Published in the December 19th edition of the Montgomery Advertiser.
Racial issues hardly confined to South
In 1641 Massachusetts was the first American colony to
legally endorse slavery through its Body of Liberties. 150 years later
in the census of 1790 it was the first state to register no slaves.
Jim Crow and Black Codes are routinely
attributed to Southern culture. Some of the earliest Southern Black Codes were
established by federal Gen. Ben Butler while he occupied New Orleans during the
War Between The States. These codes were patterned after some of America’s
earliest, established by Massachusetts in the early 1700s. Massachusetts wasn’t
doing anything that wasn’t done by all of the other colonial states of the
time.
Contrary to popular advocating, the
elements of racial disparities do not begin and end in the South. If one is to
believe that the national sentiment is exhibited through decisions of the U.S.
Supreme Court, we must examine the Plessy vs. Ferguson 7- decision in
1896. The Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions that states could maintain
separate black and white cars on intrastate trains and facilities.
This was 30 years after the war. The
13th and 14th Amendments were in existence. The “separate but equal” mantra of
segregation was thereby established and remained in effect until the 1954
Brown vs. Board of Education decision .
To
explore the intrinsic collective roots of prejudice, one must exit the Southern
enclave of alleged iniquity and wander around in the North for 400 years. One
may also discover some unaddressed prejudice against Southerners embellished
with hypocrisy.
Charlie Graham
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