The Civil Rights Act Of 1866

Why Is Byron Allen suing Comcast Under a 153 Year Old Civil Rights Bill?

The year after the Civil War ended in 1865, the Republican led congress passed the Civil Rights Act Of 1866, Southern Democrats enacted the Black Codes ,which replaced the Slave Codes and in the parish of Wassdat Louisiana, Chicken George perfected his now famous chicken sandwich recipe, which Popeyes bought in 2019 and which got some of us acting out. (Somebody had to say that.) Anywho, the bill had been vetoed by President Andrew Johnson but was overrode by Congress and enacted into law on April 9, 1866. Now a lot of us are not familiar with this President. He was Vice President when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and assumed the presidency after Lincoln’s death. Johnson had a complex personality. He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1808. His mother had indentured him and his brother to a local tailor when he was ten years old. His service was to last until he turned twenty one. An indentured servant was just another name for white slave. Well almost, an indentured servant could look forward to being free one day and didn’t have to worry about their family being sold. As it would have it, Johnson soon tired of being a slave and after five years left. A ten dollar reward for anyone who returned them was offered. Although he did return later to try and buy out his indentured service, his offer was refused. He left never to return. He eventually married, became wealthy and entered into politics.

I say again he was a complex man. He was Governor of Tennessee before they seceded and as you know, they hang em in the daytime in Tennessee, he had fourteen slaves and he vetoed the first civil rights bill. In 1863 he freed all but one slave, who went with him to the white house. Yep, there were slaves working in white house while Lincoln was president. I heard Aunt Jemima use to make breakfast and Uncle Ben helped her… okay I’ll stop… Like I was saying, a complex man…. “Shortly after Lincoln’s death, Union General William T. Sherman reported he had, without consulting Washington, reached an armistice agreement with Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston for the surrender of Confederate forces in North Carolina in exchange for the existing state government remaining in power, with private property rights to be respected. This did not even acknowledge the freedom of those in slavery. This was not acceptable to Johnson or the Cabinet who sent word for Sherman to secure the surrender without making political deals, which he did. Further, Johnson placed a $100,000 bounty (equivalent to $1.64 million in 2018) on Confederate President Davis, then a fugitive, which gave him the reputation of a man who would be tough on the South. More controversially, he permitted the execution of Mary Surratt for her part in Lincoln’s assassination. Surratt was executed with three others on July 7, 1865.” Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, reportedly stayed at Surratt’s boarding house, where he and Surratt, along with two others planned the assassination. She was hung on July 7, 1865 and was the first woman ever executed by the Federal government.

All Our Civil Rights

Civil Rights Act Of 1866

There have been many laws passed by state and local legislatures, but only eight Civil Right Acts passed by Congress. Of course the first one is the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This act was meant to solidify the citizenship and protect the civil rights of African Americans who were born here and Africans brought to America. Although the importation of slaves from Africa had long been banned in the US in 1807, there were slaves here from other slave holding nations. We will be revisiting this act a little later.

Civil Rights Act Of 1871

The racist were really hot after the Civil War. The newly freed slaves were sleeping with white people, drinking liquor and eating every chicken sandwich in sight… Okay.. I’m going to leave the chicken sandwiches alone… Anyway, this is about the time when the Klan emerged. They were killing and terrorizing the newly freed slave on such a level that the federal government had to step in. Looking closely at the law, you will notice that it provides an exception for the police. This civil right act was aimed specifically at the hooded white sheets and their grand puba or whatever…

“Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, Suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.“

The Civil Rights Act of 1875

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, when a black woman was asked to get up out of her seat in the white section of the bus and go sit in the back with the other negras. she responded.. #@@!!$ please.. The sheriff was called, she was handcuffed and arrested. That day the name Rosa Parks would forever be linked with the civil right struggles of the mid twentieth century. Of course Rosa wasn’t the first, but she is the one that was at the right place at the right time. Speaking of time, it surprised me to learn that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public transportation, public accommodations and service on juries. Now, there wasn’t no back seat on stagecoaches, so you had to give up yo money to ride on the back and hope the Indians wasn’t feeling some kinda way. You get to Tombstone and they throw some hay under the porch, charge you a dollar and tell you good night. That’s where the saying, “I ain’t got time for this!!”came from… I’m kidding. They had railroads and black boarding houses in those days. Anywho, in 1883, the Supreme Court ruled the 1875 Act unconstitutional. Their exact words were, “The Thirteenth Amendment (which banned slavery) nor the Fourteenth Amendment (which guaranteed equal protection of the laws to African Americans) was infringed by the existence of uncodified racial discrimination, which therefore could not be constitutionally prohibited.” Now, uncodified is just a fancy way of saying if it customary to have negras sleep under the porch or ride on the back of stagecoaches, then they are not going to interfere with local customs. It would be almost 100 years before this decision would be overturned.

The Civil Rights Act Of 1957

In 1957 the good ole boys had us by them. Jim Crow laws stymied our access to equal treatment, equal education and equal justice. Although the Klan membership had dwindled from the 3 million it once had in the 1920’s to a mere 30 thousand by the 1950’s, What it didn’t have in people, it made up for in bombings. According to a report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of 40 black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952, including NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore. Their home was bombed on Christmas Eve in 1951. They were the founders of the first branch of the NAACP in Brevard County, Florida. However with talented black activists and lawyers like Thurgood Marshall, Medgar Evans, MLK and others, the government was forced to face a reality not based on conscious, but on a new invention called TV, which could broadcast the lynchings, bombings and murders to millions of homes across the country. You don’t want Mr and Mrs Average American along with their daughter Peggy Sue and their black maid Sapphire sitting at the breakfast table laughing about yesterday’s episode of Amos and Andy, when Walter Cronkite comes on and says they been hung by the Klu Klux Klan in Highly White, Alabama for saying good morning to the sheriff’s wife. Not a good look. So The Civil Rights Act Of 1957 established the the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, the first legislation that the federal government undertook to protect civil rights since 1881 and it established federal penalties for hate crimes.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Well after the the Civil Rights Act Of 1957, the Klan just lost it. It was on and poppin. The Civil Right Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibited the unequal application of voter registration requirements, and racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. JFK proposed it and Johnson got it passed. So there were rumors running around the Klan about how the “blacks was gonna have laws like the white man and sleep with our women.” It just made them, cotton pickin mad, by god!!! In the years before and right after the 1964 Civil Right Act was passed, the Klan was responsible for the following atrocities:

• The 1957 murder of Willie Edwards Jr., who was forced by Klansmen to jump to his death from a bridge into the Alabama River.
• The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted.
• The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in September 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four African-American girls and injured 22 people. The perpetrators were Klan members Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died before he was indicted.
• The 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, three civil rights workers, in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter.
• The 1964 murder of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in Mississippi. In August 2007, based on the confession of Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted. Seale was sentenced to serve three life sentences. Seale was a former Mississippi policeman and sheriff’s deputy.
• The 1965 Alabama murder of Viola Liuzzo. She was a Southern-raised Detroit mother of five who was visiting the state in order to attend a civil rights march. At the time of her murder, Liuzzo was transporting Civil Rights marchers related to the Selma to Montgomery March. Liuzzo was white.
• The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer, Sr., 58, in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Samuel Bowers was convicted of his murder and sentenced to life. Two other Klan members were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial, and the other’s indictment was dismissed.
• In July 1966, in Bogalusa, Louisiana, a stronghold of Klan activity, Clarence Triggs was found murdered.
• The 1967 multiple bombings in Jackson, Mississippi of the residence of a Methodist activist, Robert Kochtitzky, the synagogue and the residence of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum. These were carried out by Klan member Thomas Albert Tarrants III, who was convicted in 1968. Another Klan bombing was averted in Meridian the same year. –Wikipedia

These are the crimes we know of. No doubt there are many, many unknown victims of this vicious hate group that we will never know about. Hopefully when they enact the next civil right bill, they will put in a provision that anybody convicted of a hate crime, that upon their release will be required to wear a black robe, a black pointed hood with a picture of Obama on it for the rest of their lives!!

So What’s Up With Byron Allen And Comcast?

Out of all the Civil Rights Acts the United States have passed in the last 150 years, the 1866 Act is the only one that has a provision that covers discrimination with regards to contracts. Section 1981

“All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.“

Allen is saying the only reason Comcast has not picked up his shows is because he is black. When Comcast bought NBC it was legally required to adhere to the 1866 law. Now Allen is saying Comcast is carrying lesser known white owned channels, like “When Dogs Eats Biscuits” and “There Is Only One R In White Man”, while refusing to carry his channels. He said he took all the steps recommended by Comcast and was lead to believe his channels would be included. Comcast said it was not based on his color, but was a business decision. Allen lawsuit was bolstered by the fact that the 9th Circuit Court agreed with his team after a lower court had ruled against him. According to legal experts, the Supreme Court is looking for a narrow ruling that would not impinge on the section 1981 provision of the 1866 Act. Well all I can say is.. Let get ready for …. Soul Trainnnnnnn!!!!!

References:

• Wikipedia
• Enotes
• Cnn
• Zinn Project
• Getty Pictures