#Segregation

[saddayfordemocracy]

Happy Juneteenth !

"Celebrate, Educate, and to agitate."

[kropotkindersurprise]

James Baldwin, talking about living his life based on observable fact, instead of white liberal promises. [link]

[blondebrainpowered]

In June of 1958, David Isom was nineteen years old when he decided he wanted to go for a swim and headed to a nearby pool. It was a white-only pool in Florida, but that didn't stop him. He walked right in and began using the facility, which sparked outrage.

The manager of the facility immediately closed down the place and made everyone leave. Then they drained and cleaned the pool in hopes it would be sanitized and ready for only white people to use again. 

According to the Amityville Echo, The Spa Pool was a swimming pool in Florida that opened in 1955 near the Spa Beach. Since both facilities were reserved for white people only, Black people were relegated to using an area in Tampa Bay called “The South Mole,” a trash littered beach that had a tiny swimming pool area near it. On June 8, 1958, Isom decided that enough was enough, taking matters into his own hands and taking a bold action that would effectively change the course of history. 

He entered the Spa Pool after purchasing a ticket at the counter. The cashier later said that she was told to treat him “like any other citizen.” There were already about 45 white people at the pool that day, and Isom said he paid little attention to them as he got in the pool and swam alongside the other patrons. Tommy Chinnis, the lifeguard on duty, echoed those sentiments, saying that they also paid little attention to him because “he was like everyone else.” 

However, the Spa Pool manager, John Gough, closed the pool down after Isom’s swim, proving he wasn’t “like everyone else.” Gough said he was acting at the behest of city manager Ross Windom who told him the facility needed to be closed because “a n***** had used the facilities.” While the fallout from the incident was swift, both the Spa Pool and Spa Beach closing, Isom said that he didn’t actually experience any tension while there, maintaining that swimming in a clean pool should “not be a privilege, just a right.” 

The pool remained closed until, Florida city council members opening it again in 1959 under the direction of new city manager George K. Armes. In assuming his new position, Armes declared that the facility would remain open unless there was “trouble.”

[afriblaq]

Separate and excelling

[unbfacts]

In 1967, Julia Roberts' parents welcomed Martin Luther King Jr.'s children into their Atlanta acting school during segregation. When the Roberts family couldn't pay the hospital bill after Julia's birth, the Kings covered the expenses in gratitude.

[belleandre-belle]

[artnlife2]

Black Love in the Colored section [segregation]

[mydownloadedfyp]

Not my video

[longliveblackness]

George McLaurin, the first black man admitted to the University of Oklahoma in 1948 was forced to sit in a corner far from his classmates.

When he first applied he was denied based on his race. He went to court & it ruled that denying him was unconstitutional.

George W. McLaurin provided the Oklahoma civil rights case that irreparably damaged the "separate but equal" legal position established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws not violate the U.S. Constitution.

The justices affirmed that McLaurin's 14th Amendment rights means he must receive the same educational experience as OU's white students.

He earned a master's degree from the University of Kansas and taught at Langston University, an all-black institution, until 1968.

•••

George McLaurin, el primer hombre negro que fue admitido a la Universidad de Oklahoma en 1948, fue obligado a sentarse en una esquina, lejos de sus compañeros de clase.

Cuando aplicó inicialmente, había sido negado debido a su raza. Fue a la corte y determinaron que negarle su solicitud era inconstitucional.

George W. McLaurin presentó el caso de derechos civiles de Oklahoma que le causó un dañó irreparable a la posición jurídica de "separados pero iguales" establecida en Plessy v. Ferguson en 1896.

Plessy v. Ferguson fue una decisión histórica de la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos en la que la Corte dictaminó que las leyes de segregación racial no violan la Constitución de los Estados Unidos.

La justicia afirmó que los derechos garantizados en la decimocuarta enmienda significan que McLaurin debía de recibir la misma experiencia educacional que un estudiante blanco de la Universidad de Oklahoma.

Obtuvo su maestría en la Universidad de Kansas y enseñó en la Universidad Langston, una institución para personas negras, hasta el año 1968.

[itscolossal]

In Paintings and Quilts, Stephen Towns Spotlights Black Leisure in the Jim Crow South

[afriblaq]

[teh-tj]

Greenbelt Maryland. Or, how America almost solved housing only to abandon it.

**I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I AM JUST AN ENTHUSIST! DO NOT TREAT MY OPINIONS/SPECULATION AS EDUCATION!**

During the Depression America faced a housing crisis that rhymes with but differs from our own. It’s different in that there wasn’t a supply issue, there were loads of houses in very desirable areas, but they were still unaffordable as people’s incomes collapsed causing a deflationary spiral. While the housing supply subtly grew and succeeded demand, people simply couldn’t pay the meager rents and mortgages. Herbert Hoover failed to manage the Depression, while his inaction is greatly exaggerated, his policy of boosting the economy with works projects and protecting banks from runs failed and the depression only got more pronounced in his term. In comes Franklin Roosevelt, a progressive liberal much like his distant and popular cousin/uncle-in-law Teddy. Franklin’s plan was to create a large safety net for people to be able to be economically viable even if they’re otherwise poor. These reforms are called the New Deal and they did many controversial things like giving disabled and retired people welfare, giving farmers conditioned subsidies to manipulate the price of food, a works program to build/rebuild vital infrastructure, etc. One of these programs was the USHA (a predecessor of America’s HUD), an agency created to build and maintain public housing projects with the goal of creating neighborhoods with artificially affordable rents so people who work low-wage jobs or rely on welfare can be housed.

In this spirit, the agency started experimenting with new and hopefully efficient housing blueprints and layouts. If you ever see very large apartment towers or antiquated brick low-rise townhouses in America, they might be these. The USHA bought land in many large and medium-sized cities to build ��house-in-park” style apartments, which is what they sound like. Putting apartment buildings inside green spaces so residents can be surrounded by greenery and ideally peacefully coexist. Three entire towns were built with these ideas outside three medium-sized cities that were hit hard by the depression; Greenbelt outside DC, Greenhills outside Cincinnati, and Greendale outside Milwaukee. The idea was to move people out of these crowded cities into these more sustainable and idyllic towns. There were many catches though, the USHA planned for these towns to be all-white, they used to inspect the houses for cleanliness, they required residents to be employed or on Social Security (which basically meant retired or disabled), they also had an income limit and if your income exceeded that limit you were given a two-month eviction notice, and you were expected to attend town meetings at least monthly. While the towns didn’t have religious requirements they did only build protestant churches. Which is an example of discrimination by omission. While a Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc could in theory move into town they also couldn’t go to a Catholic church, synagogue, or Islamic center without having to extensively travel. Things planned communities leave out might indicate what kind of people planned communities want to leave out. Basically, the whole thing was an experiment in moving Americans into small direct-democracy suburbs as opposed to the then-current system of crowded cities and isolated farm/mine towns. This type of design wasn’t without precedent, there were famously company towns like Gary and Pullman which both existed outside Chicago. But those lacked the autonomy and democracy some USHA apparatchiks desired.

The green cities were a series of low-rise apartments housing over a hundred people each, they were short walks from a parking lot and roads, and walking paths directly and conveniently led residents to the town center which had amenities and a shopping district. Greenbelt in particular is famous for its art deco shopping complex, basically an early mall where business owners would open stores for the townspeople. These businesses were stuck being small, given the income requirements, but it was encouraged for locals to open a business to prove their entrepreneurial spirit. Because city affairs were elected at town meetings the city was able to pull resources to eventually build their own amenities the USHA didn’t originally plan for like a public swimming pool or better negotiated garbage collection.

These three cities were regarded as a success by the USHA until World War II happened and suddenly they showed flaws given the shift in focus. These towns housed poor people who barely if at all could afford a car, so semi-isolated towns outside the city became redundant and pointless. The USHA also had to keep raising the income requirement since the war saw a spike in well-paying jobs which made the town unsustainable otherwise. During the war and subsequent welfare programs to help veterans, these green cities became de facto retirement and single-mother communities for a few years as most able-bodied men were drafted or volunteered. Eventually, the USDA would make the towns independent, after the war they raised the income limit yet again and slowly the towns repopulated. As cars became more common and suburbanization became a wider trend these towns would be less noticeably burdensome and were eventually interpreted as just three out of hundreds of small suburban towns that grew out of major cities. They were still all-white and the town maintained cleanliness requirements; after all they lived in apartments it just takes one guy’s stink-ass clogged toilet to ruin everyone’s day.

By the 1950’s these towns were fully independent. Greendale and Greenhills voted to privatize their homes and get rid of the income limit all together so the towns can become more normal. Greenhills, Ohio still has many of these USHA-era houses and apartments, all owned by a series of corporations and private owners. Greendale, Wisconsin property owners have demolished most of these old houses and restructured their town government so most traces of its founding are lost. But Greenbelt, Maryland still maintains a lot of its structure to this day. Greenbelt has privatized some land and buildings, but most of the original USHA apartments are owned by the Greenbelt Homes, Inc cooperative which gives residents co-ownership of the building they live in and their payments mostly go to maintenance. Because Greenbelt was collectively owned the House Un-American Activities Committee would blacklist and put on trial most of Greenbelt’s residents and officials. Though they didn’t find much evidence of communist influence, the town was a target of the red scare by the DMV area, residents were discriminated, blacklisted, and pressured into selling their assets. While Greenbelt did commodify some of the town, the still existing co-ownership shows the town’s democratic initiative to maintain its heritage. The green cities desegregated in the 50’s and 60’s depending on state law, Greenbelt was the last to desegregate under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while discrimination persisted for years by the 1980’s the town would become half non-white, today the town is 47% black and 10% Asian.

Though these towns largely integrated with a privatized and suburbanized America, they do stand as a memorial to an idea of American urbanism that died. They were designed for walkability and were planned to be more democratic and egalitarian towns, with the conditions that came with segregation and government oversight. You can’t ignore the strict standards and racism in their history, but you can say that about many towns. How do you think America would be different if more cities had green suburbs that were more interconnected and designed for community gatherings?

[surviving-the-next-4-years]

Republicans like to pretend that Slavery and Segregation were a long time ago. But if they are wrong. The generations that were dealing with segregation are still alive today.

[citizenscreen]

71 years ago today, (May 17, 1954), the #SCOTUS handed down a major civil rights victory decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. #OnThisDay #CivilRights

[hunter1976xbox]

[whenweallvote]

On this day in 1968, Sonnie Hereford IV became the first Black child to integrate public schools in Alabama. 

Sonnie’s enrollment process was not easy. It took three days — and a call to the judge who ruled that Sonnie be admitted into the school —  before he could enter the building with his father, Dr. Sonnie Hereford III, due to the 150+ protestors blocking the entryway.

Today we commend the bravery of both men.