— Richard Wright was born in Roxie, Mississippi. His grandparents had been slaves and his father had abandoned his family when he was six. His mother worked as a cook to support the family. They suffered from extreme poverty, especially after his mother became sick. Wright wanted to write from a very young age and he was overjoyed when, at the age of 16, a local newspaper printed one of the first stories that he wrote. Although no one in his family encouraged his dream, he refused to give it up. He worked at a number of jobs in the South but was unable to accept the prejudices and insults of Jim Crow. He kept reading and thinking about becoming a writer. In 1927, he left Memphis, Tennessee to migrate to Chicago. There, after working in unskilled jobs, he was given an opportunity to write. He joined the John Reed Club in Chicago, an organization set up by the Communist Party to recruit writers into its ranks. Wright joined the Party, and in 1937 he went to New York to write for the Daily Worker, the Party's newspaper. His first book, UNCLE TOM'S CHILDREN (1938), was greeted with critical praise. His next work, NATIVE SON (1940), the story of a black man who inadvertently kills a white woman, made him famous. The book was a best-seller and was staged successfully as a play on Broadway (1941) by director Orson Welles. Wright himself played Bigger Thomas, the book's main character, in a motion-picture version made in Argentina in 1951. In 1944 he left the Communist Party because of political and personal differences. His next book, BLACK BOY, told the wrenching story of his childhood and youth in the South, detailing the extreme poverty in which he lived, his experience of racism and white violence, and his growing awareness of literature. His books made Wright the voice for an entire generation of black Americans. After World War II, Wright settled in Paris; among his political works of that period was WHITE MAN, LISTEN! (1957). Toward the end of his life, Wright had become very much involved in the Pan-African movement. He also was engaged in a literary quarrel with a new generation of black writers including James Baldwin. Wright's autobiographical AMERICAN HUNGER, which recounts experiences with the Communist Party after moving to the North, was published after his death in 1977.
The birth of Bigger Thomas goes back to my childhood, and there was not just one Bigger, but many of them, more than I could count and more than you suspect. But let me start with the first Bigger, whom I shall call Bigger No. I. When I was a bareheaded, barefoot kid in Jackson, Mississippi, there was a boy who terrorized me and all of the boys I played with. If we were playing games, he would saunter up and snatch from us our balls, bats, spinning tops, and marbles. We would stand around pouting, sniffling, trying to keep back our tears, begging for our playthings. But Bigger would refuse. We never demanded that he give them back; we were afraid, and Bigger was bad. We had seen him clout boys when he was angry and we did not want to run that risk. We never recovered our toys unless we flattered him and made him feel that he was superior to us. Then, perhaps, if he felt like it, he condescended, threw them at us and then gave each of us a swift kick in the bargain, just to make us feel his utter contempt. That was the way Bigger No. I lived. His life was a continuous challenge to others. At all times he took his way, right or wrong, and those who contradicted him had him to fight. And never was he happier than when he had someone cornered and at his mercy; it seemed that the deepest meaning of his squalid life was in him at such times. I don't know what the fate of Bigger No. I was. His swaggering personality is swallowed up somewhere in the amnesia of my childhood. But I suspect that his end was violent. Anyway, he left a marked impression upon me; maybe it was because I longed secretly to be like him and was afraid. I don't know. If I had known only one Bigger I would not have written Native Son. Let me call the neat one Bigger No. 2; he was about seventeen and tougher than the first Bigger. Since I, too, had grown older, I was a little less afraid of him. And the hardness of this Bigger No. 2 was not directed toward me or the other Negroes, but toward the whites who ruled the South. He bought clothes and food on credit and would not pay for them. He lived in the dingy shacks of the white landlords and refused to pay rent. Of course, he had no money, but neither did we. We did without the necessities of life and starved ourselves, but he never would. When we asked him why he acted as he did, he would tell us (as though we were little children in a kindergarten) that the white folks had everything and he had nothing. Further, he would tell us that we were fools not to get what we wanted while we were alive in this world. We would listen and silently agree. We longed to believe and act as he did, but we were afraid. We were Southern Negroes and we were hungry and we wanted to live, but we were more willing to tighten our belts than risk conflict. Bigger No. 2 wanted to live and he did; he was in prison the last time I heard from him. There was Bigger No. 3, whom the white folks called a "bad [filtered word]." He carried his life in his hands in a literal fashion. I once worked as a ticket-taker in a Negro movie house (all movie houses in Dixie are Jim Crow; there are movies for whites and movies for blacks), and many times Bigger No. 3 came to the door and gave my arm a hard pinch and walked into the theater. Resentfully and silently, I'd nurse my bruised arm. Presently, the proprietor would come over and ask how things were going. I'd point into the darkened theater and say: "Bigger's in there." "Did he pay?" the proprietor would ask. "No, sir," I'd answer. The proprietor would pull down the corners of his lips and speak through his teeth: "We'll kill that goddamn [filtered word] one of these days." And the episode would end right there. But later on Bigger No. 3 was killed during the days of Prohibition: while delivering liquor to a customer he was shot through the back by a white cop. And then there was Bigger No. 4, whose only law was death. The Jim Crow laws of the South were not for him. But as he laughed and cursed and broke them, he knew that some day he'd have to pay for his freedom. His rebellious spirit made him violate all the taboos and consequently he always oscillated between moods of intense elation and depression. He was never happier than when he had outwitted some foolish custom, and he was never more melancholy than when brooding over the impossibility of his ever being free. He had no job, for he regarded digging ditches for fifty cents a day as slavery. "I can't live on that," he would say. Oft times I'd find him reading a book; he would stop and in a joking, wistful, and cynical manner ape the antics of the white folks. Generally, he'd end his mimicry in a depressed state and say: "The white folks won't let us do nothing." Bigger No. 4 was sent to the asylum for the insane.
Then there was Bigger No. 5, who always rode the Jim Crow streetcars without paying and sat wherever he pleased. I remember one morning his getting into a streetcar (all streetcars in Dixie are divided into two sections: one section is for whites and is labeled-FOR WHITES; the other section is for Negroes and is labeled-FOR COLORED) and sitting in the white section. The conductor went to him and said: "Come on, [filtered word]. Move over where you belong. Can't you read?" Bigger answered: "Naw, I can't read." The conductor flared up: "Get out of that seat!" Bigger took out his knife, opened it, held it nonchalantly in his hand, and replied: "Make me." The conductor turned red, blinked, clenched his fists, and walked away, stammering: "The goddamn scum of the earth!" A small angry conference of white men took place in the front of the car and the Negroes sitting in the Jim Crow section overheard: "That's that Bigger Thomas [filtered word] and you'd better leave 'im alone." The Negroes experienced an intense flash of pride and the streetcar moved on its journey without incident. I don't know what happened to Bigger No. 5. But I can guess. The Bigger Thomases were the only Negroes I know of who consistently violated the Jim Crow laws of the South and got away with it, at least for a sweet brief spell. Eventually, the whites who restricted their lives made them pay a terrible price. They were shot, hanged, maimed, lynched, and generally hounded until they were either dead or their spirits broken.
The term was first used in an Atlantic Monthly article titled “Strivings of the Negro People” in 1897. It was later republished with minor edits under the title “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” in 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois describes “double consciousness” as follows: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn’t bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
In essence, stereotypical beliefs depicted in Native Son are a form of blindness that impairs nearly all of the characters’ judgment and do not allow Bigger to be judged as an individual. From Bigger’s first meeting with Jan and Mary until the end of his trial, stereotyping affects each aspect of the narrative. In fact, Bigger counts on the police’s misconception of his inferior intellect as a way to evade suspicion. It is also Bigger’s awareness of the preconceived notions of Communists that enable him to manipulate yet another stereotype in his favor by laying blame on Jan, a Communist party member, if only for a little while. Even the early newspaper coverage of the murders implies that Bigger is incapable of concocting the crime and its cover-up: “The police feel that the plan of the murder and kidnapping was too elaborate to be the work of a Negro mind. Wright asserted in an Atlantic Monthly response essay that “(i)f there had been one person in the Dalton household who viewed Bigger Thomas as a human being, the crime would have been solved in half an hour. … The one piece of incriminating evidence … was Bigger’s humanity, and the Daltons, Britten, and the newspaper men could not see or admit the living clue of Bigger’s humanity under their very eyes” . Bigger Thomas is a victim of the environment created by the racial hierarchy of the era, and reacts naturally, as a human, to inhumane conditions, but because Bigger is black, his human qualities are never considered. Wright’s contemporaries accused him of deliberately playing into black male stereotypes to appease a white audience, therefore validating white Americans’ perceptions of how blacks behave. James Baldwin wrote of Bigger Thomas in his essay “Many Thousand Gone” that “Bigger . . . and his furious kin, serve only to whet the notorious national taste for the sensational and to reinforce all that we now find it necessary to believe”. Furthermore, Baldwin asserts that “[t]he American image of the Negro lives also in the Negro’s heart, and when he has surrendered to this image life has not other possible reality.” Thus the novel does not call for change, but confirms what people already believe. Baldwin implies that if the image of the black male as a hateful, murderous subhuman is believed and accepted by whites as well as blacks, the image, truth or myth, will continue to be portrayed in both fiction and reality. On the other hand, J.D. Jerome, in a 1940 book review of Native Son, commends Wright for deferring from previous depictions of “exceptional colored Americans” and shifting focus to the “underprivileged Negro constituting the main problem in the American social order.” By focusing on Bigger, a petty thief and liar, rather than a character of honor and perseverance, Wright is able to more forcefully explicate the immediate need for attention to the American race issue. Wright reveals that society is not churning out productive citizens, but instead, angry, militants who will violently release suppressed emotions stifled by oppression.
By Shepsu Aakhu How much useful information can be provided by telling you what something is NOT. Imagine someone describing their mother and all they can say about her is; “she’s not Adolph Hitler.” Not much help? Closer to a detriment perhaps? Likewise the same mother may spend an enormous amount of energy describing how wonderful her son is by telling you what he is not. “He’s not on drugs,” “He doesn’t have any children,” “he’s not in a gang.” In the end do we have a clear picture of her son? We have a similar problem with describing storytelling in theater and film. Chronology is king in the western narrative. So much so that the lexicon essentially permits only two definitions for story structure: Linear and non-linear. The definition for linear storytelling is simple. When told, the story’s sequence of events (plot) can be best represented by a line. All of the events happen in chronological order from first to last, or in some instances last to first. Non-linear then is any story structure which “cannot” best be represented by a straight line. So we know what non-linear is NOT, (it’s not a line) but what IS it? We must first ask ourselves, “what is the organizing force at work in our story.” In a linear story it’s obvious that the organizing force is time. More precisely it is the relentless march forward of time. If you doubt it, watch any western play/film and take note of how often the relentless march forward of time is diverted. Any diversion from linear chronology is a rare occurrence, except of course with Quentin Tarentino’s Pulp Fiction. But can you name another film? The only tangible example in Western/American theatre/film of diverting time is the “flashback”(and it’s evil step sister the “flash forward”), which basically gives license to the storyteller to incorporate a non-linear element briefly (usually less than two minutes) before once again kneeling at the alter of time. I do not have a problem with the western narrative being a slave to chronology. The fact is that linear thought and chronology are deeply imbedded in the psyche of the westernized mind. They can hardly image a world without it. But we can both image such a place, and reflect it in our art. What if we organized a story around a deeper connection or relationships between events? What if the most important force in our story centered around the interdependence and connection between events, not their chronological relationship to each other? Suddenly a new world is possible. Now we can bounce forward and backward in time and watch the effect of actions as they relate to each other, as opposed to waiting for all of those years to transpire in our story, or simply trying to create an ellipse of time? Perhaps an example would better illustrate the point. Let’s say we have a story where our primary character (Olivia) lives in 2006. She’s a mother and is having trouble raising her daughter. Her mother (Maggy) also had similar troubles raising Olivia in 1976. Maggy’s mother (Sandra) also encountered similar trouble with her in 1956. In a traditional linear format, we would tell each of these stories one after the other and watch the events of their lives slowly unfold over three generations. When the story concludes, we would then be able to make the connections regarding the impact of individual life choices on our characters. We would see how the present “results” from all of the events that lead up to today. Here’s another way to tell this story. If we organize the story around associated elements, that is to say we clump events together based on their mutual relevance/impact, and ignore chronology, we end up with a story that moves based upon the interconnected nature of these three generations. Effectively we eliminate the “present” as the result of everything that has come before it, and instead make it interdependent/interconnected with past and future. “When” something happens is of less significance. The emphasis now lays on the fact “that” it happened at all. Furthermore, the impact of the action and it’s effect on other events/characters/eras is underscored by placing such events proximal to each other in the plot. Essentially I can now see the interconnected interdependent nature of life, because the illusion of time has been removed. What do we gain, and what do we sacrifice by telling stories in this manner? The trade off is that you can get vibrant and provocative connections in the moment that they are presented, but you may not understand their chronological relationship until the end of the work you are experiencing. This has proven most difficult for those who cannot suppress the western desire to know the “when” before they know the “what” and the “why.” I recognize that associative storytelling asks a lot of the audience. It requires that you stop “actively” working to reconstruct a linear/chronological context for the work. It is not as if associative storytelling is absent of chronological clues, but the chronology is not emphasized. If one gives one’s full attention to reconstructing a viable time line, frustration will likely result. Additionally, the power of the associations, the very reason a story is being told, may be lost. My advice… submit… feel… connect… you’ll get your “when” - and you’ll likely discover how little it actually matters.
Within the black community, there had been constant migration since the end of the nineteenth century. Much of that migration had taken place within the South as blacks migrated from place to place trying to make a decent living. In the 20th century, Blacks started to move to the North as the train provided easy access to Chicago and other Northern cities. There were other factors as well that contributed to this Great Southern Exodus: American Immigration patterns could not keep pace with the growth of American Industry: The Great War halted immigration and to make matters worse it sapped many of the remaining immigrant workers as they abandoned the mills in order to take up arms in the old country -this made the labor crisis dire enough for industry to become more welcoming to the Negro. Additionally, the sharecroppers life– always hard– became unbearable as new pests such as the boll weevil decimated southern cash crops and left these farmers with no apparent means of supporting their families. Hundreds of thousands of blacks migrated from the South to Chicago and other cities of the North. The CHICAGO DEFENDER, the most influential Black newspaper, encouraged blacks to leave. The paper held a vision of the North as the land of freedom, a dream that has been in the hearts of black men and women since slavery time -- many referred to the North as "The Promised Land." Richard Wright remembered how the North kept hope alive during the dark days of his childhood in the deep South. "The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt or seen; it had no relation to what actually existed. Yet by imagining a place where everything is possible, it kept hope alive inside of me." Southern whites feared the migration would deprive them of black labor. Blacks saw the exodus as a fulfillment of God's promise. A Birmingham minister offered the following prayer to his congregation: "We feel and believe that this great Exodus is God's hand and plan. In a mysterious way God is moving upon the hearts of our people to go where He has prepared for them." Among those who migrated were the most creative people in the South. Jazz musicians came from New Orleans to play in Chicago, Kansas City, and New York. Blues players came from the Delta. The NAACP welcomed writers and poets like writer Zora Neale Hurston, poet Langston Hughes, and sculptor Augusta Savage. They, along with poet Countee Cullen and other black artists, created a cultural explosion known as the "Harlem Renaissance." The migration slowed down during the Depression in the 1930s but picked up speed when World War II began. Again jobs opened up in factories. At the same time, mechanization came to the cotton fields, displacing many black farmers. Between the period 1910 and 1970, an estimated six million blacks migrated from the South.
From the turn of the twentieth century until after World War II, the term “Black Belt” was commonly used to identify the predominately Negro (African - American) community on Chicago's South Side. Originally a narrow corridor extending from 22nd to 31st Streets along State Street, Chicago's South Side African American community expanded over the century until it stretched from 39th to 95th streets, the Dan Ryan Expressway to Lake Michigan. The “kitchenette” initially described a newly constructed small apartment in Chicago, first appearing around 1916 in Uptown, at a time when apartment construction in the city was increasing dramatically. It featured “Pullman kitchens” and “Murphy in-a-door beds” to conserve space, and connoted efficiency and modernity. By the 1920s, and especially during the Great Depression, World War II, and early postwar era, the term came to be associated with conversions by white and Black landlords of existing housing into smaller units, usually, although not exclusively, in the Black Belt and other areas occupied by African Americans. Single-family houses and structures meant for two and three families were converted for more intensive use. Brick buildings with medium and large apartments rented on a monthly basis were divided into oneroom units, using beaver-board partitions. The resulting units were often rented out by the week as furnished rooms, although the amount of furniture offered was marginal. Entire families occupied single rooms, sharing with other residents an inadequate number of bathrooms and kitchens, exceeding the plumbing capacity, and leading to a serious deterioration in sanitary conditions. During the 1940s, more than 80,000 conversions of this type had occurred in Chicago, leading to a 52 percent increase in units lacking private bath facilities. Kitchenettes of varying quality were rented by all races, including white World War II veterans and young families on the Near North Side and elsewhere. But their rapid increase and clustering in the Black Belt made them more prominent in housing of African Americans. A federal study in the 1930s found that conditions in kitchenettes occupied by blacks in one South Side area were much worse than those occupied by whites. They had less space, sunlight, and amenities.
By Gwendolyn Brooks We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, Not strong, like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.” But could a dream send up through onion fumes Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms Even if we were willing to let it in, Had time to warm it, keep it very clean, Anticipate a message, let it begin? We wonder. But not well! not for a minute! Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.
They issued what they named "The Call," a summons for civil rights activists to meet and form an organization that would fight for black civil and political rights and an end to racial discrimination. Among the founders were Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard and William English Walling. Dr. Du Bois, a Harvard-educated black scholar then teaching at Atlanta University, was asked to be editor of the organization's publication. Throughout its history, THE CRISIS was the voice of the NAACP. The NAACP's goal was to fight for integration and against discrimination in all areas of American life. It challenged segregation in the federal government; raised public awareness of the pervasiveness and brutality of lynching; protested the release of THE BIRTH OF A NATION, an inflammatory motion picture denigrating blacks and praising the Ku Klux Klan; and advocated an end to discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation. James Weldon Johnson was the organization's first black president. Walter White headed the NAACP from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 1934, under the leadership of chief legal counsel Charles Houston, the NAACP planned to attack segregation in the federal courts and won several major victories. In 1939 the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund was established independently of the NAACP to act as its legal arm. The NAACP challenged the legality of the all-white primary, segregation in higher education, and segregated interstate travel in buses. It won victories in all three cases: In 1944, the Court declared the all-white primary unconstitutional; in 1946 it banned segregation in interstate busing; and in 1954, the Court ruled that segregation in public education violated the Constitution. During the Civil Rights Movement, the NAACP organized voter registration drives and sit-ins in the South as well as initiates legal challenges in the court.
founded in 1919, three years after the Russian Revolution– it started as a dual organization composed of foreign-language and native-born American groups, but the factions were ordered to merge by the Soviet Union, which helped fund the Communist Party USA. The Communists were active in promoting civil rights and racial equality for Blacks. Many Black writers and artists were invited to Moscow as guests of the state. When the Great Depression occurred, many Communists believed that Marx's prediction of the inevitable collapse of capitalism was coming true. The Communists became extremely active on the civil-rights front, and they found a great opportunity to act on the national stage in 1931 (See The Scottsboro Boys—next page). At the same time as the Communists were fighting the Scottsboro case, they were also organizing sharecroppers and tenant farmers in Alabama. Their goal was to force landlords to give sharecroppers and tenant farmers a fair share of their income, provide food and clothing during the winter, and pay them money that was lawfully due them. The party found thousands of black farmers who were willing to participate. It was a dangerous business. Local organizers like Ralph Gray and Clifford James, Alabama farmers, were murdered. Others, like Ned Cobb, were imprisoned. Some just disappeared. Unidentified bodies of those believed to be organizers were found in rivers. Despite the terror, the party organized some successful strikes in Lee County in the mid-1930s. However, the agricultural situation had dramatically changed by the late 1930s and the party -- while still maintaining a strong civil rights platform -- withdrew from the cotton fields. By 1932 it was estimated that 75 percent of the population was living in poverty, and fully one-third was unemployed. In many places, Black unemployment rates were four times those of white workers. But the richest people in society felt no sympathy for the starving masses. They had spent the previous decade slashing wages and breaking unions, with widespread success. By 1929, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had lost a million members. With the onset of depression, they banded together as a group to oppose every measure to grant government assistance to feed the hungry or help the homeless. Most employers flatly refused to bargain with any union, and used the economic crisis as an excuse to slash all wages across the board. But in so doing, they unleashed the greatest period of social upheaval that has ever taken place in the United States. Police repeatedly fired upon hunger marchers in the early 1930s. In 1932, for example, the Detroit police mowed down a hunger demonstration of several thousand, using machine guns. Four demonstrators were killed and more than 60 were injured. Yet afterward a city prosecutor said, "I say I wish they’d killed a few more of those damn rioters." In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt granted workers the right to organize into unions in Section 7(a) of the National Recovery Act, and workers rushed to join unions. But everywhere the employers put up violent resistance. In 1934, when 400,000 East Coast textile workers went on strike to win union recognition, the bosses responded with a reign of terror, provoking one of the bitterest and bloodiest strikes in U.S. labor history. In the South, the ruling class unleashed a torrent of racism and anti-communism, while armed mobs attacked strikers. The Gastonia Daily Gazette ran "Communism in the South. Kill it!" as a front-page headline. Employers distributed anti -union leaflets that read, "Would you belong to a union which opposes White supremacy?" Historians disagree why the union movement never formed a labor party and why American workers have never embraced socialist parties in any significant numbers. Some have argued that the left lost its power to lead the labor movement by its ideological zig-zags. The CP's history within the labor movement was short and relatively ineffective.
During the 1930s, much of the world's attention was riveted on the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black youths falsely charged with raping two white women in Alabama. This case, more than any other event in the South during the 1930s, revealed the barbarous treatment of blacks. The case began on March 25, 1931, when a number of white and black youths were riding on a freight train, traveling to see if they could find work. A fight broke out between a group of black and white hobos, and the whites were thrown off the train. They reported the incident to a stationmaster, who wired ahead for officials to stop the train at a town called Paint Rock. Dozens of armed men rounded up nine black youths and took them to jail. They were about to be charged with assault when two white women, dressed in boys clothing, were discovered hiding on the train. Although there was no evidence connecting the youth to the women, the nine youths were charged with raping the women. The women -- who had had sexual relations with some of the white men thrown off the train and fearing prosecution for their sexual activity with the white men -- agreed to testify against the black youths. The trial was held in the town of Scottsboro, Alabama. The all-white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old, were sentenced to death. The announcement of the verdict and sentences brought a roar of protest in the North. The Communist Party USA took charge of the case and carried out a two-fold battle -- in the courts and on the streets. In 1932 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions (Powell v. Alabama) on the grounds that the defendants had not received adequate legal counsel in a capital case. The state of Alabama then retried one of the accused, Haywood Patterson, and once again convicted him. But the trial judge, James Horton, set aside the verdict on the grounds that he did not believe the defendant committed the crime. That decision caused him to be defeated in the next election. The state then retried Clarence Norris to see if the Supreme Court would again intervene. Norris was sentenced to death, but in 1935 decision the U.S. Supreme Court (Norris v. Alabama) overturned this conviction, ruling that the state had excluded blacks from juries. Alabama again tried and convicted Haywood Patterson, this time sentencing him to 75 years in prison. Further trials of the rest of the defendants resulted in more reconvictions and appeals until, after persistent pressure both Northern and Southern groups, Alabama freed the four youngest defendants (who had already served six years in jail) and later paroled all but Patterson. Patterson escaped in 1948 and fled to Michigan, where, three years later, he was convicted of manslaughter and died in prison. The last known surviving member of the group, Clarence Norris, fled to the North after his parole in 1946 and was granted a full pardon by the Governor of Alabama in 1976.
(1918-1938) Also known as the interbellum. In western culture, the interwar period refers to the period between the First and the Second World War. It is often associated with economic depression and the rise of fascism as countries in Western Europe in particular struggled to recover from the devastation caused by the First World War.
In the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, political and economic difficulties culminated in the 1923 hyperinflation and the failed Munich Putsch in the same year. But despite economic difficulties and the failure of the League of Nations to curb Japanese aggression in Manchuria in 1931, there was initially hope that world peace and stability could be maintained. The situation changed, however, following Hitler’s accession to power in January 1933. The period after 1933 was marked by a series of international crises, which culminated in the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, and the legitimacy and effectiveness of the League of Nations was increasingly called into question. In March 1935, Hitler announced the reintroduction of conscription in Germany disregarding the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and in March 1936 Hitler sent troops to the Rhineland, which had been demilitarised by the Treaty of Versailles. The Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936 and soon developed an international significance when Hitler and Mussolini sent help to Franco. In 1937, Japan embarked on a full-scale invasion of northern China, resulting in the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45). Austria was forcibly annexed to Nazi Germany in the Anschluss of March 1938. The Sudetenland was also annexed to Germany in September 1938. In March of the following year Hitler violated the Munich Agreement by sending troops to occupy Prague.
In the United States the first half of the period, often referred to as the ‘Roaring Twenties’, was one of considerable prosperity; the situation changed, however, from 1929 onwards with the onset of the Great Depression. In the decade following WWI, the Republican party and new-found conservatism held the loyalty of most Americans. The people of the U.S. desired to return to peacetime pursuits, and there were some serious economic and social problems to be solved: achieving a balance among the demands of business, labor, and agriculture; coping with imminent large-scale immigration; controlling the prohibition experiment; and combating radicalism without destroying civil liberties. Americans were tired of war and disillusioned by the treaty-making that followed, the people attempted to withdraw from international commitments. With the defeat of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations in the Senate on March 19, 1920, Americans turned inward in isolation, once again. In addition, politics in the 1920s saw the old issues go. Progressive reform, imperialism, war, treaty-making--were all forgotten. The vast majority of voters were anxious to escape from Wilsonian idealism and the responsibilities of world leadership. In the presidential campaign of 1920, Republican Senator Warren G. Harding called for "a return to normalcy," a slogan which appealed to war-weary Americans enough that they voted him into ofice by a landslide, and restored the Republican party to the cockpit. But, in spite of America's disgust for events overseas, the country would not be able to isolate itself from the dangerous aftermath of the Versailles Treaty.
Calvin Coolidge's motto was that "the business of America is business," so his administration from 1924-28 saw the country enjoying an unprecendented business boom. Industrial activity rose to all-time highs, and the national wealth soared. Wages were high, and the average family enjoyed a larger income than ever before. The nation went on a buying spree. Cars, radios, new homes, and furniture were in tremendous demand. Not happy with buying with cash, many people bought on the installment plan. That is, they paid a small sum down and promised to pay the balance in the over “time.� Many also used their savings to speculate wildly on the stock market in order to get rich quick. Optimism ran riot, and people expected prosperity to last forever (a natural idea, since it took so much heartache to bring it about). The era was a bundle of contradictions, continuous ferment, and trial and error. The era saw the rise of political intolerance in the form of the "Red Scare" and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Hysterical fears of Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, which led to the formation of a tiny communist party in the U.S., continued to have a tremendous effect of American thinking. This national paranoia was heightened by an epidemic of strikes following the war's end. Americans denounced "radical" foreign ideas, condemned "un-American" lifestyles, and led a nation-wide crusade against suspected left-wingers under the direction of A. Mitchell Palmer. Thousands of radicals were rounded up in these "Palmer Raids," and hundreds found guilty were deported. In the (Nicola) Sacco and (Bartolomeo) Vanzetti Trial, two Italian immigrant atheists, anarchists, and draft dodgers were convicted of a payroll robbery-murder that they didn't commit. What was really on trial was their anarchist and pacifist sentiments. Xenophobic intolerance was also on the rise. Henry Ford sponsored the publication of a vicious and obviously forged tract called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" which tried to prove that the Jews were plotting to take over the world. Ford later retracted his support and apologized for his actions. Ku Klux Klan membership mushroomed and was anti-everything: anti-black, anti-Catholic, antiforeign, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-gambling, anti-adultery, etc. Congress responded to Americans' anti-immigrant feelings by passing the Emergency Quota Act (1921) which set the quota at 3% and later the Immigration Act of 1924, which set the quota at 2%. The "Scopes Monkey Trial" (1924) divided the country, and showed how deep fundamentalism ran in American society, especially the South. John T. Scopes answered an ad placed in a Tennessee newspaper by the ACLU in 1925, which asked for a teacher who would volunteer to teach the theory of evolution in public schools, and thus become a legal test-case. Church membership grew and people like Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple MacPherson became the celebrities of their day by attracting thousands to tent revivals all over the country. The clash of the skeptical spirit of science as represented by Clarence Darrow and dogmatic faith in the form of William Jennings Bryan attracted international attention. Paradoxically, the Twenties were also a period of feminine revolt against puritan restraints. Young women flocked to become "flappers." They worked for their own money at hundreds of new jobs, wore short skirts, cloche hats, and lots of makeup, smoked openly, hung out with young men, and emulated the big movie star of the era, Clara Bow, the "It" girl.
Much of the degeneration of the 20’s was the result of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act which enforced national prohibition. Bootlegging became a shadow industry, and gangsterism flourished. No one could obey such an obviously idealistic, moralistic law and, as a result, general respect for the law in other areas began to erode, followed in close turn by the erosion of morality. The protection racket, the numbers racket, loan-sharking, prostitution, narcotics, and vendetta-style gangland murders became common. Unfortunately, many Americans became secretly sympathetic to the gangsters, who fostered this attitude by appearing as latter-day Robin Hoods to the general public. Thus it was, that the 18th Amendment had precisely the opposite effect of its intention. The frenetic all-night party atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties came to an abrupt end on October 24, 1929 with the Stock Market crash which ushered in the Great Depression. Historians and economists have been able to pinpoint several reasons why the market crashed so hard. First, the prosperity of the Twenties was unevenly distributed among the various parts of the American economy--farmers and unskilled workers were excluded with the result that the nation's productive capacity was greater than its capacity to consume. Second, the tariff and war debt policies of the Republican administrations of the 1920s had cut down the foreign market for American goods. Third, many Americans had bought on a 10% margin; that is, they put up part of the price of the stock and owed the balance. When their margin was lost, they were forced to sell their stock at whatever price they could get for it. And finally, easy money policies led to an inordinate expansion of credit and installment buying and fantastic speculation in the stock market, especially in the highly speculative enterprises. The depression stateside produced severe effects abroad, especially in Europe, where many countries had not fully recovered from the aftermath of WWI. In the U.S., during the depth of the depression (1933), there were 16 million unemployed--or about 1/3 of the workforce. Herbert Hoover's misfortune to be in the White House during the most difficult phase of the ensuing depression. Throughout his tenure, he continued to voice optimism because he sincerely believed that periodic depressions were a natural part of the business cycle. "Prosperity is just around the corner," he would always say; and he always refused to allow the government to help the jobless, homeless, and starving through relief programs because he saw these as socialistic or communistic. Furthermore, no one could envision at the time just how long the depression would last. And thus, in spite of the "too-little, too-late" public works program that he created, the growing misery, lengthening bread lines, and "Hoovervilles" of cardboard shacks, all left the lasting impression of Hoover as some kind of latterday Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Between 1929 and 1932, some 85,000 businesses failed, with assets totaling about $4.5 billion; by 1932, more than 14 million people were unemployed. The nation's income in 1929 was $81 billion, by 1932 in had dropped to $41 billion, while the savings in 9 million bank accounts were wiped out to meet household expenses. Ironically, Bernard E. Smith make a fortune in the stock market by following the rule of thumb that the market would decline every time Hoover appeared in public saying that "prosperity is just around the corner."
The Republican party was blamed for the depression and this paved the way for the election of the Democratic candidate of 1932--F.D.R., who stressed "a new deal" for the "forgotten man," while emphasizing that the Democrats believed it to be the responsibility of the federal government to promote the welfare and well-being of the great masses of the people. As a result, the Democrats were voted into office with a landslide: 42 states to 4. In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt declared that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," and pledged strong executive leadership to resolve the Depression. In spite of his handicap (stricken with Polio in 1921), Roosevelt was an activist, and set out to deal with the Depression almost as soon as he was elected. From March to June, 1933, during "The Hundred Days" Roosevelt launched the First New Deal program, whose two-fold object was relief, recovery, and reform, and the prevention of future depressions.
Music entered the "Jazz Age," and composers of every flavor began to exploit its possibilities. Blacks, who were segregated in nearly every other facet of public life, found themselves in great demand as jazz musicians, enjoyed by all races. One theory why Blacks were so productive during the 20’s may be attributed to segregation itself, ironically. "Jim Crow" laws tended to keep Black society cohesive and whole, not subject to the inroads of the general, "white" culture surrounding them. It's a sad commentary that Black society was probably never healthier before or since. They were no longer subject either to the whims and vagaries of their masters (as they had been under slavery), or to the cultural degredation imposed by force-draft integration of the 1960s, Black families could now stay together; while the isolations imposed by segregation encouraged Blacks to go into all manner of professions to meet their own needs. They were an island unto themselves in the 1920s--and they were flourishing ( at least relative speaking). White composers could only imitate the great creative genius of the Black musicians who typically couldn't even read music. Within jazz, there are many different permutations: blues, ragtime, New Orleans (or Dixieland), swing, bebop, and progressive. As the Depression's early days brought Southern musicians to Northern cities, the Chicago blues scene absorbed and incorporated these new arrivals. Ensembles grew, the blues became more popular, and individual musicians' styles combined to form a new sound. In between the first generation of Mississippi Delta acoustic blues players of the late 1920s and early '30s (Charley Patton, Skip James, Son House, etc.), and the great electric Chicago blues artists of the late 1940s and '50s (Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, etc.) - many of whom migrated to Chicago from Mississippi - was a generation of musicians that played what is often styled Acoustic Chicago Blues. This era of Blues represented an evolution from straightforward acoustic Delta Blues (a blues singer alone with his acoustic guitar), into a trio (acoustic guitar, acoustic bass and piano). Acoustic Chicago Blues was built on a new urban energy and lighthearted, city-slanted lyrics Among the pre-eminent artists of this era and style are Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold, Sonny Boy (John Lee) Williamson, Robert Nighthawk, Washboard Sam, Willie Dixon, Scrapper Blackwell, and, Big Bill Broonzy.
During the summer and fall of 1919 race riots exploded in a number of cities in both the North and South. The three most violent episodes occurred in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas. On the afternoon of July 27, 1919, a stone-throwing melee between blacks and whites began after a black youth mistakenly swam into territory claimed by whites off the 29th Street beach in Chicago. Amidst the mayhem, Eugene Williams, a black youth, drowned. When a white police officer refused to arrest the white men involved in the death, and instead arrested a black man, racial tensions escalated. Fighting broke out between gangs and mobs of both races. Violence escalated with each incident, and for 13 days Chicago was in a state of turmoil. By the time the riot ended, 23 blacks and 15 whites were dead, 537 injured, and 1,000 black families were left homeless. The Chicago riot was part of a national racial frenzy of clashes, massacres, and lynchings throughout the North and the South. All of the incidents were initiated by whites. In Washington, D.C., from July 19 to 23, four whites and two blacks were killed; whites were astonished that blacks dared to fight back. The NEW YORK TIMES lamented the new black militancy: "There had been no trouble with the Negro before the war when most admitted the superiority of the white race." A "Southern black woman," as she identified herself, wrote a letter to THE CRISIS, praising Blacks for fighting back. "The Washington riot gave me a thrill that comes once in a life time ... at last our men had stood up like men. ... I stood up alone in my room ... and exclaimed aloud, 'Oh I thank God, thank God.' The pent up horror, grief and humiliation of a life time -- half a century -- was being stripped from me." From October 1-3, a race war exploded in Phillips County, Arkansas. On the night of September 30, a small group of black men and women were gathering a rural church to organize a sharecroppers' and tenant farmers' union -- the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. When two white law-enforcement officers arrived at the church, one later claiming they were looking for a bootlegger, shots were exchanged. One white officer was killed and the other wounded. As word of the shootings spread throughout the county, the local sheriff sent out a call for men "to hunt Mr. Nigger in his lair." The call went out to Mississippi to come to the aid of white men in Phillips County. Hundreds of armed men jumped into trains, trucks, and cars and, crossing into Arkansas, fired out of windows at every black they saw. Some said that if it was black and moving, it was target practice. Frank Moore, one of the farmers at the church, saw the massacre as it unfolded: "The whites sent word that they was comin down here and kill every nigger they found. There were 300 or 400 more white men with guns, shooting and killing women and children." Soldiers from the United States Army eventually restored order, although some claimed the military participated in the killings. By the time the shooting ended, 25 blacks and five whites were listed as officially dead. Many blacks believed that perhaps as many as 200 were killed, their bodies dumped in the Mississippi River or left to rot in the canebrake. The white establishment charged that blacks had formed a secret conspiracy to rise up and overthrow the white planters, take their land and rape their women. No evidence was ever produced to substantiate the charge.
If the grand jury investigating the white-on-black violence during the 1919 race riot in Chicago is to be believed, Irish American gangs played a central role in attempting to extend the bloodshed. Members of Ragen's Colts, one of the leading gangs, disguised themselves in blackface in order to set fire to Polish and Lithuanian neighborhoods in the Back of the Yards area. Their hope was to draw the immigrant population into bloody reprisals against Blacks. Two years later, Ragen's Colts again mounted the barricades, hanging in effigy a Ku Klux Klansman in the opening salvo of a successful campaign to isolate and drive from Chicago an organization known for violence against southern Blacks, but now focused on Roman Catholics and Jews as threats to American culture and society. In that incarnation, the Colts battled the forces of intolerance. Thus Ragen's Colts symbolized the bizarre extremes of racial intolerance and terror in early-twentieth-century Chicago. The two faces of Ragen's Colts will almost inevitably strike contemporary readers as contradictory: at one moment deceptive, vile, and exclusionary and at the next campaigning against icons of hatred. However, such contradictions go to the heart of Chicago's history. In the city's past and present, two images contend. One emphasizes the astonishing cultural variety and vibrant cultural exchanges nourished in an atmosphere of tolerance. The other stresses how quickly and ruthlessly racial lines have been or can be drawn in the city sometimes called the nation's “most segregated,” one that helped to teach Martin Luther King about a racism he had not encountered in the South. To move beyond explaining away such contradictions as simply “paradoxes” requires coming to grips with the chilling extent to which processes of racial exclusion were part and parcel of building increasingly inclusive unities among European immigrants as white Americans. During the 1919 race riot, the blackface arson came in response to the lack of interest among Eastern European immigrants in brutalizing Blacks. Some Poles argued that the riot was a conflict between blacks and whites, with Poles abstaining because they belonged to neither group. Indeed the Poles and Lithuanians might well have hated each other more than either group hated Blacks. Thus the racially disguised terror committed by the Irish American gang members was not only an act of racism. It was, perversely, also an act of inclusion, reaching out to newer Roman Catholic immigrants who did not have a secure place in U.S. systems of racial privilege and who did not sufficiently identify and act as whites. In that sense the arson served as a fit prelude to militant, but not interracial, protest against the Klan's attempts to restrict the white race to Protestant Anglo-Saxondom. In this period, inclusion in the ranks of White America is not a forgone conclusion for European immigrants. That process was not cemented until the 1960’s. Some would argue that inclusion is still not cemented for many Eastern Europeans (e.g. Turkey, Iran, the Balkan States, and many corners of the former Soviet Union.)
A tragedy of three young lost lives, a dead fourteen-year-old victim and the imprisonment of two teenage killers, unfolded in Chicago in 1924. The murder trial of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold that shocked the nation is best remembered decades later for the 12-hour long plea of Clarence Darrow to save his clients from the gallows. His summation, stands as one of the most eloquent attacks on the death penalty ever delivered in an American courtroom. It was billed as the "trial of the century." It is not surprising that the public responded to a trial that involved the kidnapping and murder of a young boy from one of Chicago's most prominent families, a bizarre relationship between two promising scholars-turned-murderers, what the prosecutor called an "act of Providence" leading to the apprehension of the teenage defendants, dueling psychiatrists, and an experienced and sharp-tongued state's attorney bent on hanging the confessed killers in spite of their relative youth. The crime began as a fantasy in the mind of 18-year old Richard Loeb, the handsome and privileged son of a retired Sears Roebuck vice president. Loeb was obsessed with crime. Despite his intelligence and standing as the youngest graduate ever of the University of Michigan, Loeb read mostly detective stories. He read about crime, he planned crimes, and he committed crimes. For Loeb, crime became a sort of game; he wanted to commit the perfect crime just to prove that it could be done. Loeb was gregarious and extroverted; Leopold misanthropic and aloof—yet they soon became intimate companions. And the more Leopold learned about Loeb, the stronger his attraction for the other boy. Loeb was impossibly good-looking: slender but well built, tall. That Loeb would often indulge in purposeless, destructive behavior—stealing cars, setting fires and smashing storefront windows—did nothing to diminish Leopold's desire for Loeb's companionship. Leopold had a tedious obsession with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. He would talk endlessly about the mythical superman who, because he was a superman, stood outside the law, beyond any moral code that might constrain the actions of ordinary men. Even murder, Leopold claimed, was an acceptable act for a superman to commit if the deed gave him pleasure. Morality did not apply in such a case. Neither Loeb nor Leopold relished the idea of murdering their kidnap victim, but they thought it critical to minimizing their likelihood of being identified as the kidnappers. Their victim turned out to be an acquaintance — Bobby Franks. On May 21, 1924 at about five o'clock in the afternoon, Bobby Franks was walking home from school. Loeb asked Franks to come over to the car, asked him to get in the car - then killed him with a chisel as the two drove off. Leopold and Loeb drove their rented car to a marshland near the Indiana line, where they stripped Franks naked, poured hydrochloric acid over his body to make identification more difficult, then stuffed the body in a concrete drainage culvert. The boys returned to the Loeb home where they burned Franks' clothing in a basement fire. The next morning the Franks family received a special delivery letter asking that they immediately secure $10,000 in old, unmarked bills and telling them to expect further instructions that afternoon. The body of Bobby Franks was soon identified; a laborer happened to see a flash of what turned out to be a foot through the shrubbery covering the open culvert where the body had been placed. There would have been no arrests and no trial but for what the prosecutor called "the hand of God at work in this case." A pair of hornrimmed tortoise shell glasses were discovered with the body of Bobby Franks. The glasses, belonging to Nathan Leopold, had slipped out of the jacket he removed as he struggled to hide the body. They had an unusual hinge and could be traced to a single Chicago optometrist, who had written only three such prescriptions, including the one to Leopold. Two weeks later Judge Caverly announced his decision. He called the murder "a crime of singular atrocity." Caverly said that his "judgment cannot be affected" by the causes of crime and that it was "beyond the province of this court" to "predicate ultimate responsibility for human acts." Nonetheless, Caverly said that "the consideration of the age of the defendants" and the possible benefits to criminology that might come from future study of them persuaded him that life in prison, not death, was the better punishment. He said that he was doing them no favor: "To the offenders, particularly of the type they are, the prolonged years of confinement may well be the severest form of retribution and expiation." Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold were moved to the Joliet penitentiary. In 1936, Loeb was slashed and killed with a razor in a showroom fight with James Day, another inmate. In 1958, after 34 years of confinement, Leopold was released from prison.
by Shepsu Aakhu The movie going tradition was changing greatly from the late 20’s to the late 30’s With the introduction of sound, color, and “the major studio,” cinema changed dramatically. This period would become known as the dawn of the “Golden Age of Hollywood” - but most importantly it was the great welcoming party for the working class. This was the period where Hollywood recognized the power of mass appeal and repeat business. Major studios purchased independent neighborhood movie houses, many dedicated to specific (niche) markets including “colored or negro movie houses”. But most importantly, regular movie going was becoming as routine as any other American pastime… But the movies offered something extra. For as little as five cents admission, a movie-goer could see two films, a short or two (often animated), and a few newsreels. The experience offered sound, sometimes color, Hollywood glamour, and especially important during Chicago’s sweltering summers— air conditioning. For those who could afford it, this became a twice or thrice weekly practice. It was the cheapest most effective form of escapism available to the working class. Even in the Depression… the working class found a way into American movie houses.
Traditional movie Newsreels, produced between their theatrical debut in 1911 and their demise in 1967, are wondrous windows on the world that once was, and collectively serve as a perpetual record of our shared history and popular culture. Today we have instant and worldwide access on our televisions, computers and hand-held devices to witness news in real time as it happens. Prior to the advent of the newsreel, Americans primarily depended on radio and print media for news and information. Only by going to the movies and watching the Newsreels could one see and hear history in relatively real time. The newsreels superbly fulfilled that important purpose until television came along and access to filmed news went from twice weekly on the silver screen to daily broadcasts on the TV screen. Theatrical newsreels were typically structured much like a daily newspaper. They changed twice weekly taking about 10 minutes to tell 6 or 7 short stories. Each newsreel focused on current events, politics, natural and other disasters, sports, movies and contemporary pop culture in general. Occasionally an entire newsreel would be devoted to a single story or event of optimum interest, like the attack on Pearl Harbor or the inauguration of a president.
Jan 13th - The Church of England accepts the theory of evolution. Feb 4th - Hitler seizes control of German army & puts Nazi in key posts Feb 12th - German troops entered Austria Feb 23rd - Joe Louis KOs Nathan Mann in 3 for heavyweight boxing title Feb 24th - Du Pont begins commercial production of nylon toothbrush bristles Feb 27th - Britain & France recognize Franco government in Spain Mar 10th - 10th Academy Awards - "The Life of Emile Zola", Spencer Tracy & Luise Rainer win Mar 12th - Nazi Germany invades Austria (Anschluss) Apr 1st - Joe Louis KOs Harry Thomas in 5 for heavyweight boxing title Apr 16th - Great Britain recognizes Italian annexation of Abyssinia Apr 18th - Headless Mad Butcher victim found in Cleveland May 2nd - Pulitzer prize awarded to Thornton Wilder (Our Town) May 3rd - Concentration camp at Flossenburg goes into use May 3rd - Vatican recognizes Franco-Spain May 25th - Spanish Civil War: The bombing of Alicante takes place, with 313 deaths. May 26th - US House of Representatives Committee on un-American Activities forms Jun 1st - Protective baseball helmets 1st worn by batters Jun 3rd - German law on "Entartete Art" legalizes art robbery Jun 7th - Boeing 314 Clipper flying boat 1st flown (Eddie Allen) Jun 14th - Chlorophyll patented by Benjamin Grushkin Jun 17th - Japan declares war on China Jun 18th - Babe Ruth is signed as a Dodgers coach for the rest of the season Jun 22nd - Joe Louis KOs Max Schmeling at 2:04 of 1st round at Yankee Stadium Jun 25th - "A Tisket A Tasket" by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb hits #1 Jun 25th - Federal minimum wage law guarantees workers 25 cents per hour (rising to 40 cents by 1945) and a maximum 44 hour working week Jun 30th - Superman 1st appears in DC Comics' Action Comics Series issue #1 Jul 10th - "Yankee Clipper" completes 1st passenger flight over Atlantic Jul 10th - Howard Hughes flies around the world in 91 hours Jul 24th - Instant coffee invented Jul 29th - Comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appears Aug 27th - Two NYC subway trains collide at 116th Street killing 2 and injuring 51 Sep 1st - Benito Mussolini cancels civil rights of Italian Jews Sep 3rd - 1940 Olympic site changed from Tokyo Japan to Helsinki Finland Sep 14th - Graf Zeppelin II, world's largest airship, makes maiden flight Sep 15th - John Cobb sets world auto speed record at 350.2 MPH (lasts 1 day) Sep 21st - Winston Churchill condemns Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia Sep 21st - The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York. The death toll is estimated at 500-700 people. Sep 27th - League of Nations declares Japan the aggressor against China
Oct 1st - Cubs clinch NL pennant Oct 10th - Germany completed annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland Oct 14th - Nazis plan Jewish ghettos for all major cities Oct 21st - Japanese troops occupies Canton Oct 22nd - Chester Carlson demonstrates 1st Xerox copying machine Oct 24th - US forbids child labor in factories Oct 25th - The Archbishop of Dubuque, Francis J. L. Beckman, denounces Swing music as "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people", warning that it leads down a "primrose path to hell". Oct 27th - DuPont announces its new synthetic fiber will be called "nylon" Oct 30th - Orson Welles panics the USA with broadcast of HG Welles' "War of the Worlds" Oct 31st - Great Depression: In an effort to try restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a 15 point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public. Nov 1st - Seabiscuit beats War Admiral in a match race at Pimlico Nov 8th - 1st black woman legislator, Crystal Bird Fauset of Philadelphia Nov 9th - Al Capp, cartoonist of Lil' Abner creates Sadie Hawkins Day Nov 10th - 8.3 earthquake shakes East of Shumagin Islands, Alaska Nov 11th - Kristallnacht; Jews forced to wear Star of David Nov 16th - LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. Dec 6th - French/German non-attack treaty drawn (Ribbentrop-Bonnet Pact) Dec 14th - Major leagues agrees on standard ball Dec 15th - Groundbreaking begins for Jefferson Memorial in Wash DC Dec 17th - Discovery of nuclear fission using uranium by Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann Dec 17th - Utrecht Central Station destroyed by fire Dec 23rd - Margaret Hamilton's costume catches fire in filming of "Wizard of Oz" Dec 23rd - Discovery of the first modern coelacanth in South Africa. Dec 25th - George Cukor announces Vivien Leigh will play Scarlett O'Hara Dec 30th - Electronic television system patented (V K Zworykin) Dec 31st - Dr R N Harger's "drunkometer," 1st breath test, introduced in Indiana.
In 1899, American economist and sociologist, Thorstein Veblen, published The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. The theorist argued that beginning with primitive tribes, people began to adopt a division of labor system along certain lines. The “higher status” group monopolized war and hunting, while farming and cooking were considered inferior means of labor. Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in order to identify the habit of buying costly items that serve no other purpose than to demonstrate vast amounts of wealth and social status that were unnecessary to the socialist labor party. He established that this sort of consumption could only be accomplished by the American elite – the upper class of the period. There was essentially only one leisure class—born of the industrial revolution– this class or more accurately their offspring– did not work for a living– not even in the family businesses that sustained them. They were on permanent vacation. For these Americans– indulgence of every variety was witnessed—but most disturbing to their parents and the businesses that they ran– this new breed of American had a small but vocal minority. That minority, though largely naïve regarding the nation’s social ills, none– the—less became– vocal, active and in many cases a detriment both to their families and causes that they supported. Tragically, many of the Leisure Class came crashing to earth along with the markets as their family fortunes evaporated in 1929. Now essentially penniless and absolutely devoid of any skills save vacationing– they were left defenseless as the new reality known as the Great Depression descended upon them and the nation.
Always keep in mind that Richard did not want bankers daughters to cry over Bigger. There is little chance of that today. I know you know. I think the quote is in "How Bigger was born." (included at the top of this document) Maybe we can extend that quote to mean that Bigger is not a Christic figure, nor is he a character begging for the alms of pity. What the play should aim for is understanding and suspension of judgment of Bigger's acts , helping us to look beyond to the arbitrary context of his violence. One of Richard's favorite playwrights, Bertolt Brecht wrote : "A river tearing up everything is said to be violent, but nothing is ever said about the violence of the banks that hem it in". The Black Rat self -identification is part of Bigger's inner psyche. It might be productive to explore the symbol of mice and rats in Chicago's sociology and literature. In connection with this research, those who are interested should read Richard's introduction to *"Black Metropolis". Rats are associated with filth and disease, vermin infestation - which is also to be found in stereotypes about black folk. Paradoxically, as lab animals to be sacrificed and vivisected for the profits of pharmaceutical companies. They are animals which should remain invisible like black people should. They should be "cornered" like Bigger finally is. In kitchenettes, black babies are bitten by rats and one hears rats scratching behind the walls etc... etc... Most telling is that the scavengers of the Black Metropolis profited from the rot of the city. The rats found food in the decay while the landlords charged inflated sums for the rundown kitchenette apartments they rented to African Americans who were trapped in Bronzeville. Bigger and the rat fight for the possession of the apartment until Bigger finally slays the beast. But as he goes to rob Blum he becomes a scavenger in a scavenger's society. He internalizes the rat stereotype till he finds his humanity minutes away from the electric chair.
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Suggestions also noted above—in purple
Forward to : “Blues Fell This Morning" by Paul Oliver It is in this text that Richard quotes a blues song containing the line: "I've
got a mind to leave my baby an' I've got a mind to stay".
"Twelve Million Black Voices" contains enough dire photography to illustrate the kitchenette culture Bigger comes from. I recommend those photos. Copyright Julia Wright, Paris, May 18, 2014
THEME: The adaptation is an exploration of the concept of double consciousness as it relates to the concept of FLIGHT, or one's ability to fly or be free. There are two Biggers, public Bigger and private Bigger, two views of the same man. Public Bigger is the Bigger that everyone sees, that people talk to, talk about. The private Bigger is the unseen man, the man within, Bigger's consciousness, his secret thoughts, the voice inside Bigger's head. At times, Bigger's inner-self voices Bigger's thoughts as he acts, or speaks directly to Bigger, but Bigger never sees or looks at him, (because one cannot look at the voice he is talking to). The only exceptions to that are two moments where Bigger looks into a mirror and is able to see his consciousness. Because his view of himself is distorted through the eyes of those who look at him with contempt and pity (DuBois), the reflections he sees in the mirror is that of a Black Rat, much like the rat he kills at the top of the novel. He sees himself in the rat, someone who is dirty, disgusting, vile, sought after to be killed, undeserving of life. Although Bigger internalizes himself in a negative way (as a dirty, vile black rat), Bigger's consciousness (the character of the Black Rat) is not negative. The idea of double consciousness, as I understand it, is an internal mechanism that helps us to navigate, survive, and understand our duality as an African and as an American. The Black Rat's own duality is that he is viewed as a rat, but his intention is to help Bigger survive because he is the voice within that always tries to tell us the best thing to do. (which sometimes is not the best thing to do) He is not the devil on the shoulder. In a sense, he is Bigger's higher self. But because Bigger does not understand his own greatness, he is blind to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMZCghZ1hB4 http://www.mindmapping.com/ http://www.ratbehavior.org/PaperMaze.htm http://www.ratbehavior.org/RatsAndMazes.htm (same structure as a mind map) http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_vocalizations.htm , by Andrzej Zaniewski
http://www.amazon.com/Rat-Andrzej-Zaniewski/dp/1559702621 http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_consciousness
Everybody's Protest Novel: Notes of a Native Son
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg7t25D2hwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZPu_s1Le20
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/496387/Trader-Horn-Movie-Clip-We-re-White-Like-Her-.html http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam358/wright.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUeeWDH6DB0&feature=related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XITrnJqlh90
http://blazenfluff.com/2013/12/the-power-of-empathy-animated-short-explainsthe-difference-between-empathy-and-sympathy/ http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/centralparkfive/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnAiPSiRlLc http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html
http://www.forharriet.com/2014/02/killing-black-children-is-american.html