Atlanta Mayoral Race Results in Runoff Election

The much watched Atlanta mayoral race is not over yet. Mayoral candidates Mary Norwood and Kasim Reed will go head to head in a run-off election on December 1, after neither gained the 50% of the vote needed to win the election outright on November 3rd.

Norwood, an at-large member of the Atlanta city council, got 45% of the vote. Reed, who is a Georgia state senator, came in second place with 38% of the vote. Atlanta City Council President Lisa Borders was third with 14% of the vote in an eight person race.

Atlanta City Councilwoman and Mayoral Candidate Mary Norwood

This election has become notable because of the racial dynamics involved. Norwood is white, and if she wins, she will be the first white mayor of Atlanta in 36 years. The city is roughly 56% African American, 36% white, and 5% Hispanic. Although race is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, Norwood is popular throughout many parts of the city, and is seen as having a good chance of winning the run-off.

Georgia State Senator and Atlanta Mayoral Candidate Kasim Reed

In the November 3rd election, Norwood did very well in the white areas of Atlanta, and had some pockets of black support throughout the city as well. Reed did well in southwest Atlanta and in predominantly black areas of northwest and west Atlanta.

The big questions going into the runoff are, who will the supporters of 3rd place finisher Lisa Borders vote for? And, how many people will come out to vote in December? As reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution,

In 2001, when Shirley Franklin first ran for mayor, 41 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Tuesday, only about 24 percent of registered voters showed up. In many black areas away from Reed’s stronghold in southwest Atlanta, voter turnout was extremely low. At the polling station of the Central United Methodist Church on Mitchell Street on the West Side, only 4.63 percent of registered voters cast a ballot. In many southwest Atlanta precincts, more than 30 percent of registered voters turned out.

Low turnout would probably be least favorable to Reed.

Houston Mayoral Race Run-off

The mayoral race in Houston, Texas, has also resulted in a run-off election, to be held on December 12.

The Houston mayoral race has been notable for the diversity of the candidate pool. The leading candidates going into election day on November 3rd were City Councilman Peter Brown, a white Democrat; Harris county Education Trustee Roy Morales, a Hispanic Republican; City Controller Annise Parker, a Democrat, who is openly gay; and former City Attorney Gene Locke, an African American Democrat.

Several of the candidates in Houston’s November mayoral election: Gene Locke, Roy Morales, Annise Parker, and Peter Brown. Locke and Parker will be in the December run-off election.

Parker and Locke received 31% and 26% of the vote, respectively, and are headed to the runoff.

If Locke wins, he will be Houston’s second African American mayor. If Parker wins, she will be the city’s first openly gay mayor, and the first such mayor of as large a city as Houston.

Right after Obama’s presidential election win last November, I made this comment:

Here are my own election winners and losers, plus some “too early to tell” entries…

Too Early to Tell:

Black Voters: They were huge this election. Blacks were 13% of the total vote, up from 10% in 2000 and 11% in 2004. That helped make the difference in close elections for several states.

The question is, can they be depended on in future elections? Or will their turnout drop without Obama at the top of election ballots?

I think a lot more work needs to be done to make black voters a dependable election force, in close elections or elections in the South. Because if they’re not a dependable political force, that lessens their power and influence in the long run.

It will be interesting to see how much of the black vote turns out for the Georgia Senate runoff election between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and his opponent, Democrat Jim Martin. Martin has no hope of winning if black voters stay home; we’ll see if they sit this one out.

In the aforementioned Georgia Senate race, Jim Martin did wind up losing, and low black turnout was a factor.

Yesterday, Republicans won the governor’s election in New Jersey and Virginia. In both cases, the young and black voters who were key to Obama’s election success were not decisive in their support for the Democratic candidate.

Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press made these comments:

In another troubling omen for Democrats, the surveys also showed that more of the Virginians who turned out on Tuesday said they supported Republican John McCain in 2008 than said they backed Obama. That suggests the Democrats had difficulty turning out their base, including the swarms of first-time minority and youth voters whom Obama attracted as part of his diverse coalition.

A loss in Virginia could suggest that the diverse coalition that Obama cobbled together last year in Virginia and elsewhere — blacks, Hispanics, young people, independents and Republican crossovers — was a one-election phenomenon that didn’t transfer to the Democratic Party when Obama wasn’t on the ballot.

I share Sidoti’s concern, although I disagree with her comment that the Obama election win was a one hit wonder in terms of pulling together what I call the “Obama coalition” of young, black, Hispanic and independent voters.

Witness, for example, 38-year old Democrat Anthony Foxx in the Charlotte, North Carolina mayoral election. Voters in the city ended more than two decades of Republican leadership in Charlotte Tuesday by electing Foxx, who is the city’s second African-American mayor and the youngest in memory. Foxx won a close race, getting roughly 51 percent of the vote over Republican John Lassiter in unofficial tallies.

Foxx benefitted from a strong black turnout. African Americans are 35% of Charlotte’s population. The Democrats need to find and promote more candidates like him, who appeal to diverse constituents.

The bottom line is, if the Democrats are going to win “the Obama way,” they need to embrace the kinds of voters that put Obama into office. Failure to do so is perilous. Consider these comments from the Washington Post, concerning the election campaign in Virginia governor’s race:

Senior (Obama) administration officials have expressed frustration with how Democrat R. Creigh Deeds has handled his campaign for governor, refusing early offers of strategic advice and failing to reach out to several key constituencies that helped Obama win Virginia in 2008, they say.

A senior administration official said (Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh) Deeds badly erred on several fronts, including not doing a better job of coordinating with the White House. “I understood in the beginning why there was some reluctance to run all around the state with Barack Obama,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about the race. “You don’t do that in Virginia. But when you consider the African American turnout that they need, and then when you consider as well they’ve got a huge problem with surge voters, younger voters, we were just a natural for them.”

A second administration official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “Obama, (outgoing Democratic governor Tim) Kaine and others had drawn a road map to victory in Virginia. Deeds chose another path.”

And it goes without saying that black voters can’t afford to be apathetic or unengaged simply because certain kinds of candidates aren’t running. Not everyone who runs for political office is exciting or charismatic. And sometimes it is about voting for the lesser of two evils. Black folks need to be willing to come out to the polls even in those kinds of situations.

Statistics from the Department of Justice indicate that black males are incarcerated – held in prison or jail – at a rate that is over 6 times higher than that for white males.

For every 100,000 black males, an estimated 4,777 are held in federal or state prison or a local jail.

By contrast, for every 100,000 white men, only 727 are estimated to be incarcerated.

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Inmates at Midyear 2008 – Statistical Tables, March 2009 (Revised 4/8/09), Table 18

One result is that the percentage of blacks among all males in prison or jail far exceeds the percentage of blacks in the general population:

Source: Calculated from Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Inmates at Midyear 2008 – Statistical Tables, March 2009 (Revised 4/8/09); Population stats from US Census Bureau

What explains these numbers? It’s a combination of things: African Americans commit more crimes; they commit more crimes that are likely to result in jail time (as a result of sentencing guidelines that, for example, result in more jail time for crack cocaine than cocaine powder); they are less able to afford high quality legal services; and they may be subject to discrimination in prosecution, the rendering of verdicts, and sentencing.

I will try to look at these issues in future posts.

Segregation in the Jim Crow South was about two things: political and economic power, and sex.

The entire system was designed to keep blacks from power in government and business, and black men from intimacy with white women.

This had obvious negative effects on the South’s black population. African Americans were subjected to harsh, even brutal treatment for doing such simple things as trying to vote. But there were negative impacts on white Southerners as well.

White Southerners also had to adhere to the South’s code of behavior, or suffer consequences. This is illustrated in a true story from the book Devil’s Sanctuary: An Eyewitness History of Mississippi Hate Crimes. The book is co-authored by Alex A. Alston, Jr., former president of the Mississippi State Bar Association, and journalist James L. Dickerson.

The book details instances of the horrific oppression of Mississippi blacks by white Mississippians and all aspects of the state’s governmental and social institutions.

One of those governmental institutions was the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a quasi-independent spy agency created in 1956 to Mississippi against integration efforts by the federal government. The Sovereignty Commission was basically Mississippi’s Big Brother, and had its eyes out for anything that might imperil white supremacy.

This is a poignant and somewhat scary excerpt from the book:

Early in 1956, Mississippi Governor J. P. Coleman sent a bill to the Mississippi legislature to create a super-secret spy agency designed to protect the state from the encroaching power of the federal government. Under the provisions of the bill, the commission was empowered to “perform any and all acts and things deemed necessary to protect the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi, and her sister states, from encroachment.”

The commission was given the authority to examine the records and documents of any citizen and it was provided with broad-ranging subpoena power that included the authority to enforce obedience “by fine or imprisonment” at the discretion of the commission. It was designed to operate independantly of state govenment, when necessary, and permitted to solicit and use private funds to carry out covert operations.

…while taking the oath of office, Coleman had brought attention to the commission by saying, “I have not the slightest fear that four years hence when my successor assumes his official oath that the seperation of races in Mississippi will be left intact.”

***

When the Sovereignty Commission received word in 1964 that a white woman in Grenada, Mississippi had given birth to a baby of suspicious racial origins, investigator Tom Scarbrough was sent to the small town to conduct an investigation. After touching base with his initial source. who informed him that the 38 year old woman had been having an affair with a 31 year old motel employee who was black, Scarbrough met with the local sheriff, who expressed relief at seeing the investigator in town, since he wasn’t sure what to do about the situation. In his report Scarbrough wrote that the sheriff had told him that the people in Grenada were disturbed about the rumors, all the more since the (woman) and her husband and were from respectable families.

Scarbrough decided the easiest way to solve the dilemma would be for the sheriff to examine the baby to determine if it had a black father. The sheriff agreed. He called the woman and talked her into stopping by the office. Under questioning from Scarbrough, the woman, who was in a legal dispute with her husband over custody of their two sons, denied having an affair with a black man but admitted to having an affair with a white an who worked at the hotel. Scarbrough told her that the sheriff was sympathetic to her situation and would do his best to squelch the rumors if it turned out that the child was not black. He suggested that she grant the sheriff permission to examine the baby. The woman said she had no objection to that.

After arranging a time for a home visit, the woman left and Scarbrough went to the motel to interview the black man rumored to be the father. He asked him point blank if he had ever had sex with the white woman.

“No, sir,” answered the black man.

The next morning the sheriff went to view the baby. When he returned to the office, Scarbrough was waiting for him. He said he had seen the baby but wasn’t sure about the child’s parentage. He asked Scarbrough if he would mind taking a look at the baby. The two men returned to the anxious woman’s apartment.

We both looked at the baby again and I was looking at the child’s fingernails and the end of its fingers very closely when she remarked, ‘I know what you’re thinking, but that baby is not part Negro. Its father is an Italian,’ ” Scarbrough said in his report. “After viewing the child I had a weak feeling in the pit of my stomach and the sheriff expressed he felt otherwise. We both agreed we were not qualified to say it was a Negro child, but we could say it was not 100% Caucasian.”

Scarbrough returned to the hotel and shared his conclusions with the black man’s employer. “[The employer] stated there was nothing he could do except to dismiss [the black man] from his employ,” he said in his report. “What disposition will be made [of the black man] is yet to be seen.” He noted that the white motel owners had a lot of trust and confidence in their black employee and “in all probability would not believe anything against him. This I found to be pretty well the opinion of all the people to whom I talked.”

This is stuff that was happening in Mississippi in 1964.

I cite this to show that, it wasn’t just the most visible or violent things, like the murder of Emmett Till, that made Mississippi segregation so horrible. It was the Orwellian intrusion into the lives of ordinary people that made this state’s version of Jim Crow so overwhelming and de-humanizing.

This seems unthinkably un-American today, but that was the America of those times.

It’s no wonder that Mississippi was the most feared state for black people through the end of the civil rights struggles. And it led singer Nina Simone to write her famous song Mississippi Goddam.

This is the number of abortions in America by race, going back to 1973, through 2004:

Abortions for Black and White Women, 1973-2004

Source: Black Americans: A Statistical Sourcebook 2009. Based on information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

These numbers raise the question: why do black women have abortions at such a higher rate than white women?

The answer seems to be twofold: black women are more likely to have unintended pregnancies; and back women are more likely to feel they lack the maturity or resources to raise a child.

This chart, from the article Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture, shows the high correlation between the incidence of unintended pregnancies and abortions:

One comment I’ve heard on this subject is that, unfortunately, many pregnant black women use abortion as a kind of birth control. They never intended to have a child. But because they didn’t take effective steps to prevent the pregnancy on the “front end,” they wind up having to terminate the pregnancy on the back end.

Also of note, from the report Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture:

The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). This is partly because the rate of unintended pregnancies among poor women (below 100% of poverty) is nearly four times that of women above 200% of poverty* (112 vs. 29 per 1,000 women).

Since African Americans have a higher poverty rate than white women, it’s not surprising that the abortion rate for black women is higher.

FYI, the most common reasons that women give for having an abortion are noted in the article Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States:

The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

There is, of course, a heated debate in America over the legality and morality of abortions. But everyone agrees that the best course of action would be to reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancies, since that appears to be the primary factor in the abortion decision. I’ll be doing some research on that subject (preventing pregnancies), and I hope to share those results with you all when I’m finished.

Most people know of slavery, but we don’t know about slavery. Specifically, we don’t know how dehumanizing it was to be a slave.

We might understand what it’s like to be denied freedom or dignity at an intellectual level. But for many of us, we don’t have a grasp on how horrible the institution was, in the day to day life of an enslaved person. Most of us don’t “get” what it was about inhuman bondage that made it so inhuman.

For example: what was it like to be slave mother?

Some insights on this are given in the book Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South, by Marie Jenkins Schwartz. The book tells the history of a somewhat esoteric subject: the need of slaveholders, and the doctors they hired, to control and manage the bodies and reproductive lives of slave women.

But while the subject is esoteric, the details of how this played out in plantation life are chilling and disturbing.

Cover of Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South by Marie Jenkins Schwartz.

The first chapter of the book, titled “Procreation,” has a gripping account of the stakes involved in the reproductive ability of slave women. I’ve provided some excerpts from that chapter below. Upon reading this, you will understand how lacking in humanity and dignity this peculiar institution was:

…an important aspect of slavery… has been all too often ignored: slaveholders expected to appropriate and exploit the reproductive lives of enslaved women. Control of one’s body was not a fundamental right of slaves. Emboldened by law and custom to do with human chattels as they wished, (slave) owners felt entitled to intervene in even the most intimate of matters. Women’s childbearing capacity became a commodity that could be traded on the open market.

During the antebellum era the expectation increased among members of the owning class that enslaved women would contribute to the economic success of the plantation not only through productive labor but also through procreation. The idea was at once both powerful and seductive and shaped the way women experienced enslavement, the way owners thought about the future of slavery, and the way doctors practiced medicine.

As of 1808, when Congress ended the nation’s participation in the international slave trade… the only practical way of increasing the number of slave laborers was through new births. If enslaved mothers did not bear sufficient numbers of children to take the place of aged and dying workers, the South could not continue as a slave society.

Women entering their childbearing years-especially those who had proven their fertility through the birth of a baby-sold easily and for a high price. Former slave Boston Blackwell, who witnessed the sale of two women in Memphis, Tennessee, reported that a girl of fifteen who had no children sold for $800, but a breeding woman sold for $1,500.

Human reproduction was so important to the continuation of slavery that members of the South’s ruling class willed their heirs the unborn children of slaves as well as living people. Anna Matilda King of Georgia assured her daughter that she would inherit not only the slave Christiann but also “her child and future children.” This wish to benefit future generations of slaveholding families pressed owners to look for ways of ensuring that enslaved mothers bore plenty of children. “If it was not for my children I would not care what became of the negroes,” Elizabeth Scott Neblett wrote her absent husband during the Civil War… Neblett maintained that she would gladly do without slaves to save the bother of managing them, but for her children’s sake she could not let them go.

Barren women were a cause of concern.

Southern slaveholders’ perceived need for additional slaves did not play out solely as abstract political or economic rhetoric. It helped to justify the increased emphasis on the birth of children in the slave quarters. Every woman of appropriate age needed to bear children. Women who did not readily become mothers were subjected to scrutiny and possible action.

Purchases of slaves could be calculated to ensure that a planter had a sufficient number of women “of breeding age” and that each woman had a suitable sexual partner at hand. After purchasing Fanny from Virginia and Jim from Louisiana, Mississippi master Bill Gordon arranged for them to live together, which they did. Georgia slaveholder David Ferguson purchased Jacob Gilbert specifically as a husband for an enslaved woman.

Rewards for motherhood followed the birth of children. These included “extra clothing,” exemption from harsh treatment, even (rarely) freedom. Lula Cottonham Walker had to work hard as a slave in Alabama, according to her later testimony, but the mother of eight children was never beaten. If the master had a sow that gave birth to a litter of pigs each year, he would not take a stick and beat it. It was the same with slaves, she offered by way of explanation.

Childless women could not expect any of the rewards or concessions available to mothers. Their work regimens were similar to those of men. Mary Buford did the same work as the men on her Arkansas plantation because, according to her niece, “she wasn’t no multiplying woman.” The disparity between men’s work and women’s work could be considerable. On the Bertrand estate in Jefferson County, Arkansas, the men were expected to pick 300 pounds of cotton, women 200. Childless women could be pressed to do as much as a man.

There were other repercussions for barrenness. Young women who had not demonstrated fertility faced the possibility of separation from family… If a married couple lived together for long without having a baby, North Carolina planter Joe Fevors Cutt would force both husband and wife to choose new partners. Former slave Henry Bobbitt maintained that many marriages did not last longer than five years because if no children were born within that period, husbands and wives were expected to find other spouses.

More commonly, childless women were sold. If a woman did not “breed,” in the parlance of the slaveholder, she was put on the market… “You better have them whitefolks some babies iffen you didn’t wanta be sold,” former Tennessee slave Alice Douglass recalled. Mary Grayson, enslaved in the Oklahoma territory, was sold twice for infertility.

The emotional pain of losing family members in this way is impossible for postslavery generations to fathom. Marriages were broken up, siblings split apart, older children separated from parents. Much of the selling occurred in states of the upper South, where there was a surplus of labor.

In the South, rhetoric surrounding barrenness took a peculiar turn. The focus was on enslaved women in general and on the reproductive history of specific women. The topic came up in everyday conversations related to the profitability of plantations, the management of labor, and the monetary worth of individual slaves.

These conversations, as one historian pointed out, did much to foster notions of the black woman as “Jezebel,” a woman governed by her libido. “People accustomed to speaking and writing about the bondwoman’s reproductive abilities could hardly help associating her with licentious behavior,” writes Deborah Gray White. Both medical discourse and treatment regimens reflected and reinforced this stereotype, which served to dehumanize black women at the very time they were engaging in the most human of acts-birthing a child.

This is a lie:

This picture purports to show the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, a group of African American soldiers who supposedly served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. It’s been used in numerous places, including Youtube videos here and here.

The picture has been used by pro-Confederate supporters for its propaganda value: the “fact” that blacks fought in the Confederate armed forces is offered as proof that the South was not fighting the Civil War to defend slavery, but rather, for their freedom or “states rights”… or something.

The problem with the picture is, it’s a fake. It’s a retouched version of this picture, which features a white Union official:

The picture was taken in Philadelphia, around 1864. It was eventually used to make an illustration for a Union recruitment poster that was targeted at blacks. The fascinating story of how this piece of history was made into a hoax is detailed at the site Retouching History: The Modern Falsification of a Civil War Photograph. As described at the site,

“In the past decade,” the Yale historian David Blight has recently written, “the neo-Confederate fringe of Civil War enthusiasm . . . has contended that thousands of African Americans, slave and free, willingly joined the Confederate war effort as soldiers and fought for their ‘homeland’ . . . . Slaves’ fidelity to their masters’ cause – - a falsehood constructed to support claims that the war was not about slavery – - has long formed one of the staple arguments in Lost Cause ideology.”

In this paper we discuss a graphic example of Blight’s contention by examining a Civil War-era posed studio photograph of black Union soldiers with a white officer. We maintain that this photograph has been deliberately falsified in recent years by an unknown person/s sympathetic to the Confederacy. This falsified or fabricated photo, purporting to be of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards (Confederate), has been taken to promote Neo-Confederate views, to accuse Union propagandists of duplicity, and to show that black soldiers were involved in the armed defense of the Confederacy.

The actual 1st Louisiana Native Guards, consisting of Afro-Creoles, was formed of about 1,500 men in April 1861 and was formally accepted as part of the Louisiana militia in May 1862. The Native Guards unit (one of three all-black companies) never saw combat while in Confederate service, and was largely kept at arm’s length by city and state officials; in fact, it often lacked proper uniforms and equipment.

“The Confederate authorities,” James Hollandsworth has written, “never intended to use black troops for any mission of real importance. If the Native Guards were good for anything, it was for public display; free blacks fighting for Southern rights made good copy for the newspapers.” The unit apparently was never committed to the Confederate cause, and appears to have disobeyed orders to evacuate New Orleans with other Confederate forces; instead it surrendered to Union troops in April 1862.

The photographs of the Louisiana Native Guards… show how a legitimate photograph can be altered and used to advance and support a particular contemporary political or ideological perspective in the present-day United States.

The group that was the focus of this hoax – the Louisiana Native Guard – makes for an interesting story in and of itself. The guard, which was a militia of the state of Louisiana, consisted of creole (mixed race) soldiers. On Nov. 23, 1861 – after the start of the Civil War – they made their debut, with a show of 33 black officers and 731 black enlisted men along the banks of the Mississippi River next to their white counterparts in the Louisiana militia.

Civil War historian James Hollandsworth wrote a book about these troops titled The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Experience during the Civil War. He noted:

More than 80 percent of the free black population in New Orleans in 1860 had European blood in their veins… In contrast… fewer than 10 percent of slaves in Louisiana gave evidence of white ancestry. Because skin color and free status were highly correlated, many free blacks identified more closely with Southern whites than with African blacks.

Free blacks joined the Louisiana militia for varied and complex reasons… Some free blacks thought they would lose their property… (these) were men of property and intelligence, representatives of a free black community in New Orleans that was both prosperous and well-educated. There were even slave owners among its ranks. Furthermore, the ‘hommes de couleur libre,’ as they were called in New Orleans, enjoyed privileges not afforded blacks elsewhere in the South, allowing them by 1860 to accumulate more than $2 million worth of property. It was not surprising, therefore, that free blacks were eager to defend their holdings.

Although these men might have been enthusiastic about the Confederacy, the feeling wasn’t mutual. The members of the Guard…

…soon realized that Confederate authorities did not intend to provide the Native Guards with either the status or support they afforded the white soldiers.

In September 1861, when the first Union prisoners captured at Manassas were to arrive in New Orleans, white militia men, instead of the Native Guards, were selected to escort them.

Then, when New Orleans fell to Union forces in April 1862, the Native Guards were sent in as last-minute substitutes to defend the French Quarter. The white Confederate troops headed to their training ground some 80 miles north of the city.

This regiment was formally disbanded on February, 1862 when the state legislature passed a law in January, 1862, that reorganized the militia by conscripting “all the free white males capable of bearing arms… irrespective of nationality”. However, the governor of Louisiana continued to use the Native Guard until the Union capture of New Orleans in April.

The Union troops that occupied New Orleans were under the command of Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler. Butler issued an order calling on all members of the Native Guards to enlist in the service of the United States. On September 27, 1862, Butler organized the Union Army’s 1st Louisiana Native Guard regiment, only some of whose members had also been part of the previous Confederate Native Guard regiment. The regiment’s initial strength was 1,000 men.

Former Confederate Lt. Andre Cailloux was named captain of Company E of the 1st Louisiana Native Guard. At first, this Union version of the Native Guard consisted primarily of New Orleans freemen. However, some runaway slaves from nearby plantations joined the regiment, although the Union Army’s official policy discouraged such enrollments. In November 1862, the number of runaway slaves seeking to enlist became so great that a second regiment and then, a month later, a third regiment were formed.

The field grade officers of these regiments (colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors) were all white men. The line officers were all black, including P. B. S. Pinchback. Pinchback would eventually be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate during the Reconstruction.

The Native Guard was part of a major battle, at Port Hudson, Louisiana on May 27, 1863. Port Hudson served as the linchpin of Confederate control over the Lower Mississippi. The First Louisiana and Third Louisiana regiments were among the Union forces that attacked the well-fortified Confederate position. Although they did not inflict a single casualty on the enemy, the units showed conspicuous bravery, charging repeatedly against blistering artillery and rifle fire. All told, the two Louisiana regiments sustained nearly 200 casualties. Union general Nathaniel P. Banks reported that, “The severe test to which they were subjected, and the determined manner in which they encountered the enemy, leaves upon my mind no doubt of their ultimate success.” The efforts of the black soldiers that day helped to establish that black soldiers were indeed worthy of battle.

Despite this and other successes, the Native Guard still had trouble getting the full support and confidence of the Union military. In June 1863, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Louisiana Native Guard Regiments were dissolved and folded into the newly formed Corps d’Afrique. Perhaps 200 to 300 of the original 1,000 members of the 1st Louisiana Native Guard made this transition.

Poor treatment by white soldiers and difficult field conditions had led to the resignation of many officers and the desertion of enlisted soldiers. In April 1864 the Corps d’Afrique was dissolved and its members joined the newly organized 73rd and 74th Regiments of the United States Colored Troops of the Union Army.

The story of the Louisiana Native Guard is summed up well at this site dedicated to their memory:

The war and its aftermath provided the men of Louisiana’s Native Guards with the opportunity to earn the right to be treated as equals in a free society. However, at every turn their attempt to achieve equality was rebuffed. The Confederate authorities used them to counter northern propaganda, but never intended to let them fight. The Union Army let them fight, but made them dig ditches when their capacity for fighting became evident. During reconstruction, whites accepted them for their labor, but repudiated their quest for equal rights. Pawns of three governments, the men of the Native Guards worked hard and did their duty, but as one of their officers wrote to his mother from Port Hudson in April 1864, “Nobody really desires our success, and it’s uphill work.”

This is a photo of the Chalmette National Cemetery, near Chalmette, Louisiana. One-hundred and thirteen black soldiers in the Native Guards are known to be buried at Chalmette. On April 19, 1864, the unit designation for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Regiments of the Corps d’Afrique, formerly the Louisiana Native Guards, was changed to the 73rd, 74th, and 75th Infantry, United States Colored Troops, respectively. The grave markers at Chalmette bear this designation.

Julian Bond, the long time civil rights crusader and current chairman of the NAACP, is been an ardent supporter of gay rights. As noted in wikipedia,

Bond has been an outspoken supporter of the rights of gays and lesbians. He has publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage. Most notably he boycotted the funeral services for Coretta Scott King on the grounds that the King children had chosen an anti-gay megachurch. This was in contradiction to their mother’s longstanding support for the rights of gay and lesbian people.

In a 2005 speech in Richmond, VA, Bond stated: “African Americans … were the only Americans who were enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only Americans suffering discrimination then and now. … Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born this way. I have no choice. I wouldn’t change it if I could. Sexuality is unchangeable.”

In a 2007 speech on the Martin Luther King Day Celebration at Clayton State University in Morrow, GA, Bond said, “If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay married.” His positions have pitted elements of the NAACP against religious groups in the Black Civil Rights movement who oppose gay marriage…

Bond was recently interviewed by the student newspaper of Macalester College, and had this to say on the subject of gay rights and the black community:

Q: You’ve taken a very progressive stance on gay rights. Does gay rights fit under the larger umbrella of civil rights?

Bond: Sure.

Q: How would you gauge your organization’s success so far in conveying that message to its supporters?

Bond: It’s been mixed because most of our members and supporters are African American. They tend to be very conservative on these kinds of social issues. Many are tremendously religious, and their religion instructs some of them that homosexuality is wrong. I think we’ve tried to approach it by saying, “I’m not asking you to give up your religion, I’m asking you not to impose your religion on other people.” We have mixed success with this because you know some religious people think they can impose their religion on everybody. And they can’t.

And check out this related story from Jasmyne Cannick of the urbanthoughtcollective.com blog: The SCLC Fight Against Gay Marriage: a No Win Situation.

In the 2008 presidential election, whites in Louisiana voted for Republican John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama by a margin of 84%-14%. Meanwhile, blacks voted for Obama over McCain by a margin of 94%-4%.

There is huge divide between blacks and whites in Louisiana. And it’s not just political.

A recent report titled A Portrait of LOUISIANA: Louisiana Human Development Report 2009 shows wide disparities in income, education, and life expectancy between blacks and whites in the state. The report is a product of the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, the Foundation for the Mid South, Oxfam America, and the American Human Development Project, which did the research and wrote the report.

The findings of the report include:

• Median personal earnings for whites in Louisiana average $28,912, which is slightly above the national average. For African Americans, earnings are $17,010, comparable to U.S. median earnings in the mid- 1960s.

• Nearly one in three African American adults age 25 and over in Louisiana has not graduated from high school. (!!!)

• African Americans in Louisiana are less than half as likely to have completed college than their white counterparts.

• The average life span for African Americans in Louisiana today (72.2 years) is shorter than that of many developing nations, including Colombians, Vietnamese and Venezuela.

• The average life span of an African American in New Orleans is 69.3 years, nearly as low as life expectancy in North Korea, while the life expectancy for a white person is 79.6 years.

• Whites in Louisiana earning the least have wages and salaries on par with African Americans earning the most.

• Louisiana African American women have wages and salaries typical of those that prevailed in the U.S. in the 1950s.

• An African-American baby boy born today in Louisiana can expect to live 68.1 years, a life span shorter than that of the average American in 1960 and on par with that of men in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Jamaica today.

The economic disparity between blacks and whites in the state is illustrated by the following chart, which shows the percentage of Louisiana families that fall within various income groups.

State of Louisiana – Family Income of Whites and African Americans, 2007

In Louisiana, nearly 25 percent of white families percent have incomes of $100,000 or more, while about 7 percent have incomes below $15,000. The exact opposite is the case for African Americans.
Source: A Portrait Of Louisiana: Louisiana Human Development Report 2009

These racial inequities in economics, education, and health are mirrored in the political representation in Louisiana’s state legislature. Although African Americans are 31.9% of Louisiana’s population, only 18.1% of the members of the state legislature are black.

No other state has as big a gap between the percentage of African Americans in the state and in the legislature. These are the six states for which the state’s black population percentage most exceeds the legislature’s black percentage, causing blacks to be “under-represented” in the legislature:

Source: Factoid: Black State Legislators in 2009

These statistics paint a picture of a black population in Louisiana that is economically depressed, undereducated, relatively unhealthy, and underrepresented politically. And while the effects of hurricane Katrina are certainly a factor, there are doubtless a host of other issues and problems that are impeding black progress in the state.

Hopefully, the Portrait of LOUISIANA report will help to galvanize the people of the state, both black and white, to address the many issues they face.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Civil War this year. It is an absolutely engaging subject, one that commands the constant and ongoing interest of tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans.

One of the more controversial issues concerning the Civil War is, what was the “cause” of this War?

Many say that the central issue of the war was slavery. Others say the central issue was the South’s desire to protect their states rights.

Myself, I don’t think those are mutually exclusive statements. I believe the Civil War was about states rights – that is, the states rights to maintain slavery.

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s let the Southerners tell their own tale.

South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. On December 24, 1860, the state issued its Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. This document is South Carolina’s declaration of independence from the Union.

The following text is an excerpt from the document, and a very large excerpt at that. For emphasis, I have bolded the word slave, or other references to slavery, such as labor, which refers to slave labor; and persons. In some cases, I’ve added a parenthetical note, with the abbreviation Ed. (for Editor), to explain a comment which might not be immediately understood by the reader.

I think it’s quite clear: South Carolina seceded because they believed that the institution of slavery was in peril. Here, in their own words, is South Carolina’s reason for leaving the Union:

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact (i.e., the Constitution- Ed.), that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General (federal) Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution.

The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress.

In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor (i.e., runaway slaves – Ed.)

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of (abolitionist – Ed.) societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States.

They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself.

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man (Ed. note: Abraham Lincoln) to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety. (Ed. note: The infamous Dred Scott decision was seen by many as declaring that African Americans could not be US citizens.)

On the 4th day of March next, this party (Ed. note: Lincoln’s Republican Party) will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

Adopted December 24, 1860

Some readers might think I’m just “cherry picking” selected pieces of text, and taking words out of context to ptove my point. For those persons, I challenge you to read the whole thing for yourself. The entire text is here:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

Several things are notable about this document.

First, it is stunningly unequivocal in its declaration that slavery is THE reason for seceding from the United States. The language is clear, and beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Second, the declaration is practically single-minded in stating that slavery was central to the secession decision. There were numerous issues that South Carolina could have discussed. For example, they could have talked about conflicts over tariffs and taxes, which lead to the nullification crisis in the 1820-30s. But the document dwells solely on slavery-related issues to make the case for leaving the Union.

Third is the use of the terms “slaveholding state” and “non-slaveholding state.” In many discussions of the Civil War’s antagonists, the terms “North” and “South” are used. But note that here, the terms slaveholding state and non-slaveholding state are used quite often.

Indeed, the secession declarations for Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas all use the terms “slaveholding state” and “non-slaveholding state.” This was an important rhetorical distinction that they were making. They were saying in words, this conflict isn’t about geography, it is about policy and law concerning the institution of slavery… this is about our identity as slaveholders.

Interestingly enough, when I browse the web and encounter sites with a, let’s say, “pro-Confederate” bent, they avoid using the terms “slaveholding state” and “non-slaveholding state,” terms that the Southern states were keen to use as part of the defense for secession… and which, if used, undercut the case being made by some today that the War wasn’t about slavery.