1946 Columbia Race Riot

this program is brought to you by Emory University in 1946 the race riot in Columbia Tennessee was a phenomenon that begins to talk to speak to the militancy of black veterans and the black community coming out of that Second World War what happened is it you know and many of these things start off with something really simple what happened was a woman named Gladys Stevenson a black woman wanted to get her radio repaired she took it to a shop the guy told her was gonna cost so much to get it fixed and it would be done by such and such a date she goes back to pick it up he tells us gonna cost more she's like I don't have that kind of money he's like yeah he's that way sometimes and so they go back and forth back and forth then he sells her radio and then she he tells her is going to cost more for her to get it back from the guy that he just sold it to next time she comes in she comes in with her son who's a navy veteran because when she gets the radio it doesn't work he's cut off the electric cord and the batteries don't work and he's charged her a double the price that he originally said it was going to cost they get into a heated argument in this heated argument it looks like somebody one of the assistants is getting ready to smack the woman and this veteran let me be very clear this veteran used to box this veteran was not going to let somebody smack his mother and he steps in between and the fact that you have a black man in Tennessee in 1946 basically stepping up saying oh no you are not going to lay your hands on my mother come on my let's go and so she's walking out the son is walking out the man is so angry he fell and he hits the veteran in the back of the head yeah veteran doesn't go down veteran turns around and it's like Oh BAM and the battle is on he's pounding a pounding and pounding them they go through a glass window this is 1946 you get a black man hitting a white man going through a glass window as they go through the glass window of the radio shop whites are around looking going but what is this like what is this and so a few more whites go in there to try to beat on the veteran because I might my god you've got a black man hitting a white man this is absolutely criminal well when the mother sees folks attacking her son she's like oh that's my baby boy hey baby that's my baby boy she comes after with she picks up one of the shards of glasses she starts slashing they both get pounded they both get arrested and a lynch mob is like oh uh uh we're gonna have to do something here then oh these folks have gotten a little too uppity who do they think they are talking back and hit hit did you see what they did to poor ball over there oh that unacceptable unacceptable and you start getting this Mealing around of the crowd around the jail well the black community hears about sees the milling around starts hearing the word we're gonna get a rope I'm going to get a rope we're going to get a rope and they start moving they they work to get the son and the mother out of Columbia Tennessee the lynch mob is coming black folks start organizing because one of the things I mean we think of like Martin Luther King and non-violence but one of the things is that there has been a tradition in the black community of self-defense and so what they do is they get their shotguns because remember this is the souther but it's got a gun they get their shotguns they get their rifles they get their pistols and they start taking a purchase on top of the buildings in the black community the area known as the bottoms or meek slide and so as white start pouring in and there was one guy he had it he was just going to burn down the black businesses doing remind you of Tulsa gonna burn down the black businesses and he comes in there with his buddies and a can of gasoline and he's it's trying to zigzag and pour the gasoline and all of a sudden the black guys on top of the roof start shooting the barium bail it's like the black folks just shoot at white folks did we just get shot wavin yeah I took I'm wounded I just got what what so they don't the wounded White's get pulled out and it's like oh my god what are we going to do what are we gonna and the crowd is coming the crowd is coming now the sheriff is first thing they're going okay boys now you just need to settle down we'll handle this and the crowd is like no no no call in the Tennessee National Guard thus Tennessee State Guard they as they're coming in as more whites of the mob are coming in black folks are defending their property because there had been lynchings in that County before they knew what this looked like and this is 1946 you had veterans up on those roofs they had taken down the Nazis they weren't having it for them this was a new day and even though they had been systematically cut out of the GI Bill and and part of that let me let me describe that piece being cut out of the GI Bill it was passed in 1944 and it opened up a range of opportunities to veterans it Ropin dup housing opportunity so through the VA loans it opened up education so it a full-ride through college for veterans but the way that the law was written was that although it's a federal law and it's written race-neutral in the language is that that it will be administered by the states and so when you're looking at these Jim Crow states that cannot fathom that a black man should have access to education what you're getting are these veterans who are watching these opportunities pass them by and the thing that they're going to do at the bare minimum is to protect their homestead to protect their community and to protect one of theirs and so as White's are coming in these shooting back so when the Sun comes up the state troopers move in and I mean they moved in with machine guns moved in and started rounding up they call you a brave last night are you brave this morning because we're getting ready to take you down at the very end you get the beatings shootings about 25 African Americans are arrested for attempted murder now I see self-defense what Tennessee saw was attempted murder for shooting at the guys we're trying to burn down the black neighborhood for shooting at the mob that is trying to go in and destroy the black neighborhood well these Tennessee stormtroopers basically did that as they went rummaging through these the the the black business section looking for the guns looking for the rifles well they weren't finding too much and none of the ballistics were matching up but in the trial that happened in the trial that happened I mean the trial itself becomes fascinating because as the lynch mob is forming and as it's very clear that the bullets are flying somebody calls in to Nashville and says alert the n-double-a-cp we're in trouble down here the n-double-a-cp then sends his attorneys to help these 25 black men who have now been arrested for attempted murder charged indicted for attempted murder the defense was absolutely brilliant I mean brilliant Z Alexander Looby who was the black attorney out of Nashville one of the first things he did was to begin to challenge the jury you know what they call that voir dire process where it's like do you have any biases against black folks do you really think that you can be a fair and impartial no next do you wrote next how do you remember of the Klan well yeah next I mean and so to find then you can't make this stuff up so by the time they were able to get 12 jurors who who could be impartial and then because the state's case was so weak they didn't have the evidence and Zi Alexander Looby is arguing this is self-defense this is one of the basic rights that we know of as Americans we honor this we cherish this in the first round 23 of the 25 men were found not guilty yeah now you had the other two Thurgood Marshall from the head office of the in double ACP comes down to take part in this case of the for the final two they again laid out a brilliant beautiful strategy it's so infuriated the law enforcement folks in Columbia Tennessee that what they did was after the end of the trial Zi Alexander Looby Thurgood Marshall who would become the first black Supreme Court justice of the United States and two other men are in a car and they're leaving Columbia and that was you know almost like Chennai was bad yeah okay this is good cops pull him over when they think it was the cops because they were in plain clothes and the cars were unmarked but when you get that kind of they're close behind so they pulled over first thing they did was they're looking in the car for for open containers convinced that somebody's been drinking they went and bought some coca-cola at the local store but they weren't drinking hard liquor there's no booze in the car so cops in the car oh man find any moonshine didn't find anyone and find any whiskey huh they drive a little bit further cops pull him over again let's see you let's see your license they ask Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall hands over his license it's not expired it's nothing wrong with this license I'm just not a little gentleman he gets his license back dries a little bit further then cops pull him over a third time in this third time they're like you're driving drunk like I've had some water and I've had some coca-cola yeah you look drunk to me get out of the car they pull Thurgood Marshall out of the car throw him into their car now there's a white guy in the car named Harry Raymond and he looks up and he's like wait a minute they're not going back to to the city to arraign him or to arrest him or anything like that they're driving off into the woods so he hops over and he starts following the cars that have Thurgood Marshall in them they look up they turn right he turns right they turn left he turns left they slow down he slows down they speed up he speeds up and he's thinking they're gonna Lynch him they're taking them off into the woods to lynch him they're gonna Lynch Thurgood Marshall my god Victor religious Thurgood Marshall finally they turn this way he turns this way they stop the car he stops the car he gets up they're like what are you doing cops what are you doing and he's like I know what you're planning and I'm not gonna let you do it I said what what I know what you're planning Annie are you gonna think about this you really have no backup I mean you are out here in the woods in Tennessee you are dealing with men who are strapped they have guns you don't this is nothing but the sheer raw courage of principle and doing what I'm not going to let you do it I like fine okay when they try to then get Thurgood of rain for so but they don't actually turn him over they turn back around and go to the city and then they try to arrest him for drunk driving judge look says that this man is not sure come on y'all dismiss let him go but in that one moment you in fact see so much about the role of law enforcement in the south that doesn't enforce the law another strain of law enforcement like come on y'all there's some element of the Constitution we have to uphold so you're looking at this really contested terrain and in the middle of this contested terrain you have African Americans who refuse to go into their place who refuse to just stand there and take it and who refuse to just abide by the old ways because they're like no this is a new day and it's that new day that I think really is emblematic of the race riot in Columbia Tennessee the preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University

Channel: undefined

Views: 916,191

Rating: 4.8534651 out of 5

Keywords: NAACP, Carol Anderson, Emory University, Lynching, African American Studies, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Black, African, American

Id: qeCjvqFKxMo

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 13 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/mcjon77]

I wish that they would make a movie about this. Black folks fighting back and winning, both on the battlefield and in the courtroom.

[u/[deleted]]

Deep