Sharecropper Living

From Mississippi History Now, "Cooperative Farming in Mississippi," by Fred C. Smith: By 1932 the Great Depression had the country in its relentless grip and most Americans believed that something was very wrong.

Children went hungry, adults died of malnutrition, and in the richest agricultural region in the world, the Mississippi River Delta, families survived on the “3-Ms” – meal, meat, and molasses. There were tons of food around, but it was not profitable to transport it, to sell it. American agriculture was booming, yet people were under-fed. Warehouses were full of clothing, yet people were dressed in rags because they could not afford to buy new clothing. The situation was as bleak in the industrial economy as it was in agriculture. Industrial production had fallen by fifty percent.

Sharecroppers suffer

In the 1932 U. S. presidential campaign, New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt promised voters he would see to it that Americans got a “New Deal.” Part of the New Deal was a program designed to increase the price of farm products. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) program paid farmers to take some land and livestock out of production. While AAA programs helped to rescue large, medium, and even small land-owning farmers, the same program drove poor white and black sharecroppers, the least powerful Americans, to the brink of starvation.

Over eighty percent of the farms in the Lower Mississippi River Delta Region were worked by sharecroppers and over eighty percent of those sharecroppers were black. Sharecroppers did not have money, tools, livestock, or land. Sharecroppers agreed to work the landowner’s land for a share of the proceeds from the sale of the crop. They bought their meal, meat, and molasses on credit from the planter’s commissary or from the local “furnishing” store. Few sharecroppers in the delta region had received cash income from their share of the crop since 1920. Most of them ended the year “in the hole.”

The life of a delta sharecropper was hard. In the 1930s, it got harder. Taking advantage of the government AAA payments, planters soon began evicting sharecroppers, especially their least favorite ones. The least favorite of all sharecroppers were the men and women who had joined the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU). The STFU, which started in Arkansas and spread to other states, attempted to organize black and white tenant farmers into a union in order to get better working conditions and a fair deal in their dealings with the planters.

In late 1935, C. H. Dibble, a planter in Parkin, Arkansas, evicted almost 100 sharecropper families. In March 1936 some of those families made their way to a cooperative farm at Hillhouse, Mississippi, lured by the promise of social equality and economic stability. (source: Mississippi History Now)

The Slave Diet Low in Niacin Causes Pellagra Disease

Cornbread and Molasses. 3-M diet_ of the Southern poor: meet (fatback or slat pork), meal (cornmeal) and molasses.

The Slave Diet as Crude, Coarse, and Boring

Besides being likely vitamin deficient, the slave diet was obviously crude, coarse, and boring. As Frederick Douglass commented: "Not to give a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development of meanness even among slaveholders. The rule is, no matter how coarse the food, only let there be enough of it." Victoria McMullen remembered her slave grandmother described the average slave's diet this way:

"But the other slaves didn't git nothing but fat meat and corn bread and molasses. And they got tired of that same old thing. They wanted something else sometimes." Mary Reynolds recalled during slavery days what she was fed: "Mostly we ate pickled pork and corn bread and peas and beans and ' taters . They never was as much as we needed." Although monotonous, this diet showed her master at least gave more than just the stereotypical "hog and hoecake" diet. As Olmsted observed: "The food is everywhere, however, coarse, crude, and wanting in variety; much more so than that of our [Northern] prison convicts . " The restricted food types they received, the crude cooking equipment they used, and the sharp time limits imposed by both sexes working a "sunup to sundown" work day all combined to produce a dreary diet. As actress turned reluctant mistress Fanny Kemble observed at her husband's rice plantation:

They got to the fields at daybreak, carrying with them their allowance of food for the day, which toward noon, and not till then, they eat, cooking it over a fire, which they kindle as best they can, where they are working. Their second meal in the day is at night, after their labor is over, having worked, at the very least, six hours without intermission of rest or refreshment since their noonday meal.

Salt Pork. 3-M diet_ of the Southern poor: meet (fatback or slat pork), meal (cornmeal) and molasses.

Being high in pork and maize [corn], the classic slave diet clearly was tailor-made for producing pellagra, just as it did among poor whites. Due to its chemically bound form, corn lacks niacin that the human body can easily use. Its high content of the amino acid leucine partially even interferes with the body's digestion of whatever niacin that is consumed. Although the body can convert the amino acid tryptophan into niacin from crude protein, the low quality fat pork slaves normally ate unfortunately was a poor source of it. Even nowadays, let alone in antebellum times, physicians had difficulty diagnosing pellagra because its symptoms seem to be like other afflictions; it also manifests itself in the early stages in disparate ways in different individuals. It normally does not develop along standard, classical lines. Nineteenth-century American doctors simply did not know about this disease, so they would think the bondsmen under their care had other diseases. The description of the "negro disease" called black tongue by Southern physicians, however, fits nearly perfectly pellagra in its earlier stages. Employing such arguments, Kiple and Kiple suggest that pellagra's symptoms manifested themselves during hard times when planters cut back on their rations. It also became operative in many bondsmen in an early, endemic form that emerged during winter and early spring, only to disappear again due to seasonal fresh fruits or vegetables entering their diet. Sutch observes that the standard ration falls way short of supplying enough niacin. It even lacks the extra protein with which the body could convert tryptophan into niacin. The unsupplemented standard ration had other vitamin and mineral deficiencies, such as in thiamine, riboflavin, and calcium. It was short even in vitamin A, since the corn and sweet potatoes of the antebellum South were evidently normally white, not yellow, in color. "Since the bondsmen likely suffered from dietary deficiencies, at least during winter and early spring when forced to survive on the easily stored items of the standard ration and/or under harsher masters and mistresses ' more restrictive diets, this casts doubt upon Fogel and Engerman's [Time on the Cross] rosy reconstruction.

Collard greens are an excellent source of vitamin K, vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene), vitamin C, manganese, folate, calcium, and dietary fiber. In addition, collard greens are a very good source of magnesium, iron, vitamin B2 and vitamin B6. They are a good source of vitamin E, protein, omega-3 fatty acids, potassium, vitamin B1, vitamin B5, niacin, zinc, and phosphorus,

Pellagra no longer stalks the nation as it once did. But during the early part of the 20th-century, pellagra, a disease that results from a diet deficient in niacin killed, many poor Southerners. Dr. Joseph Goldberger, a physician in the U.S. government's Hygienic Laboratory, the predecessor of the National Institutes of Health, discovered the cause of pellagra and stepped on a number of medical toes when his research experiments showed that diet and not germs (the currently held medical theory) caused the disease. He also stepped on Southern pride when he linked the poverty of Southern sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and mill workers to the deficient diet that caused pellagra. (http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/goldberger/index.html)

The Pellagra Hospital shown here was located in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

The Pellagra Incident (1935). After millions of individuals die from Pellagra over a span of two decades, the U.S. Public Health Service finally acts to stem the disease. The director of the agency admits it had known for at least 20 years that Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency but failed to act since most of the deaths occurred within poverty-stricken black populations.

In 1915 the U.S. Public Health Office induces pellagra in twelve Mississippi prisoners. All the prisoners are, however, volunteers and after the experiment they are cured (with proper diet) and released from prison.

In early 20th century America, pellagra seemingly emerged out of nowhere when, in late summer of 1906 near Mobile, Alabama, Dr. George H. Searcy noted a peculiar malady affecting 88 patients at the Mount Vernon Insane Hospital, a state facility for the “colored insane.” Searcy soon realized that he was facing an outbreak of pellagra with its characteristic four-d’s. He quickly reported his findings to his Medical Association of Alabama colleagues in 1907 .

Pellagra: Vitamin B3 (Niacin) Deficiency: Although described in Italy in 1735, pellagra was not recognized in the United States until the early 20th century. This disorder, like beriberi, though it shows most clearly in what has been called the three "D"s: dermatitis, diarrhea, and dementia. (http://www.blatner.com/adam/consctransf/historyofmedicine/5-deficiencydiseases/5-deficdis.html)

Soon, pellagra would become epidemic throughout the South, and thus the discovery of its etiology became crucial and much-debated. Lombroso’s theory of toxic cornmeal resurfaced, while eugenicists, promoting a popular but misguided theory of social “betterment,” suggested that its origin lay in racial or hereditary factors. In 1912 the privately endowed Thompson-McFadden Commission made an on-site study of pellagra in the South Carolina mill village of Spartanburg and concluded that the disease was infectious in nature. This erroneous report would haunt the medical profession for years as they searched for the real cause and cure of pellagra.

In 1914, the U.S. Public Health Service’s Dr. Joseph Goldberger (1874-1929) was already known for his success in fighting U.S. epidemics when he was asked to investigate pellagra. Through observations and experiments at Southern orphanages and prisons, Goldberger found that the disease was not infectious, but instead was caused by a deficiency in the diet. Many poor Southerners consumed a diet solely of meat, meal and molasses. Low-wages driving high-deficiency diets made the disease economic in origin. Goldberger’s conclusions were correct but unpopular in the South because of their negative implications for the Southern way of life. Also, many in the medical community remained unconvinced since all of Goldberger’s studies were conducted in controlled environments, unlike those of the Thompson-McFadden Commission. In 1918 he rectified this by confirming his conclusions with his own mill village studies, aided by a brilliant statistician, Edgar Sydenstricker."

"I've seen," said Goldberger, "the big difference between floks that die of pellagra and those who never get it, is that the pellagrans are poor." And the "big difference between rich and poor," he added, "is that the poor don't get the right stuff to eat.

But what about pellagra's regional base? Why did it strke so many in the South and so few in the North? The answer, said Goldberger, lay in the monotonous "3-M diet_ of the Southern poor: meet (fatback or slat pork), meal (cornmeal) and molasses. Pellagra was not a starvation disease, since its victims got plenty of calories. What they lacked was the protein that came from fresh meat, milk and vegetables.

A family, mother and children, all suffering from pellagra, which caused the skin to turn red and then scaly. Stomach disorders, diarrhea, and depression followed. Victims often became insane, 1920.

The problem was worse in Mississippi. More than 16,000 cases of pellagra (resulting in 1,500 deaths) were reported by state officials in 1915 alone. A nutritional study done in the Delta showed about half of the residents with serious protein deficiencies. Few families owned a cow, and gardens were rare because the plantation owner demanded that corn be planted right up to the doorstep of their shacks. Were it not for growing of greens at odd seasons and fish caught in local ponds and rivers the sharecropper diet would have contained almost no protein at all.

In 1914, Dr. Goldberger ran a series of experiments in two pellagra-ridden Mississippi orphanages. Within a year, he had wiped out the diesase in both places by adding milk, green vegetables and fresh meat to the normal fare of grits, lard, cornbread, slat pork and molasses. The next step was more dangerous, however, as Goldberger well understood. Having cured pellagra by adding protien to the diets of suffering children, the doctor now hoped to induce the disease by removing protien from the diets of healthy adults. (Worse than Slavery)

Goldberger had considerable experience in epidemiology and knowledge of infectious diseases when he was assigned by the Surgeon General in 1913 to undertake a study of the causation of pellagra.

Pellagra was not recognized as a problem in the United States until early in the 20th century. In 1912, Lavender of the U.S. Public Health Service estimated that more than 25,000 cases of pellagra had occurred in the United States in the previous five years and that the case fatality rate was 40%. The dominant thinking in the United States at the time Goldberger began his investigations was that pellagra was an infectious disease. As a result of studies in South Carolina, the Thompson-McFadden Pellagra Commission concluded in 1913 that "1) The supposition that the ingestion of good or spoiled maize is the essential cause of pellagra is not supported by our study; and 2) Pellagra is in all probability a specific infectious disease communicable from person to person by means at present unknown." These conclusions were elaborated by Siler et al. (1914).

In less than three months after beginning his investigation, Goldberger (1914) published his first paper on pellagra. In a document of a little over three pages, Goldberger summarized the epidemiology of the disease as follows. Pellagra cannot be communicable. The cause is dietary. Prevention should result from a "reduction in cereals and vegetables and canned foods that enter to a large extent in the dietary of many of the people in the South and an increase in fresh animal food component such as fresh meats, eggs and milk." In support of these views Goldberger pointed out that 1) in institutions where pellagra was prevalent, no case had ever occurred in nurses or attendants; 2) the disease was essentially rural; and 3) it was associated with poverty, which in turn was associated with a diet deficient in animal foods.

Alan Kraut described Dr. Joseph Goldberger's battle to eradicate pellagra. The condition plagued people in a large area of the southern United States and was classified as an infectious disease, until Dr. Goldberger proved that pellagra was in fact a nutritional deficiency caused by insufficient quantities of niacin in the diet.  (source: http://www.spartasc.com/georgealexanderwheeler.htm)

Click here to watch American University professor Alan Kraut talk about his book, Goldberger's War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader.

Federal Medical Advisers Want To Medically Abuse Black Prisoners Again

Several government agencies and private companies tested pharmaceuticals on inmates at Holmesburg prison in Philadelphia from 1951 to 1974.

The New York Times article, "Panel Suggests Using Inmates in Drug Trials," by Ian Urbina, on 13 August 2006: PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 7 — An influential federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the government loosen regulations that severely limit the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations of abuse.

The proposed change includes provisions intended to prevent problems that plagued earlier programs. Nevertheless, it has dredged up a painful history of medical mistreatment and incited debate among prison rights advocates and researchers about whether prisoners can truly make uncoerced decisions, given the environment they live in.

Supporters of such programs cite the possibility of benefit to prison populations, and the potential for contributing to the greater good.

Until the early 1970’s, about 90 percent of all pharmaceutical products were tested on prison inmates, federal officials say. But such research diminished sharply in 1974 after revelations of abuse at prisons like Holmesburg here, where inmates were paid hundreds of dollars a month to test items as varied as dandruff treatments and dioxin, and where they were exposed to radioactive, hallucinogenic and carcinogenic chemicals.

In addition to addressing the abuses at Holmesburg, the regulations were a reaction to revelations in 1972 surrounding what the government called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, which was begun in the 1930’s and lasted 40 years. In it, several hundred mostly illiterate men with syphilis in rural Alabama were left untreated, even after a cure was discovered, so that researchers could study the disease.

“What happened at Holmesburg was just as gruesome as Tuskegee, but at Holmesburg it happened smack dab in the middle of a major city, not in some backwoods in Alabama,” said Allen M. Hornblum, an urban studies professor at Temple University and the author of “Acres of Skin,” a 1998 book about the Holmesburg research. “It just goes to show how prisons are truly distinct institutions where the walls don’t just serve to keep inmates in, they also serve to keep public eyes out.”

Critics also doubt the merits of pharmaceutical testing on prisoners who often lack basic health care.

Alvin Bronstein, a Washington lawyer who helped found the National Prison Project, an American Civil Liberties Union program, said he did not believe that altering the regulations risked a return to the days of Holmesburg.

“With the help of external review boards that would include a prisoner advocate,” Mr. Bronstein said, “I do believe that the potential benefits of biomedical research outweigh the potential risks.”

Holmesburg closed in 1995 but was partly reopened in July to help ease overcrowding at other prisons.

Under current regulations, passed in 1978, prisoners can participate in federally financed biomedical research if the experiment poses no more than “minimal” risks to the subjects. But a report formally presented to federal officials on Aug. 1 by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences advised that experiments with greater risks be permitted if they had the potential to benefit prisoners. As an added precaution, the report suggested that all studies be subject to an independent review.

“The current regulations are entirely outdated and restrictive, and prisoners are being arbitrarily excluded from research that can help them,” said Ernest D. Prentice, a University of Nebraska genetics professor and the chairman of a Health and Human Services Department committee that requested the study. Mr. Prentice said the regulation revision process would begin at the committee’s next meeting, on Nov. 2.

The discussion comes as the biomedical industry is facing a shortage of testing subjects. In the last two years, several pain medications, including Vioxx and Bextra, have been pulled off the market because early testing did not include large enough numbers of patients to catch dangerous problems.

And the committee’s report comes against the backdrop of a prison population that has more than quadrupled, to about 2.3 million, over the last 30 years and that disproportionately suffers from H.I.V. and hepatitis C, diseases that some researchers say could be better controlled if new research were permitted in prisons.

For Leodus Jones, a former prisoner, the report has opened old wounds. “This moves us back in a very bad direction,” said Mr. Jones, who participated in the experiments at Holmesburg in 1966 and after his release played a pivotal role in lobbying to get the regulations passed.

In one experiment, Mr. Jones’s skin changed color, and he developed rashes on his back and legs where he said lotions had been tested.

“The doctors told me at the time that something was seriously wrong,” said Mr. Jones, who added that he had never signed a consent form. He reached a $40,000 settlement in 1986 with the City of Philadelphia after he sued.

“I never had these rashes before,” he said, “but I’ve had them ever since.”

Holmesburg Prison

The Institute of Medicine report was initiated in 2004 when the Health and Human Services Department asked the institute to look into the issue. The report said prisoners should be allowed to take part in federally financed clinical trials so long as the trials were in the later and less dangerous phase of Food and Drug Administration approval. It also recommended that at least half the subjects in such trials be nonprisoners, making it more difficult to test products that might scare off volunteers.

Dr. A. Bernard Ackerman, a New York dermatologist who worked at Holmesburg during the 1960’s trials as a second-year resident from the University of Pennsylvania, said he remained skeptical. “I saw it firsthand,” Dr. Ackerman said. “What started as scientific research became pure business, and no amount of regulations can prevent that from happening again.”

Others cite similar concerns over the financial stake in such research.

“It strikes me as pretty ridiculous to start talking about prisoners getting access to cutting-edge research and medications when they can’t even get penicillin and high-blood-pressure pills,” said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, an independent monthly review. “I have to imagine there are larger financial motivations here.”

Holmesburg Guard Tower

The demand for human test subjects has grown so much that the so-called contract research industry has emerged in the past decade to recruit volunteers for pharmaceutical trials. The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, a Boston policy and economic research group at Tufts University, estimated that contract research revenue grew to $7 billion in 2005, up from $1 billion in 1995.

But researchers at the Institute of Medicine said their sole focus was to see if prisoners could benefit by changing the regulations.

The pharmaceutical industry says it was not involved. Jeff Trewitt, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug industry trade group, said that his organization had no role in prompting the study and that it had not had a chance to review the findings.

Dr. Albert M. Kligman, who directed the experiments at Holmesburg and is now an emeritus professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, said the regulations should never have been written in the first place.

“My view is that shutting the prison experiments down was a big mistake,” Dr. Kligman said.

Holmesburg Prison

While confirming that he used radioactive materials, hallucinogenic drugs and carcinogenic materials on prisoners, Dr. Kligman said that they were always administered in extremely low doses and that the benefits to the public were overwhelming.

He cited breakthroughs like Retin A, a popular anti-acne drug, and ingredients for most of the creams used to treat poison ivy. “I’m on the medical ethics committee at Penn,” he said, “and I still don’t see there having been anything wrong with what we were doing.”

From 1951 to 1974, several federal agencies and more than 30 companies used Holmesburg for experiments, mostly under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, which had built laboratories at the prison. After the revelations about Holmesburg, it soon became clear that other universities and prisons in other states were involved in similar abuses.

In October 2000, nearly 300 former inmates sued the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kligman, Dow Chemical and Johnson & Johnson for injuries they said occurred during the experiments at Holmesburg, but the suit was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired.

“When they put the chemicals on me, my hands swelled up like eight-ounce boxing gloves, and they’ve never gone back to normal,” said Edward Anthony, 62, a former inmate who took part in Holmesburg experiments in 1964. “We’re still pushing the lawsuit because the medical bills are still coming in for a lot of us.”

Daniel S. Murphy, a professor of criminal justice at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., who was imprisoned for five years in the 1990’s for growing marijuana, said that loosening the regulations would be a mistake.

“Free and informed consent becomes pretty questionable when prisoners don’t hold the keys to their own cells,” Professor Murphy said, “and in many cases they can’t read, yet they are signing a document that it practically takes a law degree to understand.”

Holmesburg Prison

During the Holmesburg experiments, inmates could earn up to $1,500 a month by participating. The only other jobs were at the commissary or in the shoe and shirt factory, where wages were usually about 15 cents to 25 cents a day, Professor Hornblum of Temple said.

On the issue of compensation for inmates, the report raised concern about “undue inducements to participate in research in order to gain access to medical care or other benefits they would not normally have.” It called for “adequate protections” to avoid “attempts to coerce or manipulate participation.’’

Holmesburg Prison

The report also expressed worry about the absence of regulation over experiments that do not receive federal money. Lawrence O. Gostin, the chairman of the panel that conducted the study and a professor of law and public health at Georgetown University, said he hoped to change that.

Even with current regulations, oversight of such research has been difficult. In 2000, several universities were reprimanded for using federal money and conducting several hundred projects on prisoners without fully reporting the projects to the appropriate authorities.

Holmesburg Prison South Gate

Professor Gostin said the report called for tightening some existing regulations by advising that all research involving prisoners be subject to uniform federal oversight, even if no federal funds are involved. The report also said protections should extend not just to prisoners behind bars but also to those on parole or on probation.

Professor Murphy, who testified to the panel as the report was being written, praised those proposed precautions before adding, “They’re also the parts of the report that faced the strongest resistance from federal officials, and I fear they’re most likely the parts that will end up getting cut as these recommendations become new regulations.”

U.S. Army overturns convictions of Fort Lawton soldiers court-martialed in 1944

Casey McNerthney's article "Book provided evidence for exonerating Fort Lawton veterans" on 18 August 2011 published in the Seattle PI states: For decades, the late Samuel Snow said he didn't think the world would ever know the truth.

At 19, he was convicted of rioting at Magnolia's Fort Lawton on a night that led to an Italian POW's death. He left Seattle in handcuffs, dishonorably discharged from the Army, and spent years as a working poor janitor in a segregated Florida town.

Many people, including dozens of reporters, who covered Snow and the other 27 men convicted in the largest and longest court-martial of World War II, accepted the nearly forgotten verdict.

And then, a Seattle man found evidence that changed history.

"Wouldn't have made it without Jack," Snow told the P-I last year. "He believed."

Jack Hamann wrote "On American Soil," the book that detailed evidence that a white military policeman lynched the POW and blamed the death on black soldiers who weren't even there.

The work, named Book of the Year Award by Investigative Reporters & Editors, caught the attention of Rep Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, who introduced a bill demanding that the Army reopen the Fort Lawton case. They found prosecutor Leon Jaworski – the man who would later become famous as the Watergate special prosecutor – committed an "egregious error" by intentionally withholding exculpatory evidence.



On Saturday, a top Army official gave families of the wrongly convicted plaques affirming their honorable discharge. And he offered words most of those convicted never lived to hear: "We're sorry."

Snow's son, Ray, said this weekend he found a new family – ones found because of dedicated investigative journalism.

"What they have done for all of us, we can barely put into words," said Lashell Drake, a Milwaukee, Wis., woman whose late grandfather, Booker Townsell, was wrongly convicted. "They filled in the blanks to what none of us knew about our family members."

The investigation started in 1986 when Hamann was a young reporter for KING/5. He was assigned to cover a routine press conference on proposed expansion of a sewage treatment plant at Discovery Park, which was once all an enormous Army Fort.

Hamann stood in the back, bored out of his mind.

There really are some cool things at the fort, a spokeswoman told him. There are trails, the beach, a military graveyard. And one of the graves was a mysterious broken column, with an inscription possibly in Latin, she said.

Hamann went there and found an Italian man's name – Pvt. Guglielmo Olivotto – with his date of death. Microfilm research at the downtown Seattle library led him to a banner P-I headline about a riot and murder at Fort Lawton. Like most people in Seattle, he'd never heard the story.

With the support of an assignment editor, Hamann cranked through easy morning assignments and spent afternoons trying to find anything he could about the case. Some days, he'd just go to the gravestone, hoping someone who knew something would wander by.

The following year, Hamann produced an hour-long documentary for KING/5 based on secondary sources, offering no substantial evidence to refute Jaworski's case.

The program won a local Emmy, drew praise from across the nation. But as Hamann now admits, "It was a lie."

Not an intentional lie, he said, but one created because – like other reporters – he didn't find enough primary sources.

More than a decade later, after his son and daughter moved to college from their Queen Anne home, Hamann – still moved by what he'd heard from four of those convicted – had more time to spend on the case.

As part of a four-year research effort, Hamann and his wife, Leslie, took two trips to the National Archives in College Park, Md.. They'd heard an inspector general had completed a report before the 1944 trial with evidence proving the 28 convicted men were innocent.

They searched files World War II courts martial. Nothing.

They searched folders on Fort Lawton. Nothing.

They turned to miscellaneous Army files from World War II – a section that had millions of documents. Some days they started there with venti drip coffees at 9 a.m. and didn't leave until 10 p.m.

After nearly a month of digging in 2002, Leslie Hamann grabbed her husband's arm.

"Jack," she said, "Look at this."

The report and addendum by Gen. Elliot Cooke – thousands of pages of documents that had recently been declassified – showed that Fort Lawton commander Col. Harry Branson had botched the initial criminal investigation. It gave the evidence Jaworski had access to and didn't reveal.

Within days of getting the book, McDermott discussed introducing legislation that would make the Army reopen the case. But McDermott, a well-known liberal, was expected to get opposition from across party lines.

"We thought it was nice," Jack Hamann said. "But we told all of our friends that's as far as it goes."

After a House Armed Services Committee vetted the book, McDermott and Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter agreed to exercise a congressional privilege allowing them to insist that the Army Board for Correction of Military Records review the convictions.

Last fall, that board overturned the verdicts.

That brought about change the Hamanns – who say they were just doing their job – didn't expect when they started the project. Many family members said they never thought it would come.

"We started out just curious why such a monumental event in Seattle's history wasn't given proper treatment," Jack Hamann said. "The real honest truth is we did what every good reporter wants the chance to do." (source: Seattle PI)

Click here to watch Jack Hamanns on C-Span

Reparations for Slavery

Cynthia Greenlee-Dnnell reported in The Herald-Sun on 18 June 2005 in an article entitle, "Reparations for slavery still big debate": Even 140 years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in rebelling U.S. territories, there's still debate about who benefited from slavery and who, if anyone, should gain from it now.

On June 1, Charlotte-based Wachovia Corp. rekindled that debate by admitting that two of its predecessor companies owned slaves or used them as collateral. As a goodwill gesture, the nation's fourth-largest bank plans to spend an unspecified amount of money on programs about black history.

Wachovia's admission wasn't exactly news to William "Sandy" Darity Jr., the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Economics at UNC and director of the university's Institute of African American Research.

"My presumption is that basically any corporation with antecedents dating to the antebellum period, you're bound to find they're linked to slavery," said Darity, a Durham resident and also a professor at Duke University.

Darity has added his voice to a small group of grassroots activists, lawyers, scholars and students who believe that the United States owes a financial debt to the descendants of slaves. The issue of slavery reparations, or compensation, has attracted passionate supporters -- such as Durham scholar John Hope Franklin, the late attorney Johnnie Cochran, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan -- but also just as passionate opponents.

Critics like writer David Horowitz -- who rocked the boat at UNC and Duke in 2001 when he tried to place an anti-reparations ad in campus newspapers -- call reparations a shakedown.

The public's opinion

Raymond Winbush, Baltimore author of "Should America Pay: Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations," sees slavery as the granddaddy of shakedowns, paraphrasing the late writer Ralph Wiley: "Give me one person to work for me for free for one year, and I will be a rich man. Give me several people to work for free for me for several years, and I will be a very rich man. Give me millions of people to work for me for free, and I'm America."

Darity said slavery gave whites an economic leg up. With no wealth to pass on, ex-slaves' progeny got reserved seats at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Then, the racial discrimination of slavery was codified with the racial discrimination of Jim Crow, a fact that Darity thinks the current slavery-oriented discussion often obscures.

"If we had gotten [equal protection under the law and access to land and income], we would be looking at a vastly different distribution of wealth," he said.

Darity and his wife, Kirsten Mullen, plan to launch an awareness campaign next year about the push for slavery and Jim Crow reparations. Such compensation could be direct payments to individuals, government- or corporation-funded scholarships, initiatives to increase black homeownership, or, as political pundit Alan Keyes once proposed, a temporary federal tax-free status.

But before anyone can talk about how reparations would work, activists would have to overcome public opinion. Polls have shown that whites overwhelmingly disapprove of the idea.

William A. Darity Jr., professor of economics at UNC, Chapel Hill discusses the economic case for reparations for black Americans.

And though Darity believes reparations may have to be handled legislatively, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has been trying unsuccessfully since 1989 to pass his H.R. 40 bill to establish a commission to research the impact of slavery and possible remedies.

"So few people take reparations seriously. They think it's a joke. I've done presentations at conferences, and people are frequently dismissive," Darity said.

But Peter Flaherty, of the Fairfax, Va., National Legal and Policy Center -- despite his opposition to reparations -- said they shouldn't be seen as radical balderdash.

"The demands that many people see, at first blush, as outlandish are being honored by big corporations. I believe the reparations activists certainly have the momentum," he said.



Businesses with ties

States and large cities such as California, Philadelphia and Chicago have enacted ordinances that require corporations wishing to do business with them to disclose any history of slavery. A similar bill has been proposed in North Carolina by state Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth.

Lawsuits have been filed against corporations alleged to have roles in slavery. And a still-pending complaint includes companies such as Charlotte's Bank of America, which had acquired the FleetBoston bank named in an earlier action.

Flaherty predicts that Bank of America will be next with a statement of complicity or apology, though the bank has denied any slavery connections.

More businesses definitely will be stepping forward, said N.C. A&T graduate Richard E. Barber Sr. Once a plaintiff in a slavery-reparations suit, the New Jersey resident now directs the U.S. Reparations Group.

His organization is examining records of more than 60 companies and plans to give corporations from July 1 to Sept. 22 (the date in 1862 when Lincoln signed a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation) to disclose slavery ties.

But David Horowitz says a company is not responsible for the misdeeds of its predecessors.

"Wachovia's trust has nothing to do with slavery, even though it owns a company that did. A corporation has to earn its way every year, so to speak," said the California-based Horowitz during a phone interview.

Darity took issue with that notion.

"These are the most prominent companies in America," he said, "and they are because of, not despite of, slavery."

Seemingly the only point of agreement for reparations fans and foes is that blacks lag behind whites in economic indicators such as household income and net worth.

It's the "why" they can't agree on.

Slavery connection

New Jersey attorney Diane Sammons is part of the pro-reparations legal team awaiting a decision on the case that involves Bank of America and other companies.

"Blacks are 13 percent of the population and own 3 percent of the assets," she says. "How do you explain the difference?"

Horowitz's take is that lack of family stability and failing public schools have more to do with the large black underclass than racial prejudice or slavery.

"There's not a single black person who's living now in America who was a slave," he says. "It's unlikely that there's a single black person in America whose parents were slaves."

That is in contrast to Holocaust survivors, who have received reparations.

Sammons has heard that argument before.

"People often get the Holocaust case wrong," she said. "There was a fund that was set up for the descendants of those people. Likewise with the Japanese [who were sent to internment camps during World War II]. To suggest that there's no residual harm from slavery, that's totally inaccurate."

Mullen, founder of the Carolina Circuit Writers literary organization, believes the historical distance between the present and slavery is not so far.

"People say, 'Why should I pay? My family didn't own slaves.' Well, were your family barrel makers who made the barrels that carried the rum? Were they sugar makers? Did they eat? Everybody was tied to the slave trade at one point or another. You cannot take your scissors and cut your family out of it."

Payoff possible?

Flaherty calls the reparations movement a scam that preys on white guilt and racial discord. Sammons of Rosedale, N.J.'s, Negel, Rice and Mazie LLP firm says it's far from fraud.

"It is money that was earned that was never paid, as opposed to an obligation to pull people up to the same level. When you look at it that way, it really is a debt. It's not a handout or a gratuity."

But a common argument against reparations is that, with 36 million black Americans -- many of whom have slave ancestors -- it would bankrupt federal coffers if the government signed onto the idea.

It's about political will, said Winbush, noting that the Bush administration found $80 billion to fund the war in Iraq.

Will there ever be a payoff or even a national apology for slavery?

Mullen won't venture a guess about when, but believes reparations of some sort will happen.

"I'm sure in 1840, people never thought that slavery would end. Or in 1920, that women would get the right to vote. You just have to keep pushing the mountain," she said. (source: http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-618559.html)

Northern Lynching: Duluth, Minnesota

From the Minnesota Historical Society: On June 15, 1920, police arrest several young black men accused of raping a white woman. That evening, three of them – Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie – are taken from jail by a mob and lynched.

The Circus Comes to Town

It was the John Robinson Circus that brought Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie to Duluth. They and other young black men were employed by the circus as cooks and “roustabouts,” laborers who performed a variety of physical tasks. Traveling by train, the circus was greeted by an eager crowd upon arrival in Duluth. They were in town for a free street parade and one day of performances on June 14, 1920.

Accusations

On the warm summer night of June 14, Irene Tusken, age nineteen, and James Sullivan, eighteen, went to the circus in Duluth. At the end of the evening the pair walked to the rear of the main tent. Nobody is sure of what happened next, but in the early morning of June 15th, Duluth Police Chief John Murphy received a call from James Sullivan’s father saying six black circus workers had held the pair at gunpoint and then raped Irene Tusken. Little evidence would be found to corroborate these claims. An examination of Tusken that morning by Dr. David Graham, a family physician, showed no physical signs of rape or assault.

Mob Forms

Six blacks were immediately arrested by the Duluth Police and held in the Duluth city jail, located inside the police station on the corner of Second Avenue and Superior Street. Already reported in the local newspaper, news of the alleged rape spread rapidly. That evening a white mob estimated between 1,000 and 10,000 people gathered on Superior Street outside the police station. They met little resistance from the police, who had been ordered not to use their guns.

Tragedy

Wielding bricks, rails, and heavy timbers, the mob forced its way into the jail, tearing down doors and breaking windows. They pulled all six blacks from their cells. After a hasty mock trial, Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie were declared guilty and taken one block to a light pole on the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East. A few tried to dissuade the mob, but their pleas were in vain. The three men were beaten and then lynched, first Isaac McGhie, then Elmer Jackson, and lastly Elias Clayton.

The Minnesota National Guard arrived the next morning to secure Duluth and protect the three surviving black prisoners. These prisoners, along with ten additional black suspects from the circus, were moved under heavy guard to the St. Louis County jail.

Though the city’s streets were now calm, not everyone felt safe. Black residents stayed inside and locked their doors, fearful of further violence.

Outrage and Shock

The lynchings made headlines in newspapers throughout the country. Many were shocked such an atrocity happened in Minnesota, a northern state. The Chicago Evening Post opined, “This is a crime of a Northern state, as black and ugly as any that has brought the South in disrepute. The Duluth authorities stand condemned in the eyes of the nation.”1 An article in the Minneapolis Journal accused the lynch mob of putting “an effaceable stain on the name of Minnesota,” stating, “The sudden flaming up of racial passion, which is the reproach of the South, may also occur, as we now learn in the bitterness of humiliation in Minnesota.” 2

Many citizens of Duluth were similarly outraged. Dentist Milton W. Judy, a prominent black Duluthian wrote, “Duluth has suffered a horrible disgrace, a blot on its name that it can never outlive.”3 Clergymen, including Reverend William M. Majors of St. Marks A.M.E., an important institution of the city’s black community, spoke out against the lynchings, calling for the severe punishment of the mob members. The Duluth Rip-Saw strongly condemned the lynchings, advocating the “thorough house-cleaning” and “elimination of every yellow member” of the police department who had failed to protect the blacks from the mob.4

Racist Attitudes

Not everyone expressed regret. Despite lacking evidence, some believed Irene Tusken was raped and that the three victims, although never tried in court, were guilty and deserving of their fate. The Ely Miner, of nearby Ely, Minnesota claimed “while the thing was wrong in principle, it was most effective and those who were put out of their criminal existence by the mob will not assault any more young girls.”5 The Mankato Daily Free Press, referring to the three blacks as “beasts in human shape,” asserted the triple lynching was advantageous to a fair trial: “Mad dogs are shot dead without ceremony. Beasts in human shape are entitled to but scant consideration. The law gives them by far too much of an advantage.”6

In Superior, Wisconsin, just across the bay, the Acting Chief of Police declared, “We are going to run all idle negroes out of Superior and they’re going to stay out.”7 How many were forced out is not certain, but all of the blacks employed by a carnival in Superior were fired and told to leave the city. (source: Minnesota Historical Society)