[Peace-discuss] (no subject)

Mon Aug 8 13:01:28 CDT 2011

Dearest Champaign County Residents:                                                                                                       

I have assumed that the following reflection would be very useful in keeping the change that we all started making back in 2004 with my case that not only made me homeless, but ended any         questions concerning my innocence as to whether or not I kidnapped my own children of which I didn't.  Please feel free to print my reflection in the September, October or November issue of the "Public 'i'".

Keep the Faith and the Ball Rolling Whether or not Death is Dared,                                                      

Nora E. Whipple                                                                                                                                                

Change (v):  To modify an antiquated standard to make life easier for all people in a given area.
Change (n):  Currency due one person by another when one over-pays for an item/a few items.

Thurgood Marshall 
A Defiant Life by Howard Ball
Reflection by Makkitotosimew Adams 

     It is no wonder why judges are very concerned with their reputations around election time.  Change is hard, and it can cause people to give up needed fights to ensure that their Rights as US Citizens are kept during trial.  I looked over the Judgepedia site not too long ago.  I noticed the following information concerning some of the judges who serve Illinois Sixth Judicial Circuit:  Judges Blockman, Clem, Difanis, Ford, Jones, Kennedy and Ladd are only listed as judges.  Judges Clemons, Klaus, Leonard, McPheters and White were reelected either in 2010 or 2011.  I can form many reasons for why this happened, but the most non-threatening one is that the later list of judges are the ones whose tenure needed to be extended by those they Govern.  It is out of compassion that I give you my reflec-tion so that Champaign County residents have an idea of the type of judges they should retain in the future if they want their Rights kept by social
 engineers and not parasites who use their knowledge to ascertain money from the Governed. 

     Chapter one of Howard Ball’s Defiant Life, titled Born into Racism and Segregation in America, tells what life was like for Baltimore’s Governed, and the type of America Thurgood Marshall was born into during the early 1900s. During Thurgood's birth year, Jack Johnson took the title belt in boxing away from Tommy Burns.  Johnson was the first black man to take the title belt from a white man, and the search for the "great white hope" to take the title belt back was on as soon as Johnson won it. There were reports of race riots, and racial jokes in the newspapers to remind African Americans of their supposed inferiority to whites on the day Thurgood was born. By this time, state-ordered Jim Crow laws were in effect and America's apartheid was rampantly taking place in the country. A Defiant Life introduces Plessy in this manor: 

          “The tragic 1896 case of Plessy... gave its official stamp of approval to the constitutional validity of racial 
          segregation... With the decision [made] in Plessy… the Supreme Court legitimized the era of formal racial 
          segregation, known as Jim Crowism. This formal state-ordered policy of segregation existed for almost sixty 
          years, until…  Brown determined that Plessy's… "separate but equal" doctrine lacked constitutional validity. 
          As a consequence of Plessy… the legal and political status of the African American plummeted to pre-Civil 
          War levels…  The result was that the overwhelming number of those African Americans living in the cities 
          worked as unskilled and semi-skilled laborers, low paid factory workers, haulers and like Thurgood Marshall's 
          father, railroad porters” (pp.5-7). 

The Plessy case allowed African Americans to fight in wars, but forbade them the right to become anything other than physical laborers. Heaven forbid that African Americans should have access to adequate resources enjoyed by white Americans. Heaven forbid that African Americans be viewed as human beings. Yet, I wonder if Thurgood's father wasn’t a railroad porter, would this somehow change history? Would Thurgood have been challenged to better himself, and become the first African American Supreme Court Judge if his life was made easier by his father's occupation? Would America lose out on the greatness Thurgood brought to it through his defiant nature if he had been accepted by the University of Maryland Law School the first time he wanted to apply to the institution? What ramifications would this have had on the NAACP? How much history would have been changed by a great man's father's occupation? Scary questions that I will leave unanswered only
 because they cannot be truthfully answered. 

     Chapters two and three deal with the rise of the NAACP, Charlie Houston's "social Engineers," as well as Thrugood's involvement with the NAACP by joining its National Office in 1936. One of the NAACP's initiatives at this time was to provide equality within educational systems. This meant that an attack on Plessy would have to be great and numerous. But how does the Plessy case relate to education? The Plessy case set a precedent to keep people segregated by their phenotype in a public setting. If states could segregate people on a public train, then they can segregate people in a public setting. If the states could segregate people on a public train, then they can segregate people in a public school. The "separate but equal" doctrine could be implemented as long as all races received the same quality of accommodations. But this wasn't happening in schools in the 1930s. In the southern states African American schools were "inferior to the white
 schools in the same community. The school term [was] shorter, equipment poorer, and the teachers less well paid," Walter White publicly stated in a release about what the NAACP uncovered in its endeavor to litigate civil rights (p. 50). So how did the NAACP accomplish their task of gaining equal education for African Americans? One of the first few steps that the NAACP had to take was to work hard on Gaines.  Gaines was heard in 1938. The Supreme Court ruled in behalf of the NAACP. The Supreme Court ruled that "Missouri must either have a separate law school for African Americans, substantively equal to the white law school, or else allow African Americans to enroll in the formerly all-white University of Missouri law school" (p.52).  Victory was made. With this case, Thurgood and fellow NAACP worker Charlie Houston moved on to litigate other cases involving unequal salaries for teachers in Maryland and other Southern states. 

     Chapter four elaborates on Thurgood's fears and frustrations about triumphing over the Plessy doctrine. Thurgood feared violence would run rampant in states like Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana if Plessy was overturned. Just because a law changes, doesn't mean the people will. Heated arguments could lead to physical confrontations if derogatory remarks were made, or even if people became frustrated with the way law makers were incorporating the rights of minorities. Thurgood was frustrated with the unwillingness of many African Americans to accept desegregation. One time Thurgood vented to his staff that "the easy part of the job is fighting the white folks," (p. 93). Thurgood was also frustrated with the lack of support from the Board of Directors of the NAACP for school desegregation. Thurgood wrote the following words in a letter to them:  

     “I had assumed that the NAACP really meant business about an all-out attack against segregation, especially in  
     the public school system. I had assumed that we not only realized that segregation was an evil but had come to 
     the conclusion that nothing can be gained under the doctrine "separate but equal." I had assumed that the Board 
     of Directors... were in agreement on this. I had assumed that the resolutions... meant exactly what they said” (p. 
     94). 

Thurgood’s letter caused a "thrashing out" meeting of the national board to be commenced so that a new policy could be agreed upon and announced.  Thurgood's calling for unity against the doctrine of "separate but equal" in the public school system finally had taken root (p. 93).  Thurgood had to verbally arouse the NAACP into action in the way that Patrick Henry verbally aroused congressional members to revolt against England rather than wait for hope to take care of their needs.  The realization of being out on a limb hit Thurgood when he realized that his work was based on assumptions. But by voicing his assumptions, Thurgood brought the NAACP to the next level of cohesive-ness to successfully overturn the decision of Plessy. It’s my theory that Thurgood knew that the powers that be were keeping the civil rights of minorities at bay as the Army did when African Americans were segregated into infantry positions rather than being placed into
 positions where they would be most useful like in field artillery.  Thrugood’s friend and mentor Charlie Huston was a first lieutenant in the Army during WWI, and helped to cause many changes for enlisted African Americans before resigning.   If Thurgood, with the NAACP’s backing, could make the Supreme Court see how “separate but equal” does not ensure that minorities receive justice, then maybe the Supreme Court would overturn the Plessy decision. The NAACP could then use the Plessy overturning to fight other injustices in the workplace, homes and other aspects of life. How were Thurgood and the NAACP going to bring about the over-turning of the Plessy decision? 

     The answer to this question can be found in chapter six of Ball’s book. Thurgood and the NAACP started work-ing with African American parents and their children to attack public school segregation through Briggs, which was named after the navy war veteran, Harry Briggs Jr.  In 1949, sixty-seven parents and children in Clarendon County, South Carolina demanded that the county school board provide them with equal school facilities. Nearly 300 white students were taught in well-built school houses. The county's 800 African American students were taught in three rickety buildings. White children were bussed to school, and African American children had to walk up to ten miles a day to attend school and return home. The Federal District Court did not hear their case until May 1950, and at this time, the parents were asking that an injunction be made to “prevent the all white school board from making any educational distinctions based on race and
 color” (pp.114 & 115). Thurgood's strategy incorporated a “large body of evidence of sociological nature testifying to the debilitating effects of segregation on the mind and the emotions” (p. 116) of African American children. Thurgood presented research done by Kenneth Clark. Clark devised two tests to measure the attitudes of African American children towards themselves in relationship to others: 

     “In the first test, children were shown four dolls, identical except for their color: two were brown, two were 
     white.  The kids were asked which one they thought was the ‘nicest’ or ‘prettiest.’ [Clark had found that the 
     children showed] an unmistakable preference for the white doll and a rejection of the brown doll.  [African 
     American children were asked to use crayons to color in outline drawings of boys and girls in the second test.  To 
     Clark’s surprise, a great number of African American children chose to use white or pink crayons.]  Clark     
     concluded that the children felt inferior to white children and unaccepting of themselves” (p. 117). 

Unfortunately the above information didn't persuade all three judges hearing the case to rule in Brigg's favor. Two of the judges overlooked the rickety conditions of the school and the high student to teacher ratio that the African American students in Clarendon County experienced. This was not the end of Briggs. 

     In June of 1952, Thurgood asked the Supreme Court for jurisdiction and to hear the arguments in Briggs. The case was scheduled to be heard on December 9-12, 1952. On December 13, 1952, the Supreme Court decided to hold conferences to discuss the school segregation cases before them. The conferees were divided on the decision to overturn Plessy, but the work of Thurgood and the NAACP was starting to pay off. The cases were eroding at the thinking of the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court could no longer remain silent on the “separate but equal” doctrine. No formal vote had taken place in 1952, but the segregation cases were returned to the spring of 1953.  Thurgood had no reason to worry as the Eisenhower Administration concluded that the Fourteenth Admendment “created a broad constitutional principle of full and complete equality of all persons under the law and... forbade all legal distinctions based on color” (p. 126).  The
 government made itself clear that school segregation was unconstitutional and that Plessy “had been wrongly decided” (p. 126).  It was time for the Supreme Court to make its final decision to overturn Plessy or not.  The decision to overturn Plessy was made through the Court’s decision on Brown:  “…we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896 when [Plessy] was written.  We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life through the Nation.  Only this way can it be determined if desegregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws” (p. 132).  The Supreme Court also had this to say about the affects segregation has in school settings:  “To separate them [African American children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of   their race generates a feeling of inferiority as
 to their status in the community that may affect hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone…  Whatever may have been the state of psychological knowledge at the time of [Plessy], this finding is amply supported by modern authority” (p. 133).  What this all boils down to is that the “separate but equal” doctrine was going to be rendered as unconstitutional.  They doorway was now open for African American children to gain equal education and ultimately a sense of whom they are.  Thurgood reacted with, “I was so happy, I was numb,” (p. 134) when the decision in Brown’s favor reached him.  All the hours working on cases related to the “separate but equal” doctrine finally worked towards the advantage of African Americans.  The Court fortified Clark’s research when they noted that children’s hearts and minds are affected when they are segregated in a school setting.  People everywhere could rejoice; justice had finally
 arrived.
     I think Ball highlights Plessy rather well.  I didn’t know that Thurgood and the NAACP went so far as to bring social psychologists to state their case against the “separate but equal doctrine prior to researching Ball’s book.  It’s my opinion that case rulings should be written in common every day words so that people are not entrapped by legal jargon.  It’s also my opinion that books like A Defiant Life are written so our “three-ringed-circus” remains in balance.  Naturally, I encourage all Champaign County residents to perform research to ascertain whether or not their judges have worked together as lawyers in the same office or are adjunct professors of the U of I.  To say whether or not Ball’s book is successful depends on how people perceive what was written.  I think the author has successfully reached an audience member with the information communicated in the book, A Defiant Life.  I recommend Ball’s book to any
 student who chooses to do a book report or research paper on the life of Thurgood Marshall.  I think Ball’s book proves that one can cause great change if one sticks to one’s guns wisely.  A “well planned bullet” can do more damage to an injustice than if someone just starts “shooting at random.”  I hope people like Thurgood Marshall are still alive in this country.  Thurgood brought change when needed either to educational settings or to the nightclubs he visited.     
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