Jim Crow, Junior Is Back And Almost As Big As Daddy

Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

Corky and I first knew Jim Crow, Sr. when we lived in Virginia and North Carolina when I was stationed on the East Coast during the middle 1950’s. We lived in Parkfairfax and Alexandria in Virginia while I was going to Marine Officer’s Candidate School at Quantico. Jim Senior was a little more subtle in Washington D.C., but if you went just one block north of the Capitol you entered part of his domain. This area was probably the worst segregated slum in D.C., featuring decaying old brownstones filled with blacks, often peering out of glassless windows and doorless doorways. Sixty years later it is some of the most expensive real estate in the District, housing the K Street nouveau riche corporate lobbyists who have a short trek up to Capitol Hill.

Then I was transferred to Camp Lejeune on the North Carolina coast where we lived for a short time in Jacksonville, N.C., a little town next to “Swamp Lagoon,” as Lejeune was called by Marines.  Jim Crow, Senior patrolled the streets night and day so every resident got to know him intimately. Jim made sure blacks walked in the streets instead of on the sidewalks. Jim made sure you drank out of the “White” or “Colored” water fountain. Jim made sure your wastes were not integrated in the “White” and “Colored” toilets.  Jim made sure you ate and drank with your own “kind.”  Jim ushered movie goers to the balcony or to the main floor depending on skin color.

The Most Racist Dog In America

After a short time we moved to New Topsail Island, a barrier island. Half of the eight-mile-long island was for blacks and half for whites. Harry Truman had integrated the military in 1948 so I had about one/third blacks in my machine gun platoon. Two of my three master sergeants were black veterans of the Korean War. The other master was a Southern redneck. He gave us a dog that had acquired his temper and racial views. He slobbered with affection or bit with hate, depending upon the race of his object. But that’s another story.

One time I told my platoon I would throw a big beach party for them if they won the division machine gun shooting contest. I guess it inspired them because they did. My black and white Marines invited black and white girl friends from far and wide and invaded the sacred segregated environs of New Topsail Beach. They all surged and frolicked in the ocean and were soon spotted by our native white neighbors. The phone calls started. Were they all working for us? No, they are at a party. But we don’t play with “them.” Well, they are our invited guests. Soon our landlord visited us, worried about his property values and his spotless segregated reputation.  In short, we always figured we brought a little civilization to New Topsail that day.

Barack Obama: The Lyin’ African Born In Kenya, Raised To Be A Muslim Witch Doctor
Jim Crow, Jr. was born as soon as Barack Obama was elected president of the U.S., delivered by the midwives and midfathers of the various Tea Parties metastasized south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  All Tea Party groups are not racist but many of them demonstrated that Jim Crow, Sr. never did die, he just retired to NASCAR, various flags and flagpoles, and Confederate state legislatures.

I think the black actor Morgan Freemen has the right slant on most of the Tea Party: “The Tea Party agenda just shows the weak, dark, underside of America. We’re supposed to be better than that.”  Wherever Freemen drove “Miss Daisy” he was well aware that Jim Crow, Sr. was the backseat driver with him. Freemen has never been shy about his opinions: “Their (Tea Party) stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see that Barack Obama only serves one term. What underlines that? ‘Screw the country. We’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here.’ It’s a racist thing.” When asked if he was disappointed in Obama, he said: “Kind of, but I understand that he was trying to hold onto his own promise he would be president of all the people.” If you think Freemen is blowing smoke, please check out the political signs erected in New Orleans in the last week.

Southern American Bigotry And South African Reality

The Confederate flag, the symbol patched together by rebels fighting for the “institution” of slavery in 1861, was present at every battle, every lynching, every Klu Klux Klan celeb ration of white supremacy, including football games and the election of sheriffs. It was present at Little Rock when it took the Army to escort nine black children through the doors of lily-white Central High. It is still present in the back windows of old pickups trolling for trouble in Southern streets. To blacks it is the symbol of slavery, racism, and death from the cross-arms of corner light and power poles. It was always the symbol present when postcards of lynched and burning black bodies were officially stamped by the U.S. Postal Service and sent to every corner of the country.

The rebel flag is still there.  It is in the middle of a historically black Southern neighborhood in Summerville, South Carolina in 2011, raised by a white woman whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy. She says the flag is part of their Southern Heritage. It certainly is. That’s why it is so repugnant, so hateful, such an anathema to blacks.

In the same year that Martin Luther King was shot and killed by a white supremacist in Memphis, Dr. Christian Barnard was performing the first human heart transplant in South Africa. A picture of the event in the operating room was sent around the world. Among the whites in the operating room one black head stood out in the picture. The hospital CEO later explained that a groundskeeper had “snuck in” to watch the operation. The head belonged to Hamilton Naki, listed by the hospital as a gardener. Hamilton lived in a hut without water or electricity on the hospital grounds. Hamilton had no degree, no medical training, but he was Dr. Barnard’s chief assistant. He worked by Barnard’s side in secret because no black was supposed to touch the blood or flesh of a white in South Africa. In fact, the two had rehearsed the heart transplant procedures using the hearts of pigs and dogs. Before he died Barnard admitted that Naki had more technical skills in the operating room than he did.

Naki later retired on a gardener’s pension.

There’s Another Income Gap In This Country

Jim Crow, Jr., and actually Speedy Gonzales, Jr., are very much alive today in the U.S. economy. The median net worth of white households in 2009 was $113,149, black households $5,667, Hispanics $6,325. Isn’t that shocking for a country that proclaims everyone is “equal”? This wealth gap has spread to its widest during the last quarter century. Prior to 1980 and the Ronald Reagan emphasis on “Greed is Good! (Or God!)” the two major minorities had made some improvement in the ratios. In 1995 the ratios of median households was 7 to 1 in favor of whites. Now it is 20 to 1 over blacks and 18 to 1 over Hispanics.  Between 2005 and 2009 Hispanic net worth dropped 66 percent, black net worth dropped 53 percent, while white net worth dropped only 16 percent.

What happens when the poor don’t have jobs or money? They turn to drugs and crime to eat. Today one in three black men are in jail or are under criminal justice supervision. One in 15 black children have a parent in prison while only one in 111 white children do. Over 1.2 million black children have a parent in prison. In Chicago, as an example, 55 percent of the black men have been labeled felons for life by the justice system, often prevented from voting forever, and unable to access public housing, student loans, and other public assistance programs for their possible betterment.

An Education System Where Every Child Is Left Behind

A Los Angeles art teacher made news last week when he walked out of his classroom and quit after ten years at Manual Arts High. He said he couldn’t take it anymore. Manual Arts has a minority enrollment over 99 percent (There are five whites, four Asians, and two Native Americans enrolled). There are over 3,200 students in a school designed for 1,000.

The fed-up art teacher had between 55 and 62 students per art class. He was allotted $2 per student for the year for art supplies. Science, math, and history classes average 42 students per class. The school has had ten principals in ten years.

For the first four weeks of school 160 history students had no textbooks to read. Students had no lockers assigned for the first two weeks because the person who was supposed to do it had been cut. Teachers do not have a classroom of their own. They must pack up and travel each hour to a different classroom. The lines for the cafeteria are so long many students have no time to eat.  Over 99 percent of the students qualify for free lunch. Last Friday the LA Unified School District had to cut 227 library aides and close 300 school libraries because they had no one to staff them.  Of course, California is broke. You can see this by driving through the ghettos of Malibu, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Santa Monica, and Hollywood and cruising Rodeo Drive.

Jesse Owens And The Ghosts And Relatives Of Jim Crow

In 1936 when a black Jesse Owens left Adolf Hitler in the dust of Berlin Stadium by winning four gold medals in the sprints and long jump, the world celebrated the victory of democracy over racism for a few minutes. But Jim Crow, Sr., healthy as a shotputter, traveled by his side for the rest of his life. This symbol of black American prowess was not invited to the White House by Franklin Delano Roosevelt so Jesse could be congratulated by his president. Jesse returned from stardom to the back of the bus, colored-only restaurants, colored-only bathrooms, and colored-only hotels. He earned money by entertaining crowds by running against horses, dogs, cars, and motorcycles until he couldn’t run anymore. He then made money praising his religion, family—-and his country.

“Shall Not Sell Wine Or Beer To The Two Faces…...

Corky and I also lived in the South during “Separate but Equal” times. The philosophy was to keep the races separate but provide them “equal” opportunities. Corky’s sister lived with us for her senior high school year. She attended a “Separate but Equal” high school in nearby Hampstead.  It was a nice brick school. The black school was a wood-frame, tarpapered shack.

Some of the Jim Crow laws passed by Southern legislatures shed light on the separation of races. Georgia had some prime examples:

:: No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women and girls. (Males were OK.)

:: The officer in charge of a cemetery shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored         persons upon ground set aside for the burial of white persons.

:: It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant       lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race,        and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race.

:: All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer and wine….shall serve             either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the         two races within the same room at any time.

Sometimes the laws were even more far-reaching. My favorite is one from Alabama: “It shall be unlawful for a negro and a white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards.”  But our landlord said it was OK for black and white children to play together when they were very young. I guess that’s why I’ve always defined Southern charm and hospitality as the ability to go to the country club for a nice dinner after watching a lynching of a pregnant black woman.

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