Skype in the Classroom - The Civil Rights Movement and me

Last week, the Civil Rights Movement and my experience was the topic I spoke about to one of the Skype in the Classroom participants.  The audience age was 10 years old.  Their location, California and this topic was one of the projects the teacher had requested speakers.  The class was made up of Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and white students.

The agenda for the 30 minute Skype instruction:

1- civil rights movement and women's rights movement: social justice issues

2- modern movement, continuation of pursuing equal rights: Lilly Ledbetter Act

3- students' role as active citizens: stop bullying, no engagement in racial jokes/remarks/songs, big brother/sister support system

4- What your experience has given in you.

The precursor to Civil Rights

History is a chronological account of past events of a period or in the life or development of a people, an institution, or a place.  I believe it is essential to provide students with history to give them a better understanding of today. I opened with the Emancipation Proclamation and three corollary revisions to the Constitution - the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th  amendments.

Emancipation Proclamation: President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.  This document declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious (confederate, southern) states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

13^th amendment (1865):   officially abolished, and continues to prohibit, slavery, and, with limited exceptions, prohibits involuntary servitude.

14^th amendment (1868):   post-Civil War amendment, also known as the Reconstruction Amendment that was first intended to secure rights for former slaves.

• It overturned the Dred Scott v. Sandford, (1857), also known as the Dred Scott Decision - a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent brought into the United States and held as slaves (or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves) were not protected by the Constitution and were not U.S. citizens.

15^th amendment (1870):  provides that governments in the United States may not prevent a citizen from voting because of his race, color or previous condition of servitude.

• By the 1890s, many Southern states had rigorous voter qualification laws, including literacy tests and poll taxes.
• Poll taxes:  fees charged of blacks
• Literacy tests: sample question: “name all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout America’s history”.

I let them know I would return to the 14 & 15^th amendments when I discussed 2012.  I moved on to explaining Jim Crow, also known as black laws (1876 – 1965).  The tenants of Jim Crow laws included

• Anti-black laws
• Christian ministers proclaimed
• whites were the chosen people
• blacks were cursed to be servants
• God supported racial segregation   (I don’t know where in Bible but it continues to work today.  Poor God.)
• Sexual relations between blacks and whites would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America. (as a bi-racial American I contest that belief as I am sure Lenny Kravitz, Halle Barry, Mariah Carey, Tiger Woods, and the President do also)
• Signs that read:  NO dogs, Negroes, Mexicans; colored served in rear
• White persons did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks.  (ref: consistent reference to 18-month “Governor” Palin but when referring to POTUS, as just “Obama”)

Jim Crow etiquette:  (just a note:  giving something a polite name does NOT make it acceptable)

1. Never assert or even intimate that a white person is lying
2. Never suggest a white person is from an inferior class
3. Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence (uppity nigger)
4. Never curse a white person

For an in-depth look, I suggested the students check out the website series:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow laws by PBS. 

I asked the students if they knew one of my heroes, Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was the most influential person in the Civil Rights movement – even over Dr. Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.  They did not.

Thurgood Marshall

• The first black Supreme Court Justice of the United States.
• Born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908,
• the grandson of a slave.
• Applied to the University of Maryland Law School in 1930 but was denied admission because of his race even though he was overqualified academically.
• this incident would haunt him and direct his future professional life.
• Marshall won the most important legal case of the century, ending the legal separation of black and white children in public schools, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education,
•  On May 14, 1954, Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, stating that "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. . ."
• working through the courts to get rid of the legacy of slavery and wiping out the racist segregation system of Jim Crow, Justice Marshall had an even more insightful and lasting effect on race relations than either Dr. King or Malcolm X.

One obituary read:  We made movies about Malcolm X, we get a holiday to honor Dr. Marin Luther King, but every day we live with the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall. 

I asked the students to look around their classroom at each other to appreciate Chief Justice Marshall’s legacy.  It was the success of the Brown case that sparked the 1960s Civil Rights movement. 

In the south, there were sit-ins by blacks and supportive whites at segregated counters.  Northern whites and black activists beaten, or worst, killed for their support of desegregation were daily news on the 3-channel TV stations.  Simultaneously, women were also fighting for their civil rights to be equal.  As more and more women entered the workplace, equal pay for equal work became a mantra (a word or expression that is repeated).  I shared with them we would talk about how well this had worked when I got to 2009 and President Obama’s first act to be signed into law.

1964 Civil Rights

• In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. The provisions of this act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing.
• Title VII of the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement the law.

Voting Rights Act of 1965;

• almost a century later that the full promise of the 15th Amendment was actually achieved in all states.  On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law.
• Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis.

I shared with them I would tie this section of this Act to the current 2012 scenarios occurring in many states, including mine, Texas.

Civil Rights in 2012 and déjà vu

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009:

• The Equal Pay Act of 1963 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in compensation for substantially similar work under similar conditions.
• Title VII of the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement the law.
• Born Lilly McDaniel April 1938, Lilly Ledbetter was the plaintiff in the American employment discrimination case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
• “I was earning $44,724 while the highest-paid man earned $59,028 and the other two followed close behind, earning $58,464 and $58,226.”
• The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 is a federal statute in the United States that was signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 29, 2009. 

Hopefully, the young girls in the class will be able to fully realize this act when they start in the workplace in 10 years.

15^th amendment:  Some states even made it difficult to find a place to register to vote; disenfranchisement continued to deter certain groups of people from voting

ÊVoting Rights Act of 1965:

• Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. (southern states)
• Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect.

Ê2011-2012 Voter Suppression Laws across the country passed measures to make it harder for Americans – particularly African-Americans, Hispanics, the elderly, students and people with disabilities – to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot.

• Over thirty states considered laws that would require voters to present government-issued photo ID in order to vote. Studies suggest that up to 11 percent of American citizens lack such ID, and would be required to navigate the administrative burdens to obtain it or forego the right to vote entirely.
• Three additional states passed laws to require documentary proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, though as many as 7 percent of American citizens do not have such proof.
•  Seven states shortened early voting time frames, even though over 30 percent of all votes cast in the 2008 general election were cast before Election Day.
• Two state legislatures voted to repeal Election Day registration laws, though Election Day registration increases voter turnout by 10-12 percent.
• Finally, two states passed legislation making it much more difficult for third-party organizations to register voters – so difficult, in fact, that some voter registration organizations are leaving the states altogether.

ÊI live in one of the states, Texas, trying to implement voter suppression laws.  I have helped in opposing these measures by writing to my local, state, and federal representatives.  Thankfully, under Section 5, the Department of Justice halted the implementation of these laws.  Former Republican presidential candidate Governor Perry was stopped from implementing these measures which would have disenfranchised thousands of Hispanic, black, and elderly voters.  California is not one of the states moving in this direction. (applause from the students).

There is an old saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”  The tactics in the 1800’s was to levy a poll tax or issue a literacy test to disenfranchise Americans from voting.  Today, the tactic is to portray voter fraud as the reason these suppression laws are being pursued.  Statistically, in Florida, out of 18 million voters, the Justice Department found less than 400 voter fraud cases. Are we looking for a solution to a non-existent problem?

Jim Crowe alive and well in 2012

Tenant of : Sexual relations (and hence, interracial marriage) between blacks and whites would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America.

Listen carefully to the words of the speakers who want you to believe our President is a socialist, a Marxist, an Islamist, “not like us”, “doesn’t see America the way we see America”, “doesn’t understand our system of capitalism”, “was not born here”, “uppity” and on and on and on.  The nastiness against this President has a lot more to do with past behavioral thoughts than with anything this President has or has not done.  Listen carefully to the language and tantrum-like behavior. (we equate screaming to bullying in this millennium).  I submit that today’s commentaries made by some are the remnants of their historical beliefs. 

What has my experience given me?

My parents met during World War II.  My American father was an officer in the segregated black Army of the United States.  My Dutch mother was a novice (a young woman, who wanted to become a nun, first had to go through 7 years of being a novice, similar to an intern).  The convent was a place for the Jews to come for safety.  When the Nazis overtook Holland, they went into the convents and captured not only the Jews but the nuns who had hidden them.  My mother was one of them.  Two years later, my father’s battalion was the one who freed people from the concentration camp my mother was at.   

That night while they were all sheltered in an underground, a bomb hit their bunker. My father draped himself over some to protect them.  It broke his back.  While recuperating at the convent (the only place American soldiers could go), my parents fell in love and my mom never took her vows.  They married in Europe.  It was illegal for my parents to be married in many of the states in the U. S.  [In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage everywhere in the U.S. (about 72% were opposed to interracial marriage and 48% felt that marrying a person of another race should be prosecuted as a criminal act.)]

As a product of their union, and inter-marrying myself, I know and have felt the repercussions of Jim Crow laws.  At University, I chose to study Civil Rights law.  Thurgood Marshall was my hero.  I watched him being sworn in as a Supreme Court Associate Justice in 1967 (yes, on one of the three TV channels of the day).  Writing action into law was the success to the  bombings and the beatings, the demonstrations and the sit-ins; the walk to the talk so to speak.

My interpersonal (the way we act with others) relationships (in business, we call them “skills”) have been born from my background..  My career has been one of mentoring women (all ages) and minorities in all countries I have worked.  Other countries do not have the protection of  EEOC laws and it is important to replicate our belief system globally because it represents the best of our country  (the students vehemently agreed).  It is the right thing to do.  It certainly isn’t the easiest. 

In 1984 I accepted a position in the south that would envelope (cover) all my values.  Over and above the position I would have, the main objective was to integrate top management in the plant with qualified blacks.  The company had moved its production from the north (where unions existed) to the south (no unions, less labor cost).  After 5 years, the plant had not generated the expected financial benefits.  A review by guru Dr. Fingenbaum noted that although the workers were 75% black, top management was 100% white.  What would motivate the workers?

My interview with corporate headquarters in Gary, Indiana was, to this day, one of the most interesting I have encountered.  The challenge, the best I have ever had.  Four years later, there were qualified black managers in the plant, the country club was integrated, and I had personally survived three attempts to burn down my house (and I lived next door to the town sheriff).

In Europe, with an American company, the promotion of women into management positions was one I pursued with fervor.  In Germany, one of the Turkish women I promoted had to have my support, not only with the German men, but more so with the Turkish men.  Her father approached me at work one day to share with me he did not like the idea of her promotion.  She should be married and raise a family (it really is every father’s dream).  I asked her in his presence if she wanted the job.  She responded “yes”.  I walked her father round the plant to show him the responsibility she would have (and was the person most qualified).  At the same time I shared stories about how he and my father were similar.  How proud they both should be of their daughters.  When he left, he was her biggest cheerleader.  She was an excellent manager and, eventually, gained the support of all in the plant.

With our 25 minutes coming to a close, I responded to the last open agenda item.

What can the students do for Civil Rights?

There is a saying:  “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”.    Think about that every day.  Everyone has a right to respect and dignity. 

• When you hear racial comments or jokes, stop it.  If it’s you, stop it.
• When you see someone being bullied, stop it.  If it’s you, stop it.
• Become a mentor (like a big brother or a big sister) to those who are younger than you are; even at your age, you can help.
• Education, education, education.  Study hard and learn.  “Knowledge is power.”  

A closing comment on “never forgetting the past lest we are doomed to repeat it”,  mutual thank you’s for the invitation and the presentation, and the Skype class was over.

References / esources: 

• The United States Department of Justice – Civil Rights Division
• American Historical Documents
• The History of Jim Crow
• Thurgood Marshall Biography
• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

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