[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       In an unpublished book, Dolphus recounts how his dad's 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.''

     

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