for over a year Henry taught her alone, "as if she were teaching a whole class."[attribution needed ]

That first day, Bridges and her mother spent the entire day in the principal's office; the chaos of the school prevented their moving to the classroom until the second day. On the second day, however, a white student broke the boycott and entered the school when a 34-year-old Methodist minister, Lloyd Anderson Foreman, walked his five-year-old daughter Pam through the angry mob, saying, "I simply want the privilege of taking my child to school..." A few days later, other white parents began bringing their children, and the protests began to subside. Yet Bridges remained the only child in her class, as she would until the following year. Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her, while another held up a black baby doll in a coffin. This led the U.S. Marshals dispatched to oversee her safety to only allow Bridges to eat the food that she brought from home, and she was not allowed to participate in recess.

Child psychiatrist Robert Coles volunteered to provide counseling to Bridges during her first year at Frantz. He met with her weekly in the Bridges home, later writing a children's book, The Story of Ruby Bridges, to acquaint other children with Bridges' story. Coles donated the royalties from the sale of that book to the Ruby Bridges Foundation, to provide money for school supplies or other educational needs for impoverished New Orleans school children.

The Bridges family suffered for their decision to send her to William Frantz Elementary: her father lost his job as a gas station attendant; the grocery store the family shopped at would no longer let them shop there; her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were turned off their land; and Abon and Lucille Bridges separated. Bridges has noted that many others in the community, both black and white, showed support in a variety of ways. Some white families continued to send their children to Frantz despite the protests, a neighbor provided her father with a new job, and local people babysat, watched the house as protectors, and walked behind the federal marshals' car on the trips to school. It was not until Bridges was an adult that she learned that the immaculate clothing she wore to school in those first weeks at Frantz was sent to her family by a relative of Coles. Bridges says her family could never have afforded the dresses, socks, and shoes that are documented in photographs of her escort by U.S. Marshals to and from the school.

Bridges speaking at Texas A&M University-Commerce in February 2015

As of 2004, Bridges, now Ruby Bridges Hall, still lived in New Orleans with her husband, Malcolm Hall, and their four sons.[better source needed ] After graduating from a desegregated high school, she worked as a travel agent for 15 years and later became a full-time parent. She is now chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which she formed in 1999 to promote "the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences". Describing the mission of the group, she says, "racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it."

Bridges is the subject of the Lori McKenna song "Ruby's Shoes". Her childhood struggle at William Frantz Elementary School was portrayed in the 1998 made-for-TV movie Ruby Bridges. The young Bridges was portrayed by actress Chaz Monet, and the movie also featured Lela Rochon as Bridges' mother, Lucille "Lucy" Bridges; Michael Beach as Bridges' father, Abon Bridges; Penelope Ann Miller as Bridges' teacher, Mrs. Henry; and Kevin Pollak as Dr. Robert Coles.

Like hundreds of thousands of others in the greater New Orleans area, Bridges lost her home (in Eastern New Orleans) to catastrophic flooding from the failure of the levee system during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.[citation needed ] Hurricane Katrina also greatly damaged William Frantz Elementary School, and Bridges played a significant role in fighting for the school to remain open.

In November 2007, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis unveiled a new permanent exhibit documenting her life, along with the lives of Anne Frank and Ryan White. The exhibit, called "The Power of Children: Making a Difference", cost $6 million to install and includes an authentic re-creation of Bridges' first grade classroom.

In 2010, Bridges had a 50th-year reunion at William Frantz Elementary with Pam Foreman Testroet, who had been, at the age of five, the first white child to break the boycott that ensued from Bridges' attendance at that school.

Bridges and President Barack Obama view the painting by Rockwell in the White House. (video)

On July 15, 2011, Bridges met with President Barack Obama at the White House, and while viewing the Norman Rockwell painting of her on display he told her, "I think it's fair to say that if it hadn't been for you guys, I might not be here and we wouldn't be looking at this together". The Rockwell painting was displayed in the West Wing of the White House, just outside the Oval Office, from June through October 2011.

Awards and honors

In September 1995, Bridges and Robert Coles were awarded honorary degrees from Connecticut College and appeared together in public for the first time to accept the awards.

Bridges' Through My Eyes won the Carter G. Woodson Book Award in 2000.

On August 10, 2000, the 40 year anniversary of her walk into William Frantz Elementary School, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder made Ruby Bridges an Honorary Deputy U.S. Marshal.

On January 8, 2001, Bridges was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton.

In November 2006, Bridges was honored as a "Hero Against Racism" at the 12th annual Anti-Defamation League "Concert Against Hate" with the National Symphony Orchestra, held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

On May 19, 2012, Bridges received an honorary degree from Tulane University at the annual graduation ceremony at the Superdome.

On November 9, 2023, Bridges was awarded the Robert Coles Call of Service Award by the Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard University, and gave the corresponding lecture at Memorial Church.

Two elementary schools are named after Bridges: one in Alameda, California, and another in Woodinville, Washington. A statue of Bridges stands in the courtyard of William Frantz Elementary School. When asked what she hopes children will feel when seeing the statue, she responded:

I think kids will look at it and think to themselves, 'I can do something great too.' Kids can do anything, and I want them to be able to see themselves in the statue. Hopefully that will remind [them that they] can change the world.

Published works

References

1. ^ Anderson, James; Byrne, Dara N. (2004). The Unfinished Agenda of Brown v. Board of Education. Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley & Sons. p. 169. ISBN 9780471649267. OCLC 53038681.

2. ^ "60 years ago today, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walked to school and showed how even first graders can be trailblazers".

3. ^ Bridges Hall, Ruby (March 2000). "The Education of Ruby Nell". as published in Guideposts. Archived from the original on May 11, 2012.

4. Ruby Bridges Hall. "The Education of Ruby Nell," ^ Guideposts, March 2000, pp. 3-4.

5. ^ Charlayne Hunter-Gault. "A Class of One: A Conversation with Ruby Bridges Hall," Online NewsHour, February 18, 1997

6. Ellen Blue, ^ St. Mark's and the Social Gospel: Methodist Women and Civil Rights in New Orleans, 1895-1965, pp. 161-162 (University of Tennessee Press, 2011).

7. ^ Excerpts from Through My Eyes, at African American World for Kids Archived May 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine

8. ^ Pollack, Susan R. (October 31, 2007). "The 'Power of Children' opens in Indianapolis". The Detroit News. Detroit, MI. p. Features section, 3E.

9. ^ "Ruby Bridges: Honorary Deputy". United States Marshals Service (usmashals.gov). August 9, 2000.

10. ^ "Deputy Attorney General Holder to Honor Civil Rights Pioneer Ruby Bridges at Ceremony at Corcoran Gallery of Art". United States Department of Justice (justice.gov).

11. ^ "President Clinton Awards the Presidential Citizens Medals". Washington, D.C: The White House (whitehouse.gov), archived by the National Archives and Records Administration (nara.gov). January 8, 2001. Archived from the original on August 1, 2012.

12. ^ "ADL Heroes Against Hate to Be Honored at Kennedy Center". U.S. Newswire. November 14, 2006.

13. ^ Hegarty, Peter (October 31, 2006). "Civil rights icon attends dedication: Ruby Bridges, namesake of new Alameda elementary school, broke racial barrier as a 6-year-old in 1960". Alameda Journal. Alameda, CA. p. News section, A1.

Further reading

Bridges Hall, Ruby. Through My Eyes, Scholastic Press, 1999. (ISBN 0590189239)

Coles, Robert. The Story of Ruby Bridges, Scholastic Press, 1995. (ISBN 0590572814)

Devlin, Rachel. A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools, Basic Books, 2018 (ISBN 9781541697331)

Steinbeck, John. Travels with Charley in Search of America, Viking Adult, 1962. (ISBN 0670725080)

External links

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Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African American child to attend formerly whites-only William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960.

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Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback for the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers from 2011 to 2016, became known for protesting injustice by refusing to stand for the national anthem.

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The Deep South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and chattel slavery during the early period of United States history. The region suffered economic hardship after the American Civil War and was a major site of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era. The Civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South. Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the Cotton States, since cotton was the primary cash crop for economic production.

The term "Deep South" is defined in a variety of ways:

Most definitions include the following states: Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Texas and Florida are sometimes included, due to being peripheral states, having coastlines with the Gulf of Mexico, their history of slavery, large African American populations, and being part of the historical Confederate States of America. The eastern part of Texas is the westernmost extension of the Deep South, while North Florida is also part of the Deep South region, typically the area north of Ocala.

Arkansas is sometimes included or considered to be "in the peripheral" or Rim South rather than the Deep South."

The seven states that seceded from the United States before the firing on Fort Sumter and the start of the American Civil War, which originally formed the Confederate States of America. In order of secession, they are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The first six states to secede were those that held the largest number of slaves percentage wise. Ultimately, the Confederacy included eleven states.

A large part of the original "Cotton Belt" is sometimes included in Deep South terminology. This was considered to extend from eastern North Carolina to Georgia, through the Gulf States as far west as East Texas, including West Tennessee, eastern Arkansas, and up the Mississippi embayment. Some of this is coterminous with the Black Belt, a term used for much of the Cotton Belt, which had a high percentage of African-American slave labor.

Although often used in history books to refer to the seven states that originally formed the Confederacy, the term "Deep South" did not come into general usage until long after the Civil War ended. For at least the remainder of the 19th century, "Lower South" was the primary designation for those states. When "Deep South" first began to gain mainstream currency in print in the middle of the 20th century, it applied to the states and areas of South Carolina, Georgia, southern Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, northern Louisiana, western Tennessee, southern Arkansas, and eastern Texas, all historical areas of cotton plantations and slavery. This was the part of the South many considered the "most Southern."

Later, the general definition expanded to include all of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as often taking in bordering areas of East Texas and North Florida. In its broadest application, the Deep South is considered to be "an area roughly coextensive with the old cotton belt, from eastern North Carolina through South Carolina, west into East Texas, with extensions north and south along the Mississippi."

After the Civil War, the region was economically poor. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, a small fraction of the white population composed of wealthy landowners, merchants and bankers controlled the economy, and largely, the politics. Most white farmers were poor and had to do manual work on their farms to survive. As prices fell, farmers work became harder and longer because of a change from largely self-sufficient farms, based on corn and pigs, to the growing of a cash crop of cotton or tobacco. Cotton cultivation took twice as many hours of work as raising corn. The farmers lost their freedom to determine what crops they would grow, ran into increasing indebtedness, and many were forced into tenancy or into working for someone else. Some out-migration occurred, especially to Texas, but overtime, the population continued to grow and the farms were subdivided smaller and smaller. Growing discontent helped give rise to the Populist movement in the early 1890s. It represented a sort of class warfare, in which the poor farmers sought to gain more of an economic and political voice.

After 1950, the region became a major epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement, including: the emergence of a young (25 year old) new pastor of a local church, Martin Luther King Jr., the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1956 Sugar Bowl Riots, the 1960 founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the 1964 Freedom Summer.

The Deep South has three major Metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) located solely within its boundaries, with populations exceeding 1,000,000 residents. Atlanta, the 9th largest metro area in the United States, is the Deep South's largest population center.

Metropolitan areas

Largest Deep South metropolitan areas include:

Rankings are assorted by metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) population. Combined statistical areas (CSAs) populations are shown as well.

In the 1980 census, of people who identified solely by one European national ancestry, most European Americans identified as being of English ancestry in every Southern state except Louisiana, where more people identified as having French ancestry. A significant number also have Irish and Scotch-Irish ancestry.

With regards to people in the Deep South who reported only a single European-American ancestry group, the 1980 census showed the following self-identification in each state in this region:

Alabama - 857,864 persons out of a total of 2,165,653 people in the state identified as "English," making them 41% of the state and the largest national ancestry group at the time by a wide margin.

Georgia - 1,132,184 out of 3,009,486 people identified as "English," making them 37.62% of the state's total.

Mississippi - 496,481 people out of 1,551,364 people identified as "English," making them 32.00% of the total, the largest national group by a wide margin.

Florida - 1,132,033 people out of 5,159,967 identified "English" as their only ancestry group, making them 21.94% of the total.

Louisiana - 440,558 people out of 2,319,259 people identified only as "English," making them 19.00% of the total people and the second-largest ancestry group in the state at the time. Those who wrote only "French" were 480,711 people out of 2,319,259 people, or 20.73% of the total state population.

South Carolina - 578,338 people out of 1,706,966 identified as "English," making them 33.88% of the total at the time.

Texas - 1,639,322 people identified as "English" only out of a total of 7,859,393 people, making them 20.86% of the total people in the state and the largest ancestry group by a large margin.

These figures do not take into account people who identified as "English" and another ancestry group. When the two were added together, people who self-identified as being English with other ancestry, made up an even larger portion of southerners. South Carolina was settled earlier than other states commonly classified as the Deep South. Its population in 1980 included 578,338 people out of 1,706,966 people, who identified as "English" only, making them 33.88% of the total population, the largest national ancestry group by a wide margin.

The map to the right was prepared by the Census Bureau from the 2000 census; it shows the predominant ancestry in each county as self-identified by residents themselves. Note: The Census said that areas with the largest "American"-identified ancestry populations, were mostly settled by descendants of English and others from the British Isles, French, Germans and later Italians. Those with African ancestry tended to identify as African American, although most African Americans also have some British or Northern European ancestors as well.

As of 2003, the majority of African-descended Americans in the South live in the Black Belt geographic area.

Hispanic and Latino Americans largely started arriving in the Deep South during the 1990s, and their numbers have grown rapidly. Politically they have not been very active; most are not yet citizens.

Political expert Kevin Phillips states that, "From the end of Reconstruction until 1948, the Deep South Black Belts, where only whites could vote, were the nation's leading Democratic Party bastions."

From the late 1870s to the mid-1960s, conservative whites of the Deep South held control of state governments and overwhelmingly identified and supported the Democratic Party. The most powerful leaders belonged to the party's moderate-to-conservative wing. The Republican Party would only control mainly mountain districts in Southern Appalachia, on the fringe of the Deep South, during the " Solid South" period.

At the turn of the 20th century, all Southern states, starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed new constitutions and other laws that effectively disenfranchised the great majority of blacks and sometimes many poor whites as well. Blacks were excluded subsequently from the political system entirely. The white Democratic-dominated state legislatures passed Jim Crow laws to impose white supremacy, including caste segregation of public facilities. In politics, the region became known for decades as the "Solid South." While this disenfranchisement was enforced, all of the states in this region were mainly one-party states dominated by white Southern Democrats. Southern representatives accrued outsized power in the Congress and the national Democratic Party, as they controlled all the seats apportioned to southern states based on total population, but only represented the richer subset of their white populations.

Major demographic changes would ensue in the 20th century. During the two waves of the Great Migration (1916-1970), a total of six million African Americans left the South for the Northeast, Midwest, and West, to escape the oppression and violence in the South. Beginning with the Goldwater-Johnson election of 1964, a significant contingent of white conservative voters in the Deep South stopped supporting national Democratic Party candidates and switched to the Republican Party. They still would vote for many Democrats at the state and local level into the 1990s. Studies of the Civil Rights Movement often highlight the region.[citation needed ] Political scientist Seth McKee concluded that in the 1964 presidential election, "Once again, the high level of support for Goldwater in the Deep South, and especially their Black Belt counties, spoke to the enduring significance of white resistance to black progress."

White southern voters consistently voted for the Democratic Party for many years to hold onto Jim Crow Laws. Once Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power in 1932, the limited southern electorate found itself supporting Democratic candidates who frequently did not share its views. Journalist Matthew Yglesias argues:

The weird thing about Jim Crow politics is that white southerners with conservative views on taxes, moral values, and national security would vote for Democratic presidential candidates who didn't share their views. They did that as part of a strategy for maintaining white supremacy in the South.

Kevin Phillips states that, "Beginning in 1948, however, the white voters of the Black Belts shifted partisan gears and sought to lead the Deep South out of the Democratic Party. Upcountry, pineywoods and bayou voters felt less hostility towards the New Deal and Fair Deal economic and caste policies which agitated the Black Belts, and for another decade, they kept The Deep South in the Democratic presidential column.

Phillips emphasizes the three-way 1968 presidential election:

Wallace won very high support from Black Belt whites and no support at all from Black Belt Negroes. In the Black Belt counties of the Deep South, racial polarization was practically complete. Negroes voted for Hubert Humphrey, whites for George Wallace. GOP nominee Nixon garnered very little backing and counties where Barry Goldwater had captured 90 percent to 100 percent of the vote in 1964.

The Republican Party in the South had been crippled by the disenfranchisement of blacks, and the national party was unable to relieve their past with the South where Reconstruction was negatively viewed. During the Great Depression and the administration of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, some New Deal measures were promoted as intending to aid African Americans across the country and in the poor rural South, as well as poor whites. In the post- World War II era, Democratic Party presidents and national politicians began to support desegregation and other elements of the Civil Rights Movement, from President Harry S. Truman's desegregating the military, to John F. Kennedy's support for non-violent protests. These efforts culminated in Lyndon B. Johnson's important work in gaining Congressional approval for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then, upwards of 90 percent of African Americans in the South have voted for the Democratic Party, including 93 percent for Obama in 2012 and 88 percent for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Late 20th century to present

Historian Thomas Sugrue attributes the political and cultural changes, along with the easing of racial tensions, as the reason why southern voters began to vote for Republican national candidates, in line with their political ideology. Since then, white Deep South voters have tended to vote for Republican candidates in most presidential elections. Times the Democratic Party has won in the Deep South since the late 20th century include: the 1976 election when Georgia native Jimmy Carter received the Democratic nomination, the 1980 election when Carter won Georgia, the 1992 election when Arkansas native and former governor Bill Clinton won Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, the 1996 election when the incumbent president Clinton again won Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas, and when Georgia was won by Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election.

In 1995, Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich was elected by representatives of a Republican-dominated House as Speaker of the House.

Since the 1990s the white majority has continued to shift toward Republican candidates at the state and local levels. This trend culminated in 2014 when the Republicans swept every statewide office in the Deep South region midterm elections. As a result, the Republican party came to control all the state legislatures in the region, as well as all House seats that were not representing majority-minority districts.

Presidential elections in which the Deep South diverged noticeably from the Upper South, occurred in 1928, 1948, 1964, 1968, and, to a lesser extent, in 1952, 1956, 1992, and 2008. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee fared well in the Deep South in 2008 Republican primaries, losing only one state (South Carolina) while running (he had dropped out of the race before the Mississippi primary).

In the 2020 Presidential Election, the state of Georgia was considered a toss-up state hinting at a possible Democratic shift in the area. It ultimately would vote Democrat, in favor of Joe Biden.

From colonial times to the early-twentieth century, much of the Lower South had a black majority. Three Southern states had populations that were majority- black: Louisiana (from 1810 until about 1890), South Carolina (until the 1920s), and Mississippi (from the 1830s to the 1930s). In the same period, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida had populations that were nearly 50% black, while Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia had black populations approaching or exceeding 40%. Texas' black population reached 30%.

The demographics of these states changed markedly from the 1890s through the 1950s, as two waves of the Great Migration led more than 6,500,000 African-Americans to abandon the economically depressed, segregated Deep South in search of better employment opportunities and living conditions, first in Northern and Midwestern industrial cities, and later west to California. One-fifth of Florida's black population had left the state by 1940, for instance. During the last thirty years of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, scholars have documented a reverse New Great Migration of black people back to southern states, but typically to destinations in the New South, which have the best jobs and developing economies.

The District of Columbia, one of the magnets for black people during the Great Migration, was long the sole majority-minority federal jurisdiction in the continental U.S. The black proportion has declined since the 1990s due to gentrification and expanding opportunities, with many black people moving to southern states such as Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Maryland and others migrating to jobs in states of the New South in a reverse of the Great Migration.

U.S. Route 90 runs from Texas to Jacksonville, Florida. U.S. Route 11 runs through the Deep South to New York.

Black, Merle, and Earl Black. "Deep South politics: the enduring racial division in national elections". doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195381948.013.0018.

Brown, D. Clayton. King Cotton: A Cultural, Political, and Economic History since 1945 (University Press of Mississippi, 2011) 440 pp. ISBN 978-1-60473-798-1

Davis, Allison. Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (1941) classic case study from the late 1930s

Dollard, John. Caste and Class in a Southern Town (1941), a classic case study

Fite, Gilbert C. Cotton fields no more: Southern agriculture, 1865-1980 (UP of Kentucky, 2015).

Gulley, Harold E. "Women and the lost cause: Preserving a Confederate identity in the American Deep South." Journal of historical geography 19.2 (1993): 125-141.

Harris, J. William. Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont, and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation (2003)

Hughes, Dudley J. Oil in the Deep South: A History of the Oil Business in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, 1859-1945 (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1993).

Key, V.O. Southern Politics in State and Nation (1951) classic political analysis, state by state. online free to borrow

Kirby, Jack Temple. Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (LSU Press, 1986) major scholarly survey with detailed bibliography; online free to borrow.

Lang, Clarence. "Locating the civil rights movement: An essay on the Deep South, Midwest, and border South in Black Freedom Studies." Journal of Social History 47.2 (2013): 371-400. Online

Pierce, Neal R. The Deep South States of America: People, Politics, and Power in the Seven States of the Deep South (1974) in-depth study of politics and issues, state by state

Rogers, William Warren, et al. Alabama: The history of a deep south state (University of Alabama Press, 2018).

Roller, David C. and Robert W. Twyman, eds. The Encyclopedia of Southern History (Louisiana State University Press, 1979)

Rothman, Adam. Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (2007)

Thornton, J. Mills. Politics and power in a slave society: Alabama, 1800-1860 (1978) online free to borrow

Vance, Rupert B. Regionalism and the South (UNC Press Books, 1982).

Primary sources

Carson, Clayborne et al. eds. The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle (Penguin, 1991), 784pp.

Johnson, Charles S. Statistical atlas of southern counties: listing and analysis of socio-economic indices of 1104 southern counties (1941). excerpt

Raines, Howell, ed. My soul is rested: Movement days in the deep south remembered (Penguin, 1983).

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The Deep South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and chattel slavery during the early period of United States history. The region suffered economic hardship after the American Civil War and was a major site of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era.

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1968 Summer Olympics, Black Power Salute

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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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Rosa Parks! Watch this educational video for children with a Rosa Parks Biography

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The history of slavery and racism

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America has a long history of systemic racism: From the dehumanization of black people to justify slavery to the policies of segregation and mass incarceration that followed emancipation, the country has always made it difficult for many minorities to rise out of their literal and figurative shackles.

The video above, from the advocacy group Equal Justice Initiative, paints that history. It goes from the moment slaves were first brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 to the thriving 19th-century slave trade of Montgomery, Alabama, to the Jim Crow policies of the 1870s through 1960s that segregated black Americans and kept them from voting - at times through pure terrorism. The video then goes into the subtler policies of today, which have racially disparate effects despite appearing race-neutral - including racial disparities in police use of force, the higher rates of incarceration among African Americans, and longer prison sentences black people tend to get when they're convicted.

The walk through history shows how black people have been consistently pushed down by US policy. The shackles of slavery deprived black Americans of any freedom, and then segregation ensured wealthier neighborhoods and better job prospects remained out of reach once they were free. When Jim Crow policies finally began collapsing under the civil rights movement, black communities were left mired in socioeconomic stagnation after decades of oppression - which led many to turn to crime as their only outlet for making ends meet. So as the war on drugs and tough-on-crime policies kicked in, black neighborhoods were more likely to be consumed by crime - and residents have faced the brunt of mass incarceration as a result.

It's this chain of history that groups like the Equal Justice Initiative point to when they say segregation and mass incarceration are an evolution of slavery. It's not that the three policies are equally abhorrent and have the exact same effects, but rather that they have all helped perpetuate the systemic oppression of African Americans through US history.

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Next time someone questions America's history of racism, show them this video

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America has a long history of systemic racism: From the dehumanization of black people to justify slavery to the policies of segregation and mass incarceration that followed emancipation, the country has always made it difficult for many minorities to rise out of their literal and figurative shackles.

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The problem we all live with ( Rockwell - painting) 

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The problem we all live with ( Rockwell - painting) 

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Media Contact:
Robin McElhatton, 408-924-1749, robin.mcelhatton@sjsu.edu

SAN JOSE, CA - San Jose State University alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos have been named this year's recipients of the university's highest honor, the Tower Award. Smith and Carlos will receive the award at San Jose State's annual Inspiration to Innovation gala, a fundraiser to be held October 18 at the Event Center at SJSU.

"San Jose State University alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos felt the fate of the nation resting on their shoulders when they made their unforgettable statement in support of human rights and dignity," President Mary A. Papazian said. "As SJSU marks the 50th anniversary of their courageous act, we seek to recognize these alumni for risking everything to bring worldwide attention to the defining issue of their time, one that still resonates today."

Smith and Carlos were SJSU track and field team members when they qualified to compete in the 1968 Olympics, held in Mexico City. After earning gold and bronze medals, respectively, they chose to bow their heads and raise gloved fists on the medal stand while the national anthem was played. In doing so, they created their iconic moment in athlete activism during one of the most tumultuous times in modern U.S. history.
From athletes to activists
"The Tower Award is given to San Jose State University exemplars whose personal stories embody the grit and determination that make us Spartans," said Paul Lanning, vice president for University Advancement and CEO of the Tower Foundation. "Without saying one word, alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos sent a message that reverberated from 1968 through today, and for this they will receive the 2018 Tower Award at SJSU's annual Inspiration to Innovation gala."

For what the International Olympic Committee reportedly described as an "outrageous stance," Smith and Carlos were evicted from the Olympic Village in Mexico City and sent back to the United States. Nearly 40 years later, SJSU student Erik Grotz, who was surprised to learn that Smith and Carlos were alumni, suggested that the campus memorialize their peaceful protest. In 2005, the Associated Students of SJSU unveiled, in the heart of campus, a 23-foot-tall landmark sculpture of the two athletes.

Today, visitors from around the world act on the sculpture's signature invitation to take a stand by posing in the silver medal position where Australian Olympian Peter Norman stood in 1968, an arrangement discussed with and approved by Norman before his death in 2006.
San Jose's Speed City era
Between 1941 and 1970, 91 Spartans were ranked in the top 10 worldwide by Track and Field News, 27 were Olympians, and men's track and field won the NCAA team title in 1969. Smith and Carlos were SJSU track and field team members during this time, when San Jose was known as Speed City, with the legendary Lloyd "Bud" Winter as head coach.

Raised in Texas and California, Tommie Smith, '69 Social Science, '05 Honorary Doctorate, coached track and field at Oberlin College, where he also taught sociology, and later at Santa Monica College. He is the author of Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith.

A native of New York, John Carlos, '05 Honorary Doctorate, pursued professional football and later worked for the United States Olympic Committee. He is the author, with Dave Zirin, of The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World, this year's Campus Reading Program selection.
Continuing the dialogue
SJSU is the birthplace of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a movement led by SJSU alumnus and instructor Harry Edwards, who went on to become a world-renown sports sociologist. The project inspired Smith and Carlos' now-historic stand.

Edwards, Smith, Carlos and others founded the SJSU Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change in 2017. The institute seeks to continue the dialogue about athlete activism and the influence of sport in effecting positive social change.
About San Jose State University The founding campus of the 23-campus California State University system, San Jose State provides a comprehensive university education, granting bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in 250 areas of study - offered through its eight colleges. With more than 35,000 students and nearly 4,370 employees, San Jose State University continues to be an essential partner in the economic, cultural and social development of Silicon Valley and the state, annually contributing 10,000 graduates to the workforce. The university is immensely proud of the accomplishments of its more than 260,000 alumni, 60 percent of whom live and work in the Bay Area.

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Alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos to Receive the San Jose State University Tower Award

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Media Contact: Robin McElhatton, 408-924-1749, robin.mcelhatton@sjsu.edu SAN JOSE, CA - San Jose State University alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos have been named this year's recipients of the university's highest honor, the Tower Award. Smith and Carlos will receive the award at San Jose State's annual Inspiration to Innovation gala , a fundraiser to be held October 18 at the Event Center at SJSU.

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Hidden Figures | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX

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"Say Their Names," Kadir Nelson's cover for the June 22, 2020, issue of The New Yorker, reflects on the murder of George Floyd and the history of violence against black people in America.

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A video about MLK for kids (pour approfondir les droits civiques) 

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A video about MLK for kids (pour approfondir les droits civiques) 

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: Biography for Children, American History for Kids - FreeSchool

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Video Ruby Bridges visits President Obama 2011 

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Video Ruby Bridges visits President Obama 2011 

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Ruby Bridges visits with the President and her portrait