The Greene County Democrat

Tag: Jim Crow laws

  • Newswire : Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to whitewash Black History as though it never existed

    The Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, but the head of the NAACP denounced the move, saying that it should not eliminate slavery, Jim Crow laws, police brutality, and the problems many Blacks face every day, including, for example, instances like the White woman who recently received probation for spitting in a Black’s woman face.

    “Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement.

    “Today’s actions by the Florida state government are an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected. It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery, and Jim Crow laws were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history. We refuse to go back,” Johnson said.

    The new standards come after the state passed new legislation Thursday under Gov. Ron DeSantis that bars instruction in schools that suggests anyone is privileged or oppressed based on their race or skin color.

    The standards require instruction for middle school students to include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” a document listing the standards and posted on the Florida Department of Education website said.

    Some things are being left out including a number of massacres, including the Atlanta race massacre, the Tulsa race massacre in which whites murdered 400 Blacks, and the Rosewood race massacre and bloody summers in Chicago.

    When high school students learn about events such as the 1920 Ocoee massacre the new rules require that instruction include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

    The massacre is considered the deadliest Election Day violence in US history and, according to several histories of the incident, it started when Moses Norman, a prominent Black landowner in the Ocoee, Florida, community, attempted to cast his ballot and was turned away by White poll worker.

    More than 250 White people, among them members of the Ku Klux Klan, torched rows of houses where African Americans lived and set fire to other community buildings.

    The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of Black people and the destruction of a Black town that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida.

    At least six Black and two White people were killed, but eyewitness accounts suggested a higher death toll of 27 to 150.

    The Chicago race riot of 1919 was a violent racial conflict between White Americans and Black Americans that began on the South Side of Chicago on July 27 when Blacks drifted into parts of Lake Michigan reserved for Whites.

    It begin on July 27 and ended on August 3, 1919. During the riot, 38 people died (23 Blacks and 15 Whites). Over the week, injuries attributed to the episodic confrontations stood at 537, two-thirds Black and one-third white; and between 1,000 and 2,000 residents, most of them Black, lost their homes.

  • A Noose was found in the Smithsonian’s African American History Museum

    By: Aric Jenkins, Time Magazine
    NMAAHC building in D. C.
    NMAAHC in Washington, near Washington monument

    A noose was found on the floor of an exhibition in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, leading museum officials to remove visitors from that section of the facility.
    The rope — which was left in an exhibition on segregation — was the second time this week a noose was found on the grounds of a Smithsonian institution, BuzzFeed News first reported.
    Park police investigated the incident and removed the rope, allowing the exhibit gallery to reopen within several hours, Smithsonian officials said, according to the Smithsonian magazine.
    “The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity — a symbol of extreme violence for African Americans. Today’s incident is a painful reminder of the challenges that African Americans continue to face. Our Museum is a place of learning an solace, a place to remember, to engage in important discussions to help change America,” Lonnie Bunch, the director of the museum, said in a statement.

    On Saturday, a noose was found hanging from a tree outside of the Hirshhorn Museum — another Smithsonian institution that showcases contemporary art.
    “I don’t know what to say,” Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas told BuzzFeed after Wednesday’s discovery.”We do consider this one to be different,” she added. “In this case it’s clearly a message to the museum.”
    Nooses were often used in lynchings of African Americans throughout the periods of slavery and Jim Crow laws and can be interpreted as a painful symbol of those eras of discrimination.
    Park Police are continuing their investigation of both incidents, according to reports. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.