Chapters 8 and 9 quotes

Noelle Roberts

March 9, 2017

AFAM 2100: The New Jim Crow

Professor Young

Chapter 8: A Summer of Trials, 1903:

1. “Grogan was accused of arresting an African American woman named Emma Pearson on a bogus charge of vagrancy and then selling her to Eliza Turner, the brother of Fletch Turner, who managed the family’s limestone quarry in Calcis.”

This quote shows an example of black codes which was a system that allowed police to arrest black people over petty crimes, and one of them was vagrancy. Since black people could not get jobs and could not afford to pay of their depts., they were resold back into slavery, to pay it off which was called convict leasing.

2. “He said that while the charges against the Cosby men were technically termed peonage, the case was in fact about slavery—the overt buying and selling of humans, and holding them in a condition of coerced forced labor.”

Once again, this shows how police knew these charges were ridiculous and still forced black people into labor to pay off debts they would not be able to pay since they had no jobs or any source of income.

3. “Swanson testified he was never paid for any work on the Cosby plantation and was held under guard seven days a week, and locked in at night.” “G.R. Shaffer, of Dadeville, one of the men who made bond for the Cosbys, urged them to plead guilty and had gathered scored of signatures in Tal- lapoosa County on a petition asking for clemency.”

This explains that even when white people would sign contracts in court saying they would pay black people for the work they did, they still would not, and they would treat black people like prisoners under guard, locked away, in harsh conditions. It then proves that other white people would go out of their way to save money, or gather signatures to help each other because they all knew what they were ding was wrong and thought that they could change the judge’s mind. They plead guilty to forty-five counts of peonage and conspiracy to hold blacks in slavery but later tried to say they did not know that what they were doing was against the law and protested the allegations against them. Judge Jones, the judge who was dealing with this case said that they knew what thy were doing was wrong especially since these black people didn’t commit any real crime and sentenced them to one year and a day in federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

4. “Ignoring the claims of extreme abuse and homicide committed on the Turner farm, the attorney’s argued that the men’s behavior might constitute a form of slavery but that no federal statute made slavery a crime.”

This quotes just shows the ways of how there is always a way to get around the law. Local law and federal law are different and for them to be charged, the case would have to be brought in a state court by local officials under Alabama’s law against false pretense, and no one acknowledged this. They had a valid argument.

5. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed in the wake of the war to formalize the ending of slavery, simply declared all persons born in the United States to be full-fledged citizens with the right to vote regardless of race or previous “conditions of slavery or involuntary servitude.” But it did not clearly state that the holding of slaves was a crime, and the disparate treatment of former slaves was made only a misdemeanor, carrying a maximum penalty of one year in jail.”

Even after The Civil Rights Act of 1866 whites took the law literally and found ways to work around it. They knew holding black people as slaves was a crime but since the act did not clearly, blatantly state that then they thought they could  get away with it. We all know that white people did not just hold slaves though, they held them and kept them under guard at all times and locked away because they knew that if one got away they would tell and get the whole plantation shut down. They still found a way around this and got a lower sentence.

Chapter 9: A River Of Anger:

1. “While the Turner trial was under was, a frenzied mob in Scottsboro, Alabama, gunned down the town sheriff in front of his family as he refused to turn over a black teenager who had allegedly “attempted criminal assault” on a nineteen-year old white girl. Once the sheriff was dead, the black man was seized from his cell and hanged from a telegraph pole that nigh.”

This shows how once white people realized that they were going to get in trouble for what they were doing they started taking matters into their own hands. They even went as far as going against law enforcement and killing them to do what they thought was right and just. This also shows how black men were portrayed as rapists and once a white girl called out rape, no one asked any questions since he was a black man that already had a stereotype against him.

2. “Their expectations of compensation radically altered the economics of southern agriculture. And even among the most ardent abolitionists, few white Americans in any region were truly prepared to accept black men and women, with their seemingly inexplicable dialects, mannerisms, and supposedly narrow skills, as true social equals.”

This quotes explains that even when black people were making progress, and showed white people now that they had the chance to that they had manners, they were educated because now they could attend school, had talents and much more that white people still saw black people as inferior to them because of the color of their skin.

3. “Before the publication of Darwin’s landmark On the Origin of Species in 1859, virtually all Americans viewed the presumed higher and lower racial order of whites, blacks, and native Indian tribes as mandated by God”

White people tried to justify slavery and their actions by using God and the Bible. There was much controversy over this because even whites and blacks are linked in their humanity and that God demanded some measure of moral consideration and compassion for all. So even when white people tried to use the Bible to justify their actions, they were wrong.

4. “The rule that had no exception was that one drop of Negro blood makes a negro.”

White people believed that if you had any black blood in you that you were impure and cursed. They hated black people but if you were mixed they hated you even more because they viewed you as a traitor, even though you can’t choose how you are born. They believed that if you had nay black in you that you tainted your white blood with dirty blood.

5. “The negro is monkey-like; has no sympathy for his fellow-man; has no regard for the truth, and when the truth would answer his purpose the best, he will lie. He is without gratitude or appreciation of anything done for him; is a natural born thief, --will steal anything, no matter how worthless, He has no morals.”

This was said about black people but if you look back in history and how white people acted, t actually describes them more than anything or anyone else. This also shows how these stereotypes and labels were put on black people and whites told and taught their young this which created a cognitive bias and cognitive dissonance. White people had a bias toward black people from what they were told from other white people, and even when proven wrong since they had a cognitive dissonance they were set in their ways of what they thought black people were.