What does the Court’s decision on affirmative action mean?

Posted June 24th, 2013 by
Category: Living consequences Tags: , ,

The U.S. Supreme Court has finally issued its ruling in this year’s affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, voting 7-1 to send the case back to the Court of Appeals for further review.

The Court’s decision upholds, at least for now, the use of race as a factor in admissions, while applying a more skeptical analysis than the lone dissenting justice, Justice Ginsburg, believes is appropriate. (Justice Kagan recused herself and took no part in the case.)

The majority opinion, authored by Justice Kennedy and supported by the other six justices, holds that the Fifth Circuit failed to properly ask whether the university’s use of race in its admissions policy meets the standard of “strict scrutiny,” the especially demanding standard which applies to the use of race in governmental actions.

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New evidence shows the Bush presidents are descended from a notorious slave trader

Posted June 20th, 2013 by
Category: History Tags: , , , , ,

Bunce Island, a slave fort along the coast of Sierra LeoneRecently uncovered historical evidence shows that the family of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush has something in common with the DeWolf family of Traces of the Trade: both are descended from notorious slave traders.

In the case of the Bush presidents, they are directly descended from Thomas Walker, a notorious English slave trader who transported enslaved Africans between the west coast of Africa and the Americas in the late 18th century.

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Buffalo Soldiers in the National Parks Study Act

Posted June 19th, 2013 by
Category: Public History Tags: , , ,

Buffalo Soldiers from the 24th Infantry at Yosemite (1899)On Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 520, the “Buffalo Soldiers in the National Parks Study Act,” which would study ways for the National Park Service to commemorate these black troops and their historic role in the post-Civil War era.

The history of the Buffalo Soldiers

The Buffalo Soldiers were U.S. Army troops who, as the bill puts it, “served in many critical roles in the western United States, including protecting some of the first National Parks” in the Sierra Nevada. Their origins date to 1866, when Congress authorized the creation of all-black Army regiments: the 24th and 25th infantry regiments and the 9th and 10th cavalry regiments. The soldiers who enlisted were primarily southerners leaving behind sharply limited economic opportunities for black citizens in the Jim Crow South. The Buffalo Soldiers performed many duties in the West, including service in the Spanish-American and Indian Wars and patrolling large territories to maintain law and order.

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The assassination of Medgar Evers, 50 years later

Posted June 12th, 2013 by
Category: Public History Tags: , , ,

Medgar EversYesterday, I wrote here on the 50th anniversary of one of the most momentous days in the history of the civil rights movement.

June 11, 1963 was a day of obvious, encouraging progress for the civil rights movement. It was the day when George Wallace was forced to step aside and watch the integration of the University of Alabama by Vivian Malone, James Hood, and the Alabama National Guard. That evening, President John F. Kennedy, released from the obligation to address the crisis in Tuscaloosa, made the last-minute decision to speak to the nation from the Oval Office anyway, announcing in hastily-prepared remarks that the civil rights movement was a moral issue without which the nation could not fulfill its promise of freedom, and promising the hastening of desegregation and the introduction of what would become the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I ended by noting, briefly, that hours after the president finished addressing his radio and television audience, there would be a horrifying event in Jackson, Mississippi. That event, of course, was the assassination of Medgar Evers, the outspoken NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, who was murdered by Byron de la Beckwith, a white supremacist, in the early morning hours of June 12.

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The 50th anniversary of two civil rights landmarks

Posted June 11th, 2013 by
Category: Public History Tags: , , , , ,

Today marks the 50th anniversary of two major landmarks in the civil rights movement: George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” over desegregation at the University of Alabama, and President Kennedy’s address to the nation announcing what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”

George Wallace at the University of Alabama, June 11, 1963On the morning of June 11, 1963, Governor George Wallace of Alabama personally and physically intervened, in front of television cameras, to attempt to block the desegregation of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

The deputy attorney general of the United States, Nicholas Katzenbach, was present in person to request that Wallace step aside. When that request was rebuffed by the governor, General Henry Graham of the Alabama National Guard, having been federalized by President John F. Kennedy, ordered the governor to stand aside. Wallace complied, after first complaining to the news cameras about this “unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion” by the federal government on the affairs of Alabama.

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Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid

Posted June 2nd, 2013 by
Category: History Tags: , , , , , ,

"Raid of Second South Carolina Volunteers among the Rice Plantations of the Combahee, from a Sketch by Surgeon Robinson," Harper's Weekly, July 4, 1863One hundred and fifty years ago today, Union forces led by Harriet Tubman and Colonel James Montgomery engaged in a daring and wildly successful raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina.

The Combahee River Raid crippled local Confederate infrastructure, liberated 756 enslaved blacks, and earned Tubman well-deserved accolades as the first woman in U.S. history to plan and lead a military raid.

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Remembering the first Memorial Day

Posted May 27th, 2013 by
Category: History Tags: , , ,

St. Michael's Church, Charleston, South Carolina, 1865As we pause today to remember the nation’s war dead, it’s worth remembering that Memorial Day was first celebrated by black Union troops and free black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina at the end of the Civil War.

As historian David Blight recounts in his masterful book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001), Charleston was occupied by Union troops in the spring of 1865, most white residents having fled the city. In this atmosphere, the free black population of Charleston, primarily consisting of former slaves, engaged in a series of celebrations to proclaim the meaning of the war as they saw it.

The height of these celebrations took place on May 1, 1865, on the grounds of the former Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, an elite facility which had been used by the Confederates as a gruesome prison and mass grave for unlucky Union soldiers. Following the evacuation of Charleston, black laborers had dug up the remains of Union soldiers, given them a proper burial, and built the trappings of a respectful cemetery around the site to memorialize their sacrifice.

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