Week 9 Post 1

 Week 9 Post 1- Notes

Chapter- State-Sanctioned Violence


  • Wilbur Gary lived in Northern California in a temporary wartime development since he was in the navy. When he needed to move out of the temporary housing, he bought a rolling wood home and the rolljngwoof improvement association insisted their covenant allowed them to kick his family out. When they offered to buy him home from him for 15 percent more, Gary refused 
  • 300 whites showed up on their lawn, throwing brick at the home and burning crosses 
  • The NAACP and a communist civil rights group helped guard the house and escort the family to school and work since the town sheriff wouldn’t step in
    • Eventually the state district attorney stepped in, but riots continued for another Month
  • Levitt was at the same time building Shelley, a suburb of Philadelphia that was supported by the FHA only if they refused to sell to AAs
  • White homeowners in places like Levittown that were whites only would rather sell to black families, who would pay more since they were desperate for housing. Bill Myers, an African-American veteran, found a white homeowner in Levittown willing to sell him his house. 
  • The Myers family got a mortgage from a private philanthropist in NYC since no bank would give a black family a mortgage
  • A postman noticed that a black family had moved in, and then made his rounds shouting "N***s have moved to Levittown!"
  • 600 white demonstrators showed up to throw rocks, blare music, and set up confederate flags in the yard next door. Myers family called in both the police and state troopers, but neither of them were any help.
  • A sergeant was demoted because he tried to interfere and stop the rioters
  • The Myers family only stayed four years before they moved back to the black neighborhood in Pennsylvania they had previously lived in. 
  • A prosecutor only charged the protestors with harassment
  • The actions of the police and the departments lack of prevention are a direct violation of equal protection under the fourteenth amendment
  • It is impossible that whites were responding out of classism, because most African Americans were more affluent than the whites who lived around them, since they had to pay more to live in the same neighborhood
  • The Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago started boycotting businesses who would sell to black people, and balck people were full driven out of the Woodlawn park neighborhood
  • An attorney in Hyde Park led a group of whites who would throw rocks at windows of black families houses
  • From 1917 to 1921 ther were fifty eight firebombings of African american owned houses on the borders of segregated neighborhoods in chicago, killing two black people in the process
  • 30 of the 58 firebombers were in a sixth month period in 1919 leading up to one of the worst race riots in the country after an Afircan American was stoned by a white youth for floating to close to a whites only beach
  • The black child drowned and the police refused to arrest the white child, leading to race riots where thirty eight people died in Chicago.
  • Arson bombings occured in several border area African American houses in Chicago following WWII
  • Harvey Clark was an African American bus driver tried to rent an apartment in Cicero, which the police tried to forcefully prevent him from doing. The police refused to stop even after a court order, and refused to stop 4000 rioters who invaded the apartment and destroyed possessions, the police arrested no one
  • The national guard arrested over 100 protestors but Cook County convicted none of them, instead convicting Clark, the NAACP, and his landlady for 'inciting a riot and conspiring to lower property values'
  • When another black family tried to move to Cicero 36 years later they were meant with open fire
  • Chicago started leasing public housing to black people in the all-white South Deering neighborhood, and violence ensued for the next ten years, police being needed at all times to protect the families
  • The Chicago Park District Police said that it was 'unfortunate that people of color chose to live here' instead of doing anything about white bombers of black homes
  • A white civil rights activist leased an apartment to an African American student in Bridgeport. A white mob showed up with rocks, and the police came in and removed all his belongings and evicted him
  • In Detroit the same situation happened, any black families trying to move to white suburbs were met with harassment 
  • 213 racist attacks occured in the first six months of 1955 in the Philly suburbs
  • of the over 100 incedents of move-in bombings in 15 years in LA, only one person was arrested, and black homes were vandalized and bombed for years
  • The fair housing act of 1968 made it illegal to use violence to prevent integration, but violence in homes continued into the 80s. In 1985 and 86, it is estimated that only about 25% of these crimes were charged with the fair housing act
  • In Shively, an all-white suburb of Kentucky, a leftists named Carl braden bought and signed a deed on a house for his black friend, Andrew Wade, and his family
  • When the family moved in a mob gathered and a cross was burned on a lawn
  • Rocks were thrown through the windows with threatening messages and ten gunshots were fired
  • Wade was the only one arrested, for 'breaching the peace'. After a month, their house was dynamited
  • The police chief informed braden that his home would be targeted next
  • The braden family was charged with conspiring to stir up racial conflict, and Carl Braden was sentenced to 15 years
  • Robert and Martha Marshall moved into an all white suburb Sylvania, and the house was firebombed the night he moved in


  • Just a couple days before the couple moved in, the KKK had boasted that no black family would ever live in Sylvania
  • Kentucky African Americans also lived in fear of racial violence

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 6 Post 2

 Week 6 Post 2- Formal Synthesis  Blockbusting was an epidemic of real estate agents manipulating the market to make money while causing black people to be framed as the cause of housing values depreciating. The FHA claimed that black people moving into neighborhoods causes the value of homes in that neighborhood to go down. The FHA had no evidence to back up this claim, in fact, black families could sometimes raise property values since middle-class black families were charged more for homes in neighborhoods with middle-class white families than the white families were. The chapter explains blockbusting, a process in which realtors tried to scare white families into selling their houses by making it seem like their neighborhood was in danger of integrating. They did this by hiring black women to push baby carriages around, hiring black men to blast music from their cars and drive in the neighborhood, and hiring black families to go with real estate agents when they were showi...
Read more

Week 7 Post 1

Image
 Week 7 Post 1- Notes  Chapter Name- IRS Support and Compliant Regulators The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were written specifically to protect black people from constitutional rights being violated  De jure segregation is committed when state real estate commissions publish codes mandating discrimination  We cannot blame church’s and universities as part of the state, but we can acknowledge that we have the right to expect that if these private institutions promoted segregation they would not get tax exceptions  “The IRS has always had an obligation to withhold tax favoritism from discriminatory organizations, but it almost never acted to do so” IRS regulations allow for charity deductions for organizations that “eliminate prejudice and discrimination” and “defend human and civil rights” the irs still granted tax exceptions to private whites only school until 16 years after brown v board  The IRS denied a tax exception to bob Jones in 1...
Read more

Week 8 Post 2

 Week 8 Post 2- Formal Synthesis     There were several strategies used by various U.S. cities to segregate neighborhoods while avoiding explicit anti-segregation legislation. There are many examples of strategies used by various U.S cities to continue to segregate their neighborhoods while evading anti-segregation legislation. The chapter began with a continuation of a story that began the book, of black Ford plant workers in northern California and their struggle to find fair housing. The suburb of Milpitas had been constructed for white Ford workers, but of course, being sponsored by the FHA, was whites only. An up-and-coming businesses man decided he wanted to create an integrated community in the Santa Clara County for people of color working at the Ford plant. When board members discovered this, the developer was met with incredible amounts of backlash, and had to fight every loophole city officials jumped through to try and prevent his development from being built....
Read more