Essential The Official African American Thread#2

[Black Lightning]

Atlanta Race Riot of 1906

The Atlanta Race Riot or Atlanta Riot of 1906 was the first race riot to take place in the capital city of Georgia. The riot lasted from September 22 to September 24 and was the culmination of a number of factors, including lingering tensions from reconstruction, job competition, black voting rights, and increasing desire of African Americans to secure their civil rights.

By 1900 the population of Atlanta had more than doubled to 89,872 from its 1880 level. The black population nearly quadrupled during that period. Job competition became intense and white politicians responded by implementing and expanding Jim Crow laws. The laws maintained separate black and white neighborhoods, segregated public transportation, and segregated schools. Despite these hurdles, a small number of black families achieved a significant measure of success. Black men voted during Reconstruction and continued to do so after their counterparts were pushed off the rolls throughout the rest of the South. Consequently there was considerable African American political activism in the city. The growing black middle class made many white citizens uncomfortable but they were also wary of rising crime rates and the perceived threat of black men against white women.

The 1906 gubernatorial campaign added fuel to the racial fire, as both Democratic candidates, Hoke Smith and Clark Howell, advocated disenfranchisement of all black voters in their respective newspapers. On September 22, after four alleged sexual attacks on white women by black men were reported in the local white press, a mob of approximately 10,000 white men formed downtown. The mob surged through black Atlanta neighborhoods destroying businesses and assaulting hundreds of black men. The violence became so dangerous that the state militia was called in to take control of the city. Still, some white groups persisted in attacking black neighborhoods, and black men organized to defend their homes and families.

Prior to the 1906 riot, Atlanta was viewed as one of the few Southern American cities where blacks and whites could live in harmony. In an effort to end the violence, some white leaders reached out to the black elite, but in the aftermath of the violence the city became increasingly socially and racially stratified. Though not known for sure, the estimated number of blacks killed was between 25 and 40 while two white Americans were killed. Hundreds more people were injured or saw businesses and homes destroyed. Black residential neighborhoods became increasingly racially isolated following the riot, and many African Americans turned away from the previously popular accommodationist philosophies of Booker T. Washington in favor of more aggressive approaches to civil rights.

 

[Black Lightning]

Chicago Race Riot, 1919

On July 27, 1919 when large crowds of white and black patrons went to the Lake Michigan beach in Chicago, Illinois to seek relief from the 96 degree heat, an angry dispute erupted over the stoning of Eugene Williams, a young African American swimmer who inadvertently crossed a segregated boundary into the “white” swimming area. White beachgoers hailed stones at the young man causing him to drown. When police refused to arrest any whites, who were accused by black bystanders of having thrown the stones and instead arrested a black beachgoer on a white’s complaint of some minor offense, the blacks began to attack the white policeman. Reports of the incident spread throughout Chicago igniting a clash of white and black rioters across the city’s South Side.

This incident released years of accumulated racial tensions, starting from a constricting job market and the efforts by Chicago African Americans to secure adequate housing by moving into previously all-white neighborhoods as thousands of African Americans began arriving in the city during World War I as part of what would be called the Great Migration.

For seven days, bloodshed was rampant on the streets of Chicago. Many African Americans became victims of white mobs when they had to pass through white neighborhoods in order to reach their workplaces. Others were attacked on streetcars or in city parks and other public venues. The majority of the rioting and violence was concentrated in the “Black Belt” section, the predominantly black neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago.

At the height of the rioting, over four-fifths of Chicago’s 3,500 police officers had been sent to control the angry crowds. Many blacks stayed home fearing mob violence. They often were not safe there as white mobs began to torch houses in African American neighborhoods. Blacks fought back. Often gangs of men attacked and stabbed white civilians, but white rioters had superiority in numbers and firepower and in many cases the sympathy of the police.

By the end of the violence twenty-three blacks and fifteen whites died, with more than five-hundred people injured and about a thousand people left homeless.

 

[Black Lightning]

Beaumont Race Riot, 1943

The Beaumont Race Riot of 1943 was sparked by racial tensions that arose in this Texas shipbuilding center during World War II. The sudden influx of African American workers in industrial jobs in the Beaumont shipyard and the subsequent job competition with white workers forced race relations to a boiling point.


The riot itself exploded on June 15, 1943 with most of the violence ending a day later. White workers at the Pennsylvania Shipyard located in Beaumont, Texas confronted black workers after hearing that a local white woman had accused a black man of raping her. The woman who made the accusation was later unable to identify her attacker from the number of black inmates held at the city jail.


Nonetheless, on the evening of June 15, about 2,000 shipyard workers and an additional 1,000 bystanders marched on City Hall when they learned that a suspect had been jailed. The number of people eventually reached 4,000 as the mob approached City Hall. Once there, the mob splintered into smaller groups and began to break into stores and destroy property located in the black neighborhoods near downtown Beaumont. Black citizens were assaulted while whites looted and burned black stores and restaurants. More than 100 homes of black Beaumont residents were ransacked.


Mayor George Gary called in the Texas National Guard late on the night of June 15, and acting governor A.M. Aiken Jr. declared Beaumont to be under martial law. About 1,800 guardsmen entered Beaumont along with 100 state police and 75 Texas Rangers at that time. Upon their arrival an 8:30 p.m. curfew was established.


The Texas Highway Patrol placed roadblocks around the city to seal it off against rural whites who threatened to join the mob. The Army and Navy also made the town off-limits to nearby military personnel. Within the town, all activity came to a halt. Local bus lines were ordered to stop running, and buses scheduled to stop inside of Beaumont were rerouted to go around the city. Mayor Gary closed all liquor stores, parks, and playgrounds to prevent the gathering of large crowds. Black workers were barred from going to work. The curfew was lifted the next day on June 16, and the guardsmen left the town.


The declaration of martial law was lifted on June 20. During the five day period 21 people were killed. Also 206 people were arrested and tried in court on June 20. Of those arrested, only 29 were actually charged with specific crimes, mostly assault and battery, unlawful assembly, and arson. The rest of those arrested were released. No one was specifically held responsible for the deaths during the riot. Although black and white workers returned to the Pennsylvania Shipyard, war production in the area was slowed for months.

 

[Black Lightning]

Detroit Race Riot (1943)

The Detroit Riot of 1943 lasted only about 24 hours from 10:30 on June 20 to 11:00 p.m. on June 21; nonetheless it was considered one of the worst riots during the World War II era. Several contributing factors revolved around police brutality, and the sudden influx of black migrants from the south into the city, lured by the promise of jobs in defense plants. The migrants faced an acute housing shortage which many thought would be reduced by the construction of public housing. However the construction of public housing for blacks in predominately white neighborhoods often created racial tension.

The Sojourner Truth Homes Riot in 1942, for example, began when whites were enraged by the opening of that project in their neighborhood. Mobs attempted to keep the black residents from moving into their new homes. That confrontation laid the foundation for the much larger riot one year later.

On June 20, a warm Saturday evening, a fist fight broke out between a black man and a white man at the sprawling Belle Isle Amusement Park in the Detroit River. The brawl eventually grew into a confrontation between groups of blacks and whites, and then spilled into the city. Stores were looted, and buildings were burned in the riot, most of which were located in a black neighborhood. The riot took place in an area of roughly two miles in and around Paradise Valley, one of the oldest and poorest neighborhoods in Detroit, Michigan.

As the violence escalated, both blacks and whites engaged in violence. Blacks dragged whites out of cars and looted white-owned stores in Paradise Valley while whites overturned and burned black-owned vehicles and attacked African Americans on streetcars along Woodward Avenue and other major streets. The Detroit police did little in the rioting, often siding with the white rioters in the violence.

The violence ended only after President Franklin Roosevelt, at the request of Detroit Mayor Edward Jeffries, Jr., ordered 6,000 federal troops into the city. Twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killed in the violence. Of the 25 African Americans who died, 17 were killed by the police. The police claimed that these shootings were justified since the victims were engaged in looting stores on Hastings Street. Of the nine whites who died, none were killed by the police. The city suffered an estimated $2 million in property damages.

 

[Black Lightning]

Elaine, Arkansas Riot (1919)

One of the last of the major riots of the “Red Summer” of 1919, the race riot in Elaine, Arkansas was also one of the deadliest. Though exact numbers are unknown, it is estimated over 200 African Americans were killed along with five whites during the white hysteria of a pending insurrection of black sharecroppers. Also known as the “Elain Massacre,” the violence, terror, and concerted effort to drive out blacks were so jarring that Ida B. Wells, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) published a short book on the riot in 1920. It was also widely reported in African American newspapers like the Chicago Defender and generated several public campaigns to address the fallout.

On the night of September 30, 1919, approximately 100 African Americans, mostly sharecroppers on the plantations of white landowners, attended a meeting of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America at a church. They hoped to organize to obtain better payments for their cotton crops. Aware of the fears of Communist influence on blacks that helped contribute to racial violence throughout the nation earlier that year, the union posted armed guards around the church to prevent disruption and infiltration.


During the meeting, three individuals pulled up to the front of the church. One of the men asked the black guards “going c00n hunting, boys?” and gunfire erupted after the guards made no response. Though sharp debate exists as to who fired first, the black guards shot to death a white security officer from the Missouri-Pacific railroad, W.A. Atkins, and injured Charles Pratt, the county’s white deputy sheriff.


The next morning, a posse was sent to arrest the suspects. Though they encountered little opposition from the black community, the fact that blacks outnumbered whites ten to one in this area resulted in great fear of an “insurrection.” The concerned whites formed a mob numbering up to 1,000 armed men, many of whom came from the surrounding counties and as far away as Mississippi and Tennessee. The mob upon reaching Elaine began killing blacks and ransacking their homes. As word of the attack spread within the Elaine African American community, some residents fled while others armed themselves in defense. The mob then turned its attention to disarming those blacks who fought back.


Meanwhile, local white newspapers reported deliberately planned black uprisings, further inflaming tensions. By October 2, U.S. Army troops arrived in Elaine and the white mobs began to disperse. Federal troops and remaining citizens rounded up and placed several hundred blacks in temporary stockades. Reports of torture occurred, and the men were not released until they had been vouched for by their white employers.


In the end, 122 blacks but no whites were charged for various crimes related to the riots. Their court-appointed lawyers did little in their defense despite investigation and involvement by the NAACP. The first 12 men given trials were executed for first degree murder. As a result, 65 others entered plea bargains and accepted up to 21 years for second degree murder. The NAACP and other rights groups worked towards retrials and release of the “Elaine Twelve,” eventually winning their release, the last of whom were set free on January 14, 1925.

 

[Black Lightning]

Washington, D.C. Race Riot (1919)

The race riot in Washington, D.C. was one of more than twenty that took place during the “Red Summer” of 1919. Lasting a total of only four days, this short-lived riot was more accurately described as a “race war” taking place in the nation’s capital.

On Saturday night, July 19, 1919, in a downtown bar, a group of white veterans sparked a rumor regarding the arrest, questioning, and release of a black man suspected by the Metropolitan Police Department of sexually assaulting a white woman. The victim was also the wife of a Navy man. The rumor traveled throughout the saloons and pool halls of downtown Washington, angering the several soldiers, sailors, and marines taking their weekend liberty, including many veterans of World War I.

Later that Saturday night, a mob of veterans headed toward Southwest D.C. to a predominantly black, poverty-stricken neighborhood with clubs, lead pipes, and pieces of lumber in hand. The veterans brutally beat all African Americans they encountered. African Americans were seized from their cars and from sidewalks and beaten without reason or mercy by white veterans, still in uniform, drawing little to no police attention.

On Sunday, July 20, the violence continued to grow, in part because the seven-hundred-member Metropolitan Police Department failed to intervene. African Americans continued to face brutal beatings in the streets of Washington, at the Center Market on Seventh Street NW, and even in front of the White House.

By the late hours of Sunday night, July 20, the African American community began to fight back. They armed themselves and attacked whites who entered their neighborhoods. Both black and white men fired bullets at each other from moving vehicles. At the end of the night, ten whites and five blacks were either killed or severely wounded.

After four days of violence and no police intervention, President Woodrow Wilson finally ordered nearly two thousand soldiers from nearby military bases into Washington to suppress the rioting. However, a heavy summer rain, rather than the troops themselves, effectively ended the riot on July 23, 1919.

In the end, several men were killed from gunshot wounds; nine were killed in severe street fights; and an estimated thirty or more eventually died from other wounds they received during the riot. Over one hundred and fifty men, women, and children were beaten, clubbed, and shot by both African American and white rioters. Six Metropolitan Policemen and several Marine guards were shot during these riots. Two of those shootings were fatal.

 

[Black Lightning]

The Colfax Massacre (1873)

The Colfax Massacre occurred on April 13, 1873. The battle-turned-massacre took place in the small town of Colfax, Louisiana as a clash between blacks and whites. Three whites and an estimated 150 blacks died in the conflict.

The massacre took place against the backdrop of racial tensions following the hotly contested Louisiana governor's race of 1872. While the Republicans narrowly won the contest and retained control of the state, white Democrats, angry over the defeat, vowed revenge. In Colfax Parish (county) as in other areas of the state, they organized a white militia to directly challenge the mostly black state militia under the control of the governor.

Colfax Parish reflected the political and racial divide in Louisiana. Its 4,600 voters in the 1872 election were split between approximately 2,400 hundred mostly black Republican voters and 2,200 white Democratic voters. One incident however, touched off the Colfax massacre. On March 28, local white Democratic leaders called for armed supporters to help them take the Colfax Parish Courthouse from the black and white GOP officeholders on April 1. The Republicans responded by urging their mostly black supporters to defend them. Although nothing happened on April 1, the next day fighting erupted between the two groups.

On April 13, Easter Sunday, more than 300 armed white men, including members of white supremacist organizations such as the Knights of White Camellia and the Ku Klux Klan, attacked the Courthouse building. When the militia maneuvered a cannon to fire on the Courthouse, some of the sixty black defenders fled while others surrendered. When the leader of the attackers, James Hadnot, was accidentally shot by one of his own men, the white militia responded by shooting the black prisoners. Those who were wounded in the earlier battle, particularly black militia members, were singled out for execution The indiscriminate killing spread to African Americans who had not been at the courthouse and continued into the night.

All told, approximately 150 African Americans were killed including 48 who were murdered after the battle. Only three whites were killed, and few were injured in the largely one-sided battle of Colfax.

On April 14, the state militia under the control of Republican Governor William Kellogg arrived at the scene and recorded the carnage. New Orleans police and federal troops also arrived in the next few days to reestablish order. A total of 97 white militia men were arrested and charged with violation of the U.S. Enforcement Act of 1870 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act). A handful of them were convicted but were eventually released in 1875 when the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Cruikshank ruled the Enforcement Act was unconstitutional. No one was ever arrested by the state of Louisiana or by intimidated local officials.

 

[Black Lightning]

Memphis Riot, 1866

In the late afternoon of May 1, 1866, long broiling tensions between the residents of southern Memphis, Tennessee erupted into a three day riot known as the Memphis Riot of 1866. The riot began when a white police officer attempted to arrest a black ex-soldier and an estimated fifty blacks showed up to stop the police from jailing him. Accounts vary as to who began the shooting, but the altercation that ensued quickly involved more and more of the city. The victims initially were only black soldiers, but the violence quickly spread to other blacks living just south of Memphis who were attacked while their homes, schools, and churches were destroyed. White Northerners who worked as missionaries and school teachers in black schools were also targeted.


In an attempt to restore order, U.S. Army commander George Stoneman ordered the black soldiers of the Third United States Colored Heavy Artillery regiment back to Fort Pickering just outside the city and they obeyed. Nonetheless, the violence continued throughout the night as the targets now became the black civilians in the city. Memphis police and firemen openly participated in the violence and looting and as a result the city's black citizens could not count on them to stop the attacks or put out the fires in the African American neighborhoods. The conflict stretched into a second day when Memphis Mayor John Park refused to request state or federal assistance. On the afternoon of the third day, General Stoneman declared martial law and sent black and white troops into the city to reestablish order.



Within a month a congressional committee arrived to investigate the riot. The investigation and interviews were thorough, but the report was controlled by Radical Republicans in Congress and used to gain support for Reconstruction policies. The national impact of the report was the rapid endorsement of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, making all ex-slaves citizens, and the increasing of Republican majorities in Congress in the November 1866 elections.


The report sought to show the vulnerability of southern blacks immediately after the end of the Civil War but it targeted Irish southerners as their major threat (as opposed to white southerners in general). The report blamed the overwhelmingly Irish police force of Memphis as well as the black-Irish competition for manual labor jobs for the underlying tensions that led to the conflict. Yet it virtually ignored the non-Irish whites who participated in the rioting and the role of black soldiers who before the fighting had been given responsibility for patrolling much of the city. The authority given to the black soldiers disturbed and discomforted many of Memphis's white citizens who preferred that the newly freed slaves retain subordinate roles in their city.


By the end of May 3, Memphis's black community had been devastated. Forty-six blacks had been killed. Two whites died in the conflict, one as the result of an accident and another, a policeman, because of a self-inflicted gunshot. There were five rapes and 285 people were injured. Over one hundred houses and buildings burned down as a result of the riot and the neglect of the firemen. No arrests were made.

 

[Black Lightning]

The Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919

The infamous Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919 was part of the wave of racial and labor violence that swept the United States during the “Red Summer” of 1919. It was witnessed by an estimated 20,000 people, making it one of the largest individual spectacles of racial violence in the nation’s history. - See more at: The Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919 | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

The Great Migration brought tens of thousands of African Americans to northern industrial cities—including Omaha, Nebraska, which saw its black population double from 4,426 to 10,315 in the second decade of the 20th Century. The growing black population and resentment over job competition by white ethnic groups helped fuel racial tension in Omaha as it did in other cities across the North.

Following a national pattern, the Omaha Bee exploited this tension by the summer of 1919 carrying daily newspaper accounts of attacks by African American males on white women, without similar coverage concerning assaults on African American women, by either black or white males. Although the other major Omaha newspapers carried similar stories, the Bee sensationalized the news the most, blaming in particular Mayor Edward P. Smith and his hand-picked police chief, Marshall Eberstein.

One particularly provocative story in September, 1919 described Will Brown, a 40-year-old African American meat-packinghouse worker who was accused of raping a 19-year-old white woman, Agnes Lobeck. Prior to Brown’s arrest, the Bee carried detailed accounts of the story along with pictures of Brown and Lobeck. When police went to Brown’s residence to arrest him, a mob tried and failed to seize him. He was arrested and held for a few hours in the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. Largely due to the newspaper story, a mob of 250 men and women gathered in the while working class area of South Omaha and marched north into downtown, gathering outside of the Courthouse in the late afternoon of Sunday, September 28.

Mayor Edward P. Smith arrived on the scene and attempted to persuade the rioters to leave. He was struck on the head from behind, a rope was placed around his neck, and his unconscious body was strung up to a lamppost. He was cut down before he succumbed, but the mob then broke into the courthouse, tore off Brown’s clothing as he was being dragged out, hanged him from a lamppost, and riddled his already dead body with bullets. His body was then tied to a police car, dragged to a major downtown intersection, and then burned. Fragments of the rope used to lynch him were sold as souvenirs for 10 cents apiece. Numerous photographs were taken, including one which shows some of the lynchers proudly posing behind Brown’s charred body. That photo became known around the world as the iconic image of Red Summer violence.

After Brown had been killed, US Army units arrived on the scene and set up one command post at the intersection of 24th and Lake Streets, which remains the heart of Omaha’s black community to this day, and another in South Omaha, the neighborhood from which most of the rioters had come. The official announcement was that the 24th and Lake Street post was there to protect African Americans from further violence, but oral legend in the black community holds that its purpose was to prevent retaliation by black Omahans who were waiting on the rooftops of 24th Street with guns.

One of the witnesses to the lynching was young future actor Henry Fonda, who later remembered, “It was the most horrendous sight I’d ever seen… My hands were wet and there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young black man dangling at the end of a rope.”

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Atlanta Race Riot of 1906

The Atlanta Race Riot or Atlanta Riot of 1906 was the first race riot to take place in the capital city of Georgia. The riot lasted from September 22 to September 24 and was the culmination of a number of factors, including lingering tensions from reconstruction, job competition, black voting rights, and increasing desire of African Americans to secure their civil rights.

related...

Fuel was added to the fire by a dramatization of Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman in Atlanta. (This was later made by David Wark Griffith into The Birth of a Nation, and did more than anything else to make successful the revival of the Ku Klux Klan.) The late Ray Stannard Baker, telling the story of the Atlanta riot in Along the Color Line, characterized Dixon’s fiction and its effect on Atlanta and the South as “incendiary and cruel.” No more apt or accurate description could have been chosen.

During the afternoon preceding the riot little bands of sullen, evil-looking men talked excitedly on street corners all over downtown Atlanta. Around seven o’clock my father and I were driving toward a mail box at the corner of Peachtree and Houston Streets when there came from near-by Pryor Street a roar the like of which I had never heard before, but which sent a sensation of mingled fear and excitement coursing through my body. I asked permission of Father to go and see what the trouble was. He bluntly ordered me to stay in the cart. A little later we drove down Atlanta’s main business thoroughfare, Peachtree Street. Again we heard the terrifying cries, this time near at hand and coming toward us. We saw a lame Negro bootblack from Herndon’s barber shop pathetically trying to outrun a mob of whites. Less than a hundred yards from us the chase ended. We saw clubs and fists descending to the accompaniment of savage shouting and cursing. Suddenly a voice cried, “There goes another ******!” Its work done, the mob went after new prey. The body with the withered foot lay dead in a pool of blood on the street.

Father’s apprehension and mine steadily increased during the evening, although the fact that our skins were white kept us from attack. Another circumstance favored us—the mob had not yet grown violent enough to attack United States government property. But I could see Father’s relief when he punched the time clock at eleven P.M. and got into the cart to go home. He wanted to go the back way down Forsyth Street, but I begged him, in my childish excitement and ignorance, to drive down Marietta to Five Points, the heart of Atlanta’s business district, where the crowds were densest and the yells loudest. No sooner had we turned into Marietta Street, however, than we saw careening toward us an undertaker’s barouche. Crouched in the rear of the vehicle were three Negroes clinging to the sides of the carriage as it lunged and swerved. On the driver’s seat crouched a white man, the reins held taut in his left hand. A huge whip was gripped in his right. Alternately he lashed the horses and, without looking backward, swung the whip in savage swoops in the faces of members of the mob as they lunged at the carriage determined to seize the three Negroes.

There was no time for us to get out of its path, so sudden and swift was the appearance of the vehicle. The hub cap of the right rear wheel of the barouche hit the right side of our much lighter wagon. Father and I instinctively threw our weight and kept the cart from turning completely over. Our mare was a Texas mustang which, frightened by the sudden blow, lunged in the air as Father clung to the reins. Good fortune was with us. The cart settled back on its four wheels as Father said in a voice which brooked no dissent, “We are going home the back way and not down Marietta.”

But again on Pryor Street we heard the cry of the mob. Close to us and in our direction ran a stout and elderly woman who cooked at a downtown white hotel. Fifty yards behind, a mob which filled the street from curb to curb was closing in. Father handed the reins to me and, though he was of slight stature, reached down and lifted the woman into the cart. I did not need to be told to lash the mare to the fastest speed she could muster.

The church bells tolled the next morning for Sunday service. But no one in Atlanta believed for a moment that the hatred and lust for blood had been appeased. Like skulls on a cannibal’s hut the hats and caps of victims of the mob of the night before had been hung on the iron hooks of telegraph poles. None could tell whether each hat represented a dead Negro. But we knew that some of those who had worn the hats would never again wear any.

Late in the afternoon friends of my father’s came to warn of more trouble that night. They told us that plans had been perfected for a mob to form on Peachtree Street just after nightfall to march down Houston Street to what the white people called “Darktown,” three blocks or so below our house, to “clean out the ******s.” There had never been a firearm in our house before that day. Father was reluctant even in those circumstances to violate the law, but he at last gave in at Mother’s insistence.

We turned out the lights early, as did all our neighbors. No one removed his clothes or thought of sleep. Apprehension was tangible. We could almost touch its cold and clammy surface. Toward midnight the unnatural quiet was broken by a roar that grew steadily in volume. Even today I grow tense in remembering it.

Father told Mother to take my sisters, the youngest of them only six, to the rear of the house, which offered more protection from stones and bullets. My brother George was away, so Father and I, the only males in the house, took our places at the front windows of the parlor. The windows opened on a porch along the front side of the house, which in turn gave onto a narrow lawn that sloped down to the street and a picket fence. There was a crash as Negroes smashed the street lamp at the corner of Houston and Piedmont Avenue down the street. In a very few minutes the vanguard of the mob, some of them bearing torches, appeared. A voice which we recognized as that of the son of the grocer with whom we had traded for many years yelled, “That’s where that ****** mail carrier lives! Let’s burn it down! It’s too nice for a ****** to live in!” In the eerie light Father turned his drawn face toward me. In a voice as quiet as though he were asking me to pass him the sugar at the breakfast table, he said, “Son, don’t shoot until the first man puts his foot on the lawn and then—don’t you miss!”

The mob moved toward the lawn. I tried to aim my gun, wondering what it would feel like to kill a man. Suddenly there was a volley of shots. The mob hesitated, stopped. Some friends of my father’s had barricaded themselves in a two-story brick building just below our house. It was they who had fired. Some of the mobsmen, still bloodthirsty, shouted, “Let’s go get the ******.” Others, afraid now for their safety, held back. Our friends, noting the hesitation, fired another volley. The mob broke and retreated up Houston Street.

In the quiet that followed I put my gun aside and tried to relax. But a tension different from anything I had ever known possessed me. I was gripped by the knowledge of my identity, and in the depths of my soul I was vaguely aware that I was glad of it. I was sick with loathing for the hatred which had flared before me that night and come so close to making me a killer; but I was glad I was not one of those who hated; I was glad I was not one of those made sick and murderous by pride.

 

[Black Lightning]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Black Arts Movement, Black Aesthetics Movement or BAM is the artistic outgrowth of the Black Power movement that was prominent in the 1960s and early '70s. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones).[1][2][3] Time magazine describes the Black Arts Movement as the "single most controversial movement in the history of African-American literature – possibly in American literature as a whole."[4] The Black Arts Repertory Theatre is a key institution of the Black Arts Movement.

Overview
The movement has been seen as one of the most important times in the African-American literature. It inspired black people to establish their own publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. It led to the creation of African-American Studies programs within universities.[5] The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X.[6] Among the well-known writers who were involved with the movement are Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Hoyt W. Fuller, and Rosa Guy.[7][8] Although not strictly part of the Movement, other notable African-American writers such as novelists Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed share some of its artistic and thematic concerns. Although Reed is neither a movement apologist nor advocate, he said:

I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s. Blacks gave the example that you don't have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that.[9]

BAM influenced the world of literature with the portrayal of different ethnic voices. Before the movement, the literary canon lacked diversity, and the ability to express ideas from the point of view of racial and ethnic minorities, which was not valued by the mainstream at the time.

Arts
Theatre groups, poetry performances, music and dance were centered on this movement, and therefore African Americans were becoming recognized in the area of literature and arts. African Americans were also able to educate others through different types of expressions and media about cultural differences. The most common form of teaching was through poetry reading. African-American performances were used for their own political advertisement, organization, and community issues. The Black Arts Movement was spread by the use of newspaper advertisements. The first major arts movement publication was in 1964.

"No one was more competent in [the] combination of the experimental and the vernacular than Amiri Baraka, whose volume Black Magic Poetry 1961–1967 (1969) is one of the finest products of the African American creative energies of the 1960s."[4]

The Black Aesthetic

Many discussions of the Black Arts movement posit it as the "aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept."[14] The Black Aesthetic refers to ideologies and perspectives of art that center on Black culture and life. This Black Aesthetic encouraged the idea of Black separatism, and in trying to facilitate this, hoped to further strengthen black ideals, solidarity, and creativity.[15]

In his well-known essay on the Black Arts Movement, Larry Neal attests: "When we speak of a 'Black aesthetic' several things are meant. First, we assume that there is already in existence the basis for such an aesthetic. Essentially, it consists of an African-American cultural tradition. But this aesthetic is finally, by implication, broader than that tradition. It encompasses most of the usable elements of the Third World culture. The motive behind the Black aesthetic is the destruction of the white thing, the destruction of white ideas, and white ways of looking at the world."[14]

Effects on society


According to the Academy of American Poets, "many writers--Native Americans, Latinos/as, gays and lesbians, and younger generations of African Americans have acknowledged their debt to the Black Arts movement."[4] The movement lasted for about a decade, through the mid-1960s and into the 1970s. This was a period of controversy and change in the world of literature. One major change came through in the portrayal of new ethnic voices in the United States. English-language literature, prior to the Black Arts Movement, was dominated by white authors.[19]

African Americans became a greater presence not only in the field of literature, but in all areas of the arts. Theater groups, poetry performances, music and dance were central to the movement. Through different forms of media, African Americans were able to educate others about the expression of cultural differences and viewpoints. In particular, black poetry readings allowed African Americans to use vernacular dialogues. This was shown in the Harlem Writers Guild, which included black writers such as Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy. These performances were used to express political slogans and as a tool for organization. Theater performances also were used to convey community issues and organizations. The theaters, as well as cultural centers, were based throughout America and were used for community meetings, study groups and film screenings. Newspapers were a major tool in spreading the Black Arts Movement. In 1964, Black Dialogue was published, making it the first major Arts movement publication.

The Black Arts Movement, although short, is essential to the history of the United States. It spurred political activism and use of speech throughout every African American community. It allowed African Americans the chance to express their voices in the mass media as well as becoming involved in communities.

It can be argued that "the Black Arts movement produced some of the most exciting poetry, drama, dance, music, visual art, and fiction of the post-World War II United States" and that many important "post-Black artists" such as Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and August Wilson were shaped by the movement.[10]

The Black Arts movement also provided incentives for public funding of the arts, and increased public support of various arts initiatives.[10]

 

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The Black Arts Movement (1965-1975)

The Black Arts Movement was the name given to a group of politically motivated black poets, artists, dramatists, musicians, and writers who emerged in the wake of the Black Power Movement. The poet Imamu Amiri Baraka is widely considered to be the father of the Black Arts Movement, which began in 1965 and ended in 1975.

After Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, those who embraced the Black Power movement often fell into one of two camps: the Revolutionary Nationalists, who were best represented by the Black Panther Party, and the Cultural Nationalists. The latter group called for the creation of poetry, novels, visual arts, and theater to reflect pride in black history and culture. This new emphasis was an affirmation of the autonomy of black artists to create black art for black people as a means to awaken black consciousness and achieve liberation.

The Black Arts Movement was formally established in 1965 when Baraka opened the Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem. The movement had its greatest impact in theater and poetry. Although it began in the New York/Newark area, it soon spread to Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Michigan, and San Francisco, California. In Chicago, Hoyt Fuller and John Johnson edited and published Negro Digest (later Black World), which promoted the work of new black literary artists. Also in Chicago, Third World Press published black writers and poets. In Detroit, Lotus Press and Broadside Press republished older works of black poetry. These Midwestern publishing houses brought recognition to edgy, experimental poets. New black theater groups were also established. In 1969, Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare established The Black Scholar, which was the first scholarly journal to promote black studies within academia.

There was also collaboration between the cultural nationalists of the Black Arts Movement and mainstream black musicians, particularly celebrated jazz musicians including John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Archie Shepp, and others. Cultural nationalists saw jazz as a distinctly black art form that was more politically appealing than soul, gospel, rhythm and blues, and other genres of black music.

Although the creative works of the movement were often profound and innovative, they also often alienated both black and white mainstream culture with their raw shock value which often embraced violence. Some of the most prominent works were also seen as racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and sexist. Many works put forth a black hyper masculinity in response to historical humiliation and degradation of African American men but usually at the expense of some black female voices.

The movement began to fade when Baraka and other leading members shifted from Black Nationalism Marxism in the mid-1970s, a shift that alienated many who had previously identified with the movement. Additionally Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Gil Scott-Heron, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin achieved cultural recognition and economic success as their works began to be celebrated by the white mainstream.

The Black Arts Movement left behind many timeless and stirring pieces of literature, poetry, and theater. Ironically despite the male-dominated nature of the movement, several black female writers rose to lasting fame including Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, among others. Additionally, the Black Arts Movement helped lay the foundation for modern-day spoken word and hip-hop.

 

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Ernest Eugene Barnes, Jr. (July 15, 1938 – April 27, 2009) was an African-American painter, well known for his unique style of elongation and movement. He was also a professional football player, actor and author.


Work
Barnes credits his college art instructor Ed Wilson for laying the foundation for his development as an artist. Wilson was a sculptor who instructed Barnes to paint from his own life experiences. "He made me conscious of the fact that the artist who is useful to America is one who studies his own life and records it through the medium of art, manners and customs of his own experiences."[18]

All his life, Barnes was ambivalent about his football experience. In interviews and in personal appearances, Barnes said he hated the violence and the physical torment of the sport. However, his years as an athlete gave him unique, in-depth observations. "(Wilson) told me to pay attention to what my body felt like in movement. Within that elongation, there's a feeling. And attitude and expression. I hate to think had I not played sports what my work would look like."[19]

Barnes' first painting sale was in 1959 for $90 to Boston Celtic Sam Jones for a painting called Slow Dance.[1] It was subsequently lost in a fire at Jones' home.

Critics have defined Barnes' work as neo-mannerist.[20] Based on his signature use of serpentine lines, elongation of the human figure, clarity of line, unusual spatial relationships, painted frames, and distinctive color palettes, art critic Frank Getlein credited Barnes as the founder of the neo-Mannerism movement - because of the similarity of technique and composition prevalent during the 16th century, as practiced by such masters as Michelangelo and Raphael.[21]

Numerous artists have been influenced by Barnes' art and unique style. Accordingly, several copyright infringement lawsuits have been settled and are currently pending.

Framing
Ernie Barnes framed his paintings with distressed wood in homage to his father. In his 1995 autobiography, artist Ernie Barnes wrote of his father: “... with so little education, he had worked so hard for us. His legacy to me was his effort, and that was plenty. He knew absolutely nothing about art.”[1]

Weeks before Ernie Barnes’ first solo art exhibition in 1966, he was at the family home in Durham, North Carolina as his father lay in the hospital after suffering a stroke. He noticed the usually well-maintained white picketed fence had gone untended since his father’s illness. Days later, Ernest E. Barnes, Sr. died. “I placed a painting against the fence and stood away and had a look. I was startled at the marriage between the old wood fence and the painting. It was perfect. In tribute, Daddy’s fence would hug all my paintings in a prestigious New York gallery. That would have made him smile.”[1]

Eyes closed
A consistent and distinct feature in Barnes' work is the closed eyes of his subjects. "It was in 1971 when I conceived the idea of The Beauty of the Ghetto as an exhibition. And I exposed it to some people who were black to get a reaction. And from one (person) it was very negative. And when I began to express my points of view (to this) professional man, he resisted the notion. And as a result of his comments and his attitude I began to see, observe, how blind we are to one another's humanity. Blinded by a lot of things that have, perhaps, initiated feelings in that light. We don't see into the depths of our interconnection. The gifts, the strength and potential within other human beings. We stop at color quite often. So one of the things we have to be aware of is who we are in order to have the capacity to like others. But when you cannot visualize the offerings of another human being you're obviously not looking at the human being with open eyes."[22] "We look upon each other and decide immediately: This person is black, so he must be... This person lives in poverty, so he must be..."[13]

Sports art
The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee named Barnes "Sports Artist of the 1984 Olympic Games". LAOOC President Peter V. Ueberroth said Barnes and his art "captured the essence of the Olympics" and "portray the city's ethnic diversity, the power and emotion of sports competition, the singleness of purpose and hopes that go into the making of athletes the world over." Barnes was commissioned to create five Olympic-themed paintings and serve as an official Olympic spokesman to encourage inner city youth.[23][24]

In 1985 Barnes was named the first "Sports Artist of the Year" by the United States Sports Academy.[12]

In 1987 Barnes created Fastbreak, a commissioned painting of the World Champion Los Angeles Lakers basketball team that included Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Kurt Rambis and Michael Cooper.

Carolina Panthers football team owners Rosalind and Jerry Richardson (Barnes' former Colts teammate) commissioned Barnes to create the large painting Victory in Overtime (approximately 7 ft. x 14 ft.). It was unveiled before the team's 1996 inaugural season and hangs permanently in the owner's suite at the stadium.

To commemorate their 50th anniversary in 1996, the National Basketball Association commissioned Barnes to create a painting with the theme, "Where we were, where we are, and where we are going." The painting, The Dream Unfolds hangs in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. A limited edition of lithographs were made, with the first 50 prints going to each of the NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team.

In 2004 Barnes was named "America's Best Painter of Sports" by the American Sport Art Museum & Archives.[25]

Other notable sports commissions include paintings for the New Orleans Saints, Oakland Raiders and Boston Patriots football team owners.[26]

"The Bench" painting
Shortly after Barnes was drafted by the Baltimore Colts in 1959, Barnes was invited to see their Colts' NFL Championship Game vs. the New York Giants at Memorial Stadium in Maryland. The Colts won 31-16 and Barnes was filled with layers of emotion after watching the game from behind the Colts' bench. He had just signed his football contract and met his new teammates Johnny Unitas, Jim Parker, Lenny Moore, Art Donovan, Gino Marchetti, Alan Ameche and "Big Daddy" Lipscomb.

Barnes later wrote that after he returned home, he "placed a stretched canvas on the easel. Without making any preliminary sketches, I started painting in quick, direct movements hoping to capture the vision in my mind before it evaporated." He created The Bench in less than an hour.[1] Throughout his life, The Bench remained in Barnes' possession, even taking it with him to all his football training camps and hiding it under his bed. It would be the only painting Barnes would never sell, despite many substantial offers, including a $25,000 bid at his first show in 1966.

On June 18, 2014 The Bench was formally presented to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio for their permanent collection by his wife Bernie Barnes.

"The Sugar Shack" painting
Barnes created the painting The Sugar Shack in the 1970s. It gained international exposure when it was used on the Good Times television series and on the 1976 Marvin Gaye album I Want You.



According to Barnes, he created the original version of The Sugar Shack after reflecting upon his childhood, during which he was not "able to go to a dance."[27] In a 2008 interview, Barnes said, "The Sugar Shack is a recall of a childhood experience. It was the first time my innocence met with the sins of dance. The painting transmits rhythm so the experience is re-created in the person viewing it. To show that African-Americans utilize rhythm as a way of resolving physical tension."[28] The Sugar Shack has been known to art critics for embodying the style of art composition known as "Black Romantic," which, according to Natalie Hopkinson of The Washington Post, is the "visual-art equivalent of the Chitlin' circuit."[29] When Barnes first created The Sugar Shack, he included his hometown radio station WSRC (Durham, NC) on a banner. He incorrectly listed the frequency at 620. It was actually 1410. Barnes confused what he used to hear WSRC's on-air personality Norfley Whitted saying "620 on your dial" when Whitted was at his former station WDNC in the early 1950s.

After Marvin Gaye asked him for permission to use the painting as an album cover, Barnes then augmented the painting by adding references that allude to Gaye's album, including banners hanging from the ceiling to promote the album's singles.[29][30]

During the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever anniversary television special on March 25, 1983, tribute was paid to The Sugar Shack with a dance interpretation of the painting.

The original piece is currently owned by actor Eddie Murphy.[31]

 

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Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an Afro-American artist. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, educated in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Bearden moved to New York City after high school and went on to graduate from NYU in 1935. He began his artistic career creating scenes of the American South. Later, he endeavored to express the humanity he felt was lacking in the world after his experience in the US Army during World War II on the European front. He later returned to Paris in 1950 and studied Art History and Philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1950.

Bearden's early work focused on unity and cooperation within the African-American community. After a period during the 1950s when he painted more abstractly, this theme reemerged in his collage works of the 1960s, when Bearden became a founding member of the Harlem-based art group known as The Spiral, formed to discuss the responsibility of the African-American artist in the struggle for civil rights.

Bearden was the author or coauthor of several books, and was a songwriter who co-wrote the jazz classic "Sea Breeze", which was recorded by Billy Eckstine, a former high school classmate at Peabody High School, and Dizzy Gillespie. His lifelong support of young, emerging artists led him and his wife to create the Bearden Foundation to support young or emerging artists and scholars. In 1987, Bearden was awarded the National Medal of Arts. His work in collage led the New York Times to describe Bearden as “the nation's foremost collagist”[1] in his 1988 obituary.

Synopsis
A prominent American artist, Romare Bearden created dazzling work celebrating the black American experience, which he integrated into greater (predominantly white) American modernism. After working several decades as a painter, during the politically tumultuous 1960s Bearden found his own voice by creating collages made of cut and torn photographs found in popular magazines that he then reassembled into visually powerful statements on African-American life. The artist's subject matter encompassed the urban milieu of Harlem, traveling trains, migrants, spiritual "conjure" women, the rural South, jazz, and blues musicians, and African-American religion and spirituality. Late in his life, the artist established The Romare Bearden Foundation to aid in the education and training of talented art students. Bearden remains revered as a highly esteemed artist of the twentieth century.

Key Ideas
Although influenced by high modernists such as Henri Matisse, Bearden's collages also derived from African-American slave crafts such as patchwork quilts and the necessity of making artwork from whatever materials were available. This turn to quotidian materials helped break the divide between the fine and popular arts, enabling a greater number of cultures and people to participate in the creation of arts.
Through his culling of images from mainstream pictorial magazines such as Look and Life, and black magazines such as Ebony and Jet, Bearden inserted the African-American experience, its rich visual and musical production, and its contemporary racial strife and triumphs into his collages, thus expressing his belief in the connections between art and social reality.
Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso introduced collage into the modernist vocabulary. In it, Bearden located a methodology that allowed him to incorporate much of his life experience as an African American, from the rural South to the urban North and to Paris, into his work.