Transcript A Lesson Before Dying

A Lesson Before Dying
English II C.P.
Louisiana
Pre-Civil Rights South
• Few opportunities
• Denied African Americans’
many human rights
• Slavery was abolished in
1863, per the Emancipation
Proclamation
• 1870- the 15th Amendment
gave ALL men (white and
black) the right to vote.
Reconstruction of America
• One of the most turbulent and controversial
eras in American History.
• Lasted from during the Civil War until 1877.
• Northern victory decided fate of Union and of
slavery.
• Problems arose… How should the nation be
reunited? What system of labor should
replace slavery? What would be the status of
the former slaves?
African Americans and Reconstruction
• They were active members in the
Reconstruction
• Central to reconstruction was efforts of
African Americans to establish meaning to
their new freedom, and to claim their rights as
citizens.
• Congress enacted laws and Constitutions
giving African Americans the right to vote and
to hold office.
The South Reacts
• The Southern Government faced great
opposition to the Reconstruction.
• Mainly from the Ku Klux Klan
• The North abandoned its commitment to
protect the rights of former slaves,
Reconstruction came to an end, and white
supremacy was restored throughout the
South.
Jim Crow Laws
• The name of the racial caste system which operated primarily in the
South from 1877 to the mid- 1960’s.
• Jim Crow was not a person. Named after a popular 19th century
minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans.
• Written by Thomas Rice, a white struggling actor
– “Come Listen all you galls and boys, I’m going to sing a little song, My
name is Jim Crow, Weel about and turn about and do jis so, Eb’ry time
I Weel about I jump Jim Crow”
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It consisted of rigid anti-Black laws.
It became a way of life in the South.
African Americans were relegated to second class citizens.
Christian Ministers taught that the Whites were the “chosen”
people, Blacks were to be servants, and God supported racial
segregation.
Beliefs/Rationalizations of Jim Crow
Laws
• Whites were superior to Blacks in
all ways, including, but not
limited to, intelligence, morality,
and civilized behavior.
• Sexual relations between Whites
and Blacks would produce a
Mongrel race, which would
destroy America.
• Treating Blacks as equals would
encourage Interracial sexual
unions.
• If necessary, violence must be
used to keep Blacks at the bottom
of the racial hierarchy.
Jim Crow Norms
• A Black male could not offer his
hand (to shake hands) with a
White male because it implied
being socially equal.
• Blacks and Whites were not
supposed to eat together.
• Under no circumstance was a
Black male to offer to light the
cigarette of a White female- this
suggested intimacy.
• White motorists had the right-ofway at all intersections.
• If Blacks rode in the car with
Whites, they had to sit in the
back seat, or the back of the
truck.
• Blacks were not to show public
affection to one another in
public, especially kissing, because
it offended Whites.
• Blacks were to be introduced to
Whites, not Whites to Blacks.
• Whites did not use courtesy titles
when referring to Blacks (Ms.,
Mrs., Mr., Sir, or Ma’am). Blacks
were called to by their first name.
Blacks had to use courtesy titles
when referring to Whites, and
COULD NOT call them by their
first name.
Jim Crow Guide
• Stetson Kennedy wrote the Jim Crow Guide. If offered
simple rules Blacks were to observe when conversing
with Whites.
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Never assert or intimate that a White person is lying.
Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White person.
Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class.
Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior
knowledge or intelligence.
– Never curse at a White person.
– Never laugh derisively at a White person.
– Never comment upon the appearance of a White female.
Separate Car Law
• 1890- Separate Car Law was implemented.
• Train cars were to be separate but equal for
both Blacks and White.
• Blacks put this to test.
• Homer Plessey (7/8 White and 1/8 Black… i.e.
Black) sat in a Whites only passenger car.
• He was arrested.
Plessey Vs. Ferguson
• 1896- Plessey vs. Ferguson
• Supreme court ruled that segregation was
legal (to have separate facilities for both
blacks and whites) as long as they were both
EQUAL.
• Separate but equal, though separate was
rarely equal.
• Segregation became the way of the land.
• PLESSEY VS. FERGUSON LIGITIMIZED JIM CROW LAWS!
Any Black person accused of ANY
perceived offense to a White person
risked his or her life!
Plantation Life
• A plantation is a large agricultural business which
produces a cash crop for sale for profit.
• In Louisiana, the most important cash crops were
cotton and sugar cane.
• Prior to Emancipation Proclamation, slaves were forced
to run the plantation. Slaves planted, weeded, and
harvested crops; kept fences and plantation structures
in order; built slave cabins; and made products like
shoes and barrels for the plantation.
• In order to gain the greatest production, slaves had to
be driven or whipped.
Plantation Life…After E.P.
• African American men and women refused
plantation discipline, to live in slave quarters,
and even on plantation.
• They wanted their own land to raise a family
and to produce own surpluses.
• Plantation owners were mad.
• Agreed to allow ex-slaves to farm independent
land on their property. In the end, ex-slaves
had to pay Plantation owners money.
Scottsboro Trials
Scottsboro Trial
• March 25, 1931- alleged rape of two White females by
nine Black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight
train.
• Hoboing- riding freight trains without paying.
• Among passengers- four black Chattanooga teenagers
hoping to investigate a rumor of government jobs in
Memphis hauling logs on the river and five other black
teens from various parts of Georgia. Four young
whites, two males and two females dressed in overalls,
also rode the train, returning to Huntsville
from unsuccessful job searches in the cotton mills of
Chattanooga.
Scottsboro Trial
• A white male stepped on the hand of Haywood Patterson (a black teen).
• Haywood and his friends engaged in a stone throwing fight against White
boys.
• Black boys defeated White boys and threw them off the train.
• Haywood helped pull one of the White boys, Orville Gilley, back on the
train to save him, because the train was going at life-endangering speeds.
• The boys who were thrown off train went to a station master and reported
what they described as an assault by a gang of blacks.
• The stationmaster wired ahead. A posse in Paint Rock, Alabama, stopped
the train. Dozens of men with guns rushed at the train as it ground to a
halt.
• The armed men rounded up every black youth they could find. Nine
captured blacks, soon to be called "The Scottsboro Boys," were tied
together with plow line, loaded on a flat back truck, and taken to a jail in
Scottsboro.
Scottsboro Trials
• Victoria Price and Ruby Bates
• In response to questioning, they told one of the
posse members that they had been raped by a
gang of twelve blacks with pistols and knives.
• In the jail on the March 25th, Price pointed out
six of the nine boys and said that they were the
ones who raped her.
• The guard reportedly replied, "If those six had
Miss Price, it stands to reason that the others had
Miss Bates."
Scottsboro Trials
• In January, 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court, by a 6 - 1
vote, affirmed all but one of the eight convictions and
death sentences.
• The court ruled that Eugene Williams, age thirteen, should
have not been tried as an adult.
• The cases were appealed to the United States Supreme
Court which overturned the convictions in the landmark
case of Powell vs Alabama.
• The Court, 7 - 2, ruled that the right of the defendants
under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause
to competent legal counsel had been denied by Alabama.
• There would have to be new trials.
• Two who had trials, found guilty and sentenced to death.
Scottsboro Trials
• Overturned because Alabama excluded blacks
from its jury rolls in violation of the equal
protection clause of the Constitution.
• Fourth trial began. Haywood was again
charged with rape, however, sentenced to 75
years in life, not death.
• In December of 1936, while Patterson's appeal
was still pending and the other eight blacks
awaited their trials.
Scottsboro Trial.
• Four were finally released in 1937.
• Two not guilty
• Two regardless of guilt, age 12-13 at time of
crime, served long enough.
• 1943, 1946, 1950- four of the remaining were
paroled
• 1948- Haywood escaped
Ernest Gaines
Biography
• He was born in 1933 on the River Lake plantation in
Pointe Coupe Parish, Louisiana
• This is the setting for most of his fiction
• At the age of nine he was picking cotton in the
plantation fields; the black quarter's school held
classes only five or six months a year.
• When he was fifteen, Gaines moved to California to
join his parents, who had left Louisiana during World
War II.
• There he attended San Francisco State University and
later won a writing fellowship to Stanford University.
Biography
• Gaines published his first short story in 1956.
• Since then he has written eight books of fiction, including Catherine
Carmier, Of Love and Dust, Bloodline, The Autobiography of Miss
Jane Pittman, A Long Day in November, In My Father's House, and A
Gathering of Old Men, most of which are available in Vintage
paperback editions.
• A Lesson Before Dying, his most recent novel, won the 1993
National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also been awarded a
MacArthur Foundation grant, for writings of "rare historical
resonance."
• Ernest Gaines and his wife Dianne now live year-round in Oscar,
Louisiana. They built a house on land that was part of the plantation
where he grew up.