Former Arkansas teacher remembers, long before 1957
September 27, 2007
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1957, Bill of Rights, Brown v. Board, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Desegregation, Education, Education success, History, Human Rights | Tagged: Clinton Library, Emancipation Proclamation, Little Rock, School desegregation | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
50 years after Little Rock: Lesson plans
September 27, 2007Tolerance.org features a solid lesson plan on what the nation should have learned from the events in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 — when nine African American students challenged segregation and sought to enroll at Little Rock’s Central High School. It’s timely — the actual anniversary is this month. This is a key point for Texas’s U.S. history standards:
September 2007 – This month, our nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine’s attempt to integrate schools. Have we really learned how to break down barriers?
This lesson plan is excerpted from the 2007-2008 Mix It Up Planner. Learn more about national Mix It Up at Lunch Day, to be held on Nov. 13, 2007!
Objectives:
- Students will draw conclusions about boundary crossing from history and literature.
- Students will identify boundaries in their classroom or school, cross those boundaries, report back and reflect on what they learned.
Tolerance.org carries several lesson plans teachers will find useful.
3 Comments | 1957, Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, Desegregation, Dwight Eisenhower, Education, Heroes, History, Lesson plans, Little Rock Nine | Tagged: Little Rock, School desegregation, teaching tolerance | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Little Rock, 50 years later
September 4, 2007
Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, leaves Little Rock’s Central High School after having been denied the chance to enroll. Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called the Arkansas National Guard to duty to prevent nine African American students from enrolling. (Photo by Will Counts – see his series here.)
Elizabeth Eckford graduated*, went on to a career with the Army as a journalist, and is the only one of the nine students (all of whom graduated and did well) to live in Little Rock today. Central High school is a National Historical Monument — and still a high school.
What I want to know is this: The woman in back of Ms. Eckford, face thoroughly engaged in delivering a piece of her mind, I suppose: Who is she, and where is she, today? Does anyone know?
- * Ernest Green was the only senior among the Nine — he graduated in the spring of 1958; the others had a more difficult path. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., attended Green’s high school graduation ceremony. When I met him, he was Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Carter administration. Green is an Eagle Scout.
- Central Arkansas Library System lesson plan on Arkansas’ top ten events in history; the 1957 events top the lists of several journalists. A top ten events in any state’s history might be a good set of activities for any state history course, especially if you can find a list of a top ten from state newspapers or other sources.
2 Comments | 1957, Bill of Rights, Boy Scouts of America, Brown v. Board, Civil Rights, Desegregation, Dwight Eisenhower, Education, Lesson plans, Little Rock Nine | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Alberto Gonzales resigned . . .
August 27, 2007. . . Friday, but the president didn’t tell us about it until today.
According to the the New York Times (which broke the story):
“The unfair treatment that he’s been on the receiving end of has been a distraction for the department,” the official said.
Injustice even as he leaves. It’s the fair treatment Gonzales received that should have forced him out. The U.S. Justice Department is a mess above the political appointee level, with serious mismanagement, mal-management and lack of management threatening justice and the administration of law at several levels.
Other notable coverage: The Washington Post story now includes notes to Gonzales’s terse announcement, and links to recent stories in the Post which lend perspective and a lot of information.
Leave a Comment » | Capturing history, Civil Rights, History, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Politics, Presidents, Scandals, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas couple gets $80,000 for Bush’s anti-protestor errors
August 17, 2007Remember the two people kicked out of President Bush’s Independence Day speech in West Virginia for wearing protest t-shirts in 2004? Nicole and Jeffery Rank, now of Corpus Christi, Texas, were charged with trespassing.
But they were invited to attend the speech.
“This settlement is a real victory not only for our clients but for the First Amendment,” said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of West Virginia. “As a result of the Ranks’ courageous stand, public officials will think twice before they eject peaceful protesters from public events for exercising their right to dissent.”
In the course of the suit it was discovered that the official advance manual for the Bush White House urged removing dissenters from speech audiences, so the original claims that the action was just overzealous local officials was refuted. One wonders if the advance manual has been changed.
When asked if are glad they decided stand up for their beliefs, both answered “absolutely” without hesitation.
“We have thoroughly not enjoyed our 15 minutes [of fame]. It’s cost us personally and professionally,” Jeff Rank said. “The thing that we’re fighting for, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, is just too important to this country to lay down on something like this.”
The First Amendment may have been wounded, but it’s still alive.
Other resources:
- The original complaint in the case, from the national ACLU website (.pdf format)
- Editorial supporting the Ranks’ position, from the Bryan-College Station, Texas, Eagle (home of Texas A&M)
- Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) with longer story and more complete explanations
Tip of the old scrub brush to blueollie.
1 Comment | Civil Rights, Dissent, First Amendment, Jurisprudence, Justice, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Oliver W. Hill, history maker, 100
August 6, 2007
Literally while writing the previous post about the importance of recording history before the witnesses leave us, I heard on KERA-FM, NPR reporter Juan Williams’ intimate, detailed and stirring story about Oliver W. Hill, one of the lawyers who brought one of the five cases that resulted in the historic 1954 reversal of U.S. law, in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (347 U.S. 483).
Oliver W. Hill died Sunday, in Richmond, Virginia. He was 100.
In 1940, Mr. Hill won his first civil rights case in Virginia, one that required equal pay for black and white teachers. Eight years later, he was the first black elected to the Richmond City Council since Reconstruction.
A lawsuit argued by Mr. Hill in 1951 on behalf of students protesting deplorable conditions at their high school for blacks in Farmville became one of five cases decided under Brown.
That case from Farmville offers students a more personal view of their own power in life. The case resulted from a student-led demonstration at Moton High School in Farmville. Moton was an all-black school, with facilities amazingly inferior to the new white high school in Farmville — no indoor plumbing, for example. While the Virginia NAACP failed at several similar cases earlier, and while the organization had a policy of taking no more school desegregation cases, the students’ earnestness and sincerity swayed Oliver Hill to try one more time:
On May 23, 1951, a NAACP lawyer filed suit in the federal district court in Richmond, VA, on behalf of 117 Moton High School, Prince Edward County, VA, students and their parents. The first plaintiff listed was Dorothy Davis, a 14-year old ninth grader; the case was titled Dorothy E. Davis, et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et. al. It asked that the state law requiring segregated schools in Virginia be struck down.
Davis was consolidated with four other cases, from the District of Columbia, Delaware, South Carolina, and Brown from Kansas; it was argued in 1953, but the Court deadlocked on a decision. When Chief Justice Arthur Vinson died and was replaced by the (hoped-to-be) conservative Chief Justice Earl Warren, Warren got the Court to re-hear the case. Because he thought it was such an important case in education, Warren worked to get a solid majority. The Court which was deadlocked late in 1953, in May 1954 issued the Brown decision unanimously, overturning the separate-but-equal rule from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (167 U.S. 537).
Brown was the big boulder whose rolling off the hill of segregation gave power to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. That decision and the horrible murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 inspired civil rights worker Rosa Parks to take a stand, and take a seat for human rights on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December of 1955, which led to the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by the new preacher in town, a young man named Martin Luther King, Jr. When the Supreme Court again chose civil rights over segregation in the bus case, the wake of the great ship of history clearly showed a change in course.
Oliver Hill was there, one of the navigators of that ship of history.
1 Comment | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Education, Education quality, Education spending, Fourteenth Amendment, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, U.S. Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Immigrants win Pennsylvania case: Hazleton’s anti-immigrant law struck down
July 26, 2007News from the Pennsylvania ACLU (watch the right wing blogs explode, especially in Texas when they figure out the Farmers Branch ordinance is based on Hazleton’s ordinance, and that the judge in Pennsylvania used language similar to the TRO language used by the judge in Texas looking at the Farmers Branch ordinance) (text of press release and background from Pennsylvania ACLU):
Judge’s Decision Upholds Fair Treatment for All
“The genius of our Constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. In that way, all in this nation can be confident of equal justice under its laws.” – Judge Munley’s Lozano v. Hazleton decision, pp. 188-189
In the first trial decision of its kind, a federal court has declared unconstitutional a local ordinance that sought to punish landlords and employers for doing business with undocumented immigrants. The landmark decision in the closely-watched challenge to Hazleton’s anti-immigrant ordinance held that the ordinance cannot be enforced.
“We are grateful the court recognized that municipal laws like those in Hazleton are unconstitutional. The trial record showed that these ordinances are based on propaganda and deception,” said Vic Walczak, Legal Director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and a lead attorney in the case. “Hazleton-type laws are designed to make life miserable for millions of immigrants. They promote distrust of all foreigners, including those here legally, and fuel xenophobia and discrimination, especially against Latinos.”
Leave a Comment » | Bill of Rights, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Economics, Human Rights, Immigration, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
World War II in Texas: Japanese internment
July 23, 2007
“Girl Scout drama presentation for Hinamatsuri (Doll’s Festival), on Japanese Girl’s Day, at the Crystal City, Texas, internment facility operated by the Justice Department, 1943-45.
- “Girl Scout drama presentation for Hinamatsuri (Doll’s Festival), on Japanese Girl’s Day, at the Crystal City, Texas, internment facility operated by the Justice Department, 1943-45. From the archives of the Institute of Texan Cultures at the University of Texas – San Antonio (UTSA)
Each of us has pockets of ignorance; some of the pockets are larger than others.
How did I miss that there were Japanese-American internees in Texas? If I stumbled across that fact before, it really didn’t register. Reviewing the website for the University of Texas – San Antonio’s Institute of Texas Cultures, I came across the Spring 2007 Newsletter, which is dedicated to the Crystal City internment facility.
Crystal City is unknown to many other Texans, too, I wager. Study of a list of the War Department “Relocation” camps shows nothing in Texas. Surprise! The U.S. Justice Department also operated camps of interned Americans of Japanese descent. The War Department rounded up Japanese Americans in west coast states and their neighbors; the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Services, the old INS which was rolled into the Department of Homeland Security after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, arrested and detained Japanese-Americans from the rest of the United States. INS operated at least four such camps in Texas. Read the rest of this entry »
15 Comments | 1941-1945, Boy Scouts of America, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Girl Scouts, History, Japanese American internment, Justice, Law, Lesson plans, Texas history, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Liberal evangelicals? Go see: Jim Wallis in Dallas
July 21, 2007To counter the notion that “evangelical Christian” is synonymous with “conservative enough to make Attila the Hun blush,” the editor of Sojourners magazine speaks out in favor of helping the poor, protecting the environment, and generally not being so crabby about life. If you’re in the North Texas area next Tuesday, you can hear the message first hand.
Jim Wallis will speak in Dallas, at Wilshire Baptist Church, on July 24, at 7:00 p.m., part of the Faith and Freedom Speaker Series of the Texas Freedom Network. Wallis speaks forcefully for faithful people who do not share the crabby views of the religious right. This is a great opportunity for Dallas to hear a voice of goodwill from faith — some call it a prophetic voice. The TFN website says:
Rev. Wallis has boldly proclaimed that the monologue of the religious right in this country is over. In his evening lecture, he will explain how to renew the values of love, justice and community in Texas.
The Dallas organizing committee meets on July 12, 7:00 p.m., at Wilshire Baptist Church, 4316 Abrams Road, (see map in the sidebar). Please come!
Admission is free, but TFN asks people to click in advance to reserve seats, or call 512-322-0545 (TFN’s offices in Austin).
Pre-speech discussions among the organizers have suggested follow-up events to discuss Rev. Wallis’s ideas, and to fan the flames of freedom of faith in North Texas. In short, this will be a good networking event, too.
Who is Rev. Wallis?
Rev. Jim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, preacher, speaker, activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life. His latest book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, was on The New York Times bestseller list for four months. He is president and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine — whose print and electronic publication reaches more than 250,000 people — and also convenes a national network of churches, faith-based organizations, and individuals working to overcome poverty in America.
Check out the Sojourners website.
More details are available at the TFN website. You may reserve a seat at the Sojourners website, also.
Mark your calendars: July 24, Jim Wallis speaks (that’s NEXT TUESDAY). To get to Wilshire Baptist Church, from Central Expressway take Mockingbird Lane east to Abrams Road, turn left onto Abrams, and the church is about one block farther, on the right. It’s big, it has a lot of space and a good deal of parking.
Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Environmental protection, First Amendment, Politics, Religion, Religious Freedom, Texas Freedom Network | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Oklahoma opposes civil rights? What is this?
July 4, 2007Americans seeking justice and healing for crimes committed during the civil rights movement, from about 1953 through at least the 1970s, championed a proposed law that would establish a unit in the Justice Department to clear up some of these old cases before the perpetrators all die — sort of a civil rights cold case division.
H.R. 923 is called “The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act” in honor of the slain young boy whose murderers were convicted by a racist-tinged jury, and then bragged about the murder in a national magazine.
The bill passed the House of Representatives June 21, 422 to 2.
It was scheduled for a quick vote in the U.S. Senate, a unanimous consent motion, to speed the bill to President Bush, so the investigations can begin quickly.
Then that old curmudgeon hurdle to progress and to the 21st century, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn stepped in. He put a “hold” on the bill, which is a notice that a senator has gross objections to a matter. As a matter of courtesy in that great deliberative body, holds are honored.
The bill is dead, unless Coburn removes his hold.
Coburn may be a nice guy otherwise, but his recent holds, stopping action honoring Presidential Medal of Honor winner Rachel Carson, and now, delaying justice already too long denied, go beyond the pale of polite society. These are thuggish actions.
I hope he’ll reconsider. But if past history is any sign — his refusal to allow the Senate to vote to stop cockfighting was one mackerel by moonlight — he won’t.
Say a prayer for America today. When justice and honor cannot be had in the U.S. Senate, because one man is a crank — when his saner colleagues cannot prevail upon him — our nation is in trouble. Don’t fly your flag upside down today — but be sure it flies in protest of Sen. Tom Coburn’s inactions.
1 Comment | Civil Rights, History, Justice, Law, Rampant stupidity | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Japanese-American internment: Statesman-Journal web special
June 29, 2007Looking for good sources on Japanese internment?
Editor & Publisher highlights the web version of a special series on Japanese internment during World War II, put together by the Statesman-Journal in Salem, Oregon. The series is featured in “Pauline’s Picks,” a feature by Pauline Millard showing off the best use of the web by old-line print publications.
The Statesman-Journal’s web piece is “Beyond Barbed Wire,” featuring timelines, maps of the Tule Lake internment facility (closest to Oregon), stories about Japanese Americans in Oregon, especially in Salem, photos, video interviews, and a significant collection of original documents perfectly suited for document-based studies.
Texas kids test particularly badly in this part of U.S. history. Several districts ask U.S. history teachers and other social studies groups to shore up student knowledge in the area to overcome gaps pointed out in testing in the past three years, on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). In teacher training, I’ve noted a lot of Texas social studies teachers are a bit shaky on the history.
The Korematsu decision was drummed into my conscious working on civil rights issues at the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, and complemented by Constitutional Law (thank you, Mary Cheh) and other courses I was taking at the same time at George Washington University. It helped that Utah has a significant Japanese population and had “hosted” one of the internment camps; one of my tasks was to be sure committee Chairman Orrin Hatch was up on issues and concerns when he met with Japanese descendants in his constituencies in Utah. Hatch was a cosponsor of the bills to study the internment, and then to apologize to Japanese Americans affected, and pay reparations.
The internment was also a sore spot with my father, G. Paul Darrell, who witnessed the rounding up of American citizens in California. Many of those arrested were his friends, business associates and acquaintances. Those events formed a standard against which he measured almost all other claims of civil rights violations.
Because children were imprisoned with their parents, because a lot of teenagers were imprisoned, this chunk of American history strikes particular sympathetic chords with students of any conscience. Dorothea Lange’s having photographed some of the events and places, as well as Ansel Adams and others, also leaves a rich pictorial history.
(I found this thanks to the RSS feed of headlines from Editor & Publisher at the Scholars & Rogues site.)
4 Comments | Bill of Rights, Citizenship, Civil Rights, DBQ sources, Education, Freedom - Political, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Historic documents, History video sources, Japanese American internment, Justice, Newspapers, Supreme Court cases, TAKS, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, TEKS, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Supreme Court, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
40 years of Loving — the changes we see
June 15, 20071968 propelled history in dramatic fashion, much of it tragic. History teachers might await the 40th anniversary stories of 1968’s events, knowing that the newspapers and television specials will provide much richer material than any textbook could hope for.
Was 1967 less momentous? Perhaps. But an anniversary this week only serves to highlight how the entire decade was a series of turning points for the United States. This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s issuing the decision in Loving v. Virginia. The Lovings had been arrested, convicted and exiled from the state of Virginia for the crime of — brace yourself — getting married.
Photo of Richard and Mildred Loving from Bettman-Corbis Archive.
You see, Virginia in those days prohibited marriage between a black person and a white person. So did 15 other states. In language that is quaint and archaic to all but Biblical literalist creationists, the trial judge said:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
The Lovings appealed their conviction. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down laws that prohibit a person of one “race” from marrying a person of another. (I put “race” in quotes because, as we have since learned from DNA studies, there is just one race among us, the human race. Science verifies that the Supreme Court got it right, as did the Americans before them who wrote the laws upon which the Supreme Court’s decision was based.)
From 1958 to 1967 — nine years the case wended through the courts. Oral argument was had on April 10 — the decision coming down in just two months seems dramatically quick by today’s standards. This was one of the cases that angered so many Americans against the Court presided over by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Ed Brayton at Dispatches from Culture Wars points to a statement from Mildred Loving on this anniversary. The statement is below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | 1968, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Fourteenth Amendment, Freedom - Political, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Jurisprudence, Justice, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: 1967, Civil Rights, Constitution, Loving v Virginia, marriage, Miscegination, Supreme Court | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Voting machine soap opera: Fire, faulty machines, new election?
May 19, 2007City elections in Aurora, Texas, may need to be re-run after spectacular failures of two of three Diebold voting machines, and a fire that damaged the impounded units after 38 votes were completely erased and Diebold technicians were unable to hack results out of their own machines. Do you even need to be told the fire’s cause is undetermined?
Is your local government considering voting machines with no paper back up?
The voting machines don’t work even when there isn’t a great partisan prize at stake; the first explanation from the Justice Department for mess-ups in personnel there is that dismissed people were not aggressively enough pursuing a campaign against minority voting; a federal conviction of a campaign worker in Wisconsin turns out to have been a bogus case created by a U.S. attorney appointed to bring exactly such bogus cases . . .
How great must the assault on the Constitution and rights of Americans be, before there is a general clamor for justice, and change?
Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Current History, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Law, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Digging deeper into history of the South and civil rights movement
May 2, 2007Hurry over the New York Times site before the article goes into the “gotta-pay-to-see” bin, and read the story by Patricia Cohen about other stories beyond the classic race confrontations, from the South, during the Civil Rights Movement: “Interpreting Some Overlooked Stories from the South.”
A new generation of historians is exploring some of the untold stories of the civil rights movement and its legacies: the experiences not of heroes or murderous villains, but of ordinary Southern whites. And their research is challenging some long-held beliefs about the nation’s political realignment and the origins of modern conservatism.
“You want to pry below these great narratives of good and evil and black and white,” said Jason Sokol, 29, who wrote “There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975” (Alfred A. Knopf). “For those of us who didn’t live through it, there’s more of an effort to not simply celebrate the civil rights movement and how extraordinary it was, but to place it within the broader arc of the 20th century.”
Much history of the era remains to be written, especially local histories that students in high schools could get from local newspaper archives, from interviews, and other local sources.
This new wave of historians, many of them young, believe that one cannot understand today’s housing, schooling, economic development or political patterns without understanding the mostly apolitical white Southerners of that era. None of these scholars play down the inbred racism of the region, but they argue that the focus on race can obscure broader economic and demographic changes, like the dizzying corporate growth, the migration of white Northerners to the South and the shifting emphasis on class interests after legal segregation ended.
1 Comment | Capturing history, Civil Rights, Education, History, Writing history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Richer historians, richer history: The Pulitzers
April 17, 2007Columbia University unveiled the Pulitzer Prize winners yesterday.
In U.S. history, the prize went to The Race Beat:The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff (Alfred A. Knopf).
Other finalists for U.S. History were: Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 by James T. Campbell (The Penguin Press), and Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking).
Roberts and Klibanoff share $10,000.
In Biography, the $10,000 first prize was awarded to The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by Debby Applegate (Doubleday).
Finalists for the biography prize included two other great books: John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty by Arthur H. Cash (Yale University Press), and Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw (The Penguin Press).
In the category of general non-fiction, where evolution has triumphed over anti-science bigotry in recent years, history is rampant in 2007, also. The prize for general non-fiction was snagged by The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11″ by Lawrence Wright (Alfred A. Knopf). Other finalists for the general non-fiction prize were Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), and Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks (The Penguin Press). 
High school history and other social studies teachers would do well to read each of these winners and the finalists. They will be significant additions to any serious history curriculum, or government, and perhaps economics.
2 Comments | Bill of Rights, Books, Civil Rights, Heroes, History, Iraq, Journalism, Justice, Leadership, School desegregation, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 