[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 55 (Wednesday, April 21, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E714-E715]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EXPOSING RACISM
______
HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON
of mississippi
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, in my continuing efforts to
document and expose racism in America, I submit the following articles
into the Congressional Record.
In Their Own Voices, African Americans Tell the History of Bigotry
(By Ovetta Sampson)
Colorado Springs, Colo.--History books paint Colorado
Springs as a haven of goodness--a beautiful resort town for
the healthy and wealthy tucked at the bottom of Pikes Peak.
In its early years, the city seemed almost ambivalent about
race compared with other places around the country. The city
didn't have segregated schools or neighborhoods. Its first
police force, formed in 1887, included black officer Horace
Shelby. By 1898, Colorado Springs had two weekly newspapers
for blacks: The Colorado Springs Sun and The Enterprise.
A closer look reveals a piece of Colorado Springs' past
that's rarely talked about. It's a piece of history locked in
the hearts and minds of many longtime black residents. It
shows a Colorado Springs that sanctioned separatism in the
city's finest hotels, restaurants and shops.
It tells of a Jim Crow existence ushered in by the Ku Klux
Klan. To find such history, you have to look beyond the usual
books about the city and into the lives of its ordinary black
residents. To get the truest sense of the triumphs and
tragedies black people endured here, you have to let them
have their say, in their own words.
* * * Kelly Dolphus Stroud was born in 1907, the third of
11 children in one of Colorado Springs' pioneering families.
While the children were still young, their father, Kimbal
Stroud, would fill the home with music, playing the French
harp or singing. He also told them stories about slavery,
biblical adventures and happenings around the world.
In an unpublished book, Dolphus recounts how his dad's
after-supper musings gave them the head start they needed for
school.
``The Stroud children learned a great deal at the feet of
their parents and were well advanced beyond their grade
levels upon entering Bristol elementary school. This placed
them in the enigmatic position of being the brains of their
classes because of their knowledge and the butt of all jokes
and embarrassments because of the color-phobia of White
America.''
Dolphus realized, even in his youth, that being smart
didn't exempt blacks from the racist attitudes of others.
``It hurts when one approaches his high school Latin
teacher as I did after the first semester of my first year of
Latin class to ask why I have been graded `B' when I had
passed every test with 100 percent grade, had done every
translation without error and had not been absent or tardy to
any class,'' Dolphus wrote in a letter to his biographer,
Inez Hunt, years after he'd left Colorado Springs.
``Thus, I received this curt answer `I don't give A's to
colored kids.' ''
Dolphus transferred to another Latin class and ``received
an A-plus on every Latin semester report thereafter for the
next three years.''
He was good at masking his pain but angry at the way he was
treated: ``To be forced to carry a pocket full of rocks at
all times for a measure of self-defense against unprovoked
attacks,'' he wrote in another letter to Hunt. The letter can
be found in John Holley's book ``Invisible People of the
Pikes Peak Region.''
``To be unable to eat food inside any of the numerous
restaurants in Colorado Springs and Manitou, to be unable to
enter any of the city theaters, and to be harassed by Chief
Hugh D. Harper and his police to the point where Negro
youngsters were constantly under the threat of being
kidnapped from the streets and taken to City Hall and forced
to dance and clown for the entertainment of the police, were
among the minor irritations one faced daily.''
Still, Dolphus excelled in college, becoming the first
black man at Colorado College to earn membership in the
prestigious honor society Phi Beta Kappa.
After graduation, however, he couldn't get a job teaching
at his alma mater where he had done so well.
Dolphus thought it was a cruel joke. Although black
students here received an equal education long before the
1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision desegregating schools, they
ran up against the same wall as in Southern cities that
separated them from professional jobs. Dolphus ended up
working for his father's company hauling everything from ash
to trash because he couldn't find a better job.
``Naturally, the experience at Bristol School, Colorado
Springs High School and the general atmosphere of the town
left emotional * * * scars upon the Negroes of my
generation,'' he wrote.
Dolphus, like most of his siblings, eventually left
Colorado Springs. He taught political science at a black
school in Georgia, coached a baseball team and owned his own
trucking and storage business in Portland, Ore. He died in
1975 at 68.
The heavy cloud of discrimination that floated throughout
the city during Dolphus' youth soon became a whirlwind of
prejudice, racism and downright terrorism for blacks.
In Colorado Springs, old-timers say, the Ku Klux Klan
reigned with the backing of the city government. A 1921
Gazette clipping tells how the Klan, formed in July of that
year, couldn't be shut down or touched by order of the police
chief and district attorney. Other clippings tell of the Klan
burning crosses on front lawns and even on Pikes Peak.
`The brutality was horrible,'' said 75-year-old Eula
Andrews, who vividly remembers the Klan uprisings from when
she was a little girl. ``It was so unpleasant. I was
frightened, my mother was frightened. The Klan was so strong
here.''
Andrews may have felt the sting of hatred more than most.
She was the daughter of Charles Banks, one of the city's most
vocal crusaders against racism.
Bank's suffering was more of a conscious choice. He was
born in 1880 to an American Indian mother and English father.
With his caramel-colored skin, Banks didn't have to identify
himself as black, but because he was raised in a black
household, he did.
When he signed up with the military, he joined black men
who were forced to fight segregated troops. After contracting
malaria in the Philippines, the Spanish-American War veteran
retired to Colorado Springs, where he used the city as the
battleground to fight a civil rights war.
Andrews said her father's activism could be traced to a
face-to-face meeting Banks had with abolitionist Frederick
Douglass, who encouraged him.
In Colorado Springs, Banks didn't hesitate to threaten,
coerce or cajole the folks of Colorado Springs to go his way.
``I am sending you this communication on behalf of the
National Colored Democratic Club of El Paso County protesting
against the appointment of Judge Little for assistant
district attorney,'' Banks wrote to another El Paso County
judge in July 1932. ``There was a time when the colored
people of this county put their unmost confidence in him and
would have supported him in almost anything he would have
asked for. But his attitude toward us during the reign of the
Ku Klu (Klan) shattered all confidence beyond a reasonable
doubt that he was not our friend. We did everything in our
power to ensure your election, and we still have undying
confidence in you and believe when you look into this matter
further that you will decline to make the appointment of
Judge Little.''
Bank's activism generated enemies, including the Klan,
which burned a cross in his neighbor's yard thinking it was
Banks' yard. His activism also helped him get elected as
president of the NAACP, a post he held for five years.
As part of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, he was a pistol, packing political clout and
a penchant for filing lawsuits against businesses that
violated civil rights laws. He sent his children and other
relatives to stores, theaters and cafes around town to
document the discrimination.
Andrews remembers being send one time by her father to
Walgreens. She sat down in a booth and ordered coffee. When
the waitress served her, she poured salt instead of sugar
into her cup. ``I got so angry,'' Andrews said.
Her father, through, had given her strict orders not to
fight--just pay, leave and document the event.
In an undated speech titled ``Will Democracy or Fascism
Reign in Colorado?'' Banks took the city's government to
task.
A five-man committee was appointed by the City Council;
they investigated very thoroughly and cleared the police of
the brutality charge. Of course, it couldn't be expected that
anyone would be appointed to that committee who would make a
fair investigation. The committee stated it was not brutality
but self-defense when a policeman cruelly beat up a man Well,
if self-defense means going into a cell when a man is already
behind bars and beating him unconscious, then we will call it
self-defense. Of course I realize that sometimes it is
necessary for a policeman to use his black jack. But the way
they have beaten some of these boys, you would think they had
just caught a desperate criminal. . . . The committee also
stated the police were sincere and devoted and above average
in intelligence. What I want to know (is) who and what are
they devoted to besides the chief and the taxpayers' money?
Yes, maybe they are above average in intelligence, they have
the intelligence to arrest a man, drunk or sober, fine him
$25 to $250 for drunkenness, disturbing the peace or whatever
else they can think of to get the money . . . They have the
intelligence to order Negroes out of theaters and to uphold
other public facilities and breaking the civil rights law.''
Banks' fervor didn't sit well with some of the other civil
rights leaders in town, and he was called a Communist.
Eventually he was ostracized and ousted as NAACP head, but
residents say his legacy will be as a freedom fighter in
Colorado Springs. He died in 1976.
In 1942, Camp Carson came to town, and in one day, the
city's black population increased 10 percent. By the time
Camp Carson turned into a permanent Army base and became Fort
Carson in 1954, the military installation was regularly
drawing new residents to the city.
[[Page E715]]
Joyce Gilmer came to Colorado Springs by way of a military
husband. Her first impressions were outlined in an extensive
interview she did in 1994 for the Pioneers Museum's Voices
and Visions Oral History project.
``When I first came here, I didn't know any black who
worked at a newspaper,'' she said. ``I don't think they had a
lot of black professors at Colorado College for sure, and
they had a lot fewer black teachers than they have now. They
didn't have any black doctor. . . . Now they have several
doctors and lawyers and things like that, but not nearly as
many as they should have for a town this size.''
It certainly wasn't a climate that looked friendly for
Gilmer, who soon became an unemployed, divorced mother of
three. Yet, she was driven to survive. She went back to
school and became the city's first black woman real estate
agent.
She was so good she convinced her landlord to put the house
she was renting on the market, and it was the first one she
sold. She was homeless but successful.
The clouds of Colorado Springs' past were there as Gilmer
began her ascension into the realm of selling real estate.
``When I first started in real estate working with men, (I
was) the only woman and (the only) black woman,'' she said in
the oral history interview. ``They don't even expect you to
say anything. When I used to do a closing . . . I would sit
through the whole closing, I'd make sure I found a mistake at
the beginning, and then I would call their attention to the
mistake so we'd all have to start over.''
Though Gilmer was never exposed to it personally, she
talked about the existence of red-lining, the practice of
showing houses only in certain neighborhoods to people of
color while steering white people to other neighborhoods.
``You were not allowed to point out a neighborhood that you
couldn't go into,'' she said. ``I guess white people knew
more about that than I did because they're not going to tell
a black person these are areas they don't want you to live in
or sell in. . . . But it was beginning to be the topic of
conversation at meetings and things like that, that this was
not legal and you had better not be caught doing it.''
Her personal triumphs--earning a degree, starting her own
business, becoming one of the most successful real estate
agents in the city--shows just how much the city has changed.
While many old-timers say racism in Colorado Springs is
still just below the surface, stories such as Gilmer's point
toward fairness.
Last year, signs were erected to identify the newly named
Martin Luther King Jr. bypass. The NAACP also celebrated its
10th annual Juneteenth festival--a community party
celebrating freedom--on the grounds of Colorado College.
Also, the city is in its second round of talks as part of a
Community Conversation on Race.
The transformation is by no means complete, but residents
who know this city's history say there have been changes.
``I think this city has made a 180-degree turn,'' said
Franklin Macon, grandson of Charles Banks and a Springs
native. ``No matter what people say, it's gotten so much
better.''
____
Twin Brothers Charged With Conspiring To Incite Race War
Richmond, Va. (AP).--A grand jury has indicted twin
brothers on charges of conspiring to incite a race war
between black's and whites.
Kevin and Kalvin Hill, who allegedly belong to a white
supremacist group, were indicted Monday in the Richmond
suburb of Henrico County on charges of ``conspiracy to incite
one race to insurrection against the other race.'' They were
released on bond pending a March 25 hearing in Circuit Court.
The brothers, 28, were indicted twice earlier this year--on
Feb. 4 and Feb. 25--on various drug distribution and
conspiracy charges. They also face an abduction charge.
The brothers ``prominently displayed Nazi paraphernalia''
and ``read passages from their white supremacy `Bible' '' to
people who came to them to buy marijuana, according to a
search warrant affidavit filed in the case.
Court papers indicated the brothers possessed a document
that ``described and espoused the burning of synagogues and
violence against people based upon race or religion.''
Police found numerous items related to the white supremacy
movement in searches of the brothers' residences in Henrico
County and Bluefield, W.Va., court records indicate.
The items included Nazi flags, posters of Adolf Hitler,
clothing with Nazi slogans, World War II Nazi paraphernalia,
applications to join the Ku Klux Klan and pamphlets
containing racist slogans, the records indicate.
Police believe the Hill brothers moved to the Richmond area
from West Virginia shortly before 1995.
The organization that the man allegedly belong to was
identified in the court documents as ``Christian Identity.''
Among several other suspects who were indicted on drug
charges related to the Hills was Sylvester J. Carrigton, 27,
of Chesterfield County. Police said the brothers recruited
Carrington, who is black, as a drug supplier.
``Basically it was just a money thing,'' said narcotics
investigator Michael J. Barron. ``. . . They didn't care for
him too much, but it was business.''
Police seized about 5 pounds of marijuana, 25 to 50 doses
of LSD, more than 20 drug pipes, several knives, 15 guns,
ammunition and military flak jackets in the Richmond area and
West Virginia. The weapons included .30-.30 rifles with
scopes, AR-15 assault-style rifles and Tec 9 semiautomatic
pistols.
Police said the 2-year investigation is ongoing.
____
Black Ag Department Managers Pursue Discrimination Complaint
Washington (AP).--Black managers working for the
Agriculture Department are moving forward with a complaint
that accuses the agency of denying them promotions.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has scheduled
an April 12 hearing on the class action complaint, which
alleges that more than 300 black managers at the department's
Farm Service Agency were discriminated against.
The Farm Service Agency, which administers loans and
credit, also had been cited by black farmers in a lawsuit
that resulted in a multimillion-dollar settlement--currently
under review by a federal judge.
``It's not surprising that the Farm Service Agency was
discriminating against the black farmers when they have for
years systematically excluded African-Americans from policy-
making positions in the upper levels of agency management,''
said lead attorney Joseph D. Gebhardt.
The complaint, which was filed in February 1997, requests a
promotion for each member of the class along with appropriate
back pay and benefits.
Tom Amontree, a spokesman for Agriculture Secretary Dan
Glickman, said the agency has been ``aggressively dealing
with the backlog of employee civil rights complaints.'' In
the past two years, the agency has resolved three-fourths of
such outstanding complaints, he said.
``Secretary Glickman will not tolerate acts of
discrimination at this department,'' Amontree said. ``Anyone
found doing so will be dealt with appropriately.''
The action before the EEOC is just one of two under way by
black department employees. Another group is meeting with
attorneys to pursue a complaint on behalf of all black
employees within the agency, organizers said.
``Obviously the only thing the department is going to
respond to is across-the-board action,'' said Lawrence Lucas,
president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and an
organizer of the effort. ``Employees who have been in the
system and seen the discrimination have decided the only way
they can get to the systemic nature and the culture of racism
is through a class action.''
____________________