Archive for the ‘Civil Rights’ Category

25 Apr

Civil Liberties in Times of Emergency

Posted by scoop2go in AP Review, Chapter 41, Civil Rights, Class discussion, Constitution, Immigration/ Citizenship, News, Presidency.

With the capture and arrest of the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, there are three opinion pieces I want you to read, as well as the first three paragraphs in particular from the front page of Thursday’s paper. As you hopefully know, at first authorities considered charging the surviving bomber as an enemy combatant, and deliberately decided not to Mirandize him once he regained consciousness. Remember that he is a naturalized US citizen captured on American soil and has so far not been tied to any international terrorist organizations.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/boston-bomb-investigation-extends-to-russia/article_047ec30a-d724-5b49-9811-c4c0941fd3dc.html (first three paragraphs are particularly important).

First, from an editorial from the Post-Dispatch: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-president-or-terror-suspect-the-rule-of-law-applies/article_411048ff-1e15-5032-8b1c-9756bc4a7d93.html

And this one from conservative commentator George Will: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/george-will/george-will-the-shame-of-deference/article_20bdbf54-e3fd-5fdb-aab5-7d8bb93e623e.html

And from moderate Kathleen Parker: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/kathleen-parker/kathleen-parker-the-terror-of-not-knowing/article_033f880d-56ef-5535-b1c5-0b7df2d2b74b.html

This is a great chance to APPLY what we learn and use it to determine our course of action. It is also a good chance to review the Constitutional Amendments and Supreme Court decisions as well as other historical precedents that apply to our understanding of  civil liberties. We will be discussing this in class next Tuesday, April 30. Take notes and CONSIDER your answer to these questions:

What are civil liberties? What is the purpose of civil liberties? Are they negotiable or variable? What does history show us about limitations on civil liberties in times of war or crisis? What points does George Will make about previous instances of racially-based civil liberties decisions? What point does Kathleen Parker make about the ease of stripping those perceived as “alien” or “other” of their rights and claims to humanity?

Here is a link outlining very briefly the current case law on the matter of enemy combatants and civil liberties: http://web.law.duke.edu/publiclaw/civil/index.php?action=showtopic&topicid=24

4 Apr

The Diner Scene from Giant

Posted by scoop2go in Audiovisual and video, Chapter 38, Civil Rights.

Here’s the background: This is the story of a wealthy family in Texas. One of the rich man’s sons has married an Hispanic woman and has a child with her. At that time, interracial marriages were very much disapproved of in Texas, and Hispanics were heavily discriminated against in much the same way that African Americans were. The rich man, played by Rock Hudson, is originally none too happy that his son has married a Hispanic woman, being full of the prejudices that were common at the time.

The grandfather (Rock Hudson), grandmother (Elizabeth Taylor), mother and baby have stopped in a diner to eat. Because they are with wealthy white people, the diner owner has grudgingly allowed the Hispanic woman and her child to be seated. But when a Hispanic family (who earlier had been depicted as having had a son die in World War II) comes in and tries to get served, the diner owner has had enough, and attempts to throw them out. Then watch what happens….

4 Apr

Excerpt – The Feminine Mystique

Posted by scoop2go in Chapter 37, Chapter 38, Civil Rights, Women.

The Feminine Mystique: Chapter 1

“The Problem that Has No Name”

Betty Friedan

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night–she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question–”Is this all?”

For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire–no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity. Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands; how to dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage more exciting; how to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents. They were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents. They learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights–the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for. Some women, in their forties and fifties, still remembered painfully giving up those dreams, but most of the younger women no longer even thought about them. A thousand expert voices applauded their femininity, their adjustment, their new maturity. All they had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children.

By the end of the nineteen-fifties, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20, and was still dropping, into the teens. Fourteen million girls were engaged by 17. The proportion of women attending college in comparison with men dropped fro m 47 per cent in 1920 to 35 per cent in 1958. A century earlier, women had fought for higher education; now girls went to college to get a husband. By the mid-fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college to marry, or because they were afraid too much education would be a marriage bar. Colleges built dormitories for “married students,” but the students were almost always the husbands. A new degree was instituted for the wives–”Ph.T.” (Putting Husband Through).

Then American girls began getting married in high school. And the women’s magazines, deploring the unhappy statistics about these young marriages, urged that courses on marriage, and marriage counselors, be installed in the high schools. Girls started going steady at twelve and thirteen, in junior high. Manufacturers put out brassieres with false bosoms of foam rubber for little girls of ten. And on advertisement for a child’s dress, sizes 3-6x, in the New York Times in the fall of 1960, said: “She Too Can Join the Man-Trap Set.”

By the end of the fifties, the United States birthrate was overtaking India’s. The birth-control movement, renamed Planned Parenthood, was asked to find a method whereby women who had been advised that a third or fourth baby would be born dead or defective might have it anyhow. Statisticians were especially astounded at the fantastic increase in the number of babies among college women. Where once they had two children, now they had four, five, six. Women who had once wanted careers were now making careers out of having babies. So rejoiced Life magazine in a 1956 paean to the movement of American women back to the home….

Interior decorators were designing kitchens with mosaic murals and original paintings, for kitchens were once again the center of women’s lives. Home sewing became a million-dollar industry. Many women no longer left their homes, except to shop, chauffeur their children, or attend a social engagement with their husbands. Girls were growing up in America without ever having jobs outside the home. In the late fifties, a sociological phenomenon was suddenly remarked: a third of American women now worked, but most were no longer young and very few were pursuing careers. They were married women who held part-time jobs, selling or secretarial, to put their husbands through school, their sons through college, or to help pay the mortgage. Or they were widows supporting families. Fewer and fewer women were entering professional work. The shortages in the nursing, social work, and teaching professions caused crises in almost every American city. Concerned over the Soviet Union’s lead in the space race, scientists noted that America’s greatest source of unused brain-power was women. But girls would not study physics: it was “unfeminine.” A girl refused a science fellowship at Johns Hopkins to take a job in a real-estate office. All she wanted, she said, was what every other American girl wanted–to get married, have four children and live in a nice house in a nice suburb.
The suburban housewife–she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife–freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.
In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture. Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. They baked their own bread, sewed their own and their children’s clothes, kept their new washing machines and dryers running all day. They changed the sheets on the beds twice a week instead of once, took the rughoolag class in adult education, and pitied their poor frustrated mothers, who had dreamed of having a career. Their only dream was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house, their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions. They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank: “Occupation: housewife.”

For over fifteen years, the words written for women, and the words women used when they talked to each other, while their husbands sat on the other side of the room and talked shop or politics or septic tanks, were about problems with their children, or how to keep their husbands happy, or improve their children’s school, or cook chicken or make slipcovers. Nobody argued whether women were inferior or superior to men; they were simply different. Words like “emancipation” and “career” sounded strange and embarrassing; no one had used them for years. When a Frenchwoman named Simone de Beauvoir wrote a book called The Second Sex, an American critic commented that she obviously “didn’t know what life was all about,” and besides, she was talking about French women. The “woman problem” in America no longer existed.

If a woman had a problem in the 1950′s and 1960′s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself.

For over fifteen years women in America found it harder to talk about the problem than about sex. Even the psychoanalysts had no name for it. When a woman went to a psychiatrist for help, as many women did, she would say, “I’m so ashamed,” or “I must be hopelessly neurotic.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with women today,” a suburban psychiatrist said uneasily. “I only know something is wrong because most of my patients happen to be women. And their problem isn’t sexual.” Most women with this problem did not go to see a psychoanalyst, however. “There’s nothing wrong really,” they kept telling themselves, “There isn’t any problem.”

But on an April morning in 1959, I heard a mother of four, having coffee with four other mothers in a suburban development fifteen miles from New York, say in a tone of quiet desperation, “the problem.” And the others knew, without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband, or her children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem, the problem that has no name. They began, hesitantly, to talk about it. Later, after they had picked up their children at nursery school and taken them home to nap, two of the women cried, in sheer relief, just to know they were not alone.

Gradually I came to realize that the problem that has no name was shared by countless women in America. As a magazine writer I often interviewed women about problems with their children, or their marriages, or their houses, or their communities. But after a while I began to recognize the telltale signs of this other problem. I saw the same signs in suburban ranch houses and split-levels on Long Island and in New Jersey and Westchester County; in colonial houses in a small Massachusetts town; on patios in Memphis; in suburban and city apartments; in living rooms in the Midwest. Sometimes I sensed the problem, not as a reporter, but as a suburban housewife, for during this time I was also bringing up my own three children in Rockland County, New York. I heard echoes of the problem in college dormitories and semiprivate maternity wards, at PTA meetings and luncheons of the League of Women Voters, at suburban cocktail parties, in station wagons waiting for trains, and in snatches of conversation overheard at Schrafft’s. The groping words I heard from other women, on quiet afternoons when children were at school or on quiet evenings when husbands worked late, I think I understood first as a woman long before I understood their larger social and psychological implications.

Just what was this problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say “I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete.” Or she would say, “I feel as if I don’t exist.” Sometimes she blotted out the feeling with a tranquilizer. Sometimes she thought the problem was with her husband or her children, or that what she really needed was to redecorate her house, or move to a better neighborhood, or have an affair, or another baby. Sometimes, she went to a doctor with symptoms she could hardly describe: “A tired feeling. . . I get so angry with the children it scares me . . . I feel like crying without any reason.” (A Cleveland doctor called it “the housewife’s syndrome.”) A number of women told me about great bleeding blisters that break out on their hands and arms. “I call it the house wife’s blight” said a family doctor in Pennsylvania. “I see it so often lately in these young women with four, five and six children who bury themselves in their dishpans. But it isn’t caused by detergent and it isn’t cured by cortisone.”….

A mother of four who left college at nineteen to get married told me:
I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do–hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about–any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There’s no problem you can even put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and putter-on of pants and a bed maker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?…

Home economists suggested more realistic preparation for housewives, such as high-school workshops in home appliances. College educators suggested more discussion groups on home management and the family, to prepare women for the adjustment to domestic life. A spate of articles appeared in the mass magazines offering “Fifty-eight Ways to Make Your Marriage More Exciting.” No month went by without a new book by a psychiatrist or sexologist offering technical advice on finding greater fulfillment through sex.

A male humorist joked in Harper’s Bazaar (July, 1960) that the problem could be solved by taking away woman’s right to vote. (“In the pre-19th Amendment era, the American woman was placid, sheltered and sure of her role in American society. She left all the political decisions to her husband and he, in turn, left all the family decisions to her. Today a woman has to make both the family and the political decisions, and it’s too much for her.”)

A number of educators suggested seriously that women no longer be admitted to the four-year colleges and universities: in the growing college crisis, the education which girls could not use as housewives was more urgently needed than ever by boys to do the work of the atomic age….

The problem was dismissed by telling the housewife she doesn’t realize how lucky she is–her own boss, no time clock, no junior executive gunning for her job. What if she isn’t happy–does she think men are happy in this world? Does she really, secretly, still want to be a man? Doesn’t she know yet how lucky she is to be a woman?

The problem was also, and finally, dismissed by shrugging that there are NO solutions: this is what being a woman means, and what is wrong with American women that they can’t accept their role gracefully? As Newsweek put it (March 7, 1960):
She is dissatisfied with a lot that women of other lands can only dream of. Her discontent is deep, pervasive, and impervious to the superficial remedies which are offered at every hand…. An army of professional explorers have already charted the major sources of trouble…. From the beginning of time, the female cycle has defined and confined woman’s role. As Freud was credited with saying: “Anatomy is destiny.” Though no group of women has ever pushed these natural restrictions as far as the American wife, it seems that she still cannot accept them with good grace…. A young mother with a beautiful family, charm, talent and brains is apt to dismiss her role apologetically. “What do I do?” you hear her say. Why nothing. I’m just a housewife.” A good education, it seems, has given this paragon among women an understanding of the value of everything except her own worth. . .

And so she must accept the fact that “American women’s unhappiness is merely the most recently won of women’s rights,” and adjust and say with the happy housewife found by Newsweek: “We ought to salute the wonderful freedom we all have and be proud of our lives today. I have had college and I’ve worked, but being a housewife is the most rewarding and satisfying role…. My mother was never included in my father’s business affairs. . . she couldn’t get out of the house and away from us children. But I am an equal to my husband; I can go along with him on business trips and to social business affairs.”

The alternative offered was a choice that few women would contemplate. In the sympathetic words of the New York Times: “All admit to being deeply frustrated at times by the lack of privacy, the physical burden, the routine of family life, the confinement of it. However, none would give up her home and family if she had the choice to make again.” Redbook commented: “Few women would want to thumb their noses at husbands, children and community and go off on their own. Those who do may be talented individuals, but they rarely are successful women.”

The year American women’s discontent boiled over, it was also reported (Look) that the more than 21,000,000 American women who are single, widowed, or divorced do not cease even after fifty their frenzied, desperate search for a man. And the search begins early–for seventy per cent of all American women now marry before they are twenty-four. A pretty twenty-five-year-old secretary took thirty-five different jobs in six months in the futile hope of finding a husband. Women were moving from one political club to another, taking evening courses in accounting or sailing, learning to play golf or ski, joining a number of churches in succession, going to bars alone, in their ceaseless search for a man.

Of the growing thousands of women currently getting private psychiatric help in the United States, the married ones were reported dissatisfied with their marriages, the unmarried ones suffering from anxiety and, finally, depression. Strangely, a number of psychiatrists stated that, in their experience, unmarried women patients were happier than married ones. So the door of all those pretty suburban houses opened a crack to permit a glimpse of uncounted thousands of American housewives who suffered alone from a problem that suddenly everyone was talking about, and beginning to take for granted, as one of those unreal problems in American life that can never be solved-like the hydrogen bomb. By 1962 the plight of the trapped American housewife had become a national parlor game. Whole issues of magazines, newspaper columns, books learned and frivolous, educational conferences and television panels were devoted to the problem.

Even so, most men, and some women, still did not know that this problem was real. But those who had faced it honestly knew that all the superficial remedies, the sympathetic advice, the scolding words and the cheering words were somehow drowning the problem in unreality. A bitter laugh was beginning to be heard from American women. They were admired, envied, pitied, theorized over until they were sick of it, offered drastic solutions or silly choices that no one could take seriously. They got all kinds of advice from the growing armies of marriage and child-guidance counselors, psychotherapists, and armchair psychologists, on how to adjust to their role as housewives. No other road to fulfillment was offered to American women in the middle of the twentieth century. Most adjusted to their role and suffered or ignored the problem that has no name. It can be less painful for a woman, not to hear the strange, dissatisfied voice stirring within her.

It is NO longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women. This is not what being a woman means, no matter what the experts say. For human suffering there is a reason; perhaps the reason has not been found because the right questions have not been asked, or pressed far enough. I do not accept the answer that there is no problem because American women have luxuries that women in other times and lands never dreamed of; part of the strange newness of the problem is that it cannot be understood in terms of the age-old material problems of man: poverty, sickness, hunger, cold. The women who suffer this problem have a hunger that food cannot fill. It persists in women whose husbands are struggling intern and law clerks, or prosperous doctors and lawyers; in wives of workers and executives who make $5,000 a year or $50,000. It is not caused by lack of material advantages; it may not even be felt by women preoccupied with desperate problems of hunger, poverty or illness. And women who think it will be solved by more money, a bigger house, a second car, moving to a better suburb, often discover it gets worse.

It is no longer possible today to blame the problem on loss of femininity: to say that education and independence and equality with men have made American women unfeminine. I have heard so many women try to deny this dissatisfied voice within themselves because it does not fit the pretty picture of femininity the experts have given them. I think, in fact, that this is the first clue to the mystery; the problem cannot be understood in the generally accepted terms by which scientists have studied women, doctors have treated them, counselors have advised them, and writers have written about them. Women who suffer this problem, in whom this voice is stirring, have lived their whole lives in the pursuit of feminine fulfillment. They are not career women (although career women may have other problems); they are women whose greatest ambition has been marriage and children. For the oldest of these women, these daughters of the American middle class, no other dream was possible. The ones in their forties and fifties who once had other dreams gave them up and threw themselves joyously into life as housewives. For the youngest, the new wives and mothers, this was the only dream. They are the ones who quit high school and college to marry, or marked time in some job in which they had no real interest until they married. These women are very “feminine” in the usual sense, and yet they still suffer the problem.

4 Apr

Johnson’s Reelection ad 1964

Posted by scoop2go in Audiovisual and video, Chapter 38, Civil Rights, Reform.

A little less than a year after Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ faced an election year. Here he tries to portray himself as the person who fulfilled the martyred Kennedy’s vision, and make a claim for election on his own as a steward of a nation still in mourning and in crisis.

 

This is only a part of the original ad, but you get the idea.

4 Apr

NOW’s Statement of Purpose

Posted by scoop2go in Chapter 38, Chapter 39, Chapter 41, Civil Rights, Primary Source Document, Women.

The National Organization for Women was founded in 1966, seeking to advocate for the full equality of women in society. The statement below was written by Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique.

Here is a link to the story of the founding of NOW: http://www.now.org/history/the_founding.html

Although 28 women originally talked of creating NOW in June of 1966, by October 300 people, both men and women, had joined as charter members of the organization. Robert Gray was one of the first men to join NOW. Here is a link to a document he wrote explaining why he believed that passage of the equal rights amendment would improve rights for men as well as women: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/7028

We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.

The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.

We believe the time has come to move beyond the abstract argument, discussion and symposia over the status and special nature of women which has raged in America in recent years; the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings.

NOW is dedicated to the proposition that women, first and foremost, are human beings, who, like all other people in our society, must have the chance to develop their fullest human potential. We believe that women can achieve such equality only by accepting to the full the challenges and responsibilities they share with all other people in our society, as part of the decision-making mainstream of American political, economic and social life.

We organize to initiate or support action, nationally, or in any part of this nation, by individuals or organizations, to break through the silken curtain of prejudice and discrimination against women in government, industry, the professions, the churches, the political parties, the judiciary, the labor unions, in education, science, medicine, law, religion and every other field of importance in American society.

Enormous changes taking place in our society make it both possible and urgently necessary to advance the unfinished revolution of women toward true equality, now. With a life span lengthened to nearly 75 years it is no longer either necessary or possible for women to devote the greater part of their lives to child- rearing; yet childbearing and rearing which continues to be a most important part of most women’s lives — still is used to justify barring women from equal professional and economic participation and advance.

Today’s technology has reduced most of the productive chores which women once performed in the home and in mass-production industries based upon routine unskilled labor. This same technology has virtually eliminated the quality of muscular strength as a criterion for filling most jobs, while intensifying American industry’s need for creative intelligence. In view of this new industrial revolution created by automation in the mid-twentieth century, women can and must participate in old and new fields of society in full equality — or become permanent outsiders.

Despite all the talk about the status of American women in recent years, the actual position of women in the United States has declined, and is declining, to an alarming degree throughout the 1950′s and 60′s. Although 46.4% of all American women between the ages of 18 and 65 now work outside the home, the overwhelming majority — 75% — are in routine clerical, sales, or factory jobs, or they are household workers, cleaning women, hospital attendants. About two-thirds of Negro women workers are in the lowest paid service occupations. Working women are becoming increasingly — not less — concentrated on the bottom of the job ladder. As a consequence full-time women workers today earn on the average only 60% of what men earn, and that wage gap has been increasing over the past twenty-five years in every major industry group. In 1964, of all women with a yearly income, 89% earned under $5,000 a year; half of all full-time year round women workers earned less than $3,690; only 1.4% of full-time year round women workers had an annual income of $10,000 or more.

Further, with higher education increasingly essential in today’s society, too few women are entering and finishing college or going on to graduate or professional school. Today, women earn only one in three of the B.A.’s and M.A.’s granted, and one in ten of the Ph.D.’s.

In all the professions considered of importance to society, and in the executive ranks of industry and government, women are losing ground. Where they are present it is only a token handful. Women comprise less than 1% of federal judges; less than 4% of all lawyers; 7% of doctors. Yet women represent 51% of the U.S. population. And, increasingly, men are replacing women in the top positions in secondary and elementary schools, in social work, and in libraries — once thought to be women’s fields.

Official pronouncements of the advance in the status of women hide not only the reality of this dangerous decline, but the fact that nothing is being done to stop it. The excellent reports of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and of the State Commissions have not been fully implemented. Such Commissions have power only to advise. They have no power to enforce their recommendation; nor have they the freedom to organize American women and men to press for action on them. The reports of these commissions have, however, created a basis upon which it is now possible to build. Discrimination in employment on the basis of sex is now prohibited by federal law, in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But although nearly one-third of the cases brought before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the first year dealt with sex discrimination and the proportion is increasing dramatically, the Commission has not made clear its intention to enforce the law with the same seriousness on behalf of women as of other victims of discrimination. Many of these cases were Negro women, who are the victims of double discrimination of race and sex. Until now, too few women’s organizations and official spokesmen have been willing to speak out against these dangers facing women. Too many women have been restrained by the fear of being called `feminist.” There is no civil rights movement to speak for women, as there has been for Negroes and other victims of discrimination. The National Organization for Women must therefore begin to speak.

WE BELIEVE that the power of American law, and the protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to the civil rights of all individuals, must be effectively applied and enforced to isolate and remove patterns of sex discrimination, to ensure equality of opportunity in employment and education, and equality of civil and political rights and responsibilities on behalf of women, as well as for Negroes and other deprived groups.

We realize that women’s problems are linked to many broader questions of social justice; their solution will require concerted action by many groups. Therefore, convinced that human rights for all are indivisible, we expect to give active support to the common cause of equal rights for all those who suffer discrimination and deprivation, and we call upon other organizations committed to such goals to support our efforts toward equality for women.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT the token appointment of a few women to high-level positions in government and industry as a substitute for serious continuing effort to recruit and advance women according to their individual abilities. To this end, we urge American government and industry to mobilize the same resources of ingenuity and command with which they have solved problems of far greater difficulty than those now impeding the progress of women.

WE BELIEVE that this nation has a capacity at least as great as other nations, to innovate new social institutions which will enable women to enjoy the true equality of opportunity and responsibility in society, without conflict with their responsibilities as mothers and homemakers. In such innovations, America does not lead the Western world, but lags by decades behind many European countries. We do not accept the traditional assumption that a woman has to choose between marriage and motherhood, on the one hand, and serious participation in industry or the professions on the other. We question the present expectation that all normal women will retire from job or profession for 10 or 15 years, to devote their full time to raising children, only to reenter the job market at a relatively minor level. This, in itself, is a deterrent to the aspirations of women, to their acceptance into management or professional training courses, and to the very possibility of equality of opportunity or real choice, for all but a few women. Above all, we reject the assumption that these problems are the unique responsibility of each individual woman, rather than a basic social dilemma which society must solve. True equality of opportunity and freedom of choice for women requires such practical, and possible innovations as a nationwide network of child-care centers, which will make it unnecessary for women to retire completely from society until their children are grown, and national programs to provide retraining for women who have chosen to care for their children full-time.

WE BELIEVE that it is as essential for every girl to be educated to her full potential of human ability as it is for every boy — with the knowledge that such education is the key to effective participation in today’s economy and that, for a girl as for a boy, education can only be serious where there is expectation that it will be used in society. We believe that American educators are capable of devising means of imparting such expectations to girl students. Moreover, we consider the decline in the proportion of women receiving higher and professional education to be evidence of discrimination. This discrimination may take the form of quotas against the admission of women to colleges, and professional schools; lack of encouragement by parents, counselors and educators; denial of loans or fellowships; or the traditional or arbitrary procedures in graduate and professional training geared in terms of men, which inadvertently discriminate against women. We believe that the same serious attention must be given to high school dropouts who are girls as to boys.

WE REJECT the current assumptions that a man must carry the sole burden of supporting himself, his wife, and family, and that a woman is automatically entitled to lifelong support by a man upon her marriage, or that marriage, home and family are primarily woman’s world and responsibility — hers, to dominate — his to support. We believe that a true partnership between the sexes demands a different concept of marriage, an equitable sharing of the responsibilities of home and children and of the economic burdens of their support. We believe that proper recognition should be given to the economic and social value of homemaking and child-care. To these ends, we will seek to open a reexamination of laws and mores governing marriage and divorce, for we believe that the current state of `half-equity” between the sexes discriminates against both men and women, and is the cause of much unnecessary hostility between the sexes.

WE BELIEVE that women must now exercise their political rights and responsibilities as American citizens. They must refuse to be segregated on the basis of sex into separate-and-not-equal ladies’ auxiliaries in the political parties, and they must demand representation according to their numbers in the regularly constituted party committees — at local, state, and national levels — and in the informal power structure, participating fully in the selection of candidates and political decision-making, and running for office themselves.

IN THE INTERESTS OF THE HUMAN DIGNITY OF WOMEN, we will protest, and endeavor to change, the false image of women now prevalent in the mass media, and in the texts, ceremonies, laws, and practices of our major social institutions. Such images perpetuate contempt for women by society and by women for themselves. We are similarly opposed to all policies and practices — in church, state, college, factory, or office — which, in the guise of protectiveness, not only deny opportunities but also foster in women self-denigration, dependence, and evasion of responsibility, undermine their confidence in their own abilities and foster contempt for women.

NOW WILL HOLD ITSELF INDEPENDENT OF ANY POLITICAL PARTY in order to mobilize the political power of all women and men intent on our goals. We will strive to ensure that no party, candidate, president, senator, governor, congressman, or any public official who betrays or ignores the principle of full equality between the sexes is elected or appointed to office. If it is necessary to mobilize the votes of men and women who believe in our cause, in order to win for women the final right to be fully free and equal human beings, we so commit ourselves.

WE BELIEVE THAT women will do most to create a new image of women by acting now, and by speaking out in behalf of their own equality, freedom, and human dignity – - not in pleas for special privilege, nor in enmity toward men, who are also victims of the current, half-equality between the sexes – - but in an active, self-respecting partnership with men. By so doing, women will develop confidence in their own ability to determine actively, in partnership with men, the conditions of their life, their choices, their future and their society.

1 Apr

Video- I Have a Dream speech

Posted by scoop2go in African Americans, Audiovisual and video, Chapter 38, Civil Rights, Primary Source Document.

For you to listen to or watch if you prefer as you read the text of the speech:

1 Apr

I Have a Dream speech

Posted by scoop2go in Chapter 38, Civil Rights, Primary Source Document.

I Have a Dream – Address at March on Washington
Martin Luther King, Jr.- August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. [Applause]

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail
together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

18 Mar

50th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright decision- told by those affected

Posted by scoop2go in Chapter 38, Civil Rights, Law, Supreme Court.

Read this: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/18/justice/gideon-own-words/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

11 Mar

Federal Indian policy from the end of World War II through Johnson

Posted by scoop2go in Chapter 37, Civil Rights, Native Americans.

This is part three of a paper I wrote in graduate school which summarizes Indian policy from Eisenhower’s administration to Johnson’s. Part 1 can be found here: http://historyscoop.com/2013/01/15/us-indian-policy-from-the-dawes-act-to-the-new-deal/ and part 2 can be found here: http://historyscoop.com/2013/02/19/us-indian-policy-during-the-new-deal .

Termination and Relocation

After the resignation of Commissioner Collier in January of 1945, federal Indian policy returned to its previous course of seeking to completely integrate American Indians into standard American society.  Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes ignored the requests of Indians to have a commissioner of Indian heritage, and appointed William Brophy to the post.  Brophy had previously been an attorney for the Pueblo tribe.  While Brophy shared a genuine interest in helping the Indians, he approached Indians affairs from a different perspective than Collier.  He believed that Indian participation in the military during World War II indicated a readiness for assimilation for many Indians.  Brophy was hampered by poor health during his tenure as commissioner; during 1946 and 1947 he requested leave at various times to recover from tuberculosis.  During his lengthy leaves assistant commissioner William Zimmerman served as acting commissioner.[1]

Congress had approved Brophy under the assurances that he would implement the will of Congress and not the ideas of John Collier.  One of the first congressional actions that Brophy implemented was a reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Affairs that was signed into law by President Truman on August 8, 1946.  The stated purpose of this act was to “simplify administration of Indian affairs.”  Brophy was authorized to establish five district headquarters at Oklahoma City, Portland, Phoenix, Billings, and Minneapolis.  Forty offices were eliminated. The area directors in charge of each district headquarters would then wield some of the powers previously reserved for the commissioner.  This innovation was immediately criticized by Indian leaders as merely another stratum of bureaucracy to impede Indian affairs.[2]  Congressional attention to Indian affairs was lessened when the House and Senate committees on Indian affairs were merged with those on public lands in 1946.[3]

More heartening for the Indians was the establishment of an Indian Claims Commission five days later on August 13, 1946.  At last, the Indians were to be offered a chance to settle longstanding claims against the government.  A three-judge panel was created through this legislation to resolve existing claims within five years.  Within ten years, it was predicted that these pending claims would be adjudicated, and the Claims Commission would expire.  This estimate would prove to be grossly inadequate; the lifespan of the Indian Claims Commission had to be extended by Congress several times to deal with the flood of cases which were placed before it.  More than 800 cases were filed during the first five years of the Commission’s existence.[4]

Many of the congressional supporters of the Indian Claims Commission did not have altruism in mind when they passed their bill.  Indians had long requested a speedy means of settling grievances against the federal government.  Those who acceded to the Indians’ request did so with an eye of reaching a final settlement with the Indians, of discharging federal responsibilities completely.  Although the national debt was alarming, supporters believed that money would be saved in the long run by settling with the Indians now.  Tribes whose claims were settled received money– often millions of dollars.  These funds were then used to justify termination of these tribes.  Claims awards would give Indians money of their own.  From this money tribes were to begin to deal with their own needs without further government assistance.  Claim amounts were awarded based on the value of the land at the time it was alienated from Indian control—not based on current value. Many tribes, especially because they were paid based on past value, demanded the land back rather than monetary compensation.  This option was of course denied.  Further, amounts spent by the government on other programs for the tribe were subtracted from any award amount.   In the end, although more than $800 million was awarded, the money made little impact on tribal economies, since many elected to disburse the money in per capita payments rather than to use it to fund programs to benefit the entire tribe.[5]

Another lasting impact that Brophy’s tenure had on Indian affairs derived from the testimony of Acting Commissioner Zimmerman before the Senate Committee on the Post Office and Civil Service in February 1947 during another of Brophy’s health leaves.  The purpose of the testimony was to reduce the expenditures and personnel in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Zimmerman was required to produce a list of Indian tribes according to their readiness to be released from federal supervision, with a goal of cutting personnel costs.  This list divided tribes into three groups: those who could be terminated immediately, those who would be ready in ten years, and those who would require assistance indefinitely.  Although Zimmerman provided the list most reluctantly and with numerous caveats, it would soon be seized upon to justify the implementation of the termination policy.[6]

During World War II thousands of Indians had left the reservations to serve in the armed forces or to work in war industries.  Their success in living among white society provided the impetus to the movement to “emancipate” Indians from their status as wards of the federal government.[7]  However, the fact of the matter was that the “emancipation” of Indians really meant the emancipation of the government from responsibilities related to trust lands, treaty obligations, and social services.

The drive for termination was not driven solely by white policymakers.  Some Indians requested their own “liberation.”  They believed that federal wardship imposed undue interference in their lives.  Indians under wardship had to get permission to sell or lease property.  They were usually restricted to reservations and reservation schools and hospitals in order to attain services, for some states, regardless of the Johnson-O’Malley Act, refused to provide government services to Indians, citing their exemption from state laws and taxes.  Reservations were often morasses of poverty, remote from employment opportunities.  Until 1948, Arizona and New Mexico denied Indians the right to vote based on their exemption from taxation—although the failure to pay taxes was not used as a means to deny the franchise to any other group.  Indians who were acculturated or who wished to live in urban areas often resented the restrictions that were analogous to tribal membership and reservation life.[8]

The years after World War II were a time when reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy became a priority, largely as a response to the rapid growth of programs during the New Deal.  Public Law 162 created the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government, also known as the Hoover Commission.  Former President Herbert Hoover was the chair of this group.  The goal was to downsize the federal executive.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs received early scrutiny.  Yet Indian needs still remained, and the government looked to the states to fill the void which would be left upon government withdrawal.  Where previously the federal government had protected Indian tribes from state interference, those who advocated termination and emancipation fought the states to take responsibility for the needs of the Indians who lived within their borders.

Commissioner Brophy resigned in June 1948.  John Nichols, who served for only 11 months, succeeded him.  During that time he expended most of his time inspecting various reservations.  Nichols was also involved in the Hoover Commission.  Nichols declared that assimilation and Federal withdrawal from guardianship over Indians must be the goals of the Indian bureau, but that the true costs of assimilation must be addressed.  Current federal appropriations of 6.5 million dollars averaged only twenty-five dollars per Indian.  Nichols estimated that it would cost at least a million dollars just to provide enough classrooms for all Indian children.  Nichols estimated the total cost at 150 million dollars for the United States to honorably discharge its debt to the Indians.[9]

The last vestiges of the Indian New Deal came to a decisive end with the appointment of Dillon S. Myer as Indian commissioner in May 1950.  Myer was best known as the administrator of the detention programs enforced upon Japanese-Americans during World War II.  As Indian commissioner, he viewed the Indians as being the same as inmates in relocation camps, and sought to “liberate” Indians from their reservations.  He did not consider the view that the reservations were the Indians’ homes, hard fought for and protected by treaty.  As Philleo Nash stated, “So Myer approached Indian affairs as though relocation centers and reservations were the same.  He viewed Indians on reservations as temporary detainees.  He sought to end this detention as quickly as possible.  His policy was a form of expulsion.”[10]  Myer sought to terminate federal wardship regardless of Indian consent or cooperation.  His autocratic style provoked outrage from many Indians and reformers.  Former Interior Secretary Harold Ickes judged Myer “a Hitler and a Mussolini rolled into one” in a 1951 article in the New Republic.  John Collier sent an open letter to President-elect Truman urging Myer’s ouster, and Felix Cohen attacked Myer’s policy in the Yale Law Review.[11]

Myer sought to place many of the responsibilities for law enforcement and human services with the states.  Although many states initially welcomed the opportunity to have jurisdiction over Indian country, some cooled to this idea when they realized how expensive extending services would be.  Since Indian land was immune to state taxation, and the federal government did not offer adequate funding to alleviate the increased fiscal burdens associated with this expansion, many states did not avail themselves of this opportunity.[12]  The Johnson-O’Malley Act which allowed for contracting between states and the federal government for services to Indians was primarily being used to finance the placement of Indian children in public schools.  Contracts for this purpose had been signed with California in 1934, Washington in 1935, Minnesota in 1937, and Arizona in 1938.[13]

Myer responded to Indian criticism of the Bureau of Indian Affairs by offering to terminate federal oversight of tribes.  In his annual report for 1952, he outlined a three-part proposal for those tribes critical of Bureau policies.  The first section is a direct challenge to the tribes:

1.  If any Indian tribe is convinced that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is a handicap to its advancement, I am willing to recommend to the Secretary of the Interior that we cooperate in securing legislative authority to terminate the Department’s trusteeship responsibility with respect to that tribe.[14]

Another idea generated during Myer’s tenure that was designed to reduce the number of Indians for which the Bureau was responsible was relocation.  Myer developed “Operation Relocation” in 1952 and claimed that through it the Bureau was providing a “basic program of training and placement assistance for those Indians who want to leave the reservation areas and establish new homes in ordinary American communities.”[15]  This program would be responsible for transplanting Indians from their reservations to selected urban areas where they were to blend into the urban environment.  The goal was not to send Indians into urban areas to learn skills that could be brought back to the reservations.  The goal was to depopulate reservations and thus make it possible to liquidate them.

The genesis of the relocation policy probably dates to two events: Indian success in working in war-related industries during World War II, and the crisis that resulted on the Navajo reservation after a severe blizzard during the winter of 1947-1948.  The Navajo reservation carried a population far above what the land could support, and even after federal emergency aid was distributed, it was obvious that a one-time injection of federal assistance would not permanently resolve the crisis.[16]  Removing at least some of the Navajos could help the Navajo economy by reducing the strain, and by placing relocatees in areas where they could find employment, possibly sending some of their wages back to those who remained behind.  Further, Indians off the reservation further reduced expenditures since they would not demand reservation-based social services.  Some Indians had become interested in relocation after the experiences of World War II.  The steady incomes the Indians earned as either soldiers or as industrial workers greatly raised expectations.  Many of these Indians were obviously reluctant to go back to the reservations, with their lack of amenities and employment opportunities.[17]  A higher standard of living was waiting to be had in the cities.  No one, not even Myer’s critics, could deny that employment opportunities were nonexistent on the reservations. There was no incentive for American business to reverse that trend, since the reservations were removed from population centers and transportation hubs, not to mention the low levels of education and occupational training of the general Indian population. As envisioned by Myer and many supporters of termination in Congress, relocation would lead to the destruction of Indian community—a complete disavowal of Collier’s ideas and the Indian New Deal.

The Indian Bureau was accused of providing no assistance to the relocatees once they arrived in the cities.  Myer interpreted most Bureau responsibilities for Indians as stopping at the boundaries of the reservations, and he claimed that no Indians were forced to leave for the city.  Relocation was a matter of choice, he emphasized.  Bureau official simply tried to encourage that choice through the use of duplicitous advertising campaigns that depicted relocated families enjoying the benefits of good jobs, such as televisions, refrigerators, and nice clothing.  The process of applying for relocation was also deceptively simple.  Relocatees would choose a city from the list of those in the relocation program.  Usually the Indians would travel by bus, and upon arrival would be met by a relocation worker.  Money was given to the relocatee and he was accompanied by the federal worker to buy necessities.  They were shown how and where to shop and where the church of their preference was.  Housing was secured, and the government would pay the first month’s rent and other bills.  After the first month, however, Indians were expected to take care of their own needs, although they were checked on periodically by the relocation worker.  It was this “sink or swim” mentality that produced the most criticism, for Indians who wished to return to the reservation were not provided with the funds to do so.  Those Indians who were not successful were thrown back into the same inexorable cycle of poverty they had sought to escape.   However, now they were without the support of their extended family, their culture, or Bureau of Indian Affairs programs that they would have had if they had remained on the reservation.[18]

As Indian populations continued to grow, the idea of relocation was expanded to include all Indian tribes.  Beginning in 1951-1952, Indians were relocated to large urban areas such as Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago.  Funding for the program in 1952 was $500,000.[19]   Expenditures were increased, and the applications for relocations surged as Indians were swayed by the pamphlets showered upon them by Bureau employees and as the situation on reservations worsened.  This led Myer to request $8.5 million to fund the expansion of the program in the next year, including some vocational training.  Congress did increase funding, although not to the extent that Myer envisioned.

The elections of 1952 led to conservative Republican control of both the federal executive and the legislative branches. Fiscally, austerity was the watchword, and the notion of limited federal government led logically to the support of termination of services to American Indians.  America was on the precipice of McCarthyism, the Cold War, and nationalism, and tolerance for variant cultures or viewpoints was incompatible with nationalist sentiment.  Further, powerful conservative westerners—Sen. Arthur Watkins of Utah and Rep. E. Y. Berry of South Dakota– controlled the committees which oversaw matters relating to the department of the interior and to Indian affairs.  These representatives and senators were usually hostile to the ideas of tribal sovereignty.[20]

Myer did not get the chance to take advantage of these developments.  He had become too hated by the Indians, and during the presidential campaigns, Indians had bartered their support of Dwight Eisenhower in return for the removal of Myer.  The 47,000 Navajos in New Mexico had recently gained the right to vote, and their tribal population was one of the largest in the United States. Eisen-hower requested Myer’s resignation in 1953.[21]  Myer’s successor was a white businessman from the center of the Navajo Reservation: Gallup, N.M., banker Glenn Emmons, who served from 1953 to 1961.  Emmons continued and expanded the policy of termination.  Emmons realized one essential fact that Myer had overlooked: it was vital to give the appearance of Indian cooperation if termination was to be fully implemented.  Emmons tried to fully utilize public relations techniques and was a master of the selective interpretation of data.

In the summer of 1953, four days after Emmons assumed the office of commissioner, Wyoming Rep. William Henry Harrison sponsored House Concurrent Resolution 83-108, which listed certain tribes presumed to be ready for termination.  The resolution stated, “It is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States.”  It specified ending the federal trusteeship over Indians and dismantling the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  The measure passed both houses with little interest or debate.[22]  The basic idea for termination as an official policy was specified and approved by Congress.  Two weeks later Public Law 83-280 allowed states to unilaterally impose their jurisdiction over Indian reservations.[23]

The anticipated results of termination were to completely break up reservations, to cease the recognition of tribal government, tribal membership, and treaty rights, and to ultimately shut down the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  The prevailing mood in Congress and throughout the government was that the services and protections provided to the tribes was a form of welfare to which Indians were not entitled in perpetuity.  Conservatives’ strong faith in economic Darwinism contradicted the idea that Indians had to be protected and that their land and resources should be withheld from exploitation in the free market.  The beginning of the Eisenhower administration brought a renewed interest in sound business practices, and a recession necessitated severe budgetary constraints.  Twelve million dollars was trimmed from the budget of the Bureau immediately after Interior Secretary Douglas McKay took office.  These cuts were justified since services to the Indians would be ending soon anyway.[24]

The first groups of Indians to be specifically targeted in Congress for termination were those in California, Texas, Florida and New York, as well as the Menominee, Klamath, Flathead, and Potawatomi tribes.  The Bureau correspondingly drew up termination bills for several of these tribes, including the Menominees, Klamaths, Alabama-Coushattas, Utes, Ottawas, Wyandottes, Ottawas, and Paiutes.  These bills required the compilation of a final tribal roll, removing trust restrictions from individual tribal members, and requiring tribes to manage tribal property themselves or to hire a trustee to administer such property.  Within two to four years after Congress approved termination legislation, the process was to be complete.  During the first half of 1954, hearings were held on the termination of several tribes.[25]

The next area to feel the pinch was in programs that offered economic help to Indians, especially the Revolving Loan Fund.  Interest rates were raised from the current 2 percent to 4-5 percent in an effort to recover operating costs.  Fewer loans were made as credit was tightened in response to delinquency rates that government officials deemed high.  Since most Indians had few tangible assets not held in trust by the government, there was little hope of foreclosure to satisfy outstanding debts if an Indian defaulted.  Eligibility was therefore constricted, and loans dropped 60 percent in 1953 alone.  Although Emmons and other Bureau officials encouraged banks in the private sector to step into the void, the lack of collateral described above made obtaining credit in the free market impossible —which was why the Revolving Fund had been initiated during the New Deal in the first place.

In late 1953, the Interior Department began preparing for the demise of the Bureau of Indian Affairs by commissioning a study to suggest ways to implement termination plans and to cut the Bureau’s budget immediately.  The committee that drew up the resulting analysis, known as the Bimson report, was made up of businessmen and officials from the Bureau.  Suggestions included transferring the responsibility for services to other federal agencies, states, or tribes, expanding the relocation program as a cost-cutting measure, delaying the construction of boarding schools, and reducing the number of district offices and personnel.  Realizing that such actions would be criticized, the Bimson report also recommended a propaganda campaign to smooth the way for these cutbacks.[26]

A simple means of reducing Bureau expenditures was to divest it of responsibilities, turning over programs to other departments.  Two areas which were transferred early in the Eisenhower administration were education and health.  The troubled Indian Health Service was transferred to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and made part of the Public Health Service in August of 1954.  While boarding schools had fallen out of favor during the New Deal, they were given new life under termination.  One reason was responsible for both decisions: boarding schools stripped youngsters from their communities and promoted assimilation.  During termination, then, boarding schools received the emphasis for full-blood Indians.  However, by 1956, nearly 59 percent of Indians were enrolled in public schools operated by the states and local communities.[27]  Indians of mixed heritage did the best there, as they were usually more familiar with white ways.

The first group to come under termination legislation was the Menominee of Wisconsin.  Their high rate of literacy in English and timber operations made them ideal test subjects for termination, and doubtless backers of termination presumed that they would have enough assets and cultural literacy to make the transition with a minimum of difficulty.  Their termination legislation was passed in June 1954, with a termination date of December 31, 1958.  Wisconsin state officials even provided the Menominee with a committee to assist in preparing their termination plans to the secretary of the interior.  However, the tribe was unable to meet their deadlines, and did not even submit their plan until October 31, 1959.  They set up a corporation, Menominee Enterprises, Inc., to administer the tribal property, such as the sawmill and logging lands.  Their reservation lands were established as a separate county, which immediately garnered the distinction of being the poorest and least populated county in the state, with only 3,270 inhabitants.

Finally, on April 30, 1961, the Menominees were officially terminated.  The Menominees became subject to all state laws, including taxation.  Immediately it became obvious that termination for this group was a dismal failure.  The federal government had buttressed the Menominee economy in unseen ways and the economy began to collapse under the weight of taxation.  Further, although the Menominees dressed and spoke as their white neighbors, they were still culturally distinct.  Many Menominee began immediately agitating for a return to recognized tribal status.  The Klamath of Oregon, also rich in timberlands, disintegrated under termination when a majority elected to divide the tribal property and take per capita payments.  The tribe was destroyed, and the land was over-harvested or used by the federal government for national forest and a wildlife refuge.  These well-publicized failures started a groundswell of Indian protests and public opposition to termination.  Although termination was to remain on the books as official Indian policy for many more years, active enforcement of the policy went on hiatus.[28]

In addition to terminating tribes, individual Indians were terminated from receiving government services.  This was accomplished through the relocation program, which had gained momentum since Myer’s tenure.  By 1954, over 2,600 had been relocated and employed, although the quality of the jobs (and their paychecks) was often poor.  The Bureau’s report for 1954 shows that Indians had been placed in urban areas in twenty states, and relocation offices had been opened in Oakland, San Francisco, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Dallas, to name a few locations.

By this time the Bureau had begun systematically providing vocational training to increase relocatees’ success in finding permanent employment.  Application rates mushroomed, and congressional financial support increased accordingly. Over $1 million was allocated in 1955, and this amount ballooned to nearly $3.5 million the following year.  In August 1956 Public Law 959 authorized a system of adult vocational education to both augment the relocation efforts and to increase opportunities near the reservations.  Although the first two sections of the law were aimed at preparing Indians for urban opportunities, the third section encouraged businesses to locate near reservations.  This allowed Indians to increase their standard of living without leaving a familiar environment, and did not result in as much culture shock as those Indians who relocated faced.  Further, the incentives provided by the government to encourage industry location near reservations led to only short term development.  The factories were usually developed with tribal funds, provided on average only a few hundred jobs, and remained only a few years, especially in the face of a recession that developed during 1957 and 1958.[29]  However, the primary goal of this program was to help Indians gain experience that they could use to transition to a better lifestyle off the reservation.

Until 1957, the main focus continued to be relocation.  Due to the increased demand by Indians for acceptance into the program, funding was stretched thin, even with the increases approved by Congress.  This resulted in a lower level of support for Indians in the program.  For instance, housing was usually located in low-income areas; ironically, even this low-income housing in slums was rationalized as being not noticeably inferior to that which the Indians were accustomed to on the reservations.  As noted previously, Indians were not provided with funds to return to reservations if they found urban life too harsh or lost employment.  Some Indians made it home anyway, but most could not afford the trip home, or were too proud to admit failure.  This also reduced the chance that those still on the reservations would discover the truth about the obstacles faced by relocatees.

Much of traditional Indian life was based on community: the support of family, clan, band, or tribe.  Urban Indians for the first time experienced true loneliness and isolation.  Discrimination was a fact of life.  Many relocated Indians were unfamiliar with conveniences such as telephones, bank accounts, or elevators.  They were unused to following schedules.  Their eligibility for government services had ended soon after they left the reservations.  They were thrown together with other impoverished minorities who nonetheless knew more about navigating the urban environment.[30]  Too often they descended into despair, alcoholism, and drug abuse.  These problems did not go unnoticed, and relocation programs received much criticism.  By 1957, the very word “relocation” had earned a negative connotation which could not be dismissed.  Since PL 959 emphasized education as a way of achieving the goals of relocation, Bureau officials soon dropped the name “relocation” in favor of the more benign “employment assistance.”[31]

The election of John F. Kennedy brought about the opportunity for a reassessment of current federal Indian policy.  The policies advocated under Commissioners Myer and Emmons had led to a complete distrust of the federal government by Indians.  A sense of hopelessness competed with a dawning awareness of the power of activism.  During the election of 1960 Kennedy was questioned about his stance on Indian policy– specifically, termination—by the Association of American Indian Affairs.  Kennedy’s Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon, was asked the same questions.  Kennedy naturally used the opportunity to criticize the previous administration’s policy, specifically termination.  Nixon, as vice president, instead tried to defend termination as a positive program.  “Since 1953 we have had more progress toward a better way of life for the American Indian than in any comparable period in our national history.”  He hinted that more progress would have been made had Democrats in Congress not hindered the intentions of the Eisenhower administration.[32]

Kennedy’s interior secretary was Stewart Udall, former Arizona congressman.  Udall had actually served on the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs, and so had taken some interest in policy.  Although Udall attempted to place an Indian in the commissioner’s office, this proved impossible.  During the search, Udall created a Task Force on Indian Affairs to review critique current policy.  The Task Force made a noticeable effort to consult with Indian leaders, traveling to many reservations to gather data and suggestions. The report delivered to Udall in July 1961 recommended “workability” and more Indian input but did not recommend any radical policy shifts or restructuring of bureaucracy.  Instead, it recommended “maximum development” of resources on the reservations.  It emphasized the further development of services and the protection of Indians’ rights even if they lived off reservations.  It did not specifically renounce termination, but instead criticized the emphasis on the word, which by this time caused immediate hostility on the part of many Indians.  Better to assist the Indians in social, political, and economic assimilation, then to gradually terminate.[33]

Finally, after some delay, Philleo Nash, an anthropologist by training, was chosen as commissioner.  Nash had served on the Task Force. He opposed termination, and when it became clear that he could not do away with the policy due to congressional pressure, he initiated a slowdown of its implementation.  Regardless of his personal stance, termination did continue during the Kennedy administration, with the Menominee and Klamath terminations finalized in 1961 and the Catawba termination finalized in 1962.  Both Udall and Nash avoided the use of the word “termination” in his many consultations with Indian leaders, preferring instead the term “development.” Nonetheless, Nash was stymied throughout his term of office by congressional adherence to termination, and Kennedy’s indifference to Indian matters left Nash with no leverage.  The most Nash and Udall could do was ensure that Indians were included in Kennedy’s rudimentary programs on poverty, which did not have much time to develop before Kennedy’s assassination. [34]

However, Indians themselves were beginning to grow tired of being involved in policies affecting them only at the invitation of bureaucrats.  Two significant events occurred during Kennedy’s admin-istration which indicated that many Indians were ready to take responsibility for self-determination.  One was the Declaration of Indian Purpose that was issued after a pan-Indian congress held at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1961.  This convocation of nearly 500 Indians from dozens of Native American tribes as well as native observers from throughout North America represented a breakthrough in cooperation among tribes.  Many of the young people who were involved in attending the Chicago conference went on to found the National Indian Youth Council.  This group’s members became activists in presenting Indian problems as civil rights problems, and many of its young leaders adopted the forceful attitudes of other minority groups in the civil rights movement, using the phrase “Red Power” to describe their dedication to political activism.[35]  Many of the leaders of the NIYC would go on to participate in the more militant American Indian Movement, known as AIM, which would gain so much attention during the later 1960s and early 1970s.

28 Feb

A WPA film: “We Work Again”

Posted by scoop2go in African Americans, Audiovisual and video, Chapter 33, Civil Rights, Great Depression, Primary Source Document.

What is fascinating is that this was aimed specifically at African Americans and showed how FDR had not forgotten them.

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