CALIFORNIA THE HISTORY OF ALLENSWORTH (1908- )

CONTRIBUTED BY: ROBERT MIKELL

In the article below retired California State University, Fresno historian Robert Mikell explores the history of the only all-black town created in the Golden State.  He traces that history including the role of its principal founder, Colonel Allen Allensworth, from 1908.

Allensworth, the first town in California established exclusively by African Americans, was founded in 1908 by a group of men led by Colonel Allen Allensworth. Born a slave in Louisville, Kentucky in 1842, Allensworth became the highest ranking black officer in the U.S. Army when he retired in 1906.

As a boy, Allensworth was punished for learning to read and write which was unlawful for enslaved people in Kentucky and across the South.  During the Civil War, he escaped and sought refuge behind the Union line, where he worked as a civilian nurse in the Army Hospital Corps.

From 1863 to 1865, Allensworth served in the U.S. Navy and afterwards became an ordained Baptist minister. In 1871, Allensworth met Josephine Leavell, a school teacher, organist and pianist. They were married on September 20, 1877. Josephine Allensworth worked diligently with her husband to promote his educational and religious works. The couple had two daughters, Nellie and Eva.

In 1882, Allensworth discovered that of the four black Army regiments (the Buffalo Soldiers), there were no black chaplains.  He immediately sought that appointment.  On April 1, 1886, President Grover Cleveland appointed Rev. Allensworth as chaplain of the 24th Infantry at the rank of Captain, with the responsibility for the spiritual health and educational well-being of black soldiers in the regiment. At the time of his appointment he was only the second African American, after Henry Plummer, named to serve as a U.S. Army Chaplain. Allensworth retired as a lieutenant-colonel on April 7, 1906, having achieved the highest rank of an African American in the U.S. Armed Forces.

After his retirement, Allensworth traveled widely throughout the United States lecturing on the need for self-help programs which would enable African Americans to become more self-sufficient. In 1904, the Allensworth family decided to settle in Los Angeles.  One of Allensworth’ s goals was to identify a town-site in the state of California where African Americans might start a new life together outside the restrictions of the Jim Crow South.

In 1906, Allensworth met Professor William Payne who was born in West Virginia in 1885, but was raised in Ohio where his father worked in the coal mines. After completing high school, Payne attended Dennison University In Granville, Ohio, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1902.  Just before his graduation he met and married Zenobia B. Jones, who also attended Dennison University.

Payne served as Assistant Principal at Rentsville School in Rentsville, Ohio for seven years and later as a Professor at the West Virginia Colored Institute for two years. In 1906, Professor Payne and his wife moved to Pasadena, California where he hoped to be a “teacher of teacher.” Payne was not eligible to teach in Los Angeles because he lacked prior teaching experience in California. While in southern California, however, Payne met retired colonel Allensworth and the two men decided to pool their talents to create what was then termed a “Race Colony” for the improvement of African Americans across the nation.

Joining Allensworth and Payne to establish their race colony were three other men, Dr. William H. Peck, an AME minister in Los Angeles, J.W. Palmer, a Nevada miner; and Harry Mitchell, a Los Angeles Realtor. Allensworth selected a location in southwest Tulare County which had virgin soil and plentiful water. Together they created the California Colonization and Home Promoting Association and soon thereafter filed a township site legal plan on August 3, 1908 to form the town of Solito, which had a depot connection Los Angeles and San Francisco on the Santa Fe Railroad.  The town’s name was changed that same year to Allensworth, to honor its most prominent founder.

Town founders established the Allensworth Progressive Association as the official form of government to conduct its affairs. Townspeople elected officers and held town meetings to encourage the civic participation of all of its residents.  In 1912 Allensworth became a voting precinct and had its own school district encompassing thirty-three square miles. At its peak in the early 1920s, Allensworth had as many as 300 residents.

Once the school district was established in in 1912, the Allensworth School, costing $5,000, was built with funds donated by local citizens. It was the largest capital investment made by the community, epitomizing the importance of education for the town. The one-room schoolhouse included elementary, intermediate, and high school students. The school was governed by an elected body of three board members. The original trustees were Josephine Allensworth (who also served as the first teacher), Oscar Overr and William H. Hall.

Allensworth School also served as the town center for events and meetings.  The Allensworth Progressive Association, the Women’s Improvement League, the Debating Society, the Theatre Club, and the Glee Club all met in the building. The most memorable of the year, however, was commencement which took place in June at the end of each school year.

Allensworth was sanctioned a judicial district by the State of California in 1914, and soon afterwards Oscar Overr and William H. Dotson became the first African Americans to hold elected offices as Justice of the Peace and Constable, respectively. A branch of the Tulare County Library and a post office were established with Mary Jane Bickers serving as the first postmistress. On July 4, 1913, an official reading room was established in a separate library building.

Agriculture dominated the economy of Allensworth as several farmers moved in or near the township.  The town also had several businesses including a barber shop, bakery, livery stable, drug store, machine shop, and the Allensworth Hotel.

In keeping with Colonel Allensworth’ s idea of self-help and self-reliance programs, city leaders in 1914 proposed to establish a vocational education school based on the Tuskegee Institute model and the ideas of its founder, Booker T. Washington. Although it received support for a state funding appropriation from Fresno and Tulare County representatives in the California State Senate and Assembly, the proposal was defeated by the entire state legislature.

The town suffered a far greater loss later in 1914 when Colonel Allensworth died after being struck by a motorcycle while visiting Los Angeles. The town however continued to grow due to the leadership of Oscar Overr, the Justice of the Peace, and Professor William A. Payne, the school principal. New residents continued to arrive and the town continued to prosper until the early 1920s.

Allensworth’ s prosperity peaked in 1925 and after that date the lack of irrigation water begin to plague the town. Irrigation water was never delivered in sufficient supply as promised by the Pacific Farming Company, the land development firm that handled the original purchase.  As a result, town leaders were engrossed in lengthy and expensive legal battles with Company, expending scarce financial resources on a battle they would not win.

By 1930 the town’s population according to the U.S. Census, had dropped below 300 people, as residents and nearby farmers began to leave in search of other employment.  The deficient water supply would not sustain the agricultural and ranching enterprises at that time. The residents who remained behind attempted to keep the community alive by designing new methods of farming, creating other businesses, and drilling new water wells.

Yet through the early 1960s, the town continued to exist even if it did not thrive.  Then in 1966 the State of California discovered high levels of arsenic in the drinking water. Most residents left but 34 families remained, leaving Allensworth all but a ghost town.

One decade later, however, on May 14, 1976, the California State Parks and Recreation Commission approved plans to develop the Colonel Allensworth Historic Park on the central portion of the town. The process started in 1969 when Cornelius Ed Pope, an African American man draftsman with the Department of Parks and Recreation began a campaign to persuade State Park officials and the general public that the town-site had particular historic and cultural significance for California’s African American population. Pope related how as a boy he had lived in the house once owned and occupied by the Allensworth family. As a part of the restoration project, several buildings have been restructured to the likeness of the historic period of 1908-1918.

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, FIGHTING AGAINST THE BOMB: AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CAMPAIGN FOR A NUCLEAR-FREE WORLD, 1945-

CONTRIBUTED BY: VINCENT INTONDI

In the description of his 2015 book, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement, historian Vincent Intondi describes the long but little-known history of black Americans in the Nuclear Disarmament Movement. His essay, which appears below, tells the compelling story of courageous black activists who connected the fight for racial equality with the campaign for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

In 2005, I made my first trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. Up that point, most of my career as an academic focused on African American history. Nuclear disarmament was simply not on my radar. However, that changed when I set foot in Japan. After meeting with atomic bomb survivors (hibakusha) and learning about what the United States had done to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I knew I could not return home and ignore how I felt about nuclear weapons. I began thinking about how I could combine black history with nuclear disarmament. To begin, I asked one question: What did African Americans think about the U.S. dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Finding out the answer to this question began the journey that ultimately became the book African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and the Black Freedom Movement.

When I started this project, many expressed doubt that I would find much on the subject. Colleagues argued that African Americans were too focused on trying to gain their own freedom and equality and simply did not have the time to worry about nuclear weapons. However, a little-known story about Malcolm X was the first piece of evidence I found that proved they were wrong.

On June 6, 1964, three Japanese writers and a group of hibakusha arrived in Harlem as part of the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission. Speaking out against nuclear proliferation, the group traveled to at least five other countries before reaching the United States. However, traveling to Harlem was the highpoint for the hibakusha, who were thrilled at the prospect of meeting Malcolm X.

Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese-American activist, organized a reception for the hibakusha at her home in the Harlem Manhattanville Housing Projects. In an effort to make the hibakusha’s wish come true, Kochiyama contacted Malcolm’s office months before their arrival, but received no response and remained doubtful that Malcolm would attend the reception. Shortly after the reception began, there was a knock at the door. Kochiyama opened the door, and there stood Malcolm X. Malcolm told the hibakusha, “You have been scarred by the atom bomb.  You just saw that we have also been scarred. The bomb that hit us was racism.” He went on to discuss his years in prison, education, and Asian history. Turning to Vietnam, Malcolm said, “If America sends troops to Vietnam, you progressives should protest. America is already sending American advisers.” He argued that “the struggle of Vietnam is the struggle of the whole Third World: the struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism.” Like so many before him, Malcolm X understood how these issues were related. He knew the issue was not civil rights, but universal human rights.

African Americans Against the Bomb examines those black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament, often connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality and liberation movements around the world.  Beginning with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my book explores the shifting response of black leaders and organizations, and of the broader African American public to the evolving nuclear arms race and general nuclear threat throughout the postwar period.

As word got out that I was writing the book, many who were in the fields of nuclear studies and African American history asked why? I always looked at Black History as a giant brick wall that we are still trying to fill in. There remains much to discover, research, and write to complete the narrative. I viewed my work as one missing brick in this wall. For too long scholars have failed to appreciate the black freedom struggle’s international dimensions, viewing slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement as national phenomena. Because of the understandable focus on African Americans’ unique oppression, historians have often entirely ignored them when addressing other important issues, such as the nuclear threat.

This has begun to change. The past two decades have seen a rise in new scholarship that challenges the accepted narrative of the black freedom movement. Historians have begun to rediscover the forgotten history of black Popular Front groups, CP and labor organizers, as well as anticolonial and peace activists. A number of these studies suggest that the black freedom movement’s origins date back to the 1930s and 1940s, were much more global in scope, and were influenced by those who consistently combined their plight with those seeking peace and an end to colonialism. While scholars have provided a valuable service by shedding light on these connections, many fail to appreciate the role of nuclear weapons. From 1945, the bomb is what, in many cases, connected various groups and individuals inside the black community. Nuclear disarmament was a main part of the platform at the Bandung Conference in 1955.  In the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, Bayard Rustin led a team in Ghana to stop the French from testing a nuclear weapon in the Sahara. A year later, Kwame Nkrumah, joined by African American activists, held the “World Without the Bomb” conference. Dr. King began connecting the nuclear issue to black freedom as early as 1957.  Therefore the role of the bomb is essential when examining the length and scope of the black freedom movement.

Setting out to research this topic, I found myself spending countless weeks in the basement of Swarthmore College’s library with its Peace Collection. I began to look for answers to a number of questions: Did African Americans respond differently to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than did other Americans and, if so, to what extent was this related to the fact that the first victims were non-white? Did African Americans’ discrimination-induced estrangement from American life allow for a more critical attitude toward the Cold War in general and U.S. nuclear policy in particular? Did the left-oriented social and political activism inspired by black Popular Front groups translate into a broader critique of U.S. militarism and foreign policy, both of which were undergirded by the American nuclear arsenal? As I researched the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the work of Bayard Rustin, I would be pushed towards the War Resisters League then to Women Strike for Peace and so on.

A challenge of this project was making clear that nothing was monolithic. I was examining leaders: both men and women, ordinary individuals, members of various organizations and religions. Therefore, while African Americans immediately condemned the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not all of these activists protested for the same reason. For some, race was the issue. Many in the black community agreed with Langston Hughes’s assertion that racism was at the heart of Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons in Japan. Why did the U.S. not drop atomic bombs on Italy or Germany?  Hughes asked. Black activists’ fear that race played a role in the decision to use atomic bombs only increased when the U.S. threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam a decade later. For others, mostly black leftists ensconced in Popular Front groups, the nuclear issue was connected to colonialism. From the U.S. obtaining uranium from the Belgian-controlled Congo to the French testing a nuclear weapon in the Sahara, activists saw a direct link between those who possessed nuclear weapons and those who colonized the non-white world. However, for many ordinary black citizens, fighting for nuclear disarmament simply translated into a more peaceful world. The bomb, then, became the link that connected all of these issues and brought together musicians, artists, peace activists, leftists, clergy, journalists, and ordinary citizens inside the black community.

As I wrote the book I was always conscious of readership. I sought to thread the needle between the academy and mainstream readers. I thought of a student who would read this book because of their love for African American history only to learn about the intersection of race and nuclear weapons. Conversely, I hoped someone interested in the peace movement or nuclear disarmament would learn about those who are rarely discussed outside of Black History and see that they too were fighting on this front. In a broader sense, all too often we are taught that humanities and science are mutually exclusive, which could not be further from the truth.

African Americans Against the Bomb explains how the fight for freedom, coupled with the desire to avoid nuclear annihilation, blended together and united human beings. Connecting racial equality to nuclear disarmament and colonialism broadened the black freedom struggle, specifically the modern Civil Rights Movement. The black freedom struggle cannot be properly understood without exploring antinuclear campaigns. African Americans’ views of nuclear weapons directly influenced their response to other international issues. My hope in writing this book was that I not only added to the rich body of scholarship dedicated to African Americans and global affairs, but altered the way in which we discuss these subjects.

THE INNOCENCE PROJECT: A SHORT HISTORY SINCE 1983

CONTRIBUTED BY: RORY O'SULLIVAN

For more than 25 years the Innocence Project has been shedding light on systemic failures of the United States criminal justice system. The authors of the Bill of Rights in the 1780s and 1790s enumerated more than a dozen specific protections for criminal defendants including the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, the right to confront witnesses, and right to assistance of counsel. And yet, despite all these protections, more than 2,100 people have been exonerated in the US since 1989 after being wrongly convicted. Advocates at Innocence Projects around the country have been working to right these wrongs.

The story of the Innocence Project starts with Marion Coakley. Born in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1955, Coakley moved to New York in 1979. He earned a living as a manual laborer, unloading fruit and vegetable crates and working in a stone-cutting shop. As an adult he read at a second grade level and his IQ was in the seventies.

On Saturday October 15, 1983, two detectives in the Bronx arrested Marion Coakley for the rape of Irma Lopez (Irma Lopez is a pseudonym used to protect the name of a victim of sexual assault). Lopez was raped two nights earlier on October 13th at the Bronx Park Motel. After the rape she was admitted to a hospital where she was treated for wounds resulting from the attack and hospital staff collected evidence as part of a rape kit. The evening of the rape, according to multiple eyewitnesses, Coakley was at a bible-study meeting in his sister’s apartment, not at the Bronx Park Motel. At trial, the Reverend Samuel Manigault, who led the bible-study meeting, testified on Coakley’s behalf as an alibi witness; but the prosecutor was able to make the reverend sound uncertain about his testimony.

Also in 1983, Kary Mullis was developing a process for duplicating and matching DNA, a process called polymerase chain reaction or PCR. He would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work. The process was adapted for use in criminal investigations in which only tiny fragments of genetic material are available for testing.

Coakley was represented by the Bronx office of the Legal Aid Society, an organization that was founded in 1876 to protect the rights of German immigrants who could not afford a lawyer. Over the years the mission and the clientele of the organization expanded and in 1965 the Legal Aid Society became the primary public defender agency in New York. Coakley’s lawyer, Donald duBoulay, was a successful trial attorney but his repeated requests for more time were denied by Judge David Levy. The case had been worked up by a different defense attorney who had since moved on to another job, and duBoulay was just coming off another trial. Three eyewitnesses who saw the rapist, including Irma Lopez, testified with certainty that Marion Coakley was the rapist and the jury quickly issued a guilty verdict.

The Legal Aid Society, however, was convinced of Coakley’s innocence, but they understood that one of Coakley’s defenses on appeal might be ineffective assistance of counsel—a claim that the Legal Aid Society itself would be conflicted in raising—so they referred the case to Barry Scheck, who worked at a law clinic at Cardozo School of Law and to Peter Neufeld, who had a private practice nearby. Scheck and Neufeld each had more than ten years of experience as practicing attorneys, they had both worked previously at the Legal Aid Society, and they often partnered together on cases.

In 1987, when Scheck and Neufeld were working to overturn Coakley’s conviction, they did not have access to DNA testing based on PCR. Instead they used basic detective work to reveal problems with the eyewitness testimony and they used a test based on the blood type of the semen donor that showed Coakley could not have been the rapist. Eventually, they had enough evidence to convince not only the court, but even the Bronx District Attorney’s Office concluded that they had convicted the wrong man. In December of 1987 based on the evidence presented by Scheck and Neufeld, Chief Administrative Judge Burton Roberts, who took on the case when he heard about the possible exoneration, overturned Coakley’s conviction.  This was the first victory for what would become the Innocence Project.

Two years later Gary Dotson became the first person exonerated based on DNA evidence. In 1992, Scheck and Neufeld founded the Innocence Project so that they could work on wrongful convictions in a more systematic manner. Initially, the Innocence Project was a clinic at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City. In 2004, after 12 years and approximately 150 exonerations, the Innocence Project became an independent nonprofit although it remains affiliated with Cardozo School of Law.

Other innocence projects have sprung up around the country and around the world. In 1997, Professor Jacqueline McMurtrie founded the Innocence Project Northwest at the University of Washington School of Law which has been responsible for the exoneration of 14 wrongly convicted individuals in Washington State. The Innocence Project Northwest is a member of the Innocence Network, an organization that connects the nearly 70 innocence project organizations worldwide.

Wrongful convictions happen for many reasons. As Scheck and Neufeld note in Actual Innocence, “[s]ometimes eyewitnesses make mistakes. Snitches tell lies. Confessions are coerced or fabricated. Racism trumps the truth. Lab tests are rigged. Defense lawyers sleep. Prosecutors lie.” Of all the reasons for wrongful convictions, eyewitness misidentification testimony was a factor in more than 70 percent of DNA post-conviction exoneration cases. Since the early 1900s, criminologists have conducted experiments demonstrating the unreliable nature of eyewitness testimony. Even the best eyewitnesses make errors and many eyewitnesses reports are filled with more errors than correct statements. Continued analysis and experimentation has demonstrated that memories are changed and embellished over time and that cross-racial identification is subject to an even greater error rate than other aspects of eyewitness testimony.

In the last ten years, popular culture has become captivated by stories of wrongful convictions. In December 2015, Netflix released the first season of Making a Murderer, a documentary viewed by more than 19 million people in the first 35 days after its release. The documentary explored the history of Steven Avery, a man who was convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin and then exonerated in 2003 after serving 18 years in prison. The show picks up after his release from prison and documents charges leveled against Avery for a murder in 2005. The premise of the documentary is that the prosecutors framed Avery for the 2005 murder in retaliation for his 2003 exoneration. Avery remains in prison today, although his case is on appeal. In another example, the first season of the podcast Serial questions the conviction of Adnan Syed in Baltimore, Maryland for the murder of Hae Min Lee. Serial has been downloaded by more than 100 million listeners.

Both the Innocence Project in New York and the Innocence Project Northwest have advocated for policy changes. The exonerations of Rolando Cruz and Ronald Jones, inmates who served time on Illinois’ death row, led then-Illinois Governor George Ryan to issue a moratorium on death sentences in 1999. That same year, Illinois State Senator Barack Obamasponsored a bill requiring that interrogations be recorded. Mandatory recording of interrogations help defense attorneys and innocence project organizations obtain evidence of coerced confessions. Other policy measures advocated by innocence projects include amending eyewitness identification procedures, preserving and testing DNA evidence, and compensation funds for exonerees. In February of 2014 Governor Jay Inslee issued a moratorium on the death penalty in Washington State and the state legislature is currently considering legislation to abolish the death penalty.

Because of their success, innocence projects have been inundated with requests for representation from prisoners claiming to be wrongfully convicted. The projects have developed screening criteria that include a claim of actual innocence (as opposed to mere “legal” innocence) that can be corroborated through DNA testing or other newly discovered evidence. Innocence project organizations review the evidence they receive and, in some cases, the tested DNA evidence confirms that the right person is in prison. But in far too many cases, the criminal justice system has convicted the wrong person.

Innocence Projects around the country have demonstrated that the scope of the problem of wrongful conviction is massive. Living up to the values enshrined in the Bill of Rights would require systemic evaluation and reform. This is an issue that requires public attention. Voters need to educate themselves and their elected officials about the need for criminal justice reform. In many places, voters may also be able to hold their prosecutors accountable at the ballot box. In Washington State, as in many states, the county prosecuting attorney is an elected position. Voters should investigate the extent to which wrongful convictions have taken place in their county and how the prosecuting attorney has responded when someone their office prosecuted has been exonerated. The American justice system was designed to protect against convicting the innocent, but we are not living up to the values enshrined in our founding documents. Voters, lawmakers, and prosecutors need to review and reform the criminal justice system in order to protect the innocent from wrongful conviction.

(1963) RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL, “RELIGION AND RACE”

CONTRIBUTED BY: BLACKPAST

On January 14, 1963, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel gave the speech “Religion and Race,” at a conference of the same name that assembled in Chicago, Illinois.  There he met Dr. Martin Luther King and the two became friends.  Rabbi Heschel marched with Dr. King at Selma, Alabama in 1965.  The speech Rabbi Heschel gave at the 1963 conference appears below.

At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me.” While Pharaoh retorted: “Who is the Lord, that I should heed this voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go.”

The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses.

Let us dodge no issues. Let us yield no inch to bigotry, let us make no compromise with callousness.

In the words of William Lloyd Garrison, “I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject [slavery] I do not wish to think, to speak, or to write with moderation. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.”

Religion and race. How can the two be uttered together? To act in the spirit of religion is to unite what lies apart, to remember that humanity as a whole is God’s beloved child. To act in the spirit of race is to sunder, to slash, to dismember the flesh of living humanity. Is this the way to honor a father: to torture his child? How can we hear the word “race” and feel no self reproach?

Race as a normative legal or political concept is capable of expanding to formidable dimensions. A mere thought, it extends to become a way of thinking, a highway of insolence, as well as a standard of values, overriding truth, justice, beauty. As a standard of values and behavior, race operates as a comprehensive doctrine, as racism. And racism is worse than idolatry. Racism is satanism, unmitigated evil.

Few of us seem to realize how insidious, how radical, how universal an evil racism is. Few of us realize that racism is man’s gravest threat to man, the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason, the maximum of cruelty for a minimum of thinking.

Perhaps this Conference should have been called “Religion or Race.” You cannot worship God and at the same time look at man as if he were a horse.

Shortly before he died, Moses spoke to his people. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The aim of this conference is first of all to state clearly the stark alternative. I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have set before you religion and race, life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life.

“Race prejudice, a universal human ailment, is the most recalcitrant aspect of the evil in man” (Reinhold Niebuhr), a treacherous denial of the existence of God.

What is an idol? Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.

Faith in God is not simply an afterlife insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy.

In several ways man is set apart from all beings created in six days. The Bible does not say, God created the plant or the animal; it says, God created different kinds of plants, different kinds of animals (Genesis 1: 11 12, 21-25). In striking contrast, it does not say, God created different kinds of man, men of different colors and races; it proclaims, God created one single man. From one single man all men are descended.

To think of man in terms of white, black, or yellow is more than an error. It is an eye disease, a cancer of the soul.

The redeeming quality of man lies in his ability to sense his kinship with all men. Yet there is a deadly poison that inflames the eye, making us see the generality of race but not the uniqueness of the human face. Pigmentation is what counts. The Negro is a stranger to many souls. There are people in our country whose moral sensitivity suffers a blackout when confronted with the black man’s predicament.

How many disasters do we have to go through in order to realize that all of humanity has a stake in the liberty of one person; whenever one person is offended, we are all hurt. What begins as inequality of some inevitably ends as inequality of all.

In referring to the Negro in this paper we must, of course, always keep equally in mind the plight of all individuals belonging to a racial, religious, ethnic, or cultural minority.

This Conference should dedicate itself not only to the problem of the Negro but also to the problem of the white man, not only to the plight of the colored but also to the situation of the white people, to the cure of a disease affecting the spiritual substance and condition of every one of us. What we need is an NAAAP, a National Association for the Advancement of All People. Prayer and prejudice cannot dwell in the same heart. Worship without compassion is worse than self-deception; it is an abomination.

Thus, the problem is not only how to do justice to the colored people, it is also how to stop the profanation of God’s name by dishonoring the Negro’s name.

One hundred years ago the emancipation was proclaimed. It is time for the white man to strive for self-emancipation, to set himself free of bigotry, to stop being a slave to wholesale contempt, a passive recipient of slander.

“Again, I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them!” (Ecclesiastes 4:1)

There is a form of oppression which is more painful and more scathing than physical injury or economic privation. It is public humiliation. What afflicts my conscience is that my face, whose skin happens not to be dark, instead of radiating the likeness of God, has come to be taken as an image of haughty assumption and overbearance. Whether justified or not, I, the white man, have become in the eyes of others a symbol of arrogance and pretension, giving offense to other human beings, hurting their pride, even without intending it. My very presence inflicting insult!

My heart is sick when I think of the anguish and the sighs, of the quiet tears shed in the nights in the overcrowded dwellings in the slums of our great cities, of the pangs of despair, of the cup of humiliation that is running over.

The crime of murder is tangible and punishable by law. The sin of insult is imponderable, invisible. When blood is shed, human eyes see red; when a heart is crushed, it is only God who shares the pain.

In the Hebrew language one word denotes both crimes. “Bloodshed,” in Hebrew, is the word that denotes both murder and humiliation. The law demands: one should rather be killed than commit murder. Piety demands: one should rather commit suicide than offend a person publicly. It is better, the Talmud insists, to throw oneself alive into a burning furnace than to humiliate a human being publicly.

He who commits a major sin may repent and be forgiven. But he who offends a person publicly will have no share in the life to come.

It is not within the power of God to forgive the sins committed toward men. We must first ask for forgiveness of those whom our society has wronged before asking for the forgiveness of God.

Daily we patronize institutions which are visible manifestations of arrogance toward those whose skin differs from ours. Daily we cooperate with people who are guilty of active discrimination.

How long will I continue to be tolerant of, even a participant in, acts of embarrassing and humiliating human beings, in restaurants, hotels, buses, or parks, employment agencies, public schools and universities? One ought rather be shamed than put others to shame.

Our rabbis taught: “Those who are insulted but do not insult, hear themselves reviled without answering, act through love and rejoice in suffering, of them Scripture says: ‘They who love the Lord are as the sun when rising in full splendor’ (Judges 5:31).”

Let us cease to be apologetic, cautious, timid. Racial tension and strife is both sin and punishment. The Negro’s plight, the blighted areas in the large cities, are they not the fruit of our sins?

By negligence and silence, we have all become accessory before the God of mercy to the injustice committed against the Negroes by men of our nation. Our derelictions are many. We have failed to demand, to insist, to challenge, to chastise.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

There are several ways of dealing with our bad conscience. (1) We can extenuate our responsibility; (2) we can keep the Negro out of our sight; (3) we can alleviate our qualms by pointing to the progress made; (4) we can delegate the responsibility to the courts; (5) we can silence our conscience by cultivating indifference; (6) we can dedicate our minds to issues of a far more sublime nature.

(1) Modern thought has a tendency to extenuate personal responsibility. Understanding the complexity of human nature, the interrelationship of individual and society, of consciousness and the subconscious, we find it difficult to isolate the deed from the circumstances in which it was done. Our enthusiasm is easily stunned by realizing the ramifications and complexity of the problem we face and the enormous obstacles we encounter in trying to implement the philosophy affirmed in the 13th and 14th Amendments as well as in the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court. Yet this general tendency, for all its important correctives and insights, has often had the effect of obscuring our essential vision, aiding our conscience to grow scales: excuses, pretense, self pity. The sense of guilt may disappear; no crime is absolute, no sin devoid of apology. Within the limits of the human mind, relativity may be true and merciful. Yet the mind’s scope embraces but a fragment of society, a few instants of history; it thinks of what has happened, it is unable to imagine what might have happened. The qualms of my conscience are easily cured—even while the agony for which I am accountable continues unabated.

(2) Another way of dealing with a bad conscience is to keep the Negro out of sight.

The Word proclaims: Love thy neighbor! So we make it impossible for him to be a neighbor. Let a Negro move into our neighborhood and madness overtakes the residents. To quote an editorial in the Christian Century of Dec. 26, 1962:

The ghettoization of the Negro in American society is increasing. Three million Negroes—roughly one sixth of the nation’s Negro population—are now congested in five of the greatest metropolitan centers of the north. The alienation of the Negro from the mainstream of American life proceeds apace. The Negro is discovering to his sorrow that the mobility which he gained in the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution nearly a hundred years ago merely enables him to move from one ghetto to another. A partial apartheid—economic, social, political and religious- continues to be enforced by the white people of the U.S. They use various pressures—some open, some covert—to keep the Negro isolated from the nation’s social, cultural and religious community, the result being black islands surrounded by a vast white sea. Such enclaves in American society not only destroy the cohesiveness of the nation but also offend the Negro’s dignity and restrict his opportunity. These segregated islands are also an embarrassment to white people who want an open society but are trapped by a system they despise. Restricted housing is the chief offender. So long as the racially exclusive patterns of suburban America continue, the Negro will remain an exile in his own land.

(3) To some Americans the situation of the Negro, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim. So many revolutionary changes have taken place in the field of civil rights, so many deeds of charity are being done; so much decency radiates day and night. Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. The conscience builds its confines, is subject to fatigue, longs for comfort. Yet those who are hurt, and He who inhabits eternity, neither slumber nor sleep.

(4) Most of us are content to delegate the problem to the courts, as if justice were a matter for professionals or specialists. But to do justice is what God demands of every man: it is the supreme commandment, and one that cannot be fulfilled vicariously.

Righteousness must dwell not only in the places where justice is judicially administered. There are many ways of evading the law and escaping the arm of justice. Only a few acts of violence are brought to the attention of the courts. As a rule, those who know how to exploit are endowed with the skill to justify their acts, while those who are easily exploited possess no skill in pleading their own cause. Those who neither exploit nor are exploited are ready to fight when their own interests are harmed; they will not be involved when not personally affected. Who shall plead for the helpless? Who shall prevent the epidemic of injustice that no court of justice is capable of stopping?

In a sense, the calling of the prophet may be described as that of an advocate or champion, speaking for those who are too weak to plead their own cause. Indeed, the major activity of the prophets was interference, remonstrating about wrongs inflicted on other people, meddling in affairs which were seemingly neither their concern nor their responsibility. A prudent man is he who minds his own business, staying away from questions which do not involve his own interests, particularly when not authorized to step in—and prophets were given no mandate by the widows and orphans to plead their cause. The prophet is a person who is not tolerant of wrongs done to others, who resents other people’s injuries. He even calls upon others to be the champions of the poor. It is to every member of the community, not alone to the judges, that Isaiah directs his plea:

Seek justice, relieve the oppressed,
Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Isaiah 1:17

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.

The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful.

The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others. Wherever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet’s angry words cry. The wrath of God is a lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos.

(6) In condemning the clergymen who joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in protesting against local statutes and practices which denied constitutional liberties to groups of citizens on account of race, a white preacher declared: “The job of the minister is to lead the souls of men to God, not to bring about confusion by getting tangled up in transitory social problems.”

In contrast to this definition, the prophets passionately proclaim that God himself is concerned with “the transitory social problems,” with the blights of society, with the affairs of the market place.

What is the essence of being a prophet? A prophet is a person who holds God and men in one thought at one time, at all times. Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love. We think of God in the past tense and refuse to realize that God is always present and never, never past; that God may be more intimately present in slums than in mansions, with those who are smarting under the abuse of the callous.

There are, of course, many among us whose record in dealing with the Negroes and other minority groups is unspotted. However, an honest estimation of the moral state of our society will disclose: Some are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the public climate of opinion, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.

That equality is a good thing, a fine goal, may be generally accepted. What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of inequality. Seen from the perspective of prophetic faith, the predicament of justice is the predicament of God.

Of course, more and more people are becoming aware of the Negro problem, but they fail to grasp its being a personal problem. People are increasingly fearful of social tension and disturbance. However, so long as our society is more concerned to prevent racial strife than to prevent humiliation, the cause of strife, its moral status will be depressing, indeed.

The history of interracial relations is a nightmare. Equality of all men, a platitude to some minds, remains a scandal to many hearts. Inequality is the ideal setting for the abuse of power, a perfect justification for man’s cruelty to man. Equality is an obstacle to callousness, setting a limit to power. Indeed, the history of mankind may be described as the history of the tension between power and equality.

Equality is an interpersonal relationship, involving both a claim and a recognition. My claim to equality has its logical basis in the recognition of my fellow men’s identical claim. Do I not forfeit my own rights by denying to my fellow men the rights I claim for myself?

It is not humanity that endows the sky with inalienable stars. It is not society that bestows upon every man his inalienable rights. Equality of all men is not due to man’s innocence or virtue. Equality of man is due to God’s love and commitment to all men.

The ultimate worth of man is due neither to his virtue nor to his faith. It is due to God’s virtue, to God’s faith. Wherever you see a trace of man, there is the presence of God. From the perspective of eternity our recognition of equality of all men seems as generous an act as the acknowledgment that stars and planets have a right to be.

How can I withhold from others what does not belong to me?

Equality as a religious commandment goes beyond the principle of equality before the law. Equality as a religious commandment means personal involvement, fellowship, mutual reverence and concern. It means my being hurt when a Negro is offended. It means that I am bereaved whenever a Negro is disfranchised:

The shotgun blasts that have been fired at the house of James Meredith’s father in Kosciusko, Mississippi, make us cry for shame wherever we are.

There is no insight more disclosing: God is One, and humanity is one. There is no possibility more frightening: God’s name may be desecrated.

God is every man’s pedigree. He is either the Father of all men or of no man. The image of God is either in every man or in no man.

From the point of view of moral philosophy, it is our duty to have regard for every man. Yet such regard is contingent upon the moral merit of the particular man. From the point of view of religious philosophy, it is our duty to have regard and compassion for every man regardless of his moral merit. God’s covenant is with all men, and we must never be oblivious of the equality of the divine dignity of all men. The image of God is in the criminal as well as in the saint. How can my regard for man be contingent upon his merit, if I know that in the eyes of God I myself may be without merit!

You shall not make yourself a graven image or any likeness of God. The making and worshiping of images is considered an abomination, vehemently condemned in the Bible. The world and God are not of the same essence. There can be no man made symbols of God.

And yet there is something in the world that the Bible does regard as a symbol of God. It is not a temple or a tree, it is not a statue or a star. The symbol of God is man, every man. How significant is the fact that the term tselem, which is frequently used in a damnatory sense for a man-made image of God, as well as the term demuth, likeness of which Isaiah claims (40:18), no demuth can be applied to God—are employed in denoting man as an image and likeness of God. Man, every man, must be treated with the honor due to a likeness representing the King of kings.

There are many motivations by which prejudice is nourished, many reasons for despising the poor, for keeping the underprivileged in his place. However, the Bible insists that the interests of the poor have precedence over the interests of the rich. The prophets have a bias in favor of the poor.

God seeks out him who is pursued (Ecclesiastes 3:15), even if the pursuer is righteous and the pursued is wicked, because man’s condition is God’s concern. To discriminate against man is to despise what God demands.

He who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker;
But he who is kind to the needy honors Him.
Proverbs 14:31; cf. 17:15

The way we act, the way we fail to act is a disgrace which must not go on forever. This is not a white man’s world. This is not a colored man’s world. It is God’s world. No man has a place in this world who tries to keep another man in his place. It is time for the white man to repent. We have failed to use the avenues open to us to educate the hearts and minds of men, to identify ourselves with those who are underprivileged. But repentance is more than contrition and remorse for sins, for harms done. Repentance means a new insight, a new spirit. It also means a course of action.

Racism is an evil of tremendous power, but God’s will transcends all powers. Surrender to despair is surrender to evil. It is important to feel anxiety, it is sinful to wallow in despair.

What we need is a total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice. God is in search of man, waiting, hoping for man to do His will.

The most practical thing is not to weep but to act and to have faith in God’s assistance and grace in our trying to do His will.

This world, this society can be redeemed. God has a stake in our moral predicament. I cannot believe that God will be defeated.

What we face is a human emergency. It will require much devotion, wisdom, and divine grace to eliminate that massive sense of inferiority, the creeping bitterness. It will require a high quality of imaginative sympathy, sustained cooperation both in thought and in action, by individuals as well as by institutions, to weed out memories of frustration, roots of resentment.

We must act even when inclination and vested interests would militate against equality. Human self-interest is often our Nemesis! It is the audacity of faith that redeems us. To have faith is to be ahead of one’s normal thoughts, to transcend confused motivations, to lift oneself by one’s bootstraps. Mere knowledge or belief is too feeble to be a cure of man’s hostility to man, of man’s tendency to fratricide. The only remedy is personal sacrifice: to abandon, to reject what seems dear and even plausible for the sake of the greater truth; to do more than one is ready to understand for the sake of God. Required is a breakthrough, a leap of action. It is the deed that will purify the heart. It is the deed that will sanctify the mind. The deed is the test, the trial, and the risk.

The plight of the Negro must become our most important concern. Seen in the light of our religious tradition, the Negro problem is God’s gift to America, the test of our integrity, a magnificent spiritual opportunity.

Humanity can thrive only when challenged, when called upon to answer new demands, to reach out for new heights. Imagine how smug, complacent, vapid, and foolish we would be, if we had to subsist on prosperity alone. It is for us to understand that religion is not sentimentality, that God is not a patron. Religion is a demand, God is a challenge, speaking to us in the language of human situations. His voice is in the dimension of history.

The universe is done. The greater masterpiece still undone, still in the process of being created, is history. For accomplishing His grand design, God needs the help of man. Man is and has the instrument of God, which he may or may not use in consonance with the grand design. Life is clay, and righteousness the mold in which God wants history to be shaped. But human beings, instead of fashioning the clay, deform the shape. God needs mercy, righteousness; His needs cannot be satisfied in space, by sitting in pews, by visiting temples, but in history, in time. It is within the realm of history that man is charged with God’s mission.

There are those who maintain that the situation is too grave for us to do much about it, that whatever we might do would be “too little and too late,” that the most practical thing we can do is “to weep” and to despair. If such a message is true, then God has spoken in vain.

Such a message is four thousand years too late. It is good Babylonian theology. In the meantime, certain things have happened: Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, the Christian Gospel.

History is not all darkness. It was good that Moses did not study theology under the teachers of that message; otherwise, I would still be in Egypt building pyramids. Abraham was all alone in a world of paganism; the difficulties he faced were hardly less grave than ours.

The greatest heresy is despair, despair of men’s power for goodness, men’s power for love.

It is not enough for us to exhort the Government. What we must do is to set an example, not merely to acknowledge the Negro but to welcome him, not grudgingly but joyously, to take delight in enabling him to enjoy what is due to him. We are all Pharaohs or slaves of Pharaohs. It is sad to be a slave of Pharaoh. It is horrible to be a Pharaoh.

Daily we should take account and ask: What have I done today to alleviate the anguish, to mitigate the evil, to prevent humiliation?

Let there be a grain of prophet in every man!

Our concern must be expressed not symbolically, but literally; not only publicly, but also privately; not only occasionally, but regularly.

What we need is the involvement of every one of us as individuals. What we need is restlessness, a constant awareness of the monstrosity of injustice.

The concern for the dignity of the Negro must be an explicit tenet of our creeds. He who offends a Negro, whether as a landowner or employer, whether as waiter or salesgirl, is guilty of offending the majesty of God. No minister or layman has a right to question the principle that reverence for God is shown in reverence for man, that the fear we must feel lest we hurt or humiliate a human being must be as unconditional as fear of God. An act of violence is an act of desecration. To be arrogant toward man is to be blasphemous toward God.

In the words of Pope John XXIII, when opening the Twenty first Ecumenical Council, “divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations.” History has made us all neighbors. The age of moral mediocrity and complacency has run out. This is a time for radical commitment, for radical action.

Let us not forget the story of the sons of Jacob. Joseph, the dreamer of dreams, was sold into slavery by his own brothers. But at the end it was Joseph who rose to be the savior of those who had sold him into captivity.

Mankind lies groaning, afflicted by fear, frustration, and despair. Perhaps it is the will of God that among the Josephs of the future there will be many who have once been slaves and whose skin is dark. The great spiritual resources of the Negroes, their capacity for joy, their quiet nobility, their attachment to the Bible, their power of worship and enthusiasm, may prove a blessing to all mankind.

In the words of the prophet Amos (5:24):
Let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream.

A mighty stream, expressive of the vehemence of a never ending, surging, fighting movement -as if obstacles had to be washed away for justice to be done. No rock is so hard that water cannot pierce it. “But the mountain falls and crumbles away, and the rock is removed from its place; the waters wear away the stones” (Job 14:18 f.). Justice is not a mere norm, but a fighting challenge, a restless drive.

Righteousness as a mere tributary, feeding the immense stream of human interests, is easily exhausted and more easily abused. But righteousness is not a trickle; it is God’s power in the world, a torrent, an impetuous drive, full of grandeur and majesty. The surge is choked, the sweep is blocked. Yet the mighty stream will break all dikes.

Justice, people seem to agree, is a principle, a norm, an ideal of the highest importance. We all insist that it ought to be—but it may not be. In the eyes of the prophets, justice is more than an idea or a norm: justice is charged with the omnipotence of God. What ought to be, shall be!

RACHEL B. NOEL (1918-2008)

CONTRIBUTED BY: ALEXANDRA LAIRD

Rachel B. Noel

Image Courtesy of Metropolitan State University of Denver

Rachel Bassette Noel was the first African American woman to be elected to public office in the state of Colorado. Born on January 15, 1918 in Hampton, Virginia, Noel earned her bachelor’s degree from Hampton University and her master’s in sociology from Fisk University. In 1942 she married Dr. Edmond F. Noel and a few years later the two moved to Denver, Colorado.

Noel was elected to the Denver Public School’s (DPS) Board of Education in 1961 and was appointed to the school board’s special committee on equal education opportunity in 1962. The committee was created in response to community protest following a DPS-proposed segregated junior high. In April 1968, while serving as a member of the board, Noel wrote and introduced Resolution 1490, which became known as the “Noel Resolution.” She authored it with fellow school board member A. Edgard Benton on the evening of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

The resolution directed Superintendent Robert Gilberts to develop and submit a comprehensive integration plan for Denver Public Schools by December 1968. The resolution generated significant controversy, but despite public opposition and threats to Noel and her family, the resolution passed the school board with amendment. The Supreme Court affirmed Noel’s position in the landmark 1973 decision Keys v Denver School District No. 1. It was the first Supreme Court desegregation case that dealt with a school system outside of the American South.

In 1969 Noel became a faculty member at Metropolitan State University of Denver teaching sociology and African American Studies. She was chair of the Department of African American Studies from 1971 to 1980 and won Outstanding Female Faculty Member for the 1974-75 school year. In 1981 MSU Denver endowed The Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professorship to foster diversity and academic excellence. Noel Professors have included Lerone Bennett, Diane Reeves, Ossie Davis, Billy Taylor, and Johnetta Cole. Denver’s Rachel Noel Middle School was also dedicated in her honor.

In 1976 Noel was appointed to the University of Colorado Board of Regents by former Governor Richard Lamm and became the first African American woman elected statewide to that body when she won a six-year term in 1978.

Noel worked with a number of civic, church, educational, and social organizations, and received numerous awards and honors for her civil rights contributions. She was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996 and won the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award in 1990, the Denver Mayor’s Millennium Award in 2001, and the Anti-Defamation League’s Civil Rights Award in 2004. She was also a member of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission, the Colorado Advisory Committee, Mayor Wellington Web’s Black Advisory Committee, and was the chair of Mayor Peña’s Black Advisory Committee. MSU Denver awarded her an honorary degree in 1981, and she also received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Denver in 1993 and the University of Colorado in 2004.

Rachel B. Noel died in 2008 in Oakland, California at the age of 90 and is survived by her daughter Angie and son Buddy Noel.