Topaz – monument to lack of civil rights

September 6, 2006

National history standards for high school U.S. history courses say kids should demonstrate knowledge about the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II, under Executive Order 9066 in February 1942. Results from Texas’ TAKS test show that most students are not meeting the standards of knowledge.

I found an interesting presentation of photographs and audio interviews hidden away at the Salt Lake Tribune’s website. It is simply titled “Topaz” after the name of the internment camp outside of Delta, Utah.

My mother’s family lived outside of Delta, in Hinckley, Utah, for several years before 1930. It is not a pleasant place to be held captive, she said.

Utah’s Japanese population is quite large, now, and held considerable influence in the 1970s and 1980s when I was active in politics in Utah. Utah’s Japanese community sought the support of Sen. Orrin Hatch for an investigation into the violation of the civil rights of people interned during World War II, and Hatch cosponsored the bill to investigate, and then to pay reparations to victims and survivors of victims.

Some wag at the copy desk of the Provo Daily Herald took sport with our press releases; whenever we’d put “internment” in a headline, they would change it to “burial,” so that “Hatch supports probe of Japanese internment” became “Hatch supports Japanese burial probe.” I didn’t see significant humor in it, but the jest continued through the life of the investigation.

Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 appropriating money to compensate victims. President Bill Clinton signed the official apology from the United States on October 1, 1993.

2 Comments | Civil Rights, History, Japanese American internment, TAKS, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Remembering Labor, on Labor Day

September 4, 2006

Here in the U.S. we celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday in September. Throughout much of the rest of the world, Labor Day is May 1. The U.S. changed that because international labor movements, especially communists, celebrated the day (remember the annual parade of missiles and tanks in the old Soviet Union’s Red Square?); U.S. politicians wanted there to be no confusion that the U.S. doesn’t endorse communism. September honors America’s early union movement appropriately, too — the first Labor Day parade in New York City was on September 5, 1882.

America has much good labor history to celebrate, however, and we should make more of it. Textbooks we have in Texas classrooms tend to shortchange the labor movement, and especially the notable social gains made because of labor in wages, benefits like health care and vacations, civil rights, etc. Teachers need to supplement labor history offerings to keep kids up with Texas standards.

Memphis garbage workers in 1968

Memphis Sanitation Workers, striking in 1968, for suitable wages and treatment as human beings. It was in support of this strike that Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Memphis when he was assassinated. Photo by Richard L. Copley, from Wayne State University’s Walter Reuther Library’s I AM A MAN exhibit. You can sponsor a traveling version of this exhibit.

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19 Comments | Civil Rights, Education, Freedom - Economic, History, Labor and unions, Lesson plans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Burying Brown and the Board of Education, too

August 30, 2006

WordPress now alerts bloggers to other blog posts with similar content.  Sometimes it pulls one out of the past, and sometimes the posts pulled up make one shudder.

Reports last April said Nebraska’s unicameral legislature passed a law that will effectively resegregate Omaha’s school system.  Appletree has the story here.  How did it turn out?  I haven’t found much other news on it.

The news and the figures reported are troubling, regardless the final outcome (and I suspect the motion did not proceed exactly as the version reported).  Some of us have long suspected that the anti-education drive, manifested in proposals for charter schools, and especially for vouchers, is simply a masked version of segregation, a way to deprive people of color and people in poverty of a chance for a good education. 

One almost wishes Ronald Reagan were still alive to remind these people that, while a rising tide raises all boats, punching holes in the bottom of the boats sinks them, and in a drought, the entire lake goes dry.  The best ideals of the United States have been expressed in the drive for almost-free, universally-available primary and secondary education, for nearly 200 years.  The U.S. education system remains the model the rest of the world strives to copy.  Getting Americans to commit to keeping that system, and keeping it up to date in a world gone flat (see Tom Friedman) is an important political task for the next quarter-century.

Every kid deserves a chance to achieve as much as she or he can.  We need to focus more on making that happen, for all kids.

8 Comments | Charter schools, Civil Rights, Current History, Education, Education spending, Freedom - Political, Public education, School vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Protecting civil rights, still

July 30, 2006

Journalist Diane Solis wrote in the Dallas Morning News today (free subscription may be required — and its dated, so hurry) about a continuing need for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), one of the most maligned federal agencies. When I staffed the Senate Labor Committee the commission was subject to a long-term investigation of its activities.

EEOC in litigated 400 cases in 2005, but it handled 75,000 complaints. Among the incidents Solis writes about:

In May, a judge ruled that 52 Indian nationals were held in lockdown by an armed guard, subjected to food rationing and paid well below the minimum wage at the John Pickle Co. in Oklahoma. The award: $1.24 million.

In March, a court heard the case of a black man who was harassed by fellow workers and restrained as they tightened a noose around his neck at Commercial Coating Service Inc. in Texas. The award: $1 million.

The long fight for civil rights continues, too.

1 Comment | Business Ethics, Civil Rights, Current History, EEOC | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Living history – Voting Rights Act

July 21, 2006

Congress this week approved a renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Senate voting yesterday, 98-0. The Act was a watershed in civil rights legislation, a law whose effects are clearly visible in the diversity of people who populate government in municipal, state and federal government now.

Lews & Kennedy discuss VRAct

This photo by Doug Mills of the New York Times is worth several thousand words. Its caption: Representative John Lewis, left, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy in the room where President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

The New York Times story (free subscription required) said:

As the Senate voted, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, who was beaten in the 1965 voting rights march on Montgomery, Ala., came to the floor, and other lawmakers provided their memories of the era as they spoke in support of the legislation.

“I recall watching President Lyndon Baines Johnson sign the 1965 act just off the chamber of the Senate,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and one of three current senators serving when the law was originally passed. “We knew that day we had changed the country forever, and indeed we had.”

This event is a good lynch-pin for history lessons on the civil rights movement. Teachers may want to clip the story and photos from today’s papers to save for lesson plans through the year.

(West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd is one of the other three senators who were there in 1965. Who is the third?)

4 Comments | Civil Rights, Current History, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quick! Before this history fades away . . .

July 20, 2006

From the Westfield, Massachusetts Republican, we find a story of history teachers getting first-hand history from a World War II veteran. His story is perhaps a bit unusual because he is African American, and he told the story of the irony of defending freedom in Europe, then returning home to have to fight for his own freedom all over again.

These veterans are dying off — this fellow, Raymond Elliott, is 82. Such a presentation to classes brings back to life the events of World War II, and in this case also sets the stage for the civil rights struggles of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (Brown v. Board, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, Little Rock, the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma, the March on Washington, “I Have a Dream,” the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc., etc.).

The full story is below the fold — fair use copy. Do you have such veterans in your town? Do your classes get to meet with them? Are you such a veteran, and do the teachers in your area know you are available? Do you think many of these teachers got his name and address to invite him to their schools?

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Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Curricula, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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