Obscure Civil Rights Activists

[Note: this Blog is sadly late and thus is out of order. ]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/politics/27cashin.html?ref=civilrights


John Cashin Jr. was an African-American man who fought for the civil rights movement in running for office. He started a branch of the Democratic party in Alabama, and that party made a lot of headway in the civil rights cause. Some of its candidates were eliminated from the ballot by officials, so the party sued them. This case was taken before the Supreme Court, who ruled in the candidates' favour. Many candidates won.

Cashin's story reminds me of the Delaney sisters'. For one thing, before he was a politician, he was a dentist like Bessie. Also, he earned his degree from a predominately black institution, like the one the Delaneys grew up in. He also lived to old age--82--though he wasn't a hundred years old.

He also campaigned for civil rights nonviolently, like Martin Luther King, Jr.

Although his record wasn't spotless--he took the Delaneys' trick of cashing a parent's social security check after their death, but actually kept doing it for months, so he served some prison time--his political career, even when unsuccessful, gave other African-Americans a good example to go by. That is, he showed that even when the establishment is set against you, your cause can prevail.

Jim Crow

(The caption, though fuzzy because of Blogger, reads: "THE JIM CROWS ARE BACK." Picture from http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/human-rights-cartoon-75/)

This cartoon portrays one of the trees that anti-African-American groups, like the KKK, would lynch black people on. In the picture, there are crows in the tree--an allusion to the Jim Crow laws mentioned in the caption. The Jim Crow laws oppressed people of colour and segregated them--giving them "separate but equal" facilities in comparison to white people. When put into practice, though, this resulted in a lot of racism and abuse of African-Americans. It also kept the racist attitude in the South and other areas in the country, which in part led to the lynchings.

This relates to the Delaney sisters' book because they spoke at length about Jim Crow laws. Also, one of the sisters claims to have been nearly lynched this way (she thought she would be, at any rate).