Linda T. Wynn
Hate groups such as the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized the makeshift city by firing shots into the tents.
Tent City (1960–1962)
In 1959 African Americans in Fayette and Haywood Counties in Tennessee fought for the right to vote. The concern for voting emerged as a byproduct of the absence of black jurors for the trial of Burton Dodson, an African American farmer in his seventies who was tried for the 1941 murder of a white man. By denying African Americans their rights to participate in the electoral process, whites eliminated them from the pool of potential jurors. To combat this injustice, African Americans in the two counties organized the Original Fayette County Civic and Welfare League and the Haywood County Civic and Welfare League. Both leagues launched voter registration drives, and a number of blacks registered to vote during June and July. However, when the Democrats held their August primary, black registered voters were not allowed to cast their ballots. League members initiated the first legal action against a party primary under the Civil Rights Act of 1957 when they filed suit against the local Democratic Party.
Whites in the west Tennessee counties used their economic advantage to penalize African Americans. Many blacks lost their employment, credit, and insurance policies. Whites circulated a list of those African Americans who had attempted to vote, and then white merchants refused to sell them goods and services; some white physicians even withheld medical care. In the winter of 1960, white property owners evicted hundreds of black tenant farmers from their lands. African American leaders did not surrender to the pressure tactics. With the support of black property owners, they formed makeshift communities known as “Tent Cities.” Day-today existence proved strenuous for the “Tent City” residents. Hate groups such as the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized the makeshift city by firing shots into the tents. The U.S. Justice Department filed several lawsuits against landowners, merchants, and one financial institution for violating civil rights laws. On July 26, 1962, as noted in the July 27, 1962, Memphis Commercial Appeal, “landowners were enjoined from engaging in any acts … for the purpose of interfering with the right to vote and to vote for candidates in public office.”
Linda T. Wynn
Tulsa, Oklahoma, Race Riot (1921)
The greatest period of racial conflict that the nation witnessed came in 1919, when approximately 25 race riots occurred in America’s urban cities. The reign of terror continued beyond that time, though not in the same numbers as seen during the Red Summer of 1919. Prominent among these were the Tulsa Race Riot of June 1921, which set off what has been called the worst race riot in U.S. history. After a 19-year-old black man named Dick Rowland was falsely accused of assaulting a young white woman, other blacks armed themselves and went to the jail to ensure his safety. Later, as tensions mounted, black and white groups engaged in what some called a “race war.” During the 16-hour clash, nine whites and 21 blacks were known to have lost their lives; over 800 people were injured and hospitalized and nearly 10,000 blacks were left homeless. The black community also lost churches, restaurants, stores, two movie theaters, a hospital, a bank, a post office, a library, and schools. The riot shattered the thriving black community known as the Deep Greenwood district, reducing it to ashes. After martial law was set up and the National Guard took control of Tulsa, most of the black residents were under guard; internment centers were set up for blacks, who were then held for civil prosecution. Many blacks deserted Tulsa for cities outside the state. About 20 black men were indicted after the riot, but no whites. No one was jailed. By the end of September 1921, the case against Rowland was dismissed. The Deep Greenwood district was rebuilt but never regained the economic status that it had enjoyed before the riot.
Jessie Carney Smith
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad, in the context of American history, refers to the secret, loosely organized network of people and the hiding spaces they used to guide slaves to freedom in the free states or Canada. While its legendary status during the antebellum period has become commonplace in American history, the history of the system actually dates back to the colonial period, when Native Americans aided the escape of African slaves on the frontier of planter society. Even so, the success of the Underground Railroad in securing the freedom of thousands of slaves during the plantation period stands as a testament to the strength of its participants and the enduring nature of its spirit.
The Seminole people of Florida provide the strongest example of furtive Native American and African slave cooperation. Based on religious principles, the Quakers, like the Native Americans, assisted the development of the second phase of early escape networks. As the third and most widely known phase, the secret network during the antebellum period was first given its name in print materials during the 1840s. Soon after, its elements assumed other railroad terminology. Those guiding escapees were dubbed “conductors,” while escapees were called “passengers” and the homes in which they received shelter were called “stations.” The network had numerous routes, called “lines,” in at least 14 states that provided circuitous paths to confuse pursuers.
Escapees traveled mostly as individuals or in small groups and were generally middle-aged male field workers who often used their free status to raise the money to purchase freedom for their families. Supposedly guided by astrological constellations such as the Big Dipper and spirituals such as “Steal Away” and “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” the system became more nuanced in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Acts that were passed to thwart abolitionists and the growing flow of blacks to the North. Among the Underground Railroad’s most successful conductors were the Quakers and Harriet Tubman, who single-handedly guided at least 300 slaves to freedom using the Underground Railroad’s routes. Dubbed the “Father of the Underground Railroad,” William Still helped hundreds of slaves to escape to freedom, too, often hiding them in his Philadelphia home.
The perception that the Underground Railroad was a highly systemized operation of abolitionists, however, does not accurately represent the courageous efforts of random people, both free and slave, black and white, who offered assistance to escaped slaves. The bravery and resourcefulness of escapees is also underestimated in conventional ideas of the Underground Railroad. In fact, fleeing slaves were mostly aided after they had already survived the most dangerous part of their escape. Despite perceptions of its effectiveness and operation in secret, exaggerated accounts of the Underground Railroad’s success were commonly used as propaganda for both anti and proslavery causes in the North and the South. Conductors and fellow abolitionists used the accounts to raise support for anti-slavery causes by illustrating the evils of slavery, while slave owners pointed to the reports as evidence of the North’s disobedience in the face of the Fugitive Slave Act.
An 1893 painting by artist Charles Webber depicts the hardships slaves faced as they fled on the Underground Railroad (Library of Congress).
Crystal A. deGregory
Voter Registration Projects
During the era of segregation, African Americans were denied voting rights by law in several southern states, and hindered from the free exercise of their Constitutional rights in other locations. Poll taxes, unfair literacy tests, “grandfather clauses” (prohibiting blacks from voting unless they could prove an ancestor of theirs could legally vote before 1857), and violence were used to prevent and discourage blacks from voting, especially in areas where they were a majority or large percentage of the population. Civil rights organizations began direct action and legal initiatives to challenge the existing order and secure voting rights. The NAACP launched several