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On March 12, 1956, the House Rules Committee chairman, Howard Smith, announced the Southern Manifesto in a speech on the House Floor. The document’s formal name was the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles, ” Seventy-seven representatives signed it, and 19 Senators, totaling approximately one-fifth of the membership of Congress, and all from Confederate states. Brought forth as an act of defiance, the Manifesto challenged the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which outlawed separate school facilities for black and white students.
Where we bring you Black History, Special Delivery.
In June 1951, Matt Ingram was arrested and accused of “reckless eyeballing” (improperly looking at a white person with sexual intent). He was one of the last Black Americans to be convicted under the Jim Crow law. Ingram was a Black sharecropper living in Yanceyville, North Carolina. He was married with nine children.
The alleged crime occurred when Ingram went to his white neighbor to see if he could borrow his truck. The neighbor’s seventeen-year-old daughter Willa Jean Boswell was present along with other siblings. Ingram left the home when he recognized that their father was not home. Bosewell testified in court that Ingram frightened her when he looked at her from about seventy-five feet away. The accusations had the small North Carolina community in an uproar. Prosecutors demanded that Ingram be charged and convicted of assault with intent to rape. The charge was later reduced to an assault on a female by the judge.
Central State Lunatic Asylum For The Colored Insane
The Central State Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane opened its doors in 1868 to provide mental health treatment for African Americans. The quality of care and conditions was often substandard. Like many institutions at that time, blacks receiving care were often segregated and subjected to substandard conditions. The 1866 Civil Rights act actually required that state-owned mental hospitals accept black patients. Despite the law, mental hospitals refused to do so. Located in Petersburg, Virginia, it was the first facility to care for black people who were thought to be experiencing mental health challenges. However, the criteria for determining if a black patient had a mental disorder was often racist and inequitable. Prior to the facility being opened, politicians and medical professionals in the state of Virginia viewed the enslaved as being at no risk for mental health challenges because they were not property owners. Thus, continuing to advance the stereotype of the inhumanity of black people. At the time, the prevailing sentiment was that only white landowners who were engaged in commerce would be at risk for mental health issues.
At the close of the civil war, landowners and legislators, seeking to maintain control of the formerly enslaved began to assert that African Americans suffered a mental illness; especially if they were seeking to flee the South. Doctors created fictitious diagnoses to label those who chose to migrate away from the south as deviant and mentally deficient. The characterization of freedom as the cause of a patient’s mental health diagnosis was intended to vilify emancipation and subjugate the formerly enslaved. Blacks could be committed to the asylum for infractions such as not following oppressive Jim Crow laws. Infractions such as not stepping off the sidewalk to allow a white person to pass, arguing with a white supervisor, or talking back to a white law enforcement officer were incidents that could result in a black person being committed to the asylum. Poverty was also a significant factor in admissions to the asylum.
In recent years, over 800,000 patient records were discovered from the Central State Assylum, as well as pictures, letters, and various other documents. Central State patient records were stored in onsite and were set to be destroyed until an astute professor, Dr.King Davis from the University of Texas recognized the value of the medical records and sought to preserve them and undertake the tedious process of digitizing the records. Davis was previously a commissioner for the Virginia Department of Mental Health. The institution remained segregated until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is still in operation today. Sources:
We are often told about the history of slavery in the United States. However, Canada also participated in the slave trade. In comparison to the U.S., the number of people estimated to be enslaved in Canada was much lower. Still those enslaved in Canada experienced the same mistreatment and abuse. We often hear narratives of enslaved people escaping to freedom in Canada. However there were also groups of slaves in Canada who escaped to freedom in the United States by crossing the border into to Detroit, MI. The stories of those enslaved in Canada has often gone untold or been ignored. Slavery was legal in Canada for 200 years. Continue reading “An Untold Story: Slavery In Canada”→
But you see now baby, whether you have a ph.d., d.d. or no d, we’re in this bag together. And whether you are from Morehouse or Nohouse, we’re still in this bag together.
-Fannie Lou Hamer
Fannie Lou Hamer (born Fannie Lou Townsend; October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist, civil rights leader, and philanthropist.
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