Glenn Young

What is the second most important date in the History of African Americans?

 

There can be no doubt that the most important date in the history of African Americans was the passage of the 13^th Amendment to the US constitution banning chattel slavery.  While the emancipation proclamation is often more cited as the date of “liberation” Lincoln’s edict did not in fact free all slaves but only those in territories still in succession.  Slavery itself was not fully outlawed until the passage of the 13^th amendment, (with citizenship rights later provided with the 14^th and 15^th amendments.)

 

However, what should we consider the second most important date, or event? The introduction of slavery into Virginia (before the Mayflower), or one of the positive or negative Supreme Court rulings, that allowed Jim Crow or moved toward ending the American Apartheid?  The “I have a Dream Speech” or Jackie Robinson?  There are just so many possible events or dates that stand out in the long term struggle for African Americans to achieve success in the United States.

 

However, if we look at issues from a slightly different perspective, I would like to propose a different idea for the second most important date in African American history that is not considered or looked upon with any connection to the African American community.  That date is June 28, 1914, and the event is the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria, the event that began World War I.  

 

And I offer this date not for the long term impact of the African Americans who eventually served in the US military (in mostly segregated units) and created a core group of empowered persons that came home expecting a different world.  No, I offer this date because with the advent of World War I the much needed source of cheap labor (Europe) that had fueled the American economy since the foundation of the nation, was now cut off.   And as a result of this termination of cheap labor from Europe, the industrial heartland of America turned to a similar group of peoples (semi or fully peon populations with little or no education, living in dire economic and political repression in their homelands) for its source of cheap labor, the peonage population of the African Americans living under Jim Crow in the southern United States became the new source of cheap labor.  Some 4 million African Americans eventually participated in the Great Migration between the years of 1914 and 1945 (with some big gaps with the world wide depression)

 

And these 4 million African Americans join in the great heritage of the mass migrations of other oppressed peoples from the servitude and hopelessness of Europe into the great American cauldron of the former industrial heartland.  And as it turns out these African Americans, despite racism, and the past history of slavery, have for the most part prospered and progressed as the same relative pace, using the same means for progression,  as the other major immigrant groups who also descended upon America.  Therefore with the ending of cheap labor from Europe, the African Americans were giving the chance to break free economically as well as culturally and politically from the Jim Crow era and move greatly along the path to political equality.

 

In addition, what each of these immigrant groups, despite low wages and mostly deplorable living conditions, were able to do, besides prospering themselves, was to develop a rare commodity, surplus wealth.  And as with other immigrant groups who came to America, this surplus wealth, impart went to improve the living and political conditions of their “fellow countrymen (people)” who never made it to “America”.  So we not only see that the modern civil rights movement in the US was supported in great part by the small contributions of the “migrants” but we see also that the establishment of the Republic of Ireland, was mostly funded by descendents of Irish immigrants to the US, and the creation of the State of Israel was demand by and mostly funded by Jewish Americans. In addition efforts to bring about reforms in Russia, Poland, Germany, Italy, and many other countries was greatly supported by if not majority funded by the “surplus wealth of the immigrants and their descendents to the US.

 

But this similarity and its long-term benefit to the efforts to end tyranny around the world, is only one of so many similarities between the immigrants to the US from other countries, and the African American immigrants from the almost other country of the “southern states.”

 

But before going on we need to define a bit better the groups we are talking about.  For example, the large wave of immigration of Scandinavians which helped to populate the Minnesota and Wisconsin regions does not really fit well into the major immigration patterns in US history.  Primarily this groups does not fit well in that they, the Scandinavians who came, were mainly “middle class” and rather well educated for the time, and they tended to stay in one highly concentrated area.  They came primarily for continuing their life style (farmers) in a place that offered far more land then they considered ever possible.  And while there were some ethnic conflicts between the Norwegians and the Swedes back in Europe, it was never one that rose to a level where the Norwegians were at risk of life. 

 

However, for the other key immigrant groups of the late 18^th and throughout the 19^th centuries and into the early 20^th centuries that came to populate and repopulate the American industrial “heartland” the Scots, and poor English, and then later the massive waves Irish, and then Italians, and then great waves of Slavs, including Russians, Poles, Bohemians, and in the West, the Chinese, and the last of the pre-World War I massive wave of Russian and Polish Jews, that all came to the US to become the cheap source of labor for the American industrial “giant.”  

 

These peoples were very different then the Swedes and Norwegians.  These people were almost all desperately poor (at least for America), they were fleeing economic, and often political repression, and while they clustered in urban settings and neighborhoods, they spread out throughout the whole of the Northern US, (with the Chinese primarily on the west coast.)  And except for some people who came over to be miners, where in the past they had been miners in the “old country” mostly the people came to do jobs they had never done before, and perhaps had never conceived of before.  For the most part these were poor peasants with almost no knowledge of modern technology who were being thrown into relatively modern cities, and went to work in massive factories with “huge machines”

 

Also, for the most part these new immigrants were extremely religious, and were practicing a religion that was not the “accepted” one of the new nation.  While the Americans were primarily some variety of Protestantism the new immigrants were mainly Roman or Eastern Catholic, or Jewish. (Or the religion of the long term oppressors of the majority population, or the most hated and repress of the religions of Europe.) And the peoples had had little impact to their traditional cultures from what we call the “enlightenment” or modernization.   For the most part these were very superstitious uneducated persons (who all appeared to have endless amounts of children).

 

In addition, almost all the groups were frightened of “outsiders” since the “outsiders” were the oppressors;

 

• The Irish were greatly repressed by the English, and the was great deprivation at the time of the major wave of immigrants (the potato famine)
• The Italians economy had collapsed and the people had to deal with the old tyranny of the Catholic Church and local dukes, and also a newly united state with a new King, as well as the long-term terror of the local gangs
• The Slavs economy also had collapsed and the peoples were mainly ruled by absolutes kings who were often German and Protestant (Prussia, Austro-Hungarian Empires) and the people were often “cannon fodder” for the frequent wars in Eastern Europe.
• The Russians has just been “liberated” from some 400 years of slavery (serfs) but had little economic access to land or education, and were still treaded as mostly non-humans by their ruling elite
• The Jews faced what seemed like an endless stream of attacks from almost all people, and the Jews of Russia were faced with new effort of the Czarist government to make the Empire of Russia “Jew Free” by a policy of “one-third conversion, one third deportation and one-third starvation.”

 

 As we can see the African American community fits well into this pattern.

 

• After some 340 years of legal slavery in the US (with the most intense period being after the invention of the cotton gin in 1790’s) Blacks were awarded their legal freedom, much at the same time as the Russian serfs.  And much like the serfs, the initial “liberal” efforts to train and education the Black populations (Reconstruction) were mostly abandoned based on pressure of the old ruling elite (the White landowners in the South, and that Barons in Russian) and near civil war in the areas of the US south.
• As with the Serfs of Russia, the African Americans of the south were mainly left to fend for themselves and rapidly fell into a state of near slavery or legal peonage.
• And for the most part, while there were some long term “free Black” communities in the north and pockets of successful African Americans in the south, for the most part there was mainly roughly a 50 year period of lost of rights and social and economic isolation.

 

And they were frightened of “whitey” since “whitey” was often ready to kill African Americans without any fear of regress of the law.  It is estimated that a minimum of 14,000 African Americans were killed in “lynchings” or other acts of racial violence (the original meaning of the term “race riots”)  in the 40 years between the ending “Reconstruction” the beginning of the Great Migration.

 

Then came the “guns of August,” in 1914, and the empires of Europe found a new use to their “surplus” populations that they had been all too happy to ship off to the Americas.  But now they were needed as soldiers and workers in the new war machines needed for this new modern war.

 

But American factories still needed labor, and cheap labor.  Since the continuous flow of competitive cheap labor kept wages down and Unionism only a pipe dream, the need was critical to the industrialist who feared “labors” demands.   By the time of World War I almost all the major countries of Europe has successful unions and even major socialist parties (based on the concepts of the Second International) Not so the US, the constant flow of labor enabled the factory owners to rid themselves of union organizer and socialist agitators with ease.  For every worker fired there were often two or three waiting to take their job. The classic line offered by the Industrialist of the time was that “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” This foundation of anti-unionism was only possible if the flow of cheap labor continued.

 

In Europe, with their limited movement of populations and the strong sense of nationalism (even in relatively newly formed countries) and extensive classism, and old “guild” concepts, both Unionism and Socialism were successful, since there were no replacement workers waiting in the wings, and European industrialist had to come to terms with their “workers”  In fact at the beginning of World War I the majority party in the German Parliament was the Socialist (who quickly abandoned their pledges of international worker solidarity in opposition to the war, to one of in favor of German Nationalism, and Germany sacred rights to fight).

 

But in America, the Industrialist needed to keep the flow of labor coming in to keep the competition going to keep down wages and unionism.  The best source of peon labor that was readily available and easily transportable was the African Americans caught in the tyranny of Jim Crow; and the word went out an the great migration began.

 

And what awaited the new African American immigrant in the cities of the North was the same as all other immigrants; overt hatred of the “native persons” discrimination in jobs and housing, and being used by the industrialist against other groups of labor.  The Irish were the first to face the overt hatred of the Americans, with the flow of Irish even leading to a political party that looked to “control the American boarders, and ban new immigration.  The American Party and what became known as the “know nothings” were active politically throughout the 1850’s and won governorships and mayoralties based on pledges to end immigration throughout the country and ran third in the 1856 Presidential elections.

 

The overt hatred given Black were no worse then that given Chinese in the West, or Irish and Jews especially in the East. In fact the case can be made that the Chinese were treated even with more contempt, then Blacks as the anti-Chinese groups managed to expel much the Asian populations from many states, and ban their further immigrations (and later during World War II had some 150,000 Japanese placed in concentration camps based solely on issue of race.)

 

All the major immigrant groups faced the rage of the “nativist” groups and were subjects of overt anti-immigrant humor, as well as almost a complete ban from the progress to wealth through “normal” means.  As late as the early 1960’s there were “quotas” for the number of Jews that would be allowed into any given college (especially the elite schools) And tokenism prevailed (as with having a “Jewish seat” on the US Supreme court, but almost never more then one Jew at a time would serve. Therefore, almost all the immigrant groups took virtually the same seven means to acquiring wealth and power in a hostile capitalist setting. 

 

But before discussing success, we need to remember that these groups on the whole, during the first wave of immigration were not very successful.  They worked in the proverbial “sweat shops” and mass industrial complexes, and most during their first generation of immigration failed to progress very far away from this setting.  Most of the immigrants who came over as cheap labor, worked and died as cheap labor, and often the same could be said for  their children they brought with them, and the first children they had in this country.  Most of the progress for all the immigrant groups came, if at all, in the form of “class creep” meaning a slow rise from cheap labor to middle class families, over the course of some three to five generation. 

 

It can be clearly argued that the poor white populations in the rural areas and even most urban areas of much of the south are basically 8^th and 9^th generation failed immigrants.  They arrived in the US in the late 1700’s (if not before) and became farmers and tradespersons in the areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and out to Missouri and Oklahoma.   They did not do well in the agricultural age and little better if not worse in the industrial age, and are still relatively failing in the information age as well.  And they were and often still are the butt of bad jokes and stereotyping (Okies, Hillbillies, etc) but are really failed descendents of failed immigrants.

 

But the urban immigrants had other means at their disposal for acquiring wealth and power, other then the traditional means of industrialism. And those who did find success did so primarily through the used the military, policing, local government and politics, popular entertainment (and sport) and also crime (mainly the sin crimes of gambling, prostitution and when the country went “dry” alcohol and later drugs.) In addition, of course there were the shop keepers who on occasion developed ways and means to turn local shops into major industrial forces (Sears and Roebuck for example)

 

We can see them working their way into these settings (and we can see them in the clichés of the times, such as the Irish Cop, or Custer’s troopers at Little Big Horn, or the Italian gangster, or and Italian crooner.)  We see the world of entertainment move from the Eddie Cantors and Al Jolson’s to the Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet to the Michael Jackson, Will Smith and 50 Cent of today.

 

Boxing (the middle weights at least) were dominated by Jews in the 1920’s (who replaced the Poles, who had replaced the Irish and Italians as the dominate fighters and now, it is the Blacks and Hispanics (the latest immigrant group) that dominate the fight game.  Basketball use to be called the “Jewish sport” in the 1920s’ and the description of the “sly and shifty Jew” in sports papers mimicked the overtly racist description of African American ball players that was the hall mark of the early 1950’s and even as far as into the early 1970’s.  We saw baseball dominated in its early days by Irish player only to be replaced by Italian players, to be replaced by Black and now Hispanic players.

 

Irish gangs, which “controlled” much of the poor sections of major cities (and was the foundation of the Kennedy family fortune) were replaced by Italian gangs (and in many places, Jewish gangs, which have now given way to Black and Hispanic and Asian gangs, all controlling what is not now government controlled “sins” (The old numbers game is no more because the states created the Lotto systems)   Cities went from having Irish mayors to Italian and Slavic mayors to Jewish and Black mayors. In 1910 90% of the prostitutes in New York City were Jewish, now it’s Black Hispanic and Asians.

 

But what I have only brushed on partly is that all groups took three to five generations to reach at least tolerable socially acceptance in the main stream culture. It was almost 130 years, or roughly five generation, between the first rushes of the Irish to America to the first (and to this point only) election of a Irish Catholic president. Now on St Patrick day, everyone tries to “act Irish” what every that means.   We also see the social acceptance of the foods of the immigrants as now “American food:” Bagels are now sold at McDonalds (with ham and cheese on it, oy).  Pizza has become more or less the national American food..  Jazz is recognized as the most true of all American art forms.  And so on and so on.  But all of this took time and during that time it was rough for both the immigrants and the Nativist who resisted so strongly their “un-American” ways.

 

And its clear that we can see that for the most part this time that its take is three to five generations.  While some, such as Chinese and Japanese and the Jews seem to have been accepted somewhat faster, that is mostly appearances, and not fact.  

 

In addition there is one other point that a study of immigration clearly has shown, that very few immigrants actually achieve great wealth, while in almost all cases within five generations, the majority of those who survive tend to reach American middle class status, and some far higher; however within every group there is at least 1/3 failure.  As noted we can see this failure in the Appalachia and the Ozark regions. But we can also see it in South Boston, were there are still generations old Irish poverty (or at least lower working class) and in the Lower East Side there were still numbers of poor Jews who have been there for close to five generations.  And in cities like Buffalo and Cleveland and Akron or even Chicago, we find still closely knitted Slavic and Irish communities often in shape conflict with each other as well as the Blacks, for what little resource that remain in the old rust belt cities.    These communities have been in tack for generations and primarily have little economic change in status during the entire history of the neighborhood. 

 

So, not all immigrants succeed, and not all the children of the immigrants succeed, and during the three to five generation of social integration, the nativist point heavily towards the most unsuccessful, the lowest one-third of the immigrants and try to generalized failure of this portion of the immigrant population to all the members of that group.  So today we hear extensively about Black school failure and African American males in jails, but hear relatively little of the extensive numbers of African American college graduates and persons who are successful in a wide degree of economic options.  We primarily here about the failures and in fact this is normal in the American experience.  We use to hear about all the stupid Poles, and Italian Mafia, and Irish drunks, and every groups “ladies of the night” and again, this is normal and standard.  Its sell papers or TV adds to feature the failings of the latest competitors for jobs and housing etc. It wins votes for politicians to campaign on fear of the latest groups to appear different with a different religion and strange clothing and customs that don’t seem at all modern.

 

But again we have seen this occur in the US in the most horrible of fashions for every group that came over as poor cheap labor.  The elites had to feel like elites and our journals and newspaper archives are filled with writings that were more then socially acceptable in its time that would not be believed by modern readers. But over time, and through social acceptance by the use of the military, police government and crime but most importantly through the arts and sports, each group has won its place in the US culture and has greatly added to (and therefore changed) the culture but it takes time.

 

Viewing the events of the massive wave of Irish or Jews into this country at the time it was happening must have been so amazing.  The people seemed so different in religion and outlook and clothing and beliefs and habits etc.  They seemed so dirty and ugly and they couldn’t speak English or communicate properly.  They seemed lazy and so secretive.  They all had terrorist groups within their communities aimed at destroying America and American values (the Molly Maguire’s, the Jewish communists, the Italian and Russian anarchist, the German Fascist, the Black Panthers and Black Muslims, etc.)  

 

But over time, over generations, the language was learned, the dress changed, the names changed, often the religion would even change, and the “terrorist groups” became more like the Elks and the Rotary then the Communist party cells.  The children grew up and hit the American streets and wanted to be “American.” They also changed the streets to make them their own.  Also children grew up and many went to college and became more established and more successful and moved away from the old neighborhood.  So today you find neighborhoods in the suburbs that appear to be homogeneous which are in fact a hodgepodge of ethnic and cultural backgrounds that after these three to five generations have become so American they often relate little to their own cultural history.

 

And we can see, using this timeline that the African American experience in this process of “immigration to America”, starting with the advent of World War I, and we see that the African Americans are right on track, despite the “race issue” We are just moving into the third generation of the after the end of the great migration and we see the black population doing so much better in the “mainstream” then ever projected (and again, there is still a great deal of failure, but this is true with all immigrant groups) But just considering the change in role of Blacks as spokes persons for products on TV or staring roles in movies (were now it the goofy white side kick for the super smart Black action hero) Who could have projected that Allstate insurance would have a African American spokes person, or that Black women would be seen as role models for beauty and spokespersons for beauty products.  Go back twenty five years and say that would happen, and what type of reaction you would have received.   

 

Also the latest data from the US Department of Education shows that on average a black person stays in school slightly longer then the average white person (some 12.8 years, as opposed to 12.4 years for whites.   This is a far cry from just some 60 years ago with the average African American attended (segregated) schools for no more then four years.

 

So in the mist of the Nativist anger and rhetoric, and the still blatant attacks on the one/third who are failing (and attempting to generalize that one/third to all Blacks) and in the mist of the dramatic changes that are happening in the culture do to the next wave of immigrants coming in is such great numbers (Hispanic, Chinese, Africans and Arabs) it is hard to step back and take an objective long-term view of the traditional positive outcomes for most members of the third through fifth generation of immigrant groups.  It is hard but so much needed to give a solid argument against the new Know Nothings attacks on the new people who are coming to continue the traditions in the United States of reaping endless benefits from immigrants, and also by providing these immigrants the chance to become “modern” and acquire that scarce resource called “surplus wealth” we will allow or new internal movements within all the countries of origins of these new wave of immigrants to help end the tyranny that engulfs their homelands

 

But it all takes time, three to five generations to be exact.  Unfortunately we all tend to live in the here and now and can not project out three more generations, so all we can see now is the conflicts and the crises, and the natural conflicts and struggles between the nativist and the newcomers, and see nothing more then that conflict.   We fail to see the standard process of cultural integration from a long term perspective, and we fail to see the eventual hope, and only the look at the current problem.  And perhaps worse of all we fail to learn from the previous processes and therefore tend to allow the same mistakes in the integration process to occur over and over again.