Last September, when I visited Washington D.C., I encountered a small gathering at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial organized by a group called the National Council of Elders. The National Council of Elders is a group that was founded by Rev. James Lawson, Dr. Vincent Harding and Rev. Phil Lawson that consists of veterans of the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movement, the immigrant rights movement and the gay rights movement and their goal is to continue their work in social justice and to impart the wisdom of their experiences to a new generation of social justice activists. The representatives of the National Council of Elders were presenting their Greensborough Declaration, which urged the country to resolve to help the poor and working class in their struggles during this economic recession.
Among the members of the National Council of Elders are many of the icons of the great social justice movements of the past 60 years. It includes respected activists like Dolores Huerta, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Marian Wright Edelman, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Reverand Mel White, Reverand Nelson Johnson, and Dr. Grace Lee Boggs. They have shown their support of the Occupy Wall Street movement and had created a Greensborough Declaration to influence the Presidential elections to focus on the issues of economic inequality and the struggles of the middle class and poor.
One of the things that I most admire about the National Council of Elders is the ecumenical nature of the participants. There are Christian ministers, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim ministers who are a part of the group, and I’m sure that Buddhist and other religious clergy also participate. To me, this shows that the fight for social justice is an integral part of many religions, especially the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. I’ve always disliked Karl Marx’s statement that religion the opiate of the masses. If you look at the history of American reform, for instance, many of America’s great grassroots social movements, from the Abolitionists, to the women’s suffragists, to the labor movement and the civil rights movement, drew many of its leaders and supporters from Christian churches. In the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Koran are many references that testify to the Abrahamic God’s concern for the poor and the marginalized.
An example is Proverbs 31:8-9 in the Old Testament, which states:
Open your mouth for the mute,
For the rights of all who are destitute,
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
Defend the rights of the poor and needy
The Koran states in the 177th verse in Chapter 2:
Righteousness is not that you should turn your faces to the East and the West;
rather, the righteous are those who believe in God and the last day,
and the angels and scripture and prophets;
and who give material gifts out of love for God,
even of what they care for,
to relatives and orphans,
and the poor and the traveler and the needy,
and for the purpose of liberating the enslaved;
and who pray regularly and give alms;
and who fulfilled their promises when they promise;
and those who are patient in misfortune, affliction, and hard times:
they are the ones who confirm the truth, and they are the conscientious.
Matthew 25:31-40 of the New Testament reads:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothed you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”
And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me.”
I end this blog with the National Council of Elders’ Greensborough Declaration, then with a few youtube videos of the work of the group. To go to their facebook page, you can go to this link.
The National Council of Elders show their support of the Occupy Wall Street protests and emphasize the need for any social movement to be intergenerational
A meeting on November 20, 2011 between members of Occupy Wall Street and the Council of Elders
Youtube videos of the National Council of Elders releasing the Greensborough Declaration on September 12, 2012
Martin Luther King Jr. is justifiably viewed as a hero by many people around the world. He’s been one of my biggest heroes. One of the great heroes that is often overlooked is his wife, Coretta Scott King. Coretta Scott King is a strong civil rights leader in her own right, as well as an outspoken advocate of women’s rights, the peace movement, the anti-apartheid movement, a foe of capital punishment, and an opponent of the Iraq War. King’s efforts to end the Vietnam War led the FBI to keep surveillance on her from 1968 to 1972. Due to her efforts in promoting education, the American Library Association began in 1970 to award a medal named for Coretta Scott King to honor outstanding African American writers and illustrators of children’s literature. In 2006, the Jewish National Fund announced the creation of the Coretta Scott King Forest in the Galilee region of Northern Israel to commemorate King’s work for equality and peace. This blog will showcase some youtube videos that highlight Coretta Scott King’s work for social justice
Coretta Scott King was deeply involved in the modern Civil Rights movement early on, participating in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. In the early 1960s, Mrs. King conceived and performed a series of Freedom Concerts, which combined prose and poetry narration with musical selections, and raised important funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during their civil rights campaigns. She was very active in advocating civil rights legislation, most prominently in lobbying for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Coretta organized the Full Employment Action Council in 1974, which focused on ending unemployment and job inequalities in the United States. In 1983, she organized the Coalition of Conscience, which brought 800 organizations together for the task of organizing the 20th Anniversary March on Washington. In 1987, she helped lead a national Mobilization Against Fear and Intimidation campaign in Forsyth County, Georgia.
A youtube interview of Coretta Scott King talking about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the early Civil Rights Movement
Coretta Scott King was an early advocate for nuclear disarmament and for pacifist causes. In 1957, Mrs. King was one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy along with Lenore Marshall and Norman Cousins and others due to their concerns about the nuclear arms race. In 1962, Coretta was a delegate for the Women’s Strike for Peace at the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. King strongly opposed the war in Vietnam, and she prodded her husband to speak out against the war. She took part in peace marches with SANE spokesman Benjamin Spock in San Francisco and Washington D.C. in 1965 and spoke at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom conference in the late 1960s. Three weeks after the assasination of her husband, Coretta delivered a speech at an anti-war rally in New York City. In 1990, Mrs. King was co-convener of the Soviet-American Women’s Summit in Washington, DC. During the early 2000s, Mrs. King spoke out against the invasion of Iraq.
A youtube video of an interview where Coretta Scott King talks about her involvement in the peace movement
In 1985 Mrs. King and three of her children, Yolanda, Martin III and Bernice were arrested at the South African embassy in Washington, DC, for protesting against apartheid. The next year, she traveled to South Africa and met Winnie Mandela. After her trip, Mrs. King lobbied President Reagan to impose economic sanctions on South Africa.
Coretta Scott King speaking Soweta, South Africa to introduce Dr. Leon Howard Sullivan
Coretta Scott King was a strong supporter of LGBT rights because of her appreciation of the contributions of gays and lesbians to the Civil Rights movement, especially gay civil rights leaders like Bayard Rustin, Pauli Murray, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. On April 1, 1998 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, Mrs. King called on the civil rights community to join in the struggle for LGBT rights. Coretta Scott King spoke in November 2003 at the opening session of the 13th annual Creating Change Conference, organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. On March 23, 2004, at Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey,, Mrs. King said that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue and she denounced a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would ban equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. King also criticized a group of black pastors in Georgia for supporting a bill that would amend the Georgia constitution to block gay marriage.
Coretta Scott King speaking at the 1996 Atlanta Pride Festival
Mrs. King founded and developed the programs for the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. For several years, she served President, Chair, and Chief Executive Officer of the center, and promoted the center’s educational and community programs to train a new generation of activists on the nonviolent advocacy of causes that both Martin and Coretta Scott King fought for their entire lives. After the establishment of the center, Mrs. King spearheaded the campaign to establish Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. In 1983, an act of Congress instituted the Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission, which Mrs. King chaired for its duration.
Coretta Scott King talks about the Martin Luther King Jr. Center
Youtube videos of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta
Frederick Douglass is best known as an abolitionist and a champion of African American rights. One of the most compelling orators of the nineteenth century, Douglass delivered countless abolitionist speeches and civil rights speeches to defend the African American community from slavery, discrimination and lynching. Frederick Douglass, though, did not fight for only the rights of African Americans. He fought for the human rights of all groups that he saw as being harassed or discriminated against and he involved himself in the great reform movements of his time. Douglass participated in the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848 and signed the Declaration of Sentiments. He supported the labor movement, the temperance movement, and he fought against peonage. One of the little known facts about Frederick Douglass is his advocacy of equal rights for immigrants, especially Chinese laborers. In the book Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches edited by Josh Gottheimer, I found a speech that Douglass made on December 7, 1869 attacking the discrimination and violence that Chinese immigrants were facing. In light of the controversy over immigrant rights today, we could draw lessons from Frederick Douglass’s speech.
The Chinese were the first Asian immigrants to enter America, and they were initially welcomed to this country to fill California’s labor shortage in areas like draining swamps and mining the gold fields and quartz mines. According to Ronald Takaki’s book Strangers From A Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, the Chinese made great contributions in railroad construction, especially in laying tracks for the Central Pacific Railroad for the transcontinental railroad. Over 12,000 Chinese were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, making up 90 percent of their entire workforce. They drilled and blasted rock during the winter and spring, and several miners froze in the snow.
After the Pacific stretch of the Transcontinental Railroad was finished, those Chinese workers entered low wage industries where employment was available to them. In the 1860s, Chinese workers made up 46% of San Francisco’s labor force in four key industries- boots and shoes, woolens, cigars and tobacco, and sewing. In the San Joaquin and Sacramento River deltas, Chinese workers constructed irrigation channels and miles of levees, dikes and ditches. They worked the vineyards and wineries of the Sonoma Valley. In 1870 the Chinese constituted 18 % of all farm laborers in California, and in 1880 they represented 86% of the agricultural labor force in Sacramento County, 85% in Yuba, 67% in Solano, 55% in Santa Clara, 46% in Yolo, and 43% in Tehema. Ronald Takaki would write about the importance of Chinese laborers:
The significant role of Chinese labor in the industrial development of California was widely recognized. A.W. Loomis, in his article “How Our Chinamen Are Employed”, counted thousands of Chinese factory operatives working in woolen mills, knitting mills, paper mills, powder mills, tanneries, shoe factories, and garment industries. In his essay “Chinamen or White Man, Which?” the Reverand O. Gibson argued that Califoria’s manufacturing interests could “not be maintained a single day” without the low rate of Chinese labor. In “The Golden State”, published in 1876, R. G. McClellan described the state’s economic dependency on Chinese labor: “In mining, farming, in factories, and in the labor generally of California the employment of the Chinese has been found most desirable; and much of the labor done by these people if performed by white men at higher wages could not be continued nor made possible.”
The Chinese worker was able to fill these low wage industries because they were easily exploited without any means of legal recourse. They would occassionally try to strike, but the industrialists would be able to get the militia to break up the strikes. Takaki wrote of the Chinese dilemma:
One answer to both questions was a proposal to reduce the Chinese into a permanently degraded cast-labor force: they would be ineffect a unique, transnational industrial reserve army of migrant laborers forced to ba a foreigner forever. They would be what sociologist Robert Blauner has termed an “internal colony,” a racially subordinated group. Unlike white immigrants such as the Irish, Italians, and Poles, the Chinese would be a politically proscribed group. Part of America’s process of production, they would not be allowed to become part of her body politic. “I do not believe they are going to remain here long enough to become good citizens,” Central Pacific official Charles Crocker told a legislative committee, “and I would not admit them to citizenship.”
For Crocker and other employers of Chinese labor, the Chinese would be allowed to enter and work temporarily, then return to their homeland while others would come here as replacements. The Chinese would be used to service the labor needs of America’s industry without threatening the racial homogeneity of the country’s citizenry. The migrant workers would be inducted into a labor supply in a circular pattern. Anti-Chinese laws, economic exploitation, and racial antagonism would assist in this process, compelling the Chinese to leave America after a limited period of employment. They would remain strangers.
This exploitation of the Chinese cheap labor caused resentment from the white labor force. Takaki wrote:
But the racially divided farm-labor force genererated ethnic antagonism, and Chinese became targets of white-labor resentment, especially during hard times. “White men and women who desire to earn a living,” the Los Angeles times reported on August 14, 1893, “have for some time been entering quiet protests against vineyardists and packers employing Chinese in preference to whites.” Their protests did not remain quiet as economic depression led to violent anti-Chinese riots by unemployed white workers throughout California. From Ukiah to the Napa Valley to Fresno to Redlands, Chinese were beaten and shot by white workers; they were herded to railroad stations and loaded onto trains. The Chinese bitterly remember this violence and expulsion as the “driving out”.
This racial resentment began to translate into anti-Chinese laws. American white miners threatened by the Chinese competition pressured the California legislature to pass the foreign miners’ license tax. This tax required a monthly payment of three dollars from every foreign miner who did not desire to become a citizen. This was aimed at the Chinese immigrants, since a 1790 federal law reserved naturalized citizenship to white persons. In 1855, the California legislature passed a law called “An Act to Discourage the Immigration to this State of Persons Who Cannot Become Citizens Thereof”, which imposed on the owner of a ship a landing tax of fifty dollars for each passenger ineligible to natural citizenship. In 1862, the California legislature passed a law “to protect Free White Labor against competition with Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage the Immigration of the Chinese into the State of California”, a law that levied a tax of $2.50 per month on all Chinese residing in the state, except those Chinese operating businesses, licensed to work in mines, or those engaged in the sugar, rice, coffee and tea industries.
The resentments that were building up against Chinese workers eventually resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In the 1870s, the United States entered a severe economic slump and anti-Chinese groups like the Supreme Order of Caucasians and the Workingman’s Party pushed for passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which excluded Chinese laborers from entering the country and it forced settled Chinese in the U.S. to to obtain certifications for reentry if they wanted to leave the U.S. and return. Signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 8, 1882, the act was supposed to last for only ten years, but it was extended as prejudiced feelings against Chinese remained strong as the country entered the twentieth century.
This was the atmosphere that Frederick Douglass addressed when he spoke in defense of Chinese immigrants on December 7, 1869 for the Parker Fraternity Course. The Parker Fraternity Course was a series of lectures in Boston, Massachussetts that was established by abolitionist minister Theodore Parker to talk about the important issues of the day. Douglass would say of the situation of the Chinese in America:
Already has California assumed a bitterly unfriendly attitude toward the Chinamen. Already has she driven them from her altars of justice. Already has she stamped them as outcasts and handed them over to popular contempt and vulgar jest. Already are they constant victims of cruel harshness and brutal violence. Already have our Celtic brothers, never slow to execute the behests of popular prejudice against the weak and defenseless, recognized in the heads of these people, fit targets for their shilalahs. Already, too, are their associations formed in avowed hostility to the Chinese.
In all this there is, of course, nothing strange. Repugnance to the presence and influence of foreigners is an ancient feeling among men. It is peculiar to no particular race or nation. It is met with not only in the conduct of one nation toward another, but in the conduct of the inhabitants of different parts of the same country, some times of the same city, and even of the same village. “Lands intersected by a narrow frith, abhor each other. Mountains interposed, make enemies of nations.” To the Hindoo, every man not twice born, is Mleeka. To the Greek, every man not speaking Greek, is a barbarian. To the Jew, every one not circumcised, is a gentile. To the Mahometan, every man not believing in the prophet, is a kaffe. I need not repeat here the multitude of reproachful epithets expressive of the same sentiment among ourselves. All who are not to the manor born, have been made to feel the lash and sting of these reproachful names.
Douglass then sets forth his idea of an America of all races and cultures. He says:
I submit this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency.
There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In anty struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.
But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men.
I want a home here not only for the Negro, the mulatto, and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man. If respect is had to majorities, the fact that only one fifth of the population of the globe is white, the other four fifths are colored, ought to have some weight and influence in disposing of this and similar questions. It would be a sad reflection upon the laws of nature and upone the idea of justice, to say nothing of a common Creator, if four fifths of mankind were deprived of the rights of migration to make room for the one fifth. If the white race may exclude all other races from this continent, it may rightfully do the same in respect to all other lands, islands, capes and continents, and thus have all the world to itself. Thus what would seem to belong to the whole, would become the property only of a part. So much for what is right, not let us see what is wise.
And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States, is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt.
Frederick Douglass’s dream of a United States of different races and cultures all sharing equal opportunities has come a lot closer to becoming true. Our nation has benefitted from the inclusion of Europeans, Asians, Hispanics, and Africans into our cultural melting pot. When I read about the arguments about our current illegal immigration issues, and see laws like SB1070 pass in Arizona, I think of the situation of the plight of Chinese workers in the nineteenth century. In my eyes, the travails of the Chinese immigrants of the nineteenth century is very similar to the plight that illegal immigrants from Mexico are going through today. They are brought to this country to fill up labor shortages in certain industries and agricultural areas. They are given no means of redressing injustices inflicted on them and thus made vulnerable to being exploited for their cheap labor.
I deeply admire Frederick Douglass’s fight to champion the human rights of all groups who are oppressed or harassed. Most of the activists that I know support a broad range of causes. The people I know who are in unions also support the rights of immigrants. My gay and lesbian friends also are against the rise in Islamophobia. My friends who support immigrant rights also speak out for the Wisconsin workers and their rights of collective bargaining.
Many of my civil rights heroes also champion a broad view of human rights. Harvey Milk supported a Teamsters strike against beer distributors. Coretta Scott King and Dolores Huerta have strong advocated the rights of the LGBT community. Civil rights pioneer John Lewis has spoken out for immigrant rights and the Dream Act. Jesse Jackson has attended several union meetings and spoken out for blue collar workers and the unemployed in the midwest. Bayard Rustin spoke out against anti-semitism.
This ability to cherish universal human rights for all people is something I admire. Frederick Douglass summed up the fight against all prejudice in a quote I found in the book Frederick Douglass In His Own Words.
If what is called the instinctive aversion of the white race for the colored, when analyzed, is seen to be the same as that which men feel or have felt toward other objects wholly apart from color; if it should be the same as that sometimes exhibited by the haughty and rich to the humble and poor, the same as the Brahmin feels toward the lower caste, the same as the Norman felt toward the Saxon, the same as that cherished by the Turk against Christians, the same as Christians felt toward the Jews, the same as that which murders a Christian in Wallachia, calls him a “dog” in Constantinople, oppresses and persecutes a Jew in Berlin, hunts down a socialist in St. Petersburg, drives a Hebrew from an hotel at Saratoga, that scorns the Irishman i London, the same as Catholics once felt for Protestants, the same as that which insults, abuses, and kills the Chinaman on the Pacific slope- then may we well enough affirm that this prejudice really has nothing whatever to do with race or color, and that it has its motive and mainspring in some other source with which the mere facts of color and race have nothing to do…
Slavery, ignorance, stupidity, servility, poverty, dependence are undesirable conditions. When these shall cease to be coupled with color, there will be no color line drawn.
A youtube video of John Lewis speaking for immigrant rights
A youtube video of Dolores Huerta speaking out for gay marriage
Two youtube videos of Jesse Jackson supporting the workers of Wisconsin
Last week was both a happy time and a sad time for me as I read the news of Congress. Last Saturday, Congress voted 65 to 31 to pass a stand alone bill repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, after the House passed the bill 250 to 174. It was an important promise that President Obama kept for the 13,000 military soldiers who have been dismissed since the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was implemented in the Clinton administration. Sadly, though, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, better known as the DREAM Act, was voted down 55 to 41, falling shy of the 60 votes required to limit debate and move forward, essentially killing the legislation for this congressional session. The measure would have offered young illegal immigrants a path to citizenship if they pursue a college degree or enlist in the armed forces. For myself, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the fight for the Dream Act were both important civil rights issues and while I was happy about the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I was sad about the failure of the Dream Act to pass the Congress.
The passage of the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was possible through the efforts of administration officials, of the persistent leadership of Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator Harry Reid, Senator Susan Collins and Representative Patrick Murphy. The people most responsible for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell are the activists and discharged military personnel who lobbied and pressured government officials to keep the repeal of this discriminatory policy as a high priority. This is in keeping with a theory I have that social change comes from both political activists pressuring the government from outside the system, and reform politicians fighting for change inside the system. Only when both groups are fighting in conjunction can social change take place.
If we look back in history, we see that the fight for inclusion in the armed forces has had a significant influence in the history of civil rights. In the Civil War, Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists lobbied Lincoln hard to allow African Americans to serve in the Union Army. Lincoln was persuaded to allow African Americans to be in the military in the Fall on 1862 and during the Civil War federal statistics indicate that 178,975 black men served in the Union army during the Civil War. In addition, some 18,000 black men joined the U.S. Navy.
During World War II, Japanese Americans who were interned wanted to join the military to prove their loyalty to the United States. Two months after the declaration of war, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which rounded up Japanese Americans living on the West Coast and put them in internment camps. Over 110,000 West Coast Japanese Americans were interred, 70,000 of them U.S citizens. These Japanese Americans who joined the military included the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was the most decorated unite in military history.
In January 1948 President Truman decided to end segregation in the armed forces and the civil service through executive order rather than through legislation. This followed report of the Gillem Board “Utilization of Negro Manpower in the Postwar Army Policy,” issued in 1947 that concluded that the Army’s future policy should be to “eliminate, at the earliest practicable moment, any special consideration based on race.” Truman issued the executive order in spite of fierce resistance, and actually integration was slow until the Korean War. During that war, insufficient white replacement troops were available and black enlistments were high. Russ Bynum, a military writer, wrote an article on Oct 30, 2010 gave a quote from Marcus S. Cox, a history professor at The Citadel, about the similar arguments about gays serving in the military and integrating the armed forces:
Arguments today in favor of keeping the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” – that openly serving gays would disrupt morale and erode the cohesion of combat units – echo those used to defend military segregation along racial lines, said Marcus S. Cox, a history professor at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.
“Many people used that same argument against African-Americans serving in the same units as whites,” said Cox, who teaches black military history to Citadel cadets. “Many people said it’s the end of the military. But the result was there were very few problems, the military ran very efficiently.”
Women also fought discrimination to be able to serve in the military. During World War II, 47,000 women nurses served in the U.S. Army and 11,000 in the U.S. Navy. After the war, the generals and admirals who had once been dubious about woman serving in the military became enthusiastic after seeing the valor of these women’s service. They pressured Congress to have permanent women’s units in each service. In an informative blog Reader’s Companion to Military History, it writes:
In the mid-1970s, the feminist movement and the end of the draft forced the military to abolish the separate women’s units and to integrate its women and men. Women were kept out of combat roles (including practically all infantry, armor, artillery, combat aircraft, and combat warship billets). In global perspective, the United States did, however, take the lead, passing the 12 percent female proportion in 1990 and systematically expanding the scope of women’s activity. The first women reached flag rank in 1970 (army), 1971 (air force), and 1972 (navy), and they had command over significant numbers of men.
The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a tremendous civil rights victory, but the defeat of the DREAM Act was a tremendous blow to civil rights. The bill would’ve given legal status to those who were brought to the U.S. before age 16, have been here for five years, have no criminal record, graduated from high school or gained an equivalency degree and who joined the military or attend college. If you read these requirements, these people are not just getting a free ride to citizenship but are earning their right and are being trained in ways that benefit our country. So for these people who want to serve our country in the military or attend colleges to join a highly educated workforce, they are denied that avenue because of stereotypes that people have against illegal immigrants. This is wrong.
I love this country, but the United States does not have a good history when it comes to exploiting immigrant for their cheap labor, then subjecting them to discrimination. Look at the example of Chinese immigrants. In the late 1800s, the United States initially welcomed Chinese immigrants to fill a shortage of workers. The early Chinese migrants helped drain the swamps of California’s swamplands and worked in the California gold mines. In 1867, 12,000 Chinese were employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, comprising 90 percent of the entire workforce. They cleared the trees, lay the track, operated the power drills and handled the explosives for boring tunnels through the Donner Summit. In 1870, 18 percent of all farm laborers in California were Chinese. In all of the fields that they entered, the Chinese immigrants were paid less than their white counterparts, and their labor was often cynically used to control the wages of all worker groups. This led other groups to resent Chinese workers and led to harassment and discrimination. American white miners felt threatened by the Chinese competition and pressured the California legislature to pass a tax that required a monthly payment of three dollars from every foreign miner who did not desire to become a citizen, which aimed at the Chinese immigrants since a 1790 federal law reserved naturalized citizenship to white persons. In 1862, the California legislature passed a law “to protect Free White Labor against competition with Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage the Immigration of the Chinese into the State of California”, a law that levied a tax of $2.50 per month on all Chinese residing in the state, except those Chinese operating businesses, licensed to work in mines, or those engaged in the sugar, rice, coffee and tea industries. The resentments that were building up against the Chinese Americans resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Irish immigrants in the 1800s faced discrimination as well. Almost 2 million Irish Catholics immigrated to the U.S. between 1820 and 1860 as a result of the Irish famine, and they worked in canal building, lumbering, and civil construction works in the Northeast. Irish Catholics were mocked in schools and The Know Nothing Movement made it their goal to oust Catholics from public office. They faced job discrimination with the “HELP WANTED – NO IRISH NEED APPLY” signs that popped up in many industries.
After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, other immigrant groups were welcomed to fill up the shortages in labor. During the 1890s and early 1900s, California farmers worried about the tons of fruit and vegetables that rotted in the fields as a result of labor shortages, and they began employing Japanese immigrants to meet their labor needs. Between 1885 and 1924, 200,000 Japanese went to Hawaii and 180,000 went to the U.S. mainland to work in plantations and farmlands. When Japanese workers demanded higher wages, Asian Indians Sikhs were employed as laborers. Between 1910 and 1917, the Mexican Revolution sparked a migration of one tenth of the Mexican population to seek refuge in the United States. Over 16,000 Mexicans worked on the railroads in the West in 1908, and at least 150,000 of California’s 200,000 farm laborers were Mexican immigrants in the 1920s. Filipino workers began immigrating to Hawaii and the mainland U.S. in the early 1900s to work in agriculture. By 1930, over 110,000 Filipinos were in Hawaii and 40,000 were in the mainland. In each case, the different immigrant groups faced the same discrimination as the earlier Chinese immigrants. After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the National Origins Act of 1924 prohibited Japanese immigration and barred the entry of women from China, Japan, Korea and India. The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 provided for the eventual independence of the Philippines, but also limited Filipino immigration to fifty people per year. The 1922 Cable Act even stipulated that any American woman who married an immigrant ineligible for citizenship was to cease being a citizen of the United States.
The pattern of all these immigrant groups is the same. They are initially welcomed to this country for their cheap labor and to fill up labor shortages in certain industries. When these immigrants get tired of being exploited and demand greater rights, then laws are passed that discriminate against them and they’re denied any means of becoming citizens of this country, in spite of the contributions that they’ve made to our country’s industries. Some illegal immigrants do come across for criminal activities like drug trafficking and should be prosecuted to the fullest extant by our law enforcement. The vast majority of illegal immigrants, however, are honest hard workers who are just trying to find a better life for themselves and their families that they cannot find in Mexico. And there are industries here in the U.S. willing to hire them and exploit their cheap labor. This historic pattern of exploitation and discrimination has to stop.
The reason I support the Dream Act is for fairness to the children of these illegal immigrants. African American soldiers during the Civil War served so they could show their white Americans of their worthiness to be treated as equal American citizens. Japanese Americans served in the military to prove their loyalty as American citizens. Gays who want to serve in the military want to show their patriotism to their country. The children of illegal immigrants went out in the open to lobby for the Dream Act to earn the right to be American citizens. If they want to earn a right to be American citizens, we should give them a chance to earn it.
A youtube video of the Gay Veterans Memorial in Cathedral City
A youtube video of Joe Lieberman and gay and lesbian veterans lobbying Congress to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
A youtube video of a student trying to lobby Senator McCain to pass the Dream Act
A youtube video of a student activist after the Dream Act passed the House vote
A youtube video of another student activist who related his story of supporting the Dream Act
A youtube video of Senators Dick Durbin and Daniel Inouye speaking for their support of the Dream Act
A youtube video of President Obama being heckled by activists for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Though I like Obama, I think the activists were right to keep pressure on Obama to keep his promise
A youtube video of President Obama signing the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy
A youtube video of Lt. Dan Choi protesting the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy
A youtube video of Senator Harry Reid and Lt. Dan Choi
“Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.”
Coretta Scott King, 25th anniversary luncheon for Lambda Defense and Education Fund, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1998
Recently a friend informed me that in the state of Maine, a proposition is on the ballot to try to outlaw gay marriages. Last year, I spent a lot of time researching arguments against Proposition 8 and found in the website by the gay evangelical group Soulforce several quotes from leaders of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and I will use them for this blog. All speak powerfully of the injustice of discrimination in any form, whether it be because of race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. As the above quote by Coretta Scott King notes, many gays and lesbians participated in the great Civil Rights battles from the 1940s to the 1960s. Among them were Bayard Rustin, who organized the March on Washington in 1963, and James Baldwin, the famous writer.
Coretta Scott King was the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. and a strong advocate of civil rights in her own right. In 1964 Coretta lobbied hard for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King’s activism focused on womens’ rights, LGBT rights, economic issues, world peace and various other issues. In the 1980s King participated in a series of sit-in protests against apartheid in South Africa. An advocate of peace, King was one of the founders of The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. She was also vocal in her opposition of capital punishment and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Talking about her advocacy of LGBT rights, Coretta Scott King noted in a speech at the 13th annual Creating Change conference of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Atlanta, Georgia, November 9, 2000:
“We have a lot of work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say ‘common struggle,’ because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry & discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.”
John Lewis was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington. He organized sit-in demonstrations at lunch counters in Nashville, Tenessee and he volunteered in the Freedom Rides, where he went on desegregated bus rides to protest the segregation of interstate travel in the South. From 1963 to 1966 Lewis was the Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and through that group, organized the voter registration drives and community action programs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Lewis was elected to Congress in November 1986 and has served as U.S. Representative of Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District since that time.The October 25, 2003 Boston Globe quotes Lewis:
“From time to time, America comes to a crossroads. With confusion and controversy, it’s hard to spot that moment. We need cool heads, warm hearts, and America’s core principles to cleanse away the distractions.
We are now at such a crossroads over same-sex couples’ freedom to marry. It is time to say forthrightly that the government’s exclusion of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters from civil marriage officially degrades them and their families. It denies them the basic human right to marry the person they love. It denies them numerous legal protections for their families.
This discrimination is wrong. We cannot keep turning our backs on gay and lesbian Americans. I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I’ve heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred, and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry.
Some say let’s choose another route and give gay folks some legal rights but call it something other than marriage. We have been down that road before in this country. Separate is not equal. The rights to liberty and happiness belong to each of us and on the same terms, without regard to either skin color or sexual orientation.
Some say they are uncomfortable with the thought of gays and lesbians marrying. But our rights as Americans do not depend on the approval of others. Our rights depend on us being Americans.
Sometimes it takes courts to remind us of these basic principles. In 1948, when I was 8 years old, 30 states had bans on interracial marriage, courts had upheld the bans many times, and 90 percent of the public disapproved of those marriages, saying they were against the definition of marriage, against God’s law. But that year, the California Supreme Court became the first court in America to strike down such a ban. Thank goodness some court finally had the courage to say that equal means equal, and others rightly followed, including the US Supreme Court 19 years later.
Some stand on the ground of religion, either demonizing gay people or suggesting that civil marriage is beyond the Constitution. But religious rites and civil rights are two separate entities. What’s at stake here is legal marriage, not the freedom of every religion to decide on its own religious views and ceremonies.
I remember the words of John Kennedy when his presidential candidacy was challenged because of his faith: “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
Those words ring particularly true today. We hurt our fellow citizens and our community when we deny gay people civil marriage and its protections and responsibilities. Rather than divide and discriminate, let us come together and create one nation. We are all one people. We all live in the American house. We are all the American family. Let us recognize that the gay people living in our house share the same hopes, troubles, and dreams. It’s time we treated them as equals, as family.”
Rev. Bob Graetz was the only white minister to march with Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and 1956. Their participation in the boycott made them targets of much harassment, as their house was twice the target of firebombings. Reverand Graetz and his wife Jeannie served an all-black Lutheran congregation in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Today Rev. Graetz and his wife serve as instructors at The Soulforce Institute for Nonviolent Change. Rev. Graetz said:
“We are a retired Lutheran pastor and spouse, whose oldest son was born gay, and who at the age of 37 died with AIDS. Having spent years coming to grips with and trying to understand the concept of homosexuality, we have ultimately come to recognize this condition as a special gift of God conveyed to some of his carefully selected daughters and sons. We have come to know personally thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. And we have also become convinced that this condition is part of the ‘creative given’ rather than a personal choice by those individuals.”
“We have spent most of our lives struggling against the oppression of African-Americans and other groups within our society who are the objects of discrimination and prejudice. And we consider our ministry with and for the GLBT community to be an extension of that life-long commitment.”
Rev. Dr. James Lawson is a distinguished United Methodist pastor who worked side-by-side with Dr. King training the activists who participated in the lunch counter sit-ins and the Freedom Rides of the 1960s. He has continued to train activists in nonviolence and to work in support of a number of causes, including immigrants’ rights in the United States and the rights of Palestinians, opposition to the war in Iraq, and workers’ rights to a living wage. In 2004, he received the Community of Christ International Peace Award. Rev. Lawson said of the plight of many homosexuals:
“Gays and lesbians have a more difficult time than we did. We had our families and our churches on our side. All too often, they have neither.”
Julian Bond was a founding member of SNCC in 1960. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he helped organize a sit-in movement at Atlanta University. In 1965 Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, but the members of the House would not seat him because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. Bond was elected two more times before the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Georgia House had violated Bond’s rights in refusing him his seat. Since 1998, Julian Bond has served as Chairman of the Board of the NAACP and is on the board of directors of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Julian Bond said at the 2008 Creating Change Conference:
“That’s why when I am asked, ‘Are gay rights civil rights?’ my answer is always, ‘Of course they are.’”
“Rights for gays and lesbians are not ‘special rights’ in any way. It isn’t “special” to be free from discrimination — that’s an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship.”
“No parallels between movements for rights is exact. African-Americans are the only Americans who were enslaved for more than two centuries, and people of color carry the badge of who we are on our faces. But we are far from the only people suffering discrimination — sadly, so do many others. They deserve the law’s protection and they deserve civil rights too. Sexual disposition parallels race — I was born black and I had no choice. I couldn’t and wouldn’t change if I could. Like race, our sexuality isn’t a preference — it is immutable, unchangeable, and the Constitution protects us against prejudices based on immutable differences.”
In 1963, Richard and Mildred Loving, an African American and white interracial couple, decided to challenge the miscegenation laws of Virginia and this eventually lead to a Supreme Court ruling that overturned the ban on interracial marriages in the United States. The Lovings married in Washington D.C. to avoid Virginia’s miscegenation laws, but when they returned to their home state, they were arrested in their bedroom for living together as an interracial couple. The judge suspended the case as long as the Lovings left Virginia for 25 years. They eventually took their case to the Supreme Court and in 1967, the Court unanimously decided that miscegenation laws was against the Fourteenth Amendments’ goals of equality.
Richard Loving died in 1975 when he was struck by a drunk driver. Mildred Loving survived and lived until May 2, 2008, when she died on pneumonia. On June 12, 2007, the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision, Mildred Loving issued a statement which said:
“My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”
Fifty years after he first started doing work for the magazine, Norman Rockwell was tired of doing the same sweet views of America for the Saturday Evening Post in the early 1960s. The great illustrator was increasingly influenced by his close friends and loved ones to look at some of the problems that was afflicting American society. Rockwell had formed close friendships with Erik Erickson and Robert Coles, psychiatrists specializing in the treatment of children and both were advocates of the civil rights movement. His most profound influence was his third wife, Mary L. “Molly” Punderson, who was an ardent liberal and who urged him in new directions. On December 14, 1963, Rockwell did his last cover for the Saturday Evening Post and he began working for Look magazine. Look magazine finally gave Norman Rockwell the opportunity to express his social concerns.
Rockwell’s first painting was The Problem We All Live With, one of his greatest paintings. This painting depicts Ruby Bridges, the little girl who integrated the New Orleans school system in 1960, being escorted to her class by federal marshalls in the face of hostile crowds. It’s a simple picture, the disembodied figures of 4 stiff suited men and the vulnerable yet defiant figure of a school age African American girl marching lockstep. To the right is a tomatoe staining a wall, obviously thrown at the girl but just missing. My eyes focus on the girl and her immaculate white, a contrast to the grafittie stained wall in the background. As a painting it’s a wonder, with it’s composition conveying Rockwell’s message in a few simple figures. To look at the picture, go to http://www.phxart.org/pastexhibitions/problem.asp.
An even greater departure from Rockwell’s usual sweet America paintings is Southern Justice, painted in 1963. Rockwell did a finished painting, but the editors published Rockwell’s color study instead, and I think his color study conveys the terror of the scene more successfully. It depicts the deaths of 3 Civil Rights workers who were killed for their efforts to register African American voters. It is done in a monochrome sienna color, and it is a horrifying vision of racism. A look of it can be seen in http://ulcercity.blogspot.com/2008/01/welcome-to-neighborhood-race-rockwell.html.
Rockwell’s most optimistic view of the civil rights movement was Negro In The Suburbs, painted in 1967. It depicts an African American family moving into a white suburban neighborhood. The African American childrens look over by the kids in the neighborhood, with all the children sharing a love of baseball, America’s game. This painting can be found in http://www.normanrockwell.com/artwork/galleries/last/image18.htm.
My favorite Norman Rockwell paintings were those that he painted from the 1940s to the 1960s. Rockwell’s paintings for Look were I think some of his greatest, and they showed an artist that was always willing to take risks. Rockwell is often nowadays seen nowadays as a conservative painter of American myth, but these Civil Rights paintings show a liberal sensibility concerned about the problems of living up to our American ideas. These paintings are, in my estimation, comparable to Goya’s paintings of the horrors of the massacre of the Spanish people by Napoleon’s troops, or Daumier’s illustrations of the corrupt political order. In the year 2001, I visited the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachussetts. It is situated in a beautiful wooded area. When I visited the museum and looked at Rockwell’s paintings face to face, I felt like I was visiting an important part of American history. I didn’t see the Civil Rights paintings during my visit, but I saw many of his other paintings and it gave me an appreciation of Rockwell as an artist. To know more, look at http://www.nrm.org/.
I was one year old when Martin Luther King Jr. died, so I can’t really say that I knew him when. Growing up as a Filipino American in the America of the 1970s and 1980s, though, he was still a presence in my life. I saw a lot of excerpts of his “I Have a Dream” speech playing on t.v. and his words gave me this feeling that this was a man to be respected and admired. Spending my early childhood in military bases, where I played with kids of many different races and religions, I never experienced any racism or prejudice, so the injustices that King talked about seemed like something from long ago. It wasn’t until my Dad retired in 1979 and we had to live in public housing that I encountered racism of any sort and it was a shock to me. When I heard the “I Had A Dream” excerpts on t.v. that year, it gave me the first appreciation of what King was fighting against.
I began to really think more about Dr. King when U2 came out with the song Pride (In the Name of Love). At that time, a big debate was going on about the passing of a national holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. I remember being flabergasted by some of the arguments of opponents of the holiday, the accusations of King being a communist and a minor figure in history. I checked out from the library some biographies of King and the more I got to know King, the more I admired him. King had his faults, like all human beings do. But he was courageous in his belief of nonviolent change, especially in the late 1960s when the movement for equal rights began to turn towards the more militant philosophies of Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers. His idea that the fight for equal rights meant redeeming the oppressor as well as the oppressed made a lot of sense to me.
The big influence on my admiration for King was the series Eyes on the Prize, a PBS documentary that aired in the late 1980s. It put King’s contributions in the context of the larger struggle for civil rights. I learned about the sit-ins, the freedom rides, the fight to desegregate the schools, the work of student groups like SNCC and CORE and African American churches, the protest demonstrations in Selma and Birmingham. Through it all, I admire King’s perserverance, and the risks he took in challenging first the South and it’s segregationist society, and later Lyndon Johnson and his war in Vietnam. The greatest successes of King and the early Civil Rights movement was in pushing JFK and LBJ to pass civil rights legislation for political equality. When King and the civil rights activists began focusing to the north and the problems of urban ghettos, they had less success. King began to equate full equal rights with the need for a fuller economic justice, and at the time that he died, he was organizing a poor people’s march on Washington D.C.
Another program that influenced me during the 1980s was a one hour PBS program on a fictional meeting between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. They debated each other’s ideas, and when I look at it now, it’s a good example of the influence and interdependence of moderates and radicals. I think both men influenced each other: after Malcolm X’s trip to Mecca in 1964, he began to move closer to King’s idea of whites and blacks living together in peace; in the late 1960s King began moving towards Malcolm’s ideas of the economic system needing a more radical restructuring to resolve the problems of the slums.
When we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day, we shouldn’t just celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. King was a great American but he didn’t achieve the things that he did in a vaccuum. King greatly benefitted from the work that came before him, from the work of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, the litigation work of the National Association of the Advencement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the writings of Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston. King fought for civil rights with contemporaries like Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, Marian Edelman Wright, Malcolm X, and Stokeley Carmichael. If we are to remember King’s achievements, we have to remember groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress on Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As an Asian American, I deeply appreciate the opportunities that I have now because of the struggles that King and all these other people had to force America to live up to its highest values. For that I am deeply grateful.
Frederick Douglass is best known as an abolitionist and a champion of African American rights. One of the most compelling orators of the nineteenth century, Douglass delivered countless abolitionist speeches and civil rights speeches to defend the African American community from slavery, discrimination and lynching. Frederick Douglass, though, did not fight for only the rights of African Americans. He fought for the human rights of all groups that he saw as being harassed or discriminated against and he involved himself in the great reform movements of his time. Douglass participated in the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848 and signed the 
