In The Heat Of The Night

In the heat of the night… I’ve got trouble wall to wall… Oh yes I have
I repeat in the night… Must be an ending to us all… Oh Lord, it won’t be long
Yes, just you be strong…. And it’ll be alright
In the heat of the night…

I titled this article “In The Heat Of The Night,” to use as a segue to my main topic about segregation and integration and because my cousin and I were talking about it and I couldn’t get the tune out of my head. The story is about a black police detective who went to “Deep” MIssissippi to help solve a murder of a wealthy white industrialist. So there’s really two Mississippi’s… you have your plain old Mississippi and then there is “Deep” MIssissippi… where they drink bottled Cokes in front of the General Store and tell stories about Grandpa Red Dirt Clevis who single handedly made two of them apologize for looking at him in the eyeball while his back was turned..
Blackman: Suh I didn’t know you had eyeballs in the back of yo head..
Red Dirt: Cause it ain’t none of yo business where I keep my eyeballs… now apologize!!
Yep they were something else back in those days.. Even so something happen in that movie that had never been seen before, and maybe just a few times since. So a few weeks back everyone was talking about Will Smith and how he slapped Chris Rock across the lips, but before that there was Virgil Tibbs, Tibbs had smacked the Procter and Gamble of Brylcreem USA out of some old rich white racist on the silver screen not even a year before the Civil Rights Act Of 1968 was signed. After airing… racist from all over America vowed on they confederate mama’s… before the sun crossed the sky again, somebody was gonna be eating their next chicken wing and biscuit in the upper room!!!

When You Don’t Know

Back when I was a kid in the second grade, I lived on an Army base in Virginia. It was the early sixties and segregation was still legal in the United States. It wasn’t until President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that segregation became illegal in the states. So to make sure we are all on the same page, we have read many articles that might make you believe that the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board Of Education was the legal end of segregation, but it was not. That case ended separate but equal, it integrated us. We were now free to go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants and shop at the same stores… but those facilities were still segregated. You can shop here but you have to come in the side door and shop in the back.. or this is your classroom, the white students are across the hall, but “your” teacher will be here in a minute.. and my personal favorite… yeah you can legally eat in here now… but the question is .. do you wanna..? “Hey Sue Ann, can you pour this boy a cup of fried chicken.. ” Anywho so yeah.. legal segregation ended in 1964. So as I said earlier, I lived on an Army base and fortunately for us segregation had been banned in the armed forces since 1948. There were two Black kids in my class and an Asian girl named Mary… my first love.. Her parents were not racist and I had eaten dinner over her house many times, after which we would go outside and play together. I was heartbroken when they moved.. and my next love would be many years away. Soon after I moved to the based with my family, I got a procedure that supposed to be done when you are a baby… and no I’m not Jewish.. anyway… I had to be admitted to the hospital. It was my first time away from my parents and I was really scared. They only kept me a few days, but it would prove to be an experience I would remember the rest of my life. There was another child in there.. a white child. We were the only two people in our room. As far as my recollection goes we were about the same age.. although I was a little bigger than him. He had been there before me and it was him that made it bearable for me. I will never forget him.. we talked and played and laughed…and you know something… he gave me something to always remember him by… he was the one who taught me how to play chess! I have been playing for over half a century now and everytime I play a game, I think of him. His father was an officer and they lived in the officers quarters. I did see him a couple times after that, but we eventually lost touch. So why did I tell these two stories? Because outside of that base these experiences would have never happened… outside America was segregated. Before we moved there, we lived on a based in Maryland.. on that based segregation ruled. We lived on base, but in an abandoned wing of a hospital ward. I use to sleep in a different bedroom every night… mama would be so frustrated trying to find me in the morning…. We had a big industrial kitchen and mama and daddy slept in what I now realized was an office.

Let’s Go To Africa Everybody…

Ever since the Civil War ended there have been black social movements that postulate the return to the land of our ancestors.. Africa. Not only blacks buts whites also wanted us gone after the our freedom cost over 600,000 lives in a war that was supposed t be over in less than a month, but took four years. As a matter of fact at the first skirmish called the First Battle of Manassas people actually set out picnic blankets on the battlefield and was eating souse of pig feet sandwiches and drinking tea out of little tiny cups like they was at the park or something… Yeah they thought that mess was gonna be over in a hot minute…

Captain North: Baby can you wrap my souse of pig feet sandwich up.. I need to take my platoon to that hill over there and teach them rebels a lesson they’ll never forget.. I’m gonna whip they very one and then nail it to a tree and set it on fire…. be right back…
Lady North: Okay baby!!
Captain South: Lieutenant, take 6000 men and go over that hill over there…
(An Hour Later…)
Lady North: You back already..!! Who’s very one is that? Are you gonna nail it to that tree over there…?
Captain North: Hurry!! Pack this shat up!! We gotta go!!!
(So yeah things didn’t go as planned at the first battle of Manassas… or the second..)
Captain North: Baby I’m finna go back out to Manassas.. and this time I ain’t gonna be playing!! Wanna go..?
Lady North: Aww honey why don’t you think about this.. It took them two months to sew that one back on…

Anywho our side didn’t fare too well when it first started. Luckily we went on to win the war. So now we got four million new Americans and everybody want to know what to do with us. President LIncoln at one time advocated for sending us back to Africa, specifically Liberia and by 1864 more than 16,000 went back to the motherland. So if you look in a Liberian telephone book, you are bound to notice a lot of English names like George and Reginald and Mark or Steven as opposed to Kojo and Hakim and Khari or Femi and that’s because of the people that immigrated there after the Civil War and when they first settled it by free men and women from the states. As a matter of fact the first female head of state in Africa was from Liberia and her name was Ellen Eugenia Johnson, president from 2008 – 2016. In 1997 when she ran for state office, she lost to a man named Charles Taylor! Johnson now chairs the Economic Community of West African States… that’s right… you go gurl!! Anyway let’s get back to what we were talking about… The next major push for re-colonization came from a man named Marcus Garvey. Now Marcus was a great man, but personally I wouldn’t follow that dude to a chicken dinner with homemade biscuits sitting on my dining room table cooked by Lola Falana in a bathing suit. He was a little too loud for me. Ever seen a picture of an 19th century Admiral in full military regalia? Well let me refresh your recollection… first there is a two foot high Robin Hood hat with large feathers sticking out of it on both sides.. I mean really big feathers.. think ostrich.. on each shoulder there are six inch round gold pads with pictures on them and with gold braid hanging down past the armpits… the jacket is adorned with more ribbons and medals than the winners at the end of the Boston Marathon and the trouser have a 2 inch wide gold seam down both sides and is top off with a long curved sword… and on the feet …. gators… I’m talking about the kind you kill yourself and shine with lard and burlap!! Yass.. a little too loud for my taste.. Although Garvey was working to help us and he had a plan to get us back to the homeland, he didn’t mind who help him get us back there. One of the men he tapped on the back was named Walter Plecker. Plecker was a straight up WAMW-H. (Wish a #@@! Would – Hillbilly) He was a first class of the deep river mud kind that nobody liked… when the Richmond Afro-American newspaper headlined, ” Plecker, Rabid Racist Killed by Auto”…. on the corner where he was ran over, they wanted to put up a statue of the car that hit him… Ok they didn’t do it, but they was thinking about it. It was Plecker along with two of his buddies who were responsible for writing a Virginia law called the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. So I believe you already know who’s integrity they was talking about… and if you don’t… let just say it didn’t have anything to do with water melons. Well we have to move on but you can read some more about him here in an article I wrote. Anyway Garvey hooked up with him because he wanted to see us leave just as much as Garvey did. Garvey was one of the leaders of Pan Africanism and his influences were later adopted by other national organizations and movements such as the Black Power Movement of the 1960’s and 70’s and Nation Of Islam. Malcolm X once said of Garvey, “The image of my father that made me proudest was his crusading and militant campaigning with the words of Marcus Garvey,” Marcus Garvey died of a stroke on June 10, 1940 at the age of 52 and is buried at King George VI Memorial Park in Jamaica. You know Garvey’s message was one of healing and unity, but unlike his message, the messenger was flawed. You can read more about him here..

No Good Deed…

One good thing about segregation was that it responsible for creating our professional and business class. We had black doctors, bankers, lawyers, teachers, dentist and everything a community needs to thrive. But like they say no good deed goes unpunished. There was envy and there was hate for the former slaves who were now masters of their own fate. We didn’t have to worry about acceptance, we had our own schools, banks and hospitals. Want a drink.. go down to Lucky Lou’s, need your car fixed.. oh yeah we had cars too.. go down to Neds Garage, or have breakfast at Nellies and then have your picture taken at Carl’s Photo’s. It was all good and they didn’t like it. So they did what they always did when they want to destroy a black man or destroy a black neighborhood… say somebody raped a white women, disrespected a white woman or was dating a white woman… that was their fall back position. Most of your early race riots were based on that one accusation. Places like Rosewood (1923) and Tulsa (1921) and Springfield (1908) and Atlanta in 1906. Tulsa was the most deadliest race riot in history after the Draft Race riots in New York. The Draft Riots were because they started drafting people to fight in Civil War. The whites were afraid that once they went to war the blacks would take their jobs and marry they white women… okay I threw that last part in there…. it was about jobs and the fact that if you were wealthy enough, you could pay to have someone fight in your place. Although New York was a bastion of abolitionist, a lot of people did not want to fight for the freedom of black folks. Blacks at that time were not able to enlist because of a 1792 federal law prohibiting black people from bearing arms, but because of the dwindling numbers of volunteers, the law was rescinded and blacks were able to join the fight in the latter part of 1862 after the riot. Of course the South said if they catch a brother wearing a Union uniform and shooting at white folks, then hot diggity dog… if we catch you then that’s yo azz!! You was going to be executed right on the spot… and they were. To be honest after the Civil War the only thing stopping us was a place to live. During all those centuries of bondage we had learned every trade the slave owners knew, while they lost that expertise. We were their farmers, blacksmiths and carpenters. We worked in textiles, cotton and wheat mills, tended animals, bookkeepers, cooks, midwives… you just about name it we knew how to do it. Why do you think they didn’t just kick us off their land after they lost the war? Plantation Owner: ” Son do you know anything about cotton…” Son: Yes daddy.. our overseer used to beat the black off them if they didn’t come in the barn with a basket full of that shat…” So yeah, they needed us more than we needed them… it’s just we didn’t have any place to go right after the war ended. Through Reconstruction we start making our own way and by the time it was over, there were thriving black communities in almost every state. Of course all that changed because of the “Great Betrayal.” So I am not going to go real deep into the Great Betrayal. That link up there will take you to an article I wrote about it a while back, but for now I just gonna say it ended Reconstruction because of a backroom political deal that removed the Federal troops from the South. They were the guys protecting us from the hard rock rebel racist wanting some payback. As soon as they left.. the South started enacting Jim Crow. “Racist: Boy your name ain’t Mr. Smith anymore.. Its Smitty!!” Reconstruction ended in 1877 and with it the fight for integration started.

If You Can’t Beat Them…

Jim Crow edicts were some of the most repressive laws ever devised in this country. Their objective was to curtail the freedoms of African Americans. So Jim Crow was was a code word for the “N word.” I say that because Jim Crow was a white man in black face imitating a clumsy dim witted black man. Back in the early 1800’s a white man named Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice started a minstrel routine based on an enslaved black man singing a song called “Jump Jim Crow.” The show was a huge success and subsequently the name Jim Crow became a derogatory name that was associated with black people. As with all racist shenanigans the show ran its course and ended. However after Reconstruction the term was revived and instead of saying the “N word” laws, the term Jim Crow was used. Anywho, the next playa’s on the stage were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois. These men were incredibly influential and their discourse would lay the foundation of the social and economic paths we are currently on. So basically the men had two opposing diametric philosophies. To put it simply, Washington was the kind of man that believed that if they smacked you, you should turn the other cheek… Racist: SMACK!! SMACK!! Black man to another Black man: “Excuse me sir.. but is that yo cheek on the floor over there?”), while Du Bois’s position was if they smack you… you should whip it. Black man: “Naw $##@@!! Now Ima whip yo very one right here under this clear blue sky!!” Okay maybe that’s a little too simplistic.. so let’s briefly talk about each man’s ideology. Washington was born a slave in 1856 near Roanoke, Virginia, in Franklin County. Now in 1856 in Virginia, the birthplace of the Black Codes and scene of Nat Turner’s rebellion, had the racist fired up!! For those who don’t remember Nat Turner, he was the black guy who didn’t give not one and got together with some of his boys and went on a shooting rampage killing everything that didn’t have a bucket of Popeyes chicken and grape soda on the kitchen table. Of course they made an example out him and you can read more about it here. Even today in some parts of Virginia, you can still get the side eye asking for a grape soda. Racist: “Boy you trying to say sumpin drinking that grape soda in front of me??!!!” Anywho add to that that in 1859 when it went up 10 levels because a white man named John Brown got tired of their mess and took a crew down to Harpers Ferry so they could put they hands on the long ones that go Bang! Bang! and start a black revolution. Of course they shot his crew’s azz off down there and hung him in Charles Town not even ten miles from me. Some folks say after they hung him, they made all the black people come to town to see them cut the tree down that they had hung him from and bury it with him. Racist: “We don’t want no mo shat from yall!!” Personally, I could see how some people would have got the message… so yeah… anywho… One of the most defining moments of Washington’s career came from his support of the Atlanta Compromise in 1895.
 “The Atlanta Compromise was a pact promulgated by Washington and other African American leaders to Southern white leaders. In essence the unwritten pact said that blacks would not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against racist behavior, they would tolerate segregation and discrimination, that they would receive free basic education but that said education would be limited to vocational or industrial training. No degrees and that their education would be paid for by northern white charities. Now believe this or not blacks in the south honored this compromise even after 1906 when riots broke out in Atlanta. “
Yep… there was cheeks all over the ground after that one… Washington died in 1915 and with him the support for his views.
W.E.B Du Bois was cut from a different cloth. He was born in Massachusetts in town called Barrington. The area he grew up in was known to be racially tolerant. By that I mean as long as you kept yo yes Suh’s and yes Ma’am’s coming out yo mouth, they tolerated you. Anywho, Du Bois was Harvard educated and was the first African American to earn a doctorate from that institution. I recently read that when they asked him about earning his degree from Harvard he said, “The pleasure was all theirs..” He came to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, predecessor to the National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People. Colored People? You know damn well that word “colored” is from way back when if you wasn’t white.. you was colored. Indians was colored, Mexican was colored, Japanese was colored, Blacks was colored… well you get the picture. I did a little research on how the word took on a racial connotation and the Mississippi Unabridged Encyclopedia said, “Don’t you look up this word again colored boy!!” Okay.. Im kidding.. It seems the first time the word colored was used in relation to race was in the latter part of the 18th century or late 1700’s. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, colored was first used in this context in 1758 to translate the Spanish term mujeres de color (‘colored women’) in Antonio de Ulloa’s A voyage to South America. Here in the states the word took on a meaning of pride for the newly freed African Americans after the Civil War. That pride dissolved with the enactments of Jim Crow and segregation. I mean if all you saw were No Colored Allowed Here, or Colored Use The Back Entrance and Colored Fountain Only.. well yeah you wouldn’t want to be associated with the word either. You might even start thinking about the words of W.E.B Du Bois.. “I believe in pride of race and lineage and self; in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; it’s time to whip it real good.” Okay I threw the whip it part in there… But as you can see we were departing from Washington’s philosophy and embracing Du Bois. Embracing Du Dois meant declaring ourselves as equals and meant let the fight begin. Earlier I mentioned Pan Africanism, which which is a movement that wants to unify all people of African descent to focus on our shared interest and goals. Du Bois, like Garvey was a proponent of Pan Africanism and was instrumental in organizing one of the first Pan African Congress assemblies. So that’s when he went and did something… Racist don’t mind you swimming in their pool because they can let the water out anytime they get ready. When you get out they pool and start swimming in the black pool down the block.. then like I said… now you done gone and did something. Not only was Du Bois fighting over here for black freedom, but his goal in organizing the PAC’s were to help them free themselves from European colonization. He went back and forth to Africa several times before they took his passport in 1951. He didn’t get it back until 1960. Yep all it took was a wink and a nod from Europe and snatch, snatch.. you are state bound for close to ten years while we get a more secure strangle hold on Africa. So now I need to talk about the elephant in the room. Du Bois was a Communist. It wasn’t that he particularly admired communism, but he took the view that the enemy of my enemy was my friend. As a matter of fact he didn’t join the Communist party until he was 93 years old! Now back in the late fifties there was only one thing worse than being a black man and that was being a black communist man. So as I said before after Washington died in 1906 and the new black leaders started to follow the philosophy of W.E.B Du Bois, since it was no secret that Du Bois was friendly with Communism, that tag was stuck to all subsequent black leaders. All of them were accused of being communist or being controlled by communist. In the end it didn’t matter. On the shoulders of Du Bois we climbed into the modern Civil Right Era. W.E.B Du Bois died on August 27, 1963 in Accra Ghana at the age of 95.

We Moving On Up To The East Side…

So there you have it. Washington proponent of segregation and Du Bois proponent of integration. With the passing of Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Right Act of 1964, the vestiges of 8 generations of discrimination were wipe away with stroke of a pen. Okay.. that’s bullshat.. It just sounded good. Our country is one of the most segregated places in the word. Yes we work together, but we live, shop, eat and go to church in our own communities. Not just black and white, but all of us. I don’t foresee a time of true integration in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime.. maybe in our children’s children’s lifetime, after all the resources of our planet is gone and they only have each other left… they might see something.. I don’t know… So where do I stand on segregation versus integration? Well… Washington’s way left to many cheeks on the ground for me, while Du Bois’s vision is a vision left unrealized..
So I think I’m gonna quote a line from a movie I saw that just about sums it up for me…
“Maybe it’s not the destination.. but the journey.”

Thanks for reading © Hill1News.