Eighty years:ago Negroes held office
and public schools were integrated |

Equal rights once
flourished in south —

d the Constitution and upheld its provisions, ~,.

United S tates to hold them. This incisive comment a few
ne, Paul Robeson, went to the core of the

there

= ‘ago by the great, world
Y civil rights problem in the

of that Negroes deprived
Were €ir constitutional rights
a unorganized.
peeeret Dixiecrats would
but Ps to jail the law-abiding,
Shed; € movement of mass
eee would roll over
glaci Crat repression like a
oe €r over the seemingly
Bectble fortress of reaction.
tidy That while the constitu-
y Was trampled underfoot
+ capi the federal gov-
With ent action like a giant
his hands tied.

“aed the US. is a giant
ing a Dixiecrat cancer drain-
nthe its strength, econ-
Dolj ally, socially, morally ahd
Itically,
of ee regard the injustices
an Crow from the moral
ims This thinking among
ta beings is understand-
ox But there is much more
Boar eetion; which is a
y business all-around.
Ne hen more than 16 million
roes are .relegated to sec-
eae slave status aS on
; oe James Eastland’s.farm
Sissippi, the economic
powth of the entire country
8nchored to backwardness.
The productive talent of

All the prejudice acquired
Tored in the face of this boy as

If all the Negroes in the U.S. South observe

Would not be enough jails in the

renowned barito
U.S., showing: ¢

about one-tenth of the U.S.
population is kept from flow-
ering and maturing in every
field of endeavor.

Low Negro wages’mean the
depression of wage scales na-
tionally. : :

Discrimination again st
Negroes in social life~means
the éxtension of this practice
to other non-white people.

Furthermore, Jim Crow
means the saddling of the
American people with bigots
and reactionaries, narrow-
minded men from the South
who in Congress fight pro-
gress in this freedom-seeking
world, because they are there
to protect white supremacy.

503 x 50

Tragically, in this present era
of great democratic upsurge
among Negroes, few know
that Negroes from the South
have served in Congress; have
held other high official posi-
tions, during the 12-year period
immediately following the civil
war.

These were the years when
the South enjoyed democracy,
when democratic-minded white
people who were unafraid of

=

former slave-holders, protected
by Northern ‘yoops, voted to-
gether with the newly-freed
Negroes, supported integrated
schools and tried to build in-
tegrated labor unions.

In the South where, before
the defeat of the Confederacy,
it was a crime punishable by
law to teach a Negro how to
read and write, the new era
of Reconstruction discovered
Negroes with education. They
came forward to serve, and
such a man was James Abe
Rapier.

He left his farm and cam-
paigned for a new political
party, such as that inspired by
Abraham Lincoln, to give to
the newdy-freed Negroes and
the poor whites their first voice
in government,

Elected to the first consti-
tutional convention of Alabama
(the slave-holders’ hadn’t held
any), Rapier told fellow dele-
gates: “We must have a pro-
vision in our constitution which
grants all,- Negro and white,
the right to vote.” :

Eugene Feldman, a Southern
newspaperman, whose biog-,
raphy of Rapier appeared in

from his elders and fanned to a frenzy by bigo“s is mir- ,
he sits behind a Negro girl in a Southern classroom.

party in Alabama.

Feseaaten Pacts

Geographical-wage differentials between the U.S. North and
South cost American workers four and a half billion dollars

a year.

the United Electrical Workers’
journal, UE News, wrote:

“The delegates assembled in
the same Montgomery (where
Jefferson Davis was installed
Confederacy president) and
called on Rapier to write the
Republican party’s platform.”

In that platform Rapier
wrote:

“Resolved that we are the
friends and advoca‘es of free
speech, free press, free schools,
and the most liberal provision
by the state for the purpose
of educating the people there-
of; and henceforth there is to
be no discrimination made be-
tween the inhabitants of thts
state in civii and_ poli‘ical
rights, on account of color or
previous condition.”

Rapier was elected vice-
president of the Republican

Feldman records: “In his
saddlebags James T. Rapier
carried union leaflets. In his
mind he carried the realiza-
tion that- neither economic
freedom nor political freedom
could live alone.”

To guarantee economic
rights that should accompany

the political democracy being

forged, Rapier se: out to or-
ganize unions. The first state
labor convention, that of the
National Labor Union in 1869
held at Montgomery, brought
together close to 100 delegates
from 42 countries.

At the 1872 convention of the
Republican party a Negro dele-
gate nominated Rapier candi-
date for Congress and. a white
delegate rose to make the sec-
onding speech. Rapier de-
feated a Confederate officer,
Col. Oates, by almost. 3,000
votes.

In Congress he worked hard
for measures to benefit the
people, and among them were
a group of bills known as the
Civil Rights bill of 1875.

This Civil Rights bill barred
segregation on trains and
other public — transportation,
and discrimination which kept

Negroes out of hotels and res-
taurants.
Rapier spoke for this bill in

Congress and fought hard for _

its passage. Four white con-
gressmen from Alabama —
where the bus strike took
place last year — joined Ra-
pier. Congress enacted the
Civil Rights Act.

Eighty years later when the
U.S. Supreme Court upheld the
right of Negroes in Montgom-
ery, Ala., to occupy any seat
of their choosing in a bus, the
decision was regarded na-
tionally as being historic.

A great achievement of thie
Reconstruction era was_ the
creation of a public school sys-
tem by state legislatures in the
Sou'h. People from seven to
70, attended integrated schools.

Reaction set in in 1883 and
the U.S. Supreme Court nulli-
fied the Civil Rights Act of
1875, that part which prohib-
ited social discrimination by
individuals. This set the stage
for segregated schools and Ne-
gro students were pushed out
of integrated schools.

This climate of reaction vis-
ited destruction on the new
institution of democracy be-
cause the privileged class of
the plantation South and the
industrial and banking inter-
ests of the North got together.
They were afraid that Negroes
and low-income whites were
jointly getting stronger to pro-
tect themselves economically.

Pressure was applied on the
federal government by North-
ern bankers to force withdraw-
al of Northern troops that were
protecting the newly establish-
ed governments in the various
states.

When the troops were with-
drawn, the accomplishments
of the Reconstruction were
torn to shreds by terror and
destruction of the privileged
whites. Ku Klux Klan reigned,
and civil rights were trampled

»into the ground, where Sena-

ter Eastland, Governor Fau-
bus of Arkansas and others
would like to keep them.

September 27, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 3