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Alexa Mason

Scottboro Boys - 0 views

law2.umkc.edu/...SB_acct.html

#class #race #communism #internationallabordefense

shared by Alexa Mason on 07 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Hoboing was a common pastime in the Depression year of 1931.  For some, riding freights was an appealing adventure compared to the drudgery and dreariness of their daily lives.  Others hopped rail cars to move from  one fruitless job search to the next. 
  • hoping to investigate a rumor of government jobs in Memphis hauling logs on the river a
  • Representing the Boys in their uphill legal battle were Stephen Roddy and Milo Moody. They were no "Dream Team."  Roddy was an unpaid and unprepared Chattanooga real estate attorney who, on the first day of trial, was "so stewed he could hardly walk straight."  Moody was a forgetful seventy-year old local attorney who hadn't tried a case in decades.
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  • he cases were appealed to the United States Supreme Court which overturned the convictions in the landmark case of Powell vs Alabama.  The Court, 7 - 2, ruled that the right of the defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause to  competent legal counsel had been denied by Alabama.  There would have to be new trials.
  • .  The Scottsboro Boys, for better or worse, cast their lots with the Communists who, in the South, were "treated with only slightly more courtesy than a gang of rapists."
  • The NAACP, which might have been expected to rush to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, did not.  Rape was a politically explosive charge in the South, and the NAACP was concerned about damage to its effectiveness that might result if it turned out some or all of the Boys were guilty.  Instead, it was the Communist Party that moved aggressively to make the Scottsboro case their own.  The Party saw the case as providing a great recruiting tool among southern blacks and northern liberals. 
  • Everyone who had followed the case knew that Bates and Price both were wearing overalls.
  • She was a person of low repute, a prostitute.  She was neither crying, bleeding, or seriously bruised after the alleged gang rape.  She was fearful of being arrested for a Mann Act violation (crossing state lines for immoral purposes) when she met the posse in Paint Rock, so she and Bates made groundless accusations of rape to deflect attention from their own sins
  • As their trial date approached, they were moved to the Decatur jail, a rat-infested facility that two years earlier had been condemned as "unfit for white prisoners."
  • investigation could turn up no evidence of a Callie Brochie or the boardinghouse that Price said she owned,
  • Wright asked the Patterson jurors "whether justice in this case is going to be bought and sold with Jew money from New York?
  • Safely back in New York after the trial Leibowitz said of the jury that had just found his client guilty: "If you ever saw those creatures, those bigots whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes popped out at you like frogs, whose chins dripped tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it.
  • In his instructions to the jury, Callahan told them that they should presume that no white woman in Alabama would consent to sex with a blac
  • Why did Gilley suddenly appear as a prosecution witness when they most needed him?  Knight admitted that he sent weekly checks to Gilley's mother and occasional spending money to Gilley. 
  • No surprise to anyone, Patterson was again convicted of rape.  What was surprising, however, was that the jury sentenced him to seventy-five years in prison rather than giving him the death sentence the prosecution requested.  One determined Methodist on the jury succeeded in persuading the other eleven to go along with his "compromise."  The verdict represented the first time in the history of Alabama that a black man convicted of raping a white woman had not been sentenced to death.
  • Free of Alabama, but not of the label "Scottsboro Boy" or from the wounds inflicted by six years in prison, they went on with their separate lives: to marriage, to alcoholism, to jobs, to fatherhood, to hope, to disillusionment, to disease, or to suicide.
  • Alexa Mason on 07 Oct 13
     
    This webpage is dedicated to discussing the case and subsequent trials of the "Scottsboro Boys". The story of the Scottsboro boys illustrates an intersection between race and class in the southern United States in the 1930s. A group of black boys aboard a hobo train seeking work along with a smaller group of white boys and girls. A group of the black boys were accused by two white girls of having been raped. The girls attempted to present themselves as being of a higher class, so as to suggest that they would never be caught dead on one of those trains with those types of people. Truthfully, however, the girls were in fact on the train with them and seeking work as well. The NAACP, a mostly middle-class organization, initially didn't want to have anything to do with the case. They were more concerned with respectability. It was the Communist party's International Labor Defense who ultimately provided competent legal counsel for the boys.
Alexa Mason

The unemployed workers' movement of the 1930s - 0 views

www.workers.org/...employed_workers_movement_0119

#class #communism #unemployed #workers #movement

shared by Alexa Mason on 07 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The 1930s produced the largest movement of the unemployed and poor that the country had ever known. The jobless rebelled against the inequalities produced by capitalism, an institution of rising profits for the wealthy ruling class. Protest movements emerged that pitted the rulers against those who were ruled — those whom the system had failed.
  • The CP declared those out of work to be “the tactical key to present the state of the class struggle
  • ommunists declared March 6, 1930, to be International Unemployment Day, and led marches and rallies of the unemployed in most of the major cities in the U.S. Several thousand marched to factories and auto plants to demand jobs and unemployment insurance. Thousands of unemployed veterans descended on Washington, D.C. Millions of unemployed Blacks and whites marched together, sometimes leading to bloodshed instigated by the cops. Federal troops made war on unarmed people, while the mainstream press branded the demonstrations as “riots.”
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  • During the 1930s, the Communist Party played a leading role in fighting for the demands of African Americans — who were devastated by the Great Depression — and helped mobilize them for their struggle. Thousands of them joined the CP. The CP also undertook food collections in the Black community of Harlem, N.Y., where unemployment had risen to as high as 80 percent.
  • Communist Party-led trade union organizations fought against the white chauvinistic policy of the American Federation of Labor, which excluded Black workers, and demanded a united labor movement based on equal rights for all workers. In the Black Belt South, they also led the sharecroppers union, which fought courageously against the tyranny of the planters. Members of the Black working class subsequently became leaders of the Black liberation movement
  • A Wealth Tax Act, Wagner Act and Social Security Act were implemented. Under the 1935 Social Security Act, the federal government paid a share of state and local public assistance costs. A Civilian Conservation Corps, designed to stimulate the economy, provided jobs as well.
  • Alexa Mason on 07 Oct 13
     
    This article outlines the work of the Communist party in 1930s America. The Communist party was integral in mobilizing the unemployed working class in an effort to get fair and secure pay as well as jobs when unemployment drastically rose during the great depression. The Communist Party lead marches and protests, though they sometimes ended in bloodshed as the media depicted these demonstrations as riots. The party also provided an alternative to the exclusionary American Federation of Labor. It also provided framework for the mobilization of the black worker during this time.
Jasmine Wade

1970: A First-Person Account of the First Gay Pride March - Page 1 - News - New York - ... - 0 views

www.villagevoice.com/...t-of-the-first-gay-pride-march

#gender # #LGBT #community #NYC #rights #marches

shared by Jasmine Wade on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • This was long before anyone had heard of a “Gay Pride March.” Back then, it took a new sense of audacity and courage to take that giant step into the streets of Midtown Manhattan. One by one, we encouraged people to join the assembly. Finally, we began to move up Sixth Avenue. I stayed at the head of the march the entire way, and at one point, I climbed onto the base of a light pole and looked back. I was astonished; we stretched out as far as I could see, thousands of us. There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs. The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting and waving to surprised onlookers.
  • Janet Thomas on 30 Oct 13
     
    This article from The Village Voice recounts the very first Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day Parade (where the image we are discussing this week was taken) and provides interesting information about the way that homosexuals/lesbians were viewed at that time.
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  • anonymous on 05 Nov 13
     
    This article gives some insight into the first gay pride march. This is a first-person account. This article showed optimism regarding equal rights for gays and lesbians.
  • David McLellan on 05 Nov 13
     
    Many times we forget that many of the causes we are so familiar with today at one time were in their starting phase. This first hand account of one of the first Gay Pride marches through Midtown and illustrates the pride and courage of those who where at that march in 1970. This is the march where the photo of Donna Gottschalk was taken and this article gives a first hand account of that day.
  • eugene yates on 06 Nov 13
     
    This a first hand account of the very first Gay Pride March on JUne 28, 1970 in NYC. It captures the emotion of the day and the times. The author speaks of the evolution in the Gay RIghts movement from the silent, conformist protests that preceded Stonewall to the the more radical, self expressive movement.
  • Jasmine Wade on 10 Nov 13
     
    This is a first-person account, written by Fred Sargeant, about the memory of the Christopher Street Liberation Day in 1970. The conception of the march, the sharing of the plan and recruitment, the rules and guidelines of appearance, behavior, and props for the event, and the expectations and execution of the plan to be noticed and heard as a community are shared in this article.
Jasmine Wade

Home - The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center - 0 views

www.gaycenter.org

#gender #LGBT #community #NYC #programs

shared by Jasmine Wade on 10 Nov 13 - Cached
  • Jasmine Wade on 10 Nov 13
     
    The site for The Center, a community center for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community, promotes many resources for everyone. There a tabs available on the site for events, causes supported by the organization, health programs, support for parenting and foster care, and general information on the organization. The center stays up to date on recent news and movements and, even though the target population is the LGBT community, provides and encourages and safe and healthy life for everyone.
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