1920s Black Chicago: Southside Policy Kings

1930s Black Chicago: Southside Policy Kings

Southside Chicago's Black Policy Kings: The Overview

"Oretha Castle Haley" (July 22, 1939-October 10,1987)

Was an African American civil rights activist in New Orleans where she challenged the segregation of  facilities and promoted voter registration. She came from a working-class background, she was able to enroll in the Southern 

University of New Orleans, SUNO, then a center of  student actvism.Oretha joined the protest marches and went on to became a prominent activist in the Civil Rights Movement and other causes.

The 1954 US Supreme Court decision,Brown v. Board of Education, undermined the legal foundation of seperate-but equal- racial segregation.The landmark court decision emboldened the cause for civil rights.The 1955 murder of  Emmett 

Till in Mississippi, and subsequent miscarriage of justice drew national attention to the brutal and unfair treatment of African Americans in the South. In late 1955,the arrest of  Rosa Parks led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.The boycott lasted almost a year and its success launched the career of Martin Luther King and demonstrated the power of non-violent political action.

The first protests marches she participated in were sponsored by the Consumers League of Greater New Orleans (CLGNO).When Oretha and several fellow protesters sought to stage sit-ins at segregated lunch counters,both the Consumers League and the National Association for the Advance of Colored People (NAACP) took no interest. The CLGNO and NAACP were involved in sensitive litigations and negotiations and shunned the publicity.In the summer of 

1960,Oretha,Ruby Lombard and Jerome Smith pioneered their own organization and sought sponsorship from a national organization. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference,SCLC,was not active in New Orleans. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was the first activist group dedicated to non-violence founded in 1942 and based in Chicago. The newly formed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commitee (SNCC) rapidly grew in prominence. SNCC's powerbase became the Nashville chapter founded by Diane Nash & John Lewis. Oretha and 

her and her coharts chose to ally their local group with core, and developed  their power base in New Orleans. SNCC and CORE both concentrated on street-level,

direct-action activism,and often compared. The NAACP,SCLC,CORE and SNCC 

cooperated in many endeavors, and each are credited with playing a major role 

in the success of the Civil Rights Movement.

On September 17,1960, Oretha and three of her fellow student-protesters were arrested for sitting in at the counter of McCrory's, a Canal street five-and-dime store in New Orleans.These protests were based on how stores in Central City 

"wouldn't hire African American clerks or cashiers, in spites of the fact that the majority of customers in the shopping district were African American." Oretha, Cecil Carter,Sydney Goldfinich and Rudy Lombard were charged with criminal mischief, " which makes it a crime to refuse to leave a place of business after being ordered to do so by the person charge of the premises.

There were no laws particularly allowing racial segregation in businesses in the town,however public announcements explaining a zero tolerance on sit-in demonstrations by the mayor and superintendent of the police had been made.

Those charged were sentenced to a $350 fine and 60 days in prison, or if the fine could not be paid 120 days in prison.

This case first went to Louisiana State Trial Court.The case was appealed by CORE attroneys to the Louisiana State Supreme Court,which upheld the conservative decision of the Trial Court.

The case was appealed and brought to the US Supreme Court. The USSC,headed 

by chief justice Earl Warren,overturned the ruling in an eight to one decision on May 20,1963.In the opinion to the court justice Warren indicated that due 

to the announcements made by public officials,restaurant owners had felt compelled to maintain segregated facilities even if it was not their will or official law.As a result, the court overturned the Trial Court and Louisiana State Supreme Court decisions.Futhermore, the court cited violations to the 14th amendment as grounds for their decision.

In 1961,CORE pioneered the Freedom Riders,a novel method of non-violent protest against segregation in interstate transportation.SNCC played a major role. Trained and committed volunteers boarded Greyhound  and Trailway buses in Washington D.C. and other northern cities,and headed south. At various stops,they occupied the white-only waiting rooms to draw attention to the segregated facilities. The Freedom Riders were scheduled to finish in New Orleans. The first Freedom Riders drew national attention in mid-may.Two buses left Atlanta,GA heading for Birmingham, AL. The first bus was commandeered by an angry mob in Anniston AL. The passengers were beaten by a waiting mob as local police stood by.

Oretha' house served as the New Orleans headerquarters for the Freedom Riders.With help from here mama Virgie and sister Doris,their home housed and fed hundreds of  Freedom Riders coming and going throughout the summer. New Orleans CORE staged a demonstration at Police Quarters.

Oretha was one of fifteen arrested.Attroney General Robert F.Kennedy was 

delegated the task of solving the problem.He petitioned and pressured the Interstate Commerce Commission,ICC, and finally on November 1, "the white only" signs were removed. The success of the Freedom Riders raised the profile and bolstered the reputation of CORE.

Toward the end of 1961 Ruby Lombard departed, and Oretha Castle was appointed  president  of the local chapter of CORE. A prominent fellow activists characterized her " the guiding force... the backbone... a woman of extraordinary capabilities.With its new notoriety,the New Orleans chapter of CORE attracted a growing membership.James Farmer had founded  CORE to 

be an interracial organization.In 1962,Oretha and African American coharts 

began to the question the participation of whites in their organization. Whites were assuming leadership roles in an organization dedicated to empowering African Americans.Oretha suspendded the white members  and came into conflict with the national office dispatched Richard Haley to resolve the issue. 

The suspensions were declared invalid, whites slowely  rejoined, yet the chapter never  fully regained the members it lost. Richard remained with the organization for the next five years.Oretha & Richard married 1967,and had two sons , in addition to the two sons Orerha was already raising.

In 1963 and 1964,nightly marches targeting segregated stores,hotels,theaters,and an amusementpark continued. The Scwegmann's

grocery store chain closed its lunch counters in response to a CORE lawsuit.

A Freedom March on city hall resulted in the desegregation of the municipal cafeteria. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited segregation in public accommodations,so the protest marches came to an end. The next battle was 

voter registration. CORE joined a coalition of civil rights organizations that combined their resources for the Freedom Summer project, what become known as Freedom Summer.In the spring of 1964,Oretha relinquished her 

presidency and moved upstate to Ouchita Parish to act as field secretary. 

In November,she was promoted to field for all of northern Louisiana.For more than a year,Oretha applied the protest techniques she helped to develop in Monroe, Jonesboro and Bogalusa,Louisiana.Freedom Summer accomplished its goal when the 1965 Voting Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in 

voting.

Bayard Rustin and James Farmer pioneered the use of non-violent disobedience in the United States inspired by Gandhi and other writers for almost ten years,non-violent methods led to the many triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement culminating with the March  from Selma to Montgomery in March,1965.In August,Watts Rebellion initiated three consecutive summers of urban rebellions. Many actvists questioned their faith in non-violence , including Oretha.Disenchanted by Selma and other unsuccessful strategies,the 

Black Panther party emerged. Stokely Carmichael ( later known as Kwane Ture) and Charles V. Hamilton wrote the book, Black Power: The Pollitics of 

Liberation (1967), encouraging self-determination for African American communities. CORE fractured in a dispute over criticizing Viet Nam War,and many long-time leaders left the organization.The original members of the New 

Orleans chapter of CORE all quit by 1965,including Oretha.CORE led by Roy Innis, is still active  in New York.

Oretha returned to New Orleans in 1966 and re-enrolled at SUNO to complete her degree. Her grass-roots organizational experience qualified her to take the lead in several  organizations sponsored by the Federal War on Poverty. 

She led a successful campaign to desegregate playgrounds. In 1971,she led 

the election campaign of Dorothy Mae,Taylor,who became the first African-American woman state legislator in Louisiana. In the 1980s, she served as 

deputy administrator of  Chairty Hospital where she instituted several  reforms. While there, she was central in creating the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation.She remained married to Richard Haley until her death,caused 

by cancer, in 1987 at the age of 48.

"Arthur Courtney Logan (September 8,1909-November 25 1973)

Physician,surgeon, and civil rights, activist,was born on the campus of Tuskegee University in Alabama, one of five children born to Warren & Adelle Logan.Warren Logan, treasurer of TUskegee University,had begun working as an educator at the University when it was established in 1882. Arthur rembered and early childhood in bucolic surroundings where hesometimes spent summer days at the side of Booker T.Washington,the founder of Tuskegee University.

At age of ten he was sent to New York City to live in Harlem with an older sister and attend the Ethical Culture School on a scholarship.In the 1920s New York City offered African Americans a broader spectrum of opportunities than possible in Alabama.The Ethical Culture School,was founded by Felix Adler in 1878,was open to children of all races and religions.Felix was a social activist who promoted the concepts of equality,justice,and intellectual freedom.At Ethical, he Arthur was exposed to children from many diffirent cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Although the school had originally been founded to reach out to the children of the poor,many of New York's wealthiest citizens paid to send their children there as well.

He went to Williams College in Massachusetts,and in 1930 graduated in Phi Beta Kappa.Arhur then studied medicine at Columbia University,where he Felix held the chair for political and social ethiics.When Arthur graduated as one of the first African American students from Columbia's College Physicians and Surgeons in 1934,he took with him a commitment to social 

activism he had learned from years of study in institutions influenced by Felix's progressive ideas.Although he had other opportunities, Arthur chose to complete his internship at Harlem Hospital.It was in Harlem that he began his lifelong effort to provide quality medical care for poor and disenfranchised citizens in New York City.

After twelve years in private practice, Arthur, along with a small group of other Doctors, founded the Upper Manhattan Medical Group in Harlem to 

serve the poorest residents of the city.Founders of one of the nation's first health maintenance organizations,the group served more than thirty thousand subcribers,most of them African Americans.These prepaid subscribers received quality health services that otherwise would have been unavailable to them.Arthur remained a partner in the Manhattan Group and served as director of its surgical department until his death.

His life was marked by unusual privilege,he was committed to helping those who could not help themselves. The Manhattan group was just one of many projects he took on in order to support the African American community.While serving on the surgical staff of several New York hospitals, including Harlem Hospital,Sydenham Hospital,and Knickerbocker Hospital, he dedicated much of his time to organizations like Citizens Organized Against Drug Abuse,which he served as chairman of the board for many years; the New York City Council Against Poverty,in 1965; and United Neighborhood Houses of New York from 1966 until his death.He also worked with the city to develop and implement public projects such as the Manhattanville Heath Park, a plan to incorporate health facilities, job training facilities, parks, and low-income housing within civic and commercial areas.

His first marriage to Wenorah Bond ended in divorce in 1947. They had one daughter,Adele. He met his second wife,Marion Taylor of Philadelphia,Pennsylvania.when he was called in to treat her after she became ill at the Apollo Theater where she sang under the name of Marian Bruce. They were married in 1958. Their only child, a son was named Warren in honor of Arthur's daddy.

In the next decade Arthur turned his attention to the civil rights movement.In 1960 he became the director of the Urban League of Greater New York and in 1962 the director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational fund.His membership in New York's progressive elite society allowed him to work behind the scenes along with his wife,who was the only northern-based member on the board of directors of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).Together they opened their fashionable brownstone on West Eighty-eight Street to raise money to support the movement.Counted among their guests and associates were some of the most important names in civil rights history:Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Watkins, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy,Eleanor Holmes Norton,Vernon Jordan,Charles Rangel, and Shirley Chisholm. On a single night in April of 1965 the Logans raised eleven thousand dollars at a reception for Martin.

Five weeks after Martin's assassination on April 4th 1968 Arthur organized and led a team of medical workers to Washington to care for the three thousand demonstrators,mostly African Americans,who were camped on the Mall for Martin's planned Poor People's March on Washington. The Tent housing,enmeshed in mud and dubbed "Resurrection City," covered the Mall from May 14 until the federal government razed it on June 24 1968.

Housing concerns were second only to Arthur's dedication to providing adequate quality health care to everyone who needed it. His last undertaking before his death was the Manhattanville project, which along with an array of housing and other civic development.It was the construction site for this project where Arthur's body was found. It is believed that he fell from a viaduct on the Henry Hudson Parkway overlooking the site. Knickerbocker Hospital was renamed the Arthur C. Logan Memorial Hospital after his untimely death at the age of sixty-four.

"The Cotton Pickers' Strike of 1891"

Was a labor action of  African-American sharecroppers in Lee County,Arkansas in September,1891. The strike led to open conflict between strikers and plantation owners,racially-motivated violence, and both a sheriff's posse and a lynching party. One plantation manager,two non-striking workers, and some twelve strikers were killed during the incident.Nine of those strikers were hung in a mass lynching on the evening of September 29.

In 1886 the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union had been 

founded  by R.M.Humprey,a white Baptist minister,reformer,and member of the parallel white Farmers' Alliance organization.Early in September 1891,R.H. called for  national African-American strike of sharecroppers against planters,in response to the planters setting 50-cent-per-100 pound prices at their summer conventions.

Despite its extensive claimed membership of millions,and despite R.H. announcement of  600,000 members firmly committed to strike for $ 1.00 per 100 pounds, the strike promoted for September 12,took hold nowhere.

Additionally,many land owners who became aware of the planned strike took steps to suppress or outright prevent the strike through increased police presence and pacification tactics such as smaller raises. Its failure was noted and documented with some satisfaction in newspapers across the cotton-growing south.The one exception was in Lee County,a location with its own history of conflict, on the Mississippi River and across from Memphis,Tennessee.Ben Patterson,an African-American labor organizer from Memphis,traveled to 

Lee County at the beginning of September 1891 and began to organize a strike among local cotton pickers.Ben's efforts were significantly more successful than those of R.H.,  garnering the support of at least twenty-five pickers in Lee County.

Workers for planter Colonel H.P.Rodgers struck on September 20,demanding higher wages,and began traveling through the country looking for support.These 

workers were from Memphis,led by Ben Patterson.Among other workers in the county they found no support.A brawl between striking and non-striking workers killed two on September 25.On the 28th the strikers killed a notorious plantation manager named Miller and burned a cotton gin.

A posse, with some African-Americans members,was organized under Sheriff Derrick of Marianna to track down the remaining strikers and Ben,partly on 

the grounds that Miller the plantation manager had been deputized. On September 29 the search led north to an island near Horseshoe Lake in Crittenden County.The strikers had been trying to work north, back to President's Island and then to Memphis.In an open battle the posse killed two strikers and captured nine.At more or less the same time,Ben alone escaped to the steamboat James Lee and admitted his story,but was extracted from the boat,taken ashore,and shot.The nine prisoners under guard by the sheriff's men wee intercepted on the road by a masked lynching party,greatly outnumbering them, that took the prisoners and hung them one by one.

The Arkansas Gazette  ran coverage under the title "Lee County Troubled Settled with Rope.The  incident directly led to the collapse of the Colored   Farmers' Alliance.

"Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union"

 Was formed in in 1886 in Texas. Despite the fact that both African American and white farmers faced 

great difficulties due to the rising price of farming and the decreasing profits which were coming from farming, the protective organization known as the Southern Farmers Alliance did not allow African American farmers to join.A group of African American farmers decided to organize their own alliance,to fill their needs. The organization rapidly spread across the Southern United States, peaking with a membership of 1.2 million in 1891.

The Farmers Alliance was founded in central Texas in 1876,through the efforts of farmers at self-protection from 'land sharks,' merchants, horse thieves,and cattle ranchers.The constitution of the initial  Texas order, drafted in 1882,denied  to African American farmers on the grounds that the alliance was a social organization "where we meet with our wives and daughters." Leaders of the alliance realized that it was impossible to established a profitable agricultural system while a large African American population served as potential competitors and a source of cheap,exploitable labor.

The Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Union was founded in Houston Texas,on 

December 11,1886,on the farm of  of  R.M. Humphrey,a white alliance member and Baptist missionary.The alliance elected  JJ Shuffer as its first president.Although the orders' barred whites 

from membership,JJ  was elected honorary  superintendent. As increasingly repressive Black Codes were enacted, JJ  served as a "white spokesman who could openly express militancy and have access that would be denied to African Americans.By 1888 the alliance received a charter from the US Federal Government.They quickly after began to spread and found chapters in different states across the south.

In 1890 they merged with a rival alliance,the National Colored Alliance. They also absorbed the Colored Agricultural Wheels in Arkansas,western Tennessee and Alabama.By 1890,the Colored Farmers' Alliance claimed  over 1,2000,000 members.

The order's statement of principles was in the vein of Booker T.Washington,promoting economic 

self-sufficiency and racial 'uplift' through vocational training, at the expense of demands for political equality.They tried to educate the farmers about farming tactics and techniques, set up exchanges in the ports of  Nolfolk,Charleston,Mobile,New Orleans and  Houston,where members could go in order to purchase discounted items required for their farming.They advocated members'

avoiding debt hard work and sacrifice,and suggested goals such as home ownership.They collaborated with the white farmers' Alliance in opposing the Louisiana State Lottery Company and

efforts to tax the production of cottonseed oil,and extremely valuable crop for African American tenant farmers.The two alliances  spilt in 1890 over a Federal Elections Bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep.Henry Cabot Lodge,which authorized federal supervision of voter registration and voting.It was designed to end suppression of Southern Republican votes,particulary 

African American votes, which had been under considerable pressure by the Democratic state legislatures.Virtually all white southerns,including the farmers' Alliance denounced the bill as a return to the polices of  Reconstruction, and the Democrats succeeded in in making it in central issue

of the of the 1892 Presidential election in the South.R.H. sought to downplay the issue,insisting that 

African-American suffrage would be protected  through the alliance movement.The majority of African American Populist supported renewed federal intervention to preserve their civil rights, which were being eroded by state changes to voter registration and electoral laws.

In 1891, after the spilt over the elections bill, the Colored Alliance called a general strike of African-American cotton-pickers to demand a wage increase from 50 cents to $1.00 per hundred pounds of cotton.The white Farmers's Alliance whose membership in the South included large numbers of landowners, employing sharecroppers,were the most vehement opponents of the proposed strike.

The Progressive Farmer, paper of farmers Alliance President Leonidas L.Polk,urged "our farmers 

to leave their cotton in the field rather than pay more than 50 cents per hundred to have it picked.

The leadership of the Colored Alliance lacked the resources to mobilized the vast majority of sharecroppers who were illiterate or semi-literate and lacked sources of income.The Georgia chapter 

of the Colored Alliance,with a large contingent of landowners,refused to support the strike,viewing it as deterimental to the interests of African-American farmers who owned or rented their land.

A minor cotton pickers strike of 1891 in the Arkansas Delta in September was crushed by local vigilantes,resulting in the death of fifteen strikers,including several who were lynched.

By the 18 the end of 1891, with the failure of the cotton-pickers strike, the Colored Farmers' Alliance

began to decline in both membership and political influence.The Texas branch continued to be active

by the spring of 1892. Alexander Asberry,an African-American Republican state legislator from 

Robertson County,was elected state president and founded a newspaper,  the Alliance Vindicator.

By the end of 1892 the Texas Colored Farmers' Alliance had largely disappeared.And by extension,

the National Colored Farmers' Alliance dissapeared  after 1896 with the demise of the Populist Party, from where its member were generally recruited.

At the 1892 St. Louis convention of the Southern and Northern Farmers' Alliances, JJ  secured the 

vote of the Colored Farmers' Alliance for the creation of an independent third-party,helping override opposition from the white Southern Alliance delegates.He packed the  Colored Farmers' Alliance 

delegation with pro-third party white men in a series of proxy deals that were contrary to the organization's charter.The African-American delegates from Georgia Colored Farmers' Alliance, 

whose leadership opposed the formation of a third party,walked out of the convention in protest over this action.Only four African-American delegates were in attendance at the founding convention of the People's Party on the 4th of     July in Omaha.

The Populists hoped to bypass African-American politicians, who they viewed as corrupt, by directly 

appealing to African-American farmers via the Colored Alliance.The Colored Alliance was in rapid, decline and the African-American Republican politicians and newspapers were largely critical  of the Southern Populists,whose claims of support for African-American civil rights were largely rhetorical  and disingenuous.

In most Southern states, the stronghold of Populism was in the old yeoman-dominated hill-country 

white belt regions, whose inhabitants played a leading role in the rebellions Reconstruction,only to be only marginalized by the old black belt planters allied with Northern capital and corporate interests,especially  the railroads.The Populists opposed the convict least system and denounced 

Democratic reliance on threats of ' Negro domination.' At the same time,they steadfastly maintained 

that they did not support 'social equality' between the races and often sought allegations that they 

compromised white racial solidarity by insisting that they were the true party of white supremacy.

A number of Southern Populists sought to rid the south of African-Americans by promoting emigration,either to Africa or to the West.Leonidas formulated a plan to create a separate all

African-American state in the West,preferably Texas.Populist Congressman Tom Watson of 

Georgia is often cited as the man example of  the initial racial liberalism of Southern Populism,

acknowledging African-Americans as an integral part of Southern economy and society. 

He had an antagonistic relationship with the leadership of the states' Colored Alliance and, after 

being defeated through Bourbon Democrat manipulation of the African-American vote, gradually became an advocate of  African-American disenfranchisement.