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Today's
Stories
July 23, 2004
Gary Leupp
The 9/11 Commission and the Looming
War on Iran
July
22, 2004
M.
Junaid Alam
Ten Ways to Build a Better Democrat
Brian
McKinlay
Rusted On Down Under: Howard, Bush and Sharon
Jason
Leopold
Cheney Lobbied for Easing of Sanctions on Terrorist Regimes While
CEO of Halliburton
Chris
Floyd
Mob Rule: Ripping the Lid Off of America's Pious Myths
Uri
Avnery
Chirac v. Sharon
July
21, 2004
Paula
J. Caplan
The Emotional Casualities of War: Psychologists
Can't Heal All the Damage
Joshua
Frank
Nader Sleeping with the Enemy? Let's be Fair
Ron
Jacobs
American Exceptionalism
Reza
Ghorashi
The Elections, Iran and al-Qaeda
Amy
Martin
Will Congress Rearm the Guatemalan Generals?
John
Ross
Bush May Lose, But His Wars Will Go On and On
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's Sizzling
New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
July
20, 2004
Stan
Cox
The Bush / Kerry War Ticket
Chris
Randolph
An Open Letter to Dr. Ehrenreich: It's Over, Barb!
Forrest
Hylton
The Ghosts of Gonismo: "Popular Patricipation"
and Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Mark
Scaramella
It's Official! Mendocino County is Crazier and Fatter Than the Rest
of California
Sam
Bahour
The World is Knocking on Israel's Door
George
Reiter
A Defense of David Cobb
John
Ross
Burying Iraq, Burying Bush
John
L. Hess
Girlie Stuff: Media Tolerance of Arnold & Co.
Website
of the Day
This Land is Your Land
July
19, 2004
Uri
Avnery
Marie and the Ghosts: the Hoax of Paris
Col.
Dan Smith
What Has Been Accomplished?
Mike
Whitney
Allawi: Our Puppet with a Pistol
Karyn
Strickler
Just Marriage, Not Gay Marriage
Robert
Fisk
The Crisis of Information in Baghdad
David
Swanson
Media Blackout of US Labor Opposition to Iraq
War
Jennifer
van Bergen
The Death of the Great Writ of Liberty
July
17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations is
Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything Wrong
with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe: Coffin Bombs
in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP, But a Movement
in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
| July
23, 2004
Get On the
Bush
150 Years
After Elizabeth Jennings
By
MICKEY Z
On
the mornings I board the Q101 bus from Queens to Manhattan, it's
not uncommon for the majority of my fellow riders to be people of
color. This is an unremarkable observation in 2004 New York where
integrated buses are hardly news...thanks to Rosa Parks and her
spontaneous act of bravery.
Well,
that's what we're taught, aren't we? However, to buy into the Rosa
Parks mythology* not only involves ignoring some crucial history
about 1955, it erases the name of Elizabeth "Lizzie" Jennings
from Big Apple lore.
It
was 150 years ago last week that Jennings, a 24-year-old schoolteacher
setting out to fulfill her duties as organist at the First Colored
Congregational Church on Sixth Street and Second Avenue, fatefully
waited for the bus on the corner of Pearl and Chatham. Getting around
1854 New York City often involved paying a fare to board a large
horse-drawn carriage...the forerunner to today's behemoth motorized
buses. For black New Yorkers like Jennings, it wasn't that simple.
Pre-Civil
War Manhattan may have been home to the nation's largest African-American
population and New York's black residents may have paid taxes and
owned property, but riding the bus with whites, well, that was a
different story. Some buses bore large "Colored Persons Allowed"
signs, while all other buses-those without the sign-were governed
by a rather arbitrary system of passenger choice.
"Drivers
determined who could ride," journalist Jasmin K. Williams explains,
adding that NYC bus drivers "carried whips to keep undesirable
passengers off." This unfortunate arrangement was the focus
of a burgeoning movement for public transportation equality with
Rev. J.W.C. Pennington of the First Colored Congregational Church
(where Jennings just so happened to play the organ) playing a major
role.
Against
such a volatile backdrop, Lizzie Jennings opted for a bus *without*
the "Colored Persons Allowed" sign on July 16, 1854. The
New York Tribune described what happened next: "She got upon
one of the Company's cars...on the Sabbath, to ride to church. The
conductor undertook to get her off, first alleging the car was full;
when that was shown to be false, he pretended the other passengers
were displeased at her presence; but (when) she insisted on her
rights, he took hold of her by force to expel her. She resisted."
The
outraged Jennings told the conductor she was "a respectable
person, born and raised in this city," calling him "a
good-for-nothing, impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while
on their way to church."
The
Tribune picks up the story from there: "The conductor got her
down on the platform, jammed her bonnet, soiled her dress and injured
her person. Quite a crowd gathered, but she effectually resisted.
Finally, after the car had gone on further, with the aid of a policeman
they succeeded in removing her."
This
would not be the end of it for, like Rosa Parks, Jennings' behavior
was no impetuous act of resistance. "Jennings was well connected,"
says Williams. "Her father was an important businessman and
community leader with ties to the two major black churches in the
city." Not satisfied with the massive rally that took place
the following day at her church, Elizabeth Jennings hired the law
firm of Culver, Parker & Arthur and took the Third Avenue Railway
Company to court.
In
a classic "who knew?" situation, Jennings was represented
by a 24-year-old lawyer named Chester A. Arthur...yes, he who would
go on to become the 21st president upon the death of James A. Garfield
in 1881. The trial took place in the bus company's home base of
Brooklyn-then a separate city-where, in early 1855, Judge William
Rockwell of the Brooklyn Circuit Court ruled in the black schoolteacher's
favor...in that 1855 sort of way: "Colored persons if sober,
well behaved and free from disease, had the same rights as others
and could neither be excluded by any rules of the Company, nor by
force or violence," Rockwell declared.
Jennings
claimed $500 worth of damages but as the Tribune put it, "Some
jury members had peculiar notions as to colored people's rights,"
and she ended up with $225, plus another $22.50 for court costs.
Regardless, just one day after the verdict, the Third Avenue Railway
Company issued an order to admit African-Americans onto their buses.
By
1860, all of the city's street and rail cars were desegregated...and
Elizabeth Jennings had married Charles Graham. She was still teaching
in New York's African-American schools. Her struggles, however,
were far from over.
Thanks
to a July 1863 resolution called the Union Conscription Act, any
New Yorker with a spare $300 was able to buy his way out of the
Civil War draft. Resentment over such favoritism soon turned into
rioting by poor whites. "The crowd's anger (had) two sources,"
explains historian Kenneth C. Davis, "the idea of fighting
to free the slaves, and the unfairness of the ability of the wealthy
to avoid conscription." The ensuing "Draft Riots"
saw over 70 African-Americans lynched. There were other, lesser-known
victims...like Thomas J. Graham, one-year-old son of Elizabeth and
Charles. Circumstances surrounded the child's death remain unclear
but author John Hewitt, who has researched Jennings's life, believes
young Thomas died of "convulsions" as the rioting and
violence played out on the streets outside his home.
Although
calm had yet to be restored to her city, Elizabeth Graham boldly
solicited the help of a white undertaker and managed to get her
son's body to Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery for a proper burial.
Elizabeth
Jennings-Graham died in 1901...and I seriously doubt many of my
co-commuters on the Q101 have ever heard of her.
*Elizabeth
Jennings' spiritual progeny was also "well-connected,"
having spent twelve years leading her local NAACP chapter. The summer
before she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger,
Parks "attended a ten-day training session at Tennessee's labor
and civil rights organizing school, the Highlander Center, where
she'd met an older generation of civil rights activists and discussed
the recent Supreme Court decision banning 'separate-but-equal' schools,"
writes journalist Paul Loeb. "In short," he says, "Parks
didn't make a spur-of-the-moment decision."
In
her 1991 book, "My Story," Parks writes: "People
always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but
that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than
I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although
some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42. No,
the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
Mickey
Z. is the author of two brand new books: "The Seven
Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda" (Common
Courage Press) and "A Gigantic Mistake: Articles and Essays
for Your Intellectual Self-Defense" (Library Empyreal/Wildside
Press). For more information, please visit: http://mickeyz.net.
Weekend Edition July 17 / 18, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations is
Must Reading
Ghada
Karmi
Vanishing the Palestinians
Lenni
Brenner
When Cattle Unite, Lions Go Hungry: Notes for Ralph Nader
Ben
Tripp
Man on a Bridge: a Ghost Story
Brandy
Baker
What Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton Make of John Kerry?
M.
Shahid Alam
Israel Builds Another Wall
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Nuclear Hypocrisy: Israel, Iran and the IAEA
Patrick
Bond
The George Bush of Africa
Fred
Gardner
Politics of Marijuana: Cannabiniod Therapuetics
William
Blum
Bush and Thucydides
Ben
Terrall
Carter and the Indonesia Elections: "I Don't See Anything Wrong
with a General Running the Country"
Tom
Barry
John Lehman on the War Path
David
Vest
Dylan Without the Music
Phyllis
Pollack
Return to Sin City: Keith Richards Does Gram Parsons
Ron
Jacobs
Smearing Muhammad Ali: Bob Feller Strikes Out
Joshua
Frank
Kerry to Edwards: "Let's Lose!"
David
Nally
A Call for Sudan: Our Georgraphical Blindspot
Toni
Solo
Bolivia's Gas Referendum
Landau,
Hassan, Prashad & Lindorff
Three Reviews of Moore's F911
Poets's
Basement
Ford, Smith and Albert
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