Immigration: U.S.A, Umelting Pot

Another government showdown is looming. This time the hostage is immigrants. Those who seek a better life, refuge, dreams, riches, freedom. What ever their motivation many have braved leaving loved ones behind, poverty, perilous journeys and indentured servitude. Once here they face various new obstacles that depends on ethnicity and geographic location of settlement.

Hundreds of years ago individuals came to the New World to obtain a fresh start and the rest is history. But since the 1930s the altitude of Americans towards immigrants have moved from inviting to hostile. The issue of a shrinking job market has created many to see these hopeful citizens as invaders. With a willingness to accept lower wages citizens have been sold the ideology that aliens have adversely affected our job market.

Defining illegal immigrant or alien often differs based on political rhetoric and emotional attachments. Canadians and Europeans are oftentimes exempted from this list for more obvious reasons. While Latins have been grouped up as Mexicans and displayed negatively by politicians, media and the public. Needless to say South and Central Americans are not Mexicans it had very little bearing on how they appear in the publics eyes beyond the obvious. Bringing to like the U.S.’s love affair with skin tones and racism.

Fair skin is a premium in these the United States. Where darkies can expect to be treated poorly. A issue that is echoed globally in country after country. But racism is not the only factor.

Migratory workers in the Midwest and Southern states face Jim Crow type laws. Followers of Islam face stereotyping of being associated with terrorist groups. Africans deal with mistaken identity being grouped with Blacks who they share no cultural ties to. While Canadians and Europeans slip under the radar blending into the ruling class.

Our immigration laws have monetized the process. If you have thousands of dollars to invest, citizenship is at arms length. For those workers who are pursuing a fresh start, a conclusion to the process may never materialize. Consequently, this has forced many to slavery and indentured servitude for the opportunity to establish future generations of U.S. born descendents. One of our darkest secrets lies in our governments denial of such practices. Many of which are run by financial institutions and gangs.

Affluent communities have catered to another demographic of immigrants, those that receive visas and refugee status. Our welfare system picks up the tab for housing, education, groceries and consumer loans to non citizen immigrants. Most will never seek citizenship or contribute in any way to our economy.

When the media talks immigration it’s easy to think of the poor Mexicans crossing the boarder or the Asian business owner. We don’t consider the fair skinned Canadians or Europeans who blends into Corporate America’s elites. Also the African political refugees who become permanent residents of this country tax free receiving government assistance. To say a system is broken is to suggest the goal would be to process individual applications for citizenship. But in the U.S. money rules everything.

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Rescued by a Bailout, A.I.G. May Sue Its Savior – NYTimes.com

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/rescued-by-a-bailout-a-i-g-may-sue-its-savior/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

Pipeline Leaks Repost

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/22/us/study-finds-flaws-in-pipeline-leak-detection-systems.html

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The Nature of Voting

Do people really vote, based on what they believe? Or what they were taught to believe? Like weed smokers voting against the legalization of marijuana. You see gays voting for anti same sex marraige politicians and legislation. Union workers supporting union busters and those with anti union rhetoric. Blacks and Hispanics feeling that affirmative action is pointless and a form of reverse discrimination. All are just a gambit of oximorons. Enough to fill a landfill because to me it is ll rubbish.

I can recall a conversation with a spoiled, rich daddy’s girl who had not yet been forced to live by her own means yet. Her ideologies reflected that of her conservative rich but, but not her liberal lifestyle. We often times have a disconnect between our morals and our lifestyles. But that can be seen in the current state of our bi partisan country. A few years later the same young ladies political views had changed to reflect the liberal world she had long embraced.

What happens is (I think at least) we all live in this Utopian bubble we call “our parents house,” where our rules and regulations are theirs. We hate abortion, marijuana, unions, taxes, welfare, planned parenthood, tuition forgiveness, tree hugging, environmentalists, government regulations, Obama, gays and affirmitive action. Then we move out and: get a job, go to college, travel the world or live off our parents as we pursue some pipe dream and realize, “hey I really don’t hate those things.” Your BFF is gay, you’ve had a homosexual relationship, would opt for an abortion, smoked pot, can’t pay back student loans, think Obama is not that bad, wish we all would do more environmentally, became a vegan, want healthcare but job won’t offer it, had to apply fr food stamps and Medicare after being fired, have no opinion on unions (let alone know what they do), still don’t see the significance of affirmative action or government regulation and thinks taxes are a yearly bonus.

GOP bashes Obama on Cuba visas, but David Rivera’s a no-show on the call

GOP bashes Obama on Cuba visas, but David Rivera’s a no-show on the call.

Might I also add that she received a visa during the Bush Administration during 2002.

Birth of a New Nation (MLK Jr)

7 April 1957 Montgomery, Alabama

I want to preach this morning from the subject: “The Birth of a New Nation.” And I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together a story that has long since been stenciled on the mental sheets of succeeding generations. It is the story of the Exodus, the story of the flight of the Hebrew people from the bondage of Egypt, through the wilderness, and finally to the Promised Land. It’s a beautiful story. I had the privilege the other night of seeing the story in movie terms in New York City, entitled “The Ten Commandments,” and I came to see it in all of its beauty—the struggle of Moses, the struggle of his devoted followers as they sought to get out of Egypt. And they finally moved on to the wilderness and toward the Promised Land. This is something of the story of every people struggling for freedom. It is the first story of man’s explicit quest for freedom. And it demonstrates the stages that seem to inevitably follow the quest for freedom.

Prior to March the sixth, 1957, there existed a country known as the Gold Coast. This country was a colony of the British Empire. This country was situated in that vast continent known as Africa. I’m sure you know a great deal about Africa, that continent with some two hundred million people and it extends and covers a great deal of territory. There are many familiar names associated with Africa that you would probably remember, and there are some countries in Africa that many people never realize. For instance, Egypt is in Africa. And there is that vast area of North Africa with Egypt and Ethiopia, with Tunisia and Algeria and Morocco and Libya. Then you might move to South Africa and you think of that extensive territory known as the Union of South Africa. There is that capital city Johannesburg that you read so much about these days. Then there is central Africa with places like Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo. And then there is East Africa with places like Kenya and Tanganyika, and places like Uganda and other very powerful countries right there. And then you move over to West Africa, where you find the French West Africa and Nigeria, and Liberia and Sierra Leone and places like that. And it is in this spot, in this section of Africa, that we find the Gold Coast, there in West Africa.

You also know that for years and for centuries, Africa has been one of the most exploited continents in the history of the world. It’s been the “Dark Continent.” It’s been the continent that has suffered all of the pain and the affliction that could be mustered up by other nations. And it is that continent which has experienced slavery, which has experienced all of the lowest standards that we can think about, and its been brought into being by the exploitation inflicted upon it by other nations.

And this country, the Gold Coast, was a part of this extensive continent known as Africa. It’s a little country there in West Africa about ninety-one thousand miles in area, with a population of about five million people, a little more than four and a half million. And it stands there with its capital city, Accra. For years the Gold Coast was exploited and dominated and trampled over. The first European settlers came in there about 1444, the Portuguese, and they started legitimate trade with the people in the Gold Coast. They started dealing with them with their gold, and in turn they gave them guns and ammunition and gunpowder and that type of thing. Well, pretty soon America was discovered a few years later in the fourteen hundreds, and then the British West Indies. And all of these growing discoveries brought about the slave trade. You remember it started in America in 1619.

And there was a big scramble for power in Africa. With the growth of the slave trade, there came into Africa, into the Gold Coast in particular, not only the Portuguese but also the Swedes and the Danes and the Dutch and the British. And all of these nations competed with each other to win the power of the Gold Coast so that they could exploit these people for commercial reasons and sell them into slavery.

Finally, in 1850, Britain won out, and she gained possession of the total territorial expansion of the Gold Coast. From 1850 to 1957, March sixth, the Gold Coast was a colony of the British Empire. And as a colony she suffered all of the injustices, all of the exploitation, all of the humiliation that comes as a result of colonialism. But like all slavery, like all domination, like all exploitation, it came to the point that the people got tired of it.

And that seems to be the long story of history. There seems to be a throbbing desire, there seems to be an internal desire for freedom within the soul of every man. And it’s there—it might not break forth in the beginning, but eventually it breaks out Men realize that freedom is something basic, and to rob a man of his freedom is to take from him the essential basis of his manhood. To take from him his freedom is to rob him of something of God’s image. To paraphrase the words of Shakespeare’s Othello: Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing; twas mine, ‘tis his, has been the slave of thousands; but he who filches from me my freedom robs me of that which not enriches him, but makes me poor indeed.

There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom. There is something deep down within the very soul of man that reaches out for Canaan. Men cannot be satisfied with Egypt. They tried to adjust to it for awhile. Many men have vested interests in Egypt, and they are slow to leave. Egypt makes it profitable to them; some people profit by Egypt. The vast majority, the masses of people never profit by Egypt, and they are never content with it. And eventually they rise up and begin to cry out for Canaan’s land.

And so these people got tired. It had a long history. As far back as 1844, the chiefs themselves of the Gold Coast rose up and came together and revolted against the British Empire and the other powers that were in existence at that time dominating the Gold Coast. They revolted, saying that they wanted to govern themselves. But these powers clamped down on them, and the British said that we will not let you go.

About 1909, a young man was born on the twelfth of September. History didn’t know at that time what that young man had in his mind. His mother and father, illiterate, not a part of the powerful tribal life of Africa, not chiefs at all, but humble people. And that boy grew up. He went to school at Achimota for a while in Africa, and then he finished there with honors and decided to work his way to America. And he landed to America one day with about fifty dollars in his pocket in terms of pounds, getting ready to get an education. And he went down to Pennsylvania, to Lincoln University. He started studying there, and he started reading the great insights of the philosophers, he started reading the great insights of the ages. And he finished there and took his theological degree there and preached awhile around Philadelphia and other areas as he was in the country. And went over to the University of Pennsylvania and took up a masters there in philosophy and sociology. All the years that he stood in America, he was poor, he had to work hard. He says in his autobiography how he worked as a bellhop in hotels, as a dishwasher, and during the summer how he worked as a waiter trying to struggle through school. [recording interrupted]

“I want to go back home. I want to go back to West Africa, the land of my people, my native land There is some work to be done there.” He got a ship and went to London and stopped for a while by London School of Economy and picked up another degree there. Then while in London, he started thinking about Pan-Africanism and the problem of how to free his people from colonialism. For as he said, he always realized that colonialism was made for domination and for exploitation. It was made to keep a certain group down and exploit that group economically for the advantage of another. He studied and thought about all of this, and one day he decided to go back to Africa.

He got to Africa and he was immediately elected the executive secretary of the United Party of the Gold Coast. And he worked hard, and he started getting a following. And the people in this party, the old, the people who had had their hands on the plow for a long time, thought he was pushing a little too fast, and they got a little jealous of his influence. and so finally he had to break from the United Party of the Gold Coast, and in 1949 he organized the Convention People’s Party. It was this party that started out working for the independence of the Gold Coast. He started out in a humble way, urging his people to unite for freedom and urging the officials of the British Empire to give them freedom. They were slow to respond, but the masses of people were with him, and they had united to become the most powerful and influential party that had ever been organized in that section of Africa.

He started writing. And his companions with him, and many of them started writing so much that the officials got afraid, and they put them in jail. And Nkrumah himself was finally placed in jail for several years because he was a seditious man, he was an agitator. He was imprisoned on the basis of sedition, and he was placed there to stay in prison for many years. But he had inspired some people outside of prison. They got together just a few months after he’d been in prison and elected him the prime minister while he was in prison. For awhile the British officials tried to keep him there, and Gbedemah says—one of his close associates, the Minister of Finance, Mr. Gbedemah— said that that night the people were getting ready to go down to the jail and get him out. But Gbedemah said, “This isn’t the way; we can’t do it like this. Violence will break out and we will defeat our purpose.” But the British Empire saw that they had better let him out. And in a few hours Kwame Nkrumah was out of jail, the prime minister of the Gold Coast. He was placed there for fifteen years but he only served eight or nine months, and now he comes out the Prime Minister of the Gold Coast.

And this was the struggling that had been going on for years. It was now coming to the point that this little nation was moving toward its independence. Then came the continual agitation, the continual resistance, so that the British Empire saw that it could no longer rule the Gold Coast. And they agreed that on the sixth of March, 1957, they would release this nation. This nation would no longer be a colony of the British Empire, that this nation would be a sovereign nation within the British Commonwealth. All of this was because of the persistent protest, the continual agitation on the part of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and the other leaders who worked along with him and the masses of people who were willing to follow.

So that day finally came. It was a great day. The week ahead was a great week. They had been preparing for this day for many years, and now it was here. People coming in from all over the world. They had started getting in by the second of March. Seventy nations represented to come to say to this new nation: “We greet you, and we give you our moral support. We hope for you God’s guidance as you move now into the realm of independence.” From America itself more than a hundred persons: the press, the diplomatic guests, and the prime minister’s guests. And oh, it was a beautiful experience to see some of the leading persons on the scene of civil rights in America on hand to say, “Greetings to you,” as this new nation was born. Look over, to my right is Adam Powell, to my left is Charles Diggs, to my right again is Ralph Bunche. To the other side is Her Majesty’s First Minister of Jamaica, Manning, Ambassador Jones of Liberia. All of these people from America, Mordecai Johnson, Horace Mann Bond, all of these people just going over to say, “We want to greet you and we want you to know that you have our moral support as you grow.” Then you look out and see the vice-president of the United States, you see A. Philip Randolph, you see all of the people who have stood in the forefront of the struggle for civil rights over the years, coming over to Africa to say, “We bid you Godspeed.” This was a great day not only for Nkrumah, but for the whole of the Gold Coast.

Then came Tuesday, [March] the fifth, many events leading up to it. That night we walked into the closing of Parliament—the closing of the old Parliament, the old Parliament, which was presided over by the British Empire. The old Parliament which designated colonialism and imperialism. Now that Parliament is closing. That was a great sight and a great picture and a great scene. We sat there that night, just about five hundred able to get in there. People, thousands and thousands of people waiting outside, just about five hundred in there, and we were fortunate enough to be sitting there at that moment as guests of the prime minister. At that hour we noticed Prime Minister Nkrumah walking in with all of his ministers, with his justices of the Supreme Court of the Gold Coast, and with all of the people of the Convention People’s Party, the leaders of that party. Nkrumah came up to make his closing speech to the old Gold Coast. There was something old now passing away.

The thing that impressed me more than anything else that night was the fact that when Nkrumah walked in, and his other ministers who had been in prison with him, they didn’t come in with the crowns and all of the garments of kings, but they walked in with prison caps and the coats that they had lived with for all of the months that they had been in prison. Nkrumah stood up and made his closing speech to Parliament with the little cap that he wore in prison for several months and the coat that he wore in prison for several months, and all of his ministers round about him. That was a great hour. An old Parliament passing away.

And then at twelve o’clock that night we walked out. As we walked out we noticed all over the polo grounds almost a half-a-million people. They had waited for this hour and this moment for years. As we walked out of the door and looked at that beautiful building, we looked up to the top of it and there was a little flag that had been flowing around the sky for many years. It was the Union Jack flag of the Gold Coast, the British flag, you see. But at twelve o’clock that night we saw a little flag coming down, and another flag went up. The old Union Jack flag came down, and the new flag of Ghana went up. This was a new nation now, a new nation being born.

And when Prime Minister Nkrumah stood up before his people out in the polo ground and said, “We are no longer a British colony. We are a free, sovereign people,” all over that vast throng of people we could see tears. And I stood there thinking about so many things. Before I knew it, I started weeping. I was crying for joy. And I knew about all of the struggles, and all of the pain, and all of the agony that these people had gone through for this moment.

After Nkrumah had made that final speech, it was about twelve-thirty now. And we walked away. And we could hear little children six years old and old people eighty and ninety years old walking the streets of Accra crying, “Freedom! Freedom!” They couldn’t say it in the sense that we’d say it—many of them don’t speak English too well—but they had their accents and it could ring out, “Free-doom!” They were crying it in a sense that they had never heard it before, and I could hear that old Negro spiritual once more crying out:

Free at last! Free at last!…    Great God Almighty, I’m free at last!

They were experiencing that in their very souls. And everywhere we turned, we could hear it ringing out from the housetops. We could hear it from every corner, every nook and crook of the community: “Freedom! Freedom!” This was the birth of a new nation. This was the breaking aloose from Egypt.

Wednesday morning the official opening of Parliament was held. There again we were able to get on the inside. There Nkrumah made his new speech. And now the prime minister of the Gold Coast with no superior, with all of the power that MacMillan of England has, with all of the power that Nehru of India has—now a free nation, now the prime minister of a sovereign nation. The Duchess of Kent walked in, the Duchess of Kent, who represented the Queen of England, no longer had authority now. She was just a passing visitor now. The night before, she was the official leader and spokesman for the Queen, thereby the power behind the throne of the Gold Coast. But now it’s Ghana. It’s a new nation now, and she’s just an official visitor like M. L. King and Ralph Bunche and Coretta King and everybody else, because this is a new nation. A new Ghana has come into being.

And now Nkrumah stands the leader of that great nation. And when he drives out, the people standing around the streets of the city after Parliament is open, cry out: “All hail, Nkrumah!” The name of Nkrumah crowning around the whole city, everybody crying this name, because they knew he had suffered for them, he had sacrificed for them, he’d gone to jail for them. This was the birth of a new nation. This nation was now out of Egypt and had crossed the Red Sea.

Now it will confront its wilderness. Like any breaking aloose from Egypt, there is a wilderness ahead. There is a problem of adjustment. Nkrumah realizes that. There is always this wilderness standing before him. For instance, it’s a one-crop country, cocoa mainly. Sixty percent of the cocoa of the world comes from the Gold Coast, or from Ghana. And, in order to make the economic system more stable, it will be necessary to industrialize. Cocoa is too fluctuating to base a whole economy on that, so there is the necessity of industrializing. Nkrumah said to me that one of the first things that he will do is to work toward industrialization. And also he plans to work toward the whole problem of increasing the cultural standards of the community. Still ninety percent of the people are illiterate, and it is necessary to lift the whole cultural standard of the community in order to make it possible to stand up in the free world.

Yes, there is a wilderness ahead, though it is my hope that even people from America will go to Africa as immigrants, right there to the Gold Coast, and lend their technical assistance, for there is great need and there are rich opportunities there. Right now is the time that American Negroes can lend their technical assistance to a growing new nation. I was very happy to see already people who have moved in and making good. The son of the late president of Bennett College, Dr. Jones, is there, who started an insurance company and making good, going to the top. A doctor from Brooklyn, New York, had just come in that week and his wife is also a dentist, and they are living there now, going in there and working, and the people love them. There will be hundreds and thousands of people, I’m sure, going over to make for the growth of this new nation. And Nkrumah made it very clear to me that he would welcome any persons coming there as immigrants and to live there. Now don’t think that because they have five million people the nation can’t grow, that that’s a small nation to be overlooked. Never forget the fact that when America was born in 1776, when it received its independence from the British Empire, there were fewer, less than four million people in America, and today it’s more than a hundred and sixty million. So never underestimate a people because it’s small now. America was smaller than Ghana when it was born.

There is a great day ahead. The future is on its side. It’s going now through the wilderness, but the Promised Land is ahead.

And I want to take just a few more minutes as I close to say three or four things that this reminds us of and things that it says to us—things that we must never forget as we ourselves find ourselves breaking aloose from an evil Egypt, trying to move through the wilderness toward the promised land of cultural integration. Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people of the Gold Coast had not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still be a colony of the British Empire. Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there, and he never voluntarily gives it up. And that is where the strong resistance comes. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.

So don’t go out this morning with any illusions. Don’t go back into your homes and around Montgomery thinking that the Montgomery City Commission and that all of the forces in the leadership of the South will eventually work out this thing for Negroes, it’s going to work out; it’s going to roll in on the wheels of inevitability. If we wait for it to work itself out, it will never be worked out. Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil. The bus protest is just the beginning. Buses are integrated in Montgomery, but that is just the beginning. And don’t sit down and do nothing now because the buses are integrated, because, if you stop now, we will be in the dungeons of segregation and discrimination for another hundred years, and our children and our children’s children will suffer all of the bondage that we have lived under for years. It never comes voluntarily. We’ve got to keep on keeping on in order to gain freedom. It never comes like that. It would be fortunate if the people in power had sense enough to go on and give up, but they don’t do it like that. It is not done voluntarily, but it is done through the pressure that comes about from people who are oppressed.

If there had not been a Gandhi in India with all of his noble followers, India would have never been free. If there had not been an Nkrumah and his followers in Ghana, Ghana would still be a British colony. If there had not been abolitionists in America, both Negro and white, we might still stand today in the dungeons of slavery. And then because there have been, in every period, there are always those people in every period of human history who don’t mind getting their necks cut off, who don’t mind being persecuted and discriminated and kicked about, because they know that freedom is never given out, but it comes through the persistent and the continual agitation and revolt on the part of those who are caught in the system. Ghana teaches us that.

It says to us another thing. It reminds us of the fact that a nation or a people can break aloose from oppression without violence. Nkrumah says in the first two pages of his autobiography, which was published on the sixth of March—a great book which you ought to read—he said that he had studied the social systems of social philosophers and he started studying the life of Gandhi and his techniques. And he said that in the beginning he could not see how they could ever get aloose from colonialism without armed revolt, without armies and ammunition, rising up. Then he says after he continued to study Gandhi and continued to study this technique, he came to see that the only way was through nonviolent positive action. And he called his program “positive action.” And it’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? That here is a nation that is now free, and it is free without rising up with arms and with ammunition. It is free through nonviolent means. Because of that the British Empire will not have the bitterness for Ghana that she has for China, so to speak. Because of that, when the British Empire leaves Ghana, she leaves with a different attitude than she would have left with if she had been driven out by armies. We’ve got to revolt in such a way that after revolt is over we can live with people as their brothers and their sisters. Our aim must never be to defeat them or humiliate them.

On the night of the State Ball, standing up talking with some people, Mordecai Johnson called my attention to the fact that Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah was there dancing with the Duchess of Kent. And I said, “Isn’t this something? Here is the once-serf, the once-slave, now dancing with the lord on an equal plane.” And that is done because there is no bitterness. These two nations will be able to live together and work together because the breaking aloose was through nonviolence and not through violence.

The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence however, are emptiness and bitterness. This is the thing I’m concerned about. Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly for the goals of justice and peace, but let’s be sure that our hands are clean in this struggle. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that, when the day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery. that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters.

Oh, my friends, our aim must be not to defeat Mr. Engelhardt, not to defeat Mr. Sellers and Mr. Gayle and Mr. Parks. Our aim must be to defeat the evil that’s in them. But our aim must be to win the friendship of Mr. Gayle and Mr. Sellers and Mr. Engelhardt. We must come to the point of seeing that our ultimate aim is to live with all men as brothers and sisters under God and not be their enemies or anything that goes with that type of relationship. And this is one thing that Ghana teaches us: that you can break aloose from evil through nonviolence, through a lack of bitterness. Nkrumah says in his book: “When I came out of prison, I was not bitter toward Britain. I came out merely with the determination to free my people from the colonialism and imperialism that had been inflicted upon them by the British. But I came out with no bitterness.” And, because of that, this world will be a better place in which to live.

There’s another thing that Ghana reminds us. I’m coming to the conclusion now. Ghana reminds us that freedom never comes on a silver platter. It’s never easy. Ghana reminds us that whenever you break out of Egypt, you better get ready for stiff backs. You better get ready for some homes to be bombed. You better get ready for some churches to be bombed. You better get ready for a lot of nasty things to be said about you, because you’re getting out of Egypt, and, whenever you break aloose from Egypt, the initial response of the Egyptian is bitterness. It never comes with ease. It comes only through the hardness and persistence of life. Ghana reminds us of that. You better get ready to go to prison. When I looked out and saw the prime minister there with his prison cap on that night, that reminded me of that fact, that freedom never comes easy. It comes through hard labor and it comes through toil. It comes through hours of despair and disappointment.

That’s the way it goes. There is no crown without a cross. I wish we could get to Easter without going to Good Friday, but history tells us that we got to go by Good Friday before we can get to Easter. That’s the long story of freedom, isn’t it? Before you get to Canaan, you’ve got a Red Sea to confront. You have a hardened heart of a pharaoh to confront. You have the prodigious hilltops of evil in the wilderness to confront. And,even when you get up to the Promised Land, you have giants in the land. The beautiful thing about it is that there are a few people who’ve been over in the land. They have spied enough to say, “Even though the giants are there we can possess the land, because we got the internal fiber to stand up amid anything that we have to face.”

The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. It always makes for temporary setbacks. And those people who tell you today that there is more tension in Montgomery than there has ever been are telling you right. Whenever you get out of Egypt, you always confront a little tension, you always confront a little temporary setback. If you didn’t confront that you’d never get out. You must remember that the tensionless period that we like to think of was the period when the Negro was complacently adjusted to segregation, discrimination, insult, and exploitation. And the period of tension is the period when the Negro has decided to rise up and break aloose from that. And this is the peace that we are seeking: not an old negative obnoxious peace which is merely the absence of tension, but a positive, lasting peace, which is the presence of brotherhood and justice. And it is never brought about without this temporary period of tension. The road to freedom is difficult.

But finally Ghana tells us that the forces of the universe are on the side of justice. That’s what it tells us, now. You can interpret Ghana any kind of way you want to, but Ghana tells me that the forces of the universe are on the side of justice. That night when I saw that old flag coming down and the new flag coming up, I saw something else. That wasn’t just an Ephemeral, evanescent event appearing on the stage of history, but it was an event with eternal meaning, for it symbolizes something. That thing symbolized to me that an old order is passing away and a new order is coming into being. An old order of colonialism, of segregation, of discrimination is passing away now, and a new order of justice and freedom and goodwill is being born. That’s what it said: that somehow the forces of justice stand on the side of the universe, and that you can’t ultimately trample over God’s children and profit by it.

I want to come back to Montgomery now, but I must stop by London for a moment, for London reminds me of something. I never will forget the day we went into London. The next day we started moving around this great city, the only city in the world that is almost as large as New York City. Over eight million people in London, about eight million, three hundred thousand; New York about eight million, five hundred thousand. London larger in area than New York, though. Standing in London is an amazing picture. And I never will forget the experience I had, the thoughts that came to my mind. We went to Buckingham Palace, and I looked there at all of Britain, at all of the pomp and circumstance of royalty. And I thought about all of the queens and kings that had passed through here. Look at the beauty of the changing of the guards and all of the guards with their beautiful horses. It’s a beautiful sight. Move on from there and go over to Parliament. Move into the House of Lords and the House of Commons. There with all of its beauty standing up before the world is one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

Then I remember, we went on over to Westminster Abbey. And I thought about several things when we went in this great church, this great cathedral, the center of the Church of England. We walked around and went to the tombs of the kings and queens buried there. Most of the kings and queens of England are buried right there in the Westminster Abbey. And I walked around. On the one hand I enjoyed and appreciated the great gothic architecture of that massive cathedral. I stood there in awe thinking about the greatness of God and man’s feeble attempt to reach up for God. And I thought something else—I thought about the Church of England.

My mind went back to Buckingham Palace, and I said that this is the symbol of a dying system. There was a day that the queens and kings of England could boast that the sun never sets on the British Empire, a day when she occupied the greater portion of Australia, the greater portion of Canada. There was a day when she ruled most of China, most of Africa, and all of India. I started thinking about this empire. I started thinking about the fact that she ruled over India one day. Mahatma Gandhi stood there at every hand, trying to get the freedom of his people, and they never bowed to it. They never, they decided that they were going to stand up and hold India in humiliation and in colonialism many, many years. I remember we passed by Ten Downing Street. That’s the place where the prime minister of England lives. And I remember that a few years ago a man lived there by the name of Winston Churchill. One day he stood up before the world and said, “I did not become his Majesty’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

And I thought about the fact that a few weeks ago a man by the name of Anthony Eden lived there. And out of all of his knowledge of the Middle East, he decided to rise up and march his armies with the forces of Israel and France into Egypt, and there they confronted their doom, because they were revolting against world opinion. Egypt, a little country; Egypt, a country with no military power. They could have easily defeated Egypt, but they did not realize that they were fighting more than Egypt. They were attacking world opinion; they were fighting the whole Asian-African bloc, which is the bloc that now thinks and moves and determines the course of the history of the world.

I thought of many things. I thought of the fact that the British Empire exploited India. Think about it! A nation with four hundred million people and the British exploited them so much that out of a population of four hundred million, three hundred and fifty million made an annual income of less than fifty dollars a year. Twenty-five of that had to be used for taxes and the other things of life. I thought about dark Africa, and how the people there, if they can make a hundred dollars a year they are living very well, they think. Two shillings a day—one shilling is fourteen cents, two shillings, twenty-eight cents—that’s a good wage. That’s because of the domination of the British Empire.

All of these things came to my mind, and when I stood there in Westminster Abbey with all of its beauty, and I thought about all of the beautiful hymns and anthems that the people would go in there to sing. And yet the Church of England never took a stand against this system.The Church of England sanctioned it The Church of England gave it moral stature. All of the exploitation perpetuated by the British Empire was sanctioned by the Church of England.

But something else came to my mind: God comes in the picture even when the Church won’t take a stand. God has injected a principle in this universe. God has said that all men must respect the dignity and worth of all human personality, “And if you don’t do that, I will take charge.” It seems this morning that I can hear God speaking. I can hear him speaking throughout the universe, saying, “Be still and know that I am God. And if you don’t stop, if you don’t straighten up, if you don’t stop exploiting people, I’m going to rise up and break the backbone of your power. And your power will be no more!”

And the power of Great Britain is no more. I looked at France. I looked at Britain. And I thought about the Britain that could boast, “The sun never sets on our great Empire.” And I said now she had gone to the level that the sun hardly rises on the British Empire—because it was based on exploitation, because the God of the universe eventually takes a stand.

And I say to you this morning, my friends, rise up and know that, as you struggle for justice, you do not struggle alone, but God struggles with you. And He is working every day. Somehow I can look out, I can look out across the seas and across the universe, and cry out, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Then I think about it, because His truth is marching on, and I can sing another chorus: “Hallelujah, glory hallelujah! His truth is marching on.”

Then I can hear Isaiah again, because it has profound meaning to me, that somehow, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every hill shall be made low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

That’s the beauty of this thing: all flesh shall see it together. Not some from the heights of Park Street and others from the dungeons of slum areas. Not some from the pinnacles of the British Empire and some from the dark deserts of Africa. Not some from inordinate, superfluous wealth and others from abject, deadening poverty. Not some white and not some black, not some yellow and not some brown, but all flesh shall see it together. They shall see it from Montgomery. They shall see it from New York. They shall see it from Ghana. They shall see it from China.

For I can look out and see a great number, as John saw, marching into the great eternity, because God is working in this world, and at this hour, and at this moment. And God grants that we will get on board and start marching with God, because we got orders now to break down the bondage and the walls of colonialism, exploitation, and imperialism, to break them down to the point that no man will trample over another man, but that all men will respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. And then we will be in Canaan’s freedom land.

Moses might not get to see Canaan, but his children will see it. He even got to the mountaintop enough to see it and that assured him that it was coming. But the beauty of the thing is that there’s always a Joshua to take up his work and take the children on in. And it’s there waiting with its milk and honey, and with all of the bountiful beauty that God has in store for His children. Oh, what exceedingly marvelous things God has in store for us. Grant that we will follow Him enough to gain them. [recording interrupted]

O God, our gracious Heavenly Father, help us to see the insights that come from this new nation. Help us to follow Thee and all of Thy creative works in this world, and that somehow we will discover that we are made to live together as brothers And that it will come in this generation: the day when all men will recognize the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Amen.

Letter From Birmingham (MLK Jr)

The Full Letter:

Birmingham City Jail
April 16, 1963

My dear Fellow Clergymen,

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South — one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible we share staff, educational, and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here. Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home town, and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.

You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive; (2) Negotiation; (3) Self-purification; and (4) Direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than any city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants — such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. On the basis of these promises Rev. Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstrations. As the weeks and months unfolded we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences of the past we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification. We started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?”

We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that with the exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on the merchants for the needed changes. Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Connor was in the run-off, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the run-off.

This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We too wanted to see Mr. Connor defeated; so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask, Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, “Why didn’t you give the new administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it acts. We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr. Boutwell will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” men and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Now what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn’t segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.

Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because they did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote despite the fact that the Negro constitutes a majority of the population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically structured?

These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws. There are some instances when a law is just on its face but unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.

I hope you can see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law as the rabid segregationist would do. This would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly (not hatefully as the white mothers did in New Orleans when they were seen on television screaming “nigger, nigger, nigger”) and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.

Of course there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that, if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negroes’ great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s “Counciler” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is merely a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, where the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substance-filled positive peace, where all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn’t this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because His unique God consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2,000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of the extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security, and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable “devil.” I have tried to stand between these two forces saying that we need not follow the “do-nothingism” of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I’m grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss us as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” — those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action — and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa, and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit-ins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, “Get rid of your discontent.” But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized.

But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice — “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ — “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist — “Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.” Was not John Bunyan an extremist — “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist — “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice — or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime — the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above His environment. So, after all, maybe the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much. I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, and James Dabbs have written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and understanding terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of angry policemen who see them as “dirty nigger lovers.” They, unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me rush on to mention my other disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white Church and its leadership. Of course there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Rev. Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non-segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the Church. I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the Church. I say it as a minister of the gospel, who loves the Church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago that we would have the support of the white Church. I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of the stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.

So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.

I have travelled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at her beautiful churches with their spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlay of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over again I have found myself asking: “Who worships here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave the clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when tired, bruised, and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment, I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the Church; I love her sacred walls. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and fear of being nonconformist.

There was a time when the Church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But they went on with the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven” and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the Church as never before. If the Church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the Church has risen to outright disgust.

Maybe again I have been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Maybe I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual Church, the church within the Church, as the true ecclesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone through the highways of the South on torturous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been kicked out of their churches and lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have gone with the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. These men have been the leaven in the lump of the race. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the Gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the Church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the Church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries our foreparents labored in this country without wages; they made cotton “king”; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation — and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

I must close now. But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commend the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I don’t believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don’t believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young Negro boys; if you will observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police department.

It is true that they have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense they have been rather publicly “nonviolent.” But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong or even more so to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Maybe Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather publicly nonviolent, as Chief Pritchett was in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of flagrant injustice. T. S. Eliot has said that there is no greater treason than to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose, facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two year old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity: “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” They will be the young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting-in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, and thus carrying our whole nation back to great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written a letter this long (or should I say a book?). I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of
Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jim Crow Laws By State

This is a compilation of SOME of the information I could find on the internet. With that in mind I did not change the text or grammar much to keep the authenticity of it’s time. Despite what many believe or care to believe these were actual written laws not unwritten laws that a select few decided to follow. Enjoy and feel free to leave comments.

Arizona

1865: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriages between whites with “Negroes, mulattoes, Indians, Mongolians” were declared illegal and void. The word “Descendants” does not appear in the statute.

1901: Miscegenation [Statute] Revision of the 1865 statute which added the word “descendants” to the list of minority groups. The revised statutes also stated that marriages would be valid if legal where they were contracted, but noted that Arizona residents could not evade the law by going to another state to perform the ceremony.

1909: Education [Statute] School district trustees were given the authority to segregate black students from white children only where there were more than eight Negro pupils in the school district. The legislature passed the law over a veto by the governor.

1911-1962: Segregation, miscegenation, voting [Statute] Passed six segregation laws: four against miscegenation and two school segregation statutes, and a voting rights statute that required electors to pass a literacy test. The state’s miscegenation laws prohibited blacks as well as Indians and Asians from marrying whites, and were not repealed until 1962.

1927: Education [Statute] In areas with 25 or more black high school students, an election would be called to determine if these pupils should be segregated in separate but equal facilities.

1928: Miscegenation [State Code] Forbid marriages between persons of the Caucasian, Asian and Malay races.

1956: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriage of person of “Caucasian blood with Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu void.” Native Americans were originally included in an earlier statute, but were deleted by a 1942 amendment.

Arkansas

1866: Education
No African American or racially mixed citizen would be allowed to attend any public education building aside from the one reserved for “colored persons.”

1866: Miscegenation
Repeals or amendments of common laws concerning interracial marriages between whites and African Americans or racially mixed citizens would be prohibited.

1873: Barred Segregation of Public Carriers and Accommodations
It was unlawful for railroads, steamboats, stage coaches, or other public carriers to refuse to provide same accommodations for those who are paying the same fare, however differing in race. This law also applied to any public housing, entertainment, or restaurants.

1873: Barred School Segregation
It was considered unlawful to refuse to provide similar or equal accommodations in an educational system of any age rank.

1884: Miscegenation
All marriages of white persons with African Americans or racially mixed citizens were declared illegal.

1891: Railroads
Railroad companies and their employees had the power to assign passengers to what they considered the proper seat or proper waiting room for each race. The penalties for the person being assigned to not follow directions are that they would be fined between $10 and $200. Employees who decided not to assign a passenger to the correct waiting room or seat were to be fined $25. Railway companies not following the law would be fined between $100 and $500.

1893: Railroads
All railroad companies are required to provide separate but equal accommodations to people of any race. In addition to providing separate passenger cars for people of a different race, the companies were also required to create separate waiting rooms for people of a differing race at all passenger stations in the state.

1897: Education
It was required that there be separate colleges established for teachers for each race.

1903: Streetcars
All streetcar companies were forced to separate white and black passengers in cars. Failure for the passengers or companies to do so would result in these penalties: Passengers who would not take their assigned seats would be charged with a misdemeanor and fined $25. Companies that failed to enforce the law and assign the passengers seats were also found guilty of a misdemeanor and fined $25.

1921: Miscegenation
This law prohibited cohabitation between whites and African Americans and defines the term “African American” as any person who has any African American blood in his or her veins.

1935: Public accommodations
All race tracks and sports establishments were required to be segregated between whites and any person of a differing race.

1947: Public Accommodation
A series of common laws were passed that made segregation at polling places, on railroad cars, streetcars, buses, and within prisons mandatory.

1947: Public accommodation
This required separate washrooms for whites and workers of a differing race in all mines.

1947: Voting rights
This law required voters to pay poll tax when voting in any election.

1947: Miscegenation
This made sexual relations and/or marriage between whites and blacks illegal. The penalty for breaking this law once was a fine of $20 to $100. A second offense resulted in a $100 minimum fine and up to 12 months of imprisonment. Three or more offenses resulted in one to three years of imprisonment.

1947: Health Care
There were to be separate tuberculosis hospitals for African Americans.

1947: Education
Segregation of races in public schools was required.

1957: Education
No children were required to enroll into a racially segregated school.

1957: Public Carrier
Racial segregation on all public carriers (buses, streetcars, etc.) was required by law.

1958: Education
Governor may close schools by polling with a ballot reading: “In support of racial integration of all schools that are a part of the school district,” or “Not in support of racial integration of all schools that are a part of the school district.”

1959: Public Carriers
All interstate buses were required to have assigned segregated seating to all passengers according to race.^[4]

California

In this state, concern about Asian immigration produced more legislation against Chinese immigrants than against African Americans. From 1879 to 1926, California’s constitution stated that “no native of China” shall ever exercise the privileges of an elector in the state.” Similar provisions appeared in the constitutions of Oregon and Idaho.

1866-1947: Segregation, voting [Statute] Enacted 17 Jim Crow laws between 1866 and 1947 in the areas of miscegenation (6) and education (2), employment (1) and a residential ordinance passed by the city of San Francisco that required all Chinese inhabitants to live in one area of the city. Similarly, a miscegenation law passed in 1901 broadened an 1850 law, adding that it was unlawful for white persons to marry “Mongolians.”

1870: Education [Statute] African and Indian children must attend separate schools. A separate school would be established upon the written request by the parents of ten such children. “A less number may be provided for in separate schools in any other manner.”

1872: Alcohol sales [Statute] Prohibited the sale of liquor to Indians. The act remained legal until its repeal in 1920.

1879: Voter rights [Constitution] “No native of China” would ever have the right to vote in the state of California. Repealed in 1926.

1879: Employment [Constitution] Prohibited public bodies from employing Chinese and called upon the legislature to protect “the state…from the burdens and evils arising from” their presence. A statewide anti-Chinese referendum was passed by 99.4 percent of voters in 1879.

1880: Miscegenation [Statute] Made it illegal for white persons to marry a “Negro, mulatto, or Mongolian.”

1890: Residential [City Ordinance] The city of San Francisco ordered all Chinese inhabitants to move into a certain area of the city within six months or face imprisonment. The Bingham Ordinance was later found to be unconstitutional by a federal court.

1891: Residential [Statute] Required all Chinese to carry with them at all times a “certificate of residence.” Without it, a Chinese immigrant could be arrested and jailed.

1894: Voter rights [Constitution] Any person who could not read the Constitution in English or write his name would be disfranchised. An advisory referendum indicated that nearly 80 percent of voters supported an educational requirement.

1901: Miscegenation [Statute] The 1850 law prohibiting marriage between white persons and Negroes or mulattoes was amended, adding “Mongolian.”

1909: Miscegenation [Statute] Persons of Japanese descent were added to the list of undesirable marriage partners of white Californians as noted in the earlier 1880 statute.

1913: Property [Statute] Known as the “Alien Land Laws,” Asian immigrants were prohibited from owning or leasing property. The California Supreme Court struck down the Alien Land Laws in 1952.

1931: Miscegenation [State Code] Prohibited marriages between persons of the Caucasian and Asian races.

1933: Miscegenation [Statute] Broadened earlier miscegenation statute to also prohibit marriages between whites and Malays.

1945: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited marriage between whites and “Negroes, mulattos, Mongolians and Malays.”

1947: Miscegenation [Statute] Subjected U.S. servicemen and Japanese women who wanted to marry to rigorous background checks. Barred the marriage of Japanese women to white servicemen if they were employed in undesirable occupations.

Colorado

1864: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriage between Negroes and mulattoes, and white persons “absolutely void.” Penalty: Fine between $50 and $500, or imprisonment between three months and two years, or both.

1864-1908: [Statute] Passed three Jim Crow laws between 1864 and 1908, all concerning miscegenation. School segregation was barred in 1876, followed by ending segregation of public facilities in 1885. Four laws protecting civil liberties were passed between 1930 and 1957, when the anti-miscegenation statute was repealed.

1908: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriage between Negroes and mulattoes, and whites prohibited. Penalties: Punishable by imprisonment from three months to two years, or a fine of between $50 to $500, or both. Performing a marriage ceremony punishable by a fine of $50 to $500, or three months to two years’ imprisonment, or both.

1930: Miscegenation [Statute] Miscegenation declared a misdemeanor.

Connecticut

1879: Military [Statute] Authorized state to organize four independent companies of infantry of “colored men”. Companies were to receive same pay as other companies, including one company parade in the Spring and one in September.

1908: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited intermarriage between white persons and those persons having one-eighth or more Negro blood.

1925: Antidefamation [Statute] Prohibited motion picture theaters from showing any film which ridiculed the Negro race.

1933: Miscegenation [Statute] Miscegenation declared a felony.

1935: Education [Statute] Upheld school segregation as originally authorized by statute of 1869.

Florida

• “All marriages between a white person and a Negro, or between a white person and a person of Negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited.”
• “Any Negro man and white woman, or any white man and Negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12) months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred ($500.00) dollars.”
• “The schools for white children and the schools for Negro children shall be conducted separately.”

Georgia

• “All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license.”
• “It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race.”

Idaho

Passed four laws prohibiting miscegenation and a statute that prevented Native Americans who had not severed their tribal relations from voting ^[5] An 1889 constitutional amendment barred segregation in Idaho schools. The miscegenation statute was repealed in 1959.

1867: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited marriage between white persons and Negroes or mulattoes.

1887: Miscegenation [Statute] A restatement of the law passed in 1867.

1889: Voter rights [Constitution] “Indians not taxed, who have not severed their tribal relations and adopted the habits of civilization” were excluded from voting.

1908: Miscegenation [Statute] Intermarriage prohibited between Negroes and white persons. A marriage valid where consummated outside the state would be valid in Idaho.

1932: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited marriages between persons of the Caucasian and Asian races.

Illinois

1927: Housing [Municipal Code]

• Chicago adopted racially restrictive housing covenants beginning in 1927.^[6] In 1948, the United States Supreme Court ruled that enforcement of racial restrictive covenants was unconstitutional.

1953: Housing In August 1953, the first black family moved into Trumbull Park, a formerly all-white project of the Chicago Housing Authority.

Indiana

Enacted seven Jim Crow laws in the areas of education and miscegenation between 1869 and 1952^[7] Persons who violated the miscegenation law could be imprisoned between one and ten years. The state barred school segregation in 1877, followed by a law giving equal access to public facilities in 1885.

1869: Education [Statute] Separate schools to be provided for black children. If not a sufficient number of students to organize a separate school, trustees were to find other means of educating black children.

1905: Miscegenation [Statute] Miscegenation prohibited.

1952: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriage between whites and Negroes void.

1955: Adoption [Statute] Required that due regard be given to race on adoption petitions.

Kansas

1905: Education [Statute] Schools in Kansas City, Kansas, may organize and maintain separate schools for education of white and colored children, including high schools; “but no discrimination on account of color shall be made in high schools, except as provided herein.” ^[8]

Kentucky

1866: Miscegenation
This law prohibited whites from marrying any African American who is more than 12% African American (meaning having a blood relation up to the third generation to an African American). Penalty of not following this law was a felony that was punishable by imprisonment in the state penitentiary up to five years.

1866: Education
This gave all school district trustees the right to create separate schools for African American children.

1873: Education
It was unlawful for a black child to attend a white school, and vice versa. No separate colored school was allowed to be located within one mile of a separate white school. This law excluded schools in cities and towns but did not allow the schools in those areas within six hundred feet of the other.

1890: Railroads
All railway companies were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and colored passengers. Penalty to do so resulted in the passengers or conductors receiving a fine of $25 or imprisonment for 20 days. Any officers and directors of railway companies that fail to follow this law were found guilty of a misdemeanor and could be fined between $100 and $500. This law excluded streetcars.

1892: Railroads
Railroads were to provide separate coaches for white and colored passengers. Signs stating the race for each car must be posted. Penalty to do so was railway companies that failed could be fined from between $500 to $1,500. Any conductors who failed to enforce the law were to be fined from $50 to $100.

1893: Miscegenation
Any marriage between a white person and an African American or mixed citizen was prohibited.

1894: Railroads
Railroad stations must provide separate but equal waiting rooms for the white and colored passengers. A sign posting what race was in what room was to be seeable by everyone. Penalty to do so would end in a fine $25 or imprisoned up to 30 days. Any agents failing to enforce the law were found guilty of misdemeanor that was punishable by a fine of $25 to $50.

1894: Miscegenation
Any marriage between a person of color and a white person was prohibited.

1902: Streetcars
All streetcars must provide separate but equal accommodations to a passenger of any race. The failure to do so ended with such penalties as passengers or conductors could receive a fine of $25 or imprisonment up to 30 days. Any railway company that refused to follow could receive a fine of $100 or imprisonment between two and six months.

1904: Education
It was unlawful to maintain or operate any college, school, or institution where persons of the white and African American races are both allowed to attend. This law did not prohibit private schools or colleges from maintaining a segregated school in a different location for each race no less than 25 miles. The penalty for not following this law resulted in any violators receiving a $1,000 fine.

1908: Public Accommodation
It was unlawful for whites and blacks to purchase and consume alcohol on the same location. Penalty for this act was a misdemeanor punishable by a fine from $50 to $500 or an imprisonment in the parish prison or jail up to two years.

1908: Miscegenation
Cohabitation of a white person and an African American without legal marriage is a felony. Penalty for committing such an act resulted in imprisonment from one month to one year, with or without hard labor.

1909: Health Care
An institution for the education of colored deaf mutes was to be established. But segregation in this school was to still be enforced.

1912: Residential
Building permits for building Negro houses in white communities, or any portion of a community inhabited principally by white people, and vice versa prohibited. Penalty: violators fined from $50 to $2,000, “and the municipality shall have the right to cause said building to be removed and destroyed.”

1914: Public Accommodation
All circuses, shows and tent exhibitions were required to provide two ticket offices with individual ticket sellers and two entrances to the performance for each race.

1915: Education
No white children were allowed to attend any graded common school for colored children and vice versa.

1918: Prisons
This law allowed the segregation of races in all municipal, parish, and state prisons.

1921: Education
This law called for separate public schools for the education of white and black children between the ages of six and eighteen.

1921: Housing
This prohibited African American and white families from living in the same home.

1928: Education
This gave separate textbooks for white and African American school children.

1928: Public Carrier
Separate but equal accommodations were required to be provided on all forms of public transportation.

1932: Residential
No person or businesses were allowed to rent an apartment in an apartment complex or other housing buildings to a person who differs in race from the other occupants.

1932: Miscegenation
All interracial marriages were outlawed. Invalidated interracial marriages if the parties went to another legal power where such marriages were legal. Marriages between African Americans and Native Americans were also prohibited.

1933: Public Accommodations
Establishment of segregated libraries for different races was authorized.

1934: Education
All schools were required to be racially segregated.

1942: Health Care
There were to be separate but equal accommodations for whites and African Americans provided in nursing homes.

1944: Miscegenation
Any marriage between a white person and an African American or racially mixed citizen was prohibited. Penalty to follow this law was a fine of $500 to $5,000. If the people continued to be interracially married the result would be imprisonment in prison from three to twelve months.

1944: Railroads
Separate coaches for white and African American passengers were required.

1948: Barred School Segregation
This law did not allow African American physicians and nurses to take postgraduate courses in public hospitals and Louisville.

1950: Barred School Segregation
African Americans were allowed to attend colleges and universities under two conditions. These conditions are that if comparable courses were not available at Kentucky’s African American College in Frankfort, KY and the school’s governing body had to approve of this act.

1951: Miscegenation
Any intimate relation between whites and African Americans was illegal. Failure to follow this law ended in fines up to $1,000, up to five years in prison, or both.

1951: Adoption
Interracial adoptions were banned.

1952: Miscegenation
Interracial marriages were prohibited. Penalty of failing to follow this law was Up to $1,000 and/or five years in prison.

1953: Health Care
It was required to establish separate tuberculosis hospitals for each race. This law was then repealed in 1954.

1956: Public Carriers
This law revised older laws that required common carriers to provide separate waiting rooms for white intrastate passengers and for African American intrastate passengers.

1956: Employment
Provided that all persons, firms, or corporations create separate bathroom facilities for members of the white and African American races employed by them or allowed to come into the business. In addition, separate rooms to eat in as well as separate eating and drinking utensils were required to be provided for members of the white and African American races. Not following this law gave to offender a misdemeanor, a fine of $100 to $1,000, or 60 days to one year in prison.

1956: Recreation
All businesses were prohibited from permitting any dancing, social functions, entertainments, athletic training, games, sports or contests on their premises in which the participants are members of the white and African American races.

1956: Public Accommodations
All public parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, etc. were required to be segregated.

1956: Public Carrier
All forms of public transportation were to be segregated.

1957: Education
All public schools were required to be racially segregated.

1957: Education
There were to be no state funds to non-segregated schools.

1960: Voting Rights
The races of all candidates were to be written on the ballots.^[9]

Louisiana

• “Any person who shall rent any part of any such building to a Negro person or a Negro family when such building is already in whole or in part in occupancy by a white person or white family, or vice versa when the building is in occupancy by a Negro person or Negro family, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

Maine

1795 law prohibiting intermarriage between whites and blacks repealed.

1893: Voter rights [Constitution] Required the elector to be able to read the Constitution in English and write his name.

1893: Voting [State Code] A Constitutional amendment was passed in 1893 requiring electors to be able to read the Constitution in English and write his name.

Maryland

• “All railroad companies and corporations, and all persons running or operating cars or coaches by steam on any railroad line or track in the State of Maryland, for the transportation of passengers, are hereby required to provide separate cars or coaches for the travel and transportation of the white and colored passengers.”

Mississippi

• “Any person…who shall be guilty of printing, publishing or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter urging or presenting for public acceptance or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and Negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to fine not exceeding five thousand (5,000.00) dollars or imprisonment not exceeding six (6) months or both.”

Missouri

• “Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school.”

Montana

Four Jim Crow laws were enacted in Montana between 1871 and 1921. The school segregation act was repealed in 1895. A 1909 miscegenation law prohibited marriage between Caucasians and blacks as well as Chinese and Japanese.

1871: Education [Statute] Children of African descent would be provided separate schools.

1897: Voting rights [Statute] Excluded “any person living on an Indian or military reservation” from residency, unless that person had acquired a residence in a county of the state and is in the employment of the government while living on a reservation. Without residency, a person could not vote.

1897: Residency [Statute] An 1897 statute excluded “any person living on an Indian or military reservation” from residency, unless that person had acquired a residence in a county of MT and is in the employ of the government while living on a reservation.”

1909: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited intermarriage between whites and Negroes, Chinese and Japanese. Penalty: Misdemeanor, carrying a fine of $500 or imprisonment of one month, or both.

1921: Miscegenation [State Code] Miscegenation prohibited. Nullified interracial marriages if parties went to another jurisdiction where legal. Also prohibited marriages between persons of the Caucasian and Asian races.

Nebraska

1865: Miscegenation [Statute] Declared marriage between whites and a Negro or mulatto as illegal. Penalty: Misdemeanor, with a fine up to $100, or imprisonment in the county jail up to six months, or both.

1911: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriages between a white and colored person declared illegal. Also noted that marriages between whites and those persons with one-quarter or more Negro blood were void.

1929: Miscegenation [Statute] Forbid marriages between persons of the Caucasian race and those persons with one eighth or more Asian blood.

1943: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited marriage of whites with anyone with one-eighth or more Negro, Japanese or Chinese blood.

Nevada’s laws… Enacted four miscegenation laws and a school segregation statute between 1865 and 1957. The education statute declared that blacks, Asians and Indians were prohibited from attending public schools, and that a separate school would be established for them if “deemed advisable.” The state’s miscegenation law offered an extensive list of inappropriate marriage candidates by race and color for Caucasians, including blacks, “Malay or brown race, Mongolian or yellow race, or Indian or red race.” The miscegenation statute was repealed in 1959.

1865: Education [Statute] Negroes, Asians, and Indians prohibited from attending public schools. The Board of Trustees of any district could establish a separate school for educating Negroes, Asians, and Indians, if deemed advisable.

1912: Miscegenation [Statute] Unlawful for a white person to intermarry with any person of “Ethiopian or black race, Malay or brown race, Mongolian or yellow race, or Indian or red race, within the State.” Penalty: Misdemeanor for participants and the minister who performs such a ceremony. White persons found to be living with the above mentioned groups would be fined between $100 and $500, or confined in the county jail from six months to one year, or both.

1929: Miscegenaion [Statute] Miscegenation declared a misdemeanor. Also forbid marriages between persons of the Caucasian, Asian and Malay races.

1955: Miscegenation [Statute] Miscegenation illegal. Penalty: $500 to $1,000 and/or six months to one year imprisonment.

1957: Miscegenation [Statute] Gross misdemeanor for white to marry person of black, brown, or yellow race.

New Mexico

• “Separate rooms [shall] be provided for the teaching of pupils of African descent, and [when] said rooms are so provided, such pupils may not be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent.”

North Carolina

• “Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.”
• “The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals.”

North Dakota

The state passed three Jim Crow laws. A 1943 statute barring miscegenation was repealed in 1955. An 1899 Constitutional amendment gave the legislature authority to implement educational qualificaitons for electors.

1933: Education [Statute] Law stated that “it would not be expeident to have the Indian children mingle with the white children in our educational institutions by reason of the vastly different temperament and mode of living and other differences and difficulties of the two races.

1943: Miscegenation [State Code] Cohabitation between blacks and whites prohibited. Penalty: 30 days to one year imprisonment, or $100 to $500 fine.

Ohio

Enacted a miscegenation statute in 1877 and a school segregation law in 1878. Segregation of public facilities was barred in 1884, and the earlier miscegenation and school segregation laws were overturned in 1887. However, in 1953, the state enacted a law requiring that race be considered in adoption decisions.

1877: Miscegenation [Statute] Unlawful for a person of “pure white blood, who intermarries, or has illicit carnal intercourse, with any Negro or person having a distinct and visible admixture of African blood.” Penalty: Fined up to $100, or imprisoned up to three months, or both. Any person who knowingly officiates such a marriage charged with misdemeanor and fined up to $100 or imprisoned in three months, or both.

1878: Education [Statute] School districts given discretion to organize separate schools for colored children if “in their judgment it may be for the advantage of the district to do so.”

1953: Adoption [Statute] Race to be taken into account on adoption petitions.

Buses were separated e.g.: One for white and one for Coloured

Oklahoma

1903: Mining-bath facilities [Statute] “The baths and lockers for the Negroes shall be separate from the white race, but may be in the same building.” (Martin Luther King, Jr. NHS)

1904: Education-Teaching [Statute] “Any instructor who shall teach in any school, college or institution where members of the white and colored race are received and enrolled as pupils for instruction shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined in any sum not less than ten dollars nor more than fifty dollars for each offense.” (Martin Luther King, Jr. NHS)

1907: Voting [Constitution] In 1907, an amendment passed requiring electors to read and write any section of the state constitution. Exempted were those who were enfranchised on Jan. 1, 1866, and lineal descendants of such persons. (Declared unconstitutional in 1915; however, the provision for literacy was upheld.) NOTE: The Amendment allowed Persons of Indian descent to vote.

1907: Funerals [Statute] Blacks were not allowed to use the same hearse as whites.

1908: Voting [State Code] In 1907, inmates of institutions were excluded from voting. “Any person kept in a poorhouse at public expense, except federal, Confederate, and Spanish-American ex-soldiers or sailors.”

1928: Recreation—Fishing, Boating, and Bathing [Statute] “The [Conservation] Commission shall have the right to make segregation of the white and colored races as to the exercise of rights of fishing, boating and bathing.” (Martin Luther King, Jr. NHS)

1937: Telephone Booths [Statute] “The Corporation Commission is hereby vested with power and authority to require telephone companies…to maintain separate booths for white and colored patrons when there is a demand for such separate booths. That the Corporation Commission shall determine the necessity for said separate booths only upon complaint of the people in the town and vicinity to be served after due hearing as now provided by law in other complaints filed with the Corporation Commission.” (Martin Luther King, Jr. NHS)

Oregon

Enacted two miscegenation laws in 1867 and 1930 prohibiting intermarriage between whites and blacks, Chinese, Kanakas or any person having more than one half Indian blood. A 1953 statute required that adoption petitions note the race of prospective adopting parents. A 1924 statute required electors to read the Constitution in English.

1867: Miscegenation [Statute] Unlawful for any white person to intermarry with any “Negro, Chinese, or any person having one-quarter or more Negro, Chinese or kanaka blood, or any person having more than one-half Indian blood.” Penalty: Imprisonment in the penitentiary or the county jail for between three months and one year. Those who licensed or performed such a ceremony could be jailed for three months to one year, or fined between $100 and $1,000.

1924: Voting rights [State Code] Required electors to read the Constitution in English and write their name.

1924: Voting [Statute] Statute and constitutional amendment passed in 1924 required electors to read the constitution in English and write their name.

1930: Miscegenation [State Code] Miscegenation declared a felony. Also forbid marriages between persons of the Caucasian race and those persons with one fourth or more Chinese or Kanaka blood.

1953: Adoption [Statute] Adoption petition must state race or color of adopting parents.

Pennsylvania

1869: Education [Statute] Black children prohibited from attending Pittsburgh schools.

1956: Adoption [Statute] Petition must state race or color of adopting parents.

Rhode Island

1872: Miscegenation [State Code] Prohibited intermarriage. Penalty: $1,000 fine, or up to six months’ imprisonment.

1960: Voting [Statute] Not until 1928 did Rhode Island permit men and women who did not own property to vote in city elections.

South Carolina

• “No persons, firms, or corporations, who or which furnish meals to passengers at station restaurants or station eating houses, in times limited by common carriers of said passengers, shall furnish said meals to white and colored passengers in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter.”
• “It shall be unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in this State, having the control or custody of any white child, by right ofguardianship, natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or surrender such white child permanently into the custody, control, maintenance, or support, of a negro.”

South Dakota

Enacted three miscegenation laws between 1809 and 1913, and a 1952 statute that required adoption petitions to state the race of both the petitioner and child. A 1913 miscegenation law broadened the list of races unacceptable as marriage partners for whites to include persons belonging to the “African, Korean, Malayan, or Mongolian race.” This law reflected the nation’s growing tension over the massive waves of immigrants entering the country during the early twentieth century. The miscegenation law was repealed in 1957.

1909: Miscegenation [Statute] Intermarriage or illicit cohabitation forbidden between blacks and whites. Penalty: Felony, punishable by a fine up to $1,000, or by imprisonment up to ten years, or both.

1913: Miscegenation [Statute] Law expanded to prohibit marriage between whites and persons belonging to the “African, Corean, [Korean] Malayan, or Mongolian race.” Penalty: Felony, punishable by a fine up to $1,000, or by imprisonment in state prison up to ten years, or both.

1929: Miscegenation [Statute] Miscegenation declared a felony. Also forbid marriages between persons of the Caucasian, Asian and Malay races.

1952: Adoption [State Code] Adoption petitions must state race of petitioner and child.

Texas

Twenty-seven Jim Crow laws were passed in Texas from 1866 to 1958. In addition to segregation involving blacks, persons of Mexican descent were also subject to segregation laws. Some examples include:

• 1950: Separate facilities required for white and black citizens in state parks
• 1953: Public carriers to be segregated
• 1958: No child compelled to attend schools that are racially mixed. No desegregation unless approved by election. Governor may close schools where troops used on federal authority.

Utah

Four miscegenation laws were passed in Utah between 1888 and 1953, prohibiting intermarriage between whites and those of African or Asian descent. School segregation was barred in 1895. The state’s miscegenation law was repealed in 1963.

1888: Miscegenation [Statute] Intermarriage prohibited between a Negro and a white person, and between a “Mongolian” and a white person.

1907: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriage laws amended, with earlier intermarriage provision remaining the same.

1933: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited marriages between persons of the Caucasian and Asian races.

1953: Miscegenation [State Code] Marriage between “white and Negro, Malayan, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon void.”

Virginia

• “Every person… operating… any public hall, theater, opera house, motion picture show or any place of public entertainment or public assemblage which is attended by both white and colored persons, shall separate the white race and the colored race and shall set apart and designate… certain seats therein to be occupied by white persons and a portion thereof, or certain seats therein, to be occupied by colored persons.”
• “The conductors or managers on all such railroads shall have power, and are hereby required, to assign to each white or colored passenger his or her respective car, coach or compartment. If the passenger fails to disclose his race, the conductor and managers, acting in good faith, shall be the sole judges of his race.”

Washington

Enacted a miscegenation statute in 1866 forbidding marriage between whites and Negroes or Indians. This law was repealed in 1887.

Six civil rights laws barring segregation were passed between 1890 and 1956.

1866: Miscegenation [Statute] Prohibited marriage between white persons and Negroes, Indians, or a person of half or more Negro or Indian blood.

1887: Barred anti-miscegenation [Statute] Repealed anti-miscegenation law.

1896: Voting rights [Constitution] “Indians not taxed shall never be allowed the elective franchise.”

1896: Voting [Constitution] A constitutional amendment passed in 1896 requiring electors to read and speak English. In 1912 a statute was passed noting, “If naturalized, must furnish satisfactory evidence that he is capable of reading and speaking the English language so as to comprehend the meaning of ordinary English prose.”

1920: Restrictive Housing Covenants [Municipal Code] Beginning in the 1920s, Seattle realtors frequently discriminated against minorities. In November 1927 the Capitol Hill development used a covenant that read: “The parties…agree each with the others that no part of the lands owned by them shall ever be used or occupied by or sold, conveyed, leased, rented or given to Negroes or any person of Negro blood.” An April 1928 covenant for the Broadmoor subdivision read: “No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic race…”

Until 1950, Article 34 of the Code of Ethics for realtors in Seattle included the following clause: “A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.” Voluntary agreements between realtors and homeowners continued well into the 1960s.

In 1964, Seattle voters rejected a referendum that prohibited housing discrimination. In April 1968, the city council passed an open housing ordinance, making restrictive covenants illegal.

West Virginia

“White and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school.” This point-blank requirement for segregated schools was proclaimed in West Virginia’s State Constitution as Article XII Section 8. In a remarkable show of the persistence of such attitudes extending to the highest levels of state government, numerous attempts to remove this from the constitution were defeated in the state legislature until it was finally repealed in November 1994.

Wyoming

“All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void.”

1887: Education [Statute] Separate schools could be provided for colored children when there were fifteen or more colored children within any school district.

1889: Voting rights [Constitution] Required electors to read the state Constitution.

1908: Intermarriage [Statute] All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void. (Martin Luther King, Jr. NHS)

1931: Education [Statute] Schools to be segregated only when fifteen or more colored children were in a district.

1931: Miscegenation [Statute] Declared miscegenation a misdemeanor. Also prohibited marriages between persons of the Caucasian, Asian and Malay races.

1945: Miscegenation [Statute] Marriage of whites to Negroes, mulattoes, Mongolians, Malayans void. Penalty: $100 to $1,000 and/or one to five years imprisonment.

Mexican-Arizona War on Education

 Arizona HB2281s

15-111. Declaration of policy

THE LEGISLATURE FINDS AND DECLARES THAT PUBLIC SCHOOL PUPILS SHOULD BE TAUGHT TO TREAT AND VALUE EACH OTHER AS INDIVIDUALS AND NOT BE TAUGHT TO RESENT OR HATE OTHER RACES OR CLASSES OF PEOPLE.

15-112. Prohibited courses and classes; enforcement

A. A SCHOOL DISTRICT OR CHARTER SCHOOL IN THIS STATE SHALL NOT INCLUDE IN ITS PROGRAM OF INSTRUCTION ANY COURSES OR CLASSES THAT INCLUDE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. 1.       PROMOTE THE OVERTHROW OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
2. 2.      PROMOTE RESENTMENT TOWARD A RACE OR CLASS OF PEOPLE.
3. 3.      ARE DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR PUPILS OF A PARTICULAR ETHNIC GROUP.
4. 4.      ADVOCATE ETHNIC SOLIDARITY INSTEAD OF THE TREATMENT OF PUPILS AS INDIVIDUALS.

The other amended portions relate more to actions the State can take to resolve the matter, which add up to roughly 95% of the changes.

Here are a few questions that I have about this bill and some of the proceeding drama about it:

1. If pupils are to be treated as individuals why are they classified by racial status?
2. Learning Mexican American history is now different than European History?
3. Would M.O.C.H.A. and similar ethnic clubs or associations also be targeted?
4. Why is this bill structured in a way that the disciplinary actions are stressed, explained and takes up a far greater portion than the actual subject matter?
5. Who pays for all of the different actions that have been outlined by the bill, knowing that most of the State education budget comes from Federal monies?

C. THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SHALL PAY FOR ALL EXPENSES OF A HEARING CONDUCTED PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION.

E. THIS SECTION SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO RESTRICT OR PROHIBIT:

1. 1.      COURSES OR CLASSES FOR NATIVE AMERICAN PUPILS THAT ARE REQUIRED TO COMPLY WITH FEDERAL LAW.
2. 2.      THE GROUPING OF PUPILS ACCORDING TO ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE, INCLUDING CAPABILITY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, THAT MAY RESULT IN A DISPARATE IMPACT BY ETHNICITY
3. 3.      COURSES OR CLASSES THAT INCLUDE THE HISTORY OF ANY ETHNIC GROUP AND THAT ARE OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, UNLESS THE COURSE OR CLASS VIOLATES SUBSECTION A.
4. 4.      COURSES OR CLASSES THAT INCLUDE THE DISCUSSION OF CONTROVERSIAL ASPECTS OF HISTORY.

 F. NOTHING IN THIS SECTION SHALL BE CONSTRUED TO RESTRICT OR PROHIBIT THE INSTRUCTION OF THE HOLOCAUST, ANY OTHER INSTANCE OF GENOCIDE, OR THE HISTORICAL OPPRESSION OF A PARTICULAR GROUP OF PEOPLE BASED ON ETHNICITY, RACE, OR CLASS.

This is one of the cleverest pieces of legislation that I have read this far. One reason I say this is how complex, almost confusing, it is written. One line says that the courses or classes will prohibited then it says that it would not. Part A. is not explained with examples of what is acceptable in terms of accountability. Subjectivity will always create opportunity for interpretation and the leisure of the governing bodies. After finding out Tom Horne the Attorney General, who is supposed to not be partial, wrote the bill it made more sense. He is Harvard Law trained both under and post graduate, the former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and former Arizona State House of Representatives member, who has filed bankruptcy and found guilty of breaking trading laws by the SEC, who has consequently given him a life time ban on trading. One thing is certain from his past experiences is he knows the constitutional law and money.

Now let’s look at some things closely at section E. THIS SECTION SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO RESTRICT OR PROHIBIT

THE GROUPING OF PUPILS ACCORDING TO ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE, INCLUDING CAPABILITY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE THAT MAY RESULT IN A DISPARATE IMPACT BY ETHNICITY.

In United States employment law, the doctrine of “disparate impact” holds that employment practices may be considered discriminatory and illegal if they have a disproportionate “adverse impact” on members of a minority group. Under the doctrine, a violation of Title VII of the1964 Civil Rights Act may be proven by showing that an employment practice or policy has a disproportionately adverse effect on members of the protected class as compared with non-members of the protected class. According to the EEO, examples of practices that may be subject to a “disparate impact” challenge include written tests, height and weight requirements, educational requirements, and subjective procedures, such as interviews. Blatantly they have established discriminatory practices as being okay even if it will create harm to the students ETHNICLY.

COURSES OR CLASSES THAT INCLUDE THE DISCUSSION OF CONTROVERSIAL ASPECTS OF HISTORY.

Controversial aspects of history can include the Vietnam War, Jim Crow, Willie Lynch, Bay of Pigs, Iran- Contra, Eugenics, ethnic profiling, conflicts in incarceration rates, Mexican migratory workers, Ethnic Internment Camps during World Wars 1 and 2 and other US atrocities. Arizona is basically proposing to rewrite history books to reflect what they deem as safe. By definition this is PROPAGANDA and CENSORSHIP in an attempt to strip Minorities of their native culture.

Section F is a pure contradiction of E seeing that genocide and historical oppression are clearly very controversial topics in this country. What it does do is include a very outspoken ethnic group in this country that holds power in both the Conservative and Liberal world, Jews.

What is appalling is that they don’t mind segregating students based on ethnicity as long as the reason is involuntary and harmful. This conclusion is based on the strategic choice of wording (disparate impact) used. Just like any other law or bill, the devil is in the details, it is not what they say it’s intended to do, as much as what can potentially be done. Without any stipulations or oversight this is and will always be fair game to interpretation by its drafters. Evident by the ruling against Tucson Unified School District, where no explanations were given other than John Huppenthal, current Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, found them in violation of this law. Now new old books have been boxed and new ones are being ordered to reflect what the district deems “more suitable.” I must note that it has been reported that the initial (120 page pdf) independent study by Cambium Learning Inc. ($170,000) showed no violations but was later overruled by Huppenthal and Horne with no explanation or evidence.

Are we moving backwards in time, everyday I’m seeing anti ethnicity laws and sentiment been passed on and brandished? This law in particular reminds me of the Jim Crow and Willie Lynch rhetoric that had been abolished during the Civil Rights Movement, at least we had hoped so.