Rosa Parks' case (December 5, 1955) shows how impossible
it is to measure the monstrous impact of government imposing segregation
and teaching racism as official policy for so long. Government racism
did much more damage than private enterprise could ever have afforded to
do. It would have been better if government had stayed out of buses
altogether. Instead, the government created bus monopolies and then forced
the bus company to treat customers in a racist manner. http://rexcurry.net/rosaparks.html
The Parks story ignores how government started the problem
that Parks helped to end. When government began socializing and monopolizing
buses, it expanded government-mandated racism. Parks' persecution is
another example of government peeing on everyone and then claiming that
it was rain.
The persecution of Parks on a city-regulated bus is similar
to the persecution of Parks' friends and family on government school buses
and within government schools. Government forced people to ride segregated
buses and to attend the government's segregated schools.
The government's takeover of education was promoted by
Edward Bellamy and Francis Bellamy (author of the "Pledge of Allegiance").
They wanted the government to take over all schools and use the schools
to impose their dogma of "National Socialism" and create and "Industrial
Army." The Bellamys were bigots, self-proclaimed National Socialists,
and advocated that government should operate buses, schools and other services
as socialist monopolies and end all of the better alternatives. When the
government granted their wish, government schools imposed segregation by
law and taught racism as official policy. http://rexcurry.net/pledgebigot.html
Francis Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance (1892) was the
origin of the stiff-arm salute adopted later by the National Socialist German
Workers Party, as uncovered by the noted historian Dr. Rex Curry (author
of "Pledge of Allegiance Secrets"). http://www.rexcurry.net/stopthepledge4.html
Because of the Bellamys, students were forced to perform
the nazi salute to the US flag in segregated schools that taught racism as
official policy. See the eye-popping photo at http://rexcurry.net/pledge-allegiance-pledge-allegiance2.jpg
That behavior (robotic chanting to flags with the straight-arm
salute) began in the United States three decades before it was adopted by
the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and the government's racism
in busing, schools and elsewhere outlasted German National Socialism. The
government's bus monopolies still exist to this day, as do the government's
schools. http://www.rexcurry.net/pledgeracism.html
There are frightening similarities to the way anti-black
laws were imposed in socialized (government) services in the United States
and anti-jewish laws were imposed in socialized (government) services in
Germany under the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Dr. Curry is an attorney and is often asked about important
court cases, including that of Rosa Parks. Curry said, "If the government
had taken over all churches then the same horror would have resulted, with
government-mandated racism in government churches. The libertarian
solution would have been to end socialized churches. It is fortunate
that the Constitution prevented government churches. It is unfortunate
that the Constitution did not prevent government buses, government-created
bus monopolies, and government schools, though they are no where authorized."
In addition to ending government’s racism, Parks should
have ended government involvement in busings. The separation of economy and
state is as important as the separation of church and state. http://www.rexcurry.net/schoolsmain.html
Its not too late.
They boycotted the buses for a year and used other means
of transportation. They were not able to simply operate their own buses,
because the buses were a government-created monopoly. They were even persecuted
by the government for car-pooling on the grounds that it was an unauthorized
bus substitute.
A lot has not changed. Parks’ descendants cannot
operate their own buses today. If they tried, then the result would
be the same: they would be jailed and persecuted by local officials.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Similar behavior occurred in Brown v. Board of Education http://rexcurry.net/schoolbrown.html
Abolish the
N word, Ban the N-word http://rexcurry.net/N_word_N-word_Nword_abolishthenword_banthenword_abolish_ban.html
Rosa Parks (December 5, 1955) and the bus boycott http://rexcurry.net/rosaparks.html
Another report said that the bus company nearly went bankrupt from the boycott
that followed.
It is amazing how media stories about segregation never
mention that the government was responsible for segregation.
Media stories about Rosa Parks never mention that the
reason the bus was segregated was because of government - because a law dictated
segregation on the private bus. That there were private bus companies
at the time that did not segregate. The 1955 case of City of Montgomery v.
Rosa Parks involved charges that Parks violated STATE segregation STATUTES
by not relinquishing her seat on a Montgomery City bus to a white man.
Even the infamous case of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S.
537 (1896), Argued on April 13, 1896, Decided on May 18, 1896 is another example
of government mandated racism in private enterprise, yet the media never
mention that fact. A Louisiana law mandated racial segregation on its trains.
The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars
for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy--who was seven-eighths
Caucasian--took a seat in a government mandated "whites only" car of a Louisiana
train. He refused to move to the government mandated car reserved for blacks
and was arrested. The U.S. Supreme court at that time upheld the
state-imposed racial segregation. The justices based their decision on the
separate-but-equal doctrine, that separate facilities for blacks and whites
satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal. (The phrase,
"separate but equal" was not part of the opinion.)
Southern states enacted laws banning black folk from
sitting at segregated lunch counters. The federal courts eventually got around
to throwing out those laws. To this day the media often show historic
photos of blacks at segregated lunch counters (e.g. at W. T. Grants)
and the media fails to clarify whether the segregation was a result of government
laws.
Government, historically and to this day, has been the
greatest promoter of racism and other forms of discrimination with anti-libertarian
laws (regarding buses, government schools, government universities, the military,
anti-miscegenation laws). Yet, when relief is sought, it seems that
Government is then used as an excuse to pile on even more government programs,
along with controls of private individuals and their lives and businesses.
-------------------------------
In the infamous case of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S.
537 (1896), Argued on April 13, 1896, Decided on May 18, 1896, the Question
Presented to U.S. Supreme Court was:
Is Louisiana's law mandating racial
segregation on
its trains an unconstitutional infringement on both
the privileges and immunities and the equal
protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?
The infamous conclusion by the U.S. Supreme Court was:
No, the state law is within constitutional
boundaries. The majority upheld state-imposed
racial segregation. The justices based their decision
on the separate-but-equal doctrine, that separate
facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the
Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were
equal. (The phrase, "separate but equal" was not
part of the opinion.) Brown conceded that the 14th
amendment intended to establish absolute equality
for the races before the law. But Brown noted that
"in the nature of things it could not have been
intended to abolish distinctions based upon color,
or to enforce social, as distinguished from political
equality, or a commingling of the two races
unsatisfactory to either." In short, segregation does
not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination.
----------------------------
Fred David Gray served as defense attorney in the celebrated case of City
of Montgomery v. Rosa Parks. After graduating from Alabama State University
in 1951, you decided to enter law school. Because African-Americans were not
admitted to any law school in Alabama at the time, the state helped finance
your enrollment at a law school elsewhere, and thus you arrived as a law student
at this University. To A few months after your graduation in 1954, you passed
both the Ohio and Alabama bar examinations and, determined to change segregation
and discrimination, you moved to Alabama to become the only black attorney
in Montgomery. The following year, you defended Mrs. Parks against the charge
that she violated state segregation statutes by not relinquishing her seat
on a Montgomery City bus to a white man. While your defense failed on a technicality,
the case mushroomed into a bus boycott for which you also served as counsel.
The boycott in turn launched the most visible portion of the civil rights
movement, under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King and with your legal
advice.
--------------------------
The media always fail to make any distinction between
discrimination by private individuals and discrimination required from private
citizens by government, historically and to this day. It seems that the media
will never even mention any distinction between discrimination that is compelled
by law and discrimination that is private. Journalists who do not make
the distinction are unable to make the distinction between statism and freedom.
Journalists who do not discern the difference are unable to discern the proper
role of government: That government is as wrong to compel discriminatory behavior
by people as it is in forbidding discriminatory behavior.
That it is never enough to repeal the laws that dictate
discrimination, but that new laws, laws that attempt to dictate non-discriminatory
behavior upon private citizens have to be piled on top.
Government, historically and to this day, has been the
greatest promoter of racism and other forms of discrimination. Yet,
when relief is sought, it seems that Government is then used as an excuse
to
*************************
Mr. Lifson contacted retired employees of the bus company including Mrs.
Margaret Cummings, widow of the former bus station manager Charles Homer Cummings.
Mrs. Cummings provided a scrapbook of newspaper clippings that her husband
had kept during and after the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.
National City Lines (which was the parent company of the Montgomery City
Bus Lines) had employed a clipping service to clip and save any newspaper
articles about the company’s bus service. Charles Cummings had kept the scrapbook
of newspaper articles from the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott. Next to articles
describing the arrest of Rosa Parks, he wrote "#2857" and "Blake/#2857." James
Blake was the bus driver who had Rosa Parks arrested. Mr. Cummings’ relatives
confirm that he jotted down the bus number because he felt the events were
so important.
With this information in hand, Mr. Lifson consulted with the Motor Bus Society
of Clark, New Jersey, a nonprofit historical organization. Their research
into the records of the General Motors Corp. showed that bus Serial Number
1132 was produced in Pontiac, Michigan, in March 1948. It was a TDH-3610 (Transit
Diesel Hydraulic Transmission, 36 passenger, Model 10) delivered to the National
City Lines (NCL) of Chicago, Illinois.
NCL records indicate that the bus was assigned Coach #2857 and sent to Terre
Haute, Indiana. In 1954 it was transferred from Terre Haute to Montgomery,
Alabama.
Thus, we know that bus #2857 was in Montgomery in 1955, that it was informally
documented as the Rosa Parks bus at the time, and that employees passed this
information on to Mr. Summerford in 1970, who then passed it on to other people.
In October 2001, a member of the Museum’s conservation staff personally
inspected the bus, ensuring that its markings and identification were original.
A certified forensic document examiner employed by the Museum examined the
scrapbooks and saw no reason to doubt the authenticity of the notations.
Often, as in this case, historical truth is not officially recorded, but
is passed along in private memoirs and oral tradition.
She was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known
as “Jim Crow laws.” Mrs. Parks appealed her conviction and thus formally challenged
the legality of segregation.
At the same time, local civil rights activists initiated a boycott of the
Montgomery bus system. In cities across the South, segregated bus companies
were daily reminders of the inequities of American society. Since African
Americans made up about 75 percent of the riders in Montgomery, the boycott
posed a serious economic threat to the company and a social threat to white
rule in the city.
A group named the Montgomery Improvement Association, composed of local
activists and ministers, organized the boycott. As their leader, they chose
a young Baptist minister who was new to Montgomery: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sparked by Mrs. Parks’ action, the boycott lasted 381 days, into December
1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation law was unconstitutional
and the Montgomery buses were integrated. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the
beginning of a revolutionary era of non-violent mass protests in support of
civil rights in the United States.
It was not just an accident that the civil rights movement began on a city
bus. In a famous 1896 case involving a black man on a train, Plessy v. Ferguson,
the U.S. Supreme Court enunciated the “separate but equal” rationale for Jim
Crow. Of course, facilities and treatment were never equal.
Under Jim Crow customs and laws, it was relatively easy to separate the
races in every area of life except transportation. Bus and train companies
couldn’t afford separate cars and so blacks and whites had to occupy the
same space.
Thus, transportation was one the most volatile arenas for race relations
in the South. Mrs. Parks remembers going to elementary school in Pine Level,
Alabama, where buses took white kids to the new school but black kids had
to walk to their school.
“I'd see the bus pass every day,” she said. “But to me, that was a way of
life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among
the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world” (emphasis
added).
Montgomery’s Jim Crow customs were particularly harsh and gave bus drivers
great latitude in making decisions on where people could sit. The law even
gave bus drivers the authority to carry guns to enforce their edicts. Mrs.
Parks’ attorney Fred Gray remembered, “Virtually every African-American person
in Montgomery had some negative experience with the buses. But we had no choice.
We had to use the buses for transportation.”
Civil rights advocates had outlawed Jim Crow in interstate train travel,
and blacks in several Southern cities attacked the practice of segregated
See the bus specificationsbus systems. There had been a bus boycott in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, in 1953, but black leaders compromised before making real
gains. Joann Robinson, a black university professor and activist in Montgomery,
had suggested the idea of a bus boycott months before the Parks arrest.
Two other women had been arrested on buses in Montgomery before Parks and
were considered by black leaders as potential clients for challenging the
law. However, both were rejected because black leaders felt they would not
gain white support. When she heard that the well-respected Rosa Parks had
been arrested, one Montgomery African American woman exclaimed, “They’ve messed
with the wrong one now.”
In the South, city buses were lightning rods for civil rights activists.
It took someone with the courage and character of Rosa Parks to strike with
lightning. And it required the commitment of the entire African American community
to fan the flames ignited by that lightning into the fires of the civil rights
revolution.
Stands trial and is convicted of disorderly conduct
Attends the first mass meeting of the Montgomery Improvement Association
led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins
U.S. Supreme Court rules segregation on Montgomery buses to be unconstitutional
Nov 13, 1956
The issue of segregated seating had long been a source of resentment
in Montgomery's black community. African Americans were forced to pay their
fares at the front then reboard the bus at the back. They faced systematic
harassment from white drivers, who sometimes pulled away before black passengers
could reboard. On the bus, blacks sat behind a mobile barrier dividing the
races, and as the bus filled, the barrier was pushed back to make room for
white passengers. No black person could sit in the same row as a white, and
whites had priority in this middle "no-man's land."
*****************************
Thurgood Marshall’s Libertarian Moment (- it didn't last long) by
Myles Kantor a law student at Stetson University. This was published
at http://www.lewrockwell.com/kantor/kantor4.html on Sept. 21, 2000.
Ok, my title’s a bit misleading. Thurgood
Marshall was a libertarian about as much as
Plato was a family advocate. The legacy for
which he’s lauded (most gratingly by
white social democrats gorged on paternalism)
is in direct conflict with libertarian
principles. One of Marshall’s law clerks
attributed chief responsibility to him "for the
idea that social reform, through the Courts
in the name of the Constitution, was both
possible and desirable." So what if these
"reforms" spat in the face of American
constitutional order and perpetuated the
caste-status of countless black Americans?
(Just to round things out, there’s Marshall’s
blatant textual defiance, shared by William
Brennan, in deeming "The death penalty.a
cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by
the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." Never
mind that the latter amendment
mentions depriving individuals of "life."
Constitutional scholar Leonard Levy rightly
observes in this context, "Brennan and Thurgood
Marshall corrupt the judicial process
and discredit it.") Marshall, however, stands
out as an example of philosophical
contingency and individual action. His jurisprudence
largely pivoted on this
relationship, specifically with regard to
the role of government and the nature of
property rights.
Marshall’s turning point came during the
student sit-ins at segregated restaurants.
Hundreds of students were arrested for trespassing,
which is what tends to happen
when individuals refuse to exit land that
doesn’t belong to them. Marshall at the time
was the top attorney for the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund. Present to
hear Marshall’s reaction to defending the
students was Derrick Bell (who goes on to be
a professorial victicrat, to use Larry Elder’s
excellent term): "Thurgood stormed
around the room proclaiming in a voice that
could be heard across Columbus Circle
that he did not care what anyone said, he
was not going to represent a bunch of crazy
colored students who violated the sacred
property rights of white folks by going in
their stores or lunch counters and refusing
to leave when ordered to do so."
That’s impeccable logic. (I think the students
were more misguided than crazy,
though.) Once one sobers up from the intoxicant
of social justice (which has a knack
for begetting antisocial injustice), the
students’ actions boiled down to criminal
conduct, plain and simple. Unfortunately,
the students’ indignation for state tyranny
eclipsed their respect for proprietary prerogative.
I’m sure many consider that
disrespect a permissible and even commendable
means of achieving justice. The
terrible irony is that those means helped
institutionalize injustice on a massive scale
while convincing a country that justice was
served by doing so.
Marshall’s earlier support of property rights
didn’t endure and in fact he facilitated his
volte-face. Juan Williams describes the course
of events in his recent biography:
"Looking for strategies for defending the
students, Marshall called a conference of civil
rights lawyers at Howard University on March
18 [1960]. Most of the lawyers, like
Marshall, were skeptical of finding any legal
basis for defense. The courts had long
held that store owners had the right to refuse
to do business with anyone they chose
not to serve.
Marshall’s young, activist staff, however,
put forward the idea that a restaurant had to
deal with anyone who walked in the door,
regardless of race, under the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
And Marshall became a convert
when he began to consider that if racial
prejudice were enforced by the state’s police
and courts, then it was unconstitutional."
The Supreme Court went on to be converted,
and private prejudice was deemed state
prejudice in Garner v. Louisiana (1961).
It requires not legal profundity but literacy
to discern the Equal Protection Clause has
no bearing on the prejudice of a restauranteur.
The sentence where that clause appears
begins, "No State shall." No less an activist
justice than William O. Douglas recognized
this in his concurring opinion:
"It is, of course, state action that is prohibited
by the Fourteenth Amendment, not the
actions of individuals. So far as the Fourteenth
Amendment is concerned, individuals
can be as prejudiced and intolerant as they
like." He however went on to write
regarding restaurants, drugstores, etc.:
"Though they are private enterprises, they are
public facilities in which the States may
not enforce a policy of racial segregation."
This blurs the distinction between citizen
and state, treating individuals conducting
commerce on private property as extensions
of the state (echoes of a certain ideology
imposed on Italy, Germany, and elsewhere
during the first half of the twentieth
century?). Brought to its logical conclusion,
this means homeowners cannot engage in
discriminatory conduct on their property,
for instance posting a sign on one’s lawn
reading "Whites Not Allowed on This Land."
After all, if their racial prejudice were
enforced by the state’s police and courts
(i.e., if a white trespasser were treated as
such), that would constitute state action.
Like a restaurant license, title to a house
derives from the state; and surely a "public
interest" could be contrived against
residential racial prejudice as it was against
commercial racial prejudice. (The Court did
something akin to this in the 1948 case of
Shelley v. Kraemer, in which it was held
judicial enforcement of racially restrictive
covenants in land transactions violated the
Equal Protection Clause. As an additional
nexus, Marshall was one of the attorneys
that argued against the covenant’s legitimacy.)
Douglas’s exemption of individual
conduct from the Fourteenth Amendment, then,
is vacuous.
Further decisions eroding property rights
were to follow, and Marshall played an
important role in that erosion. Amalgamated
Food Employees Union Local 500 v.
Logan Valley Plaza (1968) is emblematic.
(Marshall was now a member of the
Supreme Court, previously serving on the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals and as
Solicitor General.) The Court had to decide
the permissibility of picketing on a
supermarket’s property located in a shopping
mall. Marshall’s majority opinion held
the First Amendment barred the supermarket
from ejecting the picketers, citing a rule
from an earlier case:
"The more an owner, for his advantage, opens
up his property for use by the public in
general, the more do his rights become circumscribed
by the statutory and
constitutional rights of those who use it."
Justice Hugo Black would have no truck with
such sophistry: "[W]hether this Court
likes it or not, the Constitution recognizes
and supports the concept of private
ownership of property." "These pickets do
have a constitutional right to speak about
Weis’ [the supermarket owner] refusal to
hire union labor," Black wrote, "but they do
not have a constitutional right to compel
Weis to furnish them a place to do so on its
property." Indeed, he went further and argued
the Court’s action was a taking for
which just compensation was due under the
Fifth Amendment: "[I]f this Court is going
to arrogate to itself the power to act as
the Government’s agent to take a part of Weis’
property to give to the pickets for their
use, the Court should also award Weis just
compensation for the property taken."
In Garner and Amalgamated Food Employees,
Marshall set forth the formula that
private property plus public purpose equals
proprietary diminishment, i.e., a disability
is inflicted upon businessmen. I know a beekeeper
that harvests honey and sells it at a
stand in front of his farm. Under the said
formula, if he kicked off Freedom for Bees
activists from his honey stand, it’s no long
shot some court would hold that abridges
the constitutional right of bee activists
to picket on his land. Stated more bluntly, the
state would compel the beekeeper to permit
trespassing.
The racial discrimination that prompted Marshall’s
conversion to coercive property
usage is grounded in the much broader premise
that the State can subordinate a
rudimentary right to realize an objective,
in this instance ostensible social harmony and
freedom of speech. In their convenient detachment
from the fallout of their haughty
holdings, judges can ignore how they have
exacerbated social tension and created a
right to trespass both literally and figuratively
on property rights. (I guess that means I
have the right to picket on the property
of and gain entrance to a women’s gym
because the proprietor has segregated me
from fit bachelorettes.)
The approach of that paradigmatic libertarian
Murray Rothbard simplifies this
Byzantine subordination and promotes individual
rights. In his article on the
flag-burning controversy ("The Flag Flap,"
The Free Market, October 1995),
Rothbard quickly went to the heart of the
matter and argued, "[T]he entire problem can
be resolved by focusing.on the natural and
integral right to private property and its
freedom of use." Applying this basic liberty,
one discovers people may destroy their
own property or deliver an oration in protest,
but that does not entitle them to do so on
the property of others. The relationship
is clear: "[F]ree speech or free press rights are
a subset, albeit an important one, of the
rights of private property: the right to hire, to
own, to sell."
Mark Tushnet, a Marshall law clerk and author
of two studies on him, observes that
"Marshall was not a strong traditionalist,
though he felt traditionalism’s pull." The pull
is seen in Marshall’s initial aversion to
defending the student trespassers. This was
harmonious with the Madisonian maxim that
"Government is instituted no less for
protection of the property than of the persons
of individuals." At the forefront of civil
rights litigation, Marshall was in a position
to promote the rights of black Americans in
a liberal manner conducive to justice. But
instead of pursuing rollback of the massive
statism that had originally dispossessed
blacks of the most elementary self-ownership
(i.e., slavery), Marshall sought to redirect
statism’s momentum with the effect of
advancing the Marxian prescription, "despotic
inroads on the rights of property." Juan
Williams’s description of Marshall as an
"American Revolutionary" is therefore
accurate, although not in the sense he intends.
(Marshall also took an ahistorical, statist
position in supporting what amounted to gun
prohibition: "I don’t believe you have any
right to carry a gun, except for policemen
and law enforcement officers. But I don’t
see why anybody else needs a gun." It’s as
if he were oblivious to the fact that a salient
method of racial subordination in American
history was deprivation of the right to bear
arms. See Stephen P. Halbrook’s Freedmen,
the Fourteenth Amendment, and the
Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876 and The Second
Amendment: Toward an
Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, Robert
J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond,
Georgetown Law Journal, December, 1991.)
Thurgood Marshall had his libertarian moment.
His failure to pursue it
was everyone’s loss.
September 21, 2000
Myles Kantor is a law student at Stetson
University.
http://rexcurry.net is the first, or one
of the first, to use the phrases below, according to searches of the internet
and newsgroups. The number on the left is the web search result total,
the number on the right is the newsgroup search result total. The
searches show how the fault for segregation is not placed upon the government
via government mandate, nor even upon "government schools" (for which the
misleading term "public schools" is often substituted in the media).
“government mandated segregation in government schools” 0,
0
“government mandated segregation in public schools”
0, 0
“government mandated segregation in schools”
0, 0
"mandated segregation in government schools"
0, 0
"mandated segregation in private schools"
0,
0
"mandated segregation in public schools"
9, 0
"mandated segregation in education"
9, 0
"mandated segregation in schools"
4, 0
"mandated segregation"
587,
168
"ended segregation in government schools" 0,
0
"ended segregation in public schools"
124, 4
"ended segregation in public"
174, 4
"ended segregation"
1720, 334