The Current Status of Black America

Martin Luther King, Jr., and those who supported the Civil Rights Movement, including 85 affiliate organizations, had a very specific agenda when they marched on Washington – “Jobs and Freedom.” King made it clear in his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, why hundreds of thousands of Americans came to Washington DC in assertion of their constitutional right to petition the government regarding grievances peacefully:

“…In a sense we've come…to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir…We have also come to …remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.”

(The entire transcript: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm)

In essence the agenda was to end segregation and racial injustice for all people. In response, the federal government instituted new laws, policies, procedures, and agencies to achieve equality (The Civil Rights Act of 1964, affirmative action programs, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Fair Housing Act, to name a few) and enforced those laws. The Supreme Court of the United States continued to deem many state laws unconstitutional and in violation of equal protection of law. Still, states continued to ignore the federal mandates and decisions of the Court and created and enforced law that perpetuated a racial caste system that has lasted into the 21^st Century. The law has “no teeth” without enforcement. It is not self-operating. America is not alone; racism has existed (and continues to exist) all over the world. In this way, the agenda of the Civil Rights Movement has yet to be fulfilled.

Some progresses have been made. Many areas of the country and schools have been desegregated. Lynching has ceased for the most part; but, still, there are current incidents of police brutality against African-Americans. There have been modern instances of “lynching.” In 2011, Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed for his part in chaining James Byrd, a 49-year old Black man, to the back of a pick-up truck and dragging him along a rural road in Texas and dumping the remains of his shredded body near a black church cemetery in 1998. (http://www.chron.com/life/article/White-supremacist-executed-for-Jasper-dragging-2182561.php.)

Laws prohibiting the socialization of Blacks and Whites may no longer be enforced; but in many areas of the country, particularly the “Deep South” it is practiced socially, though the likelihood of arrests or terrorist attacks are less likely. The Ku Klux Klan still exists and other groups which promote white supremacy; but the First Amendment allows them to spew their hatred under free speech. Laws prohibiting interracial marriage were stricken from the books (deemed unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967); but there are still many who would not to date or marry an African-American. You see, quite frankly, you cannot legislate the mind.

In America, there was no denying the impact of hundreds of years of racial injustice when Hurricane Katrina blew the roofs off of Louisiana, Mississippi, and other areas of the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, one day before the 42^nd anniversary of the March on Washington. A Category 5 storm the day before it made landfall, it covered the whole Gulf of Mexico and hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 with winds of approximately 125 per hour.(http://www.katrina.noaa.gov.) Damages cost nearly $60 billion, 80 percent of the area was under water when the levees breached, many areas of New Orleans were submerged in 20 feet of water, and the flooding caused the deaths of more than 1,100 people. (Watch the film “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” Home Box Office, HBO Documentary Films. 2006.)

Despite catastrophic damage and loss of property, within six months of the storm, the St. Bernard Parish Council decided to pass a series of ordinances restricting rentals of single-family homes. Initially, the Parish placed a complete moratorium on renting these properties until “the post-Katrina real estate market…stabilizes.”[1] The ordinance was amended in September 2006 making a narrow exception for blood relatives of owners, specifically those relatives who were direct ancestors or descendants. Following a lawsuit, filed by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center that argued the “blood relative” designation constituted racial discrimination, the Parish Council held fast to its decision but did agree to halt enforcement of the ordinance pending the court’s decision[2]; yet, by December 2006, the Council again amended the ordinance withdrawing the reference to blood relatives and instead requiring individual Council approval of all rentals.[3] The parish revised the ordinance to reflect a facially-neutral appearance; but, it would have the same desired discriminatory effect because all single-family residential rental property would have to be approved by the Parish Council on a case-by-case basis. With no explanation as to how permits would be granted there is a great threat the ordinance would be applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner, which violates equal protection of law under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

As if that was not sufficient, in March 2009, the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana “found that a September 2008 moratorium on the construction of multi-family housing of more than five units violated the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §3604(a), and the 2008 Consent Order…because the moratorium was racially discriminatory in intent and effect.[4] (See the order at http://www.relmanlaw.com/docs/September_11_order.pdf.). What is important to consider is how this ordinance disproportionately affects Blacks, especially in the case of a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. In a study by Professor John Logan from Brown University, there is an undeniable statistical account:

• 53,000 in St. Bernard Parish suffered moderate to catastrophic flooding
• Damaged areas were 45.8 percent “Black.”
• 45 percent of homes were occupied by renters.
• 20.9 percent of households had incomes below the poverty level;
• Greater than 70 percent of the population of St. Bernard Parish and Orleans Parish lived in heavily damaged areas;[5]
• If no one were able to return to the damaged areas, New Orleans would lose 80 percent of its African-American population.[6]
• 49,000 lived in public housing or received housing choice vouchers; and more than 95 percent are African-American. Only a fraction returned post-Katrina.[7]

Parish president Henry J. Rodriguez, Jr. was quoted during that time, “The parish is 99.9 percent destroyed.”[8]

Since its establishment to the present date, Louisiana subjugated Blacks and non-whites and sought to separate the races through custom, law, and societal structure beginning with slavery. Additionally, the state has a history of ignoring federal law and mandates in the areas related to race relations. The subjugation and institutional discrimination of Blacks in Louisiana and the South extends hundreds of years – understand that. It did not happen hundreds of years ago; rather, it has been happening for hundreds of years. Remedies began on a federal level but it is well-known that Louisiana, among other states, circumvented the provisions by establishing state laws that created a social caste system based on white supremacy.

Before Louisiana was a state, it enacted the Code Noir, also known as the 1806 Black Code, which remained in effect until 1866 (after the Civil War ended) – 40 sections of laws “prescribing the rules and conduct to be observed with respect to Blacks." These were built from the laws of 1724.[9] Despite the fact that Louisiana was a state of the Union, and that the federal government outlawed slave trading, Louisiana continued trading slaves; and, by 1850, New Orleans was the largest slave-trading center in the South – both for the domestic trade of current slaves and the illegal importation of slaves from Cuba and Haiti; Africa; and the West Indies, according to Louisiana State Museum, “The Cabildo: Antebellum Louisiana: Immigration.” and “St. Bernard Parish’s history – how we began: Louisiana’s Spanish Treasure.”[10]

After the Civil War, the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments were passed to end the badges of slavery; and the Freedman’s Bureau was established. These policies were met with violent hostility; race riots broke out in New Orleans; and, in 1868, white terrorists in St. Bernard Parish killed dozens of blacks in opposition to “Radical reconstruction.” Slaves were still sold in defiance of federal law. Black Codes then became Jim Crow; and Louisiana passed more Jim Crow laws than any other state including: separate railroad accommodations in 1890, separate waiting rooms, prohibitions on interracial marriage in 1894, and the building of “Negro Housing” in predominantly white areas in 1912.[11] The segregation laws were sanctioned in 1896 by the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson – infamous for endorsing “separate but equal doctrine.”[12] Blacks were relegated to second-class citizenship. Then in 1917, the Supreme Court reviewed Buchanan v. Warley and answered the question of whether Louisiana’s and Kentucky’s ordinances restricting the sale of property from a white man “to a colored man” were unconstitutional – indeed the Court did find it unconstitutional. Louisiana continued to pass similar housing statutes in spite of the Court’s decision. Louisiana’s Constitution of 1921 denied property ownership and prohibiting the housing of blacks and whites in the same dwelling. The same year Louisiana authorized the withholding of permits for white and Negro houses to ensure segregation.

These types of laws, physical attacks on Blacks, and interferance with the civil liberties of Blacks in the South are what gave rise to the Civil Rights Movement, the boycotts, the sit-ins, the marches, the speeches about the evil of racism. Even the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 (the beginning of the Civil Rights movement), which overturned the Plessy decision, could not change states like Louisiana. It took 40 years (and 10 years after Brown) to find the laws of 1921 in violation of the Equal Protection Clause – the case of McCain v. Davis, 217 F. Supp, 661 (1963); and, still, the law was not repealed until 1972. This repeal was after the Civil Rights Movement and after the assassination of Dr. King. These decisions drove whites out of New Orleans and into St. Bernard Parish where they established separate schools and took their money, jobs, restaurants, and grocery stores with them; this occurred until 1970. And when Katrina hit Louisiana with a vengeance, the laws came out again – prohibitions on “renting to non-blood relatives.”

The Parish president during the time of Katrina, Henry J. Rodriguez has sometimes used racial slurs in describing African-Americans. As a councilman, he used slurs at public meetings; in response to the cost of the federal mandates, he said, “It kind of smells like they’ve got a little nigger in the woodpile” and then made a negative comment about Jews.[13] Rodriguez referred to Black Bay as “Nigger Lake” justifying his statement using a description from old maps. He offered an apology for the “nigger in the woodpile” comment but refused on the reference to “Nigger Lake” because “I didn’t name it…I can’t rewrite history.”[14] But the term was used during the 1980s. (See http://www.al.com/specialreport/mobileregister/index.ssf? delta2/a215796a.html).

It is important to demonstrate the legislative history of the state when evaluating new law that is charged with being unconstitutional. It provides evidence of the intent of the law newly created. From 1724 until 2006, Louisiana created laws with the intent of segregating the races and subjugating Blacks….a full 282 years. But laymen dismiss the history of law: “It’s over now,” “Those laws don’t exist anymore,” “Let’s forget it and move on,” “slavery is over.” One cannot deny the history; it is foundation of the future; and it is not “the past.” It continues presently and will in the future, including slavery (in this world, also known as human trafficking), until one day people decide this is no longer permissible anywhere. Perhaps Mr. King was right when he said, “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts” of subjugation to say so. (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html).

In April 2011, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and the Lawyers' Committee released a handbook entitled "Strategies to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing: Proposals for the City of New Orleans Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO) and Beyond." It “ recommended strategies the City Planning Commission could adopt in the new zoning ordinance to overcome impediments to fair housing choice. (Read the handbook at http://www.lawyerscommittee.org/admin/community_development/documents/files/4-28-11_Strategies_to_Affirmatively_Further_Fair_Housing.pdf).

We cannot act like this never existed or that it does not affect our society anymore. Rev. Martin Niemoller, who spent eight years in German concentration camps including Dachau, said it best: "In Germany they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me - and by that time no one was left to speak up.” (http://www.ccsf.edu/Resources/Tolerance/lessons/div01.html.). See also "Germany: Dynamite." Time Magazine. Feb. 21, 1938. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,759113,00.html

Let’s get personal for a moment. Look, I’m a white Puerto Rican who was born and raised in New York. I never knew about racism as a child. I knew about slavery only. But when I grew up, I began to see it with my own eyes. I was never denied housing until my Black husband came with me to look at the home or sign the lease. I was never subjected to racial slurs until I walked hand-in-hand with him in Virginia and a pick-up truck of white men shouted, “Nigger Lover!” I never knew about coming in the back door until I went to visit my grandmother with my “mulatto” baby; and she told me to enter through the back. I never knew what DWB (Driving While Black) meant until being pulled over by a Florida state trooper for going two miles over the speed limit; and the officer told my husband “behave yourself down here” before letting us go after 20 minutes. I never knew about racial profiling until, when hand-playing with him at a rest stop, the Massachusetts cops came running to us with Billy clubs drawn yelling, “We’re coming ma’am!” I never knew the heartbreak of racism until I lived in Connecticut when my 5-year old daughter came home from school and asked me, “What’s a nigger, momma? Cuz' someone called me that today.” I heard about those things in-a-whisper-kind-of-way. Knowing it from experience is a totally different story.

Racism is still here; and it is not just a Black vs. White nor is it an American issue. It happens all over the world to all kinds of people of all colors and religions. The examples are numerous: German extermination of the Jews and others (from the Middle Ages to 1945); apartheid in South Africa; the Cambodian Genocide by Pol Pot from 1975 – 1979, which killed 21 percent of the Cambodian population (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/); the Rwandan genocide, where 800,000 people were killed in 1994 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13431486); the Bosnian genocide in 1995, also known as the ethnic cleansing campaign by the Bosnian Serb Army and Slobodan Milosevic (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.res.00134:); and the ethnic conflict in Dafur, which began in 2003 and where the death count as of 2007 was estimated at 450,000.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (“Letter”):

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.”

(http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html.)

When will we as humanity learn? Better yet, when will we, as humanity, care? How many have to be excluded from neighborhoods because of their race or religion? How many more have to suffer the indignities of a racial caste system? Anywhere. How many more must die? King’s “Letter” stated: "justice too long delayed is justice denied" and “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He could not have been more right. It would take volumes of books to discuss the current status of Black America. The examples this author provides, merely scratch the surface and explores what is current in the status of Black America.

By Liza Lugo, J.D.

WORKS CITED

[1] Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, Inc. v. St. Bernard Parish and the St. Bernard Parish Council. “Complaint for Injunctive Relief, Declaratory Judgment, and Remedial Relief.” Filed in United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

[2] NOLA.com. “St. Bernard Parish won’t enforce controversial housing ordinance until it goes before judge.” Bob Warren. November 13, 2006. http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tpupdates/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tpupdates/archives/2006_11_13.html. 9/7/07.

[3] St. Bernard Parish Government. “Council alters rental law by dropping reference to blood relative.” Steve Cannizaro. December 20, 2006. http://www.sbpg.net/newsdec2006c.html. 9/13/07.

[4] Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center v. St. Bernard Parish et al, 2009 WL 2399999 (E.D.La.2009) (Berrigan, J.)

[5] Logan, John R. “The Impact of Katrina: Race and Class in Storm-Damaged Neighborhoods.” http://www.s4brown.edu/katrina/report.pdf. 9/29/07.

[6] Id.

[7] Chicago Tribune. “Devastated parish feels ‘neglected’; St. Bernard says it has played 2^nd fiddle to New Orleans in storms’ aftermath.” Ofelia Casillas. September 29, 2005.

[8] Id.

[9] Quigley, Bill and Maha Zaki. “The Significance of Race: Legislative Racial Discrimination in Louisiana 1803-1865.” 24 S.U. L. Rev. 145, 147 (1997)

[10]Louisiana State Museum “The Cabildo: Antebellum Louisiana: Immigration.” http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/cabildo/cab8.htm. 10/27/07 and “St. Bernard Parish’s history – how we began: Louisiana’s Spanish Treasure.”

[11] The History of Jim Crow. “Jim Crow in the South.” http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/geography/geography.htm. 12/09/07

[12] Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 543 (1896)

[13] The Times-Picayune. “A Councilman’s Ill-Chosen Words.” Amy Ragsdale. September 20, 1997.

[14] The Times-Picayune. “The Rodriguez Apology.” September 18, 1997.

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