Category Archives: Black history

Black history, History, Lynching

Senator Coleman Bigot Blease

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Senator Coleman Bigot Blease

On July 15, 1930 US Senator Coleman Blease (D-South Carolina) proposed a lynch law for blacks (only) guilty of criminally assaulting white women.

As if that wasn’t enough, he had already read a poem entitled “Niggers in the White House” on the floor of the Senate.

Senator Coleman Bigot Blease
Coleman L Blease when governor of South Carolina
Senator Coleman Bigot Blease

Similar to others

The quick biographical description of Blease reads like many other elected officials of his times: the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Blease was born on October 8, 1868 in Newberry, South Carolina. Of course that is just after the Civil War ended and where the Civil War was fought.

Coleman L Blease graduated from Georgetown University in 1889. He became a lawyer.

Elected official

Voters elected Blease to the South Carolina State House as a State Representative in 1890. He served in that capacity from 1890 – 1894 and again from 1899 – 1900.

He was mayor of Helena, SC in 1897 and became Governor of South Carolina in 1911 and served as governor until 1915. He had a determined personality and nearly came to blows once with a SC representative.

Elected Senator

The people of South Carolina elected Blease to the US Senate in 1924 and he served one term as senator until March 3, 1931.

In 1928, Blease proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, requiring that would have set a punishment for interracial couples attempting to get married and anyone officiating an interracial marriage.

Jessie DePriest

Jessie DePriest was the wife of Illinois congressman Oscar DePriest. In June 1928, then First Lady Lou Hoover invited Mrs DePriest to the White House for tea. Blease was outraged at the invitation because the DePriests were black. Blease proposed a resolution to Congress to remind the Hoovers that they should show respect to the White House and to remember that they were only temporary residents of the White House.

As if his inference was not obvious enough, he then read an outrageous poem entitled “Niggers in the White House.”

Senator Coleman Bigot Blease

The Senate expunged Blease’s comments from the Record.

Senator Coleman Bigot Blease

July 15, 1930

In 1926, Blease had offered his services pro bono to Aiken County, South Carolina to help defend it from suits brought by the heirs of three blacks who had been lynched in that county.

And It was on July 15,1930 while Blease was US Senator that he advocated a lynch law for Blacks (only) guilty of criminally assaulting white women. He enthusiastically declared to a group of supporters that, “Whenever the Constitution comes between me and the virtue of the white women of the South, I say to hell with the Constitution!”

Out of office

Blease was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1930 and an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1934 and 1938.

Blease died in Columbia, S.C., January 19, 1942. His family interred him in Rosemont Cemetery, Newberry, S.C. if you’d like to visit and pay your disrespects.

Senator Coleman Bigot Blease
Black history, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Nina Simone Four Women

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Nina Simone Four Women

1966

Nina Simone Four Women

Nina Simone Four Women

Eunice Kathleen Waymon

Nina Simone, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, aspired to be a concert pianist, not an easy thing for a young black woman, even a very talented young black woman.

With the financial help of her Tyron, North Carolina neighbors and her music teacher, Eunice was able to attend the  Juilliard School of Music in New York. A next step would have been the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, but her application was rejected. A rejection she felt was simply a racially motivated one.

She started to take private lessons and to help pay for them she began to perform a mixture of jazz and blues. Knowing her family would disapprove, Waymon adopted a stage name: Nina Simone.

Nina Simone Four Women

Civil Rights Choice

With the rebirth of the civil rights movement, Simone, like other black artists, faced a decision: speak out and risk a career or take that risk. After the assassination of Medgar Evers and the terrorist attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four girls and blinded another, Simone’s mind was made up.

“Mississippi Goddam” reflected her anger and decision. She felt that the conciliatory demands, the non-violent approach that Martin Luther King, Jr used were not useful. She adopted he separatist views of a Malcolm X  and the Black Nationalist movement.

Nina Simone Four Women

Wild Is the Wind

The 1966 album, Wild is the Wind (1966), Simone included the song “Four Women.” The album itself reflected the many styles Simone had begun to use by then: jazz, blues, folk, R & B. and pop, but “Four Women” reflected her realization of the choices a black woman in America faced. Continued slavery. The mixed race woman rejected by both races. The prostitute. The militant.

Nina Simone Four Women

Nina Simone Four Women

Four Women

The song, like the women, was rejected as racist by many on both sides.

My skin is black
My arms are long
My hair is woolly
My back is strong
Strong enough to take the pain
inflicted again and again
What do they call me
My name is AUNT SARAH
My name is Aunt Sarah		 My skin is tan
My hair is fine
My hips invite you
And my mouth like wine
Whose little girl am I?
Anyone who has money to buy
What do they call me
My name is SWEET THING
My name is Sweet Thing
My skin is yellow
My hair is long
Between two worlds
I do belong
My father was rich and white
He forced my mother late one night
What do they call me
My name is SAFFRONIA
My name is Saffronia		 My skin is brown
my manner is tough
I’ll kill the first mother I see
My life has been too rough
I’m awfully bitter these days
because my parents were slaves
What do they call me
My name is PEACHES
Nina Simone Four Women

Expatriate

Simone’s career was not an easy one. Difficult marriages.  Illness. Controversial views. An expatriate.  She died of breast cancer in 2003 at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, France, near Marseille.

Peter Keepnews wrote in his New York Times article: Ms. Simone was as famous for her social consciousness as she was for her music. In the 1960’s no musical performer was more closely identified with the civil rights movement. Though she was best known as an interpreter of other people’s music, she eloquently expressed her feelings about racism and black pride in those years in a number of memorable songs she wrote herself.

Nina Simone Four Women
Black history, Mohammad Ali, Vietnam

Passion of Muhammad Ali

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Passion of Muhammad Ali

George Lois, Esquire magazine, and Muhammad Ali
Passion of Muhammad Ali
Passion of Muhammad Ali cover by George Lois

On January 24, 1964 Clay took an Army evaluation test for the draft. On March 3, after having defeating Sonny Liston on February 25 and winning the world heavyweight championship,  The Louisville Courier‐Journal published a story that Clay had failed by a slight margin to pass the psychological portions of that evaluation test.

Clay, commenting on the report, said, “Do they think I’m crazy?”

On March 13, Clay, now Muhammad Ali, took a second test and on March 20, the Department issued the following statement about Ali’s draft status: “The Department of the Army has completed a review of Cassius Clay’s second pre-induction examination and has determined he is not qualified for induction into the Army under applicable standards.”

Ali’s response was, “I just said I’m the greatest. I never said I was the smartest.”

Passion of Muhammad Ali

Joe Namath

On September 15, 1965 Joe Namath took his Army physical and on December 9 that year the Army classified Namath 4-F, ineligible to be drafted. It was determined that Namath’s knees were in too poor condition for the Army to take care of, though the National Football League and Namath found that Namath’s knees were fine to play.

Passion of Muhammad Ali

Reclassified

On February 12, 1966,the Louisville, KY draft board re-classified Muhammad Ali as 1-A. Ali challenged the reclassification as politically motivated and questioned why other athletes, such as Namath, quarterback for the NY Jets, weren’t being drafted as well.

On April 17, 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court barred Muhammad Ali’s request to be blocked from induction into the U.S. Army and on April 28, the US Justice Department denied Ali’s claim. The Department found that his objections were political, not religious. Ali reported for induction ceremony, but refused to step forward when called.

Passion of Muhammad Ali

Guilty

On June 20, 1967 Ali was found guilty of refusing induction into the armed forces. He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000—the maximum penalties. He was stripped of his title by the boxing association and effectively banned from boxing.

Passion of Muhammad Ali

Esquire cover

Nine months later, George Lois’s cover picture of Ali on Esquire magazine’s April 1968 edition portrayed him as a martyr akin to St Sebastian. Kurt Andersen, host of NPR’s Studio 360, stated that “George Lois’s covers for Esquire in the 60s are classic. His April 1968 image of Muhammad Ali to dramatize the boxer’s persecution for his personal beliefs, is the greatest magazine cover ever created, making a political statement without being grim or stupid or predicable.”

Ali’s legal fight continued until June 28, 1971 when the Supreme Court reversed Muhammad Ali’s conviction for refusing induction by unanimous decision in Clay v. United States.

Passion of Muhammad Ali

Reclaims title

MORE THAN THREE years later, on October 30, 1974 Ali fought the reigning champion George Foreman in an outdoor arena in Kinshasa, Zaire, The fight is known as the “Rumble in the Jungle.”  Using his novel “rope-a-dope” strategy, Ali defeated Foreman and after seven years, reclaimed the title of Heavyweight Champion of the World.

Passion of Muhammad Ali