AAS 205 Mar Outline –

Understanding anti-discrimination law; racial oppression and the role of the courts/legal system

          Eric’s ptv – Asian American community tied in with history of other people of  color – Vincent chin/wen ho lee – ‘lynchings’; API’s and courts – WONG KIM ARK, Yick Wo,  JA internment and reparations; immigrant rights, refugee rights, African American freedom struggle and indigenous peoples’ struggle

‘FORCED’ – immigration vs. refugee communities and African American communities – understanding slavery and its ‘vestiges’

Amistad – point of view [film; new haven Connecticut reconstruction of the ship] – freedom – captain’s view of the importance of the memory of the struggle for human rights and against racism/white supremacy

Important points – how anti-discrimination law develops – racism & the law; courts as double-edged sword; conservatism of the legal system; -politics and legal decision-making

    1. Pre-Civil War [see ken burns civil war documentary]

                                               1.            Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

Citizenship - Judge taney’s view – white people [later 14th amendment 1868]

Wong Kim Ark and birthright Citizenship

    1. Civil War, 1861-65
      1. Emancipation Proclamation, 1863
      2. 13th Amendment (1865)--abolition
      3. "Black Codes" – subordination
    1. Reconstruction, 1866-77

                                               1.            14th Amendment (1868)--citizenship

Chinese Americans? - Wong Kim Ark and birthright Citizenship US supreme court decades; generations later

      1. 15th Amendment (1870)--voting rights
      2. Civil rights laws
        1. 1866 Civil Rights Act
        2. 1870 Enforcement Act
        3. 1871 Anti-KKK Act
        4. 1875 Civil Rights Act
      3. 1876 presidential election
        1. R. B. Hayes (R) v. S. Tilden (D)
        2. Compromise of 1877
    1. Era of "Jim Crow," 1877-1965

                                                      1.            Legal and political abuses

                                                      2.            Segregation of the races

                                                                              a.            1883 Civil Rights cases

                                                                       b.            Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

                                                                                                    i.            "separate but equal"

                                                      3.            Lynching and race violence –

strange fruit 1940 song and history [billie holiday and cultural resistance; meripol family and popular front politics of culture]

                                                                              a.            between 1882 and 1946, 4,715 recorded lynchings

                                                                              b.            Marion, Indiana, 1930

                                                                        c.            1921 Tulsa riots to Strange Fruit & 1946 Georgia lynchings – teachers and anti-racism work and US anti-communism

    1. Modern Civil Rights Movements
      1. W.E.B. DuBois, NAACP
        1. Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
        2. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) – struck down ‘separate but equal’ govt policies – but… little change
        3. Brown v. Board of Education II (1955)

                                                                                                     i.            "all deliberate speed"?

      1. Martin Luther King, Jr., SCLC

                                                                       a.            Rosa Parks, NAACP and 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott

                       F.            Sixties – broad social movements [multiracial coalition building]

                                                      1.            August 1963 March on Washington, D.C.

                                                      2.            November 1963 Assassination of John F. Kennedy

                                                      3.            1964 Civil Rights Act

                                                                              a.            Title I--voter registration discrimination

                                                                              b.            Title II--public accommodations

                                                                              c.            Title V--federal lawsuits against segregated schools

                                                                              d.            Title VI--Powell Amendment and federal grants/contracts

                                                                              e.            Title VII--Equal Employment Opportunity

                                               4.            1965 Voting Rights Act – and political participation

                                                      5.            "Long, Hot Summers," 1964-67 [Watts 65, Detroit, Newark, etc. vs. South Central La 1992]

                                                                       a.            Kerner Commission, 1968

                                                      6.            April 1968 Assassination of M. L. King, Jr. [‘rioting’

                                                      7.            1968 Fair Housing Act

                     G.            Equal Opportunity & ‘Affirmative Action’ struggles – pendulum swinging back and forth – politics of the courts –Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas

1978 Bakke decision; 80’s Reagan era;

1996 CA – Prop 209;

March 2004 – Ward Connerly’s ‘racial privacy initiative’ – called Racial Ignorance initiative by CA’s for Justice

H. Reparations Now?

80’s Redress and Reparations movement for Japanese Americans – precedents? 

German government payment to holocaust survivors

’02 African American reparations?  Role of Asian Americans – solidarity?

·      READ - 10-21-02 – SF Chronicle – front page – article on African American family lawsuits for reparations [sfgate.com]

 

·      Target = corporations that directly benefited from slavery; individuals?