xArc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle (Roaring 20's-WWII, Ethnicity & Race, Law)

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age 

by Kevin Boyle 

Roaring 20's-WWII
Ethnicity & Race
Law

Thesis:

Segregation was illegally protected in Northern cities that struggled to find a place for the wave black migrants coming from the South as part of the Great Migration.
The story of Ossian Sweet's struggle to find a home in the Northern  city of Detroit after the Great Migration demonstrates the racism and illegal segregation that became common place in Northern cities. Despite the blatant illegality of mobs attempting to violently dispell someone from a community based on race, the court battle for Sweet was still highly contested. Police tried to cover up evidence but in the end the law could not deny the innocence of the Sweets and their friends/family.

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:

Ossian Sweet

 During the 1920s, African Americans from the South poured into northern industrial cities such as Detroit. This migration triggered racial confrontations, as blacks began competing with whites over jobs, schooling, and housing. In 1925, one of those southern black migrants, Ossian Sweet, became a central figure in a confrontation that attracted national attention. Sweet, originally from Florida, was a doctor who sought to establish his practice in Detroit. After he moved into the home he had purchased in a white section of town, an organized mob stoned the house, and some members tried to break in. Anticipating trouble, Sweet had prevailed on friends to help defend his home. They were armed, shots were fired, and one white man was killed and another wounded. Police arrested Sweet, his wife, and nine other black men in the house. The trials that followed were ground breaking for legal challenge of segregation. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) raised money and recruited a legal team for the defendants. The Sweet case set a precedent for the NAACP’s subsequent strategy of using its new Legal Defense Fund to challenge segregation primarily through the courts.

What does this tell us about Ethnicity & Race in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?

What does this tell us about Law in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"The narrative ranges widely to capture the many dynamic forces that were reshaping the American city and its race relations. These include a rapidly rising black population in Detroit; the role of the real estate industry in building ghetto walls; the use of restrictive covenants to enforce the color line; the significance of local homeowners’ associations in maintaining white neighborhoods; the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, not just in asserting white power but as a major force in Detroit politics; and the agency of some African Americans in challenging residential restrictions despite the dangers in doing so."

My Highlighted Passages: 

xThe Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America by Nicholas Lemann (Roaring 20's-WWII, Ethnicity & Race, Politics)

The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America 

by Nicholas Lemann 

Roaring 20's-WWII
Ethnicity & Race
Politics

Thesis:

As Chicago, New York and other cities saw their black populations expand exponentially, migrants were forced to deal with poor working conditions and competition for living space, as well as widespread racism and prejudice. During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively confronting economic, political and social challenges and creating a new black urban culture that would exert enormous influence in the decades to come.

 

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

 

Summary:

This book covers the Great Black Migration mostly from 1940's onward. The author takes specific examples of people moving from Mississippi to Chicago to exhibit the larger phenomenon.  The stories demonstrate how racism and racial tensions become paramount issues in the North as well as the South. The author found that officials in the North were slow to respond to mounting tensions.

After reconstruction, share cropping became the new system to continue free African American labor on plantations in the South. Instead of direct slavery, share croppers worked an entire season for the plantation owner, agreeing to get paid once the harvest occurred. In the mean time, they borrowed money for goods/food to survive and once the crop was sold the plantation owner would settle up. However, most often, the share cropper got virtually nothing or found they owed more than they made.

The plight of the sharecroppers increased due to technology in harvesting cotton, as well as a boll weevil epidemic that caused massive crop damage in 1898. In the 1920's-1940's the Hobson Plantation in Mississippi experimented with mechanized cotton growing and harvesting equipment. Eventually this developed into a fully mechanized system to grow and harvest which made the need for labor and share cropping dissipate.

With less job opportunities in the rural south and so many share croppers struggling to get by and the rise of industrialization in the North, many African Americans began to make their way north.  
This extended the issues of racism and segregation on a large scale to the Northern half of the United States. 
Cities began to section off parts of the city for exclusively black Americans to live.

What does this tell us about Ethnicity & Race in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?

 Lemann places much of the blame for black urban poverty and social pathology on both the oppressive racism of the South, which handicapped black migrants from birth, and on the exclusionary racism of the North, which tried to bar blacks from jobs, neighborhoods, and schools. He believes that the destitution of Northern blacks in the ghetto in the 1980's and 90's is a result of a long history of struggle in the sharecropper system and then the racially segregated North where oppurtunities for advancement quickly dried up. The welfare state became the crutch and a staple of urban black survival.

What does this tell us about Politics in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?

Lehmann discovered a pattern of black dependence on the welfare state while doing an article for a magazine. To investigate this further he interviewed families going back to the Great Black Migration. He discovered that sharecropping instilled a since of dependency because they were not payed a wage until after harvest meaning they took loans from the land owners for everything they needed to survive. Coming to the North they found jobs were difficult to find, and fair treatment and wages were non-existant. Black were still segregated to their own parts of town and authorities did little to fight against the illegal segregation and discrimination occuring in the North. As situations worstened many black migrants had no choice but to rely on the welfare state, a pattern which has continued today.

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

 "From his account one could easily get the impression that the mechanical cotton picker alone was responsible for the migration, and that it all began in 1940. Yes, the picker was important and so were the 1940s, but the migration had been going on for decades, and there were many causes. Marcus Garvey, who had thousands of Black followers in northern cities in the 1920s, is not mentioned. The words "boll weevil" do not appear. Nor was the Community Action Program all there was to the War on Poverty."

My Highlighted Passages: 

The Enigma Woman: The Death Sentence of Nellie May Madison (Women in the West) by Kathleen A. Cairns (Roaring 20's-WWII, Gender & Sexuality)

The Enigma Woman: The Death Sentence of Nellie May Madison (Women in the West) 

by Kathleen A. Cairns

Roaring 20's-WWII
Gender & Sexuality

Thesis:

The roaring twenties changed the public perception of women. While women were allowed more independence and respect they could also be viewed as manipulators making power plays using men as their pawns.

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:

What does this tell us about Gender in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?

During this era women were trying to break out of their traditional roles. Finding more independence with jobs and breaking free from the conforms of women living with their parents and then their husbands, always chaperoned. 

In this time women gained more political power from the right to vote and had more public presence. The sphere of women expanded. Noir film, books, and radio shows told stories of women seducing men and manipulating them, often convincing them to murder someone. Women were no longer viewed as the codependent innocent party.
These attitudes contributed to the death sentencing of Nellie May Madison. This women strayed from the expected roles of women and was judged more harshly than may have been in previous time periods.

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?
Noir and the shift of power towards women plus the social backlash. It would be fun to compare Noir films to films of the previous era to demonstrate how the characterization of women in society had shifted.

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"In this splendidly crafted narrative of Nellie's life, Cairns explores the West as geography and a place of reinvention, the rise of mass popular culture and its impact upon the individual, Los Angeles as myth and reality, criminal prosecution as a force in social control, the media's ability to elevate or destroy individuals, and intimate abuse as a legal defense to murder. "

"Nellie challenged societal norms by marrying several times, remaining childless, wandering the West, earning a professionally accomplished resume, and by being convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in California."

My Highlighted Passages: 

The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932 by William E. Leuchtenburg (Roaring 20's-WWII, Class & Economy, Politics)

The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932 

by William E. Leuchtenburg 

Roaring 20's-WWII
Class & Economy
Politics

Thesis:
The roaring 20's were a time of prosperity the likes of which had never before been known in the United States.The repercussions of this time are still felt today including consumerism, an expanse of Women's rights, the US as a predominant world power.

"The United States had to come to terms with a strong state, the dominance of the metropolis, secularization and the breakdown of religious sanctions, the loss of authority of the family, industrial concentration, international power politics, and mass culture. "

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:

What does this tell us about Class & Economy in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?
This era resulted in a substantial growth of wealth in the country as a whole. Every person increased their buying power and increased their modern conveniences. However, the largest wealth holders were at the top as corporations exploded and the everyday merchant disappeared. America became a creditor nation instead of a debtor nation as europe needed to be rebuild and had virtually no means of production . The results were a huge economic boom in America until the crash of 1929. This was then a "time when the American people took a vacation from sober traditional virtues."

What does this tell us about Politics in the Roaring 20’s-WWII?
With the World War I coming to an end and the US as a new world power emerged to play the part in settling the peace. Creating the league of nations and the 14 point agreement but after bringing it home could not get it passed by congress. America held strong isolationist sentiment.

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

This book is a comprehensive overview of the time period, the chapters are broken out by subtopics like economy, minorities, coorporations, etc. A very useful reference for lecture notes.

General Thoughts:

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"It is especially good on social and intellectual history, with charming chapters on such subjects as "A Botched Civilization," and "The Revolution in Morals." It pays its respects to the economic changes that played so important a part in determining the course of events-"The Second Industrial Revolution." And it does not neglect politics, whether national or international. The chapter on "Tired Radicals" hits off well the inadequacies of the progressives, and the one on "The Sidewalks of New York," the political results of urbanization.

My Highlighted Passages: 
America’s entrance into World War I and the end of postwar prosperity,
idealism of Woodrow Wilson and our failure to follow his lead into the League of Nations have become symbols for the continuing weaknesses of American diplomacy and for our refusal to accept responsibilities as a world power.58

time when the American people took a vacation from sober traditional virtues.63

He finds movements in the period which reach back to the nineteenth century: the rise of the city, the change from handicraft to assembly lines, the ascent to the world stage. He sees the beginnings of institutions which would produce the New Deal and with it the changed attitude toward government that has stayed with us ever since.70

Machines had replaced the old artisans; there were few coopers, blacksmiths, or cobblers left.87

The livery stable had been torn down to make way for the filling station. Technology had revolutionized the farm. In 1918, there were 80,000 tractors; in 1929, 850,000. The Old West had disappeared; ranchers were even concerned for a time lest they lose their cowhands to movie westerns. The empire builders like James J. Hill were gone.88

In 1914, the Progressive movement was at its height. Americans believed that by adopting institutional changes—the direct primary, the short ballot, the recall—political life might be made over.97

There was no scourge that would not eventually yield to reason and goodness, they thought.99

c99

The war destroyed much of the traditional confidence in the ability of American society to assimilate all manner of men.162
At the very moment when the country was confronting attacks on traditional standards, the United States was plunged into the responsibilities of becoming the world’s greatest power.164

The country did not want to abandon its isolation,167

But prosperity held perils of its own. It served to justify investing enormous political and social power in a business class with little tradition of leadership. It placed economic primacy in the hands of a country unprepared to guide world trade. It made money the measure of man.175


women, thanks to the suffrage amendment, were able to participate in politics more freely than ever before.185

reformers were nurturing the ideas that were to see fruition in the New Deal.186
It was an age of shameful persecution of minorities186

the Supreme Court, at long last, began to incorporate the Bill of Rights in the Fourteenth Amendment.189

Through the decade, the United States moved quietly away from the rigid isolationism of 1920.194

Abandoning the notion of saving income or goods or capital over time, the country insisted on immediate gratification, a demand chat became institutionalized in the installment plan.2412

By 1929, 1 percent of the financial institutions in the country controlled over 46 percent of the nation’s banking resources. Chain stores expanded rapidly in the postwar years. Chain store units rose from 29,000 in 1918 to 160,000 in 1929;2629

Note: Consolidation of businesses, bought out by bigger firms.

Corporate profits and dividends far outpaced the rise in wages, and despite the high productivity of the period, there was a disturbing amount of unemployment. At any given moment in the “golden twenties,” from 7 to 12 percent were jobless.2651

The very men who were taken as the epitome of the old order were the ones who undermined it—the Victorian statesman Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the transition to a strong state and the breakdown of isolation;3661

The United States had to come to terms with a strong state, the dominance of the metropolis, secularization and the breakdown of religious sanctions, the loss of authority of the family, industrial concentration, international power politics, and mass culture. The country dodged some of these challenges, resorted to violence to eliminate others, and, for still others, found partial answers. The United States in the period from 1914 to 1932 fell far short of working out viable solutions to the difficulties created by the painful transition from nineteenth-century to modern America. But it is, at the very least, charitable to remember that the country has not solved these problems yet.

War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War, By John Dower (Roaring 20's-WWII, Ethnicity & Race, Military & Foreign Policy)

War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War 

By John Dower 

Roaring 20's-WWII
Ethnicity & Race
Military & Foreign Policy

Thesis:

 Racism between the West and Asia made the war in the Pacific particularly merciless and brutal. Widespread wartime atrocities and civilian casualties were justified by racist sentiment that promoted the idea that this is what was required to defeat such an uncivilized foe. This thought process went both ways, West towards Asia, and Asia towards the West.

 

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary: 
The author first describes the methods of propaganda that were inspired by racism and how these impacted the soldiers and the battlefield. The war was much more brutal with civilian casualties and war atrocities committed on both sides. Americans believed that the Japanese needed to exterminated like vermin not reprogrammed like the Germans. They believed that the only good Japanese were dead Japanese. The irredeemable quality of Japanese in the minds of Americans was unique. This was why even American citizens were placed in internment camps if they were of Japanese origin.
The Japanese felt that they were a pure people not diluted like the intermixed brutes of America. They saw the way Westerners conquered Asian people and felt they had no right to rule them. Japan felt they were the best fit to rule the Asian world.
Once the author established the racist attitudes back and forth between the Japanese and the Americans and how it ultimately led to a viciously brutal war, the author describes how these ideas were subverted into ideologies that fostered a peaceful occupation and thereafter a relatively friendly relationship between the two nations. The US once again found their mission to bring up a lesser people and act as the big brother. The US sought to bring the benefits of capitalist individualism to Japan.

 

What does this tell us about Ethnicity and Race in the Roaring 20's-WWII?

The racism of the of Pacific Theater of WWII demonstrates how Americans refused to see any Asian people as equal. Before Pearl Harbor, they believed that there was no way that the Japanese had any real power when compared to the West. After Pearl Harbor they were viewed as all following a single mind (the emperor) and empowered with no fear of death and an all sacrificing sub-human quality. Within the United States, the treatment of Japanese or even just anyone with Asian decent was terrible and got worse with Pearl Harbor. This was much different than people of German heritage. The atrocities committed on both sides of the battlefield were justified by racism. Here the ideas of scientific racism are present, advocating a stronger race that should rule over lesser peoples.

What does this tell us about Military & Foreign Policy in the Roaring 20's-WWII?
The author convincingly argues that the US policy in war towards Japan was hugely influenced by racism. The use of two atomic weapons when the war was clearly already won was justified with racist sentiment that this different type of people had to be completely subdued to the point of unconditional surrender. They had to agree to sacrifice their way of life and potentially their emperor. 

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

Frank Capra documentary, Know Your Enemy - Japan

General Thoughts:

It was really interesting that in this situation the US turned the Chinese into good guys (although still lesser people). The Chinese could be molded into good people but the Japanese had no hope of that.

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

"Dower is exploring the propaganda of the US-Japanese conflict to delineate the "patterns of a race war," the cultural mechanisms of "othering," and the portability of racial/racist stereotypes."

"Yellow, Red, and Black Men" examines the notions of racial difference occupying the American mind since Columbus. More specifically, Dower outlines the concept of race war and the "Yellow Peril," and how this peril had become encoded in American immigration law."

"Once the war started, of course, the dehumanization of the enemy in the Pacific led to many notable atrocities on both sides of the conflict, from the infamous Bataan death march to the collection of noses, ears, teeth, and skulls by Allied soldiers, from the execution of three Doolittle Raid flyers to the slaughtering of surrendering Japanese at Bougainville. As Dower notes, these wartime atrocities spawned a vicious circle that, once publicized, led to more and more atrocities."

"Dower's study is fascinating. He shows the  interaction of racist ideas. To the Japanese, 
Japan's homogeneity, common purpose, corporate unity, and will were evidence of Japan's purity of race; to the Americans they were proof of Japan's primitiveness and uncivilized status. Americans, on the other hand, glorified individualism, creative entrepreneurship, and maximum individual liberty, all proof to the Japanese of America's racial heterogeneity and inability to mobilize its people to pursue anything morally worthwhile."

"How could such a savage killing frenzy as marked the final year of the war in the Pacific have been followed so suddenly by what still appears to be a benign occupation and subsequently friendly relations? The code words and images were malleable, he answers, and could be turned almost inside out. The yellow ape could become a pet, insanity could be cured with tender care, and the child could be shown how to mature-all expressions of American generosity, but also of American superiority. The Japanese did no less. The emperor invoked the national polity when he asked his people to endure the unendurable in defeat. The imperial institution was preserved, and Japanese began anew the struggle to find their rightful place in the world hierarchy."

My Highlighted Passages

"the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor. On this, there was no dispute among contemporary observers. They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart -- and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the 'good German' in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) 

"as the war years themselves changed over into into an era of peace between Japan and the Allied powers, the shrill racial rhetoric of the early 1940s revealed itself to be surprisingly adaptable. Idioms that formerly had denoted the unbridgeable gap between oneself and the enemy proved capable of serving the goals of accommodation as well." (13)

"At the simplest level, they dehumanized the Japanese and enlarged the chasm between 'us' and 'them' to the point where it was perceived to be virtually unbridgeable." 

"transitions and juxtapositions in the Western image of the Japanese were abrupt and jarring: from subhuman to superhuman, lesser men to supermen. There was a common point throughout, in that the Japanese were rarely perceived as being human beings of a generally comparable and equal sort." (99)

"the metaphor of the child was used in a manner that highlighted the overlapping nature of immaturity, primitivism, violence, and emotional instability as key concepts for understanding the Japanese." (143)

"Where racism in the West was markedly characterized by denigration of others," writes Dower, "the Japanese were preoccupied far more exclusively with elevating themselves. While the Japanese were not inadept at belittling other races and saddling them with contemptuous stereotypes, they spent more time wrestling with the question of what it really meant to be 'Japanese,' how the 'Yamato race' was unique among the races and cultures of the world, and why this uniqueness made them superior."(204-205)

"the Japanese presented themselves as being 'purer' than others -- a concept that carried both ancient religious connotations and complex contemporary ramifications," (231-232)

"the Anglo-Americans were described as demons (oni), devils (kichiku), fiends (akki and akuma), and monsters (kaibutsu.)" (244)

"Despite such differences(in what tactics of racist rhetoric were used), however, the end results of racial thinking on both sides were virtually identical -- being hierarchy, arrogance, viciousness, atrocity, and death." (180) 

"To the victors, the simian became a pet, the child a pupil, the madman a patient."