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Dred Scott

A Thousand Words

June 19, 2020 by Jim 2 Comments

I was born in Pawhuska, Osage County, Oklahoma where I spent my first 19 years (1943-1962). Osage County is adjacent to Tulsa and Tulsa County. The Tulsa race riots of 1921 were never mentioned during my 12 years of public education and one year at Oklahoma State University.

I served as a judge in Mt. Vernon, Posey County, Indiana from 1981-2018. Until March 14, 1990 the lynchings of African Americans that took place on the courthouse campus on October 12, 1878 were unknown to me and never brought to my attention.

Upon being made aware of the Posey County murders I began to search for more complete information. A friend of mine, Glenn Curtis, who was born and raised in Posey County advised me he had seen a photograph of the 4 young Black men hanging from locust trees outside the courthouse door. He told me he remembered the elongated necks, swollen tongues and cue ball sized eyes of the hanging bodies. I have searched for a copy of that photograph since 1990.

October 12, 1878 Mt. Vernon, Indiana Courthouse Campus

My friend, Doug McFadden, who was also born and raised in rural Posey County told me that his grandfather told Doug that the day after the lynchings Doug’s grandfather watched as white citizens used the hanging young Black men for target practice. And while there was no photograph taken of the young Black man Daniel Harrison, Jr. who on October 10, 1878 was burned to death in the fire box of a locomotive in Mt. Vernon, another Posey County native friend of mine, Basil Stratton, told me that his grandfather, Walker Bennet, was an eyewitness. Walker told Basil that as a young boy he was present and saw several white men, including Walker’s father, force Harrison into the steam engine. Basil’s grandfather told Basil he never forgot the Black man’s screams and the smell of his burning flesh.

I have long thought that a photograph of the lynchings might be the evidence needed to finally get a memorial to the victims erected on the Posey County Courthouse campus. And yesterday my friends, Liz and Jeff Miller of Posey County, emailed me a copy of just such a photograph. Jeff and Liz received the copy from our mutual friend and historian, Ray Kessler of Mt. Vernon. Ray told me when we spoke by phone last night that he got the photograph from Karen McBride Christensen of Indianapolis who retrieved the picture from Georgia’s Emory University archives. I do not, as yet, know how it came to be there. Because of its graphic nature I have not attached it to this newspaper article. However, it did call me to reprise an article on race relations I first published July 4, 2005. Gentle Reader, as recent events may lead one to conclude the issues discussed in that article remain raw in our national psyche today, I offer it once more for your consideration.

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO U.S.!

LET’S HAVE A PARTY AND INVITE EVERYONE!

(Week of July 4, 2005)

The United States Supreme Court has occasionally succumbed to popular opinion then later attempted to atone for it.  The Dred Scott (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1892) cases come to mind as examples of institutionalized injustice with the partial remedy of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) being administered many years later.

In Dred Scott, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that American Negroes had no rights which the law was bound to protect as they were non-persons under the U.S. Constitution.

And in Plessy, the Court held that Mr. Plessy could not legally ride in a “whites only” railroad car.  The Court declared that laws that merely create distinctions but not unequal treatment based on race were constitutional.  SEPARATE BUT EQUAL was born.

Our original U.S. Constitution of 1787 disenfranchised women, and recognized only three-fifths of every Black and Native American person, and even that was only for census purposes.  Our Indiana Constitution of 1852 discouraged Negro migration to our state in spite of Posey County Constitutional Convention Delegate, Robert Dale Owen’s, eloquent pleas for fair treatment for all.

Were these documents penned by evil men?  I think not.  They were the result of that omnipotent god of politics, compromise, which is often good, but sometimes is not.  Should you have read this column recently you may recall that I strongly encourage compromise in court, in appropriate cases.

However, as one who grew up in a state where the compromise of the post Civil War judges and politicians led to the legal segregation of schools, restaurants, and public transportation, I can attest that some compromises simply foist the sins of the deal makers onto future generations.

When I was 6 years old, my 7 year old brother, Philip, and I made our first bus trip to our father’s family in southern Oklahoma.

We lived on the Osage Indian Nation in northeastern Oklahoma.  It sounds exotic but our hometown, Pawhuska, looked a lot like any town in Posey County.

In 1950 our parents did not have to worry about sending their children off with strangers except to admonish us not to bother anyone and to always mind our elders.

When mom and dad took us to the MKT&O (Missouri, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma) bus station it was hot that July day.  Oklahoma in July is like southern Indiana in July, WITHOUT THE SHADE TREES!

My brother and I were thirsty so we raced to the two porcelain water fountains in the shot gun building that was about 40 feet from north to south and 10 feet from east to west.

Phil slid hard on the linoleum floor and beat me to the nearest fountain.  And while I didn’t like losing the contest, since the other fountain was right next to the first one, I stepped to it.

“Jimmy, wait ‘til your brother is finished.  James Marion! I said wait!”  Dad, of course, said nothing. He didn’t need to; we knew that whatever mom said was the law.

 “Mom, I’m thirsty.  Why can’t I get a drink from this one?”

 “Son, look at that sign.  It says ‘colored’.  Philip, quit just hanging on that fountain; let your brother up there.”

Of course, the next thing I wanted to do was use the restroom so I turned towards the four that were crammed into the space for one:  “White Men”, “White Ladies”, “Colored Men”, and “Colored Women”.

After mom inspected us and slicked down my cowlick again, we got on the bus and I “took off a kiting” to the very back.

I beat Phil, but there was a man already sitting on the only bench seat.  I really wanted to lie down on that seat but the man told me I had to go back up front.  And as he was an adult, I followed his instructions.

Philip said, “You can’t sit back there.  That’s for coloreds.  That’s why that colored man said for you to go up front.”

That was the first time I noticed the man was different.  That was, also, the point where the sadness in his eyes and restrained anger in his voice crept into my awareness.

As a friend of mine sometimes says, “No big difference, no big difference, big difference.”

And if all this seems as though it comes from a country far far away and long long ago, Posey County segregated its Black and White school children for almost 100 years after 600,000 men died in the Civil War.  In fact, some of Mt. Vernon’s schools were not fully integrated until after Brown was decided in 1954.

And, whether we have learned from our history or are simply repeating it may depend upon whom we ask.  Our Arab American, Muslim, Black, Native American, and Hispanic citizens, as well as several other “usual suspects”, may think the past is merely prologue.

Sometimes it helps for me to remember what this 4th of July thing is really about.  It’s our country’s birthday party; maybe we should invite everyone.

There is nothing equal about separate.

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Filed Under: America, COVID-19, Democracy, Events, Gavel Gamut, Law Enforcement, Mt. Vernon, Oklahoma, Osage County, Posey County, Posey County Lynchings, Prejudice, Slavery Tagged With: 4 Black men hanging from locust trees, Basil Stratton, Brown v. Board of Education, Daniel Harrison Jr., Doug McFadden, Dred Scott, Gentle Reader, Glenn Curtis, Indiana, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Karen McBride Christensen, Liz & Jeff Miller, lynchings, Mt. Vernon, Oklahoma, Osage County, Pawhuska, Plessy v. Ferguson, Posey County, Ray Kessler, Robert Dale Owen, Separate but Equal, the usual suspects, there is nothing equal about separate, Tulsa race riots, Walker Bennet

The Ultimate Sin

July 20, 2018 by Jim Leave a Comment

NJC/Dred Scott Symposium

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Campbell was America’s recognized guru in the area of myth and religion. He postulated that the ultimate/unpardonable sin was to be unaware.

When Peg and I visited the just opened Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama earlier this month then participated in the Dred Scott convocation in St. Louis, Missouri last week, I was constantly made aware of Campbell’s admonition. I thought back to when I lived in an apartheid society of which I was barely conscious. When I saw the representations of lynchings and Jim Crow laws in Montgomery the stark reality of a separate and unequal daily life assaulted me. But when in St. Louis I listened to personal accounts of Black people who were on the unequal side of the equation, my own lack of alertness came into focus.

While you can anticipate the content of the displays at the EJI, when you walk through the hundreds of metal coffins inscribed with thousands of names of murdered Black people including several from Posey County, Indiana, you will naturally contemplate the evil we are capable of doing to one another just because someone may be an “other”. But when you hear directly from living persons who are still experiencing a denial of equal justice you are forced to confront your own previous lack of awareness.

The Dred Scott case was decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 and led directly to the Civil War four years later. It is only one of many wrong decisions of the Supreme Court but is probably the worst. Chief Justice Roger Taney (1777-1864) who sat on the Supreme Court for almost thirty years authored the 7 to 2 opinion. It held that Negroes could not be citizens of the United States and had no rights that white men were legally bound to recognize, and that Dred Scott must remain a slave.

On Monday, July 16, 2018 at Logan University in St. Louis descendants of Dred Scott (c.1799-1858), Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) and Roger Taney along with one hundred and fifty judges, attorneys and academic scholars were brought together by Judge Judith Draper and her husband Justice George Draper in conjunction with the National Judicial College to engage in “reconciliation”.

NJC President Benes Aldana, NJC technology specialist Joseph Sawyer, Michael Roosevelt education specialist for the State of California Courts and I as an NJC faculty member presented the afternoon sessions after the descendants and audience members held an interesting and extremely positive discussion during three hours in the morning.

The relatives of Taney and Davis did not attempt to excuse slavery. They did, however, clearly and poignantly point out their ancestors had done many good things along with their egregious errors in moral and legal judgments. As Peg and I listened to them I was reminded of Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar:

“The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft’ interred with their bones.”

William Shakespeare, Act III, sc ii.

What the EJI and Dred Scott experiences did for me was force me to remember and dissect my experiences under the system of legal apartheid in my hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. I had never given more than a passing thought as to why “Colored” boys could not enter the front door of the pool hall or come to the front part of the building. And now my home town is New Harmony, Indiana where, according to the book by William E. Wilson On the Sunny Side of a One Way Street at page 91 he wrote that when he was a boy in New Harmony:

“By the twentieth century New Harmony had lost the egalitarian faith on which it was founded a hundred years before, and Aunt Minnie’s Lizzie (Wilson’s Aunt’s Black servant) was the only Negro permitted to live in the town. She had a room in the hotel (owned by Wilson’s Aunt and Uncle) and never went out on the street, day or night. Uncle Harry and Aunt Minnie did everything possible to make Lizzie feel like one of the family, not only because she was an excellent cook but also because they loved her. Even so, I have often wondered since how Lizzie endured her ostracism in the town.”

And Wilson also writes of his father’s loss of his Congressional seat in 1925 because he refused to join the Ku Klux Klan.

Well, I am more “aware” now than I was before the visit to the EJI Museum and Memorial, the Dred Scott convocation and Mr. Wilson’s book, but realize there’s more I need to do while, I hope, there’s still time to do it.

I wish to sincerely thank the friendly and expert staff of our fine Alexandrian Public Library in Mt. Vernon, Indiana for providing me with several excellent reference works on Dred Scott and William E. Wilson’s interesting book on New Harmony.

 

For video of Peg’s pictures of the Convocation please go to: https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=qqOf6KZ7ZBw&video_referrer=watch

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Filed Under: America, Events, Gavel Gamut, Indiana, Mt. Vernon, National Judicial College, New Harmony, Oklahoma, Osage County, Posey County, Slavery Tagged With: Alexandrian Public Library, Chief Justice Roger Taney, Civil War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Dred Scott, Equal Justice Initiative, guru of myth and religion, James M. Redwine, Jim Crow laws, Jim Redwine, Joseph Campbell, Julius Caesar, Ku Klux Klan, legal apartheid, Logan University, lynchings, Mark Antony, Mt. Vernon Indiana, National Judicial College, New Harmony Indiana, On the Sunny Side of a One Way Street, Posey County Indiana, Sarah Lawrence College, slavery, The Legacy Museum and Memorial, The Ultimate Sin, William E. Wilson

A House Divided

July 2, 2018 by Jim Leave a Comment

Most of us know of and many can even recite President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address delivered during the Civil War on November 19, 1863. And most of us know of and probably sometimes paraphrase his House Divided speech delivered when he was a candidate for United States Senator in Illinois (June 16, 1858). Lincoln lost to Stephan Douglas whom Lincoln later beat for the presidency in 1860.

​The topic might be a little heavy for a short weekly newspaper column but with our country’s birthday this week and the country in a perpetual state of mutual invective I humbly submit it is worth our attention.

​In an attempt to pare down the extremely complex and emotionally charged issues of our country’s Negro slavery, the Civil War, our current status in re civil rights and the cacophony of our public discourse, I will just refer to a few items: (1) The United States Constitution, (2) the Missouri Compromise, (3) the Kansas-Nebraska Act and, (4) the Dred Scott case as decided in 1857 by the U.S. Supreme Court. If you are still with me, I caution it gets worse.

​Originally slavery was recognized as a States Rights issue, i.e., if a state wanted slavery and wanted to be part of the Unionthat was okay. But as a device to apportion the number of a state’s congressmen, the Constitution declared Negroes in eachstate would be counted as 3/5 of a person for census purposes. However, African Americans were not made citizens until the Civil War via the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Of course, Indians were not included, and women of any race could not vote until 1920 via the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

​Because of the great divide between free and slave states, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was enacted, although many argued it was unconstitutional. The Missouri Compromise allowed for the admission of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and prohibited slavery north of a certain parallel (36°30’) but allowed it below that border.

​This worked alright until heightened tensions arose between slave and free states so Senator Stephan Douglas in 1854 got the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed, which allowed for the admission of the states of Kansas and Nebraska to the union with the provision of slavery by popular majority vote of each state’s citizens. Of course, this was not within the spirit or the substance of the Missouri Compromise.

​Then in 1857 the United States Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case. Scott, was a slave whose owner had taken Scott with the owner to live in a free state then returned with him to Missouri. Scott sued for his freedom claiming that once he was in a free state he was then after always free.

​Precedent as old as a decision from colonial times in 1772, the Somerset case, was clearly with Scott and most legal authorities, including the lawyer Abraham Lincoln, expected the Supreme Court to declare Scott free. How wrong he and many others were.

​Chief Justice Roger Taney a former slave owner and fierce opponent of the Missouri Compromise, ignored established precedent and used Dred Scott’s case to declare no Negro could ever be a citizen of the United States and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Taney’s overreaching andpoorly reasoned opinion led directly to the Civil War four years later.

​According to the historian Paul Finkelman who wrote the book Dred Scott v. Sandford, A Brief History with Documents:

“By the 1850s Taney was a seething, angry, uncompromising supporter of the South and slavery and an implacable foe of racial equality, the Republican Party, and the anti-slavery movement.”

See p. 29

​

​Taney declared that Blacks:

“[A]re not included and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution… [T]hey were at that time (1787) considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings….”

ibid p. 35

​

​Stephan Douglas held the position the question of slavery should be a matter of state option. Abraham Lincoln on the other hand foresaw that a nation half-slave and half-free, that is a nation divided against itself, could not survive. We are still working that out after 242 years. Happy Birthday!

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Filed Under: America, Gavel Gamut, Judicial, National Judicial College Tagged With: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, Chief Justice Taney, Civil War, Dred Scott, Gettysburg Address, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, slavery, Stephen Douglas

Are We Still Separate?

June 30, 2017 by Jim Leave a Comment

Although I wrote the first few Gavel Gamuts in 1990 the every-weekly column began in April 2005, about 700 articles ago. In light of our current political and cultural dissonance I thought it might be interesting to revisit the following thoughts from over a decade ago to assess what changes may have occurred. This Birthday Greeting to America was first published July 04, 2005. I hope those of you who read it then and those who are considering it for the first time will find it worthwhile in our on-going conversation of Separate versus Equal. Also, Peg and I are returning to Osage County, Oklahoma for this Fourth of July. Maybe we’ll find the bus station is now just a memory.

Happy Birthday to U.S.!

Let’s Have a Party and Invite Everyone!

The United States Supreme Court has occasionally succumbed to popular opinion then later attempted to atone for it. The Dred Scott (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1892) cases come to mind as examples of institutionalized injustice with the partial remedy of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) being administered many years later.

In Dred Scott, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that American Negroes had no rights which the law was bound to protect as they were non-persons under the U.S. Constitution.

And in Plessy, the Court held that Mr. Plessy could not legally ride in a “whites only” railroad car. The Court declared that laws that merely create distinctions but not unequal treatment based on race were constitutional. SEPARATE BUT EQUAL was born.

Our original U.S. Constitution of 1787 disenfranchised women, and recognized only three-fifths of every Black and Native American person, and even that was only for census purposes. Our Indiana Constitution of 1852 discouraged Negro migration to our state in spite of Posey County Constitutional Convention Delegate, Robert Dale Owen’s, eloquent pleas for fair treatment for all.

Were these documents penned by evil men? I think not. They were the result of that omnipotent god of politics, compromise, which is often good, but sometimes is not. Should you have read this column recently you may recall that I strongly encourage compromise in court, in appropriate cases.

However, as one who grew up in a state where the compromise of the post Civil War judges and politicians led to the legal segregation of schools, restaurants, and public transportation, I can attest that some compromises simply foist the sins of the deal makers onto future generations.

When I was 6 years old, my 7 year old brother, Philip, and I made our first bus trip to our father’s family in southern Oklahoma.

We lived on the Osage Indian Nation in northeastern Oklahoma. It sounds exotic but our hometown, Pawhuska, looked a lot like any town in Posey County.

In 1950 our parents did not have to worry about sending their children off with strangers except to admonish us not to bother anyone and to always mind our elders.

When mom and dad took us to the MKT&O (Missouri, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma) bus station it was hot that July day. Oklahoma in July is like southern Indiana in July, WITHOUT THE SHADE TREES!

My brother and I were thirsty so we raced to the two porcelain water fountains in the shot gun building that was about 40 feet from north to south and 10 feet from east to west.

Phil slid hard on the linoleum floor and beat me to the nearest fountain. And while I didn’t like losing the contest, since the other fountain was right next to the first one, I stepped to it.

“Jimmy, wait ‘til your brother is finished. James Marion! I said wait!” Dad, of course, said nothing. He didn’t need to; we knew that whatever mom said was the law.

“Mom, I’m thirsty. Why can’t I get a drink from this one?”

“Son, look at that sign. It says ‘colored’. Philip, quit just hanging on that fountain; let your brother up there.”

Of course, the next thing I wanted to do was use the restroom so I turned towards the four that were crammed into the space for one: “White Men”, “White Ladies”, “Colored Men”, and “Colored Women”.

After mom inspected us and slicked down my cowlick again, we got on the bus and I “took off a kiting” to the very back.

I beat Phil, but there was a man already sitting on the only bench seat. I really wanted to lie down on that seat but the man told me I had to go back up front. And as he was an adult, I followed his instructions.

Philip said, “You can’t sit back there. That’s for coloreds. That’s why that colored man said for you to go up front.”

That was the first time I noticed the man was different. That was, also, the point where the sadness in his eyes and restrained anger in his voice crept into my awareness.

As a friend of mine sometimes says, “No big difference, no big difference, big difference.”

And if all this seems as though it comes from a country far far away and long long ago, Posey County segregated its Black and White school children for almost 100 years after 600,000 men died in the Civil War. In fact, some of Mt. Vernon’s schools were not fully integrated until after Brown was decided in 1954.

And, whether we have learned from our history or are simply repeating it may depend upon whom we ask. Our Arab American, Muslim, Black, Native American, and Hispanic citizens, as well as several other “usual suspects”, may think the past is merely prologue.

Sometimes it helps for me to remember what this 4th of July thing is really about. It’s our country’s birthday party; maybe we should invite everyone.

There is nothing equal about separate.

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Filed Under: America, Democracy, Events, Gavel Gamut, Judicial, Law, Oklahoma, Osage County, Patriotism, Posey County Tagged With: 4th of July, American Negroes, Arab American, back of the bus, Black, Brown v. Board of Education, colored men, colored women, Dred Scott, Gavel Gamut, Happy Birthday to U.S., Hispanic, Indiana Constitution of 1852, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, legal segregation of schools restaurants public transportation, let's have a party and invite everyone, MKT&O bus station, Muslim, Native American, Oklahoma, Osage County, Pawhuska, Plessy v. Ferguson, Posey County, Separate but Equal, there is nothing equal about separate, three-fifths of every Black and Native American person, United States Supreme Court, usual suspects, white ladies, white men, whites only

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