The Fight to End Discrimination on Philadelphia Streetcars:
Connecting the Abolitionist, Civil Rights, and Black Lives Matter
Movements in the Fight to End Discrimination and Segregation
By Maddy Canning
1 On January 31, 1865, the United States Congress voted to adopt the thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery in the United States. On that
same day, streetcar companies in Philadelphia announced a formal policy mandating
segregation on streetcars.1 In other words, on the very same day that the United States
Congress voted in favor of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, regardless of
the color of a person’s skin, Philadelphia African Americans formally lost the right to
ride streetcars in that same pursuit. In the United States, the 1860’s marked the end of
one era and the beginning of another. Slavery was now relegated to a darker past in
American history, but segregation was just getting started, and its day in the sun would
last for decades. Today, segregation is often viewed as another dark period in the United
States past; however, segregation is still a part of the reality in the United States, which
should be addressed. This paper will discuss the history of segregation from abolitionism
to the civil rights movement to black lives matter in the United States, and in Philadelphia
specifically.2
Segregation was not unique to the civil rights era and similarly, fights to end
segregation were not unique to the civil rights movement. Before the civil war and the
abolition of slavery in the United States, Philadelphia Abolitionist William Still began the
fight against segregation and discrimination in the City of Brotherly Love.3 In 1858, the
first horse-drawn streetcars began running routes in Philadelphia.4 These early streetcars
generally did not allow African American passengers in the cars at all. 5 African
American passengers who entered the car and attempted to sit down could be subjected to
excessive violence from conductors and fellow passengers alike. African Americans
were sometimes allowed to ride on the outside with the driver, completely exposed to the
elements, but were still expected to pay the same fare as that of the white passengers
inside the car. 6 Immediately, the abolitionist and African American communities
identified this discrimination as an inequality. In 1859, Philadelphia Abolitionist William
Still began a campaign to desegregate the streetcars after an African American in
Philadelphia after travel in Europe commented how he could not ride streetcars in
Philadelphia but could in other American cities and in cities abroad.7
The Abolitionist and Civil Rights movements are typically seen as two separate
events in American history; however, they are more interconnected than is generally
recognized. Beyond the fact that both movements centered on racism, human rights, and
civil liberties, the movements sparked national attention and can be seen as directly
relating to one another and to the events of the last few years in the United States and
specifically the Black Lives Matter Movement. Although the gap in time between the
1
Philip S. Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars: (Part II) The Victory,” Pennsylvania
History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 40, no.3 (October, 1973): 355, doi: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27772152.
2
In this paper, I will be using the term “African American” or “Black”
3
Philip S. Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars: (Part I) Background and the
Beginning on the Battle,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 40, no.3 (July, 1973): 275, doi:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27772133.
4
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 267.
5
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 267, 272.
6
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I.”
7
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 267-268; Maxwell Whiteman, ed., A
Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of the Colored People of Philadelphia on the City Railway Cars and a Defense of
William Still Relating to His Agency Touching the Passage of the Late Bill, Etc. (Philadelphia: Rhistoric Publications, 1867).
2 abolitionism movement and the civil rights movement means that the two movements do
not share any key players, they do share one goal; to achieve freedom and equality for
people of color in the United States. The major concern of the civil rights movement was
the inherent inequality in segregation and the appalling treatment of African Americans
in the United States. Similarly, the primary objective of the abolitionists was the
abolition of slavery in the south and equal rights for African Americans in the north. The
practice of segregation is inconsistent with the goals of both movements and was
therefore condemned during both movements.
The purpose of this research is to provide a link between the abolitionist, civil
rights, and black lives matter movements. Although the major players are different and
the movements are separated by decades, some of the messages and tactics of both
movements are remarkably similar. Additionally, some of the major issues in American
society that the movements highlighted are similar. Segregation and discrimination has
been identified as a problem by the abolitionist, civil rights and black lives matter
movements in slightly different ways. These movements should not be viewed as
disjointed efforts for the African American people that occurred in different times, with
different players, and stood for different causes because they have more in common than
not. The fact that the American public separates the movements highlights the short
attention span of the American public and a detrimental tendency of the American public
to label movements as complete once sufficient legislation has passed. The abolitionist,
civil rights, and black lives matter movements are all united by their focus on the
disastrous effects of segregation and discrimination in American society.
There has been much research on the Civil Rights Movement and the Abolitionist
Movement separately, but there have been very few scholarly works, if any, published
about the two movements’ relationship and influence on each other. There has been some
scholarship on the efforts of abolitionists to end segregation or discrimination, such as a
pamphlet published in Philadelphia about the fight to end discrimination on streetcars in
Philadelphia and a secondary source published on the same topic. However, Philip
Foner’s secondary source on the efforts of abolitionists to end discrimination in
Philadelphia focuses primarily on the Philadelphia side of the story when this is not the
whole story. In the state Legislature in Harrisburg Pennsylvania, several senators fought
tooth and nail to pass a bill to end discrimination, and their efforts began before the
Philadelphia activists sent a petition that was meant to grab the attention of the state
legislature on the issue of discrimination on Philadelphia streetcars. The purpose of this
research is to add to the existing historiography on these two topics. I argue that
Philadelphia and the streetcar committee were not the only players in the efforts to end
discrimination on streetcars and that the civil rights and abolitionists movements should
not be viewed as completely unrelated movements.
In the 1860’s William Still and several other Philadelphia abolitionists identified
discrimination on streetcars as a serious injustice towards the African American
community. It is important to note that Philadelphia was not the only city to fight and
win a battle against segregation on streetcars. Similar successful fights against
segregation on public transportation occurred in New York City and San Francisco.8
Clearly, abolitionists in Philadelphia were not the only ones to identify segregation as a
8
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 282.
3 major problem facing African Americans in addition to slavery. Abolitionists like
William Still did not limit themselves to one cause. His goal was to improve the life of
all African Americans even if the issue affecting some was not slavery but something
else, like segregation.
Philadelphia was a huge center for anti-slavery activity in the nineteenth century,
but it was also the most segregated northern city in the United States.9 In 1859, William
Still launched a fight to desegregate streetcars in Philadelphia. William Wells Brown
who visited Philadelphia after traveling abroad in the United Kingdom first highlighted
the injustice of discrimination against African Americans on streetcars in Philadelphia.
Brown was appalled that he was unable to ride on the streetcars in the City of Brotherly
Love when he had been able to in Paris, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Liverpool.10 In
reaction, William Still and other abolitionists launched a campaign against
discrimination.11
In general, an African American person attempting to ride the streetcars in
Philadelphia would be informed that company policy mandates that no African American
be offered service on streetcars, and they must disembark from the streetcar. If the
African American person refused to get off the streetcar, the conductor, the police, or
other passengers would oftentimes forcefully throw off him or her.12 One story about an
African American person’s experience on the streetcars of Philadelphia is especially
interesting. Poet Mary Frances E. W. Harper traveled throughout the country during the
civil war as a lecturer and in 1866, she was forced to ride on the platform with the driver
during a downpour because she was African American. It did not matter that she was a
prominent poet, or a women. When the conductor told her she had to ride on the platform
or walk to her destination she said that she had been able to ride in streetcars in the South,
asking if the Northern states and Philadelphia in particular was more heathenish than the
South. The implication that the North was more backwards than the South, the home of
slavery should have incensed Northerners who would not want to be considered more
barbaric than the barbaric South, but instead the conductor simply pushed her towards the
platform.13 Obviously, the North was slightly hypocritical in criticizing the South and the
institution of slavery as the axis of evil when discrimination and the brutal treatment of
African Americans in Northern states and cities seemed to be relatively commonplace.
At first, abolitionists leading the fight against discrimination on streetcars focused
on a media strategy of sorts. Dozens of stories about African American men and women
being forced off of streetcars in Philadelphia, often violently, were published in
newspapers throughout Philadelphia.14 Additionally, stories about men and women who
were forced to walk long distances or to ride on the platform of the streetcar with the
driver in inhospitable weather were published in an effort to show the public the injustice
that was occurring in their city. In 1859, William Still published a letter in the North
American and the United Stated Gazette highlighting the discrimination against African
Americans occurring in Philadelphia. His letter pointed out that the public wanted to
9
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 261.
Whiteman, ed., A Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of the Colored People, 1.
11
Whiteman, ed., A Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of the Colored People, 1; Stephen G Hull, “To Render the Private
Public: William Still and the Selling of ‘The Underground Rail Road,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 127, no.
1 (January 2003): 37, doi: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20093599.
12
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars,” Parts I and II
13
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 272
14
for examples see Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I.”
10
4 believe that all African American people in Philadelphia were poor, degraded and poorly
dressed, but that this was not the case, and even so, even the best dressed, highly
educated African American could not ride the streetcars in Philadelphia.15 Despite trying
to bait Philadelphians into action by commenting that Philadelphia was behind other
cities, even southern cities because they discriminated against African Americans on
streetcars, his letter did not receive much attention in Philadelphia.16 As a result, William
Still and other activists began a new strategy. They decided to send a petition to the
presidents of the streetcar companies with signatures of prominent Philadelphians who
would support an end to discrimination against African Americans.17
In 1861, William Still and the car newly appointed car committee drafted a
petition to send to the streetcar company presidents requesting the end to discrimination
on streetcars.18 The presidents of the streetcar companies did not want to do anything in
regards to the petition because they felt that they would lose white patronage if they
allowed African Americans to ride on the streetcars which was something they could not
afford. Additionally, the petition was criticized because the companies felt that the wellto-do Philadelphians who signed the petition were wealthy enough to use their own
private carriage for transportation and thus did not represent the actual clientele of the
streetcars.19 This is another instance of lower income, less prominent Americans holding
tighter to segregation and racism while the wealthy could afford to support equal rights
and desegregation for African Americans because their money meant that they would be
relatively unaffected by giving equal opportunity to African Americans. Poor African
American people would not be competition for wealthy Americans, but they certainly
would be for lower income white Americans who did not want the competition. If
African American people can ride the streetcars than they can compete for jobs, and
lower income Americans do not want the competition in any realm of their life whether it
be in jobs, housing, or public transportation. As a result, wealthy business owners like
the presidents of the streetcar companies’ perpetuated segregation and racism because
they felt their business would be hurt if they forced desegregation on the fiercely racist
and segregationist lower income Americans.
In 1865, the owners of the streetcar companies put the issue to a vote in the
general public hoping that the general public would confirm that they did not want to ride
with Negroes and the issue would be dropped. They were partially right. The general
public did vote to keep African Americans excluded from streetcars, but abolitionists and
activists like William Still would not let the issue drop. 20 African Americans in
Philadelphia felt that they could escape segregation by choosing not to go to concerts,
and they could simply send their children to segregated schools even though the quality
of education at the segregated school was lower than that of the white school. However,
if they were barred from public transportation African American people could only avoid
segregation and discrimination by choosing to walk everywhere.21
In the end, the battle to end discrimination on streetcars was faugh with the
presidents of the streetcar companies, in the Pennsylvania State Legislature, and in the
15
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 275.
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 277.
17
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 278.
18
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 278.
19
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 280.
20
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 355.
21
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 267.
16
5 courts when African Americans who felt their had been denied their rights would bring
suit against the car company or a particular conductor who had thrown them off the
streetcar.22
The legislative fight began on March 3, 1864 during a meeting of African
Americans in Philadelphia. The decision was made that the streetcar companies were not
willing to compromise with the African American community, and perhaps they would
have more luck in lobbying the state legislature to pass a bill outlawing discrimination on
streetcars.23 The example these African Americans drew upon was of United States
Senator Charles Sumner, who had denounced Washington D.C. streetcars for
discriminating against African Americans. 24 To begin the fight, William Still and
Philadelphia activists from the car committee sent a petition to the state legislature stating
that the exclusion of African Americans from streetcars was an injustice worthy of being
addressed by the legislature.25
Interestingly enough, State Senator Morrow B. Lowry, the champion of the bill to
end streetcar segregation in the senate, had introduced a bill to end segregation on all
public transportation in the state in 1861. 26 His bill was referred to the judiciary
committee in the senate and defeated in committee.27 To defeat a bill in committee can
mean a number of different things happened to the bill. It could mean that the bill was
never even discussed by the committee; it could mean that the bill was discussed and
defeated in committee; or it could mean that the bill was discussed in committee and that
some member of the committee, generally an important member like the committee chair
for example, refused to let the bill out of committee, thus letting the bill die in committee.
Thus, not only had abolitionists in Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles
identified segregation as a major issue facing the African American community, but
Senator Lowry identified segregation as an issue in the state legislature before the issue
of discrimination in Philadelphia even reached the state legislature. It seems that not only
had abolitionists in major cities around the country identified segregation as the next big
battle facing the African American community, but legislators such as Lowry had as well
and a full century before the civil rights legislation would pass in 1965. Clearly,
segregation was not only a concern for civil rights activists in the 1960’s, and the
abolitionist and civil rights movements have more in common than is fully recognized.
However, the fight to end discrimination on Philadelphia streetcars was far from over.
In 1865, the issue of segregation on railway cars was raised again. On January
11, 1865, Senators Lowry and Nelson passed a resolution in the senate that required the
judiciary committee to bring a bill prohibiting segregation by any streetcar company in
the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. On January 19, 1865, Senator Lowry presented the
bill as “An Act relative to the exclusion of colored people from the passenger railways of
this commonwealth” and given the number 58. The bill was first given to the committee
on railways. However, Senators Lowry and Wilson must not have wanted to bill in the
22
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 282.
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 281.
24
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 281.
25
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 281; Pennsylvania State Senate,
legislative record, January 20, 1865, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
26
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate legislative Record 1861 at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Foner, “The
Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part II,” 363.
27
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate legislative Record 1861, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Foner,
“The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part II,” 363.
23
6 railway committee because they immediately called for a resolution to release the bill
from the railway committee, which was accepted. The bill was read a second time and
after a resolution presented by Senators Donovan and Hopkins to take the matter up at a
later time was sent to the judiciary committee.28
On January 26, 1865, Senator Lowry presented the petition that the Philadelphia
car committee had sent to the Pennsylvania State Legislature. On February 7, 1865,
Senators Lowry and Graham made a motion to bring the streetcar bill back up for another
reading. After the second reading, a motion was made for the Senate to agree to the
language of the bill. At this time, senators are allowed to make amendments to the bill.
Four amendments to the bill were offered and none was accepted, so the language of the
bill stayed as it was. The bill was then transferred for a third reading. The bill was read
for the third time on February 8, 1865 and passed seventeen to fourteen.29 The bill was
then sent to the House of Representatives for passage because any bill that becomes law
has to be passed by the house and the senate in identical forms.
Meanwhile, the same petition that Senator Lowry had presented to the Senate in
January 1865 was read in the House of Representatives by Representative Smith. The
petition was referred to the committee on passenger railways. On February 9, 1865, the
streetcar bill, which had passed the Senate, was presented to the House and also referred
to the committee on city passenger railways. On March 14, 1865, Representative
Cochran of Erie, Pennsylvania presented a resolution that Senate bill 58, the streetcar bill,
be discharged from the passenger car committee and “laid on the table.” When a bill is
laid on the table it means that consideration of the bill is suspended indefinitely. In other
words, on March 14, 1865, Representative Cochran of Erie, Pennsylvania let the senate’s
streetcar bill die on the floor of the state House of Representatives.30 The 1865 streetcar
legislation was officially dead in the water.
When legislation is laid on the table as the 1865 ban of discrimination on
streetcars was, it dies for that legislative term and cannot be discussed again until the next
session at which time it has to be reintroduced. Usually, bills such as the 1865 streetcar
bill will be reintroduced in January of the new session of congress. On January 31, 1867,
Senator Graham presented a new bill to ban discrimination on streetcars. The bill was
entitled “An Act to punish by fine, any railroad corporations within this commonwealth
that shall exclude or allow to be excluded, by their agents, conductors or employees, from
any of their passenger cars, any person or persons on account of color or race.”31
Upon introduction in 1867, the bill was referred to the railroad committee. The
new bill was Senate Bill number 235. On February 1, 1867, Senator Lowry, speaking for
the committee on railroads, reported the bill out of committee.32 The bill only spent three
days in committee, so discussion must have been short and the senators were still in
agreement from 1865 that discrimination on railway cars must end. On February 5, 1867,
the bill was read a second time and was put to a vote on the floor of the senate. As in
28
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record, January 19, 1865, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
29
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record, February 8, 1865, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
30
Pennsylvania State House of Representatives, House of Representatives Legislative record March 14, 1865, at the Pennsylvania
State Library, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
31
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record January 31, 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
32
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record February 1, 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania..
7 1865, the senate was again asked if they would agree to the first section of the bill, at
which time amendments were offered on the floor. The first amendment, offered by
Senators Wallace and Searight, would have removed the lines in the bill that made
segregation illegal. Essentially, their goal was to pass a bill that would simultaneously
ban discrimination while allowing segregation. The senate did not accept this
amendment. The next amendment introduced said that companies would have to pay a
fine of a thousand dollars, which would equate to about $15,500 in 2016. Furthermore,
the amendment stated that the fine would be split half way between the victim and the
commonwealth. Clearly, the senate wanted to make paying the fine as abhorrent an idea
as possible to the streetcar companies to increase the likelihood that they would simply
decide to comply. The senate accepted the amendment and it was incorporated into the
bill.33
After a language change was accepted, amendments attempting to incorporate
some wiggle room for segregation were offered. Senators Wallace and Searight again
offered an amendment that would soften the radical nature of the bill by allowing
segregation in absence of discrimination. Their amendment would have made
segregation legal on streetcars as long as the companies set aside “comfortable seats at
the ends [of the car]…or shall provide separate cars for the accommodation of persons of
color…no such fine or penalty shall be imposed.” Essentially, this amendment would
have made Jim Crow segregation legal on Philadelphia Streetcars in 1867. The senate did
not accept the amendment. Senators Wallace and Glatz then offered an amendment
which would still allow for railway companies to refuse colored passengers on sleeping
cars, and to allow companies to separate African Americans from women. This is a fairly
standard amendment to be offered in 1867, but the Senate still did not accept any forms
of segregation to be incorporated into their bill outlawing discrimination so the
amendment was rejected. After the final segregationist amendment was rejected, Senators
M’Conaughy and Sehall made a motion to recommit the bill to the railway committee,
which would provide conservative legislators like Senator Wallace the opportunity to kill
the bill in committee. The movement was postponed and the session adjourned for the
morning. Senators Lowry and Bigham likely motioned to adjourn the morning session so
they could sure up the votes they needed to keep the bill from going back to committee.34
At the afternoon session on February 5, 1867, the question to recommit the bill to
the railroad committee was officially rejected. The senate was again asked if they would
agree to the first section of the bill as amended and because no other amendments were
offered, the Senate voted on and approved the first section of the bill. The bill officially
made discrimination and segregation by railway corporations illegal and punishable by
fine. The second section of the bill was now read and the senate was asked if they
agreed. At this time, more amendments were offered. Senators M’Candless and
Donovan offered another segregation amendment, which would allow railway companies
to run separate cars for African Americans and whites. The amendment was again
rejected.35 It is important to note that this solution to the discrimination against African
33
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record February 5, 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania..
34
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record February 5, 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania..
35
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record February 5, 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
8 Americans on streetcars in Philadelphia was offered to William Still and other activists.
William Still rejected it saying that it simply replaced the injustice of complete exclusion
from railway cars with the inequality of segregation, especially when only one in every
five cars would be for African Americans so the wait between one car to the next would
be long and potentially take the convenience out of public transportation. 36 The
amendment was rejected. At the next vote, the amendment was accepted. Now Senators
Graham and Brigham offered an amendment to the title of the bill, adding the word
imprisonment after the word fine so the title read “An Act to punish by fine and
imprisonment…”, which was accepted, and the bill was transferred for its third reading.37
On February 6, 1867 Senate Bill Number 235 was presented for its third reading.
Senator Cowles asked for unanimous consent from the senate to amend the title of the bill
to read “An Act making it an offence for railroad corporations within this commonwealth
to make any distinction with their passengers on account of race or color, and punishing
such corporations and their agents and employees, for the commission of such offence.”
The Senate gave unanimous consent and the title was amended. With the amended title,
discrimination is not only punishable by fine, but also is classified as an offence, which
gives the law more weight in criminal cases. Finally, the bill was put to a final vote and
passed nineteen to thirteen and sent to the House of Representatives for a vote.38
Now all that was left to make the bill law was to pass an identical bill in the
House of Representatives and have the bill signed by the governor. On February 12,
1867, Senate Bill number 235 titled “An Act making it an offence for railroad
corporations within this commonwealth to make any distinction with their passengers on
account of race or color, and punishing such corporations and their agents and
employees, for the commission of such offence” was introduced in the House and sent to
the committee on the Judiciary system (general). On February 14, 1867, the bill was
reported out of committee with no amendments. On March 18, 1865, the bill was read
for a third time on the floor. Again, the House did not like the bill and House Democrats
fought the bill tooth and nail. The Democrats refused to vote, hoping that the day would
adjourn and they would have the time to gather the votes they needed to defeat the bill.
Unfortunately for the republicans, this did not have enough people in the state house to
force a vote so the democrats sat in their seats refusing to vote. Finally, late that night,
the democrats were declared in contempt because they were refusing to vote. To avoid
being held in contempt, the democrats allowed a vote. The bill passed 52 to 27 and was
sent back to the senate in the same form received.39
On March 26, 1867, the governor informed the Senate and the House of
Representatives that he had signed the bill. The Governor of Pennsylvania signed Bill
number 235 “An Act making it an offence for railroad corporations within this
commonwealth to make any distinction with their passengers on account of race or color,
and punishing such corporations and their agents and employees, for the commission of
such offence” into law on March 22, 1867. The legislative fight to end discrimination on
36
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars,” Parts I and II.
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record February 5, 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
38
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record February 6, 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
39
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Foner,
“The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part II.”
37
9 streetcars in Philadelphia and throughout the commonwealth of Pennsylvania was finally
over after eight years.40
There are a few interesting differences between the 1865 legislation and the 1867
legislation. The 1865 bill was titled “An Act relative to the exclusion of colored people
from the passenger railways of this commonwealth” and the final version of the 1867
legislation is titled “An Act making it an offence for railroad corporations within this
commonwealth to make any distinction with their passengers on account of race or color,
and punishing such corporations and their agents and employees, for the commission of
such offence.” Even the titles have significantly different language. The title of the 1867
legislation makes discrimination a punishable offence while the title of the 1865
legislation simply serves as a subject heading for the bill, indicating that the bill pertains
to railway cars.
The content of the bills were different as well. The 1865 legislation basically said
that discrimination on passenger railway cars would be illegal under the 1865 bill. The
bill made creating or enforcing any discriminatory practice illegal, but the bill would
make discrimination illegal with no real repercussions for failure to comply. The 1867
bill, on the other hand, made discrimination punishable by law and backed that
punishment up with a fine. Without the fine what would be the reason for railway
corporations to follow the new rules set out in the new law? Railway corporations had
already made it clear that one of their major reasons for refusing to end discrimination on
their own was because they felt that they would lose white passengers if they allowed
African American passengers to ride the streetcars. The corporations felt that their
bottom lines could not take that hit even if they would gain African American passengers.
The corporations felt that the increased African American patronage would not be enough
to offset the loss of white passengers. Clearly, if the state legislature wanted to make
discrimination illegal, they had to make non-compliance hurt. They had to make it so
that the fine for not complying with the new law outweighed the higher earnings the
companies stood to make if they continued to discriminate. Legislators had to make the
fine a harsher hit to the bottom lines of the corporations that it benefited the companies to
avoid the fine than to ignore the bill and incur the fine. The House would have been
better off to give the 1865 legislation more discussion because the 1867 legislation was
much more radical and the specifications included in the bill makes noncompliance much
harder to justify. And guess what? The 1867 bill was going to pass. The house killed a
moderate bill and ended up stuck with a more radical substitute instead.
Clearly, there were legislators, (and presumably corresponding constituents who
elected them) who would have implemented full blown Jim Crow like we saw in the
southern states. This proves that racism and segregationist tendencies were very much
alive and well in Northern states like Pennsylvania, and if not for the liberal senators like
Senator Lowry and Graham and house republicans, Pennsylvania might have gone down
the rabbit hole of de jure segregation along with the states south of the Mason Dixon line.
As it is, even liberal senators who saved Pennsylvania from egregious forms of legally
codified segregation could not protect the state from all segregation.
Although segregation on streetcars did not happen in Philadelphia after 1867,
other forms of segregation were common. Education, housing, lending practices, and job
hiring all featured discriminatory or segregationist components. The Pennsylvania
40
Pennsylvania State Senate, Senate Legislative record 1867, at the Pennsylvania State Library, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
10 Abolition Society, the very abolition society that William Still served as president for
originally did not admit African Americans in the early years.41 Part of this is certainly
that the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society was founded in 1775, and even the abolition
movement evolved overtime. However, it is a little ironic that an institution founded on
the belief that slavery was wrong did not seem to have the same moral objection to
discrimination. In the end though, the abolition movement evolved just like every group,
organization, society, and country in the world and gradually began to embrace more
enlightened ideas. By 1859, members of the abolitionist community in Philadelphia and
around the country had begun the crusade against segregation.
The civil rights movement has long been touted as the movement that focused on
the inherent inequalities and evils of segregation, but the fight to desegregate streetcars in
Philadelphia and other cities proves that this is not the case. Abolitionists like William
Still and other members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society identified segregation as
the next major fight for the rights of African Americans. Not only did abolitionists
identify segregation as the next big fight, they began the fight to end segregation.
Arguably abolitionists began the fight against the early segregationist tendencies
emerging in society, and not even against the institution of segregation as it was during
the civil rights movement. Segregation in the later half of the nineteenth century was not
as egregious as it would become, but it was still enough to catch the attention and the
activism of abolitionists. One abolitionist said in a meeting in Philadelphia that the
causes for the civil war and the abolitionist movement were “the enslavement of the black
man at the South, and the contempt for him manifested at the North.”42 Abolitionists are
not shy about stating that the treatment of African Americans in the south was not the
only cause of the civil war. The treatment of African Americans in the North was also a
concern raised by abolitionists. The general public is responsible for declaring the
abolitionist movement complete and stifling the continuing agenda of the abolitionists.
After the war, the south was hanging in tatters, so the focus was on rebuilding the south
and strengthening the union. Segregation was completely ignored after the war by all but
the most dedicated abolitionists, which enabled the institution of segregation to gain
strength and become ingrained in Americans society.43
Abolitionists even claimed that segregation was a denial of equal rights for
African Americans before the emancipation proclamation, not to mention the fourteenth
amendment, which introduced the idea of equal protection under the law into the law.44
In 1865 the presidents of the Philadelphia railway companies offered to run a colored car
every five cars, which would have given the African American community the right to
public transformation they certainly deserved but would also signify a transition to
segregation.45 William Still and Abolitionists like him declared that this solution was
unacceptable because it was “a simple substitution of one act of injustice for another, and
as much in violation of [African American’s] rights as is their total exclusion [from riding
the railway cars at all].”46 In other words, William Still declared separate to be inherently
41
Leslie Patrick, “African Americans and Civil Rights in Pennsylvania” Pennsylvania Heritage, Spring 2010,
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/pa-heritage/african-americans-civil-rights-pennsylvania.html.
42
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 288.
43
the NAACP was not founded until 1909, and that is the only other group focusing on segregation until the general public gets
involved during the civil rights movement.
44
William Still quoted in Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 288.
45
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars,” Parts I and II.
46
William Still quoted in Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 288.
11 unequal in the context of segregation. And if segregation is inherently unequal, then
segregation is not acceptable to abolitionists who battled for equal rights, the antithesis of
segregation.
The United States Congress did not segregate immediately after the end of the
civil war, and this is because the institution of segregation had yet to grow into the beast
known as Jim Crow. On June 13, 1866, the fourteenth amendment is passed. The
amendment guaranteed citizenship to all African Americans which was granted to them
under the civil rights bill passed earlier that year. The fourteenth amendment also
ensures equality of political representation and a protection from discrimination. In 1866,
the first two African Americans were elected to serve in the Massachusetts assembly,
becoming the first African Americans in elected office. In 1870, Hiram R Revels became
the first African American US senator, elected to office by the state of Mississippi. 1870
also marked the first year that African Americans were elected to the US House of
Representatives. In South Carolina, Joseph Rainey, Robert DeLarge and Robert B.
Elliott won three out of South Carolina’s four seats in the House of Representatives. All
four African American men were seated in congress for the first several years. However,
in 1876, the United Stated Senate refused to seat P.B.S. Pinchback in the senate. The
refusal to seat Senator Pinchback signaled the beginning of the decline of civil rights for
African Americans in the United States. When President Hayes withdrew the federal
troops from the South in 1877, reconstruction is declared complete and the south is left to
do as they please. The end of Northern occupation in the South marks the beginning of
the worst discrimination against African Americans in the United States since the end of
slavery. By the end of the nineteenth century, Jim Crow is in full effect throughout most
of the South and African American people lost most civil liberties guaranteed by the civil
rights act of 1866 and the reconstruction amendments.47
In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down their decision in Plessy v.
Fergusson. This decision stated that segregation was constitution as long as the separate
facilities were equal and was the legal basis for the constitutionality of Jim Crow until the
1950’s. However, in the state of Pennsylvania, segregation of all kinds was illegal after
1887. In 1854, the State Legislature of Pennsylvania passed a law that stated that if there
were more than twenty African American children in a school district, those children had
to go to a separate school for African Americans. In 1854, segregation in Pennsylvania
was the law. In 1881, the State legislature of Pennsylvania passed a new law, which
made segregation illegal throughout the commonwealth. However, the 1881 legislation
was largely ignored throughout the commonwealth, so in an effort to get peoples
attention the state legislature passed a new law in 1887. The 1887 legislation makes all
47
“Timeline: The Life and Times of William Still (1821-1902)” http://stillfamily.library.temple.edu/timeline/william-still; “Pinckney
Benton Stewart Pinchback,” National Governors Association, http://www.nga.org/cms/home/governors/past-governorsbios/page_louisiana/col2-content/main-content-list/title_pinchback_pinckney.default.html; “Revels, Hiram Rhodes, 1827-1901),”
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 1774-Present,
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000166; “Cain, Richard Harvey, 1825-1887),” Biographical Directory of
the United States Congress: 1774-Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000022; “Elliott, Robert Brown
(1842-1884),” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 1774-Present,
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=E000128; “Ransier, Alonzo Jacob, (1834-1882), Biographical Directory of
the United States Congress: 1774-Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000060; “Rapier, James
Thomas, (1837-1883), Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 1774-Present,
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=R000064; “Walls, Josiah Thomas, (1842-1905), Biographical Directory of
the United States Congress: 1774-Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=W000093; “Lynch, John Roy,
(1847-1939), Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 1774Present,http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000533.
12 forms of discrimination, schooling, employment, housing, lodging, and many more,
illegal throughout the state of Pennsylvania.48 Why state legislators thought that passing
a more general ban on segregation and discrimination would succeed where the more
specific legislation had failed is a mystery. However, the fact remains that in 1887,
segregation and discrimination of all forms was illegal in the State of Pennsylvania.
Segregation was illegal in the state of Pennsylvania before the United States Supreme
Court even addressed the issue in 1896. It is important to note that when the U.S.
Supreme Court made segregation legal in 1895, they did not make segregation
mandatory. The decision simply said that separate facilities for the races were
constitutional so long as the separate facilities were equal. Thus, even though
segregation was allowed, it is not mandated, and is thus illegal in the State of
Pennsylvania by virtue of the 1881 and 1887 legislation. However, this legislation
seemed to have little to no impact on the reality of segregation in the State of
Pennsylvania, because Philadelphia became one of the most segregated cities in the entire
country by the middle of the twentieth century.
Philadelphia always had a relatively large population of African Americans
because escaped slaves would settle in Philadelphia, other big northern cities, or
Canada.49 Philadelphia’s African American population grew dramatically between 1890
and 1940 due to the great migration. The great migration was in two big waves, one at
the end of the twentieth century and another during the great depression. African
Americans were drawn to Philadelphia because of the abundance of industrial jobs in
Philadelphia, especially at the end of the great depression when World War II drove the
economy to new highs.50 However, migrating African Americans were not met with the
accepting City of Brotherly Love they had been expecting. Philadelphia had segregation,
just not legal segregation. The 1930’s and 40’s saw a huge increase in Philadelphia’s
African American population with little to no available housing.51 Between 1940 and
1960, 155,609 African Americans migrated to Philadelphia.52 Real estate agents had
deals with local neighborhoods to keep African American people from moving into white
neighborhoods so African Americans either found themselves crammed into what were
originally single family homes three families at a time, or they faced hostility in white
neighborhoods if they managed to buy a house in a white neighborhood.53
The influx of African American families in Philadelphia with little available
housing caused the white families to flee to the suburbs because African American
families had no where to go but white neighborhoods because housing was so scarce and
the whole white population of the neighborhood would move out as soon as an African
American family moved in. in some neighborhoods like East Falls, the white population
stayed even when the African American population moved in and these neighborhoods
ended up mixed, but these mixed neighborhoods were the exception rather than the rule.
By and large, white families moved to the newly constructed suburbs as African
48
Pennsylvania State Legislature Bill no. 72,1887, accessed at the Pennsylvania State Library.
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 262.
50
Stephanie Christensen, “The Great Migration (1915-1960),” The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed,
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/great-migration-1915-1960.
51
James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2007), 179-212.
52
Anne E. Phillips, “A History of the Struggle for School Sedegregation in Philadelphia, 1955-1967” Pennsylvania History: A Journal
of Mid-Atlantic Studies 72, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 51, doi: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27778658.
53
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212.
49
13 American families moved north and into previously white neighborhoods.54 The growth
of the suburbs around Philadelphia is a testament to the racism and discrimination against
African American people above the Mason Dixon line. In the end, Philadelphia was, and
still is, said to have a black center surrounded by a white ring.55 To this day, African
Americans predominantly live in the inner city and white families live in the surrounding
suburbs.
When whites would flee to the suburbs, the majority of African American
families could not afford to buy the homes they were vacating, even with the lower
property values, so the newly vacant homes would be bought by landlords and rented to
multiple African American families who needed a place to live. Philadelphia is mostly
made up of single family row homes and landlords were cramming two or three families
into single family homes to make a higher profit for themselves which led to unsafe
conditions. 56 Additionally, the landlords neglected the properties because African
Americans lived there so the landlords did not have a vested interest in beautifully
maintaining the property so things fell into disrepair.
Germantown used to be a neighborhood full of wealthy white Philadelphians, and
the houses to this day are big and would be beautiful if they were well maintained. When
the inner city became so crowded that landlords simply could not fit one more family into
an already overcrowded home, African American families began to move out to
Germantown and the other far reaches of the city. When the African American families
arrived, the wealthy white inhabitants of Germantown moved further up Germantown
Avenue to Chestnut Hill and the African American Families moved into their vacated
homes. However, the homes in Germantown were massive and beautiful homes and
because African Americans had a hard time finding meaningful high paying employment
in Philadelphia because of discriminatory hiring practices, the African American families
that moved into these beautiful homes in Germantown could not afford to maintain them.
Because the houses were no longer beautifully maintained, the property values fell and
more wealthy white families who had tried to stay in Germantown finally moved out. In
addition to not being able to maintain the homes, the homes in Germantown and
elsewhere were overcrowded which would have disastrous consequences.57
Eventually, these housing practices reached a breaking point in December 1936
when a tenant building in Philadelphia collapsed. This was due to many different things.
First, this is due to the decrease in the city budget which decreased the city inspectors
lower than the legally mandated 35 inspectors, so many buildings were going
uninspected. Additionally, the collapse was due to people ignoring code violations
because property owners claimed that they could not afford repairs. And finally, this is
due to overcrowding. As a result, Philadelphian Jack Kelly urged the state legislature to
provide funds for public housing projects. The housing projects would replace the
crumbling homes in the slums, which were clearly unsafe, and would provide homes to
lower income families that were subsidized by the federal government to keep the price
down.58 In short, the goal of the federal housing projects is to ensure families are living
54
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212; “George M. Leader Papers,” Manuscript group 207 box 48, Pennsylvania State Archives
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
55
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212.
56
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212.
57
“George M. Leader Papers,” Manuscript group 207 box 48, Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
58
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212.
14 in safe homes that they likely would not otherwise be able to afford and to protect them
from the alternative. However, the struggle with the federally subsidized homes is where
to build them, because many communities do not want them in their neighborhoods.
The housing projects did a lot of good by getting families out of decrepit homes
and into sturdier construction, but public housing projects also exacerbated segregation.
The housing projects were being built in the predominantly African American inner-city
of Philadelphia and not out in the suburbs where the schools and job opportunities were
better because the white suburbanites had moved to the suburbs to escape the influx of
African Americans and did not want them moving into the sanctuary they had created for
themselves outside of the city.59 Additionally, the property values outside the city are
high so building government subsidized housing on expensive land is illogical when the
government certainly cannot charge a high rent. Thus segregation is perpetuated by
housing projects, and even though the projects are good, they are also harmful in other
ways. By solving one problem, they are adding to the other.
In addition to legislation that made discrimination in schooling illegal,
Pennsylvania State Law made all forms of segregation illegal in 1887 and this law was
clearly disregarded as well. Segregation existed in almost all areas of life in Philadelphia.
There was segregation in housing, financing options, employment, education, and public
convinces, all of which had been outlawed by the 1887 legislation. 60 Although
segregated education was illegal in Philadelphia from 1881 on, this legislation was
unenforced and schools were still segregated. Most African American families were
already segregated from white families anyways because of the housing trends in
Philadelphia discussed above. However, dual schools were run as well, one for white kids
employing white teachers and administrators and producing better prepared students
because they received higher funding, and one for African American kids, employing
African American teachers and African American administrators and receiving lower
funding and producing lower performing students. Clearly Pennsylvania State Laws
were ignored in Philadelphia when it came to the segregation of schools and most other
aspects of daily life in Philadelphia. Philadelphia even had an active KKK chapter that
perpetuated segregation in Philadelphia.61
Segregation was not unique to the South; therefore, desegregation was not unique
to the South either. In the 1950’s and 1960’s the fight for civil rights reached a boiling
point in the United States. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in
Brown v. Board of Education which stated that segregation in public schooling was in
violation of the fourteenth amendment and therefore unconstitutional because separate
facilities are inherently unequal. Brown served as the death knell for segregation, but the
process of desegregation was complicated. The southern states were the focus of federal
efforts to desegregate public schools because the segregation was legally codified and
much easier to identify and therefore to address. Other forms of desegregation such as de
facto segregation are harder to identify and therefore harder to address.
Duel public schools in northern cities were easy to identify and eliminate, but de
facto segregation left over by discriminatory housing, lending, and employment practices
were not so easy to identify. Additionally, many school districts were homogeneous
59
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212.
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212; Pennsylvania State Legislature Bill no. 72, 1887, accessed at the Pennsylvania State
Library.
61
Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 179-212, 22-23.
60
15 because of white flight from the city so the inner city schools were predominantly
African American and the schools outside the city in suburbs like Radnor and Haverford
were predominantly white. Segregation in Philadelphia is so hard to address because
segregation in A contributes to segregation in B and segregation in B also contributes to
segregation in A. For example, segregation in hiring practices effects how much money a
person will make, and a person’s income dictates where they can afford to live, and
generally the higher property value, more expensive neighborhoods have better school
systems, so parents who make a lot of money can afford to live in an area with good
schools which will prepare their children to go on and make lots of money themselves.
However, discriminatory hiring practices which barred African American workers from
certain jobs, generally meant that African Americans ended up making less money, and
because they made less money, they could not afford to live in an expensive
neighborhood and therefore their children likely did not go to a good school that prepared
them to compete in the job market as adults. Eventually segregation in one area of life
will create a vicious cycle that perpetuates segregation in other forms, such as in
education quality.
Additionally, the process of desegregation in the South was very publicized.
Some of the most famous pictures in the history of the United States are the pictures of
the National Guard escorting the Little Rock Nine into school amid protesting students.
The issue of the President stepping in to ensure desegregation in Little Rock also sparked
many issues in the United States. President Eisenhower was criticized for encroaching on
states rights by stepping in to ensure desegregation of the public school in Little Rock
because education is under the jurisdiction of the state governments so many proponents
of states rights felt that Eisenhower had violated states rights by intervening on behalf of
the African American school children and their constitutional right to go to a
desegregated school.62 The issue of desegregation in southern states such as Arkansas
was so public that government officials all over the country began to weigh in on the
issue.
The Governor of Pennsylvania, Governor Leader, defended President
Eisenhower’s decision to use executive action to ensure desegregation in Arkansas, and
received no shortage of letters from Pennsylvanians, some who supported his position
and others who vehemently opposed it.63
While segregation and desegregation in southern states like Arkansas received
national attention, segregation and discrimination in Philadelphia was not a topic of
national fascination or controversy. I have already established that Philadelphia schools
were segregated, and now it was time to desegregate them. However, the process of
desegregating schools was complex because housing practices perpetuated segregation
and people had, and still have, a right to choose where they want to live. Additionally,
income dictates where people lived because lower income families can only afford lower
income housing and because African Americans make up a high percentage of
Philadelphia’s lower income families, African Americans were economically segregated
into lower income areas of the cities where the rent was low.64
62
“George M. Leader Papers,” Manuscript group 207 box 48, Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
“George M. Leader Papers,” Manuscript group 207 box 48, Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
64
Bussing, a system of transporting kids originally from one district to schools in another district was tested but incredibly unpopular
and ultimately unsuccessful. Desegregation in Philadelphia has a number of challenges because schools are by county and many
Philadelphia suburbs, which are predominantly white, are in a different county and therefore not part of the school system. This left
Chestnut hill and a few other areas that had remained predominantly white in the city of Philadelphia that could be included in
desegregation efforts. The other problem with bussing, in addition to the relative lack of white families living within the city of
63
16 In 1955, Governor George M. Leader signed the Human Relations Act of 1955,
which created the Human Relations Commission. The Human Relations Commission is
the group that investigates reports of segregation or discrimination. The commission has
jurisdiction to investigate reports of segregation and can bring suits against perpetrators
of segregation.65 In 1957, in Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission v. Chester
School District, the commission’s authority to force school districts to address de facto
segregation is established. This case is especially important because the majority of
segregation in Pennsylvania was de facto segregation. However, this case is also the
reason that desegregation litigation is ongoing in Pennsylvania because the commission
has to jump through a number of local hoops before it can hold hearings and go on factfinding missions.66
Between the 1957 and 1971, many cases came before the Human Relations
Commission. 67 In the end, the decision was made to build more schools because
educational parks were defeated and bussing was not going to be an accepted way to
distribute kids evenly. 68 However, despite the fight to desegregate, segregation
increased, largely due to white students being sent to private schools instead of the
predominantly African American public school they otherwise would have attended.
Ninety-two percent of African American went to public schools while forty-eight percent
of white students went to public schools and fifty-two percent went to private or
parochial schools.69 This trend still exists today.
In the 1970’s the Human Relations Commission began bringing suits against
various school districts to address segregation. The court cases were important for a
number of reasons. One extremely important case is from 1977 in which the court
acknowledges that segregation in Philadelphia is the result of housing practices and not
laws mandating segregation and is therefore de facto segregation.70 Throughout most of
the human relations commission cases, the fight was against segregation in school
districts in Pennsylvania, and the focus was on desegregating the student body so all
students attended a racially integrated school. In 1994, the fifth Human Relation
Commission case signaled the transition from the fight for racially integrated public
schools to an effort to ensure adequate and equal education for all students regardless of
where the student attends. As a result of the sixth Human Relations Commission case, the
school board of Philadelphia was required to develop a new plan containing things like
Philadelphia, was distance. Children have a right to a local public school, and parents are not wild about the idea of their children
being bussed long distances to go to school in a different neighborhood. The city of Philadelphia tried other ways of desegregating the
school systems in Philadelphia. For example, the city adopted rules that allowed families to choose where they would send their
children to school, giving families to option to send their white children to historically African American schools or African American
parents to send their children to historically white schools, however, the freedom of choice option was not really successful because
African American families ended up sending their children to the same historically African American schools and white families
ended up sending their children to the same historically white schools.
65
Malik Morrison, “An Examination of Philadelphia’s School Desegregation Litigation,” The University of Pennsylvania Graduate
School of Education’s Online Urban Education Journal 3, no. 1 (Fall 2004): doi. http://www.urbanedjournal.org/archive/volume-3issue-1-fall-2004/examination-philadelphia-s-school-desegregation-litigation.
66
Morrison, “An Examination of Philadelphia’s School Desegregation Litigation.”
67
Bussing was addressed and defeated, educational parks, which proposed super schools in large districts for huge populations of
students, were also defeated. Bussing was defeated because it was seen by the white community as a plan to integrate schools, and it
was to a degree, but it also had another goal which was to distribute students more evenly between schools so that there were less
issues with overcrowding. Educational parks would make the range of the school districts that much bigger and thus would pull a
wider range of students into one educational park whereas in the other system, the smaller school districts were more likely to follow
community lines and perpetuate segregation.
68
Phillips, “A History of the Struggle for School Desegregation,” 54, 60-68.
69
Phillips, “A History of the Struggle for School Desegregation,” 52.
70
Morrison, “An Examination of Philadelphia’s School Desegregation Litigation.”
17 plans for increased parental involvement, educational standards, smaller class sizes, so on
and so forth.71 The focus is on elevating the quality of education rather than fighting with
each other over what was segregation and what was not and what a desegregated school
looks like versus a segregated school, which is a good focus.
The focus when people discuss segregation and desegregation efforts throughout
the country and in Philadelphia is on physical separation of the races and efforts to attain
racially desegregated schools. Thus, the focus when Philadelphia public schools were
working on desegregation was the physical movement of bodies so that races were
equally distributed throughout the school systems. Ideally, racial integration would have
lead to equal populations of white and African American students in all public schools in
the city, but this is an unrealistic goal because whites fled the city in the middle of the
twentieth century when the African American population skyrocketed so the number of
African Americans in the city is higher than the number of whites in the city and there
simply are not enough white students to make the racial makeup of schools equal.
Additionally, parents who can afford to are choosing to send their children to private
schools instead of underfunded inner-city public schools, so at the end of the day, racial
integration is hard to achieve unless private schools are outlawed and the city lines are
redrawn to include the suburbs, both of which would never happen because local
governments are afraid of losing control. Finally, racial desegregation has already been
labeled complete, and so this fight can either be taken up again, or a new fight can begin.
I propose that a new fight begin to go after the local nature of school funding which ends
up producing vast disparities between the funding of one public school to another simply
because one public school happens to have a higher property tax base to draw funds from
than another public school.72
Currently, the economically disadvantaged, predominantly African American
population of Philadelphia are still segregated to the low-income, low property tax and
property value neighborhoods that discriminatory housing practices relegated them to
during the great migration when African Americans came north from southern farms to
work industrial jobs. Because the schools are linked to the community and the funding is
linked to the community’s property values and subsequent property taxes, the schools are
underfunded and underperforming which keeps African Americans confined to the same
low income, low property value and low property tax neighborhoods that they grew up in
and went to school in. In the end, generation after generation of African Americans have
been confined to the inner-city and because their educational opportunities are not
sufficient enough to prepare the vast majority of them to work their way out of their
poverty stricken communities, they stay in those same poverty stricken communities,
raise children in those same poverty stricken communities, send their children to the same
underfunded, underperforming public schools.
And the horrible thing is that this cycle is not the fault of the African American
communities. This cycle is the result of a broken education system and unequal funding
that should be dealt with in court and in legislation. How can the African American
community be expected to work their way out of poverty when the government instituted
and bureaucracy run education system leaves them little opportunities to raise themselves
71
Morrison, “An Examination of Philadelphia’s School Desegregation Litigation.”
Sara Burnett and Lary Fenn, “Divided America: In Recovery, Many Poor Schools Left Behind,” AP, September 6, 2016,
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/37c22cdf81504e5386e8a029e5ba94c7/divided-america-recovery-many-poor-schools-left-behind.
72
18 out of poverty. William Still once said that, “it might be possible that ‘filthy and
degraded’ negroes were ‘rendered so by being compelled to live and rear their children in
localities of degradation.’”73 This is true to a degree. In lower income, predominantly
African American communities living in “localities of degradation” there are limited role
models. These communities would benefit from interacting with individuals who came
from that same community but were able to go to college and are working a skilled job
making a good living.
In Manchild in the Promised Land, the Claude Brown discusses psychological
poverty. He says that in his neighborhood, he sees many young men who cannot
invasion another future for themselves so there is no reason to delay instant gratification
in favor of that larger goal because they do not have that larger goal. As a result, if the
hypothetical young man in Brown’s neighborhood wants something he does not have the
money for there is nothing stopping him from steeling the funds necessary for the item he
wants. Brown observed that growing up there was nothing that they wanted that they
could not have because funds were easy to come by as long as one was willing to perform
illegal activity to get them. Brown also notes that if a person is committing crimes that
often, he or she is likely to get arrested once or twice, and the cycle continues after
prison, creating a revolving door between Brown’s community and prison. Brown says
that it was more difficult to be able to envision an alternative future that did not involve
steeling funds to immediately gratify the sudden desire for some material good.
However, because Brown could envision an alternative future he had something to work
for, and thus would delay instant gratification in favor of working towards that end goal.
If William Still and Claude Brown’s opinions are taken together than Brown’s
community is an example of William Still’s “localities of degradation” where the
inhabitants can not envision an alternative future for themselves, so there is no reason to
delay instant gratification to get what they want even if that behavior might end them up
in a prison cell.74
After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the push was to desegregate
schools so that there were no all white schools and no all African American schools,
however the true ruling in Brown was that separate is inherently unequal and thus
segregation should not stand. The important aspect of the decision had to do with what
made those separate institutions unequal and that all came down to unequal funding,
facilities, supplies, and faculty. Of course segregated education is a horrible thing and
had to be addressed after brown, but the other part of the case hinged on the inequality
and the reality of the matter is that public education is still inherently unequal because
funding is not uniform throughout all the public schools in any given state, and it
certainly is not equal throughout the country, so some schools have better funding and
therefore can afford better facilities, supplies, and faculty. There have been efforts to
racially desegregate public education in Pennsylvania and throughout the country, but
these efforts have not been very successful. Now it is time to work to financially
desegregate public education in Pennsylvania and throughout the country.
If we reform the educational system of today, than we can change the view points
of thousands of children who see school as a means to an end, rather than the path to
73
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 279.
Foner, “The Battle to End Discrimination Against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars Part I,” 279; Claude Brown, Manchild in the
Promised Land, (New York: Touchstone Publishing, 1965).
74
19 college and a fulfilling career. If we change the opinion of the youth of today, than the
youth of tomorrow will be in even better shape because they will be getting the value of
education at home from parents who benefited from the education system and from the
improved education system itself. If we improve the education system and the public
opinion of the education system and of education itself than those children who do not
succeed in school do so of their own volition and not because the educational system is
not equipped to inspire them to succeed. In today’s society, where some public schools
like Masterman boast a student body where all students go to college and other public
schools like west Philadelphia send significantly less than half of their student body to
college, than the school must be at fault too because there is no possible way that the
students who attend Masterman and the students that attend west Philadelphia are so
fundamentally different from one another. When there is this much difference between
the performances of the schools than there must be a significant difference between the
schools themselves. These differences between West Philadelphia and Masterman are
what need to be fixed.
In other words, if desegregation efforts would focus less on the racial aspect of
desegregation and instead focus on financially desegregating school systems, placing
high income and lower income students in the same school system, someway somehow,
than racial desegregation will happen as well because statistically speaking, African
Americans are more likely to be lower income so if integration of financial status were to
happen in schools, schools would end up desegregated to a point. However, it is
important to note that this method of desegregation would possibly lead higher income
predominantly white students to private schools just as the influx of African American
families in inner-city neighborhoods in the 30’s and 40’s lead to the growth of the
predominantly white suburbs.
In 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in San
Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. In this case, the Edgewood
Concerned Parent Association brought suit against the San Antonio Independent School
District and five other Texas school districts, arguing that the way Texas funded their
school districts violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution
because the funding was not equalized.75 The funding plan for public education in Texas
is similar to the way schools are funded in states all over the country. In Texas, there is a
state funded program which is designed to provide a minimum level of funding for all
schools and then local property taxes provide the rest of the funding, so areas with lower
property taxes or less taxable property have a lower tax base to add to their state funded
minimum funding base. Thus, the funding does not begin unequal because all schools get
some funding from the state, but they can and do end up wildly unequal because property
taxes vary from area to area.
The San Antonio Independent School District filed suit against this funding
scheme on behalf of families that live in poorer areas with schools that end up with a
lower funding base. The argument was that the difference in funding from one school to
the next was unconstitutional because the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal
protection under the law, and the unequal funding made the education available to the
students unequal and therefore unconstitutional. The main question in the case is whether
75
Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech., “San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez,” Oyez,
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1972/71-1332.
20 Texas had a constitutional mandate to equalize funding throughout the state. The United
States Supreme Court decided five to four that Texas’ funding plan was not
unconstitutional because the system did not systematically discriminate against poor
people.76 Additionally, the supreme court decided that the funding plan in Texas was
similar to the funding plans in other states so the funding plan in Texas could not possibly
be “so irrational as to be invidiously discriminatory” if other states used roughly the same
plan. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that the constitution does not include a right to
education, so the Fourteenth Amendment cannot protect something that the constitution
does not provide for.77 However, the Supreme Court’s decision was wrong on two
counts.
First, the Supreme Court is wrong in their belief that Texas’ funding scheme is
not intentionally discriminatory against poor individuals because other states use the
same funding mechanism. Just because other states use the same funding plan does not
mean that the plan in Texas is not intentionally discriminatory, it actually means that if
the plan is intentionally discriminatory in Texas than it is probably intentionally
discriminatory in other states as well. Funding public schools with the profits from
property taxes makes sense, this is not the problem. The problem is that the funding goes
directly where it came from which means that areas that raise more get more. Usually,
this system of “eating what you kill” works well to make sure people do not feel that
some people are getting preferential treatment, however, in the case of school funding
this mentality produces gross inequalities.
The argument that the Texas funding scheme is so widely used that it could not be
intentionally “invidiously discriminatory” is based on the assertion that the funding
scheme is rational and therefore cannot be declared intentionally discriminatory is sound
but invalid. Of course the funding scheme is rational; if it were not rational, than the
state and local governments probably would not have set up funding that way. However,
just because the funding plan is rational does not mean that it is not discriminatory. The
other key word is the ‘intentionally’ in “intentionally discriminatory.” Intentionally
implies that if the discrimination is unintentional than it is not unconstitutional. This
argument is based on earlier decisions of the Supreme Court which allowed the federal
judiciary to focus on eliminating de jure segregation but not de facto segregation. The
funding scheme perpetuates de facto segregation because segregating people into poorer
and richer areas is de facto segregation. People want to live in nice areas but ultimately
will live where they can afford to live, so poorer areas will attract more poor people and
will have a low property tax base for their schools.78 Therefore, the funding scheme is
not intentionally discriminatory and it is rational, but it is still de facto segregation and
produces gross inequalities. The fact that other states used the same funding plan does not
prove that education funding in Texas in equal, it simply proves that funding throughout
many states in the United States have an educational scheme that produces educational
inequalities.
Second, the Supreme Court’s decision states that education is not a fundamental
right guaranteed by the Constitution. However, the Constitution guarantees the
protection of all laws to citizens of the United States, not just fundamental rights. The
76
77
78
Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech., “San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.”
Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech., “San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.”
Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech., “San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez.”
21 Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law and protection from
discrimination to all citizens of the United States of America. Thus, the Fourteenth
Amendment provides universal protection of the law, and education is the law. Every
state in the United States has compulsory education laws making education mandatory
for every child living in that state, and since every child living in the United States lives
in a state within the United States than every child in the United States is legally
mandated to go to school. By this logic, the Fourteenth Amendment should provide for
equal protection under the law that mandates that all children go to school and part of
equal protection should be that not only do all children have a school to go to, but that all
children have a good school to go to. Furthermore, the Fourteenth Amendment of the
Constitution provides for equal protection under the law, and since education is the law,
the Constitution provides for the right to an equal education which is not granted to all
children in the United States because the major funding base for education is property
taxes, and property taxes vary wildly from one area to another and no effort is being
made to equalize these funding disparities between the different schools. If all children
have to go to school, and the right to equal protection protects all children under the law,
than all children should be entitled to, at the very least, go to a school with the same
funding as the school in the wealthy neighborhood across the street.
Clearly, there is an argument to be made that the Supreme Court was wrong in
their decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. It is important to
note that the Supreme Court has changed their mind in the past. A very famous example
of the Supreme Court reversing a previous decision is Brown v. Board of Education,
which reclassified the doctrine of separate but equal as unconstitutional, reversing the
decision in Plessy v. Ferguson which made “separate but equal” constitutional. The very
reason appointing a Supreme Court nominee is so important and such a contentious
process is because legislators and voters alike realize that the Supreme Court can change
its mind on old court decisions if the opportunity presents itself in a new case. 79
Therefore, the decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez is not
set in stone. The right make up of the Supreme Court and another court case that raises
similar questions could very well result in a different decision.
The Civil Rights Movement was about fighting for equal rights. The fight of
Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights activists was about bringing the promise of
equality to all citizens of the United States regardless of race. Doing so meant breaking
Jim Crow. However, Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks
fought for equal rights in non-violent ways, while other less celebrated activists protested
violently. Rosa Parks knew that a picture was worth a thousand words and the picture of
her being arrested for peacefully refusing to give up her seat rather than immediately
turning the altercation physical was a more powerful picture than her being dragged from
the bus in handcuffs kicking and screaming. Martin Luther King Jr. knew that simply
denying the bus companies the patronage of the African American community would be
enough of a financial burden for the companies that increased violence was not
necessary. Civil Rights leaders knew that peacefully sitting at the “white persons only”
79
For example, republicans and democrats alike take Roe v. Wade into consideration when appointing new nominees. Republicans
try their best to put conservative justices who oppose abortion on the bench while democrats focus on appointing liberal justices who
support a women’s right to choose. Democrats and republicans alike know what is at stake when new justices are appointed, they
know that liberals are needed to preserve the decision made in Roe v. Wade and conservatives are needed to overturn it. Clearly, the
Supreme Court can, has, and will change its mind.
22 counters in dining establishments and juxtaposing the peaceful behavior of the African
American protesters with the violent behavior of the whites and police officers was a
much more powerful picture than fighting with the white diners and police officers. The
Civil Rights Movement is remembered for its peaceful march on Washington D.C. and
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream speech.” The peaceful tactics of the Civil
Rights Movement paid off, resulting in the 1965 legislation, which formally put an end to
Jim Crow and all other forms of segregation. However, the other forms of segregation
and the other issues Civil Rights leaders hoped to address were stifled because the Civil
Rights Movement was declared complete after Jim Crow and other forms of
discrimination and segregation were declared illegal.
Yet Civil Rights activists did not see the cause for racial equality to be over after
the 1965 legislation. Throughout the end of the twentieth century, Civil Rights activists
have worked for the same equality that the general public decided was guaranteed after
the 1965 legislation, but change such as ensuring civil liberties to thousands of
Americans who did not have them before does not happen over time. For example, it
took time to register African American voters in the South. In the 1960’s the Civil Rights
Movement was declared over, but it was not, there was more work to be don’t, and it was
done without the benefit of a national spotlight. For example, the Black United Front, the
Organization for Black Struggle and the Black Racial Congress are all groups that
advocated for Civil Rights and equality under the law for African Americans well after
the Civil Rights Act of 1965 marked the public end of the Civil Rights Movement.80 The
Civil Rights Movement was able to enact dramatic changes because they had a media
spotlight and public attention. Later movements fighting for Civil Rights for African
Americans were less publicized and not as widely known and lacked the same platform
that the Civil Rights movement had had which enabled the movement to drive such
monumental changes. Much like the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Lives Matter
movement has the media and public attention to make some big changes if they play their
cards right.
Abolitionists said that separate was inherently unequal before the Fourteenth
Amendment was even written and passed by the country. Before the Fourteenth
Amendment was even a twinkle in the eye of Americans, Abolitionists were advocating
for equal protection under the law and for an end to segregation. In fact, Abolitionists
like William Still were fighting segregation with the same rhetoric that would be used to
overthrow Jim Crow a hundred years later.81 Either Abolitionist’s were light years ahead
of their time, or the American public was years behind. The arguments of Abolitionists
like William Still were not even taken into consideration by the Supreme Court in 1896
when they ruled on Plessy v. Ferguson. The reason the advocacy for equal rights that
helped characterize the Abolitionists movement was forgotten from the collective
American memory is because the Abolitionist movement was complete in the eyes of the
public and the media once slavery had been abolished. Once abolition was accomplished,
people simply assumed that the Abolitionist movement was over.
80
Percy Green II et al., “Generations of Struggle” Transition, no. 119, Afro-Asian Worlds (2016): 9, doi:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.119.1.03.
81
William Still said that running separate cars for African American passengers was simply substitution the earlier injustice of not
allowing them to ride at all with the injustice of allowing them to ride some cars and not others because at the end of the day, they are
still not allowed to ride at any time in any streetcar.
23 The general public saw the Abolitionist movement as fighting for abolition alone,
when the movement certainly did not limit themselves to the abolition of slavery alone.
Abolitionist also advocated for equal rights, an end to discrimination, and the
improvement of circumstances for African Americans in the North. For example, the
Pennsylvania Abolition Society sent a letter to the mayoral candidates from Philadelphia
in 1865 asking if they would support equal rights for African Americans if elected.82
They did not ask if the candidate would support abolition, they asked about equal rights
because they knew that the end of slavery was not the only cause that needed their help
and that equal rights was as important as abolishing slavery because without equal rights,
former slaves after abolition would be confined to a new form of slavery because they did
not have equal rights, which is exactly what happened. Newly freed slaves were confined
to this new “slavery under a different name” because the general public viewed
abolitionists as solely interested in the abolition of slavery, so when slavery was
abolished, they assumed that the movement was over because the one goal of the
Abolitionist movement that the public knew about had been achieved. In reality, the
Abolitionist movement was not over in the eyes of Abolitionists but the public end of the
Abolition movement with the emancipation proclamation meant that the continuing
agenda of Abolitionists was virtually dead in the water because without the public
interest, the legislature is not inclined to do anything about the issue. Public interest is
one of the major ways an issue ends up on a political agenda and without public interest
the issue is not likely to go anywhere.
Another example of the continuing agenda of the Abolitionist movement was an
effort to determine the status of African Americans in Philadelphia. In the midnineteenth century, a committee interested in the status of African Americans in
Philadelphia looked into incarceration rates in the state of Pennsylvania in an effort to
determine if African Americans were incarcerated at a higher rate than whites relative to
the general population of African Americans in the state.83 Does this sound familiar? It
should. This is extremely similar to the concerns raised by the African American
community and the Black Lives Matter movement today.
Abolitionists were concerned about higher incarceration rates of African
Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, but the issue was not national news until the
twenty-first century. Clearly, the concerns of Abolitionists and Black Lives Matter
activists today are one and the same, so why are the movements classified as completely
different movements and eras in American history? Abolitionists and Black Lives Matter
activists both focused on the status of African Americans in society and ways to improve
that status, so why are the movements classified as completely different movements
advocating for completely different goals? They should not be.
The Abolitionist, Civil Rights, and Black Lives Matter movements should not be
discussed alone. There is more commonality than differences between the three
movements and yet the movements are discussed like they happen in a bubble, only
influenced by the time period they occurred in and not capable of influencing one
another. The Abolitionist movement is connected to the Civil Rights movement because
both identify segregation as a problem. The Abolitionist movement is connected to the
Black Lives Matter movement because both were interested in the increased incarceration
82
83
Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society Papers Box 17 Folder 4, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society Papers Box 16 Folder 16, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
24 rates of African Americans compared to white Americans today and throughout history.
The Black Lives Matter movement is often called the second Civil Rights movement, but
it should not be considered the second coming of a movement cut short by the public’s
short attention span and the whim of the media. Additionally, the movements are
connected in their causal relationship, the institution of slavery sparked the need for an
Abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements are
necessary because of the inequalities and racism left over from slavery. All three of these
movements would probably not have been necessary if slavery had never existed in the
United States. In other words, these three movements are about addressing underlying
social issues left over from slavery and the impact slavery left on this country.
The Abolitionist, Civil Rights, and Black Lives Matter movements should all be
viewed in context with one another and as the interconnected and related movements that
they are. Abolitionists were undoubtedly happy that slavery was over. Civil Rights
activists were certainly happy that segregation and discrimination was now illegal.
However, both movements did not feel that the job was over or that the situation for
African Americans would be perfect overnight. Both movements clearly saw that while
the progress made was great, there was much more work to be done. Today, the Black
Lives Matter movement has the opportunity to continue the work of the Abolitionist and
Civil Rights movements. About the only thing separating the three movements is the
passage of time, and it is about time this is recognized. Additionally, the Black Lives
Matter movement has a lot to teach the general American public, but by that same token,
the Black Lives Matter movement has a lot to learn from the past.
Racism and police brutality have taken center state in the last four years in the
United States.84 The Black Lives Matter movement aims to expand the conversation on
state violence to discuss the ways African Americans are left powerless and the ways in
which they are denied their basic human rights. However, the most public work of the
Black Lives Matter movement centers around the negative relationship between the
police and the African American community.
One of the most public complaints of the Black Lives Matter movement is
unnecessary police brutality, the use of excessive force, and the shooting of unarmed
African American males. Many of these points are supported by staggering facts. For
example, African Americans are two and a half times more likely to be shot and killed by
a police officer than Caucasians and African Americans only make up 13.3 percent of the
American population as of July 1, 2015.85 At the end of the day, the loss of any life is
tragic. But the loss of human life due to police is unacceptable. This loss is what the
black lives matter movement is protesting. It is important to note that police brutality is
an issue, there is no doubt about it, but there are underlying issues such as the infiltration
of white supremacists into police forces that are underlying contributors to the
overarching problem of police brutality that need to be addressed. Police officers are a
necessary part of keeping the American people safe, and eliminating the possibility that
84
The Black Lives Matter movement is a contemporary movement “working for the validity of the Black life” and aims to “(re)build
the Black libertarian movement.” The Black Libertarian movement or the Black Libertarian Army was an underground black
nationalist movement advocating for armed struggle working to “take up arms for the libertarian and self-determination of black
people in the United States.” The Black Libertarian movement advocated for armed struggle which runs in the face of the current
pleas of the black lives matter movement for less police brutality against unarmed African Americans.
85
Jonathan Capehart, “From Trayvon Martin to ‘Black Lives Matter,’” The Washington Post, February 27, 2015,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/02/27/from-trayvon-martin-to-black-livesmatter/?utm_term=.5df020df60bc.
25 police officers could be white supremacists is an integral part of improving the
relationship between the police and the African American communities they protect.86
The Black Lives Matter movement began in response to the shooting of Trayvon
Martin by a neighborhood watchman on February 26, 2012. Martin was seventeen.
Initially the shooter was not charged with murder, and was only charged after public
outrage. In the end, the shooter was acquitted of murder. On November 23, 2015, Jordan
Davis was shot for playing his music too loud in his car. The shooter was convicted of
murder and sentenced to life in prison. Davis’ death called attention to the dangers facing
African American men in the United States; this danger and the conflict between the
African American community and police forces is what drives the Black Lives Matter
movement.87
The Black Lives Matter activists and their protests have some very valid points.
First, police brutality is a major issue that needs to be addressed. In the case of Laquan
McDonald, he was shot sixteen times for failure to drop a switch blade. McDonald’s
knife makes the situation slightly more complicated, but he was not causing any problems
when police pulled a gun on him. Additionally, he was not even facing the police when
he was shot, so the shooting was not in self defense. Furthermore, McDonald was shot
86
The relationship between the police and the African American community is complex. One aspect is the issue of the KKK. In July,
one police officer resigned and another was fired from a Florida police force after the police captain received convincing evidence
from the FBI that these two men were members of the local KKK chapter. This was not the first time this police force faced a KKK
scandal. A few years before, another police officer was let go after photos surfaced of him in full KKK dress, pointy hat and all. This
highlights several important issues. First, the general public needs to understand that the KKK was not and is not an early to mid
twentieth century terror group in the south. The KKK were all over the country and still exist today. Other white supremacy groups
exist today such as groups who are spin offs of Hitler’s Nazis’ swastika’s and all. How can the African American community trust the
police officers who are supposed to keep them and their neighborhoods safe when there is a very real possibility that those very
officers of the law who have promised to protect the people to the full extent of the law are actually white supremacist who have
temporarily taken off their white sheet and pointy hat?
87
On November 2, 2013, Renisha McBride is shot after knocking on the door of a Detroit home after she is in a car accident. The
homeowner shoots her through the front door. The shooter receives seventeen years in prison for charges, which included second
degree murder. The shooting highlights contemporary race relations because the shooter was white and McBride was African
American.
On July 17, 2014, police chocked Eric Garner to death. This death represents the first murder by a police officer and the
first example of police brutality impacting the black lives matter movement. His last words, “I can’t breath” became a battle cry for
the movement and also highlights that the police officer must have known Garner was losing oxygen if bystanders heard his pleas for
air. Protests erupt after the police officer is not indicted by a grand jury. On August 5, 2014, John Crawford was shot dead by police
officers after being seen with a toy gun at a Walmart where he and his girlfriend were picking up s’mores supplies for a family event.
On August 9, 2014, Michel Brown was killed in Furgeson Missouri. Protests begin peaceful, but turned violent at night and continued
for weeks. Pictures circulated around the country of police decked out in military grade gear stared down protesting civilians,
sometimes unarmed, sometimes holding rocks. On October 20, 2014, Laquan McDonald was shot sixteen times by police when he
refused to drop a switchblade. The incident was caught on camera and the footage sparks protests. The police officer was charged
with murder.
On November 23, 2014, Tamir Rice was shot by police. Rice was 12 years old and had been playing with a toy gun,
pointing it at things and people in the street. People in the street called the cops, but did say that the gun looked fake. The police
officer that showed up shot the boy, and was not charged with a crime even though he shot a twelve-year-old boy playing with a toy
gun. A month later, two police officers were killed in New York following black lives matter protests. On April 12, 2015, Freddie
Gray died in police custody in Baltimore Maryland. The city erupted into protests, the schools were closed and the protestors pillage,
damage and burn the city. Protestors throw rocks at police officers who are trying to control the protests.
On November 16, 2015, Jamar Clark was shot in the head by police officers while in police custody. Some witnesses even
claimed that Clark was handcuffed at the time. As a result, the black lives matter movement pickets outside the police station for
eighteen days and no charges are filed against the police officer who shot Clark. On July 5, 2016, Anton Sterling was shot five times
by police officers while pinned to the ground. Protests breakout after a video of the ordeal is released and police officers call for calm.
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was shot in his car by a police officer after being pulled over because one of his taillights was out.
Castile informed the police officer that he had a weapon in the car and had permit for concealed carry. When Castile went to get his
license and registration the officer shot him. Castile’s fiancé and her daughter were in the car as well and the ordeal was streamed on
Facebook. On July 7, 2016, a sniper killed five police officers at a black lives matter demonstration in Dallas Texas. The shooter told
police that he was killing white officers as payback for the deaths of African American men at the hands of police officers. On July
22, 2016, Charles Kinsey was shot by police while trying to help an autistic patient from the halfway house where he worked who had
managed to get out onto the street. Kinsey was laying on the ground with his hands in the air asking police not to shot when he was
shot.
26 sixteen times, fifteen of which were fired after he had been hit with the first shot. Police
should not be firing their weapons that many times at one suspect, it is simply over-kill.88
Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot by police while playing with a toy gun. Police
should be able to tell the difference between a child playing with a fake gun and a child
with a real gun. The people on the street who called into the police to report that a child
had a gun stated that the gun could be fake and that they were calling just to be on the
safe side.89 The police officer should have approached the whole situation differently.
He should have talked first and shot second if the gun had proved to be real, instead he
shot a child playing with a fake gun that posed no threat to anyone.
Second, the Black Lives Matter movement criticizes the lack of transparency and
oversight of police officers. In the case of Tamir Rice, the police officer who shot Rice
was not convicted of a crime even though he shot a child playing with a toy. In the case
of Laquan McDonald, the police officer’s report of the event was inconsistent with the
events as recorded by the dashcam.90 Perhaps the police officer had made a mistake in
shooting McDonald and attempted to cover it up by fabricating a completely different
story to justify the killing, but even if the shooting itself had been a mistake in the heat of
the moment, the police officer should not attempt to cover up the events of the killing.
Additionally, shooting someone sixteen times does not look like a mistake. Shooting
someone sixteen times looks like police brutality, plain and simple.
In the case of Philando Castile, Castile informed police that he had a weapon in
the car and a license for concealed carry.91 The officer might have had a reason to shoot
if they had been uninformed of the gun and had somehow seen it in the car, but the fact is
that Castile informed the officer of the gun and was reaching to open his glove box to
produce his license and registration as the officer had requested. Shooting a man simply
because he had a gun in the car and informed the officer of the gun is unacceptable,
especially when Castile informed the officer of the gun specifically to avoid being shot in
the event the officer saw the gun and reacted, and the officer still shot him. If police are
going to shoot armed people, than people are going to feel like they cannot carry a gun
which many people do for self-defense. Additionally, the Second Amendment protects
the right to bear arms, so Castile was essentially shot for exercising his Second
Amendment rights and correctly informing police of the fact that he was armed.
On the other hand, the police have some valid points as well. First, some black
lives matter protests have gotten out of hand and turned violent.92 Not only is violence a
danger for all, police officers and civilians alike, but it also puts police on edge and
rightfully so. Protesters have also thrown rocks at police officers, which is unacceptable
behavior.93 Yes, there are bad cops, but not all are bad and all police officers deserve our
respect unless they personally have done something wrong. Throwing rocks at a police
88
“Timeline: The Black Lives Matter Movement,” ABC News, Updated July 22, 2016, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-14/blacklives-matter-timeline/7585856.
89
“Timeline: The Black Lives Matter Movement,” ABC News.
90
Michael Pearson, “Tamir rice Shooting: Cleveland to Pay $6 Million to Settle Family’s Lawsuit,” CNN, Updated Monday, April 25,
2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/25/us/tamir-rice-settlement/.
91
Eliott C. McLaughlin, “Woman Streams Aftermath of Fatal Officer-Involved Shooting,” CNN, Updated Friday, July 8, 2016,
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/falcon-heights-shooting-minnesota/.
92
Adrian Florido, “Black Lives Matter Protest Turns Violent in St. Paul,” NPR, July 11, 2016,
http://www.npr.org/2016/07/11/485593473/black-lives-matter-protest-turns-violent-in-st-paul; “Ferguson Unrest: From Shooting to
Nationwide Protests,” BBC, August 10, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30193354.
93
Karen D. Taylor, “Still Occupied,” Transition, no. 118, I Can Be Lightning (2015):
http://www.jstor,org/stable/10.2979/transition.118.144.
27 officer while protesting the behavior of another officer is unfair. The police officer the
people are throwing rocks at likely has not done anything wrong and the protesters are
upset a different officer. Protestors should not take their frustration with one officer out
on a completely innocent second party.
Police are also being criticized for doing their jobs. In the case of Eric Garner, he
was a criminal of sorts, and police are supposed to arrest criminals so these criminals can
not continue to break laws and potentially harm another person. Police knew Garner for
selling untaxed cigarettes, which is against the law.94 Therefore, police were well within
their rights and their job description to approach Garner. However, police are not
fulfilling their job description when they choke a man to death. So it is complicated
because police do not need to use excessive force, but the general public wants police to
arrest criminals, and Gardner was a criminal. In short, the Black Lives Matter movement
has a point that the police were excessively forceful in their interaction with Garner.
There is no way the police officer holding Garner down did not hear Garner’s pleas for
air if witnesses heard the pleas. Thus, the officer is in the wrong for his use of excessive
force, which resulted in Garner’s death. However, the Black Lives Matter movement is
wrong to paint Garner as completely innocent. The man did not deserve to die, but the
police had reason to suspect that he was engaging in criminal activity if he is known for
such behavior.
The police are definitely at fault for their use of excessive force when moderate
force or no force at all is more appropriate, however, the African American community
and the Black Lives Matter movement is not always in the right. The African American
community has double standards when it comes to racial profiling. When the police
profile suspects on the basis of race, racial profiling becomes something negative and
dirty. The Black Lives Matter movement and many in the African American community
claim that racial profiling by police leads more young men to go into a life of crime
because they feel that they will always be suspected of a crime even if they have not
committed one, so why refrain from the crime in the first place. On the other hand, the
African American community touts affirmative action as a justified entitlement program
that will make up for the legacy of slavery in this country.95 While slavery is a horrible
legacy that our whole country has to deal with, college admission is not the place to try to
make amends for this wrong.96 Additionally, at the end of the day, the African American
94
Al Baker, J. David Goodman, and Benjamin Mueller, “Beyond the Chokehold: The Path to Eric Garner’s Death” The New York
Times, June 13, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html?_r=0.
95
Anita L. Allen, “Was I Entitled or Should I Apologize?: Affirmative Action Going Forward,” The Journal of Ethics 15, no. 3
(September 2011): doi. http://www.jstor,org/stable/41486913.
96
Affirmative action exists because policy makers and a vast majority of the general public recognizes that college is the path to
success and opportunity and that African Americans are underrepresented in colleges compared to their percentage in the population.
However, affirmative action is criticized because it gives an advantage to African American college and job applicants based on their
race. However, the root cause of inequality and the underrepresentation of African American students in colleges is because the
education system is not preparing them for college.
Affirmative action in college admissions is like a Band-Aid for a gunshot wound. The Band-Aid will be woefully
unsuccessful at stopping the bleeding. In turn, affirmative action in college admissions addresses the unequal representation of
African Americans in colleges without addressing the underlying reason for this underrepresentation. Affirmative action ends up
admitting under qualified students. This point can be disputed, but at the end of the day, affirmative action would be irrelevant if these
students could get into the college without it. Admitting under qualified students essentially means that the student suffers in college
because they are intellectually unprepared for the class and workload of a top tier university. Admitting under qualified students over
qualified students based on race is like putting a Band-Aid on the gun shot wound that really needs stitches and potentially surgery.
The underlying cause for the need for affirmative action is certainly economic, but it is also education. Presumably, the
reason these minority children can not get into these college without affirmative action is because their academics are not strong
enough and their academics are not strong enough either because they did not try in high school and therefore did not achieve to their
full potential, or because they went to underperforming high schools where the vast majority of children in the school will not have the
28 community of today has never experienced slavery and never will, at least not in the
United States. There are certainly lingering inequalities between the African American
and white communities, but institutions of higher education are not the place to right this
wrong. The differences should be addressed with equal primary and secondary
education, equal community resources, and universal access to adequate housing in safe
neighborhoods.
Racial profiling can not be something that the African American community
maintains as a positive in one instance while condemning it as a mechanism to suppress
the predominantly African American lower class in another instance. Either racial
profiling is a negative or it is a positive, it cannot be both. Interestingly enough, the
United States Supreme Court essentially found that this same sort of double standard was
unacceptable when it came to segregation. In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, the
Supreme Court pertained to graduate programs and stated that the program could choose
to segregate African Americans or they could admit them to the same institutions or
facilities as whites, but if they chose to segregate, they had to make the separate facilities
equal, and if the institution decided not to segregate, than the African American student
had to be treated the same as white students. This decision only directly impacted
segregation in graduate schools, but it indirectly impacted all segregation and race
relations. Essentially, the Supreme Court was saying that if the state or institution in
question chose to segregate than they had to ensure the existence and equality of separate
facilities even when providing those separate facilities was expensive and it would have
been more beneficial for the white community to simply abandon the practice of
segregation in that one situation.97 The decision made it so that if a community wanted to
segregate, they had to segregate fully, no double standards.
This same standard set by the Supreme Court should go for racial profiling. The
African American community should not be able to rage against racial profiling by police
officers while praising racial profiling by colleges and universities simply because racial
profiling by colleges and universities benefits the African American community by
giving preferential treatment to minority students who otherwise would not be able to get
financial or academic means to go to college. The financial means is one issue and needs to be addressed, but in the mean time there
are financial aid options available to economically disadvantages students regardless of race.
The inadequate education cause for affirmative action needs to be addressed and is something that is possible to fix. All
children need the means to succeed in high school if they are to be expected to be admitted into a good college and be successful
afterwards. If the public primary and secondary education system in this country were to be reformed, the need for affirmative action
would be eliminated because every child would have access to the same educational opportunities, and thus economically
disadvantaged minority children would receive the same education as the wealthy majority students and so the grades of the successful
minority children who took advantage of the newly improved educational opportunities at their disposal would have a great chance at
being accepted into a high level college because their academic record was qualified. If public education is not improved than the
need for affirmative action still exists. If all children regardless of their economic situation or place of residence receives a high
quality primary and secondary education whether or not they went to a private school or their local public school than the educational
differences between the white majority and the African American minority are eliminated and one of the root reasons for affirmative
action is no longer. Affirmative action is the Band-Aid used for a gunshot wound that really needs stitches and potentially surgery. If
we perform the surgery now than the money spent to stop the bleeding once and for all would be more cost affective than the millions
of Band-Aids used to try to stop the bleeding in the long term.
Additionally, lets take into account the constitutional implications of affirmative action. The Supreme Court has decided
that affirmative action solely based on race is unconstitutional for the same reason that widespread segregation was deemed
unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Race based discrimination violates the equal protections clause of the fourteenth
amendment. Additionally, there is existing unconstitutional inequality in the education system that should be addressed that would
also eliminate the need, at least somewhat, for affirmative action, so affirmative action simply adds another unconstitutional practice
to the educational system in this country. Addressing the unequal nature of the public education system which runs separate public
schools in each county with varying levels of funding is unconstitutional because the unequal funding leads to unequal resources in the
form of faculty and facilities.
97
John P. Roche, “The Future of ‘Separate But Equal,’” Phylon (1940-1956), 12, no. 3 (3rd Qtr., 1951): 5, doi.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/271632.
29 into that college if the college did not practice affirmative action. Either racial profiling
is bad because it keeps the predominantly African American lower class at the bottom, or
racial profiling is good because it gives typically economically disadvantaged African
American students the chance to get an education they otherwise might not have access
to. Racial profiling can not be good in one case and bad in another simply because it
benefits the African American community in one instance and not in another. This is the
type of double standard that the Supreme Court prevented with its decision in Missouri ex
rel. Gaines v. Canada, and the African American community should be held to this same
standard when it comes to racial profiling.
The Black Lives Matter movement discusses violence towards African Americans
and police brutality as if they are something new and unique to the last four years, but
this is not true. On August 2, 1964, claims of police brutality sparked riots in Jersey City
New Jersey. On August 11, 1965, riots ensued in the Watts neighborhood of Los
Angeles after two African American brothers were beaten and arrested by police. In
1967, riots erupted in Tampa Florida after police killed an unarmed African American
teen. Similar to the riots that erupted after the deaths of Freddie Gray and Michel Brown
in 2014 and 2015, and all three riots escalated to burning and looting businesses.98
However, in the long run, the violence only hurts the community, which suffers the loss
of businesses as people have to rebuild.
Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement released their demands for how they
want to see policies change in the United States. The list includes an end to the broken
windows policy, more community involvement in punishing officers, and more
transparency in police forces. 99 Some of the demands of the Black Lives Matter
movement are new and unique to the movement, but other groups have requested some of
the same demands in the past. In 1955, a subcommittee on Police-Community Relations
was formed by the Philadelphia Fellowship Commission’s committee on Community
Tensions with the goal of diffusing the rising tensions between the community and the
police. The subcommittee believed that diffusing the tensions was the responsibility of
both the police and the communities.
The subcommittee evolved into a forum where the African American community
could voice their concerns. Many of the concerns voiced by the African American
community at this time are similar to concerns voiced by the African American
community today such as the interconnectedness of the police forces and the police trial
board which investigates instances of police misconduct without providing any real
independent oversight for the police, and police brutality and misconduct towards even
98
Susan Cianci et al., “Civil Rights in America: Racial Desegregation of Public Accommodations” The National Historic Landmarks
Program, Cultural resources, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior (Washington D.C.: September 1943).
99
Julia Craven and Ryan J. Reilly, “Here’s What Black Lives Matter Activists Want Politicians to do About Police Violence,”
Huffington Post, Updated August 24, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-lives-matter-policydemands_us_55d7392ae4b0a40aa3aa9443; “Black Lives Matters Activists Outline Policy Goals,” BBC, August 21, 2015,
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34023751.
The list includes an end to the broken windows policy which aggressively polices small crimes under the belief that cracking down on
smaller crimes keeps them from escalating into larger crimes. Second, the movement demands community involvement in
determining the consequences officers will face. Third, the movement wants a way for citizens to report deadly force by police.
Fourth, the movement demands an independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute police officers who have wrongfully killed
civilians so police forces can not protect their own. Fifth, the movement wants the racial makeup of local police departments to reflect
the communities in which they serve. Sixth, the movement wants new policies to be implemented that mandate police to wear body
cameras so the police can no longer fabricate a report to cover up a mistake they made. Seventh, the movement wants more training
for police. Eight, the movement wants an end to for-profit policing. Nine, the movement wants the police to be demilitarized which
means that police forces would not have access to the military grade equipment they were photographed with in Ferguson. Ten, the
movement wants contracts with the police unions, which would hold officers accountable for misconduct.
30 the most esteemed members of the African American community. The subcommittee’s
officials tried to make some changes including changing training practices for the police
to include race based training to prepare officers to deal with racially charged issues.
Additionally, the subcommittee wanted cases of police misconduct brought in front of an
independent oversight committee and wanted all hearings in the police trial board to be
open to the public to increase transparency between the local communities and the police
force.100 These requests, such as increased transparency, more effective training, and
external oversight are identical to demands made by the black lives matter movement.
Clearly, issues with the police have a long history in the United States, and perhaps the
black lives matter movement could learn a thing or two from this history.
The world has a lot to learn from the black lives matter movement, but the black
lives matter movement also has a lot to learn from the past. Chief among the lessons the
past can teach todays civil rights activists is that violence is not the answer and only leads
to more violence. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks both knew that peaceful protest
was the best solution, and their dedication to peaceful protest is simultaneously what
made their movements so successful and memorable. The families of the victims of racial
and police violence have also called for peace.101 For example, the Mothers of the
Movement spoke at the Democratic National Convention asking for peaceful
movements.102 These women and their families know that violence is not the answer.
Furthermore, police officers all around the country are condemning the actions of police
officers that have wrongfully killed unarmed Americans.103 The police forces want to try
to work with communities. Just a few weeks ago, a Black Lives Matter protest was
planned but turned into a party thrown by the local police officers in an effort to foster
communication and to give both sides a chance to humanize one another.104 Violence is
not the answer. The Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. showed this to
the world, and it is time that the Black Lives Matter movement acknowledged this and
started condemning violence by all protestors.
In the 1860’s, Philadelphia Abolitionists lead a crusade against segregation on
railway cars in Philadelphia. During this process, William Still condemned the offer to
run separate “colored only cars” one out of every five cars which would enable the
railway presidents to offer transportation to the African American community which they
quickly saw was necessary if they wanted the segregation issue to disappear, while still
enabling them to separate whites from blacks. William Still said that running separate
cars for whites and blacks, especially when the white cars would be less frequent, was a
“simple substitution of one injustice for another” and that this sort of separate treatment
was unequal and therefore unacceptable. Thus, in 1865, William Still and other
abolitionists in Philadelphia argued against the injustices of segregation with the same
100
Karl E. Johnson, “Police-Black Community Relations in Postwar Philadelphia: Race and Criminalization in Urban Social Spaces,
1945-1960,” The Journal of African American History 89, no. 2, African Americans and the Urban Landscape (Spring 2004): 128,
doi. http://www/jstor.org/stable/4134096.
101
Mothers of the Movement, Democratic National Convention, July 26, 2016; John Eligon, “Black Lives Matter Leader Calls for End
to Violence,” The New York Times, July 17, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/live/police-shooting-in-baton-rouge/black-lives-matterleader-calls-for-peace/; “11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement,” Black Lives Matter,
http://blacklivesmatter.com/11-major-misconceptions-about-the-black-lives-matter-movement/.
102
Mothers of the Movement, Democratic National Convention, July 26, 2016
103
The 2016 Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
104
Colby Itkowitz, “These Black Lives Matters Protesters Planned a March. The Police Threw Them A Cookout Instead,” The
Washington Post, July 21, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/07/21/these-black-lives-mattersprotesters-planned-a-march-the-police-threw-them-a-cookout-instead/.
31 arguments that would be used to abolish the practice almost 100 years later.
Additionally, the fight for the abolition of segregation in Philadelphia (and other cities)
started before the emancipation proclamation was even signed, and thus, abolitionists had
identified segregation as the next big fight the African American people would have to
wage in the quest for equal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However,
with the emancipation proclamation and the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and
Fifteenth amendments, the general American public (that is the white American public)
declared the abolitionist movement complete because legislation that they deemed
sufficient to address the issue of slavery had passed. However, abolitionists knew that
the fight was long from over.
In the 1960’s, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of
Education ruling, another group of activists, the Civil Rights activists such as Rosa Parks
and Martin Luther King Jr. fought for equal rights in their efforts to highlight the inherent
inequalities of segregation in the United States. After the abolition of “separate but
equal” by the Supreme Court, Civil Rights activists still had to crusade against
segregation because the judicial victory was not enough. In 1965, congress passed the
Civil Rights Act, along with other Civil Rights legislation that was designed to ensure the
equal access to things like equal transportation, education, and housing. Once again,
after the passage of the Civil Rights acts, the Civil Rights movement was declared
finished and a success by the public and the media because legislation had passed that
they felt satisfactorily addressed the injustice of segregation.
In this country, we have a tendency to label movements as finished after
legislation has been passed. Perhaps this is because by the time we manage to get
legislation through the exhausting partisan circus congress has become we are so
exhausted that we want to take a nap for the next one hundred years before we are finally
energized enough to begin the next stage of the fight. Or, perhaps this is because the
American people like things packaged up nice and neat, and legislation looks like the
perfect ribbon to complete the present. Whatever the reason may be, it is time to start
looking at the Abolitionist, Civil Rights, and Black Lives Matter movements as the
interconnected continuations that they are. The Abolitionist movement did not end with
the Emancipation Proclamation and the passing of William Still, Harriet Tubman,
Frederic Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and other Abolitionists, it simply morphed
into what would be labeled the Civil Rights movement a hundred years later. Likewise,
the Civil Rights movement did not end with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the
passing of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., it
simply morphed and took on new issues until it reached a boiling point and burst onto the
national radar as the Black Lives Matter movement.
Civil liberties movements should not be separated from one another. The
American public, and indeed the activists themselves can learn a lot from the history of
past civil liberties movements and the ways to fix todays inequalities are similar to the
ways segregation and slavery were addressed fifty or one hundred years ago. We need
legislation that will equalize education, give every child access to top of the line
textbooks, teachers, facilities, and staff, regardless of where they go to school. Every
school needs college counselors who must work with all students, not just those that seek
out their help so all children see college as a possible future that they can work for.
Every child needs to see college as a possibility that they have access to should they
32 choose to do so and to make this happen we need to reform education to ensure that all
children are prepared to go to college and we need to get parents more involved in the
education of their children so they are instilling the value of education and the goal of
college at home, not just in the classroom from Monday to Friday, September to June.105
This country is a work in progress. The Constitution itself was meant to be a
work in progress from the beginning, which is why the document was written, signed,
and then amended with the Bill of Rights to add more protection for the people.
Legislation is also supposed to be a work in progress that is malleable to the changing
times. There was a time when African Americans were counted as three fifths of a
person and unable to vote. Now, the three-fifths compromise is seen as barbaric and
unimaginable in today’s world, and this is just the point. If laws were not meant to
change with the times, than African Americans would still be counted as three-fifths of a
person, we would not have had Barak Obama as President for the last eight years, and
Hillary Clinton would not be voting in the 2016 Presidential Election let alone running in
it. This being said, our founders left this country as a work in progress for a reason and
we need to honor their forethought and actually work to improve our country in an effort
to improve our laws, our country, and ourselves just as our forefathers intended us to.
The United States is one of the greatest countries in the history of the world, but when
three countries issue travel warnings against the United States, we clearly must not be
acting the part.
105
Additionally, education needs to be taken out of the hands of local government. For one thing, the local nature of public education
is one of the things that led to school inequality because there is no uniformity in funding. Public education should be taken out of the
hands of local politicians and given to the state government with oversight by the federal government. Additionally, once the state
government gets a hold of public education, they should ensure uniform funding for every public school. Probably the best way to do
this would be to calculate the number of students in public education and then divide the total funding evenly among all those children
and then direct the funding on a per child basis. This is because inner city or suburban public schools likely have more children than
rural public schools simply because of population density in and around cities and because school districts can not be too big because
students have to live a realistic distance away from the school they are expected to attend, so if every public school in the state were to
receive the same amount of funding, the smaller rural public schools would receive a disproportionate amount of funding compared to
the larger inner city or suburban public schools which would again lead to inequality but this time between rural and city schools
rather than inner city and suburban schools and would defeat the purpose of centralizing public schools under the state in the first
place.
Politically speaking, it will be nearly impossible to take public education out of the hands of local government because
local government will not want to relinquish the control, power, and money that comes with controlling public education.
Additionally, people will think that centralizing education under the state will put more distance between the people controlling
education and the students themselves, but centralizing education is the only way to ensure equality.
Additionally, the federal government is not really in a position to step in and take control of public education for the nation
because the constitution says that all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government fall under the jurisdiction of the states
so states would not allow the federal government to take control of public education and would have the grounds to fight the
movement because education is left to the states by the constitution. However, public education does receive federal money as well as
state and local funding and the state government is closer to the federal government so placing education in the hands of the state
government would enable the state and federal government to work together more effectively.
However, it is important to note that many states have a requirement to balance their budget worked into their state
constitution and education comprises a large portion the state budget so the desire to cut funding to education to balance the budget is
strong, and is something that has been happening in recent years. This should not happen. Education is arguably the most important
function of the state government and its funding should not be significantly diminished because children are the future of the country
so we have a responsibility to ourselves and to them to ensure that they are properly educated.
Finally, the compulsory education laws should be amended in every state throughout the country to say that every child
should be in school until the age of eighteen. The reason this is not the case in every state is because some states like Pennsylvania or
Vermont have high rural populations which rely on the family’s children to help working on the farm and the longer the child has to
legally stay in school the longer that family has to do without that child’s labor to help the family farm. Amending the compulsory
education laws in this way would hurt these family farms and the families themselves, but would eventually benefit the child when he
or she potentially takes over the farm and has two more years of formal education at their disposal. Alternatively, the compulsory
education laws could be amended in cities and surrounding suburban areas (similarly to the way cigarettes have a higher tax in the city
of Philadelphia than they do in the rural areas of the state of Pennsylvania) because the major hubs of crime are cities and crime rate
increases as education achievement level decreases so mandating that all city and suburban children stay in school through the age of
eighteen would decrease the level of crime in the cities.
33 Thus, we need to honor the belief that the United States is a work in progress and
the best country in the world by working to improve our country by passing legislation
that will make shootings of unarmed black men, unequal education, and segregation in its
many forms, things of the past. And when we pass this legislation, we need to not label
the Black Lives Matter movement, or whatever movement eventually sparks this kind of
change, finished. Social movements like the Abolitionist, Civil Rights, and Black Lives
Matter movements should never be placed on a proverbial shelf to be dusted off by some
political scientist or historian fifty years from now. The Abolitionist, Civil Rights, and
Black Lives Matter movements are all parts of our national history and should be integral
parts of our identity. The history of slavery and segregation should not be hidden away
because it is shameful to acknowledge that the United States ever condoned them, instead
the histories of slavery and segregation should be celebrated because they are history in
this country and this is a good thing. Now we need to make educational inequality and
shooting of unarmed African American men history so that we can celebrate that fact.
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