Congressman John Lewis

Born: February 21, 1940 in Troy, Alabama.



Early Life

He was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama. His family were sharecroppers. He was a hard-working young man who overcame poverty and political disenfranchisement to educate himself.

In John Lewis's own words:

"More people were living in Pike County the year I was born than at any time before or since. The 1940 census shows 32,500 residents of the county-roughly double the number living there at the end of the Civil War.

There is no question about the beauty of the place, at least not in my mind. For all the wounds and scars and pain that surround it, this is still home to me. My earliest memories are not of drudgery and labor, oppression and inequality, exclusion and neglect. Those memories would take shape later, as I grew up. But the world I knew as a little boy was a rich, happy one. In the same way that my mother never felt poor as a little girl, I didn't know the meaning of the word when I was small. We were poor-dirt poor-but I didn't realize it.

Sundays we would listen to WRMA, the gospel station. The Pilgrim Travelers, the Soul Stirrers, the five Blind Boys of Mississippi- groups like these were all over gospel radio in the 1940s. A decade later their upbeat, wall-rocking sounds would evolve into something called rhythm and blues. A decade after that it would become the music they called soul. We just loved it

More than anything else-besides work, of course, which became the center of my life as soon as I was big enough to join my parents in the fields-the most important thing in my family's life, and in almost every family's life around us, was church" (Lewis, 17-20).


College Life

He graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville and then received a bachelor's degree in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University. As a student, Lewis was very dedicated to the civil rights movement. He organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville and took part in many other civil rights activities.


SNCC involvement

In 1961, Lewis joined SNCC in the Freedom Rides. Riders traveled the South challenging segregation at interstate bus terminals. Lewis and others received death threats and were severely beaten by angry mobs. In 1963, when Chuck McDew stepped down as SNCC chairman, Lewis was quickly elected to take over. Lewis' experience at that point was already widely respected--he had been arrested 24 times as a result of his activism. He held the post of chairman until 1966.


Where is he now??

John Lewis’s devotion to community service and his abilities and stature as a leader and activist are also reflected in his political career. In 1981 he was elected to the Atlanta City Council, where he pushed for ethics in government and neighborhood preservation. Five years later, in 1986, he was elected to Congress, where he has served for over two decades as the representative for Georgia’s 5thdistrict. Congressman Lewis is currently Senior Chief Deputy Whip for the Democratic Party in the House, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, a member of the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight.

As Time Magazine noted, Congressman John Lewis’s life and career is “a stirring portrait of the power of moral consistency and courage.” For his bravery and steadfast devotion to human rights, justice, and civil liberties for all Americans, the Tubman African American Museum is proud to present Congressman John Lewis with our first Tubman Lifetime Act of Courage Award.

In his own words:

"By eight I'm in my office, along with my staff, to begin what is typically at least a twelve-hour day. Committee and subcommittee meetings, visits from constituents and lobbyists, a steady stream of receptions and fund-raisers, breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings, television and radio and newspaper interviews and press conferences, and, of course, my duties on the floor of the House itself-these responsibilities fill my days when Congress is in session.

Some of those people never dreamed I would still be in office today. When I was first elected in 1986, there were more than a few skeptics who predicted that I would, as one observer put it, "be ground into paste by Washington's Capitol Hill glue factory." Twelve years later I've been reelected five times and am fortunate enough to have risen to the position of chief deputy Democratic whip, making me one of the highest appointed or elected black officials in the country.

They have also appreciated my ability to build the foundation that every congressman must have, positioning myself to take care of the bread-and-butter needs of my district as well as helping to steer and govern the nation as a whole. It was dealing with this nitty-gritty end of politics, the intricate process of connecting with the light coalitions and getting on the right committees to be able to bring fair share of federal dollars and resources back to my district...." (Lewis, 480-81)

In recent news, Lewis says that he is supporting Obama:

WASHINGTON — After months of personal soul-searching and political pressure, Rep. John Lewis on Wednesday formally announced that he's switching his influential support from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama, whom Lewis now sees as the heir apparent to the racial progress Lewis himself has spent his life fighting for.

Lewis cited the overwhelming preference for Obama in his Atlanta district as a reason for his change of heart. But he also talked about Obama's campaign as a transformational moment, an opportunity born of Lewis' own sacrifices in the 1960s civil rights movement.

"Something's happening in America, something some of us did not see coming," Lewis said. "Barack Obama has tapped into something that is extraordinary.

"It's a movement. It's a spiritual event," Lewis said of the surging Obama campaign. "It's amazing what's happening."

Lewis had not talked with Obama or Clinton prior to announcing his switch, so it's unclear what role he'll play as the election continues.

"I have not been asked to campaign for Sen. Obama," Lewis said in a statement released later Wednesday. "I support his candidacy for president and will cast my vote for Sen. Obama as a superdelegate at the Democratic convention."

Obama issued a statement Wednesday afternoon, saying, "John Lewis is an American hero and a giant of the civil rights movement, and I am deeply honored to have his support."

Clinton, questioned about Lewis during a satellite interview with Houston television station KTRK, said: "I understand he's been under tremendous pressure. He's been my friend. He will always be my friend. At the end of the day, it's not about who is supporting us, it's about what we're representing, what our positions are, what our experiences and qualifications are, and I think that voters are going to decide."

Lewis' announcement last October that he was backing Clinton, a longtime friend, over Obama, the nation's first truly viable African-American candidate for the presidency, angered many of Georgia's black constituents and numerous civil rights elders who had fought for black voting rights alongside Lewis.

It also created political opposition for Lewis, who has run for Congress unopposed for the past decade. The Rev. Markel Hutchins of Atlanta recently announced his plans to oppose Lewis in this year's Democratic primary because, Hutchins said, Lewis has lost touch with his constituency.

"It was a long, hard, difficult struggle to come to where I am," Lewis said.

At the time he endorsed Clinton, Lewis said, Obama was an unknown and Clinton not only had across-the-board appeal but also was clearly ready to lead the nation.

"I did it because I felt in my heart that I had to support Mrs. Clinton because of our friendship," Lewis said.

"I don't regret it," Lewis added. "The political thing to do would have been to have done nothing, to not endorse anyone.

"Sometimes, you have to be on the right side of history," he said.

Lewis' comments were intended to clear up confusion caused about a week ago when The New York Times reported that he was going to vote for Obama over Clinton as a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention this summer if neither had enough delegates to declare victory outright. Lewis' office called the report inaccurate but never clarified whom he was supporting.

In an interview Wednesday, Lewis said his decision was an anguishing one.

During his last visit to Selma, Ala., where in 1965 police beat him nearly to death during a protest, Lewis stood between Clinton and Obama and praised the potentially historic election of both.

Former President Bill Clinton attended Lewis' 60th birthday party, but Obama was at his 65th.

With Lewis' switch to Obama -- along with Rep. David Scott, another Atlanta Democrat, who also left Clinton for Obama -- all of Georgia's African-American congressmen are now backing Obama.

Georgia's other congressional Democrats -- Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon and Rep. John Barrow of Savannah -- still have not endorsed either of their party's presidential aspirants.

Wednesday was the 48th anniversary of the day Lewis was arrested for the first time -- at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Nashville that did not serve blacks. And he's now talking about Obama as the heir of the civil rights fight.

"Mr. Obama is the embodiment of the hopes, dreams and aspirations of a lot of people," Lewis said. "He represents something different, something new. But he also represents a long line of individuals who come around from time to time who carry the aspirations of the people."

By BOB KEMPER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/27/08

(By Courtney Beck)

Sojourner Truth

NAME: Isabella Baumfree (Sojourner Truth)

BIRTHDATE: 1797

BIRTHPLACE: Ulster County, New York

FAMILY BACKGROUND: Sojourner Truth was born in 1797 on the Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh estate in Swartekill, in Ulster County, a Dutch settlement in upstate New York. Her given name was Isabella Baumfree (also spelled Bomefree). She was one of 13 children born to Elizabeth and James Baumfree, also slaves on the Hardenbergh plantation. She spoke only Dutch until she was sold from her family around the age of nine. Because of the cruel treatment she suffered at the hands of a later master, she learned to speak English quickly, but had a Dutch accent for the rest of her life.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: She was first sold around age 9 when her second master (Charles Hardenbergh) died in 1808. She was sold to John Neely, along with a herd of sheep, for $100. Neely's wife and family only spoke English and beat Isabella fiercely for the frequent miscommunications. She later said that Neely once whipped her with "a bundle of rods, prepared in the embers, and bound together with cords." It was during this time that she began to find refuge in religion -- beginning the habit of praying aloud when scared or hurt. When her father once came to visit, she pleaded with him to help her. Soon after, Martinus Schryver purchased her for $105. He owned a tavern and, although the atmosphere was crude and morally questionable, it was a safer haven for Isabella.

But a year and a half later, in 1810, she was sold again to John Dumont of New Paltz, New York. Isabella suffered many hardships at the hands of Mrs. Dumont, whom Isabella later described as cruel and harsh. Although she did not explain the reasons for this treatment in her later biography narrative, historians have surmised that the unspeakable things might have been sexual abuse or harassment (see the biography on Harriet Jacobs, the only former slave to write about such), or simply the daily humiliations that slaves endured.

Sometime around 1815, she fell in love with a fellow slave named Robert, who was owned by a man named Catlin or Catton. Robert's owner forbade the relationship because he did not want his slave having children with a slave he did not own (and therefore would not own the new 'property'). One night Robert visited Isabella, but was followed by his owner and son, who beat him savagely ("bruising and mangling his head and face"), bound him and dragged him away. Robert never returned. Isabella had a daughter shortly thereafter, named Diana. In 1817, forced to submit to the will of her owner Dumont, Isabella married an older slave named Thomas. They had four children: Peter (1822), James (who died young), Elizabeth (1825), and Sophia (1826).

The state of New York began in 1799 to legislate the gradual abolition of slaves, which was to happen July 4, 1827. Dumont had promised Isabella freedom a year before the state emancipation, "if she would do well and be faithful." However, he reneged on his promise, claiming a hand injury had made her less productive. She was infuriated, having understood fairness and duty as a hallmark of the master-slave relationship. She continued working until she felt she had done enough to satisfy her sense of obligation to him -- spinning 100 pounds of wool -- then escaped before dawn with her infant daughter, Sophia. She later said:

"I did not run off, for I thought that wicked, but I walked off, believing that to be all right."

Isabella wandered, not sure where she was going, and prayed for direction. She arrived at the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen (Wagener?). Soon after, Dumont arrived, insisting she come back and threatening to take her baby when she refused. Isaac offered to buy her services for the remainder of the year (until the state's emancipation took effect), which Dumont accepted for $20. Isaac and Maria insisted Isabella not call them "master" and "mistress," but rather by their given names.

Isabella immediately set to work retrieving her young son Peter. He had recently been leased by Dumont to another slaveholder, who then illegally sold Peter to an owner in Alabama. Peter was five years old. First she appealed to the Dumonts, then the other slaveholder, to no avail. A friend directed her to activist Quakers, who helped her make an official complaint in court. After months of legal proceedings, Peter returned to her, scarred and abused.

During her time with the Van Wagenens, Isabella had a life-changing religious experience -- becoming "overwhelmed with the greatness of the Divine presence" and inspired to preach. She began devotedly attending the local Methodist church and, in 1829, left Ulster County with a white evangelical teacher named Miss Gear. She quickly became known as a remarkable preacher whose influence "was miraculous." She soon met Elijah Pierson, a religious reformer who advocated strict adherence to Old Testament laws for salvation. His house was sometimes called the "Kingdom," where he led a small group of followers. Isabella became the group's housekeeper. Elijah treated her as a spiritual equal and encouraged her to preach also. Soon after, Robert Matthias arrived, who apparently took over as the group's leader, with the activities becoming increasingly bizarre. In 1834, Pierson died with only the group's members attending. His family called the coroner and the group disbanded. The Folger family, whose house the group had moved into, accused Robert and Isabella of stealing their money and poisoning Elijah. They were eventually acquitted and Robert traveled west.

Isabella settled in New York City, but she had lost what savings and possessions she had had. She resolved to leave and make her way as a traveling preacher. On June 1, 1843, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth and told friends, "The Spirit calls me [East], and I must go." She wandered in relative obscurity, depending on the kindness of strangers. In 1844, still liking the utopian cooperative ideal, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts. This group of 210 members lived on 500 acres of farmland, raising livestock, running grist and saw mills, and operating a silk factory. Unlike the Kingdom, the Association was founded by abolitionists to promote cooperative and productive labor. They were strongly anti-slavery, religiously tolerant, women's rights supporters, and pacifist in principles. While there, she met and worked with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles. Unfortunately, the community's silk-making was not profitable enough to support itself and it disbanded in 1846 amid debt.

Sojourner went to live with one of the Association's founders, George Benson, who had established a cotton mill. Shortly thereafter, she began dictating her memoirs to Olive Gilbert, another Association member. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave was published privately by William Lloyd Garrison in 1850. It gave her an income and increased her speaking engagements, where she sold copies of the book. She spoke about anti-slavery and women's rights, often giving personal testimony about her experiences as a slave. That same year, 1850, Benson's cotton mill failed and he left Northampton. Sojourner bought a home there for $300. In 1854, at the Ohio Woman's Rights Covention in Akron, Ohio, she gave her most famous speech -- with the legendary phrase, "Ain't I a Woman?" :

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ain't I a woman? ... I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me -- and ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well -- and ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen most all sold off to slavery and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me -- and ain't I woman?"

Sojourner later became involved with the popular Spiritualism religious movement of the time, through a group called the Progressive Friends, an offshoot of the Quakers. The group believed in abolition, women's rights, non-violence, and communicating with spirits. In 1857, she sold her home in Northampton and bought one in Harmonia, Michigan (just west of Battle Creek), to live with this community. In 1858, at a meeting in Silver Lake, Indiana, someone in the audience accused her of being a man (she was very tall, towering around six feet) so she opened her blouse to reveal her breasts.

During the Civil War, she spoke on the Union's behalf, as well as for enlisting black troops for the cause and freeing slaves. Her grandson James Caldwell enlisted in the 54th Regiment, Massachusetts. In 1864, she worked among freed slaves at a government refugee camp on an island in Virginia and was employed by the National Freedman's Relief Association in Washington, D.C. She also met President Abraham Lincoln in October. (A famous painting, and subsequent photographs of it, depict President Lincoln showing Sojourner the 'Lincoln Bible,' given to him by the black people of Baltimore, Maryland.) In 1863, Harriet Beecher Stowe's article "The Libyan Sibyl" appeared in the Atlantic Monthly; a romanticized description of Sojourner. (The previous year, William Story's statue of the same title, inspired by the article, won an award at the London World Exhibition.) After the Civil War ended, she continued working to help the newly freed slaves through the Freedman's Relief Association, then the Freedman's Hospital in Washington. In 1867, she moved from Harmonia to Battle Creek, converting William Merritt's "barn" into a house, for which he gave her the deed four years later.

In 1870, she began campaigning for the federal government to provide former slaves with land in the "new West." She pursued this for seven years, with little success. In 1874, after touring with her grandson Sammy Banks, he fell ill and she developed ulcers on her leg. Sammy died after an operation. She was successfully treated by Dr. Orville Guiteau, veterinarian, and headed off on speaking tours again, but had to return home due to illness once more. She did continue touring as much as she could, still campaigning for free land for former slaves. In 1879, Sojourner was delighted as many freed slaves began migrating west and north on their own, many settling in Kansas. She spent a year there helping refugees and speaking in white and black churches trying to gain support for the "Exodusters" as they tried to build new lives for themselves. This was to be her last mission.

Sojourner made a few appearances around Michigan, speaking about temperance and against capital punishment. In July of 1883, with ulcers on her legs, she sought treatment through Dr. John Harvey Kellogg at his famous Battle Creek Sanitarium. It is said he grafted some of his own skin onto her leg. Sojourner returned home with her daughters Diana and Elizabeth, their husbands and children, and died there on November 26, 1883, at 86 years old. She was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery next to her grandson. In 1890, Frances Titus, who published the third edition of Sojourner's Narrative in 1875 and became Sojourner's traveling companion after Sammy died, collected money and erected a monument on the gravesite, inadvertently inscribing "aged about 105 years." She then commissioned artist Frank Courter to paint the meeting of Sojourner and President Lincoln.

Sojourner Truth has been posthumously honored in many ways over the years:

* a memorial stone in the Stone History Tower in Monument Park, downtown Battle Creek (1935);
* a new grave marker, by the Sojourner Truth Memorial Association (1946);
* a historical marker commemorating members of her family buried with her in the cemetery (1961);
* a portion of Michigan state highway M-66 designated the Sojourner Truth Memorial Highway (1976);
* induction into the national Woman's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York (1981);
* induction into the Michigan Woman's Hall of Fame in Lansing (1983);
* a commemorative postage stamp (1986);
* a Michigan Milestone Marker by the State Bar of Michigan for her contribution (three lawsuits she won) to the legal system (1987);
* a marker erected by the Battle Creek Club of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs (also 1987);
* a Mars probe named for her (1997);
* a community-wide, year-long celebration of the 200th anniversary of her birth in Battle Creek in 1997, plus a larger-than-life statue of her by artist Tina Allen; and
* the First Black Woman Honored with a Bust in the U.S. Capitol (October, 2008)

DATE OF DEATH: November 26, 1883

PLACE OF DEATH: Battle Creek, Michigan

PORTRAYED BY: Stephanie Tolliver

Source: Abraham Lincoln: The War Years Vol. 2, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc
(photograph circa 1862) © www.arttoday.com

(Posted by Alex)

Medgar Evers

Medgar Wiley Evers was born July 2, 1925, near Decatur, Mississippi, and attended school there until he was inducted into the army in 1943. After serving in Normandy, he attended Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University), majoring in business administration. While at Alcorn, he was a member of the debate team, the college choir, and the football and track teams, and he also held several student offices and was editor of the campus newspaper for two years and the annual for one year. In recognition of his accomplishments at Alcorn, he was listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges.

At Alcorn he met Myrlie Beasley, of Vicksburg, and the next year, they were married on December 24, 1951. He received his B.A. degree the next semester and they moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, during which time Evers began to establish local chapters of the NAACP throughout the Delta and organizing boycotts of gasoline stations that refused to allow blacks to use their restrooms. He worked in Mound Bayou as an insurance agent until 1954, the year a Supreme Court decision ruled school segregation unconstitutional. Despite the court’s ruling, Evers applied for and was denied admission to the University of Mississippi Law School, but his attempt to integrate the state’s oldest public university attracted the attention of the NAACP’s national office, and that same year he was appointed Mississippi’s first field secretary for the NAACP.

Evers and his wife moved to Jackson, where they worked together to set up the NAACP office, and he began investigating violent crimes committed against blacks and sought ways to prevent them. His boycott of Jackson merchants in the early 1960s attracted national attention, and his efforts to have James Meredith admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962 brought much-needed federal help for which he had been soliciting. Meredith was admitted to Ole Miss, a major step in securing civil rights in the state, but an ensuing riot on campus left two people dead, and Evers’ involvement in this and other activities increased the hatred many people felt toward Evers.

Related Links & Info


Medgar Evers College:
The name of Medgar Evers has been immortalized in many ways but perhaps none more so grandly than in Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College, a unit of the City University of New York.


Film: For Us the Living
Myrlie Evers’ book about her husband was made into a TV movie starring Howard Rollins.


Statue of Evers in Jackson:
A statue of Medgar Evers was erected to honor him in his adopted hometown of Jackson on June 28, 1992.
“It may sound funny, but I love the South. I don’t choose to live anywhere else. There’s land here, where a man can raise cattle, and I’m going to do it some day. There are lakes where a man can sink a hook and fight the bass. There is room here for my children to play and grow, and become good citizens—if the white man will let them....”
—Medgar Evers, “Why I Live in Mississippi”

On June 12, 1963, as he was returning home, Medgar Evers was killed by an assassin’s bullet. Black and white leaders from around the nation came to Jackson for his funeral and then gathered at Arlington National Cemetery for his interment. Following his death, his brother, Charles, took over Medgar’s position as state field secretary for the NAACP. The accused killer, a white supremacist named Byron De La Beckwith, stood trial twice in the 1960s, but in both cases the all-white juries could not reach a verdict. Finally, in a third trial in 1994 (and thirty-one years after Evers’ murder), Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

The legacy of Medgar Evers is everywhere present in the Mississippi of today. This peaceful man, who had constantly urged that “violence is not the way” but who paid for his beliefs with his life, was a prominent voice in the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi. Many tributes have been paid to Medgar Evers over the years, including a book by his widow, For Us, the Living, but perhaps the greatest tribute can be found in changes noted in Mississippi Black History Makers: “Ten years after Medgar’s death the national office of the NAACP reported that Mississippi had 145 black elected officials and that blacks were enrolled in each of the state’s public and private institutions of higher learning.... In 1970, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, more than one-fourth or 26.4 percent of black pupils in Mississippi public schools attended integrated schools with at least a 50 percent white enrollment. When Medgar died in 1963, only 28,000 blacks were registered voters. By 1971, there were 250,000 and by 1982 over 500,000.”

—John B. Padgett

(Article first posted August 1997)
Updated September 2002

Bio credit: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/evers_medgar/

Video credit: : http://youtube.com/watch?v=1lBHic-PZLk

Picture credit: http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/511915RZP1L.jpg

Lyrics credit: http://www.mp3lyrics.org/b/bob-dylan/only-a-pawn-in-their-game/

This video is a song Bob Dylan wrote after Medgar Evers’ death called, “Only a Pawn in Their Game”.

Lyrics:

A bullet from the back of a bush
took Medgar Evers' blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.

A South politician preaches
to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you
been born with white skin"
they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers,
the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used
[ Find more Lyrics at www.mp3lyrics.org/cXd ]
in the hands of them all like
a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

From the powerty shacks, he
looks from the cracks to
the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

Today, Medgar Evers was buried
from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game

Sarah C. Roberts

Sarah C. Roberts is a little known Freedom Fighter in American history. Roberts was only five years old when she and her father challenged the Boston Board of Education in 1849. The final decision in Roberts’ case, given by the Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw set up the ultimate precedence for the Plessy vs. Ferguson “separate but equal” ruling of 1896.
Roberts, with her lawyers Charles Sumner and Robert Morris, sued the city of Boston for the right to attend public school with white children. They intended to prove that "separate" schools did not meet the statutory requirement for "common" schools for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The school Roberts was supposed to attend; the Smith school did not have the same funding, faculty, or other materials that were available in the white schools in Boston. In order to be fair, Sumner and Morris maintained, the Boston school board needed to intervene and provide identical, integrated facilities.
The City defense argued that the law was that that each child would receive adequate education at a school which was geographically closest to them, and that it did not make sense for Roberts to travel across town to attend the Sun Court school for which she had been kicked out of one day previously for attempting to go to class.
In their final arguments, Sumner declared that before the law all men must be equal, and that it was necessary for "distinctions [to] disappear. He is not poor, weak, humble, or black; nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian... He is a man, the equal of all his fellow-men." Chief Justice Shaw retorted that in order to ascertain the best meaning of "equality," one had to look beyond the "great principle" to the law and its continuous adaptation to "respective relations and conditions" (Roberts v. The City of Boston, 1849, p. 206).10 Such a view treated societal norms as the key phenomena in need of investigation, while the law worked best when it mirrored these relations. At one point in his opinion, Shaw claimed that if there was an "odious distinction of caste," as the petitioners maintained, then it was the sole result of "a deep-rooted prejudice of public opinion" which "is not created by law, and probably cannot be changed by law" (p. 209). Essentially, that laws must be influenced by public opinion, and that it was not the job of the judiciary to go against general public attitudes.
As Marfouf Hasian Jr. and Geoffrey Klinger conclude in their paper on Sarah C. Roberts and Lemuel Shaw, “the belief that prejudices were not created or changed by the law provided the theoretical ground to justify political positions maintaining "separate but equal" education. When the law is treated as simply a reflection of some temporary majority, it became an impediment to meaningful social change both for that time and for subsequent generations.”

Sources-
http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/gallery/movment.asp
http://brownvboard.org/researh/handbook/sources/roberts-208.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi qa3669/is 200210/ai n9146075/pg 10

Posted by Mia Ragent

Amelia Boynton Robinson

Civil rights leader Amelia Platts Boynton Robinson was born on August 18, 1911 in Savannah, Georgia. Both of her parents were of African, Native American, and German descent.

Robinson began fighting for voting and property ownership rights and education for African Americans in the 1930s along with her husband Samuel William “Bill” Boynton who was president of registration and voting of the Fourth Congressional District. The Alabama Lawyers Association wrote that Samuel William Boynton “laid the historical foundation for the Voting Rights Act.” In 1936, Amelia Boynton Robinson wrote a play called “Through the Years”, a musical drama centered around the life of a freed slave, in order to raise money for a community center in Selma, Alabama that black people would be able to go to. She also served as Home Demonstration Agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the 30s.

Robinson lost her husband Bill to a heart attack in the 1960s, but this did not stop her from continuing to fight for freedom. Robinson’s own home and office served as a meeting place to plan civil rights demonstrations. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his attendants along with Congressmen and attorneys from across the U.S. were among those in attendance. In 1964, Robinson was the first African American woman from Alabama to seek a seat in Congress and the first woman to run as under the Democratic Party in Alabama. Amelia Boynton Robinson assisted in leading the first march across Edmund Pettus Bridge to Montgomery, Alabama on “Bloody Sunday”, March 7, 1965. She ended up gassed, beaten, and left for dead by Alabama State Troopers. Unfortunately, the gas seared her lungs and permanently damaged her singing voice. The photograph of the injured Amelia, which was seen on the news throughout the world, helped to gain support for the civil rights movement. When the Voting Rights Act was signed and made into law in 1965, Robinson went to Washington D.C. to meet with President Lyndon Johnson after he signed the act.

Amelia Boynton Robinson met Lyndon LaRouche during the early 1980s, and in 1984, she became a board member of the Schiller Institute, which was founded by Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Robinson has participated in hundreds of events at the Schiller Institute over the past 17 years, and has encouraged thousands of school-age children to learn about the history of the United States and to work for social change.

In addition to working for social change in the U.S., Robinson has gone to Europe as well. In the spring of 1990, Robinson spoke to thousands of people in Germany about the Martin Luther King movement. Soon after, Robinson won the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Medal on July 21, 1990 for her dedication to fighting for civil rights and human rights. In 1992, Robinson went to Croatia and worked with the Croatian Mothers of Peace, and in 2001, Amelia traveled to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Italy to become part of Lyndon LaRouche’s struggle for a New Bretton Woods system and the Eurasian Land-Bridge.

On March 14, 2000, 35 years after the Voting Rights Act became law, the politically active Robinson went to Washington D.C. to speak at a press conference at the National Press Club. As a member of the Michigan Democratic Presidential Caucus, she helped to release their findings that the Gore Democrats were ruining the Voting Rights Act by trying to stop Lyndon LaRouche’s 2001 presidential campaign.

At 96 years old, Amelia Boynton Robinson who has claimed that “it’s better to wear out than to rust out” is still alive today, and has been a registered voter since 1934. She is currently Vice Chairman of the Schiller Institute. People can read more about Amelia Boynton Robinson’s life and achievements in her autobiography titled Bridge Across Jordan, which was published in 1991 by the Schiller Institute. The book focuses on Robinson’s fight for both civil and human rights for American citizens of all racial backgrounds.

Here is an open letter from Robinson to European citizens from March of 2008:

- This Could Be a Treaty of Death for Nations -

March 20, 2008

It is very interesting and even fascinating to daydream (and sometimes in reality) to think of the growth of a family, from a couple, to many children, and from the one couple there are many and many generations throughout the world. And you love them, because they are your relatives, and take interest in them all, and we often speak of their successes. Then, why should any people be compelled to make war against their neighbors or friends and relations?

As a member and co-founder of Schiller Institute, living to give the best future to the BüSo, the LaRouche Youth Movement, and all the youth of the world, I want peace for everyone. But can there be peace without justice? There is no justice where evil men burn their brains out, planning wars and strife, violating the very concept of a nation!

Have you ever heard of the United States South, with its plantation sharecropper system, and our struggle to get people to register and vote throughout the United States? Have you ever heard of Bloody Sunday, on March 7, 1965 in Selma, Alabama, where people were beaten, and many lost their lives just because, when they reached voting age, they wanted to act as full citizens of their native country, the United States? Those are the very rights of man.

Well, that experience should never be repeated again in any country or countries, in a civilized world. With the shedding of blood, with their sweat and tears, human beings have fought to erase the fine print and hidden illegal terms in any contract, constitution, treaty, or governing law that cannot easily be interpreted or understood by all, and which the feudal system of the Dark Age has fought against justice to return.

I invite you to read my autobiography, Amelia Platts Boynton Robinson, Bridge Across Jordan, which now exists in German, Italian, and French. This book will give you a glimpse of what could happen, if you take your God-given right to national sovereignty for granted. The death penalty could be imposed upon one of your own, and he or she could rot in jail for years, while the law is being discussed by faceless bureaucrats. This Lisbon Treaty is a return to slavery, feudalism, and the plantation system: Demand a referendum in your country, now; otherwise, by then, complaining about it will be too late.

It is time to raise the issue: Do you want to be slave countries, or free people? It is as you wish.

It was Martin Luther King in his famous "I Have A Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963 in Washington, D.C., who reminded the world that all men are created equal, and that we are all God's children. Then, let us, all over the world, make his dream come true. He gave his life for this truth: Let us give our love, truth, and justice throughout the world.

Wherever you see young people with tables of literature, braving the hot or cold weather, or where they have meetings, please pay special attention: It could save you from a disaster, or it could cause us to stop, think, and discuss before your treaty becomes a Treaty of the Death of Freedom.

I invite you to make a change in the respect for your national constitutions that are being violated, even in your capitals. Cleaning up a constitution can only be accomplished when the citizens living under it fight for that right, and ensure that if it is to be changed, let the citizens of that sovereign country make the changes, not an army of politicians from other countries, who would rob you of your sovereignty, laws, constitution, and your way of life.

Constitutions see that every citizen has the same protections from birth to death, letting no committee or unelected bureaucrat make the laws of your nation. Be proud of who you are, build your nation, and offer help to your neighbors, in the solid tradition your forefathers handed down to you. In this, no country small or large has supremacy over any other, but all are equal in what they have to give to humanity.

How would you or your children feel, knowing that you have gone to war with your neighbor, because the treaty demands it, or if your whole country is put under a dictatorship that you cannot refuse, or you're compelled to go along or approve of the death penalty of someone, who might be one of your citizens, or even of your family. You can only blame yourselves for not fighting for your sovereign country, or forever blame yourselves for losing your rights as a nation, to become a part of the plantation system under the fascist Lisbon Treaty.

My spirit is with you in your struggle,

Amelia Boynton Robinson

This video on YouTube is of Robinson during a Kwanzaa celebration (the purpose of her speech is to empower African Americans and to give them a sense of pride and unity):

Sources:

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/biographys/bio_amelia_new.html

http://members.tripod.com/american_almanac/ameliamw.htm

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/03/22/amelia-boynton-robinsons-letter-citizens-europe-could-be-tre.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvjRUrWZ_jM