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American servicemen returned from the First World War only to find a new type of violent conflict waiting for them at home.

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The Bandung conference of 1955 was the result of political vision and meticulous planning. It marked the first ever summit-level meeting of independence leaders. It had an extremely important legacy, sparking organisations of developing countries like the NAM and the G77. By Adriano José Timossi
On April 18-24, 1955, leaders of Asian and African countries gathered in a historic meeting in Bandung, Indonesia. They included Premiers Chou En-Lai of China, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, U Nu of Burma, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt besides President Sukarno of Indonesia, and leaders from Liberia, Sudan, Gold Coast, Jordan, Iran, Ceylon, Nepal, Pakistan and Philippines. The meeting of these leaders was a key point in the history of developing countries that gave rise to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the concept of the Third World or the South. At the start of the Cold War between the West and the former Soviet Union, the leaders of the developing countries gathered in Bandung asked for an alternative way of just global governance and global justice, to achieve greater social and economic development for their people, and to continue the process of political and economic decolonization.
Sukarno's Opening Speech
In his opening speech at the first Asian-African Conference, President Sukarno of Indonesia recognized that the gathering of the leaders of the 29 Asian-African independent countries was a result of the sacrifices made by their forefathers and by the people of their own and younger generations. "The hall was filled not only by the leaders of the nations of Asia and Africa but also contained within its walls the undying, the indomitable, the invincible spirit of those who went before them", he said. Their struggle and sacrifice paved the way for this meeting of the highest representatives of independent and sovereign nations from two of the biggest continents of the globe. In a historic event, Asian and African peoples were meeting together to discuss and deliberate upon matters of common concern to them.

Sukarno stated that the burden of the delegates attending the Conference was not a light one. "For many generations our peoples have been the voiceless ones in the world. We have been the unregarded, the peoples for whom decisions were made by others whose interests were paramount, the peoples who lived in poverty and humiliation. Then our nations demanded, nay fought for independence, and achieved independence, and with that independence came responsibility. We have heavy responsibilities to ourselves, and to the world, and to the yet unborn generations. But we do not regret them".

Below are some extracts of his speech:

"We are often told 'Colonialism is dead'. Let us not be deceived or even soothed by that. I say to you, colonialism is not yet dead. How can we say it is dead, so long as vast areas of Asia and Africa are unfree. And, I beg of you do not think of colonialism only in the classic form which we of Indonesia, and our brothers in different parts of Asia and Africa, knew. Colonialism has also its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, actual physical control by a small but alien community within a nation. It is a skilful and determined enemy, and it appears in many guises. It does not give up its loot easily. Wherever, whenever and however it appears, colonialism is an evil thing, and one which must be eradicated from the earth.

"If this Conference succeeds in making the peoples of the East whose representatives are gathered here understand each other a little more, appreciate each other a little more, sympathise with each other's problems a little more - if those things happen, then this Conference, of course, will have been worthwhile, whatever else it may achieve. But I hope that this Conference will give more than understanding only and goodwill only - I hope that it will falsify and give the lie to the saying of one diplomat from far abroad: "We will turn this Asian-African Conference into an afternoon-tea meeting".

"I hope that it will give evidence of the fact that we Asian and African leaders understand that Asia and Africa can prosper only when they are united, and that even the safety of the World at large cannot be safeguarded without a united Asia-Africa. I hope that this Conference will give guidance to mankind, will point out to mankind the way which it must take to attain safety and peace. I hope that it will give evidence that Asia and Africa have been reborn, nay, that a New Asia and a New Africa have been born!

"Our task is first to seek an understanding of each other, and out of that understanding will come a greater appreciation of each other, and out of that appreciation will come collective action. Bear in mind the words of one of Asia's greatest sons: "To speak is easy. To act is hard. To understand is hardest. Once one understands, action is easy". Let us remember that the highest purpose of man is the liberation of man from his bonds of fear, his bonds of human degradation, his bonds of poverty - the liberation of man from the physical, spiritual and intellectual bonds which have for too long stunted the development of humanity's majority."

The other 28 leaders also spoke eloquently in calling for unity among Asian and African countries and for greater solidarity, self-determination, mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, and equality.
The Bandung Final Communiqué 1955
The Final Communiqué of the 1955 Bandung Asian-African Conference provided the basis for South-South cooperation with concrete proposals for promoting economic, political, technological, cultural spheres. It declared full support of the fundamental principles of human rights as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations and took note of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations in a moment in history when many South nations were still under Western colonial rule.

The communiqué deplored all forms of racial segregation and discrimination. In declaring support for the cause of freedom and independence for all peoples it also deplored colonialism, in all its manifestations.

The communiqué took note that several States had still not been admitted to the United Nations, and that for effective cooperation and world peace, membership in the United Nations should be universal. The leaders also considered that representation of Asian and African countries in the UN Security Council, in relation to the principle of equitable and geographical distribution, was inadequate, as it is today. The right to self-determination, stated the communiqué, should be enjoyed by all peoples.

The Ten Bandung Principles enunciated in 1955 continue to be as relevant today as it was 60 years ago and in the decades since. These are as follows:

"Free from mistrust and fear, and with confidence and goodwill towards each other, nations should practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours and develop friendly cooperation on the basis of the following principles:

"1. Respect for fundamental human rights and for the purposes and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

"2. Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations.

"3. Recognition of the equality of all races and of the equality of all nations large and small.

"4. Abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country.

"5. Respect for the right of each nation to defend itself singly or collectively, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.

"6. (a) Abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defense to serve the particular interests of any of the big powers,

(b) Abstention by any country from exerting pressures on other countries.

"7. Refraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any country.

"8. Settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration or judicial settlement as well as other peaceful means of the parties' own choice, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.

"9. Promotion of mutual interests and cooperation.

"10. Respect for justice and international obligation."

The 1955 Bandung communiqué concluded by expressing its conviction that friendly cooperation in accordance with the 10 Principles of Bandung would effectively contribute to the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security, while cooperation in the economic, social and cultural fields would help bring about the common prosperity and well-being of all.
What has the Bandung spirit achieved in 60 years?
In the six decades after the 1955 Bandung Conference that gave rise to the "Bandung Spirit" of South-South cooperation, decolonization has for the most part taken place, with most developing countries now independent. The basic principles of Bandung, namely, mutual interest, solidarity and respect for national sovereignty, continue to play important roles in shaping and guiding the relations of developing countries with each other. Developing countries have also joined the United Nations and actively developed different regional and multilateral South-South institutions to defend and promote their common interests in the various multilateral negotiating processes. The "Bandung Spirit" continues to animate and motivate the spirit of South-South cooperation, as can be seen in the fact that the recent 60 th anniversary commemoration of the 1955 Bandung Conference saw over 100 developing countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America participating.

More importantly, the 1955 Bandung Conference led to the establishment in 1961 of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). This was followed by the establishment of the Group of 77 (G77) in 1964. These two multilateral groupings of the South together enable developing countries to actively voice and articulate their views and perspectives on political and economic issues, respectively, in the United Nations and other international arenas and to promote the unity and solidarity among the developing countries of the South in their common struggle for a fairer world. Other multilateral Southern institutions such as the South Centre (and its precursor the South Commission) can also trace their intellectual and political lineage to the 1955 Bandung Conference and the South-South spirit that it engendered.

Several regional initiatives which have taken shape in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the past decades are also concrete reflections of the ideals of South-South cooperation and solidarity discussed in Bandung and adopted by leaders in the Final Communiqué. These include the African Union, the African continent's primary vehicle for greater continental integration. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) are two newly established initiatives that are contributing to open a new era of integration among the countries of the regions and their representation in global affairs with greater independence. It is also the case of Asia, with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) among many other initiatives. The emergence of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) grouping itself, as well as recent projects such as the BRICS Development Bank and the Bank of the South are important examples of the vision of South-South cooperation from Bandung. These and many other developments that have taken place, and which continue to take place, in the developing world are all examples that point to the continuing relevance of the intellectual and political legacy of the 1955 Bandung Conference.

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Revisiting the 1955 Bandung Asian-African Conference and its legacy

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The Bandung conference of 1955 was the result of political vision and meticulous planning. It marked the first ever summit-level meeting of independence leaders. It had an extremely important legacy, sparking organisations of developing countries like the NAM and the G77.

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The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Back to Main Declaration Page

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Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

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Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

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Summary

Part of the so-called congressional "Compromise of 1850," this second federal Fugitive Slave Act aggressively extended the provisions of the original 1793 Act. Law enforcement officials were required to arrest people suspected of escaping enslavement on as little as a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. The Commissioner before whom the fugitive from slavery was brought for a hearing was compensated $10 if he found that the individual was proven a fugitive, but only $5 if he determined the proof to be insufficient. In addition, any person aiding a fugitive by providing food or shelter was subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. The Act was broadly condemned in the North and prompted multiple instances of violent resistance. Although the Supreme Court upheld Congress's power to pass such laws in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, Northern states resisted enforcement of the law on their soil. Wisconsin, for example, invoked the compact theory of the Constitution and insisted it retained the right to "nullify" what they believed was an unconstitutional law.

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Document Excerpt

And be it further enacted, That when a person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the United States, has heretofore or shall hereafter escape into another State or Territory of the United States, the person or persons to whom such service or labor may be due . . . may pursue and reclaim such fugitive person, either by procuring a warrant from some one of the courts, judges, or commissioners aforesaid, of the proper circuit, district, or county, for the apprehension of such fugitive from service or labor, or by seizing and arresting such fugitive, where the same can be done without process, and by taking, or causing such person to be taken, forthwith before such court, judge, or commissioner, whose duty it shall be to hear and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner; and upon satisfactory proof being made, by deposition or affidavit, in writing, to be taken and certified by such court, judge, or commissioner . . .. In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence; and the certificates in this and the first [fourth] section mentioned, shall be conclusive of the right of the person or persons in whose favor granted, to remove such fugitive to the State or Territory from which he escaped, and shall prevent all molestation of such person or persons by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever.

And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder, or prevent such claimant, his agent or attorney, or any person or persons lawfully assisting him, her, or them, from arresting such a fugitive from service or labor, either with or without process as aforesaid, or shall rescue, or attempt to rescue, such fugitive from service or labor, from the custody of such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, or other person or persons lawfully assisting as aforesaid, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given and declared; or shall aid, abet, or assist such person so owing service or labor as aforesaid, directly or indirectly, to escape from such claimant, his agent or attorney, or other person or persons legally authorized as aforesaid; or shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after notice or knowledge of the fact that such person was a fugitive from service or labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of said offences, be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months . . . and shall moreover forfeit and pay, by way of civil damages to the party injured by such illegal conduct, the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost as aforesaid, to be recovered by action of debt, in any of the District or Territorial Courts aforesaid, within whose jurisdiction the said offence may have been committed.

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Summary Part of the so-called congressional "Compromise of 1850," this second federal Fugitive Slave Act aggressively extended the provisions of the original 1793 Act. Law enforcement officials were required to arrest people suspected of escaping enslavement on as little as a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership.

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Through the generous support of The Boeing Company, the Emancipation Proclamation will be on display annually at the National Archives through 2029. Stay tuned for more on upcoming dates and programming!

When President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, he said, "I never in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper. . . . If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it." The document proclaimed that slaves held in areas still in rebellion "are and henceforward shall be free." By the end of the war nearly 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.
Take our Emancipation Proclamation Quiz

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Juneteenth

On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln's historic Emancipation Proclamation, U.S. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3, which informed the people of Texas that all enslaved people were now free. Granger commanded the Headquarters District of Texas, and his troops had arrived in Galveston the previous day.

This day has come to be known as Juneteenth, a combination of June and nineteenth. It is also called Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, and it is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.

The official handwritten record of General Order No. 3, is preserved at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC.

The National Archives also holds the DC Emancipation Act.

On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Passage of this law came nearly nine months before President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. It provided for immediate emancipation, compensation to former owners who were loyal to the Union of up to $300 for each freed slave, voluntary colonization of former slaves to locations outside the United States, and payments of up to $100 for each person choosing emigration.
The National Archives' celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of

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Emancipation Proclamation - National Archives Foundation

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Through the generous support of The Boeing Company, the Emancipation Proclamation will be on display annually at the National Archives through 2029. Stay tuned for more on upcoming dates and programming! When President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on ...

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Letters for Black Lives an organization that provides multi-lingual resources to help people talk about Black Lives Matter with their families, was started by young Asian Americans (2016)

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Letters for Black Lives an organization that provides multi-lingual resources to help people talk about Black Lives Matter with their families, was started by young Asian Americans (2016)

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Letters for Black Lives is a set of crowdsourced, multilingual, and culturally-aware resources aimed at creating a space for open and honest conversations about racial justice, police violence, and anti-Blackness in our families and communities.

We began as a group of Asian Americans and Canadians writing an intergenerational letter to voice our concerns and support for the Black community. We have since grown to include other immigrant groups and communities of color. Our goal is to listen, support, and amplify the message of Black Lives Matter within our communities.

We encourage people from all communities to adapt and build off of these resources.

Learn More

Published Translations of the American Letter

Letters for Black Lives is a a set of crowdsourced, multilingual, and culturally-aware resources aimed at creating a space for open and honest conversations about racial justice, police violence, and anti-Blackness in our families and communities. Learn more about the project and get involved.

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Letters for Black Lives is a set of crowdsourced, multilingual, and culturally-aware resources aimed at creating a space for open and honest conversations about racial justice, police violence, and anti-Blackness in our families and communities. We began as a group of Asian Americans and Canadians writing an intergenerational letter to voice our concerns and support for the Black community.

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National Constitution Center - The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

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The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1924-law-slammed-door-immigrants-and-politicians-who-pushed-it-back-open-180974910/

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Decades of xenophobic policy were overturned, setting the United States on the path to the diversity seen today

smithsonianmag.com

"AMERICA OF THE MELTING POT COMES TO END," the New York Times headline blared in late April 1924. The opinion piece that followed, penned by Senator David Reed of Pennsylvania, claimed recent immigrants from southern and Eastern European countries had failed to satisfactorily assimilate and championed his recently passed legislation to severely restrict immigration to the United States. He proudly proclaimed, "The racial composition of America at the present time thus is made permanent."

The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, which Congress had overwhelmingly passed just weeks before and which President Coolidge would sign into law the following month, marked the start of a dark chapter in the nation's immigration history. It drastically cut the total number of immigrants allowed in each year and effectively cut off all immigration from Asia. It made permanent strict quotas- defined as "two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census"-in order to favor immigrants from northern and Western Europe and preserve the homogeneity of the nation. The new system also required immigrants to apply for and receive visas before arriving and established the U.S. Border Patrol.
The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act marked a schism in the country's immigration history. How did the nation get to that point?
The restrictions imposed by the law sparked a prolonged fight to reverse them, driven by politicians who decried the law's xenophobia and by presidents who worried about the foreign policy consequences of such exclusions. In her new book, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965, journalist Jia Lynn Yang, a deputy national editor at The New York Times, details the drive to implement and sustain the 1924 legislation and the intense campaign to reverse it, a battle that culminated in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. That law eliminated the quotas, increased the number of visas issued each year, prioritized immigration for skilled workers and instituted a policy of family unification.

Yang spoke with Smithsonian about the advocates who led the way, the forces they battled and the legacy of their fight.

Before the act, there were these smaller attempts to restrict immigration. The most important was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which was quite a bold law that singled out, for the first time, an ethnic group for restriction.
How did the theory of eugenics play a role in the new immigration system?
Starting in the 1880s you have this historic wave of immigrants coming from southern and Eastern Europe. Jews, Italians. Lawmakers are continually trying to kind of stem that wave, and really it's not until 1924 that they truly succeed. Because everything else they've tried [such as literacy tests] either gets vetoed by a president or doesn't really work.

1924 is really a watershed moment. Once you add a whole visa process, once you add these strict quotas, you're just in a whole different regime of immigration. The system really just changes forever, and it's a moment when the country I think symbolically says, 'We're not going to do things like this anymore. You can't just show up.'
The 1924 act was met with resistance during its passage and efforts to overturn it started immediately. What were the law's opponents up against?
It became very important, because people with a lot of social influence really embraced it. These are leading economists, leading scientists, people who are really kind of dictating intellectual American life at the time. And [eugenics was] completely mainstream and considered very cutting edge, and just very current. If people could figure out a way to make a better society through this science, people didn't question why that was necessary or why their methods would work. And these experts began to testify before Congress as they're looking at immigration.

One of the primary examples would be [prominent eugenicist] Harry Laughlin. He hasn't spent his whole life being trained as a scientist, but he gets very excited about eugenics, joins people who are really hardcore scientists, and gets involved in the political side. Lawmakers treat him as kind of an in-house expert, essentially. He's writing up reports at their behest, and pointing out, if you do the laws this way, you will actually improve the American bloodstream, and that's why you should do this. [Eugenicists] are people who were already very nativist and wanted to restrict immigration. But once they get the sort of scientific backing, it really strengthens their arguments, and that's how they're able to push this dramatic bill through in the '20s.

I think this notion-it's still very powerful now-that America should have some kind of ethnic makeup is actually a very hard thing to argue against. Their defense is one that I think you still see today, which is, "We're not being racist. We just want to keep a level of ethnic homogeneity in our society...we can't introduce new elements too quickly, and this is how we protect the stability of our country."

I would also add that if you look at the polling on immigration over time-Gallup, for instance, has looked at this question for many, many years now-you hardly ever see Americans clamoring for more immigrants.
What finally led to the overhaul of the nation's immigration laws in the 1960s?
In fact, the people who want to change [immigration policy] are often presidents who are dealing with the foreign policy [consequences of the 1924 law.] That's one thing that really surprised me in my research, is how immigration was driven by foreign policy concerns. So there are presidents who don't want to insult other leaders by saying, "We don't want people from your country."

But your mainstream American is really not thinking about loosening immigration laws as a giant priority. Even now, you can see that both Democrats and Republicans are pretty leery of making that kind of super pro-loosening immigration laws argument. I don't think it's ever that politically popular to do that.

It's kind of an amazing confluence of events. Right before President Kennedy died, he introduced a bill to abolish these ethnic origins quotas. The bill doesn't really go anywhere, just as every other effort hadn't gone anywhere in 40 years. As usual, there's just not a lot of interest in changing the immigration quotas.

But when he is killed, President Johnson looks at the unfinished business of Kennedy and [thinks], 'Let's honor the memory of our late president. Let's really do right by his memory. Let's make this stuff work. We've got to pass it.'
Kennedy supported immigration reform and Johnson signed the 1965 act into law, but this wasn't a consuming passion for either president. Who fought the legislation into being?
LBJ is leading the country in mourning, yes, but he also spots an extraordinary political opportunity to pass legislation, I think, that would otherwise never pass. The Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, these are all kind of in that moment. But the immigration bill, too, has that kind of moral momentum from Kennedy's death. You've got people talking about racial equality. We're going to be getting rid of Jim Crow laws, so we should also look at our immigration laws in the same way. They have a similar kind of racial and discriminatory problem to them.

At the same time you've got the Cold War argument-that these laws are embarrassing to us. They're not helping us win an ideological war against the Soviet Union. The other thing too is labor unions were anti-immigrant before. This is a moment where they actually flip sides. Once labor unions switch to the other side, that removes one of the big political opponents to changing the quotas.
Celebrating "America as a nation of immigrants" is a surprisingly recent idea. How did that idea develop and play into the 1965 legislation?
Emanuel "Manny" Celler was chair of the House Judiciary Committee for many, many years. Right when he becomes a Congressman, in 1923, he sees the quotas passed and is horrified, because he himself is from a German Jewish family and he represents a district in Brooklyn that is basically all immigrants from Europe. He basically spends the next 40 years trying to get rid of [the quotas]. He sees during World War II how [the quotas] make it impossible to admit Jewish refugees. After the war, he's still fighting and fighting and fighting, constantly losing. He's sort of the rare person who in is there to see the victory, but not everybody does.

I'm thinking of Herbert Lehman. He is from the famous Lehman Brothers' family, and comes from a huge amount of money from New York. He was the first Jewish governor of New York, and he was kind of a righthand man to FDR. He spends much of his senate career in the '50s fighting [for immigration reform] and loses again and again, just like Celler and others, because of the Red Scare and a lot of anti-communist sentiment, which translates into anti-immigrant sentiment on the Hill.

The story of Kennedy's Nation of Immigrants [a book published posthumously in 1964.] is sort of instructive with this. He is leaning on, and borrowing from, the work of immigration historian Oscar Handlin, who wrote this book called The Uprooted, which won a Pulitzer Prize in the early 1950s and was, at one point, assigned to a lot of schoolchildren to read. It was basically the seminal text that, for the first time that anyone could point to, celebrated all these immigrants who had come to this country and sort of pointed out the successive waves of people.

We often think of nationalism and immigration as opposing ideas and forces. The really interesting political turn in the '50s is to bring immigrants into this idea of American nationalism. It's not that immigrants make America less special. It's that immigrants are what make America special.
What did advocates for the 1965 act expect when the law was signed? What has it looked like in reality?
Whereas in the '20s the argument was, "Keep America 'American' by keeping out immigrants." Now it was, "If you're not going to welcome immigrants, you're not going to celebrate all these different waves of immigration, the Jews, the Italians, the Germans, you're just being un-American. You don't love this part of the American story."

That is still a very powerful idea on the Left, in the Democratic Party. But I was really surprised in the research just how recent that is. That was a work of history. A historian had to put his finger on it. Then it had to then be translated into the political sphere to take on its own momentum, to become its own argument for immigrants.

The system they come up with is still really interesting to think about because it's very much the one we have today. They get rid of the quotas, and they prioritize family reunification. The people who get top priority for visas are people who already have family in the U.S. This is what the Trump administration wants to end. Just to give you a sense of just how little [the lawmakers] predicted what would happen: [reunification] was actually a compromise to nativists who wanted to keep America white.

Yet because of family reunification, once you do get enough people here who are outside Europe, their numbers actually grew and grew and grew and grew. A bunch of presidents kept adding these special carve-outs for different refugee populations, like the Cubans and Vietnamese.
How is what passed in 1965 tied to today's immigration crisis?
Over time, the entire stream of immigrants just becomes much, much less European, much less white. To the point that now, I think we take for granted that a lot of our immigrants are from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America.

That is not something that I think almost anyone who was involved in the debate would have expected. In fact, they kept downplaying how much the law would change the actual demographics of the U.S. What's interesting to me is that no one quite knew what standing for the principle [of racial equality] would lead to in terms of what this country looked like.

At the end of this whole journey in 1965, [advocates] have to make a bunch of compromises and they added a numerical cap for the very first time on immigration from the Western hemisphere. So until that point-incredible to imagine right now because we are so fixated on securing the border-there was no numerical cap to how many people could come from Latin America and Canada. It was just totally open. That was, again, a foreign policy decision. It was an idea that you had to be friendly to your neighbors.
What were you most surprised to discover while researching and writing your book?
[The cap introduces] the idea of "illegal" immigrants from Mexico on this mass scale that didn't exist before. That just changed the nature of how we thought about Mexican immigrants forever, and which we are still living in the shadow of.

The law is lauded as a civil rights achievement by some, in that it basically bans racial discrimination in immigration laws and gets rid of these old ethnic quotas. But it really transforms our whole notion of our neighbors and our relationship to them as sources of immigration.

I got into this whole project for very personal reasons. I wanted to understand why my family had been allowed to come to this country [from Taiwan and China]. In retrospect, I feel kind of naïve for not having thought about it before. I so bought into this idea of America as a nation of immigrants that I hadn't even really seriously considered a possibility that my parents would have been rejected.
What is it like to release your book as the COVID-19 outbreak has led to a spike in Anti-Asian sentiment and a resurgence of xenophobia?
What was surprising to me was just to learn how easily that could have happened-and not just for me and my family but every family I know in America, basically, that's not from Europe. I now wonder, who among us would just not be here if not for the 1965 Immigration Nationality Act? And I think [it was surprising] understanding how hard that fight was to get it, how many times it didn't work, how many times it failed, how when it finally worked it was only because of this perfect convergence of all these different circumstances, literally from a president's assassination to somebody negotiating at the end, 'We'll reunify families because that'll keep America more white,' and then getting it wrong.

When I started this book it was early 2016, before President Trump was elected. I never imagined how timely it would be. It really started as an exploration of, in a way, family history through American political history.

Knowing that history, knowing how recent [Asian Americans'] arrival is as a large racial group in this country, helps me to process what's happening now. Because I think part of what the xenophobia is revealing is just how tenuous, in a way, the Asian American political category can be. It's a group that often lacks a lot of political power and political voice.

I think of ourselves as very much in the tradition of other immigrants who've sort of come before, each of whom has also kind of had to establish their place in America.

For people like me, who are children of immigrants, who were able to come here because of the 1965 law, it's a chance to say, 'Okay, this is our political history as a people. This is how we got here.'

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The 1924 Law That Slammed the Door on Immigrants and the Politicians Who Pushed it Back Open

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smithsonianmag.com "AMERICA OF THE MELTING POT COMES TO END," the New York Times headline blared in late April 1924. The opinion piece that followed, penned by Senator David Reed of Pennsylvania, claimed recent immigrants from southern and Eastern European countries had failed to satisfactorily assimilate and championed his recently passed legislation to severely restrict immigration to the United States.

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Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland - resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Between 1861 and 1940, approximately 275,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii and the mainland United States, the majority arriving between 1898 and 1924, when quotas were adopted that ended Asian immigration. Many worked in Hawaiian sugarcane fields as contract laborers. After their contracts expired, a small number remained and opened up shops. Other Japanese immigrants settled on the West Coast of mainland United States, cultivating marginal farmlands and fruit orchards, fishing, and operating small businesses. Their efforts yielded impressive results. Japanese Americans controlled less than 4 percent of California's farmland in 1940, but they produced more than 10 percent of the total value of the state's farm resources.

As was the case with other immigrant groups, Japanese Americans settled in ethnic neighborhoods and established schools, houses of worship, and economic and cultural institutions. Ethnic concentration was further increased by real estate agents who would not sell properties to Japanese Americans outside of existing Japanese American enclaves and by a 1913 act passed by the California Assembly restricting land ownership to those eligible to be citizens. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Ozawa v. United States, upheld the government's right to deny U.S. citizenship to Japanese immigrants.

On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked the United States at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii. The attack launched a rash of fear about national security, especially on the West Coast. This combined with economic competition, distrust over cultural separateness, and long-standing anti-Asian racism turned into disaster for Japanese Americans.

Lobbyists from western states, many representing competing economic interests or nativist groups, pressured Congress and the President to remove persons of Japanese descent from the west coast, both foreign born ( issei - meaning "first generation" of Japanese in the U.S.) and American citizens ( nisei - the second generation of Japanese in America, U.S. citizens by birthright.) During congressional committee hearings, Department of Justice representatives raised constitutional and ethical objections to the proposal, so the U.S. Army carried out the task instead.

The West Coast was divided into military zones, and on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command proceeded to announce curfews that included only Japanese Americans.

General DeWitt first encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese Americans from a limited number of areas. About seven percent of the total Japanese American population in these areas complied. Then on March 29, 1942, under the authority of Roosevelt's executive order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which began the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese-American West Coast residents on a 48-hour notice. Only a few days prior to the proclamation, on March 21, Congress had passed Public Law 503, which made violation of Executive Order 9066 a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.

In the next six months, approximately 122,000 men, women, and children were forcibly moved to "assembly centers." They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded "relocation centers," also known as "internment camps." The 10 sites were in remote areas in six western states and Arkansas: Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Topaz in Utah, Poston and Gila River in Arizona, Granada in Colorado, Minidoka in Idaho, and Jerome and Rowher in Arkansas.

Nearly 70,000 of the evacuees were American citizens. The government made no charges against them, nor could they appeal their incarceration. All lost personal liberties; most lost homes and property as well. Although several Japanese Americans challenged the government's actions in court cases, the Supreme Court upheld their legality. Nisei were nevertheless encouraged to serve in the armed forces, and some were also drafted. Altogether, more than 30,000 Japanese Americans served with distinction during World War II in segregated units.

For many years after the war, various individuals and groups sought compensation for those incarcerated. The speed of the "evacuation" forced many homeowners and businessmen to sell out quickly; total property loss is estimated at $1.3 billion, and net income loss at $2.7 billion (calculated in 1983 dollars based on a congressional commission investigation). The Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act of 1948, with amendments in 1951 and 1965, provided token payments for some property losses. More serious efforts to make amends took place in the early 1980s, when the congressionally established Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians held investigations and made recommendations. As a result, several bills were introduced in Congress from 1984 until 1988. In 1988, Public Law 100-383 acknowledged the injustice of the incarceration, apologized for it, and provided partial restitution - a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated.

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Executive Order 9066: Resulting in Japanese-American Incarceration (1942)

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Executive Order 9066, February 19, 1942; General Records of the Unites States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives. View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland - resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

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U.S. v. Pacific Movement of the Eastern World (1942)

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U.S. v. Pacific Movement of the Eastern World (1942)

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In 1942, federal officials targeted a group of Black Americans who were allegedly hoping for a Japanese invasion. They uncovered a plot that included stockpiles of weapons and secret passwords-but was any of it true? This week, Joel Anderson tells the story of a shadowy organization in East St. Louis, Illinois, the group's mysterious leader, and an alleged conspiracy against America during World War II.

This episode of One Year was produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Joel Anderson, Sol Werthan, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is executive producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

Slate Plus members get to hear more about the making of One Year. Get access to extra episodes, listen to the show without any ads, and support One Year by signing up for Slate Plus for just $15 for your first three months.
Sources for This Episode ﻿Books
Briones, Matt. Jim and Jap Crow: A Cultural History of 1940s Interracial America, Princeton University Press, 2012.

Gallicchio, Marc S. The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945, University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Horne, Gerald. Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity, New York University Press, 2018.

Kurashige, Scott. The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles, Princeton University Press, 2007.
Articles
"2 Cultists Indicted In E. St. Louis," Chicago Defender, Feb. 6, 1943.

"4- and 2-Year Terms in Jap-Negro Plot," St. Louis Star and Times, June 15, 1943.

Allen Jr., Ernest. "Waiting for Tojo: The Pro-Japan Vigil of Black Missourians, 1932-1943," Gateway Heritage, Fall 1995.

Allen Jr., Ernest. "When Japan Was 'Champion of the Darker Races': Satokata Takahashi and the
Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism," the Black Scholar, Winter 1994.

Barnes, Kenneth C. "Inspiration from the East: Black Arkansans Look to Japan," the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Autumn 2010.

"Charges Church Formed to Keep its 'Ministers' Out of the Army," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 28, 1943.

"FBI Grills 2 in Jap-Negro Movement," St. Louis Star and Times, Sept. 16, 1942.

"FBI Hunts Two Japs In Expose Of 5th Column Activity In St. Louis," Chicago Defender, March 14, 1942.

"'Fifth Column' Propaganda Among Negroes in St. Louis Area Traced to Japanese," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 5, 1942.

"Filipino Testifies Against Leader at Sedition Trial of Two Negroes," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1943.

"Former Officers of Negro Pacific Group on Stand," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1943.

Gates Jr., Henry Louis. " What Was Black America's Double War?," PBS.

"Guilty of Sedition Backed by Japanese," New York Times, June 16, 1943.

"Had Arsenal Here for Japs, Says Witness," St. Louis Star and Times, May 11, 1943.

"Jap Movement Had Million Membership," Afro-American, June 26, 1943.

"Japanese Brought Here as Sedition Witness," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 7, 1943.

"Japanese Plotter of 'Fifth Column' Among Negroes Here Held in East," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 31, 1942.

"Leader Admits Not Resisting Pro-Jap Move," St. Louis Star and Times, May 15, 1943.

"Leader Says FBI Coerced Him in Sedition Confession," St. Louis Star and Times, May 14, 1943.

Lumpkins, Charles L. "Black East St. Louis: Politics and Economy in a Border City, 1860-1945," Pennsylvania State University, May 2006.

Morgan Ward, Jason. "'No Jap Crow': Japanese Americans Encounter the World War II South," The Journal of Southern History, February 2007.

"Negro Group Leaders Plead Not Guilty," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 2, 1943.

Nielsen A., Euell. " The Double V Campaign (1942-1945)," BlackPast, July 1, 2020.

Ottley, Roi. "A White Folks' War?," Common Ground, Spring 1942.

"Pacific Group Told to Arm, Says Witness," St. Louis Star and Times, May 13, 1943.

"Pacific Movement Founder Held," Sikeston Standard, Aug. 4, 1942.

"Pro-Japanese Unit Scrutinized," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 23, 1942.

Russo-Japanese Relations in the Far East, Library of Congress.

Russo-Japanese War: Topics in Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

Steinberg, John W. " The Russo-Japanese War and World History," Education About Asia, Fall 2008.

"Swears Jap Paid Him to Promote Disloyal Sect," Chicago Tribune, Jan. 28, 1943.

Tajiri, Larry. "Farewell to Little Tokyo," Common Ground, 1944.

"Testifies Negroes Gathered Guns to Aid Invaders," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 12, 1943.

"Testimony Ended in Trial of 2 on Sedition Charges," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 15, 1943.

"Two in Pacific Movement to Begin Terms for Sedition," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oct. 6, 1943.

"U.S. Indicts 3 in East Side Sedition Probe," St. Louis Star and Times, Jan. 27, 1943.

Washburn, Pat. " The 'Pittsburgh Courier's' Double V Campaign in 1942," Association for Education in Journalism, August 1981.

Werthan, S.M. " In Search of Common Ground: Japanese Americans' and African Americans' Struggle for Citizenship during World War II," Wellesley College, April 2018.

"Witness Gives Dramatic Story of Jap Intrigue," St. Louis Star and Times, May 12, 1943.
Audiovisual
Axelrod, Josh. " A Century Later: The Treaty Of Versailles And Its Rejection Of Racial Equality," Code Switch, Aug. 11, 2019.

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The Sensational Trial of Black Americans Accused of Conspiring With Japan During World War II

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In 1942, federal officials targeted a group of Black Americans who were allegedly hoping for a Japanese invasion. They uncovered a plot that included stockpiles of weapons and secret passwords-but was any of it true? This week, Joel Anderson tells the story of a shadowy organization in East St.

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Grace Lee and James Boggs dedicated seven decades of their life to revolutionary justice and civil rights in Detroit (1915-2015)

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Grace Lee and James Boggs dedicated seven decades of their life to revolutionary justice and civil rights in Detroit (1915-2015)

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Grace Lee Boggs was a Chinese American civil rights activist whose work spanned over 70 years. Her activism was concentrated in Detroit, where she settled with her husband James Boggs, an African American activist. Learn more how their thinking and work helped indelibly shape our present-day movements for racial justice.

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How Grace Lee and James Boggs Shaped Today's Racial Justice Movements

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Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs emerged in Detroit to lay the foundations for one of the most important movements for racial justice in the 20th century.

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When Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, two California farmers, sent their children to a local school, their children were told that they would have to go to a separate facility reserved for Mexican American students. The Mendez family recruited similarly aggrieved parents from local school districts for a federal court case challenging school segregation.

Unlike the later case, the families did not claim racial discrimination, as Mexicans were considered legally white (based on the preceding Roberto Alvarez v. the Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District ) , but rather discrimination based on ancestry and supposed "language deficiency" that denied their children their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.

On March 18, 1946, Judge Paul McCormick ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on the basis that the social, psychological, and pedagogical costs of segregated education were damaging to Mexican American students. The school districts appealed, claiming that the federal courts did not have jurisdiction over education, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately upheld McCormick's decision on April 14, 1947, ruling that the schools' actions violated California law.

The Mendez v. Westminster(1947) case is important not only for the precedent it set for later court cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education , but also because it is a clear example of members of the Mexican American community taking the lead to fight for their rights - and winning.

From the introduction to Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican-American Rights.

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April 14, 1947: Mendez v. Westminster Court Ruling - Zinn Education Project

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When Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, two California farmers, sent their children to a local school, their children were told that they would have to go to a separate facility reserved for Mexican American students. The Mendez family recruited similarly aggrieved parents from local school districts for a federal court case challenging school segregation.

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White men, age 21 and older, who owned property were given the right to vote in 1776.

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution removed racial barriers to voting in 1870, but states continued to practice voter discrimination and continued to deny Black voters a chance to participate in elections.

The right to vote was extended to white women in 1920.

It wasn't until 1965, after years of intimidation, murders, and advocacy that the path to the voting booth was cleared for Black people with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The right to vote, regardless of race

Just eight days after Martin Luther King, Jr. led a peaceful civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his intention to pass a federal Voting Rights Act to ensure that no federal, state, or local government could in any way impede people from voting because of their race or ethnicity. He signed the Voting Rights Act into law later that year, banning racial discriminatory practices in voting, including literacy tests.

Provisions of the Voting Rights Act

Originally, legislators hoped that within five years of its passage, the issues surrounding the 1965 Voting Rights Act would be resolved and there would be no further need for its enforcement-related provisions. They were wrong. Congress had to extend these provisions in 1970, 1975, 1982 and most recently in 2007, this time for 25 years.

Enforcement measures included:

Requirements for certain jurisdictions with a history of disenfranchising voters to obtain approval or "preclearance" from the U.S. Department of Justice or the U.S/ District Court in D.C. before they can make any changes to voting practices or procedures. They must prove that the proposed change does not denying or infringe on the right to vote on account of race or color.

Requirements for certain jurisdictions to provide language assistance to voters in communities where there is a concentration of citizens who do aren't proficient in English to actively participate in the electoral process. This provision was added to the Voting Rights Act in 1975.

Federal election examiners and observers for certain jurisdictions where there is evidence of attempts to intimidate minority voters at the polls.

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One of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

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Courtesy Library of Congress (95506959)

The Watts Riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The riot took 34 lives and injured 1,032 people. There were nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million in property damage in what was until that point, the largest urban rebellion in the United States in the 1960s.

Although the riot began on August 11, 1965, its roots go back at least two decades. Following World War II, over 500,000 African Americans migrated to West Coast cities in hopes of escaping racism and discrimination. However they found both in the west. For many black Los Angeles, California residents who lived in Watts, their isolation in that community was evidence that racial equality remained a distant goal as they experienced housing, education, employment, and political discrimination. These racial injustices caused Watts' African American population to explode on August 11, 1965 in what would become the Watts Rebellion.

The rebellion began on August 11th when the Los Angeles Highway Patrol stopped black Watts resident Marquette Frye and his brother, alleging that they were speeding. Back-up was called from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a crowd of African Americans gathered to watch the scene. Since the incident was close to Frye's home, his mother emerged to find her son resisting arrest. Fearful that his arrest may ignite a riot, one LAPD officer drew his firearm. Catching a glimpse of the gun, Mrs. Frye jumped onto the officer's back, causing the crowd to begin cheering. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers arrested all three of the Fryes. Enraged by the family's arrests, Watts' residents protested as the police cars drove away. Less than an hour later, black Angelenos took to the streets.

The five day revolt which involved some 30,000 people served as stark testimony to the inequality and poverty that dominated the lives of thousands of Watts's residents. Many of those engaged in the uprising looted items from local groceries and clothing stores, acquiring what they wanted and needed but often could not afford. Others battled the LAPD which they held immediately responsible for their poverty and alienation.

By August 15 the riot ended when 14,000 National Guard troops arrived and patrolled the streets. The following day most African Americans retired to their homes. In spite of the protest, the Watts Rebellion did not significantly improve the lives of the community's black population. While the revolt inspired the federal government to implement programs to address unemployment, education, healthcare, and housing under Lyndon B. Johnson's " War on Poverty," much of the money allocated for these programs was eventually absorbed by the Vietnam War.

Today most of the population of Watts is Latino with many residents from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although the population has changed, many of the issues of poverty, alienation, and discrimination still plague the community today.

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The Watts Riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The riot took 34 lives and injured 1,032 people. There were nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million in property damage in what was until ...

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National Constitution Center - The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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During the Philippine-American War, Black leaders and soldiers opposed US colonization (1899-1902)

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During the Philippine-American War, Black leaders and soldiers opposed US colonization (1899-1902)

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Sandra Nomoto examines the experiences of all-Black regiments during the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902 for an historical example of effective allyship.

Since George Floyd's death and the flood of content about the movement for racial justice for Black people, I've dived head-first into articles, blogs, social media posts, movies, and courses about allyship.

What I didn't expect to find was such a significant historical event that would forever change the way I saw Black Americans as allies for Filipinxs: the Philippine-American War.

Thanks to Bianca Mabute-Louie on Instagram, I learned about this event and a few key Black figures involved in this war. "Buffalo Soldiers" is a term originally given to Black soldiers by Native Americans in 1866, and refers to the all-Black regiments formed that year.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CALSE5rhmSH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Courtesy of Bianca Mabute-Louie on Instagram.

The Philippines was a Spanish colony until the Spanish-American war of 1898. Filipinxs had welcomed the Americans' help in their revolt against Spain, only to find themselves at war with those Americans, in what would later be the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902.

2,100 Black soldiers arrived in the Philippine Islands, followed by another 4,000. At this time, Jim Crow laws had enforced racial segregation in the American South. Black American soldiers were conflicted in their loyalty; prominent Black leaders spoke out against the war in the Philippines, stating that Filipinxs should be given the opportunity to govern themselves, at least until the United States made significant progress in its treatment of Black and Native Americans.

Buffalo Soldiers from the 25th Infantry. Photo Credit: Library of Congress

White American soldiers held negative and racist attitudes toward the Filipinxs. The Black soldiers found themselves caught between their sense of duty and identity as American soldiers, and their compassion for the people of colour suffering from white supremacy, which also included Cubans.

Some nine or so soldiers, including David Fagen, deserted the battlefield altogether, while others were punished for expressing sympathy toward Filipinxs. After several clashes with his commanding officer, Lt. James Alfred Moss, Fagen deserted his camp to join the Filipinxs on November 17, 1899, earning the nickname "General Fagen."

Around fifteen Buffalo Soldiers joined Fagen, who led ambushes and assaults against the American troops. He also married a Filipina woman. Retreating to the Pacific coast with a reward for his life, Filipino hunters killed him in December of 1901, though some believed he'd faked his death.

David Fagen. Courtesy private collection of Anthony L. Powell.

The racist attitudes White Americans directed at Filipinxs, coupled with Black soldiers demonstrating their respect for Filipinxs and forming relationships with Filipina women, led to some 1,000 Black soldiers staying in the Philippines after the war was over.

Despite the strong kinship between Black soldiers and Filipinxs, the Philippine-American War came at the enormous cost of over 250,000 Filipinx lives. Disapproving of the relationships that developed between Black and Filipinx people, U.S. President William Taft-then also the Governor-General of the Philippines-had most of the Black soldiers in the Philippines return to the U.S. in 1902.

What we can learn from the Buffalo Soldiers during the Philippine-American War

Learning about the Buffalo Soldiers in this period of history reminds me about how we can have more in common with people of other ethnicities, besides just skin colour.

Just as David Fagen enjoyed music, drinking, and playing stud poker with the locals, and saw who the real oppressors were during the war, Black people showed that they were more than just soldiers; they were people who wanted good lives for themselves. I think that's what we all want too.

As wars continue to break out around the world, at home, we're still fighting against a prejudiced history that subsequently erases the humanity of certain peoples. The Buffalo Soldiers transformed from enemy to ally of Filipinxs, and although this was one of the most significant examples of allyship, it wouldn't be the last.

The USA granted independence to the Philippines on July 4, 1946, 44 years after the end of the Philippine-American War. Many Filipinx activists today recognize the importance of standing by Black people, because if it wasn't for the Buffalo Soldiers, we may not have known what allyship looked like.

In David Fagen's newspaper obituary, the editor called Fagen a "traitor, [who] died a traitor's death." Perhaps that was true, but today, in countries like Canada and the USA where most of us are settlers on unceded land, we can no longer confine alliances within country borders. I believe that we all have an obligation to actively oppose the injustice imposed on oppressed peoples globally.

Fagen's obituary continues: ". . . but he was a man, no doubt, prompted by motives to help a weaker side, and one to which he felt allied by ties that bind . . . He saw, it may be, the weak and the strong; he chose, and the world knows the rest."

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Black and Filipinx solidarity: Lessons from the Buffalo Soldiers in the Philippines - Cold Tea Collective

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Sandra Nomoto examines the experiences of all-Black regiments during the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902 for an historical example of effective allyship.

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What does math have to do with human solidarity?

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What does math have to do with human solidarity?

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Model minority
Math achievement as a tool to distinguish minoritized groups
Math data is problematic. How do we use it?

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Malcom X and Yuri Kochiyama partnership 

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Malcom X and Yuri Kochiyama partnership 

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Yuri Kochiyama speaking at an anti-war demonstration in New York City's Central Park, c. 1968.
Courtesy of the Kochiyama family/UCLA Asian American Studies Center

Yuri Kochiyama was a Japanese American political and civil rights activist. During World War II, the U.S. government forcibly removed her and her family to an incarceration site for Japanese Americans. For fifty years, Kochiyama spoke out about oppressive institutions and injustice in the United States. Her activism supported the liberation and empowerment of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Puerto Ricans. She also advocated for nuclear disarmament, reparations for Japanese American incarcerees, and the release of prisoners whom she regarded as prisoners of conscience.

When is it necessary to challenge the status quo? What would drive you to do so?

Activists are people who want to challenge the status quo. They often face backlash and resistance. As a radical activist, Kochiyama supported many controversial causes. Many people have criticized her admiration for figures who challenged or opposed the U.S. government, including foreign adversaries like Osama bin Laden. With awareness of Kochiyama's controversial stances, this article recognizes her activism in the struggles for rights for people of color.

Early Life and Incarceration

Yuri Kochiyama was born Mary Yuriko Nakahara on May 19, 1921. Her parents were first-generation Japanese immigrants. As a child and young adult, Kochiyama was active in her school and community.

Her life changed after Japan bombed the American naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i on the morning of December 7, 1941. Congress quickly declared war on Japan and the U.S. formally entered World War II. Fearful that Americans of Japanese descent would side with the Japanese, President President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. This presidential act forced Japanese Americans to relocate to incarceration sites, even if they were American citizens.

Later on December 7, the FBI arrested Kochiyama's father and other first-generation Japanese Americans as "national security threats." Although he was recovering from a recent ulcer surgery, the authorities refused to provide medical treatment. When Kochiyama's father was released six weeks later, his health had deteriorated rapidly. He died within one day of returning home.

Soon after, the government temporarily detailed Kochiyama's family at the horse stables at the Santa Anita racetracks near Los Angeles, California. For most of the war, they were incarcerated at a confinement site in Jerome, Arkansas.[1] In her diary, Kochiyama maintained a positive outlook, but also described the anger of other incarcerees and her exposure to racism. Despite her confinement, Kochiyama urged other incarcerees to write letters of support to Japanese American soldiers serving in the U.S. military.

In 1944, Kochiyama volunteered to work at an all-Japanese, segregated United Service Organizations (USO) Center in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, so that she could get out of the incarceration site in Jerome. The USO Center provided programs and entertainment for active-duty service members at Camp Shelby Army Base. There, she met William "Bill" Kochiyama. Because Bill was Japanese American, he was incarcerated in Topaz, Utah.[2] He enlisted in the U.S. Army 442nd Regimental Combat Team to escape the confinement site and prove his patriotism. Working at the USO in Hattiesburg, Yuri witnessed Jim Crow segregation for the first time. In this new context, she gained a new understanding of race that she did not have in California.

Early Activism

Yuri and Bill Kochiyama married in 1946. During their 47-year marriage, they raised six children and supported several activist causes. The Kochiyamas moved to the Amsterdam Houses near Lincoln Center in New York City. In December 1960, they moved into the Manhattanville Housing Projects in Harlem. Living and working in Harlem exposed them to the Black and Puerto Rican communities' struggles for freedom, which sparked Kochiyama's interest in civil rights activism. In 2004, she explained:

"I didn't wake up and decide to become an activist. But you couldn't help notice the inequities, the injustices. It was all around you."

Known as "Grand Central Station" or the "Revolutionary Salon," Kochiyama's apartment in Harlem became a crossroads for activists, artists, and intellectuals. Kochiyama also became well known for her behind-the-scenes work. She made flyers, wrote newsletters, and corresponded with prisoners in the Black freedom struggle and other movements. Knowing how important morale was for a movement, Kochiyama encouraged other activists to send birthday cards and care packages to prisoners, not just demonstrate outside of detention facilities.

The Impact of Malcolm X

Meeting Ma lcolm X in October 1963 transformed Kochiyama's approach to activism. She, Bill, and their oldest children had enrolled in the Harlem Freedom School and participated in the 1964 New York City school boycott to protest the segregation of public schools. Their oldest son, Billy, also traveled to the South as a Freedom Rider during the 1960s.[3] But until Kochiyama met Malcolm X, she advocated simply for racial integration. Malcolm X encouraged her to develop an internationalist and anti-imperialist view, linking the freedom struggles of Black people in America with the experiences of people of African and Asian descent all over the world.

After attending Malcolm X's Liberation School and becoming involved with his non-religious Organization of Afro-American Unity, she embraced his viewpoint of "human rights" rather than civil rights. In a 1965 interview, Malcolm X explained the difference:

"We believe that our problem is one, not of violation of civil rights, but a violation of human rights. Not only are we denied the right to be a citizen in the United States, we're denied the right to be a human being."

Furthermore, "human rights" reflected the need for the recognition and respect of Black people around the world, not just in the United States.

On June 6, 1964, Kochiyama hosted a reception for the Hiroshima-Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission at her apartment. Despite her status as a newcomer to the Black freedom struggle, she invited Malcolm X to meet with sufferers of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Due to his prominence as a Black nationalist leader, recent departure from the Nation of Islam, and constant attacks in the press, Kochiyama doubted he would come. When Malcolm X arrived, he spoke about his studies in prison, Chinese and Japanese history, and his opposition to the Vietnam War. He explained that the freedom struggles of people of color and third-world people were linked.

Kochiyama and her 16-year-old son Billy were also present when Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.[4] Even after the assassination, the Kochiyama and Shabazz families remained close. Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz 's eldest daughter Attallah was a frequent guest at the Kochiyama house.

Liberation and Self-Determination

Malcolm X's encouragement to know oneself and one's history helped to change the way Kochiyama viewed power and racism. Fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War, she became a pioneer of the Asian American movement. In 1969, she and Bill joined the new organization Asian Americans for Action (AAA), which drew inspiration from the Black Power and anti-war movements. Kochiyama became a featured speaker at the AAA's Hiroshima-Nagasaki Day events. She later championed the development of ethnic studies programs and reparations for former Japanese American incarcerees.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Kochiyama advocated for Puerto Rican self-determination. In 1969, she joined the Young Lords' Party, a civil rights organization committed to Puerto Rican independence. In October 1977, Kochiyama participated in the takeover of the Statue of Liberty by Puerto Rican Nationalists. Thirty demonstrators ocupied the monument, climbed to the top, and hung a Puerto Rican flag from Lady Liberty's crown.

Throughout this period, Kochiyama remained committed to the Black freedom struggle. She worked with Black Power and Black nationalist organizations including the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika. This organization advocated for self-determination, reparations for slavery and segregation, and the creation of an independent Black republic in the southeastern United States. She also advocated for the release of Black prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal was a former Black Panther and journalist who was accused of killing a police officer.

After Bill's death in 1993, Yuri Kochiyama moved to Oakland, California to live with her daughter. The focus of her work shifted to the war on terror. Kochiyama strongly condemned the rise in Islamophobia after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. At a peace vigil and rally in San Francisco's Japantown, she drew from her experience with incarceration after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in her speech. She cautioned people not to give into fear and hate and to stand in solidarity with Arabs, Muslims, and South Asian people who were being victimized. She declared:

"In war, they say that the first casualty is truth. America forgot that we are American citizens. We Japanese Americans should feel a kinship with the Arab and Muslim people who are the newest targets of racism, hysteria, and jingoism-something that we have experienced too."

After over fifty years of activism to end war, racism, and hatred, Yuri Kochiyama died on June 1, 2014 at the age of 93.

Notes

[1] Congress created the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) grant program in 2006. The program awards grants for the preservation and interpretation of confinement sites where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. Although the incarceration site at Jerome, Arkansas is no longer physically extant, the University of Arkansas received a JACS grant for digital storytelling and preservation projects related to the sites in Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas.

[2] The Central War Relocation Center (Topaz) was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 2, 1974 and designated a National Historic Landmark on March 29, 2007.

[3] Freedom Riders National Monument is located in Anniston, Alabama.

[4] The Audubon Ballroom is now known as the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.

Bibliography

CBC. "Malcolm X on Front Page Challenge, 1965: CBC Archives | CBC." YouTube Video, 7:48. April 7, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7IJ7npTYrU&t=3s.

Democracy Now! "Civil Rights Activist Yuri Kochiyama on Her Internment in a WWII Japanese American Detention Camp & Malcolm X's Assassination." February 20, 2008. https://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/20/civil_rights_activist_yuri_kochiyama_remembers.

Fujino, Diane C. "Kochiyama, Yuri." Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Mary Yu Danico. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2014.

Harlem World Magazine. "The Passionate Harlem Activist Yuri Kochiyama, New York, 1921 - 2014 (Video). Published July 7, 2020. https://www.harlemworldmagazine.com/harlem-activist-yuri-kochiyama-ny-1921-2014/.

Kochiyama, Yuri. "The Impact of Malcolm X on Asian-American Politics and Activism." Latinos, and Asians in Urban America: Status and Prospects for Politics and Activism. Edited by James Jennings. London: Praeger, 1994. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~hist32/Hist33/Impact%20of%20Malcolm%20X.PDF.

Kochiyama, Yuri. "Yuri Kochiyama in Response to 9/11." Apex Express, 94.1 FM KPFA. June 7, 2014. https://apexexpress.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/yuri-kochiyama-in-response-to-911/.

R Tajima. "Yuri & Bill Kochiyama: on the road in Mississippi." YouTube Video, 9:01. June 2, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApSa2_SW9rw.

Swift, Jaimee A. "Celebrating 100 Years of Yuri Kochiyama: Akemi Kochiyama on Her Grandmother's Life, Leadership, and Legacy." Asian American Writers' Workshop. May 19, 2021. https://aaww.org/celebrating-100-years-of-yuri-kochiyama/.

Woo, Elaine. Los Angeles Times. "Yuri Kochiyama, '60s civil rights activist and friend of Malcolm X's dies at 93." Washington Post. June 5, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/yuri-kochimaya-60s-civil-rights-activist-and-friend-of-malcom-x-dies-at-93/2014/06/05/1dbe93dc-eccd-11e3-b98c-72cef4a00499_story.html.
The content for this article was researched and written by Jade Ryerson, an intern with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education.

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Yuri Kochiyama (U.S. National Park Service)

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Yuri Kochiyama was a Japanese American political and civil rights activist. During World War II, the U.S. government forcibly removed her and her family to an incarceration site for Japanese Americans. For fifty years, Kochiyama spoke out about oppressive institutions and injustice in the United States.

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1869: American abolitionist Frederick Douglass denounced the Chinese Exclusion Act in his “Composite Nation” Speech. "Only one-fifth of the population of the globe is white,” he argued in 1869, noting that “the other four-fifths are colored and ought to have some weight and influence.”

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1869: American abolitionist Frederick Douglass denounced the Chinese Exclusion Act in his “Composite Nation” Speech. "Only one-fifth of the population of the globe is white,” he argued in 1869, noting that “the other four-fifths are colored and ought to have some weight and influence.”

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Jun Fujita, a Japanese-American photojournalist and poet documents the 1919 Race Riots in Chicago (1919; begins nine minutes in)

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Jun Fujita, a Japanese-American photojournalist and poet documents the 1919 Race Riots in Chicago (1919; begins nine minutes in)

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The Future of America's Past | Red Chicago | Season 2 | PBS

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Long-simmering tensions between white and black residents in Chicago erupted in violence.

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Third World Liberation Front - Formation, sit-ins, strikes, and more (1968)

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Third World Liberation Front - Formation, sit-ins, strikes, and more (1968)

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WHAT WAS unique about San Francisco State that made it an epicenter of struggle?

ONE OF the things that made San Francisco State unique as opposed to Berkeley or some other places is that it was a commuter school. The students were older, and it was a working-class school. Among the type of students who went to San Francisco State, not only did many have work experience, but they also had political experience that they brought with them to the campus.

The Black Panthers were a tremendous influence on what happened at San Francisco State, with many of the members of the Black Student Union (BSU) being early members of the party. So there's an intimate relationship between the BSU and the Black Panther Party.

The SF State campus itself was a really exciting place. It was an epicenter for a lot of activism, a lot of organizing, a lot of culture, a lot of hippies, a lot of dope, a lot of poetry. It had everything, so it was a very exciting place to be.

WHAT STUDENT groups were active on campus?

THERE WERE four core groups of students. There was the BSU, the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Programs.

The TWLF was a coalition of student organizations of color. In many ways, it was formed by the BSU, but it also includea a Latin@ student organization (LASO), a Mexican American student organization (MASC), the Filipino organization called PACE and the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action (ICSA).

The TWLF was formed based on the political principle of Third World solidarity, which is animating Cuba, Algeria, Tanzania and Vietnam. So it's no coincidence that they called themselves the TWLF - like the National Liberation Front in Vietnam. They were all internationalists - not necessarily Marxist, but internationalist.

The BSU created the TWLF partially out of principle and partially because they knew that in the struggle that was going to unfold, they would need alliances.

Plus, they could also see that the other students of color on campus weren't as politically developed - that their consciousness had not come along as far as the Black Power movement had. Other groups of color were just forming the Asian-American or Latino movements in the late 1960s, whereas the Black community had gone through this a few years before, due to Malcolm X and the Black Consciousness movement.

So the BSU created the TWLF as a way to support that political development.

There were also the white student groups: SDS and the Programs. There was a lot of tension between these two groups.

The Programs were trying to build student power and community involvement programs, where they were connecting student-organizing efforts like a Tenants Union in public housing in San Francisco, while trying to give students credit to be organizing.

Then there was SDS, which was more confrontational - like "F*** the pigs, kick ROTC off campus, kick the Dow Chemical recruiter off campus." SDS at SF State had principally been taken over by Progressive Labor. So SDS viewed students in the Programs as reformist, and those in the Programs looked at SDS as ultra-left and sectarian.

WHAT WAS the source of discontent on campus and the conditions that led to the strike?

THERE'S SO much focus on the strike itself because it's so spectacular. The institution was shut down for four-and-a-half months, the Tactical Squad was out there every day cracking skulls.

But it's important to understand that the strike was just a culminating moment, when the crisis came to a head. There were many contributing factors.

The BSU students had been organizing for years, developing alternative educational experiences, within the Experimental College at first, and later the tutorial programs that connected them to the community. The BSU students ran this program and were tutoring hundreds of kids in the Mission and Fillmore, teaching them the basics, but also teaching them Black Power.

Out of these diverse experiences, a unique and revolutionary Black Studies curriculum began to cohere. However, the administration was threatening to pull funding for these working programs.

There was also an English instructor, George Murray, one of the Central Committee members of the Black Student Union, who was a longtime student at State and a graduate student by the late 1960s, but he was also Minister of Education for the Black Panther Party.

In the summer of '68, George traveled to Cuba and gave a speech there where he basically said - I'm paraphrasing here - that every U.S. soldier that dies in Vietnam is one less soldier we have to deal with in the streets of Detroit." He was linking the Black liberation struggle with the struggle of the Vietnamese people.

Needless to say, when the Board of Trustees and then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan found this out, they were irate and tried to fire Murray. That was one catalyst for the strike.

In the spring of '68, there was also a sit-in organized by SDS and TWLF where the goals were twofold: kicking the ROTC off campus was the big SDS demand, and the TWLF had a set of demands around recruitment and retention of Third World students - not only Black students but also students from the Mission and from Chinatown. That sit-in didn't get the ROTC off campus, but it did get special admissions for students of color.

The SFSU campus president, liberal John Summerskill, made the promise, but as soon as he made it, he resigned. As a result, over the course of the summer and into the fall, those special admits never materialized. This also added to the rising level of frustration.

So the BSU wasn't getting their Black Studies program as promised, and funding for the programs they were involved in with the community was being threatened by Sacramento and by the Board of Trustees. One of their prominent members, George Murray, was threatened with being fired.

Plus, members of the Third World Liberation Front weren't getting the special admits they had been promised, and on top of that, they were beginning to make a demand for Third World studies, La Raza studies and Asian American Studies.

So when the catalyst happened - with George Murray being fired from teaching - the BSU went out on strike. The BSU issued 10 demands, and the TWLF added five demands, going out on strike along with the BSU.

I think what made the strike so unique is the way that white students on this campus followed the leadership of Third World students. On other campuses, it wasn't that way - white students were in the leadership, and Third World students were maybe involved.

But this was a case where leadership and the demands were squarely in the hands of Third World folks. And white students supported and didn't challenge that leadership. They didn't say try to make this about student power or the war - they stayed focus on the BSU and TWLF demands' - because, I think, those demands ultimately opened out to these broader issues of imperialism and the war.

WHAT WERE the demands of the strike?

REHIRING GEORGE Murray was one of the original demands of both the BSU and the TWLF. One of their five demands was to rehire George Murray, too.

If you look at the demands, they're very specific: We want this woman fired, we want Nathan Hare given a permanent position, we want this number of faculty positions. It wasn't "we want global revolution" or anything like that. This was intentional because the students wanted to be able to struggle over something concrete and be able to win a base for later.

During the course of the strike, they continually restated the demands and said they were nonnegotiable because this is what the community needs. They argued that the demands reflected the fight against racism: It's about self-determination and power. They weren't looking for crumbs - they wanted the power to determine who the faculty was and the type of curriculum being taught.

HOW DID the strike unfold? Can you talk about the strikers' tactics?

UP UNTIL the fall of '68, some of the dominant tactics of the student movement were occupations and sit-ins. The BSU said we're not going to do that - we're going to embrace the tactics of guerrilla warfare, like Che and the Vietnamese.

What did they mean by that? They didn't mean being armed per se, but they pointed out that sit-ins were largely symbolic. At most, you hold a space for a day or two days or three days. At a certain point, the institution wears you down. Maybe you get immediate attention when they arrest you, but in the end, you display your powerlessness.

The BSU was looking at what happened at Columbia University in New York City in the spring of '68. Stokely Carmichael had come out and given a talk at State, where he said that the Columbia students made a dent, but they didn't change the power relations on campus.

The BSU decided that they were going to shut down the university down. They weren't just going to occupy space. But they didn't just go out on strike by picketing the campus. Instead, they decided to use guerrilla warfare tactics - we advance when the enemy retreats, and when the enemy advances, we retreat.

This meant having mobile forces. One of the first things they did in the first week was create disruptions all over campus: stink bombs clogging up toilets, going to classes and saying, "Don't you know we're on strike?" and doing some political education.

The logic was: If we can't have the education we want, you're not going to get the education that you've been getting. We're going to disrupt this classroom, but when the police come - boom, we're gone.

Those were the initial tactics during the first week. SDS and the movement people supported the strike. But it took about a week before things developed.

HOW DID the strike build support at this point, and what role did police repression play?

THE BSU had a press conference about one week into the strike, and the cops came onto campus and just started beating people - members of BSU in particular. BSU leader Nesbit Crutchfield got hit over the head for everyone to see.

Pandemonium ensued on campus. Some faculty supported the students, even if they didn't necessarily agree with the tactics - they supported the ideas behind the strike. So the faculty got in between the police and the students on that chaotic day.

From that point on, the biggest recruitment factor for the strike was probably the police because they overreacted. They decided that they were going to shut the militants down, and it got to the point that the Tactical Squad was pulling police not just from San Francisco, but Santa Cruz, Vallejo and all over the region.

And of course, the cops relished the opportunity to rough up Black folk, hippies, people who were challenging gender conventions with long hair, people who were peace activists. They saw San Francisco State as a place to vent their racist vitriol. You could feel it, like the heat of their hatred radiated off of them.

This began to politicize more and more students, who saw that law and order wasn't a good response to legitimate demands.

The BSU and the TWLF started doing more education, with a convocation to explain their demands. And they started bringing the community in, from the Mission and the Fillmore and Chinatown.

There was a tremendous transformation. These apolitical students - everyday people who you would have seen on campus - were saying "F*** the pigs" and throwing rocks at the cops.

Part of this had to do with the broader environment, including the war in Vietnam. Ronald Reagan famously said in a press conference that San Francisco State was a domestic Vietnam. There's certainly an exaggeration in that - obviously the things happening in Vietnam, like napalm and the massacre at My Lai, weren't happening at San Francisco State.

But Vietnam was undeniably a subtext for what was happening at State, both in terms of the fact that a group called the Third World Liberation Front was fighting for educational self-determination and the empowerment of oppressed people - and also with the state's response that we need to crush these militants and dissidents because they represent anarchy," just as they were doing with the Panthers.

So Vietnam was the subtext. For those everyday students who weren't militants or radicals themselves, it was difficult to remain neutral when your campus is being occupied militarily every single day. The Tac Squad was out there with huge batons and riot shields and helmets, and they're looking to pick off members of the BSU or TWLF, or crack the skull of some protesting student.

WHAT WAS the response of the administration to the student strike?

In the spring of '68, as I mentioned, the president of SF State, John Summerskill, resigned after that TWLF/SDS sit-in. John Summerskill was a liberal; he was a Kennedy boy. But liberalism was under attack by this point in the movement.

These days, we tend to think about those liberal politics of the 1960s, but the movements by this point had realized that liberals were part of the problem. Liberals just want stability, they don't want to change the power dynamics.

So the liberals were caught in the middle. You had, on the one hand, the right wing, with Reagan and the law-and-order people, and on the other hand, there was the left, with powerful movements pushing for radical demands. They didn't just want reforms. They wanted power - real, meaningful and deep democracy.

The liberals were caught in the middle, pushed and pulled both ways. They might want to help Black people, but they also had a responsibility to and a relationship with the forces on the right that didn't allow them to do that.

So when John Summerskill resigned in the spring of '68, and they brought in another liberal: Education professor Robert Smith. Through the summer and into the fall, he was the president.

But as the strike unfolds, he had the right wing telling him to not close the campus - to bring in the police to maintain order for the "good students" who want to study and kick out the dissident students. Meanwhile, the students are telling him to shut the campus down until we resolve these issues.

Smith tried to occupy a middle ground, with school still in session, but creating spaces where everyone could come and talk about the issues. He proposed a convocation where anybody who was interested could come and learn about the issues of the strike. That didn't satisfy the right, of course, and it didn't satisfy the striking students.

The BSU and TWLF took advantage of the crisis and used the convocation as a platform to educate the nonpolitical students about the origins of the strike. They ultimately walked out, and Robert Smith resigned.

Reagan brought in a new president - another San Francisco State faculty member named S.I Hayakawa. What a character this guy was! He was a megalomaniac who decided that he was going to be the man to shut this down and instill law and order. He was also, as a Japanese-American, a person of color, so the right absolutely loved him because he created all these new dynamics.

So now you have a man of color in the big seat, talking about who the responsible students were, and who the irresponsible students were. But you also have Asian-American students, Black students, Native students and Latino students continuing to push him - they weren't falling for a symbolic "nonwhite face in a high place."

From the point Hayakawa was hired to the end of the strike, the administration was all about "law and order": Use the police to shut down and crush the campus movement.

Importantly, the strength of a lot of the student organizations was in their community programs: the tutorial and community involvement programs. Hayakawa started shutting down their sources of funds, so that dried up.

This is a classic counterinsurgency tactic - kind of like what the right did in the late 1970s and 1980s when it started unraveling social programs.

The New Deal and Great Society programs had all brought in students who had previously been excluded from campus. When that happened, they got politicized. As liberal and reformist as they might have been, these programs politicized people, got them involved in the community and kind of subsidized activism.

So the right wing decided that they were going to cut the programs off at their base, which was their connections to the community.

In the end, Hayakawa became the darling of the right. He eventually became a U.S. senator for California, and of course, his big claim to fame when he was a senator was pushing for English-only in California.

He had a Tam o' Shanter hat, and that Tam o' Shanter hat became a symbol for law and order. He became a celebrity of the right. He was flown out to meet with Richard Nixon because he was seen as the guy who wasn't going to take shit from these militants - and he was a person of color.

HOW DID the students maintain momentum for the strike with so much repression?

THERE WERE days that it was very scary for people, and the big fear was that somebody was going to get killed. It was well-known that the police looked forward to taking out some of the strike leadership of the strike.

And this can't be separated from the police's simultaneous desire to neutralize the Panthers. There were raids on the Panthers office in the Fillmore happening during the Strike.

So it was very, very difficult. But when you've got 3,000 students, and sometimes up to 5,000, out there, that's an inspiring way of boosting spirits.

Then there are dark days like January 23, 1969, when there was a huge bust and well over 400 people were arrested.

The leadership had to be very selective about what days they were going to go on campus, because they knew there were warrants out for Roger Alvarado, the TWLF spokesman, and Benny Stewart, the BSU chairman, and many others.

But it should be said that by this point in the struggle in the spring of 1969, the leadership of the BSU and TWLF were deeply engaged in the community. They had offices in the Fillmore and in the Mission, and they were engaging in many meetings with community leaders to intervene on behalf of the students. They were also organizing on a statewide level with Third World students on other campuses.

HOW SUCCESSFUL was the strike in shutting down the campus?

IT WAS never a hundred percent. But think about it: Even if students and faculty were still holding classes, imagine trying to go to your class, and you have to march through the Tac Squad and through 2,000 students out on the central square just to get there. It would be a little nerve-wracking.

LATER ON in the strike, the faculty walked out, too. Can you talk about how that developed and what effect it had on getting the administration to settle?

THE FACULTY had a long set of issues going back many years, which were connected to efforts to organize a union for faculty. The organization that was representing faculty at the time was a professional association - it wasn't a real union.

There was a group of radical faculty at SF State that wanted a real union. Some had ties to the labor movement themselves. Some - many of them on the younger side - had ties to the wider movement.

That's another thing to recognize about San Francisco State: Some of the faculty wanted to be there because they were young and hip and cool. They smoked weed and went to the jazz clubs. It wasn't like Berkeley or Stanford or other places, where the faculty was stodgy and separate from the life of the community.

These people were young, some of them in the 20s, and they were politically involved. San Francisco State was a specific destination for them. This was another way in which the political and cultural life of the campus was interwoven with the political and cultural life of the city.

So the question of power was part of all of this. On the one hand, students at SF State were making specific demands challenging the power of the Board of Trustees and, quite frankly, the larger political economy of higher education in California. They were challenging the so-called Master Plan for Higher Education, in which students were tracked. Some students, mainly white and middle class ones, were tracked for the UCs, some people tracked to the CSUs, and then some people, mostly working people and people of color, tracked directly to the community colleges.

The demands of the TWLF and the BSU were challenging that system, and saying: "We want power; we want autonomy." And the faculty wanted that power, too.

For years, the Board of Trustees had tried to control and centralize the educational process - to seize power away from individual campuses and away from faculty and students.

The faculty was fighting for the bread-and-butter issues of a trade union, too. They wanted better salaries, better working conditions, a grievance procedure - classic union stuff.

When the students went out on strike, there were already some faculty who had issues with the Trustees, and they supported the students. There was faculty, for instance, who tried to get between the police and the students at various times.

By December, they were telling the administration that they better deal with the students, or we're going to go out on strike, too. But by that point, they didn't want to deal with the students. Hayakawa was looking to crush the strike, not settle it.

So the faculty walked out in January. The San Francisco Labor Council sanctioned the strike, which meant that deliveries weren't coming through and garbage was piling up across campus. Nobody was going to cross the picket line.

The authorities were becoming quite concerned that this could turn into some type of regional insurrection if the strike were to spread to the Fillmore, the Western Addition, the Mission, Bayview-Hunters Point. They feared that if the struggle deepened, they weren't going to be able to keep it confined it to just the campus anymore.

So the community was involved, labor was involved, and other campuses were threatening strikes. One could argue that this is why we got a College of Ethnic Studies. The power in the street was just too strong.

WHAT WAS the outcome of the strike? What did the strikers win, and what did they lose?

THE STUDENTS got their demands for the most part - except that George Murray never came back to SF State.

In the middle of the strike, he was arrested. He was under constant surveillance, and he got pulled over driving in the South Bay. He had a gun in his car, which wasn't surprising: he was the Minister of Education of the Black Panther Party, an organization undergoing intense political repression.

They used that as a pretext to throw him into jail. From jail, Murray became part of the negotiations to end the strike. But by that point, he left the party and became a minister.

The BSU and TWLF settled the strike, and they ultimately established the College of Ethnic Studies during the fall 1969 semester - which was composed of a Black Studies Department, La Raza Studies Department, Asian American Studies Department and, eventually, an American Indian Studies Department.

Then came the business of offering classes and hiring people. It was different at that time, because there really weren't a whole lot of people with PhDs in La Raza Studies. So they often ended up hiring folks from the community to teach - or members of the Black Student Union who were graduate students.

But this campus/community relationship was actually fundamental to the mission of these early departments.

IN THE first year of Ethnic Studies, many of the original faculty were pushed out. Can you talk about how the administration was able to do that?

A LOT of the original faculty in Ethnic Studies either got fired, didn't get rehired or got pushed out.

But have some perspective: This was after five months of that type of grueling strike, where there was so much sacrifice, where people's personal relationships were damaged, where there was a level of paranoia and police infiltration. There was a real fatigue factor - people asked if they wanted to jump right back into that in the fall of 1969.

At the same time, some of the members of BSU, like Nesbit Crutchfield, were sent to prison on trumped-up charges. By the spring of 1969, 400-plus people had been arrested. That took the wind out of the sails of the movement. All of a sudden, you had to figure out how to represent 400 people in the courts, facing felony charges.

Some people, like members of PL, said that it was important to organize against the courts and represent themselves, to show how the courts are part of a class system. But there are a lot of other people who were arrested who just weren't political in that way. They had been rounded up and thrown into jail, and the leadership of the BSU and TWLF felt a responsibility to defend these people.

There was a legal defense campaign that lasted a full year, which was draining, just representing these people, getting the evidence and lawyers together, trying to get the charges dropped. So in the fall of '69 and into the spring of '70, people were stretched thin.

And on top of that, some people started to look away from organizing on campus. They participated in all these struggles, like against the police in the Mission or defending the elderly at the I Hotel. So some people in the movement invested their energies into other spheres of struggle.

As a result, there wasn't a strong defense of the people who were trying to build Ethnic Studies. In some ways, that created a vacuum, and the people who filled that vacuum - in my view and the view of many of the original strikers - were a combination of traditional bourgeois academics or cultural nationalists.

So people sort of burrowed down into their spaces and did their academic work, but it wasn't connected to working-class struggles anymore in an organic way. Plus, the cultural nationalists were always critical of the Panthers - and, by extension, the BSU - anyway, because the Panthers worked with white folks or were Marxists or identified as Third World revolutionaries.

CAN YOU talk about the legacy of the strike 50 years later - both for our radical history and for how it shaped San Francisco's struggles and grassroots institutions?

I TEND to talk about San Francisco as one of the global epicenters of an international revolutionary movement. Havana, Algiers, Dar es Salaam: those would be other ones. San Francisco is one of those places where the local and the international converge.

What happened at San Francisco State remade the city. I think of it as similar to the famous 1934 strike of longshore workers, and the impact that had on the political terrain of San Francisco.

What happened at San Francisco State in 1968 reverberated throughout the city. Many of the institutions bettering the city right now have connections to the strike - if not directly, then indirectly. People went from their experience at State and got involved in the community.

There were community health clinics started out of the strike, as well as KPOO, a people's radio station. People from the Black Student Union were centrally involved in the politics of the Western Addition, and some of them joined together to start this radio station. It's still standing today - still community-based radio.

Then, of course, there's Los Siete de la Raza - many of the people who were involved in Los Siete de La Raza were connected to the student strike at SF State and the College of San Mateo.

Los Siete developed free breakfast for children and community health centers. They developed legal aid centers and put out a community newspaper called Basta Ya that ran for a couple years. After that, the organization dedicated more time to organizing workers at the point of production.

All of these things gave birth to and catalyzed community-oriented institutions. El Tecolote, a free bilingual newspaper, while not a Los Siete creation itself, represents the next iteration after Basta Ya. It was started by students at San Francisco State in the La Raza journalism class.

It served a need because Latinos continued to suffer from horribly racist coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, which referred to Raza youth as dirty, Latin, hippy gangsters and so forth. So folks decided to create their own newspaper and report on their own community. El Tecolote still publishes out of the Mission District.

After the strike, some people got burnt out and decided that this academic thing wasn't worth it. They got more involved in the community - in the struggle at the I Hotel, for example. Plus, in the fall of 1969, Native students were part of the occupation of Alcatraz Island.

So the strike produced a wave of energy that permeated the city: The I Hotel, Alcatraz, Los Siete, the Panthers - they were all connected to what happened at SF State and propelled forward by the strike, even if the struggles had national and international reverberations.

The other legacy that I would mention is the participation of Chinese students in the strike.

The experience of the strike led to dramatic changes within the community as folks began challenging the established leadership in Chinatown of the Chinese Six Companies. This leadership was very conservative, connected to the politics of Taiwan and the political right. Then suddenly, you had young Chinese students asking about who this guy Mao is, and working with youth in the community.

The politicization at State led to their deeper involvement in Chinatown politics, developing the voice of Chinatown youth and connecting with those people in the community who had been silenced - like the Communists who had a history going back to the 1930s in Chinatown, but who had been silenced and purged because of McCarthyism and the right-wing leadership.

So a new generation came to be the foot soldiers in a challenge to the traditional leadership in the community. This also happened in the Mission.

So when I say there's a rich history and legacy of the SF State strike, it's not confined to a syllabus or even to the campus itself. It's in the neighborhoods of San Francisco, and it's tied to both a national and international struggle.

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Fifty years ago, students at San Francisco State were fighting racism and repression during the longest student strike in U.S. history.

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Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Zen buddhist monk and peace activist from Vietnam meets Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in 1966, after corresponding with him. The two become close friends and King nominates Hahn for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.

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Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Zen buddhist monk and peace activist from Vietnam meets Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in 1966, after corresponding with him. The two become close friends and King nominates Hahn for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.

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In the new book Brothers in the Beloved Community: The Friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr., author Marc Andrus chronicles the relationship that developed between the two spiritual leaders as allies in the peace movement and as friends. The two met in 1966 and only knew each other for a few years before Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, but they bonded over a shared vision of the Beloved Community, where all are included and at peace with one another, and where each being in the community is connected to every other being. Read three passages from the book below:
Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr.'s First Meeting in 1966
A. J. Muste, working on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, arranged a meeting between Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago on May 31, 1966. They conferred privately for some time, discussing the latest crises in Vietnam, and then held a joint press conference at the Sheraton-Chicago Hotel.

The paradoxical nature of this meeting is that there are no detailed notes on the private conversation and no transcript or recording of the press conference is known at this time. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Nhat Hanh recalled, "We had a discussion about peace, freedom, and community. And we agreed that without a community, we cannot go very far."

The main artifacts of the 1966 meeting are photographs of Nhat Hanh and King at the press conference. The power of these photographs is felt immediately: the men have an intensity of expression, and their youthful energy radiates from them. If the photographs can be considered to have iconic quality, it would be of friendship and solidarity. They are not two men working on isolated issues; the message is their commitment and their common cause.

At some point that day, likely during the press conference, they released a joint statement. The statement read:

"We believe that the Buddhists who have sacrificed themselves, like the martyrs of the civil rights movement, do not aim at the injury of the oppressors but only at changing their policies. The enemies of those struggling for freedom and democracy are not man. They are discrimination, dictatorship, greed, hatred and violence, which lie within the heart of man. These are the real enemies of man-not man himself. We also believe that the struggles for equality and freedom in Birmingham, Selma and Chicago, as in Hue, Danang and Saigon, are aimed not at the domination of one people by another. They are aimed at self-determination, peaceful social change, and a better life for all human beings. And we believe that only in a world of peace can the work of construction, of building good societies everywhere, go forward. We join in the plea, written June 1, 1965, by Thich Nhat Hanh in a letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., 'Do not kill man, even in man's name. Please kill the real enemies of man which are present everywhere, in our very hearts and minds.'"

This brief statement of mutuality and solidarity bursts with meaning; in it, deaths that had been conceived of as suicides are redefined as martyrs' deaths. Further, common cause is made between those in the Vietnamese peace movement and Black civil rights activists. For some, the fact that Nhat Hanh was not a partisan for either North or South Vietnam must surely have been lost in the seeming enormity of King making a joint statement with a representative of a country at war with the United States.

Living in the Beloved Community meant, for King, living in what he called "the World House," or as Nhat Hanh would express it, "becoming a citizen of the world." King believed that living in the World House didn't mean abandoning his national and local causes, but whatever he personally believed, the wider public wondered if King was trading civil rights for Blacks for peace for Vietnam, and other international causes, such as international justice.

To make this statement together, on their first meeting, was an extraordinary beginning to their relationship. At the May 31, 1966 meeting, with its private conversation followed by the press conference, we may say that Nhat Hanh and King began a friendship that is at the heart of the Beloved Community to which both men dedicated their lives.

***
Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr.'s Last Meeting in 1967
In May 1967 the World Council of Churches held a Pacem in Terris conference in Geneva, Switzerland, and Nhat Hanh and King both attended. The New York Times reported that King delivered a "bitter denunciation" of the Vietnam War there. The conference was also the last time that King and Nhat Hanh would meet. Their meeting may be seen as a metaphysical exchange between friends, marked by human warmth and humor. Here is how Nhat Hanh describes their meeting:

Dr. King was staying on the eleventh floor; I was on the fourth floor. He invited me up for breakfast. On my way, I was detained by the press, so I arrived late. He had kept the breakfast warm for me and had waited for me. I greeted him, "Dr. King, Dr. King!" "Dr. Hanh, Dr. Hanh!" he replied. We were able to continue our discussion on peace, freedom, and community, and what kind of steps America could take to end the war. And we agreed that without a community, we cannot go very far. Without a happy, harmonious community, we will not be able to realize our dream. I said to him, "Martin, do you know something? In Vietnam they call you a bodhisattva, an enlightened being trying to awaken other living beings and help them move toward more compassion and understanding." I'm glad I had the chance to tell him that, because just a few months later he was assassinated in Memphis.

According to Sister Chan Khong, [a Vietnamese nun and the first fully-ordained monastic disciple of Thich Nhat Hanh], it was at the Pacem in Terris meeting that King shared his understanding of the Beloved Community with Nhat Hanh. The importance of community was a mutual value for the two men; in fact, Sister Chan Khong holds that since before his ordination at the age of sixteen, Nhat Hanh has worked for "true sisterhood and brotherhood" in Vietnam.

In return, Nhat Hanh tells King that he is viewed as a "great bodhisattva" in Vietnam, an enlightened being with the quality of awakening compassion in others. King is not the only person Nhat Hanh calls a great bodhisattva. In other places, he calls the Earth, the Sun, the mother of the Buddha, and Sister Chan Khong "great bodhisattvas." The designation by Nhat Hanh of non-traditional bodhisattvas is far more than a personal, affectionate bestowing of an honorific. Nhat Hanh is advancing his ideas of the restoration and reformation of Buddhism by his expansion of the beings who may be venerated as bodhisattvas. In Thich Nhat Hanh's communities, well-known bodhisattvas, venerated throughout the Mahayana, are honored too, resettling the landscape of the holy. For instance, by invoking the mother of the Buddha and Sister Chan Khong, Nhat Hanh honors human women. A central goal of his reform of Buddhism in Vietnam has been gender equality in monastic Buddhism, and the honoring of a human woman as a bodhisattva furthers that goal. King, as a Christian American, might be another challenging entry into the lists of the holy for Vietnamese Buddhists, when placed next to Manjusri and Avalokiteshvara. Both King and Sister Chan Khong are also people of the contemporary world, bringing the idea of the holy close. The Earth and the Sun as bodhisattvas are in keeping with Nhat Hanh's contributions to the Beloved Community; with Nhat Hanh, the concept is completely inclusive-all human life, all life we recognize as sentient, all beings of the cosmos.

As to what King made of Nhat Hanh's message during their Geneva meeting, I can only join my hopes to those of Nhat Hanh's, that it was a comfort to King as he faced the challenges of what would be the last months of his life.

***
Thich Nhat Hanh's Reaction to Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death
The day after King's "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech, he was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. With him were several close friends and coworkers in the civil rights movement, including Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, and Jesse Jackson. The morning after hearing the news, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a heartbroken letter to his and King's mutual friend Raphael Gould, one of the directors of the Fellowship of Reconciliation: "I did not sleep last night. . . . They killed Martin Luther King. They killed us. I am afraid the root of violence is so deep in the heart and mind and manner of this society. They killed him. They killed my hope. I do not know what to say. . . . He made so great an impression [on] me. This morning I have the impression that I cannot bear the loss."

Years later, Nhat Hanh recalled: "I was in New York when I heard the news of his assassination; I was devastated. I could not eat; I could not sleep. I made a deep vow to continue building what he called 'the beloved community,' not only for myself but for him also. I have done what I promised to Martin Luther King Jr. And I think that I have always felt his support."

This brief statement, made before Nhat Hanh's massive stroke in 2014, is replete with the qualities of friendship and love. At the affective level, we see that Nhat Hanh was deeply moved by King's death. Nhat Hanh's reaction to the news of King's death was not that of a dispassionate observer, but rather of someone aware of their interconnection and of the love that provides the interconnection in both the model of reality that Nhat Hanh had inherited and in the model he adopted from King: the Beloved Community. One does not make a "deep vow" to continue a great work of someone at a great remove, but rather to continue the work of someone one loves.

Anyone who has known a great love in their life knows that the measurement of that loving relationship in days marked off on a calendar is perhaps the least meaningful way to measure the relationship, if measuring ever enters the picture at all.

The friendship between Nhat Hanh and King in the world we access with our senses spans a short period of time-from 1965 to 1968. The points of contact between the two men over that slender skein of years is equally meager: an open letter on the immolations in Vietnam, the meeting in Chicago, the Nobel Peace Prize nomination, a second meeting in Geneva, and a tiny number of errata-these constitute the historical deposit of their relationship. Yet Nhat Hanh's 2014 statement about King is suffused with the warmth of friendship and brotherhood.

⧫

Adapted from Brothers In The Beloved Community: The Friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr. by Marc Andrus (2021) with permission of Parallax Press.

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A look into the friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr., two brothers working to build a Beloved Community

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The Untold Story of Latin America

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Harvest of Empire The Untold Story of Latinos in America

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 The Emergency Detention Act of (1950) was repealed due to joint Black and Japanese activism. This law would have given the US President the power to establish concentration camps at any time. (1967-1971) 

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 The Emergency Detention Act of (1950) was repealed due to joint Black and Japanese activism. This law would have given the US President the power to establish concentration camps at any time. (1967-1971) 

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Twenty years after Japanese Americans had left the World War II concentration camps, the Black Civil Rights and Black Power Movements stirred Japanese Americans into a four-year movement to repeal the law that gave the U.S. President executive fiat to institute concentration camps at any time. This was one of the earliest issues at the beginning of the Asian American Movement that shows how Japanese Americans have an intertwined history with African Americans, and the interactions it produced.

What follows are excerpts from an article in Amerasia 2:2 (Fall 1974)...

--

From the editor's introduction:

The Emergency Detention Act, as Okamura points out, "might have become another obsolete and unenforced law, but it started to gain new meaning in early 1967." Rumors spread rapidly through Black communities that concentration camps were being prepared for Black people in order to put an end to their "riots." Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Malcolm X , and eventually Martin Luther King, Jr. claimed that if Japanese Americans could be placed in concentration camps, so could Black people. Rumors also spread through the anti-war movement that mass incarcerations were being planned to thwart its protest of the Vietnam war.

It was in this setting that a four-year campaign to repeal the Emergency Detention Act was launched and spearheaded by the authors of the following articles and commentaries. Ray Okamura and Edison Uno served as national co-chairmen for the National Ad Hoc Committee for Repeal of the Emergency Detention Act. Judge Robert Takasugi was the national legal counsel for JACL, and Hiroshi Kanno served as the JACL's Midwest District chairman for the repeal drive. These articles are the first public discussions, which have been written by the participants themselves, on the campaign that culminated with the successful repeal of Title II on September 21, 1971.
More on the campaign to repeal Title II, below the fold...
From the article " Campaign To Repeal The Emergency Detention Act,"

by Raymond Okamura, Robert Takasugi, Hiroshi Kanno and Edison Uno

Amerasia Journa l Volume 2, Number 2, Fall 1974, pp. 71-94

Passage of the Law (1950)

The Internal Security Act of 1950 was passed shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War and during the Joseph McCarthy era of communist witchhunts. The law consisted of two parts: Title I, the Subversive Activities Control Act; and Title II, the Emergency Detention Act. Parts of Title I, which required the registration of Communists, were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and repealed in 1968. However, the remainder of Title I, which placed restrictions on organizations and individuals labeled "Communist" by the Subversive Activities Control Board, and all of Title II were retained.

Both Titles I and II became popularly known as the "McCarran Act," but Title I would more accurately be called the "Mundt-Nixon Act," because Representatives Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon were the originators, and Senator Pat McCarran was only a later co-sponsor. Similarly, Title II should have been called the Kilgore-Douglas-Humphrey, et al. Act," because during the Senate debate on Title I, "liberal" Senators Kilgore, Douglas, Humphrey, Lehman, Graham, Kefauver, and Benton introduced Title II as a substitute bill, supposedly as a tactic to defeat Title I. McCarran, himself, opposed Title II, calling it "a concentration camp law, pure and simple." Mundt, also, opposed Title II, calling it a program for "establishing concentration camps into which people might be put without benefit of trial, but merely by executive fiat . . . simply by an assumption, mind you, that an individual might be thinking about engaging in espionage or sabotage." In June, 1950, the Korean War broke out, public paranoia of communism intensified, and easily-panicked liberals joined conservatives to pass both Titles I and II. President Harry Truman vetoed the legislation, calling it "a long step toward totalitarianism," but Congress overrode the veto by a two-thirds vote, and the Internal Security Act became law on Sept. 23, 1950.

...

A New Meaning (1967)

The Emergency Detention Act might have become another obsolete and unenforced law, but it started to gain new meaning in early 1967. The civil rights movement was transformed into the Black Power movement, and blazing ghetto riots shook the nation's complacency. Simultaneously, the anti-Vietnam war movement gained momentum with massive demonstrations, and an alarming number of white youths "dropped out" of the established system. The silent generation of the 1950s was over, and America entered a period of protest and uncertainty. The power structure responded with police violence and resistance to change. Blacks, war protestors, and counter-culture youth began to worry about severe repression, and rumors of concentration camps for unpopular Americans began circulating. "Concentration Camps USA", a booklet by Charles Allen, Jr., was the first published account of the Title II detention camps, and it became the basis for all subsequent articles on the subject. By mid-1967, the concentration camp rumors increased, as Black militants Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown made speeches about it, and articles appeared in the underground newspapers.

...

By late May, the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) was formed in Berkeley, California, and one of its first activities was to issue an information leaflet, "Concentration Camps USA," which reviewed the dangers of Title II and discussed the controversy to date. Breaking with previous norms by practicing militancy and advocating Asian pride and unity, AAPA founded what is known today as the "Asian movement." (AAPA was first to promote use of "Asian" rather than "oriental.") AAPA -members forcefully spoke out against Title II at various public gatherings-from Black Panther Party rallies to meetings of the Oakland City Council. Also, as a means of reaching the more traditional-minded Asians, AAPA started a petition drive calling on Congress to repeal Title II.

The JACL Resolution

After months of futile correspondence with congressmen and refusals of the Northern California and National American Civil Liberties Unions to become involved in legal or legislative action, Okamura decided to join the JACL and follow the procedure earlier outlined by Masaoka. On June 2, 1968, Okamura, together with a veteran JACL member, Mary Anna Takagi of Oakland, California, called the first meeting to organize an ad hoc committee to get the JACL involved. The initial committee consisted of only seven members from the Berkeley, Contra Costa, and Oakland chapters of JACL.

This small East Bay group realized that Japanese Americans, asthe past victims of American concentration camps, were in the best position to lead a repeal campaign. Moreover, the group felt it was imperative for Japanese Americans to assume the leadership in order to promote Third World unity. Japanese Americans had been the passive beneficiaries of the Black civil rights movement, and this campaign was the perfect issue by which Japanese Americans could make a contribution to the overall struggle for justice in the United States. The group decided to campaign visibly as Japanese Americans and to utilize the ready-made organizational structure of the JACL. JACL was the only Japanese American organization with a paid Washington lobbyist and a national legislative capability.

For the full article: subscribe to Amerasia and get full access to all the back issues of Amerasia online through Metapress.com or through participating libraries that subscribe to Amerasia Journal.
Other articles on the Repeal Movement of Title II:
"Prohibiting 'American Concentration Camps': Repeal of the Emergency Detention Act and the Public Historical Memory of the Japanese American Internment" by Masumi Izumi, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 2, May, 2005, pp. 165-193.

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Historical Note: Japanese Americans Support Black Civil Rights Struggle

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Twenty years after Japanese Americans had left the World War II concentration camps, the Black Civil Rights and Black Power Movements stirred Japanese Americans into a four-year movement to repeal ...

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Milestones: 1866–1898 - Office of the Historian

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The term “Asian American” was coined by UC Berkeley students who were inspired by the Black Power Movement (1968)

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The term “Asian American” was coined by UC Berkeley students who were inspired by the Black Power Movement (1968)

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LOS ANGELES - The term "Asian American" appears innocuous today. It's in the name of film festivals, professional organizations, college clubs and an officially recognized heritage month.

But that wasn't always so.

When the phrase Asian American was created - in 1968, according to activists and academics - it was a radical label of self-determination that indicated a political agenda of equality, anti-racism and anti-imperialism. Asian American was an identity that was chosen, not one that was given.

Over the last 50 years, however, as people of Asian ancestry in the United States have grown in number and diversity, the term has evolved - raising new questions of who is included in Asian America, what it stands for and if it's still relevant.

"If you were to ask most people who are Asian American, 'Describe your race or ethnicity,' they would say, 'I'm Japanese American,' 'I'm Thai, Cambodian, Filipino.' Very few of us would start out by saying, 'I'm Asian American,'" Daryl Maeda, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder and author of the book, "Rethinking the Asian American Movement," said.

"Instead, 'Asian American' - rather than describing our personally felt identities or describing our family histories - expresses an idea. And that idea is that as Asian Americans, we have to work together to fight for social justice and equality, not only for ourselves, but for all of the people around us."

Activists and academics trace the origins of the term back to 1968 and University of California, Berkeley students Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, who, inspired by the Black Power Movement and the protests against the Vietnam War, founded the Asian American Political Alliance as way to unite Japanese, Chinese and Filipino American students on campus.

But Ronald Quidachay, who co-founded the Philippine American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE) at the then-San Francisco State College in 1967, said the term "Asian American" took time to catch on.

"Nobody was referring to themselves as 'Asian,'" he said of the Third World Liberation Front strikes in 1968 and 1969, when Ichioka and Gee's Asian American Political Alliance joined with PACE, the Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action, as well as black, Latino and Native American students at San Francisco State to demand ethnic studies and more faculty and students of color.

"It was very interesting," Quidachay, who is now a Superior Court judge in San Francisco, said of first hearing the term. "My step-dad from Guam, his father was decapitated in World War II by the Japanese... I didn't have this animosity, but I was certainly familiar with these sorts of concerns that people from Guam, and even the Philippines, had."

This pan-Asian identity wasn't necessarily an obvious one. Before this, people of Asian ancestry identified with their ethnic group and didn't see commonalities with each other.

For instance, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was up for renewal in 1902, Maeda said, Japanese immigrants didn't protest it, and when people of Japanese descent were forced into incarceration camps during World War II, Chinese and Korean Americans often wore buttons stating their ethnicity so that they wouldn't be mistaken for being Japanese.

"In other words, the injustice here isn't that you're incarcerating Japanese Americans, the injustice is that you're lumping us in with them unfairly," Maeda said.

The Morning Rundown

The term Asian American, however, signaled a shared and interconnected history of immigration, labor exploitation and racism, as well as a common political agenda. It was also a pushback against the pejorative word "Oriental."

"There was a recognition that the term Oriental was a Eurocentric term that geographically referenced the East relative to Europe," said Karen Umemoto, director of UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, which was co-founded by Ichioka in 1969. "Many of the stereotypes of Orientals and Orientalism was part of the project of imperialist conquest - British, and later, American - in Asia, with the exoticization of the Oriental as well as the creation of threat and fear, as evidenced in the yellow peril movement."

The U.S. Census first used the term Asian American in 1980, according to Paul Ong, a professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA who has also served as an advisor to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. It was only in 2016 that the U.S. government formally banned the word Oriental in federal law, instead requiring the use of the term Asian American.

While the term Asian American was used in activist and academic circles, it took decades for the term to become popularized across the country.

The turning point, said Helen Zia, a journalist and author of the book, "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People," was the 1982 killing of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American who was mistaken for being Japanese at a time when auto workers in Detroit were being laid off in part because of competition with Japanese manufacturers.

"The nature of the killing of Vincent Chin compelled people to see what there was in common," said Zia, referring to different Asian ethnicities. "So whether people wanted to feel like there was anything in common or not, they could not deny that if they looked that way, they could be killed, whether they were Japanese ethnically or not."

Zia, who helped organize the community in response to Chin's killing, said the national movement that followed helped bring together Asian Americans of all different backgrounds at a time when they made up only about 3.5 million, or less than 2 percent of the total population, according to the U.S. Census.

"The fact that they could come together and multiply their presence in the American democracy was huge," she said. "It really was an empowering recognition... It raised the stakes in terms of no-you can't ignore this population."

In addition, Chin's case also introduced the Asian Americans to white Americans.

"To the rest of America at the time, Asian people didn't exist in the popular consciousness," said Zia. "They were like, 'Oh, where did these people come from? What - they're organizing, they have a voice, they're talking about racism? What - they speak English?' These were all the reactions we got... It was a teaching process."

But just as Asian America took shape, it expanded and evolved.

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act - which changed immigration quotas for non-European countries - and the conflicts in Southeast Asia resulted in new populations from countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of anti-miscegenation laws in 1967's Loving v. Virginia led to a boom in the number of multiracial Asian Americans.

Even as Asian American remained a strategic political label, this diversity also meant that recognizing each ethnicity on its own terms became a critical tool for advancement.

For instance, Kathy Ko Chin, president of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, explained that when viewed as a single group, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders had the highest rates of health insurance coverage in the country in 2013. But by disaggregating the data, she found that not all groups fared equally well - for example, more than 20 percent of Korean Americans were uninsured in her analysis, a higher rate than any other racial category. Knowing this, the APIAHF was able to address the disparity.

"Because we see the challenges of having only aggregated data," said Chin, "the only way to address those challenges is through disaggregated data. It's using a powerful tool to zero in on how to best achieve equity for our communities."

There are approximately 21.4 million people of Asian descent living in the United States, according to a 2016 U.S. Census estimate. They come from more than 20 countries and are now the fastest growing major racial or ethnic group in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.

With this growth and diversification of the community come new questions about what it means to be Asian American, who belongs, and which issues to advocate for.

Sarath Suong, executive director of the Providence Youth Student Movement, which organizes Southeast Asian youth in Rhode Island, said that as a Cambodian refugee, he often feels like he doesn't fit into Asian America.

"Growing up during the 1980s and 1990s, the Asians we saw were East Asian, and often images of the model minority," he said. "And that never felt like us. We were failing out of schools, we were being harassed and profiled by the police, and there was a really fast school to prison pipeline - and now, a school to deportation pipeline."

"When I wanted to join Asian-American groups, I always felt like I was othered by my skin color, my class or my refugee experience," Suong added. "I've always felt, personally and as a community, rejected by Asian America."

Deepa Iyer, author of the book "We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future," said South Asians grapple with similar questions of who - and which issues - belong under the umbrella of Asian America.

"In the wake of 9/11, South Asians would bring up the need to address national security and that be something that Asian Americans look at broadly, but oftentimes they felt that those issues were not part and parcel of the policy agenda of Asian-American organizations," she said, citing Islamophobia as another such issue.

"Questions from those who find themselves on the margins of the Asian-American community - who are mainly South Asian and Southeast Asian - can be really helpful in refining an analysis of what it means to be Asian in this country."

For others, the future of Asian American is about reconnecting with the term's roots.

"Today when a community of immigrants and the descendants of immigrants from Asia is more diverse than ever, the term Asian American is more essential than ever before," Maeda said. "People of Asian ancestry continue to face discrimination, harassment and prejudice, and just as it's been over the past century-and-a-half, we exist in a society that sees us all as one, as all looking the same, as all being the same."

"And given that that's the case," he added, "it's even more incumbent upon us to come together to fight for social justice."
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After 50 years of 'Asian American,' advocates say the term is 'more essential than ever'

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LOS ANGELES - The term "Asian American" appears innocuous today. It's in the name of film festivals, professional organizations, college clubs and an officially recognized heritage month. But that wasn't always so. When the phrase Asian American was created - in 1968, according to activists and academics - it was a radical label of self-determination that indicated a political agenda of equality, anti-racism and anti-imperialism.

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Transcript

(Transcription of the Judgement of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson.)

Supreme Court of the United States,
No. 210, October Term, 1895.
Homer Adolph Plessy,
Plaintiff in Error,
vs.
J.H. Ferguson, Judge of Section "A"
Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans
In Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana

This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana, and was argued by counsel.

On consideration whereof, It is now here ordered and adjudged by this Court that the judgement of the said Supreme Court, in this cause, be and the the same is hereby, affirmed with costs.

per Mr. Justice Brown,
May 18, 1896.

Dissenting:
Mr. Justice Harlan

(Transcription of Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson.)
U.S. Supreme Court
PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
May 18, 1896.
This was a petition for writs of prohibition and certiorari originally filed in the supreme court of the state by Plessy, the plaintiff in error, against the Hon. John H. Ferguson, judge of the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth, in substance, the following facts:

That petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a resident of the state of Louisiana, of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him, and that he was entitled to every recognition, right, privilege, and immunity secured to the citizens of the United States of the white race by its constitution and laws; that on June 7, 1892, he engaged and paid for a first-class passage on the East Louisiana Railway, from New Orleans to Covington, in the same state, and thereupon entered a passenger train, and took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated; that such railroad company was incorporated by the laws of Louisiana as a common carrier, and was not authorized to distinguish between citizens according to their race, but, notwithstanding this, petitioner was required by the conductor, under penalty of ejection from said train and imprisonment, to vacate said coach, and occupy another seat, in a coach assigned by said company for persons not of the white race, and for no other reason than that petitioner was of the colored race; that, upon petitioner's refusal to comply with such order, he was, with the aid of a police officer, forcibly ejected from said coach, and hurried off to, and imprisoned in, the parish jail of New Orleans, and there held to answer a charge made by such officer to the effect that he was guilty of having criminally violated an act of the general assembly of the state, approved July 10, 1890, in such case made and provided.

The petitioner was subsequently brought before the recorder of the city for preliminary examination, and committed for trial to the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, where an information was filed against him in the matter above set forth, for a violation of the above act, which act the petitioner affirmed to be null and void, because in conflict with the constitution of the United States; that petitioner interposed a plea to such information, based upon the unconstitutionality of the act of the general assembly, to which the district attorney, on behalf of the state, filed a demurrer; that, upon issue being joined upon such demurrer and plea, the court sustained the demurrer, overruled the plea, and ordered petitioner to plead over to the facts set forth in the information, and that, unless the judge of the said court be enjoined by a writ of prohibition from further proceeding in such case, the court will proceed to fine and sentence petitioner to imprisonment, and thus deprive him of his constitutional rights set forth in his said plea, notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of the act under which he was being prosecuted; that no appeal lay from such sentence, and petitioner was without relief or remedy except by writs of prohibition and certiorari. Copies of the information and other proceedings in the criminal district court were annexed to the petition as an exhibit.

Upon the filing of this petition, an order was issued upon the respondent to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue, and be made perpetual, and a further order that the record of the proceedings had in the criminal cause be certified and transmitted to the supreme court.

To this order the respondent made answer, transmitting a certified copy of the proceedings, asserting the constitutionality of the law, and averring that, instead of pleading or admitting that he belonged to the colored race, the said Plessy declined and refused, either by pleading or otherwise, to admit that he was in any sense or in any proportion a colored man.

The case coming on for hearing before the supreme court, that court was of opinion that the law under which the prosecution was had was constitutional and denied the relief prayed for by the petitioner (Ex parte Plessy, 45 La. Ann. 80, 11 South. 948); whereupon petitioner prayed for a writ of error from this court, which was allowed by the chief justice of the supreme court of Louisiana.

Mr. Justice Harlan dissenting.

A. W. Tourgee and S. F. Phillips, for plaintiff in error.

Alex. Porter Morse, for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice BROWN, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.

This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the general assembly of the state of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. Acts 1890, No. 111, p. 152.

The first section of the statute enacts 'that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations: provided, that this section shall not be construed to apply to street railroads. No person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong to.'

By the second section it was enacted 'that the officers of such passenger trains shall have power and are hereby required to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs; any passenger insisting on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison, and any officer of any railroad insisting on assigning a passenger to a coach or compartment other than the one set aside for the race to which said passenger belongs, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison; and should any passenger refuse to occupy the coach or compartment to which he or she is assigned by the officer of such railway, said officer shall have power to refuse to carry such passenger on his train, and for such refusal neither he nor the railway company which he represents shall be liable for damages in any of the courts of this state.'

The third section provides penalties for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railway companies to comply with the act, with a proviso that 'nothing in this act shall be construed as applying to nurses attending children of the other race.' The fourth section is immaterial.

The information filed in the criminal district court charged, in substance, that Plessy, being a passenger between two stations within the state of Louisiana, was assigned by officers of the company to the coach used for the race to which he belonged, but he insisted upon going into a coach used by the race to which he did not belong. Neither in the information nor plea was his particular race or color averred.

The petition for the writ of prohibition averred that petitioner was seven-eights Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him; and that he was entitled to every right, privilege, and immunity secured to citizens of the United States of the white race; and that, upon such theory, he took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated, and was ordered by the conductor to vacate said coach, and take a seat in another, assigned to persons of the colored race, and, having refused to comply with such demand, he was forcibly ejected, with the aid of a police officer, and imprisoned in the parish jail to answer a charge of having violated the above act.

The constitutionality of this act is attacked upon the ground that it conflicts both with the thirteenth amendment of the constitution, abolishing slavery, and the fourteenth amendment, which prohibits certain restrictive legislation on the part of the states.

1. That it does not conflict with the thirteenth amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument. Slavery implies involuntary servitude,-a state of bondage; the ownership of mankind as a chattel, or, at least, the control of the labor and services of one man for the benefit of another, and the absence of a legal right to the disposal of his own person, property, and services. This amendment was said in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, to have been intended primarily to abolish slavery, as it had been previously known in this country, and that it equally forbade Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade, when they amounted to slavery or involuntary servitude, and that the use of the word 'servitude' was intended to prohibit the use of all forms of involuntary slavery, of whatever class or name. It was intimated, however, in that case, that this amendment was regarded by the statesmen of that day as insufficient to protect the colored race from certain laws which had been enacted in the Southern states, imposing upon the colored race onerous disabilities and burdens, and curtailing their rights in the pursuit of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little value; and that the fourteenth amendment was devised to meet this exigency.

So, too, in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was said that the act of a mere individual, the owner of an inn, a public conveyance or place of amusement, refusing accommodations to colored people, cannot be justly regarded as imposing any badge of slavery or servitude upon the applicant, but only as involving an ordinary civil injury, properly cognizable by the laws of the state, and presumably subject to redress by those laws until the contrary appears. 'It would be running the slavery question into the ground,' said Mr. Justice Bradley, 'to make it apply to every act of discrimination which a person may see fit to make as to the guests he will entertain, or as to the people he will take into his coach or cab or car, or admit to his concert or theater, or deal with in other matters of intercourse or business.'

A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races-a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color-has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of involuntary servitude. Indeed, we do not understand that the thirteenth amendment is strenuously relied upon by the plaintiff in error in this connection.

2. By the fourteenth amendment, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are made citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside; and the states are forbidden from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The proper construction of this amendment was first called to the attention of this court in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, which involved, however, not a question of race, but one of exclusive privileges. The case did not call for any expression of opinion as to the exact rights it was intended to secure to the colored race, but it was said generally that its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro, to give definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from those of citizens of the states. The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguish d from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation, in places where they are liable to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which have been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.

One of the earliest of these cases is that of Roberts v. City of Boston, 5 Cush. 198, in which the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts held that the general school committee of Boston had power to make provision for the instruction of colored children in separate schools established exclusively for them, and to prohibit their attendance upon the other schools. 'The great principle,' said Chief Justice Shaw, 'advanced by the learned and eloquent advocate for the plaintiff [Mr. Charles Sumner], is that, by the constitution and laws of Massachusetts, all persons, without distinction of age or sex, birth or color, origin or condition, are equal before the law. ... But, when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion that men and women are legally clothed with the same civil and political powers, and that children and adults are legally to have the same functions and be subject to the same treatment; but only that the rights of all, as they are settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the paternal consideration and protection of the law for their maintenance and security.' It was held that the powers of the committee extended to the establish- ment of separate schools for children of different ages, sexes and colors, and that they might also establish special schools for poor and neglected children, who have become too old to attend the primary school, and yet have not acquired the rudiments of learning, to enable them to enter the ordinary schools. Similar laws have been enacted by congress under its general power of legislation over the District of Columbia (sections 281- 283, 310, 319, Rev. St. D. C.), as well as by the legislatures of many of the states, and have been generally, if not uniformly, sustained by the courts. State v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 210; Lehew v. Brummell (Mo. Sup.) 15 S. W. 765; Ward v. Flood, 48 Cal. 36; Bertonneau v. Directors of City Schools, 3 Woods, 177, Fed. Cas. No. 1,361; People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438; Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 337; Dawson v. Lee, 83 Ky. 49.

Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contract, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the state. State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389.

The distinction between laws interfering with the political equality of the negro and those requiring the separation of the two races in schools, theaters, and railway carriages has been frequently drawn by this court. Thus, in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, it was held that a law of West Virginia limiting to white male persons 21 years of age, and citizens of the state, the right to sit upon juries, was a discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society, which lessened the security of the right of the colored race, and was a step towards reducing them to a condition of servility. Indeed, the right of a colored man that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race, and no discrimination against them because of color, has been asserted in a number of cases. Virginia v. Rivers, 100 U.S. 313 ; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 ; ush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110 , 1 Sup. Ct. 625; Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904. So, where the laws of a particular locality or the charter of a particular railway corporation has provided that no person shall be excluded from the cars on account of color, we have held that this meant that persons of color should travel in the same car as white ones, and that the enactment was not satisfied by the company providing cars assigned exclusively to people of color, though they were as good as those which they assigned exclusively to white persons. Railroad Co. v. Brown, 17 Wall. 445.

Upon the other hand, where a statute of Louisiana required those engaged in the transportation of passengers among the states to give to all persons traveling within that state, upon vessels employed in that business, equal rights and privileges in all parts of the vessel, without distinction on account of race or color, and subjected to an action for damages the owner of such a vessel who excluded colored passengers on account of their color from the cabin set aside by him for the use of whites, it was held to be, so far as it applied to interstate commerce, unconstitutional and void. Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U.S. 485 . The court in this case, however, expressly disclaimed that it had anything whatever to do with the statute as a regulation of internal commerce, or affecting anything else than commerce among the states.

In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 , 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was held that an act of congress entitling all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances, on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement, and made applicable to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude, was unconstitutional and void, upon the ground that the fourteenth amendment was prohibitory upon the states only, and the legislation authorized to be adopted by congress for enforcing it was not direct legislation on matters respecting which the states were prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws, or doing certain acts, but was corrective legislation, such as might be necessary or proper for counter-acting and redressing the effect of such laws or acts. In delivering the opinion of the court, Mr. Justice Bradley observed that the fourteenth amendment 'does not invest congress with power to legislate upon subjects that are within the domain of state legislation, but to provide modes of relief against state legislation or state action of the kind referred to. It does not authorize congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights, but to provide modes of redress against the operation of state laws, and the action of state officers, executive or judicial, when these are subversive of the fundamental rights specified in the amendment. Positive rights and privileges are undoubtedly secured by the fourteenth amendment; but they are secured by way of prohibition against state laws and state proceedings affecting those rights and privileges, and by power given to congress to legislate for the purpose of carrying such prohibition into effect; and such legislation must necessarily be predicated upon such supposed state laws or state proceedings, and be directed to the correction of their operation and effect.'

Much nearer, and, indeed, almost directly in point, is the case of the Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348, wherein the railway company was indicted for a violation of a statute of Mississippi, enacting that all railroads carrying passengers should provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger cars by a partition, so as to secure separate accommodations. The case was presented in a different aspe t from the one under consideration, inasmuch as it was an indictment against the railway company for failing to provide the separate accommodations, but the question considered was the constitutionality of the law. In that case, the supreme court of Mississippi (66 Miss. 662, 6 South. 203) had held that the statute applied solely to commerce within the state, and, that being the construction of the state statute by its highest court, was accepted as conclusive. 'If it be a matter,' said the court (page 591, 133 U. S., and page 348, 10 Sup. Ct.), 'respecting commerce wholly within a state, and not interfering with commerce between the states, then, obviously, there is no violation of the commerce clause of the federal constitution. ... No question arises under this section as to the power of the state to separate in different compartments interstate pas- sengers, or affect, in any manner, the privileges and rights of such passengers. All that we can consider is whether the state has the power to require that railroad trains within her limits shall have separate accommodations for the two races. That affecting only commerce within the state is no invasion of the power given to congress by the commerce clause.'

A like course of reasoning applies to the case under consideration, since the supreme court of Louisiana, in the case of State v. Judge, 44 La. Ann. 770, 11 South. 74, held that the statute in question did not apply to interstate passengers, but was confined in its application to passengers traveling exclusively within the borders of the state. The case was decided largely upon the authority of Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 66 Miss. 662, 6 South, 203, and affirmed by this court in 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348. In the present case no question of interference with interstate commerce can possibly arise, since the East Louisiana Railway appears to have been purely a local line, with both its termini within the state of Louisiana. Similar statutes for the separation of the two races upon public conveyances were held to be constitutional in Railroad v. Miles, 55 Pa. St. 209; Day v. Owen 5 Mich. 520; Railway Co. v. Williams, 55 Ill. 185; Railroad Co. v. Wells, 85 Tenn. 613; 4 S. W. 5; Railroad Co. v. Benson, 85 Tenn. 627, 4 S. W. 5; The Sue, 22 Fed. 843; Logwood v. Railroad Co., 23 Fed. 318; McGuinn v. Forbes, 37 Fed. 639; People v. King ( N. Y. App.) 18 N. E. 245; Houck v. Railway Co., 38 Fed. 226; Heard v. Railroad Co., 3 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 111, 1 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 428.

While we think the enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state, neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, we are not prepared to say that the conductor, in assigning passengers to the coaches according to their race, does not act at his peril, or that the provision of the second section of the act that denies to the passenger compensation in damages for a refusal to receive him into the coach in which he properly belongs is a valid exercise of the legislative power. Indeed, we understand it to be conceded by the state's attorney that such part of the act as exempts from liability the railway company and its officers is unconstitutional. The power to assign to a particular coach obviously implies the power to determine to which race the passenger belongs, as well as the power to determine who, under the laws of the particular state, is to be deemed a white, and who a colored, person. This question, though indicated in the brief of the plaintiff in error, does not properly arise upon the record in this case, since the only issue made is as to the unconstitutionality of the act, so far as it requires the railway to provide separate accommodations, and the conductor to assign passengers according to their race.

It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in an mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is 'property,' in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property. Conceding this to be so, for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man, and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called 'property.' Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man, and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.

In this connection, it is also suggested by the learned counsel for the plaintiff in error that the same argument that will justify the state legislature in requiring railways to provide separate accommodations for the two races will also authorize them to require separate cars to be provided for people whose hair is of a certain color, or who are aliens, or who belong to certain nationalities, or to enact laws requiring colored people to walk upon one side of the street, and white people upon the other, or requiring white men's houses to be painted white, and colored men's black, or their vehicles or business signs to be of different colors, upon the theory that one side of the street is as good as the other, or that a house or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. Thus, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 , 6 Sup. Ct. 1064, it was held by this court that a municipal ordinance of the city of San Francisco, to regulate the carrying on of public laundries within the limits of the municipality, violated the provisions of the constitution of the United States, if it conferred upon the municipal authorities arbitrary power, at their own will, and without regard to discretion, in the legal sense of the term, to give or withhold consent as to persons or places, without regard to the competency of the persons applying or the propriety of the places selected for the carrying on of the business. It was held to be a covert attempt on the part of the municipality to make an arbitrary and unjust discrimination against the Chinese race. While this was the case of a municipal ordinance, a like principle has been held to apply to acts of a state legislature passed in the exercise of the police power. Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U.S. 465 ; Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Kentucky, 161 U.S. 677 , 16 Sup. Ct. 714, and cases cited on page 700, 161 U. S., and page 714, 16 Sup. Ct.; Daggett v. Hudson, 43 Ohio St. 548, 3 N. E. 538; Capen v. Foster, 12 Pick. 485; State v. Baker, 38 Wis. 71; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665; Hulseman v. Rems, 41 Pa. St. 396; Osman v. Riley, 15 Cal. 48.

So far, then, as a conflict with the fourteenth amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we cannot say that a law which authorizes or even requires the separation of the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment than the acts of congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state legislatures.

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power in the state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white race, at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals. As was said by the court of appeals of New York in People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 448: 'This end can neither be accomplished nor promoted by laws which conflict with the general sentiment of the community upon whom they are designed to operate. When the government, therefore, has secured to each of its citizens equal rights before the law, and equal opportunities for improvement and progress, it has accomplished the end for which it was organized, and performed all of the functions respecting social advantages with which it is endowed.' Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.

It is true that the question of the proportion of colored blood necessary to constitute a colored person, as distinguished from a white person, is one upon which there is a difference of opinion in the different states; some holding that any visible admixture of black blood stamps the person as belonging to the colored race (State v. Chavers, 5 Jones [N. C.] 1); others, that it depends upon the preponderance of blood ( Gray v. State, 4 Ohio, 354; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665); and still others, that the predominance of white blood must only be in the proportion of three-fourths (People v. Dean, 14 Mich. 406; Jones v. Com., 80 Va. 544). But these are questions to be determined under the laws of each state, and are not properly put in issue in this case. Under the allegations of his petition, it may undoubtedly become a question of importance whether, under the laws of Louisiana, the petitioner belongs to the white or colored race.

The judgment of the court below is therefore affirmed.

Mr. Justice BREWER did not hear the argument or participate in the decision of this case.

Mr. Justice HARLAN dissenting.

By the Louisiana statute the validity of which is here involved, all railway companies (other than street-railroad companies) carry passengers in that state are required to have separate but equal accommodations for white and colored persons, 'by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.' Under this statute, no colored person is permitted to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to white persons; nor any white person to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to colored persons. The managers of the railroad are not allowed to exercise any discretion in the premises, but are required to assign each passenger to some coach or compartment set apart for the exclusive use of is race. If a passenger insists upon going into a coach or compartment not set apart for persons of his race, he is subject to be fined, or to be imprisoned in the parish jail. Penalties are prescribed for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railroad companies to comply with the provisions of the act.

Only 'nurses attending children of the other race' are excepted from the operation of the statute. No exception is made of colored attendants traveling with adults. A white man is not permitted to have his colored servant with him in the same coach, even if his condition of health requires the constant personal assistance of such servant. If a colored maid insists upon riding in the same coach with a white woman whom she has been employed to serve, and who may need her personal attention while traveling, she is subject to be fined or imprisoned for such an exhibition of zeal in the discharge of duty.

While there may be in Louisiana persons of different races who are not citizens of the United States, the words in the act 'white and colored races' necessarily include all citizens of the United States of both races residing in that state. So that we have before us a state enactment that compels, under penalties, the separation of the two races in railroad passenger coaches, and makes it a crime for a citizen of either race to enter a coach that has been assigned to citizens of the other race.

Thus, the state regulates the use of a public highway by citizens of the United States solely upon the basis of race.

However apparent the injustice of such legislation may be, we have only to consider whether it is consistent with the constitution of the United States.

That a railroad is a public highway, and that the corporation which owns or operates it is in the exercise of public functions, is not, at this day, to be disputed. Mr. Justice Nelson, speaking for this court in New Jersey Steam Nav. Co. v. Merchants' Bank, 6 How. 344, 382, said that a common carrier was in the exercise 'of a sort of public office, and has public duties to perform, from which he should not be permitted to exonerate himself without the assent of the parties concerned.' Mr. Justice Strong, delivering the judgment of this court in Olcott v. Supervisors, 16 Wall. 678, 694, said: 'That railroads, though constructed by private corporations, and owned by them, are public highways, has been the doctrine of nearly all the courts ever since such conveniences for passage and transportation have had any existence. Very early the question arose whether a state's right of eminent domain could be exercised by a private corporation created for the purpose of constructing a railroad. Clearly, it could not, unless taking land for such a purpose by such an agency is taking land for public use. The right of eminent domain nowhere justifies taking property for a private use. Yet it is a doctrine universally accepted that a state legislature may authorize a private corporation to take land for the construction of such a road, making compensation to the owner. What else does this doctrine mean if not that building a railroad, though it be built by a private corporation, is an act done for a public use?' So, in Township of Pine Grove v. Talcott, 19 Wall. 666, 676: 'Though the corporation [a railroad company] was private, its work was public, as much so as if it were to be constructed by the state.' So, in Inhabitants of Worcester v. Western R. Corp., 4 Metc. (Mass.) 564: 'The establishment of that great thoroughfare is regarded as a public work, established by public authority, intended for the public use and benefit, the use of which is secured to the whole community, and constitutes, therefore, like a canal, turnpike, or highway, a public easement.' 'It is true that the real and personal property, necessary to the establishment and management of the railroad, is vested in the corporation; but it is in trust for the public.'

In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights. Every true man has pride of race, and under appropriate circumstances, when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper. But I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation as that here in question is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, national and state, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United States.

The thirteenth amendment does not permit the withholding or the deprivation of any right necessarily inhering in freedom. It not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. It decreed universal civil freedom in this country. This court has so adjudged. But, that amendment having been found inadequate to the protection of the rights of those who had been in slavery, it was followed by the fourteenth amendment, which added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship, and to the security of personal liberty, by declaring that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,' and that 'no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' These two amendments, if enforced according to their true intent and meaning, will protect all the civil rights that pertain to freedom and citizenship. Finally, and to the end that no citizen should be denied, on account of his race, the privilege of participating in the political control of his country, it was declared by the fifteenth amendment that 'the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.'

These notable additions to the fundamental law were welcomed by the friends of liberty throughout the world. They removed the race line from our governmental systems. They had, as this court has said, a common purpose, namely, to secure 'to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations have been held in slavery, all the civil rights that the superior race enjoy.' They declared, in legal effect, this court has further said, 'that the law in the states shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the states; and in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.' We also said: 'The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity or right, most valuable to the colored race,-the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored; exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy; and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race.' It was, consequently, adjudged that a state law that excluded citizens of the colored race from juries, because of their race, however well qualified in other respects to discharge the duties of jurymen, was repugnant to the fourteenth amendment. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 306 , 307 S.; Virginia v. Rives, Id. 313; Ex parte Virginia, Id. 339; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 , 386; Bush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110, 116 , 1 S. Sup. Ct. 625. At the present term, referring to the previous adjudications, this court declared that 'underlying all of those decisions is the principle that the constitution of the United States, in its present form, forbids, so far as civil and political rights are concerned, discrimination by the general government or the states against any citizen because of his race. All citizens are equal before the law.' Gibson v. State, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904.

The decisions referred to show the scope of the recent amendments of the constitution. They also show that it is not within the power of a state to prohibit colored citizens, because of their race, from participating as jurors in the administration of justice.

It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this argument does not meet the difficulty. Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of accommodation for travelers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statute, is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens. 'Personal liberty,' it has been well said, 'consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever places one's own inclination may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.' 1 Bl. Comm. *134. If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so; and no government, proceeding alone on grounds of race, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each.

It is one thing for railroad carriers to furnish, or to be required by law to furnish, equal accommodations for all whom they are under a legal duty to carry. It is quite another thing for government to forbid citizens of the white and black races from traveling in the same public conveyance, and to punish officers of railroad companies for permitting persons of the two races to occupy the same passenger coach. If a state can prescribe, as a rule of civil conduct, that whites and blacks shall not travel as passengers in the same railroad coach, why may it not so regulate the use of the streets of its cities and towns as to compel white citizens to keep on one side of a street, and black citizens to keep on the other? Why may it not, upon like grounds, punish whites and blacks who ride together in street cars or in open vehicles on a public road or street? Why may it not require sheriffs to assign whites to one side of a court room, and blacks to the other? And why may it not also prohibit the commingling of the two races in the galleries of legislative halls or in public assemblages convened for the consideration of the political questions of the day? Further, if this statute of Louisiana is consistent with the personal liberty of citizens, why may not the state require the separation in railroad coaches of native and naturalized citizens of the United States, or of Protestants and Roman Catholics?

The answer given at the argument to these questions was that regulations of the kind they suggest would be unreasonable, and could not, therefore, stand before the la . Is it meant that the determination of questions of legislative power depends upon the inquiry whether the statute whose validity is questioned is, in the judgment of the courts, a reasonable one, taking all the circumstances into consideration? A statute may be unreasonable merely because a sound public policy forbade its enactment. But I do not understand that the courts have anything to do with the policy or expediency of legislation. A statute may be valid, and yet, upon grounds of public policy, may well be characterized as unreasonable. Mr. Sedgwick correctly states the rule when he says that, the legislative intention being clearly ascertained, 'the courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without any regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment.' Sedg. St. & Const. Law, 324. There is a dangerous tendency in these latter days to enlarge the functions of the courts, by means of judicial interference with the will of the people as expressed by the legislature. Our institutions have the distinguishing characteristic that the three departments of government are co-ordinate and separate. Each much keep within the limits defined by the constitution. And the courts best discharge their duty by executing the will of the law-making power, constitutionally expressed, leaving the results of legislation to be dealt with by the people through their representatives. Statutes must always have a reasonable construction. Sometimes they are to be construed strictly, sometimes literally, in order to carry out the legislative will. But, however construed, the intent of the legislature is to be respected if the particular statute in question is valid, although the courts, looking at the public interests, may conceive the statute to be both unreasonable and impolitic. If the power exists to enact a statute, that ends the matter so far as the courts are concerned. The adjudged cases in which statutes have been held to be void, because unreasonable, are those in which the means employed by the legislature were not at all germane to the end to which the legislature was competent.

The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.

In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case.

It was adjudged in that case that the descendants of Africans who were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, were not included nor intended to be included under the word 'citizens' in the constitution, and could not claim any of the rights and privileges which that instrument provided for and secured to citizens of the United States; that, at time of the adoption of the constitution, they were 'considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.' 17 How. 393, 404. The recent amendments of the constitution, it was supposed, had eradicated these principles from our institutions. But it seems that we have yet, in some of the states, a dominant race,-a superior class of citizens,-which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race. The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of the United States and of the states in which they respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as citizens, the states are forbidden to abridge. Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana.

The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned. This question is not met by the suggestion that social equality cannot exist between the white and black races in this country. That argument, if it can be properly regarded as one, is scarcely worthy of consideration; for social equality no more exists between two races when traveling in a passenger coach or a public highway than when members of the same races sit by each other in a street car or in the jury box, or stand or sit with each other in a political assembly, or when they use in common the streets of a city or town, or when they are in the same room for the purpose of having their names placed on the registry of voters, or when they approach the ballot box in order to exercise the high privilege of voting.

There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the state and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. It is scarcely just to say that a colored citizen should not object to occupying a public coach assigned to his own race. He does not object, nor, perhaps, would he object to separate coaches for his race if his rights under the law were recognized. But he does object, and he ought never to cease objecting, that citizens of the white and black races can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway. The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.

If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens,-our equals before the law. The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done.

The result of the whole matter is that while this court has frequently adjudged, and at the present term has recognized the doctrine, that a state cannot, consistently with the constitution of the United States, prevent white and black citizens, having the required qualifications for jury service, from sitting in the same jury box, it is now solemnly held that a state may prohibit white and black citizens from sitting in the same passenger coach on a public highway, or may require that they be separated by a 'partition' when in the same passenger coach. May it not now be reasonably expected that astute men of the dominant race, who affect to be disturbed at the possibility that the integrity of the white race may be corrupted, or that its supremacy will be imperiled, by contact on public highways with black people, will endeavor to procure statutes requiring white and black jurors to be separated in the jury box by a 'partition,' and that, upon retiring from the court room to consult as to their verdict, such partition, if it be a movable one, shall be taken to their consultation room, and set up in such way as to prevent black jurors from coming too close to their brother jurors of the white race. If the 'partition' used in the court room happens to be stationary, provision could be made for screens with openings through which jurors of the two races could confer as to their verdict without coming into personal contact with each other. I cannot see but that, according to the principles this day announced, such state legislation, although conceived in hostility to, and enacted for the purpose of humiliating, citizens of the United States of a particular race, would be held to be consistent with the constitution.

I do not deem it necessary to review the decisions of state courts to which reference was made in argument. Some, and the most important, of them, are wholly inapplicable, because rendered prior to the adoption of the last amendments of the constitution, when colored people had very few rights which the dominant race felt obliged to respect. Others were made at a time when public opinion, in many localities, was dominated by the institution of slavery; when it would not have been safe to do justice to the black man; and when, so far as the rights of blacks were concerned, race prejudice was, practically, the supreme law of the land. Those decisions cannot be guides in the era introduced by the recent amendments of the supreme law, which established universal civil freedom, gave citizenship to all born or naturalized in the United States, and residing ere, obliterated the race line from our systems of governments, national and state, and placed our free institutions upon the broad and sure foundation of the equality of all men before the law.

I am of opinion that the state of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that state, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several states of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law, would, it is true, have disappeared from our country; but there would remain a power in the states, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the 'People of the United States,' for whom, and by whom through representatives, our government is administered. Such a system is inconsistent with the guaranty given by the constitution to each state of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

For the reason stated, I am constrained to withhold my assent from the opinion and judgment of the majority.

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Plessy vs. Ferguson, Judgement, Decided May 18, 1896; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248, National Archives. View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."

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When LA Erupted In Anger: A Look Back At The Rodney King Riots

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This week 25 years ago, policemen were acquitted in the savage beating of African-American Rodney King. Five days of riots, arson and looting ensued, fueled by deep-rooted tensions that persist today.

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The Plessy Decision

Although the Declaration of Independence stated that "All men are created equal," due to the institution of slavery, this statement was not to be grounded in law in the United States until after the Civil War (and, arguably, not completely fulfilled for many years thereafter). In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and finally put an end to slavery. Moreover, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) strengthened the legal rights of newly freed slaves by stating, among other things, that no state shall deprive anyone of either "due process of law" or of the "equal protection of the law." Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) further strengthened the legal rights of newly freed slaves by prohibiting states from denying anyone the right to vote due to race.

Despite these Amendments, African Americans were often treated differently than whites in many parts of the country, especially in the South. In fact, many state legislatures enacted laws that led to the legally mandated segregation of the races. In other words, the laws of many states decreed that blacks and whites could not use the same public facilities, ride the same buses, attend the same schools, etc. These laws came to be known as Jim Crow laws. Although many people felt that these laws were unjust, it was not until the 1890s that they were directly challenged in court. In 1892, an African-American man named Homer Plessy refused to give up his seat to a white man on a train in New Orleans, as he was required to do by Louisiana state law. For this action he was arrested. Plessy, contending that the Louisiana law separating blacks from whites on trains violated the "equal protection clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, decided to fight his arrest in court. By 1896, his case had made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. By a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court ruled against Plessy. In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, Justice Henry Billings Brown, writing the majority opinion, stated that:

"The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to endorse social, as distinguished from political, equality. . . If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane."

The lone dissenter, Justice John Marshal Harlan, interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment another way, stated, "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Justice Harlan's dissent would become a rallying cry for those in later generations that wished to declare segregation unconstitutional.

Sadly, as a result of the Plessy decision, in the early twentieth century the Supreme Court continued to uphold the legality of Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination. In the case of Cumming v. Richmond (Ga.) County Board of Education (1899), for instance, the Court refused to issue an injunction preventing a school board from spending tax money on a white high school when the same school board voted to close down a black high school for financial reasons. Moreover, in Gong Lum v. Rice (1927), the Court upheld a school's decision to bar a person of Chinese descent from a "white" school.

The Road to Brown

(Note: Some of the case information is from Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. Oxford University Press; New York, 2001.)

Early Cases

Despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy and similar cases, many people continued to press for the abolition of Jim Crow and other racially discriminatory laws. One particular organization that fought for racial equality was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded in 1909. For about the first 20 years of its existence, it tried to persuade Congress and other legislative bodies to enact laws that would protect African Americans from lynchings and other racist actions. Beginning in the 1930s, though, the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund began to turn to the courts to try to make progress in overcoming legally sanctioned discrimination. From 1935 to 1938, the legal arm of the NAACP was headed by Charles Hamilton Houston. Houston, together with Thurgood Marshall, devised a strategy to attack Jim Crow laws by striking at them where they were perhaps weakest-in the field of education. Although Marshall played a crucial role in all of the cases listed below, Houston was the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund while Murray v. Maryland and Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada were decided. After Houston returned to private practice in 1938, Marshall became head of the Fund and used it to argue the cases of Sweat v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents of Higher Education.

Pearson v. Murray (Md. 1936)

Disappointed that the University of Maryland School of Law was rejecting black applicants solely because of their race, beginning in 1933 Thurgood Marshall (who was himself rejected from this law school because of its racial acceptance policies) decided to challenge this practice in the Maryland court system. Before a Baltimore City Court in 1935, Marshall argued that Donald Gaines Murray was just as qualified as white applicants to attend the University of Maryland's School of Law and that it was solely due to his race that he was rejected. Furthermore, he argued that since the "black" law schools which Murray would otherwise have to attend were nowhere near the same academic caliber as the University's law school, the University was violating the principle of "separate but equal." Moreover, Marshall argued that the disparities between the "white" and "black" law schools were so great that the only remedy would be to allow students like Murray to attend the University's law school. The Baltimore City Court agreed and the University then appealed to the Maryland Court of Appeals. In 1936, the Court of Appeals also ruled in favor of Murray and ordered the law school to admit him. Two years later, Murray graduated.

Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada (1938)

Beginning in 1936, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund decided to take on the case of Lloyd Gaines, a graduate student of Lincoln University (an all-black college) who applied to the University of Missouri Law School but was denied because of his race. The State of Missouri gave Gaines the option of either attending an all-black law school that it would build (Missouri did not have any all-black law schools at this time) or having Missouri help to pay for him to attend a law school in a neighboring state. Gaines rejected both of these options, and, employing the services of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he decided to sue the state in order to attend the University of Missouri's law school. By 1938, his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and, in December of that year, the Court sided with him. The six-member majority stated that since a "black" law school did not currently exist in the State of Missouri, the "equal protection clause" required the state to provide, within its boundaries, a legal education for Gaines. In other words, since the state provided legal education for white students, it could not send black students, like Gaines, to school in another state.

Sweat v. Painter (1950)

Encouraged by their victory in Gaines' case, the NAACP continued to attack legally sanctioned racial discrimination in higher education. In 1946, an African American man named Heman Sweat applied to the University of Texas' "white" law school. Hoping that it would not have to admit Sweat to the "white" law school if a "black" school already existed, elsewhere on the University's campus, the state hastily set up an underfunded "black" law school. At this point, Sweat employed the services of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and sued to be admitted to the University's "white" law school. He argued that the education that he was receiving in the "black" law school was not of the same academic caliber as the education that he would be receiving if he attended the "white" law school. When the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1950, the Court unanimously agreed with him, citing as its reason the blatant inequalities between the University's law school (the school for whites) and the hastily erected school for blacks. In other words, the "black" law school was "separate," but not "equal." Like the Murray case, the Court found the only appropriate remedy for this situation was to admit Sweat to the University's law school.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma Board of Regents of Higher Education (1950)

In 1949, the University of Oklahoma admitted George McLaurin, an African American, to its doctoral program. However, it required him to sit apart from the rest of his class, eat at a separate time and table from white students, etc. McLaurin, stating that these actions were both unusual and resulting in adverse effects on his academic pursuits, sued to put an end to these practices. McLaurin employed Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund to argue his case, a case which eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In an opinion delivered on the same day as the decision in Sweat, the Court stated that the University's actions concerning McLaurin were adversely affecting his ability to learn and ordered that they cease immediately.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955)

The case that came to be known as Brown v. Board of Education was actually the name given to five separate cases that were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the issue of segregation in public schools. These cases were Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (VA.), Bolling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel. While the facts of each case are different, the main issue in each was the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools. Once again, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund handled these cases.

Although it acknowledged some of the plaintiffs'/plaintiffs claims, a three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court that heard the cases ruled in favor of the school boards. The plaintiffs then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the cases came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court consolidated all five cases under the name of Brown v. Board of Education. Marshall personally argued the case before the Court. Although he raised a variety of legal issues on appeal, the most common one was that separate school systems for blacks and whites were inherently unequal, and thus violate the "equal protection clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, relying on sociological tests, such as the one performed by social scientist Kenneth Clark, and other data, he also argued that segregated school systems had a tendency to make black children feel inferior to white children, and thus such a system should not be legally permissible.

Meeting to decide the case, the Justices of the Supreme Court realized that they were deeply divided over the issues raised. While most wanted to reverse Plessy and declare segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, they had various reasons for doing so. Unable to come to a solution by June 1953 (the end of the Court's 1952-1953 term), the Court decided to rehear the case in December 1953. During the intervening months, however, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died and was replaced by Gov. Earl Warren of California. After the case was reheard in 1953, Chief Justice Warren was able to do something that his predecessor had not-i.e. bring all of the Justices to agree to support a unanimous decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. On May 14, 1954, he delivered the opinion of the Court, stating that "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. . ."

Expecting opposition to its ruling, especially in the southern states, the Supreme Court did not immediately try to give direction for the implementation of its ruling. Rather, it asked the attorney generals of all states with laws permitting segregation in their public schools to submit plans for how to proceed with desegregation. After still more hearings before the Court concerning the matter of desegregation, on May 31, 1955, the Justices handed down a plan for how it was to proceed; desegregation was to proceed with "all deliberate speed." Although it would be many years before all segregated school systems were to be desegregated, Brown and Brown II (as the Courts plan for how to desegregate schools came to be called) were responsible for getting the process underway.

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History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment

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The Plessy Decision Although the Declaration of Independence stated that "All men are created equal," due to the institution of slavery, this statement was not to be grounded in law in the United States until after the Civil War (and, arguably, not completely fulfilled for many years thereafter).

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Black & Asian Solidarity coalition building (2020) 

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Black & Asian Solidarity coalition building (2020) 

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How Black-Asian Solidarity Is Taking on White Supremacy

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In the wake of the violence in Atlanta, Black and Asian communities are coming together to stand against racism

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Stop AAPI Hate was co-founded when community leaders from Chinese for Affirmative Action, the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University, and AAPI Equity Alliance recognized the need to document the rise of COVID-19-related anti-Asian racism in the early stages of the global pandemic and joined forces to launch an online reporting center.

On March 19, 2020, our coalition launched stopaapihate.org, where Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders could share their experiences with race-based hate and discrimination without divulging personal information or engaging with law enforcement.

It went viral. In the days, weeks, and months that followed, we received thousands of reports from across the U.S. People of all ages, genders, and ethnicities were sharing incidents of verbal harassment, physical assault, racial discrimination, child bullying and more.

With the subsequent rise of high profile attacks - including the murder of Vicha Ratanapakdee, the Atlanta spa shootings, and the gun violence in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay - millions of people took to the streets in protest of anti-Asian racism, giving rise to a nationwide movement for racial justice that we are proud to be a part of.

Since then, we have advocated for community investments, civil rights protections and education equity.

Click here to learn more about our impact.

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Stop AAPI Hate was co-founded when community leaders from Chinese for Affirmative Action, the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University, and AAPI Equity Alliance recognized the need to document the rise of COVID-19-related anti-Asian racism in the early stages of the global pandemic and joined forces to launch an online reporting center.

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To promote erasure of gay and Black men.

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A lot has changed about HIV/AIDS in the last 30+ years. Learn about the history of HIV/AIDS in the U.S.

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Loving v. Virginia | Constitution Center

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National Constitution Center Supreme Court Case Library: Loving v. Virginia

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IDEA, ADA, Section 504 all came about through a solidarity with the Civil Rights movement.

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To ensure singular promotion of capitalist thought and erasure of sociality thought.

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McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism, and socialism, and especially when the accusations are false or unproven and are made in a public and attention-grabbing manner.

The term originally referred to the controversial practices and policies of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and covers the period of the late 1940s through the 1950s. It was characterized by heightened political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals, and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. After the mid-1950s, McCarthyism began to decline, mainly due to Joseph McCarthy's gradual loss of public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false, and sustained opposition from the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren on human rights grounds. The Warren Court made a series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that the term McCarthyism is now outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover is more appropriate.

What would become known as the McCarthy era began before McCarthy's rise to national fame. Following the breakdown of the wartime East-West alliance with the Soviet Union, and with many remembering the First Red Scare, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order in 1947 to screen federal employees for possible association with organizations deemed "totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive", or advocating "to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means." The following year, the Czechoslovak coup by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia heightened concern in the West about Communist parties seizing power and the possibility of subversion. In 1949, a high-level State Department official was convicted of perjury in a case of espionage, and the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb. The Korean War started the next year, significantly raising tensions and fears of impending communist upheavals in the United States. In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy claimed to have a list of members of the Communist Party USA working in the State Department, which attracted substantial press attention, and the term McCarthyism was published for the first time in late March of that year in The Christian Science Monitor, along with a political cartoon by Herblock in The Washington Post. The term has since taken on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts to crack down on alleged "subversive" elements. In the early 21st century, the term is used more generally to describe reckless and unsubstantiated accusations of treason and far-left extremism, along with demagogic personal attacks on the character and patriotism of political adversaries.

The primary targets for persecution were government employees, prominent figures in the entertainment industry, academics, left-wing politicians, and labor union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive and questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations and beliefs were often exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and the destruction of their careers and livelihoods as a result of the crackdowns on suspected communists, and some were outright imprisoned. Most of these reprisals were initiated by trial verdicts that were later overturned, laws that were later struck down as unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, and extra-judiciary procedures, such as informal blacklists by employers and public institutions, that would come into general disrepute, though by then many lives had been ruined. The most notable examples of McCarthyism include the investigations of alleged communists that were conducted by Senator McCarthy, and the hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

The historical period that came to be known as the McCarthy era began well before Joseph McCarthy's own involvement in it. Many factors contributed to McCarthyism, some of them with roots in the First Red Scare (1917-20), inspired by communism's emergence as a recognized political force and widespread social disruption in the United States related to unionizing and anarchist activities. Owing in part to its success in organizing labor unions and its early opposition to fascism, and offering an alternative to the ills of capitalism during the Great Depression, the Communist Party of the United States increased its membership through the 1930s, reaching a peak of about 75,000 members in 1940-41. While the United States was engaged in World War II and allied with the Soviet Union, the issue of anti-communism was largely muted. With the end of World War II, the Cold War began almost immediately, as the Soviet Union installed communist puppet régimes in areas it had occupied across Central and Eastern Europe. In a March 1947 address to Congress, Truman enunciated a new foreign policy doctrine that committed the United States to opposing Soviet geopolitical expansion. This doctrine came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, and it guided United States support for anti-communist forces in Greece and later in China and elsewhere.

Although the Igor Gouzenko and Elizabeth Bentley affairs had raised the issue of Soviet espionage in 1945, events in 1949 and 1950 sharply increased the sense of threat in the United States related to communism. The Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in 1949, earlier than many analysts had expected, raising the stakes in the Cold War. That same year, Mao Zedong's communist army gained control of mainland China despite heavy American financial support of the opposing Kuomintang. In 1950, the Korean War began, pitting U.S., U.N., and South Korean forces against communists from North Korea and China.

During the following year, evidence of increased sophistication in Soviet Cold War espionage activities was found in the West. In January 1950, Alger Hiss, a high-level State Department official, was convicted of perjury. Hiss was in effect found guilty of espionage; the statute of limitations had run out for that crime, but he was convicted of having perjured himself when he denied that charge in earlier testimony before the HUAC. In Britain, Klaus Fuchs confessed to committing espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the War. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in 1950 in the United States on charges of stealing atomic-bomb secrets for the Soviets, and were executed in 1953.

Other forces encouraged the rise of McCarthyism. The more conservative politicians in the United States had historically referred to progressive reforms, such as child labor laws and women's suffrage, as "communist" or "Red plots", trying to raise fears against such changes. They used similar terms during the 1930s and the Great Depression when opposing the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many conservatives equated the New Deal with socialism or Communism, and thought the policies were evidence of too much influence by allegedly communist policy makers in the Roosevelt administration. In general, the vaguely defined danger of "Communist influence" was a more common theme in the rhetoric of anti-communist politicians than was espionage or any other specific activity.

McCarthy's involvement in these issues began publicly with a speech he made on Lincoln Day, February 9, 1950, to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. He brandished a piece of paper, which he claimed contained a list of known communists working for the State Department. McCarthy is usually quoted as saying: "I have here in my hand a list of 205-a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." This speech resulted in a flood of press attention to McCarthy and helped establish his path to becoming one of the most recognized politicians in the United States.

The first recorded use of the term "McCarthyism" was in the Christian Science Monitor on March 28, 1950 ("Their little spree with McCarthyism is no aid to consultation"). The paper became one of the earliest and most consistent critics of the Senator. The next recorded use happened on the following day, in a political cartoon by Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block (Herblock). The cartoon depicts four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant (the traditional symbol of the Republican Party) to stand on a platform atop a teetering stack of ten tar buckets, the topmost of which is labeled "McCarthyism". Block later wrote:

"nothing [was] particularly ingenious about the term, which is simply used to represent a national affliction that can hardly be described in any other way. If anyone has a prior claim on it, he's welcome to the word and to the junior senator from Wisconsin along with it. I will also throw in a set of free dishes and a case of soap."

A number of anti-communist committees, panels, and "loyalty review boards" in federal, state, and local governments, as well as many private agencies, carried out investigations for small and large companies concerned about possible Communists in their work forces.

In Congress, the primary bodies that investigated Communist activities were the HUAC, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Between 1949 and 1954, a total of 109 investigations were carried out by these and other committees of Congress.

In the federal government, President Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. It called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds ... for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States." Truman, a Democrat, was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional election and felt a need to counter growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists.

When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. Hiram Bingham, chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things." The following year, J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb, then working as a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, was stripped of his security clearance after a four-week hearing. Oppenheimer had received a top-secret clearance in 1947, but was denied clearance in the harsher climate of 1954.

Similar loyalty reviews were established in many state and local government offices and some private industries across the nation. In 1958, an estimated one of every five employees in the United States was required to pass some sort of loyalty review. Once a person lost a job due to an unfavorable loyalty review, finding other employment could be very difficult. "A man is ruined everywhere and forever," in the words of the chairman of President Truman's Loyalty Review Board. "No responsible employer would be likely to take a chance in giving him a job."

The Department of Justice started keeping a list of organizations that it deemed subversive beginning in 1942. This list was first made public in 1948, when it included 78 groups. At its longest, it comprised 154 organizations, 110 of them identified as Communist. In the context of a loyalty review, membership in a listed organization was meant to raise a question, but not to be considered proof of disloyalty. One of the most common causes of suspicion was membership in the Washington Bookshop Association, a left-leaning organization that offered lectures on literature, classical music concerts, and discounts on books.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover designed President Truman's loyalty-security program, and its background investigations of employees were carried out by FBI agents. This was a major assignment that led to the number of agents in the bureau being increased from 3,559 in 1946 to 7,029 in 1952. Hoover's sense of the communist threat and the standards of evidence applied by his bureau resulted in thousands of government workers losing their jobs. Due to Hoover's insistence upon keeping the identity of his informers secret, most subjects of loyalty-security reviews were not allowed to cross-examine or know the identities of those who accused them. In many cases, they were not even told of what they were accused.

Hoover's influence extended beyond federal government employees and beyond the loyalty-security programs. The records of loyalty review hearings and investigations were supposed to be confidential, but Hoover routinely gave evidence from them to congressional committees such as HUAC.

The FBI engaged in a number of illegal practices in its pursuit of information on communists, including burglaries, opening mail, and illegal wiretaps. The members of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild (NLG) were among the few attorneys who were willing to defend clients in communist-related cases, and this made the NLG a particular target of Hoover's; the office of the NLG was burgled by the FBI at least 14 times between 1947 and 1951. Among other purposes, the FBI used its illegally obtained information to alert prosecuting attorneys about the planned legal strategies of NLG defense lawyers.

The FBI also used illegal undercover operations to disrupt communist and other dissident political groups. In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute communists. At this time, he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO actions included planting forged documents to create the suspicion that a key person was an FBI informer, spreading rumors through anonymous letters, leaking information to the press, calling for IRS audits, and the like. The COINTELPRO program remained in operation until 1971.

In March 1950, McCarthy had initiated a series of investigations into potential infiltration of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by communist agents and came up with a list of security risks that matched one previously compiled by the Agency itself. At the request of CIA director Allen Dulles, President Eisenhower demanded that McCarthy discontinue issuing subpoenas against the CIA. Documents made public in 2004 revealed that the CIA, under Dulles' orders, had broken into McCarthy's Senate office and fed disinformation to him in order to discredit him and stop his investigation from proceeding any further.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (commonly referred to as the HUAC) was the most prominent and active government committee involved in anti-communist investigations. Formed in 1938 and known as the Dies Committee, named for Rep. Martin Dies, who chaired it until 1944, HUAC investigated a variety of "activities", including those of German-American Nazis during World War II. The committee soon focused on communism, beginning with an investigation into communists in the Federal Theatre Project in 1938. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion.

HUAC achieved its greatest fame and notoriety with its investigation into the Hollywood film industry. In October 1947, the committee began to subpoena screenwriters, directors, and other movie-industry professionals to testify about their known or suspected membership in the Communist Party, association with its members, or support of its beliefs. At these testimonies, this question was asked: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?" Among the first film industry witnesses subpoenaed by the committee were ten who decided not to cooperate. These men, who became known as the " Hollywood Ten", cited the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and free assembly, which they believed legally protected them from being required to answer the committee's questions. This tactic failed, and the ten were sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress. Two of them were sentenced to six months, the rest to a year.

In the future, witnesses (in the entertainment industries and otherwise) who were determined not to cooperate with the committee would claim their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. William Grooper and Rockwell Kent, the only two visual artists to be questioned by McCarthy, both took this approach, and emerged relatively unscathed by the experience. However, while this usually protected witnesses from a contempt-of-Congress citation, it was considered grounds for dismissal by many government and private-industry employers. The legal requirements for Fifth Amendment protection were such that a person could not testify about his own association with the Communist Party and then refuse to "name names" of colleagues with communist affiliations. Thus, many faced a choice between "crawl[ing] through the mud to be an informer," as actor Larry Parks put it, or becoming known as a "Fifth Amendment Communist"-an epithet often used by Senator McCarthy.

In the Senate, the primary committee for investigating communists was the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), formed in 1950 and charged with ensuring the enforcement of laws relating to "espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States". The SISS was headed by Democrat Pat McCarran and gained a reputation for careful and extensive investigations. This committee spent a year investigating Owen Lattimore and other members of the Institute of Pacific Relations. As had been done numerous times before, the collection of scholars and diplomats associated with Lattimore (the so-called China Hands) were accused of "losing China", and while some evidence of pro-communist attitudes was found, nothing supported McCarran's accusation that Lattimore was "a conscious and articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy". Lattimore was charged with perjuring himself before the SISS in 1952. After many of the charges were rejected by a federal judge and one of the witnesses confessed to perjury, the case was dropped in 1955.

McCarthy headed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953 and 1954, and during that time, used it for a number of his communist-hunting investigations. McCarthy first examined allegations of communist influence in the Voice of America, and then turned to the overseas library program of the State Department. Card catalogs of these libraries were searched for works by authors McCarthy deemed inappropriate. McCarthy then recited the list of supposedly pro-communist authors before his subcommittee and the press. Yielding to the pressure, the State Department ordered its overseas librarians to remove from their shelves "material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers, etc." Some libraries actually burned the newly forbidden books. Though he did not block the State Department from carrying out this order, President Eisenhower publicly criticized the initiative as well, telling the graduating class of Dartmouth College President in 1953: "Don't join the book burners! ... Don't be afraid to go to the library and read every book so long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency-that should be the only censorship." The president then settled for a compromise by retaining the ban on Communist books written by Communists, while also allowing the libraries to keep books on Communism written by anti-Communists.

McCarthy next turned his attention to the case of a U.S. Army dentist who had been promoted to the rank of major despite having refused to answer questions on an Army loyalty review form. McCarthy's handling of this investigation, including a series of insults directed at a brigadier general, led to the Army-McCarthy hearings, with the Army and McCarthy trading charges and counter-charges for 36 days before a nationwide television audience. While the official outcome of the hearings was inconclusive, this exposure of McCarthy to the American public resulted in a sharp decline in his popularity. In less than a year, McCarthy was censured by the Senate, and his position as a prominent force in anti-communism was essentially ended.

On November 25, 1947, the day after the House of Representatives approved citations of contempt for the Hollywood Ten, Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, issued a press release on behalf of the heads of the major studios that came to be referred to as the Waldorf Statement. This statement announced the firing of the Hollywood Ten and stated: "We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States..." This marked the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist. In spite of the fact that hundreds were denied employment, the studios, producers, and other employers did not publicly admit that a blacklist existed.

At this time, private loyalty-review boards and anti-communist investigators began to appear to fill a growing demand among certain industries to certify that their employees were above reproach. Companies that were concerned about the sensitivity of their business, or which, like the entertainment industry, felt particularly vulnerable to public opinion, made use of these private services. For a fee, these teams investigated employees and questioned them about their politics and affiliations.

At such hearings, the subject usually did not have a right to the presence of an attorney, and as with HUAC, the interviewee might be asked to defend himself against accusations without being allowed to cross-examine the accuser. These agencies kept cross-referenced lists of leftist organizations, publications, rallies, charities, and the like, as well as lists of individuals who were known or suspected communists. Books such as Red Channels and newsletters such as Counterattack and Confidential Information were published to keep track of communist and leftist organizations and individuals. Insofar as the various blacklists of McCarthyism were actual physical lists, they were created and maintained by these private organizations.[citation needed ][further explanation needed ]

Efforts to protect the United States from the perceived threat of communist subversion were particularly enabled by several federal laws. The Hatch Act of 1939 banned membership in subversive organizations, which was interpreted as being anti-labor legislation. The Hatch Act would allow for the reduction of influence of the Workers' Alliance, which was claimed to have been created by the Soviet Union based on a model of their unemployed councils. The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 made the act of "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the ... desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association" a criminal offense.

Hundreds of communists and others were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were convicted under the Smith Act in 1949 in the Foley Square trial. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. The defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and given prison sentences. In 1951, 23 other leaders of the party were indicted, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Many were convicted on the basis of testimony that was later admitted to be false. By 1957, 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law, of whom 93 were convicted.

The McCarran Internal Security Act, which became law in 1950, has been described by scholar Ellen Schrecker as "the McCarthy era's only important piece of legislation" (the Smith Act technically antedated McCarthyism). However, the McCarran Act had no real effect beyond legal harassment. It required the registration of Communist organizations with the U.S. Attorney General and established the Subversive Activities Control Board to investigate possible communist-action and communist-front organizations so they could be required to register. Due to numerous hearings, delays, and appeals, the act was never enforced, even with regard to the Communist Party of the United States itself, and the major provisions of the act were found to be unconstitutional in 1965 and 1967. In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.

The Communist Control Act of 1954 was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler and Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies." While the Communist Control Act had an odd mix of liberals and conservatives among its supporters, it never had any significant effect.

The act was successfully applied only twice. In 1954 it was used to prevent Communist Party members from appearing on the New Jersey state ballot, and in 1960, it was cited to deny the CPUSA recognition as an employer under New York state's unemployment compensation system. The New York Post called the act "a monstrosity", "a wretched repudiation of democratic principles," while accused Democratic liberals of a "neurotic, election-year anxiety to escape the charge of being 'soft on Communism' even at the expense of sacrificing constitutional rights."

In addition to the federal laws and responding to the worries of the local opinion, several states enacted anti-communist statutes.

By 1952, several states had enacted statutes against criminal anarchy, criminal syndicalism, and sedition; banned communists and "subversives" from public employment, or even from receiving public aid; demanded on loyalty oaths from public servants; and severely restricted or banned the Communist Party. In addition, six states had equivalents to the HUAC. The California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities and the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee were established by their respective legislatures.

Some of these states had very severe, or even extreme, laws against communism. In 1950, Michigan enacted life imprisonment for subversive propaganda; the following year, Tennessee enacted the death penalty for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. The death penalty for membership in the Communist Party was discussed in Texas by Governor Allan Shivers, who described it as "worse than murder."

Although right-wing radicals were the bedrock of support for McCarthyism, they were not alone. A broad "coalition of the aggrieved" found McCarthyism attractive, or at least politically useful. Common themes uniting the coalition were opposition to internationalism, particularly the United Nations; opposition to social welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the New Deal; and opposition to efforts to reduce inequalities in the social structure of the United States.

One focus of popular McCarthyism concerned the provision of public health services, particularly vaccination, mental health care services, and fluoridation, all of which were denounced by some to be communist plots to poison or brainwash the American people. Such viewpoints led to collisions between McCarthyite radicals and supporters of public-health programs, most notably in the case of the Alaska Mental Health Bill controversy of 1956.

William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of the influential conservative political magazine National Review, wrote a defense of McCarthy, McCarthy and his Enemies, in which he asserted that "McCarthyism ... is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks."

In addition, as Richard Rovere points out, many ordinary Americans became convinced that there must be "no smoke without fire" and lent their support to McCarthyism. The Gallup poll found that at his peak in January 1954, 50% of the American public supported McCarthy, while 29% had an unfavorable opinion. His support fell to 34% in June 1954. Republicans tended to like what McCarthy was doing and Democrats did not, though McCarthy had significant support from traditional Democratic ethnic groups, especially Catholics, as well as many unskilled workers and small-business owners. (McCarthy himself was a Catholic.) He had very little support among union activists and Jews.

Those who sought to justify McCarthyism did so largely through their characterization of communism, and American communists in particular. Proponents of McCarthyism claimed that the CPUSA was so completely under Moscow's control that any American communist was a puppet of the Soviet intelligence services. This view, if restricted to the Communist Party's leadership is supported by recent documentation from the archives of the KGB as well as post-war decodes of wartime Soviet radio traffic from the Venona project, showing that Moscow provided financial support to the CPUSA and had significant influence on CPUSA policies. J. Edgar Hoover commented in a 1950 speech, "Communist members, body and soul, are the property of the Party."

According to historian Richard G. Powers, McCarthy added "bogus specificity" to "sweeping accusation[s]", gaining support among "countersubversive anticommunists" on one hand, who sought to find and punish perceived communists. On the other hand, "liberal anticommunists" believed that the Communist Party was "despicable and annoying" but ultimately politically irrelevant.

In addition, it was often claimed that the party didn't allow members to resign; thus someone who had been a member for a short time decades previously could be thought a current member. Many of the hearings and trials of McCarthyism featured testimony by former Communist Party members such as Elizabeth Bentley, Louis Budenz, and Whittaker Chambers, speaking as expert witnesses.

Various historians and pundits have discussed alleged Soviet-directed infiltration of the U.S. government and the possible collaboration of high U.S. government officials.

Estimating the number of victims of McCarthy is difficult. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases, simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired.

For the vast majority, both the potential for them to do harm to the nation and the nature of their communist affiliation were tenuous. After the extremely damaging " Cambridge Five" spy scandal ( Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, et al.), suspected homosexuality was also a common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism. The hunt for "sexual perverts", who were presumed to be subversive by nature, resulted in over 5,000 federal workers being fired, and thousands were harassed and denied employment. Many have termed this aspect of McCarthyism the " lavender scare".

Homosexuality was classified as a psychiatric disorder in the 1950s. However, in the context of the highly politicized Cold War environment, homosexuality became framed as a dangerous, contagious social disease that posed a potential threat to state security. As the family was believed to be the cornerstone of American strength and integrity, the description of homosexuals as "sexual perverts" meant that they were both unable to function within a family unit and presented the potential to poison the social body. This era also witnessed the establishment of widely spread FBI surveillance intended to identify homosexual government employees.

The McCarthy hearings and according "sexual pervert" investigations can be seen to have been driven by a desire to identify individuals whose ability to function as loyal citizens had been compromised. McCarthy began his campaign by drawing upon the ways in which he embodied traditional American values to become the self-appointed vanguard of social morality.

Some of the notable people who were blacklisted or suffered some other persecution during McCarthyism include:

In 1953, Robert K. Murray, a young professor of history at Pennsylvania State University who had served as an intelligence officer in World War II, was revising his dissertation on the Red Scare of 1919-20 for publication until Little, Brown and Company decided that "under the circumstances ... it wasn't wise for them to bring this book out." He learned that investigators were questioning his colleagues and relatives. The University of Minnesota press published his volume, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920, in 1955.

The nation was by no means united behind the policies and activities that have come to be associated with McCarthyism. The critics of various aspects of McCarthyism included many figures not generally noted for their liberalism. In his overridden veto of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, President Truman wrote, "In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have." Truman also unsuccessfully vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, which among other provisions denied trade unions National Labor Relations Board protection unless union leaders signed affidavits swearing they were not and had never been Communists. In 1953, after he left office, Truman criticized the current Eisenhower administration:

It is now evident that the present Administration has fully embraced, for political advantage, McCarthyism. I am not referring to the Senator from Wisconsin. He is only important in that his name has taken on the dictionary meaning of the word. It is the corruption of truth, the abandonment of the due process law. It is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism or security. It is the rise to power of the demagogue who lives on untruth; it is the spreading of fear and the destruction of faith in every level of society.

On June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, delivered a speech to the Senate she called a " Declaration of Conscience". In a clear attack upon McCarthyism, she called for an end to " character assassinations" and named "some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought". She said " freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America", and decried "cancerous tentacles of 'know nothing, suspect everything' attitudes". Six other Republican senators- Wayne Morse, Irving M. Ives, Charles W. Tobey, Edward John Thye, George Aiken, and Robert C. Hendrickson -joined Smith in condemning the tactics of McCarthyism.

In 1952, the Supreme Court upheld a lower-court decision in Adler v. Board of Education, thus approving a law that allowed state loyalty review boards to fire teachers deemed "subversive". In his dissenting opinion, Justice William O. Douglas wrote: "The present law proceeds on a principle repugnant to our society-guilt by association.... What happens under this law is typical of what happens in a police state. Teachers are under constant surveillance; their pasts are combed for signs of disloyalty; their utterances are watched for clues to dangerous thoughts."

One of the most influential opponents of McCarthyism was the famed CBS newscaster and analyst Edward R. Murrow. On October 20, 1953, Murrow's show aired an episode about the dismissal of Milo Radulovich, a former reserve Air Force lieutenant who was accused of associating with Communists. The show was strongly critical of the Air Force's methods, which included presenting evidence in a sealed envelope that Radulovich and his attorney were not allowed to open.

On March 9, 1954, See It Now aired another episode on the issue of McCarthyism, this one attacking Joseph McCarthy himself. Titled "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy", it used footage of McCarthy speeches to portray him as dishonest, reckless, and abusive toward witnesses and prominent Americans. In his concluding comment, Murrow said:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.

This broadcast has been cited as a key episode in bringing about the end of McCarthyism.

In the mid and late 1950s, the attitudes and institutions of McCarthyism slowly weakened. Changing public sentiments heavily contributed to the decline of McCarthyism. Its decline may also be charted through a series of court decisions.

With this court decision, the private blacklisters and those who used them were put on notice that they were legally liable for the professional and financial damage they caused. Although some informal blacklisting continued, the private "loyalty checking" agencies were soon a thing of the past. Even before the Faulk verdict, many in Hollywood had decided it was time to break the blacklist. In 1960, Dalton Trumbo, one of the best known members of the Hollywood Ten, was publicly credited with writing the films and .

Much of the undoing of McCarthyism came at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren. As Richard Rovere wrote in his biography of Joseph McCarthy, "[T]he United States Supreme Court took judicial notice of the rents McCarthy was making in the fabric of liberty and thereupon wrote a series of decisions that have made the fabric stronger than before." Two Eisenhower appointees to the court- Earl Warren (who was made Chief Justice) and William J. Brennan, Jr. -proved to be more liberal than Eisenhower had anticipated.

The Warren Court made a series of rulings that helped bring an end to the McCarthyism.

In 1956, the Warren Court heard the case of Slochower v. Board of Education. Harry Slochower was a professor at Brooklyn College who had been fired by New York City for invoking the Fifth Amendment when McCarthy's committee questioned him about his past membership in the Communist Party. The court prohibited such actions, ruling "...we must condemn the practice of imputing a sinister meaning to the exercise of a person's constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment... The privilege against self-incrimination would be reduced to a hollow mockery if its exercise could be taken as equivalent either to a confession of guilt or a conclusive presumption of perjury." In addition, the 1956 Cole v. Young ruling also greatly weakened the ability to discriminate in the federal civilian workforce.

Another key decision was in the 1957 case Yates v. United States, in which the convictions of fourteen Communists were reversed. In Justice Black's opinion, he wrote of the original "Smith Act" trials: "The testimony of witnesses is comparatively insignificant. Guilt or innocence may turn on what Marx or Engels or someone else wrote or advocated as much as a hundred years or more ago... When the propriety of obnoxious or unfamiliar view about government is in reality made the crucial issue, ...prejudice makes conviction inevitable except in the rarest circumstances."

Also in 1957, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Watkins v. United States, curtailing the power of HUAC to punish uncooperative witnesses by finding them in contempt of Congress. Justice Warren wrote in the decision: "The mere summoning of a witness and compelling him to testify, against his will, about his beliefs, expressions or associations is a measure of governmental interference. And when those forced revelations concern matters that are unorthodox, unpopular, or even hateful to the general public, the reaction in the life of the witness may be disastrous."

In its 1958 decision in Kent v. Dulles, the Supreme Court halted the State Department from using the authority of its own regulations to refuse or revoke passports based on an applicant's communist beliefs or associations.

The political divisions McCarthyism created in the United States continue to make themselves manifest, and the politics and history of anti-communism in the United States are still contentious. Portions of the massive security apparatus established during the McCarthy era still exist. Loyalty oaths are still required by the California Constitution for all officials and employees of the government of California (which is highly problematic for Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses whose beliefs preclude them from pledging absolute loyalty to the state). At the federal level, a few portions of the McCarran Internal Security Act remain in effect. However, the act's detention provision was repealed in 1971. The McCarran Act's Communist registration requirement was declared unconstitutional in the 1965 Supreme Court ruling in Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board as well. The McCarran Act's Subversive Activities Control Board, which enforced the law's investigation requirement for persons alleged to be involved in "subversive activities," was officially abolished through Congressional legislation in 1972 as well.

McCarthyism also attracts controversy purely as a historical issue. Through declassified documents from Soviet archives and Venona project decryptions of coded Soviet messages, the Soviet Union was found to have engaged in substantial espionage activities in the United States during the 1940s. The Communist Party USA also was substantially funded and its policies controlled by the Soviet Union, and accusations existed that CPUSA members were often recruited as spies.

Liberal anti-communists like Edward Shils and Daniel Moynihan had a contempt for McCarthyism. Sociologist Edward Shils criticized an excessive policy of secrecy during the Cold War, that led to the misdirection of McCarthyism, which was addressed during the 1994-1997 Moynihan Commission. As Moynihan put it, "reaction to McCarthy took the form of a modish anti-anti-Communism that considered impolite any discussion of the very real threat Communism posed to Western values and security." After revelations of Soviet spy networks from the declassified Venona project, Moynihan wondered: "Might less secrecy have prevented the liberal overreaction to McCarthyism as well as McCarthyism itself?" He described the situation during the McCarthy era as "ignorant armies clashed by night". With McCarthy advocating an extremist view, the discussion of communist subversion was made into a civil rights issue instead of a counterintelligence one.

In the view of some contemporary commentators, the revelations from Venona and other archives on espionage, stand as at least a partial vindication of McCarthyism. Some such as Goldberg feel that a genuinely dangerous subversive element was in the United States, and that this danger justified extreme measures. The opposing view holds that, recent revelations notwithstanding, by the time McCarthyism began in the late 1940s, the CPUSA was an ineffectual fringe group, and the damage done to U.S. interests by Soviet spies after World War II was minimal. Historian Ellen Schrecker states, " in this country, McCarthyism did more damage to the constitution than the American Communist Party ever did."

Historian John Earl Haynes, while acknowledging that inexcusable excesses occurred during McCarthyism, argues that some contemporary historians of McCarthyism underplay the un-democratic nature of the CPUSA. At the same time, Haynes, who studied the Venona decryptions extensively, argued that McCarthy's attempts to "make anti-communism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened [the post-War] anti-Communist consensus", thereby ultimately harming anti-Communist efforts more than helping them. Of the 159 people who were identified on lists used or referenced by McCarthy, evidence only substantially proved that nine of them had aided Soviet espionage efforts-while several hundred Soviet spies were actually known based on Venona and other evidence, most were never named by McCarthy.

A number of observers have compared the oppression of liberals and leftists during the McCarthy period to 2000s-era actions against suspected terrorists, most of them Muslims. In The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, author Haynes Johnson compares the "abuses suffered by aliens thrown into high-security U.S. prisons in the wake of 9/11" to the excesses of the McCarthy era. Similarly, David D. Cole has written that the Patriot Act "in effect resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting 'terrorist' for 'communist'."

From the opposite pole, conservative writer Ann Coulter devotes much of her book to drawing parallels between past opposition to McCarthy and McCarthyism and the policies and beliefs of modern-day liberals, arguing that the former hindered the anti-communist cause and the latter hinder the War on Terrorism. Other authors who have drawn on a comparison between current anti-terrorism policies and McCarthyism include Geoffrey R. Stone, Ted Morgan, and Jonah Goldberg.

Since the time of McCarthy, the word McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for a variety of practices: aggressively questioning a person's patriotism, making poorly supported accusations, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or to discredit an opponent, subverting civil and political rights in the name of national security, and the use of demagoguery are all often referred to as McCarthyism.

The 1951 novel The Troubled Air by Irwin Shaw tells the story of the director of a (fictional) radio show, broadcast live at the time, who is given a deadline to investigate his cast for alleged links to communism. The novel recounts the devastating effects on all concerned.

The 1952 Arthur Miller play The Crucible used the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for McCarthyism, suggesting that the process of McCarthyism-style persecution can occur at any time or place. The play focused on the fact that once accused, a person had little chance of exoneration, given the irrational and circular reasoning of both the courts and the public. Miller later wrote: "The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties."

The 1976 film starring Woody Allen dealt with the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist. The film was made by those blacklisted: producer and director Martin Ritt; writer Walter Bernstein; and actors Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Michael Murphy, John Randolph, Lloyd Gough, and Joshua Shelley.

Guilty by Suspicion is a 1991 American drama film about the Hollywood blacklist, McCarthyism, and the activities of the HUAC. Written and directed by Irwin Winkler, it starred Robert De Niro, Annette Bening, and George Wendt.

The 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck by George Clooney starred David Strathairn as broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow and contained archival footage of McCarthy.

Haynes, John Earl. "The Cold War debate continues: A traditionalist view of historical writing on domestic Communism and anti-Communism." Journal of Cold War Studies 2.1 (2000): 76-115.

Hixson Jr, William B. Search for the American right wing: An analysis of the social science record, 1955-1987 (Princeton University Press, 2015).

Reeves, Thomas C. "McCarthyism: Interpretations since Hofstadter." Wisconsin Magazine of History (1976): 42-54. online

Selverstone, Marc J. "A Literature So Immense: The Historiography of Anticommunism." Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 24.4 (2010): 7-11.

Badash, Lawrence (October 30, 2007). "Science in the McCarthy Period: Training Ground for Scientists as Public Citizens". Oregon State University. Archived from the original on February 5, 2008.

Beyer, Mary & Michael Beyer (January 2006). "McCarthyism Today". International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. Archived from the original on October 1, 2006.

"McCarthyism / The "Red Scare"". Dwight D. Eisenhower Online Documents. Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home. Archived from the original on November 1, 2013.

Rusher, William A. (Fall 2004). "A Closer Look Under The Bed". Claremont Review of Books. Claremont Institute. Archived from the original on January 27, 2012.

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McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism, and socialism, and especially when the accusations are false or unproven and are made in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term originally referred to the controversial practices and policies of U.S.

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Coalition following Vincent Chin murder (1980s-current)

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Coalition following Vincent Chin murder (1980s-current)

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In conjunction with the Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance & Rededication, a 64-page legacy guide has been published.

This reference and teaching tool provides important historical context about why we remember Vincent Chin and how his legacy helped ignite the pan-Asian civil rights movement, ultimately building a multiracial, multicultural coalition united for equal justice and human dignity which stands as a landmark of American history. The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center assisted with the guide, which is translated into various Asian languages and available online.

Get the Legacy Guide

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Legacy Guide - The Vincent Chin Institute

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In conjunction with the Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance & Rededication, a 64-page legacy guide has been published. This reference and teaching tool provides important historical context about why we remember Vincent Chin and how his legacy helped ignite the pan-Asian civil rights movement, ultimately building a multiracial, multicultural coalition united for equal justice and human dignity which stands as a landmark of American history.

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African Americans protested against the Vietnam War (1965-1975)

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African Americans protested against the Vietnam War (1965-1975)

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By July 1965, SNCC members had produced their first uncompromising statement on the war, declaring that blacks should not "fight in Vietnam for the white man's freedom, until all the Negro people are free in Mississippi." From the outset, the burden of the conflict was borne disproportionately by African Americans and working-class and poor whites. During the early years of the war, students enrolled in college could obtain deferments from military service. Many middle- and upper-class whites were also able to fulfill military obligations by joining the Army Reserve or the National Guard. As a result, in 1967, 64 percent of all eligible African-Americans were drafted, but only 31 percent of eligible whites. During 1965-66, the casualty rate for blacks was twice that of whites. Malcolm X was the first prominent African American leader to denounce the Vietnam War, and others soon followed his lead.

During the bitter national debate on Vietnam, all public leaders within black America were forced to choose sides. Black progressives in electoral politics began to speak out in opposition to the war. As a dedicated pacifist, Martin Luther King took a strong public stand against it. At the annual SCLC executive board meeting held in Baltimore on April 1-2, 1965, King expressed the need to criticize the Johnson Administration's policies in Southeast Asia, much to the dismay of colleagues who believed his antiwar sentiment would jeopardize the organization's funding. In January 1966, King published a strong attack on the Vietnam War. In it he stated that Black leaders could not become blind to the rest of the world's issues while engaged solely in problems of domestic race relations. While the initial response to King's statement was negative, by the spring of 1966 the SCLC' s executive board had come out officially against the war. King understood that the massive military spending on the war in Vietnam meant that the nation had far fewer resources available to attack domestic poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment. King concluded that the Vietnam conflict had to end immediately. On April 4, 1967, speaking at Harlem's Riverside Church, King announced: "It would be very inconsistent for me to teach and preach nonviolence in this situation and then applaud violence when thousands of thousands of people, both adults and children, are being maimed and mutilated and many killed in this way." Eleven days later, Dr. King organized a rally of 125,000 in protest against the war.

In an expansion of his message concerning race and the war in Vietnam, King began to link the oppression of the poor to the global oppressiveness of capitalism as exhibited in the U.S. action in Southeast Asia. When Black Memphis sanitation workers voted to strike on February 12 to protest against low wages and the accidental deaths of two black garbage men 12 days before, they asked the SCLC for help. King and his closest associates arrived in the city to help mobilize popular support for the strike. The pacifist minister, who had once struggled for desegregated buses, was now, 13 years after Montgomery, organizing militant black urban workers, building a national poor people's vision, and defying a president. On April 4, 1968, while standing on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, King was assassinated by a white man, James Earl Ray, when the police officers who had been guarding the minister were absent.

Black people across the nation felt the grievous loss to the cause for racial freedom. As word spread throughout the country of the esteemed civil rights activist's murder, cities erupted into violence reminiscent of the previous summer's urban unrest. Ministers, activists, and entertainers were dispatched throughout the nation to calm crowds outraged by King's assassination.

Despite the death of the great leader, the antiwar struggle continued. Using the Reverend's rhetoric linking inhumane foreign policy to the injustices of the American domestic social landscape, students continued to raise questions and demonstrate against the war they saw as an extension of American racism. On May 14, as Jackson State College students protested the injustices of the war and American racism, the police opened fire on the rally, killing two and injuring 12. Occurring right after the Kent State shootings, where four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard as they protested, the events at Jackson State set off a widespread outrage that linked the war to police violence and domestic injustice. The protest of a spectrum of black leaders, athletes, activists, artists, and entertainers helped force the federal government to start withdrawing troops from Vietnam in late 1969.

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Enlarge image Enlarge image By July 1965, SNCC members had produced their first uncompromising statement on the war, declaring that blacks should not "fight in Vietnam for the white man's freedom, until all the Negro people are free in Mississippi." From the outset, the burden of the conflict was borne disproportionately by African Americans and working-class and poor whites.