#northern kkk

[ausetkmt]

Violent secret society plagued 1930s Detroit

Eighty years ago this spring, the murder of Detroiter Charley Poole led to the exposure of the Black Legion, a Klan-like organization that flourished in southeast Michigan. The revelation that tens of thousands of men, including police and elected officials, belonged to a violent, hooded secret society spawned hysteria, demands for a federal investigation and, too, a Humphrey Bogart movie.

Legion members were prosecuted for two murders, but they were responsible for dozens more, as well as beatings, bombings and dire plots.

The legion’s reign of terror rates as one of Detroit’s darkest moments but it coincided with one of its most glorious. Between autumn 1935 and spring 1936, the Tigers, Lions and Red Wings all won championships as undefeated boxer Joe Louis became a national figure.

Author Tom Stanton, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Detroit Mercy, delves into the legion’s activities in his new book, “Terror in the City of Champions.” This adapted excerpt details the 1936 Poole killing.

Dayton Dean, a pipe wrapper for the Detroit lighting commission, went to Eppinger Sporting Goods in Cadillac Square on Monday, May 11, 1936, to take target practice in the fourth floor range.

The next evening, Dean went to a gathering at Findlater Temple, a two-story structure with 20-foot columns at Waterman and West Lafayette. Nearby was an industrial area that included factories for American Brass and Fisher Fleetwood.

A “White Russian,” Victor Nicholas Schultz, lectured the crowd of nearly 50 legionnaires, decrying the communists who he said had destroyed his native land. He warned the same thing could happen in America. When Schultz finished, Col. Harvey Davis, leader of a legion regiment, took center stage.

There was another serious issue to be tackled, Col. Davis said. A Catholic man, Charley Poole, had beaten and kicked his expectant Baptist wife, Rebecca, so badly that she was in Herman Kiefer Hospital at the very moment, and her baby wouldn’t be born alive, he said.

There was one major problem with the story. It was untrue. Poole had not hit his wife. There had been no beating. Rebecca was in the hospital because she had delivered a second daughter.

Legionnaire Lowell Rushing had helped spread the false story. He disliked Charley Poole for having married Rebecca 18 months earlier. Rushing had grown up with Rebecca back in Danville, Tennessee. Some years back, Rebecca had spent a summer in the home of her sister, who was married to Rushing’s brother. Lowell had spent that same summer under the same roof and become smitten with pretty, 90-pound Rebecca and her high-pitched, childlike voice.

The rumor of the beating became embellished, and grew into the large tale that Col. Harvey Davis spread at the May 12 meeting, inflaming the men with colorful details and working them into a fervor. What should be done? he asked.

Poole had been mostly unemployed since losing his job around Christmas and was working two days a week with the WPA. Over the years, he had been a mechanic, a chef and a shipman on the Great Lakes, but money always seemed tight. The landlord was allowing him to stay temporarily with the understanding that he would pay him back once he found a job.

Poole was a talented athlete. Col. Davis told him he could get him a position that would include playing for the Timken Axle baseball team. He said he would send someone by later to take him to a team meeting to be measured for a uniform. It was not uncommon for some workers to be hired based on their ability to contribute in the competitive industrial sports leagues. Poole was a catcher, like the Tigers’ Mickey Cochrane.

That night, the livid crowd inside Findlater Temple called for justice. They demanded a beating, a lynching or a one-way ride for Charley Poole. Davis had already procured his gunmen, Ervin Lee and Dayton Dean. Others volunteered. Until then, some had done little with the Black Legion.

Twenty-two-year-old Urban Lipps had come to Michigan from Mississippi a year earlier. Feeling lonesome, he had accepted an invitation to a party, hoping to meet friends and build a social life outside his job at Hudson Motor Company. Instead, he was inducted into the legion. Thousands of men were tricked into joining. The ritual, conducted in the dark by robed men with guns, petrified Lipps. The only former members were dead members, he was told.

“A fellow hardly knows how he gets into these things,” he would say.

Poole must have thought his life was finally taking a turn for the better with the possibility of a decent job and a spot on a factory team. He may have wondered, though, if he had heard Col. Harvey Davis correctly, for Poole and two pals went to three beer gardens that evening looking for his baseball ride. They started out at Hayes Chop House around the corner from his flat. They walked next to the Blue Ribbon Café, a mile up Fort, and then proceeded to Joe’s Pavilion, a dancing spot across from Ternstedt Manufacturing.

At each place, Poole let the bartender know where he could be found if someone came looking. He wasn’t taking chances with his wardrobe, either. He looked smart, dressed in a second-hand, dark-brown suit, red tie, stylish pin-striped red-and-purple shirt, gray socks and black Oxfords. He was sitting in Joe’s Pavilion when blonde-haired Urban Lipps walked up to the table.

“Are you going to the baseball party?” Lipps asked.

“Sure,” Poole said.

The proposition sounded so good that all three men wanted to go. But there was room for only Charley Poole. They left the bar, and Lipps led Poole to a car. Poole slid into the backseat beside Dayton Dean. The nighttime caravan of four cars headed out of Detroit along Fort Street.

Poole was excited about the baseball meeting. Dean and Lipps kept up the charade by talking about the Tigers. Ever since the October World Series, baseball had been a topic of choice around town. Earlier in the day, the Tigers had shut out Boston. It was their second straight win.

Two cars made it over the Rouge River before the drawbridge lifted. The others waited for a ship to pass. The industrial skyline at nighttime was eerie, ominous and menacing. Floodlights — white, red, amber — dotted land and sky, spreading orbs over looming cranes and smokestacks and throwing shadows across hard, hostile structures. Flames flared from narrow pipes, and massive, forbidding buildings stood silhouetted against the sky. Ghostly clouds of illuminated smoke hovered around them.

Charley Poole noticed the moon. It shone large, a scuffed cue ball against a blue-felt sky. Poole commented to Dayton Dean about it as they drove. They were heading to Dearborn, holding close to the Rouge River where possible. Poole talked about his wife and two young daughters. Dean began feeling there was “something fishy” about Col. Harvey Davis’ tale of the beating. But he had his orders, and he knew he could be killed for disobeying them.

It was a long ride before they stopped along Gulley Road. A golf course lay 300 yards away. Lipps and Poole stayed in the car near a one-lane bridge. Dean and Ervin Lee got out to confer with Col. Davis and the other men. A bottle of liquor passed between them. Lee went back to the car and offered Lipps and Poole a drink. Poole declined.

He had begun to doubt the baseball meeting.

“What is this going to be, a party out under the stars?” Poole asked.

Lee laughed and said yes.

Col. Davis directed Dean to get Poole. Dean pulled out his .38 and .45. Poole didn’t fight as Dean ushered him to a spot near a ditch. He stood six feet from him. Lee was to Dean’s left. Col. Davis stayed behind both of them, armed with a revolver.

Poole asked why they had pulled guns. He said he hadn’t done anything.

“You’re a dirty liar,” replied Col. Davis. “You know what you’ve done and what you have been brought out here for. You know you beat up your wife — ”

“Boys, there must be some mistake,” he said. “I never — ”

Col. Davis swore at him. “You’ll never live to do it again,” he said.

Dean looked around. There wasn’t much light, and he couldn’t see Poole’s face. In the brief, quiet pause, Dean figured it was time to act. He fired at Poole. So did Lee, but off to the side. Dean shot eight times from the hip, unloading with both hands. Poole collapsed into the ditch. He had been struck six times. They waited to make certain he was dead. The pop of the gun awoke farmer Fred Shettleman, who figured it must be a backfiring car. He fell back asleep.

Col. Davis scolded Dean for shooting too early; he had wanted to lecture Poole some more. Col. Davis told the men to keep their mouths shut about the killing. They drove back to Fort Street. A few of them went to a German inn, where they sat amid cigar and cigarette smoke in the tawny light of a half-curtained barroom and chatted over beers.

Col. Davis walked home. The fresh air might clear his mind.

Adapted from “Terror in the City of Champions” by Tom Stanton. Copyright ©2016 by Tom Stanton. Reprinted by permission of Lyons Press.

Poole slaying helped expose Black Legion

[robynshellhole]

Spoke to an Orangeman for the first time.

Never again.

[gooselacom]

Hadiri Acara 2nd Northern Sumatra Forum SKK Migas – KKKS Sumbagut di Medan, Inilah Harapan Bupati Rohil

Hadiri Acara 2nd Northern Sumatra Forum SKK Migas – KKKS Sumbagut di Medan, Inilah Harapan Bupati Rohil

Medan, Goosela.com – Bupati Rokan Hilir (Rohil) Afrizal Sintong SIP menghadiri acara 2nd Northern Sumatra Forum SKK Migas – KKKS Sumbagut di Kota Medan, Provinsi Sumatera Utara, Kamis (27/10/2022). Acara 2nd Northern Sumatra Forum ini mengusung tema “Semangat Kebangsaan Dalam Mewujudkan Ketahanan Energi dan Keberhasilan Visi Hulu Migas 2030″ berlangsung pada tanggal 27 sampai dengan 28 Oktober…

[decolonize-the-everything]

That one post going around where its like voting is like going outside of your house talking a walk and drinking some water is so telling of the liberal mindset like no, voting blue is like people telling you to go outside, take a walk and drink water while ignoring that you dont have a house, there's nowhere to walk, and the water is contaminated

Idk im just very tired

"voting blue is what you do for your social well being" and your ballot has nothing but Republicans and Trump party candidates because you live in trump/kkk/proud boy country where all the people that are abled enough to do something about it (like run for office) just don't. Hardly even show up for protests.

Oh yeah is voting what you do for your social health? Voting blue is refreshing like drinking water or a walk?

Must be nice. I'm scared to shower too often cuz the federal government hid documents that radiation was leaking into the water that fills my taps. Well that was after I found out they tried hiding other documents from a report when they leaked it once on purpose to test how far it would travel and got it all over our agricultural land and northern city areas.

I also protest most bottled water on principle because of Nestlē stealing from natives on top of that. This area isn't the first or only time they intentionally irradiated native land for testing either.

For clarification I'm not even on a reservation. This is just another case of a nuclear town being built on stolen land and then being used as lab rats for the government who's absolutely gonna deny they're doing that. The fact everyone here is patriotic and things are named with atomic bomb themes, and they're so proud of Hiroshima really makes it feel like a racist time capsule sometimes, but Im getting off topic.

It's the privilege and tone deaf insistence on Not listening to poc. For generations. Every time they're like "we'll be different"

But they're not.

[possumcollege]

Tumblr just fed me a repost thread where someone responded to a meme that said "The Right gave us the Klan and the Left gave us weekends" with this extremely broken nugget of US history. 👇

🌈 This is horseshit.

1: In the 1860s, under what US historians call the Third Party System Republicans were what we would call "progressive" and Democrats were the "conservative" party.

Lincoln was a Republican, as were many Americans who called for the abolition of slavery. Lincoln stated that he was not personally in favor of total abolition and emancipation but he did believe regulation of slavery was a power of the federal government as opposed to state governments. Democrats of the Reconstruction Era favored strict moral legislation against race mixing, opposed citizenship and voting rights for African Americans, and largely opposed the expansion of Federal powers over the individual states.

It's honest-to-god not that hard to understand that American political parties haven't always been the exact same parties they are today. I can't help it if no one ever taught them this but it isn't an obscure or contested piece of information. Anybody trotting this shit out as a dunk on contemporary Democrats is either wrong or lying.

2: The Klan was never a "Leftist Anarchist alternative to law enforcement"

The concept of organized State law enforcement was barely a thing in the South at that time. Most southern law enforcemement consisted of slave patrols mustered from state militias, tasked with finding and capturing runaways, and preventing large-scale slave rebellions like the French experienced in the Caribbean. Slave patrols were abolished after the Civil War and officers were instead charged with enforcing "Jim Crow" laws under Reconstruction. Many of the Klan's tactics were literally the unofficial, vigilante continuation of practices that were legal for slave patrols. At no point were organized "law enforcement" and the Klan working at cross purposes. They both sought to maintain the social order through violent enforcement of white supremacy, the klan just wasn't an official agent of the state.

Anarchists may seek to operate without centralized state authority, but vigilantes are not inherently "Anarchists" because they're ungoverned. By that reasoning, children fighting on the playground are Anarchists.

White Supremacy is itself antithetical to central Anarchist principles, which call for a society based on voluntary participation, free of social heirarchy, or rule-by-force.

3: Whether they know it or not, when someone says that the Klan formed as any kind of peacekeeping force, they are parroting Pro-Klan propaganda.

There are 3 distinct, widely accepted eras of organizations calling themselves the KKK. The first is the most relevant as it formed during Reconstruction in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War. It began when a number of young Southern men and Confederate veterans took it upon themselves to terrorize and intimidate newly-free African Americans by raiding homes and businesses, destroying property, harassing black communities, and murdering black leaders, organizers, and their allies.

The first iterations of the Klan were heavily influenced by a growing fascination with fraternal orders and secret societies in America during that era. They cribbed heavily from another secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, (the Klan's name came from the Greek word for "circle") who hoped to establish a new county around the legality of slavery. This country would've included the states of the CSA, Mexico, Cuba, the islands of the Caribbean, and parts of Central/ South America.

Claims that the Klan existed to oust Scalawags, Carpetbaggers and other Northern opportunists (often said to be Jews and Catholics) who rushed in to fill the vacuum of deposed Southern leadership doesn't emerge until 1868-69 when Nathan Bedford Forrest was formally elected as their first (holy fucking shit 🤦‍♂️) "Grand Wizard."

(this absolute dipshit)

These retroactive narratives were further amplified in the 1880s-90s as Lost Cause rhetoric began to gain momentum among those sympathetic to the confederacy, white supremacists, and those seeking to profit off the continued disenfranchisement of African Americans as cheap prison labor.

These tales of masked men protecting downtrodden southern whites from the grasping, predatory Yankee Carpetbaggers were further enshrined as founding myths of the second Klan, in Georgia in 1915. It remains a popular Whitewashing narrative to this day.

I do not give half a proud southern shit what the guys who were scamming their buddies into buying official Klan dishes in the 20s said the Klan was about. Those actually existed btw. I don't have to give Forrest's claims any more weight than I give Spencer's claims on the motivation of neo-nazis.

Spencer got exactly what both of them deserved when he got socked in the head on TV.

[politics-project]

Hi guys!

I will be discussing the further mistreatment of black people that lead to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Jim Crow Laws

Were local laws meant to segregate black and white people. It marginalised black people by withholding the right to vote, the ability to hold a jobs, to receive an education and other chances.

Brief Background Info:

Jim Crow Laws had it’s beginnings in black codes that started almost immediately following the 13th Amendment. These were strict local and state laws that created a legal way to force black citizens into indentured servitude and to control their lives. They found some freedom in the city’s from these laws in the early 1880’s, which upset white people who then demanded more laws to limit their opportunities. So, Jim Crow laws soon spread across the country with more force than before, depriving black people of what I mentioned earlier.

Pre-Civil Right’s Movement:

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges. On top of KKK members being part of the lowest and highest parts of government. This made it hard to fight back against the Black codes which lead to unfair sentences to cruel labour camps. It was not much safer for those who fled the Jim Crow South with police officers being brutal and punitive in Northern cities.

The policing we know today started in 1909. August Vollmer refashioned the American police info the American military. His peers and Vollmer used military tactics, weapons and considered “[…] union organisers, immigrants and black people.”to be their enemies. Go reports in 1911 say that 11% of people arrested were black people but under James Robinson this grew to 14.6% in 1917. By the 1920’s, a quarter of those arrested were black people despite only making up 7.4% of the population.

The National Commission on Law, Observance and Enforcement in their investigation findings from 1931 - 1932, brought to light the realities of police brutality although it did not address racial disparities in it.In the Progressive Era, under Vollmer - style policing criminalised blackness by over policing their neighbourhoods, arresting and convicting them with longer sentences than their white counterparts. Policing grew harsher too. The introduction of State Police Forces and growing number of police during this time did not help the situation.

During the Civil Right’s Movement:

“We can never be satisfied as long as the N#gro is of the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality” - Martin Luther King (1963)

The aggressive tactics of using police dogs, fire hoses during peaceful protests such as the sit ins were horrific but it was the everyday violence and brutality of how they policed their communities that grew the rightful distrust of the police. The Freedom Riders also faced violence from the police as well as from civilians. It was only under presidential pressure that they gave them an escort but the police in Mississippi arrested them unfairly in May of 1961.

“The idea of police brutality was very much on people’s minds in 1963, following on the years, decades really, of police abuse of power and then centuries of oppression of African Americans” - William Pretzer (Senior History Curator)

Such as the ‘Bloody Sunday’ that occurred in Alabama in March 1965 where 600 peaceful protesters, protesting the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson by white police officer, were blocked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by police sent by the governor of Alabama. They were viciously beaten and tear-gas was used by the police, dozens of protesters were hospitalised. Later that year, President Lyndon B Johnson started his ‘War on Crime’, he got congress to pass the Law Enforcement Assistant Act under which he supplied police with military grade which is a further militarisation of the police. It disproportionately targeted back neighbourhoods bringing things to how it was under Vollmer.

The deadliest riot was caused by a police officer harshly beating John Smith, a black taxi driver in Newark in 1967. The riot killed 26 and many others were injured. This is just another instance of the police abusing their power being the reason for retaliation. The commission concluded that “police actions were ‘final’ incidents before the outbreak of violence 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders” In 1968, Johnson got congress to pass the Omnibus Crime, Control, Safe Streets Act which diverted money from social programs and into the police. This of course didn’t do that since social programs are what help prevent crime and increasing the police forces money only served to cause continued discrimination.

Link to Theorist(s):

This links into the theorist Karl Marx because of his view that law enforcement only works in favour of those in power and that crime control & punishment only serve to oppress the oppressed.

[argyrocratie]

The social reaction to feminism includes a hatred of feminism, but as well, idealisations, which produce associations and attachments that shift and surge around a received identity of women and women’s causes as progressive. The problem of identity and identity-thinking - something no one can plausibly claim to be above - maintains because these identifications aren't stable, they were historically produced, and in the case of feminism, no authentic version exists.

Debates around the rights and wrongs of episodes in feminist history are therefore important because they are complex and wrought. Historians of suffrage help to challenge essentialism because it is clear that womanhood had no stable identity. The role of state power in splitting movement alliances becomes far clearer when an idealised story of national women’s rights struggle is troubled. And as Ellen Carol Dubois states, the paths taken by its leaders are hard to disconnect from their social backgrounds: “Woman suffrage leaders were rarely from the ranks of wage-earners. Some, like [Lucy] Stone and Anthony, were the daughters of small farmers. Others, most notably Stanton, were the children of considerable wealth.”27 After the word “male” entered into the Constitution for the first time, Stanton wrote in 1866: “if that word ‘male’ be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out.” In fact, once Reconstruction was overthrown and white supremacy reasserted, it was a century before Black Americans finally had some civil rights enforced by the federal government. Meanwhile, white women secured voting rights with the 20th Amendment in 1920.28 

For Stanton and Anthony, the betrayal of "womanhood" by Black male suffrage could only be reduced to a conspiracy of male supremacy, Black and white. The lesson Stanton took: woman “must not put her trust in man.”29 Whilst shared patriarchy was an element, Black male enfranchisement came about in larger part due to Republican Party strategy and the Northern bourgeoisie’s attempt to secure postwar Reconstruction. That is, a calculation was made: Black men would vote Republican, white women would return the white supremacist Democrats to power.

...

-”Fascism and the Women's Cause: Gender Critical Feminism, Suffragettes and the Women's KKK”

[somerandomjewelleryonthefloor]

HEYYYYYY

So, as you've seen my user, I'm Somerandomjewelleryonthefloor or Twstaddict17, or jewel!

My interests are: TWST, Choices (app, PixelBerry), HTTYD namely, I join fandoms regularly so don't get thing if you see me post stuff on a fandom I'm new to.

Fun fact: I'm a teen & jobless, I'm nearing the last few years of HS and I'm planning on moving to northern Europe when I can!

I like: writing fanfics & drabbles, I love pets/animals, and I love thunderstorms. Also you WILL see me arting like crazy

DNI AND *BLOCK ME* IF:

Homo/trans/xeno phobic

Racist &/or a race-supremist of any kind (KKk people for eg*****)

Proshipper

Ableist

antisemitic (hate Jews)

zionist (think a genocide should happen)

if you adore/idolise on about any politician to a *REAL extreme*. (Trump supporters for EXAMPLE*****)

Had to add some brackets so I was extra clear, especially with people using the "if you hate Zionists, you're antisemitic!" Bullshit, because not all Jews are Zionists dumbasses.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

My page is usually SFW, and there's absolutely no sex here. I'm Ace, my pfp has the flag so don't expect smut. Pls.

By anything I classify as NSFW, I mean my work (writing or art) can be gorey.

I'm Aboriginal & obviously live in AUS, so don't be surprised if I pop out a casual "C you next Thursday" at any time, or swear.

*ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡.·༻¨*:·.✧˚.ೃ࿐*ੈ✩‧₊˚*+°

FANFICS: ↓

↑ is on hiatus.

↑ WIP.

Fanfic ideas:

╔═*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*═╗

Twisted Cinderella story

╚═*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*═╝

────────────────────────

ASKS:

────────────────────────

MCS in question ↓: (their little insights and who they are lol)

Solrin

Giselle

Orphic

Kristabelle

Swan

Diva

Dosha

Charelynn

Mischief

────────────────────────

My Bio will be a continuous work in progress, so don't mind that!!!!!!!!!

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. · ───

[orthopunkfox]

An Appalachian Orthodox Christian's Perspective on Juneteenth

Growing up in redneck country, I was no stranger to racism. I heard my great granny use the hard R and even my parents make little racist comments between themselves about BIPOC folx. I have remarked in conversations to friends that one of the disadvantages of growing up as a white cis man in Kentucky and Southern Indiana is that other white cis men will be racist around you. I can remember more than a few times being approached in the grocery store by men asking "Do you know Mr. Ayak?" the call sign for the KKK.

Today in the United States, we celebrate the end of the greatest disease that has afflicted our nation: the abomination of slavery. Yet we acknowledge that the great strides taken in the 1860s and the 1960s are but the first steps on a long road to true racial equality. Indeed today is not just a day of celebration, but remembrance. We remember the thousands of people, created in the image of God who's names have been erased from history because their lives and deaths were not counted worthy of remembrance.

We remember also, and mourn, those who twisted the words of Our Lord and His Saints to defend their racist actions, just as they do now with their anti LGBTQ+ rhetoric. We remember those who stood behind the pulpit and the Bible and dared to use even Christ's Holy Cross as a symbol of hatred for their fellow human beings.

On this day, it is worth noting that the Orthodox Church has a message for those people. In April of 1863, His All-Holiness Joachim II Patriarch of Constantinople released a statement that was printed in an Antiochian newspaper. He says:

The United States of America, after many years of union and peace, after gigantic material and moral development, are separated into two hostile camps. The Northern States, guided by true reason and evangelical principles, persistently seek the abolition of the slavery of the blacks. The Southern States, blinded by a badly understood material interest, obstinately and anti-Christianly seek the perpetuation of slavery. This war of ideas and physical interests is prosecuted to desperation. Bloody battles are delivered, but victory until the present is doubtful, and the return of peace does not seem near. But if we cast a careful eye upon the wonderful events of this age, we shall be inclined to believe that those who contend so nobly for the most unquestionable and humane rights, will, God helping them, reach the object of their desires.

We thank God that the (doubtful) hopes of the Patriarch were realized, and we vow, as inclusive Orthodox Christians to continue the battle for the rights of the oppressed, to step forward where we are needed and to step back in support when where we are not. We hope and pray and celebrate with our siblings of color today as they rejoice in they victories already won.

Glory to God for all things!

[IMAGE]: An icon depicting various Saints of Africa including Saint Moses and Saint Mary of Egypt.

[romanceyourdemons]

more ink has been spilled about the birth of a nation (1915) than i will ever write, but i would like to look at d w griffith’s claim that “the story writes itself.” although the film goes to great lengths to present itself as the self-evident or historically supported story of the nation, it actually uses many techniques, including some of the most advanced film technology of the time, to present its argument. the film’s air of historicity is of course supported by all of the marketing around it, including woodrow wilson’s famous endorsement of the film as “like writing history with lightning,” but is also forwarded within the film itself through the frequent and obvious citations to the history books used as references for the set design. the widely praised cinematography bridges the gap between the affect of historicity and the pathos-laden emotional slant. griffith maintains careful control over scope in the cinematography of this truly epic film, using both cutting-edge technologies like tracking shots and narrative intercutting and technologies that would soon fall out of favor like vignettes or irises and under cranking. with a wide range of deeply emotionally effective camera techniques, griffith guides the audience seamlessly from the epic scale to the small scale, equating the sickly-sympathetic poignancy of the latter with the broadly corroborated historicity of the former to infuse historical events with a highly targeted emotional significance. although the film frames itself as arguing against war, what it is actually arguing for is a particular view of black people and their ability to function in various positions in society. this is a fundamentally racist argument, and the film presumes and builds upon the audience’s whiteness and according racism or ignorance and lack of sympathy toward black people. the film’s prelude, showing the happy, stable status quo in piedmont before the brutal destabilization of the war, fills its deep shots with black bodies in passive, de-agentified positions in society—not just embodying the literary role of “happy slave” and other minstrelsy-derived stock characters, but also simply standing and moving in a way that forms a soothing visual backdrop to the action. this status quo, both narrative and visual, contrasts against the point later in the film when blackface actors begin to take active, agentive roles in the narrative. by acting in a way that draws the camera’s eye, these characters break the visually pleasant status quo; as blackface actors, their faces, gestures, and expressions are uncanny in their obvious affectation, and the overall affect is very unpleasant. to a white audience member from the northern united states in the 1910s, who had met or seen virtually no black people, this technique of using the physical presence of black bodies to establish and then violate the status quo proved very effective in biasing audience members against empathy towards or recognition of the equality of black people—to the extent, of course, that this film caused the reformation and nationwide spread of the kkk. even though griffith presented the birth of a nation (1915) as a film that came naturally, its high level of skill, both visual and narrative, speaks otherwise, both suggesting and forwarding the film’s real argument

[mogai-sunflowers]

MOGAI BHM- Day 7!

happy BHM! today I’m going to be talking about two movements from the Civil Rights Era- Freedom Summer and the Selma Movement!

Freedom Summer-

The Freedom Summer was a project sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the SNCC, in 1964. A key drive of the Civil Rights Movement was to secure voting rights for Black Americans. In some places, movements for voting rights were more successful- but Mississippi was not one of those places.

Student activists from the SNCC faced much more violent pushback from white supremacists and segregationists in Mississippi than in other areas. Some of these student activists realized that voting rights couldn’t be achieved without raising awareness for the violence they faced in Mississippi- so they started the project known as Freedom Summer.

Freedom Summer was an interracial effort that focused largely on training northern white college students to help register Black southerners for voting. Because white politicians frequently used different strategies to disenfranchise Black voters, student volunteers also focused on counteracting voter disenfranchisement.

As will be discussed further in a future post, one of the most crucial parts of Freedom Summer was the establishment of the Freedom Schools, which were Black-run schools that focused on educating Black children about a variety of things, especially how to read and write, which helped to counter the racist literacy tests that were often a part of voter registration.

Student activists for the Freedom Summer project successfully helped get 1,600 Black citizens registered to vote in Mississippi- but that was out of 17,000 who applied, which highlighted the huge need for voting rights activism. Freedom Summer was a major suffrage project, and helped influence events that would eventually lead to the passing of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Selma Movement/Marches-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of a huge group of people, most Black but some white, marching in a street. At the very front of the group, a few people are holding sings that say in all capitals “Freedom Now”. Two men near the front of the group are holding up a large white banner that says “WE MARCH WITH SELMA!”. End ID.]

A year after Freedom Summer’s success, another movement began in protest of the Jim Crow era suppression of Black voters in the South- the infamous Selma marches. Coordinated and organized by the SCLC, the SNCC, and the Dallas County Voters League (the DCVL), the Selma Marches were a series of three marches in 1965 between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama.

When James Orange, a member of the DCVL, was arrested, a man named Reverend C.T Vivian led a peaceful march to a courthouse in Marion, Alabama, but he and the marchers were attacked viciously by Alabama state troopers on the way, leading to the death of one of the marchers, Jimmie Lee Jackson. Outrage over his murder prompted the SCLC, the SNCC, and the DCVL to organize a march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for justice for Jackson.

However, this first Selma march, launched on March 7, 1965, came to be known as “Bloody Sunday”- Alabama law enforcement attacked the protestors so viciously that many recall thinking they were about to die- over 60 protestors were injured in the attack on this Selma March.

Two more marches were led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists later in March. These other Selma marches were also met with violence from law enforcement and the KKK. During the third march, which amassed thousands and thousands of participants, they all reached the Alabaman capitol. 

As tragic and horrific as the violence against the Selma marchers was, their bravery directly inspired the introduction of a bill to Congress- the Voting Rights Act. 5 months after its introduction, the Voting Rights Act of 1956 was signed into law. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests and other racist policies, and was a monumental case that helped end a legacy of voter disenfranchisement in the South.

Sources-

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/freedom-summer

https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/vote/selma-marches 

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:~:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting. 

[nicklloydnow]

“He said: "I came back because I'd seen the South and I'd seen the North, and there was the same hate in both places. It wasn't Sergeant Wilson that convinced me of that. He was nothing but a Georgia cracker, and he took the South with him wherever he went. He didn't have to be south of the Mason-Dixon line to hate niggers. He just did. No, it was the fire at the Black Spot that convinced me of that. You know, Mikey, in a way . . . “

He glanced over at my mother, who was knitting. She hadn't looked up, but I knew she was listening closely, and my father knew it too, I think.

"In a way it was the fire made me a man. There was sixty people killed in that fire, eighteen of them from Company E. There really wasn't any company left when that fire was over. Henry Whitsun . . . Stork Anson . . . Alan Snopes . . . Everett McCaslin . . . Horton Sartoris . . . all my friends, all dead in that fire. And that fire wasn't set by old Sarge Wilson and his grits-and-cornpone friends. It was set by the Derry branch of the Maine Legion of White Decency. Some of the kids you go to school with, son, their fathers struck the matches that lit the Black Spot on fire. And I'm not talking about the poor kids, neither."

"Why, Daddy? Why did they?"

"Well, part of it was just Derry," my father said, frowning. He lit his pipe slowly and shook out the wooden match. "I don't know why it happened here; I can't explain it, but at the same time I ain't surprised by it.

"The Legion of White Decency was the Northerners' version of the Ku Klux Klan, you see. They marched in the same white sheers, they burned the same crosses, they wrote the same hate-notes to black folks they felt were getting above their station or taking jobs that were meant for white men. In churches where the preachers talked about black equality, they sometimes planted charges of dynamite. Most of the history books talk more about the KKK than they do about the Legion of White Decency, and a lot of people don't even know there was such a thing. I think it might be because most of the histories have been written by Northerners and they're ashamed.

"It was most pop'lar in the big cities and the manufacturin areas. New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, Portsmouth-they all had their chapters. They tried to organize in Maine, but Derry was the only place they had any real success. Oh, for awhile there was a pretty good chapter in Lewiston - this was around the same time as the fire at the Black Spot - but they weren't worried about niggers raping white women or taking jobs that should have belonged to white men, because there weren't any niggers to speak of up here. In Lewiston they were worried about tramps and hobos and that something called 'the bonus army' would join up with something they called 'the Communist riffraff army,' by which they meant any man who was out of work. The Legion of Decency used to send these fellows out of town just as fast as they came in. Sometimes they stuffed poison ivy down the backs of their pants. Sometimes they set their shirts on fire.

"Well, the Legion was pretty much done up here after the fire at the Black Spot. Things got out of hand, you see. The way things seem to do in this town, sometimes."

He paused, puffing.

"It's like the Legion of White Decency was just another seed, Mikey, and it found some earth that nourished it well here. It was a regular rich-man's club. And after the fire, they all just laid away their sheets and lied each other up and it was papered over." Now there was a kind of vicious contempt in his voice that made my mother look up, frowning. "After all, who got killed? Eighteen army niggers, fourteen or fifteen town niggers, four members of a nigger jazz-band . . . and a bunch of nigger-lovers. What did it matter?"

"Will," my mother said softly. "That's enough."

"No," I said. "I want to hear!"

"I's getting to be your bedtime, Mikey," he said, ruffling my hair with his big, hard hand. "I just want to tell you one thing more, and I don't think you'll understand it, because I'm not sure I understand it myself. What happened that night at the Black Spot, bad as it was . . . I don't really think it happened because we was black. Not even because the Spot was close behind West Broadway, where the rich whites in Derry lived then and still live today. I don't think that the Legion of White Decency happened to get along so well here because they hated black people and bums more in Derry than they did in Portland or Lewiston or Brunswick. It's because of that soil. It seems that bad things, hurtful things, do right well in the soil of this town. I've thought so again and again over the years. I don't know why it should be . . . but it is.” - Stephen King, ‘It’ (1986) [p. 445 - 447]

[faorism]

the walk in the woods job out here doing the mostest with their translation of the bohemian grove (a real, very evil boys club of the worlds most powerful men that does in fact feature weird rituals and pissing everywhere). by moving it from california to ambiguous south near new orleans, it makes explicit some of the underlying tomfuckery of the grove by making possible the fictional counterpart's being hosted on a plantation.

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as gestured to in the episode, the grove began 130 years ago by ~men of industry~ (ill get back to this). the bohemian grove specifically was founded in 1878. places its founding within reconstruction, an era post the us civil war's end in 1865. the war had created fundamental changes to the american landscape, from the emancipation of enslaved Black people to a nationwide trauma due to mass death. reconstruction is often described as a period of reconciliation between the northern states and the south, to draw together the nation's people, rebuild its infrastructure, and reestablish the union.

thing is, there was a reconciliation. but ultimately, it was to bridge together the power and resources of whites by way of the continued disfrancisement of Black people. it was a time of both reckoning and potential, given the shock attempted succession had on the political landscape but more impkrtantly given what the nation looks like post-slavery as long as you are not incarcerated. Black people held a fuck ton of govt seats at first, there was Black industry, there was Black migration, but also simultaneously wildly exploitative sharecropping schemes that were not slavery but also yeah kinda were and a ton of other genocidal shit. the forty acres and a mule promise never came through. Black folk were freed, but they were not equal and there would be no support to undo hundreds of years of violence, human trafficking, and genocide, nor would there be enough protections in place to secure Black prosperity for the future. it is absolutely no surprise that the first iteration of the KKK ran from 1868 to the early 1870s: their intention was to reestablish white supremacy through violence, voter suppression, and terrorism. while they were squashed as a formal organization, they signaled antiblack attitudes held by many white people for years to come.

as you might see in the Reconstruction wiki page (under the timing section), some place the end of Reconstruction to align with some govt seat change schenanigans called the compromise of 1977. there's a lot of nitpicky shit about it, but what i care about is that federal troops were withdrawn out of the south. i dont like this time point because i dont feel like it tells the full story. it leans onto the reconciliation between whites, because the withdrawl can be described as Back To Normal Operations! in terms of state control. but as the compromise wiki describes, Black politicians were upset about this because they felt the federal troops were protecting Black progress and safety. and they were right! vote suppression and intimidation went rampant, and the slow churn toward the establishment of Jim Crow Laws would be allowed to sneak in.

by extending the frame of Reconstruction to, as the wiki again suggests, something like 1890s when antiblack voter suppression was passed. a longer era focuses not on reconciliation on a top-down (read: white) level, but instead highlights the rise and eventual destruction of Black rights and capital. centering that as the true legacy of Reconstruction is vital to avoid white supremacist historicizing that distracts from the true concerted efforts to disenfranchise Black folk.

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anyway what does this have to do with leverage and the grove, you might be asking.

as said, the irl grove was founded 1878, a year after the compromise act but firmly within the arc of a long Reconstruction era.

this is where the "men of industry" line said (i believe) in general frick's speech comes in, and how the move to a plantation heightens the optics in a hugely significant way.

bruh, they are a group of powerful men in white robes meeting on a plantation in the south. they allowed in some Black men now (diversity win! your cabal is now racially mixed!), but you know that when this shit started up, it was white dudes on white dudes on white dudes. the actual bohemian grove has rituals involving red robes, but the shock and discomfort of the fictional version was intentional, i feel, in order to associate it with the KKK. this to me is confirmed when frick said his family owned that plantation for generations. that, like all other sites that abducted and tortured enslaved people, was a concentration camp. the men of industry frick is talking about are at least partly human traffickers (aka, "slaveowners"). the leverage grove is one that is intricately tied to a moment of transition, Black dispossession, and violence. white men pissing every which way getting drunk on the lands that held hundreds of years of trauma.

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it's important for me to say that around the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were a fuckton of social clubs and lodges opening up across the country, including some hosted by people of color. maybe the irl grove did not have the same overtly racial tensions feeding into it as when placed in the heart of Reconstruction (even though, please please understand that it's not just a south thing; it was a white folk thing, regardless of political affiliation or location).

but! the legacy of bohemian grove? yeah, this is a fucking club that has had an impact. there was a meeting of the manhattan project at one of the grove meetings that led to the development of the atomic bomb. if all that ever came out from the grove was that, then that alone would be enough to make the whole shit rotten. but given the power behind the men of the grove (listed here), any reestablishment of a boys club (literal or figurative) is a backdoor dealings system to withhold influence, opportunities, and privilege from marginalized people by managing access to cultural capital and social resources.

it's what was done in Reconstruction, and its done through these secret (or "secret") society rituals, and it's done again and again and again, but those dealings are ones us normies will ever get a chance to see.

i just wish there was a leverage team for us irl ready to fuck shit up and defend some wildlife. (the irl bohemian grove protesters wete trying to protect redwood trees, owls, and some other bird instead of a frog, but still.)

but yeah. fuck fricks dudes and fuck the irl grove and i hope your ugly ass owl statue topples over one day during one of your cringe plays and yall all die drowning in your own piss!

[i might come back to this, clean it up, and throw it onto ao3 as a meta post because i do feel this is important for people to know and i legit spent two and a quarter hours on this.... anyway, i will link it here in this postscript should i do that. also i am not a historian so i absolutely got some shit wrong but whatever. dont cite me in a paper, basically]

[quill-of-thoth]

Letters From Watson: The Five Orange Pips

Crimes in Context: Lynching and the Klu Klux Klan

I don't intend to go into graphic details regarding historic terrorism and murder, but I thought I'd give a quick summary of the reconstruction era after the American Civil War, and the Klu Klux Klan, a formerly secret society of some of the worst people in the country, since it would be conceited to assume that everyone studied it in history class. When it comes to the KKK pre-emptively punching them is self defense, just like Nazis. American Civil War, 1861-1865: The Confederate (southern) states secede from the United States, leading to a civil war over whether slavery should remain legal. It's important to note that the economy of the southern states, which endorsed slavery, was largely tied up in the production of cotton and other major cash crops, which was largely profitable because the people doing all the agricultural work were enslaved in terrible conditions. In 1863 the emancipation proclamation ended chattel slavery in the United States, and in 1865 the Confederate states surrendered and the Union was reunited. The Reconstruction Era, 1865-1877:

The 14th and 15th amendments are passed, granting formerly enslaved people the same civil rights as all other citizens on paper. The former confederate states do not, in practice, guarantee this. Pretty much immediately there are hate crimes against black people, to the point that the former confederate states were under military control by 1866, and there is an entire political party formed on the basis of rolling back black people's new civil rights, particularly the right to vote. Confusingly, it's not the same party that is currently working to undermine civil rights in the United States: back in the 1860's, the Republican party was the good guys. For the approximate era where that completely reversed, see the 1960's which are outside the scope of this write up.

During this time there was a wave of black politicians, community building among groups of newly free black citizens and their compatriots who had escaped to northern states prior to the war, and federal involvement to attempt to ensure that everyone actually had their civil rights.

The rest is under the cut because that's where I will outline the crimes of the Ku Klux Klan.

There was also the KKK, or Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist terrorist organization that focused on preventing black participation in voting, community involvement, or having any civil rights by intimidation and murder. They murdered whites who supported black citizenship, and they murdered black people for literally any excuse that they could come up with, often via torture or public hanging. As with all white supremacist groups they also expanded into christofascist terrorism, so they've also added jewish and islamic people, as well as latino, asian, and native american people to their list of targets. The first iteration of the KKK ended (mostly) in the early 1870's, due to prosecution of their crimes and the fact that decentralized terrorist organizations tend to crumble when they don't see results and some of their leaders are in jail. Unfortunately, like all white nationalist and christofascist terrorist organizations, it keeps being resurrected, notably in 1915 and the 1960's. In 1915 it was based on the film The Birth of a Nation, a movie based upon a book that had romanticized the KKK, and masqueraded as a fraternal organization, and it broadened its focus to anti-immigrant, anti communist, anti-science, and anti non-christian-protestant-religion activity. If this sounds familiar it's because politics is a flat circle and I want to get off. It dissolved again due to the arrests of leaders, and infighting between chapters. In the 1950's and 60's it arose again specifically to combat civil rights activisim and legislation, and although it has since waned in membership there are still members who still conduct, or conspire to conduct, terrorist activity. They also actively collaborate with other white supremacist and christofascist organizations, including neo-nazis. Historians will sort out if the increased white supremacist, christofascist, queerphobic, misogynistic, insurrectionist, antisemitic, antislamic and anti-science political activity of the last decade and change has anything to do with them, but when mass shooters have a white supremacist manifesto in the USA, chances are they were somewhat influenced by the history of the Klan even if they were never a member. The Case All of this to say that the facts of The Five Orange Pips are, to an extent limited by England's position across an entire atlantic ocean, fairly accurate to the historical record. Our uncle Openshaw, who presumably either had enough money from repartitions (yes, former plantation owners were paid reparations and the people they enslaved were not, in an attempt to stabilize the economy of the former confederacy that remains infuriating) not to worry about his finances and fuck off back to England, or stole his fortune from the rest of the Klan, unarguably got what he deserved. I have no idea why the threatening letters first came from India, which seems like the last place an American group of racially motivated murderers would flee to to avoid prosecution (The whole west, and Latin America are more convenient) but it's not impossible that Openshaw's former compatriots were also originally from England.

[rjalker]

I don't know how many schools we ended up going to but literally none of them ever told us a single true thing about the Black Panthers besides their name. The rest was literally just racist propaganda. They literally taught us that the Black Panthers were the Black equivalent of the KKK.

And these schools were all in Maryland and Pennsylvania, the so-called "good northern states".

[cateyedfox36]

I resent the hell out of Buster Keaton's masterpiece "The General" for making me root for a Southern traitor.

It rankles at the heart of the Fool. As the Fool, Buster's Johnie Gray should be on the side of the lowest in society, which in America in 1862 would be the enslaved people's, not those who seek to keep them enslaved.

The myth of Northern aggression, of the shit bird South's underdog nature, is obv bullshit, and harmful. Films during this time like "The General" and "Birth of a Nation" helped the KKK spawn and spread as much as those worthless cunts, the daughters of the glorious dead.

Yet! Yet! Here's Buster, being hilarious, mischievious. a big dork ass hero. And I cheer. I cheer when he burns down a bridge, stopping his Northern pursuers. I laugh as his shite sword falls apart and kills a Sniper.

I want this littlr dork ass Trickster to win the girl and the battle. He gets his uniform, he becomes a lieutenant and my heart soars.

So fuck the Southern shitbag traitors but I love Buster Keaton and I want to write papers on Silent Film Tricksters.