A Liberal Dose, May 27, 2021 "Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias- What Are They? Part 2

 

A Liberal Dose, May 27, 2021

Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They?  Part Two

Troy D. Smith

 (See Part 1 HERE)

Last week we looked at Brown v. Board and the Clarks’ doll test, which the Court cited to prove the danger of implicit bias and the presence of systemic racism. The problem is that a lot of white people resist the idea of those things even existing, because no one likes to be called a racist. Unlike many people in previous generations, we have been raised to believe that racism is not only wrong it is evil, so to admit we are tainted by it would be to admit we are evil, too. But that is not what systemic racism means. It operates as it does without you making a conscious decision to be part of it, and it takes work and education on the subject to recognize it and work against it.

When my child was very little, in the mid-90s, they were pitching a fit because they wanted to go to the store with their mom and mom needed some time alone. My aunt happened to be over at the time –my beloved aunt who helped raise me and whom I love dearly. She wanted to help out in quieting the kid. So she said “You don’t want to go over there! Them colored people will get you!” I was shocked. I had never heard her say anything so overtly racist, and in fact she usually spoke in favor of civil rights issues. She herself was at a loss to explain it.

I gave that incident a lot of thought in ensuing years. Why would she say a thing like that? Well, because she wanted to scare a little child into behaving. But why that particular approach? It would have to be because that’s what her parents had said to her fifty years earlier to scare her. And their parents said to them, and theirs to them, and so on. To the point that no one remembered any longer why that threat had originally been so scary. Because if you go back far enough, you reach the days of slavery –when white people lived in fear of slave uprisings. Black people out on the roads after dark –with or without the proper “papers” –might be desperate runaways, or participants in a revolt. As one black friend once said, when a white man commented that black people don’t seem to age as quickly as white ones, “that’s because we don’t lay awake at night worried about a white uprising.” And when slavery existed, it was considered the duty of the white community –required by law –to take action against potentially rebellious or “uppity” black people.

Now think about all the incidents in the last few years where black people innocently going about their business were shot dead by panicked white people. A 12-year-old boy in the park with a toy gun. A man in Wal-mart carrying a BB gun he was going to buy. A man jogging at night. Kids playing their music loud. A teenager walking home from a convenience store. Car crash victims knocking on a random door at night for help. With most of those shooters, I don’t think they woke up that morning and said “Man, I hate black people, I hope I get to shoot one today.” I don’t believe they thought at all, I think they just reacted, because they were scared. But why were they so much more scared by black people? Studies prove this happens, and numbers don’t lie.

Do you think it might help if more people were aware of (and believed in) implicit bias, and the history of race in this country? Do you think that white people burying their heads in the sand will solve anything?

You know it won’t.

Another factor is Republicans trying to pass laws about how history is taught is what historians call “the Lost Cause narrative.” We’ll look at that next week.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found HERE

A list of historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Troy D.Smith's official author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

Letter to the Editor, Cookeville Herald-Citizen, May 19, 2021

 

A Liberal Dose, May 20, 2021 "Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They? Part 1"

 

A Liberal Dose, May 20, 2021 

Troy D. Smith

"Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias: What Are They? Part 1"

note: unfortunately, the Sparta Expositor has had to cut the word count of their guest columns in half, so many of my topics will have to be covered in two or more parts from now on.

Last week we discussed how some conservatives (and some Republican-controlled state legislatures, including our own) have been following Donald Trump’s lead and freaking out about critical race theory, often without understanding what it is. We defined that theoretical approach (it comes from legal studies, and is about the historical connection between race, slavery, and laws) and other cultural approaches to the study of race. This week I’m going to give some examples, to more fully demonstrate what I’m talking about.

Trump’s complaint, you will recall, was not just about an academic field of study but about the very ideas of privilege, implicit bias, or “negative” focus on historical racism and/or slavery, which his supporters say are “divisive concepts.” One Tennessee Republican legislator actually defended the three-fifths compromise on slavery as a good thing. A GOP leader in Louisiana said earlier this month that schools should teach all the “good” things about slavery such as the fact that there were some kind masters who were beloved by their slaves, implying they were happy in slavery, and said that anyone believing otherwise is “indoctrinated by leftist, Marxist education.”

In other words, they are saying nothing bad ever happened, if it did it wasn’t that bad, and there are no modern-day effects of it. So let’s take a look at that.

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled –in Brown v. Board of Education –that school segregation was unconstitutional. This decision was the first of several that would end Jim Crow segregation in general, although it would take more than a decade. In their ruling, the Court cited the research of married couple Kenneth and Mamie Clark, both African American psychologists. In particular, the Court pointed to the “doll tests” the Clarks had run in the 1940s.

In the experiments, several children –one at a time –were presented with four baby dolls. The dolls were identical, except that they ranged in skin tone from Caucasian to dark brown. The children were asked to pick which doll they wanted to play with –they all chose the Caucasian doll. They were asked which doll was the most “good” and which the most “bad,” which was smartest and which was dumbest –which was lazy and which was not. Invariably, they always chose the white doll as being good and smart, and the darkest as being bad and dumb.

These were black children.

The Clarks concluded that segregating black children and reinforcing the fact they were different from all the others made them feel that black was inferior and undesirable while making the white children feel superior. Racism, the Clarks wrote, is inherent in American institutions and reinforced by laws. The Supreme Court agreed (and so did the Eisenhower administration, which lauded the Court’s decision). Although the Clarks stood out, many other sociologists, psychologists, and historians were cited in the Court’s unanimous opinion.

Although the term did not exist at the time… the Court was swayed by critical race theory.

Academics and others have been saying ever since then that there is systemic racism in this country, and that as a result people can have biases they are not even consciously aware of. Those children were probably not consciously aware of their bias against their own race; their parents did not sit them down and say “you’re black, therefore you’re terrible, so try your best to be white.” No, the children absorbed that belief from society around them. And not just from school segregation, either.

Here’s something that may shock you (and it may not). The Clarks’ experiments were re-run, with both white and black children, in 2010. With the exact same results. And again earlier this year. With the same results.

There it is. systemic racism; implicit bias. If you were raised in America, you were affected by this whether you wanted to be or not, and whether you want to admit it or not.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found HERE

A list of historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Troy D.Smith's official author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com 

Chris Knight- the Country Bruce Springsteen

 

Troy D. Smith

I have long maintained -and still do- that Kris Kristoffersen is the country Bob Dylan (although at times Bob Dylan has been the Country Bob Dylan). Lately I've been on a Bruce Springsteen kick -I've listened to all his studio albums while working over the past couple of months. Also lately, I have been bonding with my grown young'un Finn over "non-mainstream" country music with an Appalachian twist, and I put together a playlist that was heavy on Kentuckian Chris Knight (whom my wife and I saw live just before the 'Rona hit). Listening to a lot of Knight songs right after listening to the complete Boss, I was struck by the thematic and lyric similarities.

My first introduction to singer-songwriter Chris Knight was 20 years ago (three years after his debut album) when his chilling Appalachian murder ballad "Down the River" got heavy airplay on the John Boy and Billy Big Show (which I used to enjoy until around the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when they got increasingly right-wing political -but that's a different story).

I encourage you to seek out all Knight's albums and songs and hear for yourself (he has a brand new album) - but I am pasting below the lyrics to five songs that are constructed around a similar theme. One of them, "Broken Plow," is actually about the Dust Bowl migration, but the rest have a setting that should resonate with anyone from the rural South.

Chris Knight is not a household name... but he damn sure ought to be. 

https://www.chrisknight.net/

HOUSE AND 90 ACRES

From Chris Knight, 1998

I've got a house and 90 acres some cattle in the barn
Two kids with no mama, she left in a saleman's arms
A sign by the mailbox says there's an auction in the yard
Born and raised has been damn easy but lately living's hard
The children miss their mama but there ain't nothing I can do
If she was all I had to worry about well I'd guess I'd miss her too
But I've watched my tools and tractor leave in someone else's hands
I grit my teeth, I'm let 'em go but I won't give up my land
This house and 90 acres, the only place I've left to stand
My roots are anchored solid, I ain't machinery I'm a man
I'll be here in the morning come pouring rain or sun
This house and 90 acres
What's said is good as done
There's jobs up in the city I could probably drive a truck
Or I could move 300 miles from home but that would be giving up
Well you know that I ain't leaving if it's just my pride I save
I might be on the front porch or I might be in a hillside grave
This house and 90 acres, the only place I've left to stand
My roots are anchored solid, I ain't machinery I'm a man
I'll be here in the morning come pouring rain or sun
This house and 90 acres
What's said is good as done
This house and 90 acres
What's said is good as done

ENOUGH ROPE

From Enough Rope, 2006

Well I work for the city in the town where I grew up
Some days I run a backhoe, some days I run a dump
If I had other plans on my graduation day
Then several years ago I guess I hauled 'em all away
Yeah I hauled 'em all away

She told me she was pregnant on the day I turned 18
I did what you’re supposed to do, I bought her a ring
He didn't have to ask us, but he asked us anyway
We stood up and said, "I do." What else were we gonna say?
What else were we gonna say?

Well I'm thankful for the things I have
And all the things I don't
And I've got dreams that will come true
And I've got some that won't
Most the time I just walk the line wherever it goes
'Cause you can't hang yourself if you ain't got enough rope

My boss man is the Mayor. I do just what he asks
I mow the courthouse lawn, watch the prisoners walkin' past
I'm happy to be working, instead of wearin' chains
Like my cousin Willy, he's locked up in La Grange
He's locked up in La Grange

But I'm thankful for the things I have
And all the things I don't
And I've got dreams that will come true
I've got some that won't
Most the time I just walk the line wherever it goes
'Cuz you can't hang yourself if you ain't got enough rope

 

There's a tavern down the highway, I go to drink some beers
And wash down all I'm missin' by hangin' around here
Then I drive back to the trailer; I'll make up with my wife
I kiss my sleeping children, and I get on with my life
Yeah I get on with my life

 

 

DIRT

From Enough Rope, 2006

Well I would'a bought my grandpa's farm
But I couldn't raise quite enough cash
Now they're cuttin' all the timber down
Turnin' all the rest to ash

 

A company came in from outta state
To building another stinkin' factory
And them county politicians think they know
Just exactly what we need

But I sit down by the highway
I hear those big cats growl
Where the quail gonna fly to?
Where will the rabbits run now?
I watch 'em tearin' all to hell what used to be my church
Tearin' up my grandpa's land
They're treatin' my grandpa's land like dirt

A few more jobs and a lot less trees
Gonna put this county in the rat race
Like that's where we want to be
This used to be such a peaceful place

And they'll tell us that they don't pollute
This shit they dump in the river is perfectly safe
But all the talk in the whole wide world
Could never bring back what they've laid to waste

I sit down by the highway
I hear those big cats growl
Where the quail gonna fly to?
Where will the rabbits run now?
I watch 'em tearin' all to hell what used to be my church
Tearin' up my grandpa's land
They're treatin' my grandpa's land like dirt

There's an ancient oak standin' alone
Tryin' to do the work of a thousand trees
Been here since the Cherokee called this home
But it's standin' in the way of a factory

I sit down by the highway
I hear those big cats growl
Where the quail gonna fly to?
Where will the rabbits run now?
I watch 'em tearin' all to hell what used to be my church
Tearin' up my grandpa's land
They're treatin' my grandpa's land like dirt
They're treatin' my grandpa's land like dirt

 

 

RURAL ROUTE

From Enough Rope, 2006

I built a fire up on the hill; I sat in the woods and drank my fill
Talked to God all night, took another shot at setting me right
Then I walked down to the road, filled a beer can full of 22 holes
Then I said goodbye, yeah I said goodbye

I'd go back but I can't go home, ‘cause the river is up and the road is closed
And there ain't no telephone… at my mothers' house
And all the lights are out… down on the rural route

There ain't much of nothin' left, this place where I became myself
Ghosts and memories, I'd walk on by but they'd follow me
I'd seen plenty on down the road. 

Asked him if he'd seen my brother… he just said no.

Well I guess I'd better go

I'd go back but I can't go home, ‘cause the river is up and the road is closed
And there ain't no telephone… at my mothers' house
And all the lights are out… down on the rural route

I built a fire up on the hill; I sat in the woods and drank my fill
Talked to God all night, took another shot at setting me right
Then I just walk away, ain't nothin' here I want to remember anyway
Least not today

I'd go back but I can't go home, ‘cause the river is up and the road is closed
And there ain't no telephone… at my mothers' house
And all the lights are out… down on the rural route

 

BROKEN PLOW

From The Jealous Kind, 2003

Load up the old Dodge truck
We'll leave what we can't sell
Nobody needs a sharecropper's tools
Or a dust filled well
Take you one last look around
Shed you one last tear
For the broken plow, the broken dreams
And the life we're leaving here

Pull the lines down tight
The kids can ride on top of the load
In the cool of the night
They can crawl underneath the tarp
To stay out of the cold
Eleven hundred miles of mountain and sand
We'll cross 'em tired and torn
If this beat up truck can carry us
Far enough away from the storm

We're going to California
There's work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray it's just the land we're losing
Not my life's blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow

That haunts me in my dreams

A man at a roadside station
Don't like dealing with my kind
He'd beat me out of my last dollar
And never look me in the eye
I heard 'em call us Okies
Hell, I don't know what that means
But something tells me the promised land
Ain't as promising as it seems

This restless road is full of strangers
They ain't no stranger than I am
Hardened faces damn the dust and curse the wind
That drove us from this life and home
We'll never know again

On the handles of my broken plow that haunts me in my dreams

 

 

 

A Liberal Dose, May 13, 2021 "What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Are Some People Scared of It?"

 

A Liberal Dose, May 13, 2021

"What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Are Some People Scared of It?"

Troy D. Smith

Tennessee is one of several red states whose legislatures have passed laws banning critical race theory- something most Americans had never heard of until Trump condemned it in the final days of his presidency, calling it “unpatriotic.” Trump also attacked the New York Times’ “1619 Project” which began in 2019. That ongoing series of articles about the legacy of slavery gets its name from the fact that the first African slaves arrived in the English colonies (specifically, Virginia) in the year 1619. Which seems like a pretty reasonable date with which to begin a series of articles about slavery in America. Following Trump’s lead, a lot of conservatives are conflating the New York Times series, the academic thematic approach of critical race theory, and anything else that takes a frank and honest look at the history of slavery in this country instead of glossing over it like it never happened, and banning it from public school history classes. I’ve read a lot of quotes from conservative politicians and pundits about “CRT”, but I have yet to read anything said or written by anyone who actually knows anything about it. In fact, editorials about it tend to begin with words like “I’m not an expert, and I don’t actually know what this is, but it’s bad.”  Why is it bad? Because, they say, it is unpatriotic; it denies the rule of law and says that all of American history has been different racial groups vying for power; because it claims 1619 is the founding of America instead of 1776. Spoiler alert- none of those accurately describe critical race theory.

I do have some background that qualifies me to discuss the topic, I think. I have a Ph.D in history, specifically race and ethnicity and the American South. I will start out by saying that, like a lot of stuff from the previous administration, this is a lot of hot air about nothing. K-12 public schools are not teaching critical race theory; critical race theory is an offshoot of academic legal studies and is also now used as a theoretical approach in political science, education, anthropology, and some other fields. It is not really used by many academic historians, actually –academic historians who specialize in race tend to use whiteness theory, which is very similar but different in that it looks at culture rather than law. And in that it equally freaks out conservatives who are familiar with it. The 1619 Project uses elements of both.

Critical race theory holds that the American colonies, and later the United States, used the legal system to make racism official in order to support slavery. Because it was such an intrinsic part of the law, it got baked into the system and elements of it are still there, resulting in systemic racism. Let me pause to give you a dose of actual (not imaginary) history: the English colonies, and all thirteen states at the beginning of the Revolution, had laws that legalized slavery and other laws that limited the civil rights even of free black people. Slavery ended with the Civil War, but existed in everything except name in the South during Reconstruction (see “black codes”). That was followed by Jim Crow segregation laws, which existed until the mid-1960s. Before that, black men were lynched or executed on the flimsiest, if any, evidence. Today, factual studies prove that black men are more likely to be imprisoned, and for longer sentences, than white men convicted of the same types of crimes. These are facts. Historical facts.

Whiteness theory is based on the works of W.E.B. DuBois and others, including James Baldwin. This approach says that English colonists in the Americas established a new identity for themselves, apart from being British. This “American” identity was also, de facto, a “white” identity. The idea of being “white” was relatively new –it started in the early 1600s, started becoming a common idea in the late 1600s, and was used universally in the English colonies by 1700. In other words, after they started using African slaves, colonists started pointing out that they themselves were not black. The black slaves were an “other” against which to define themselves, as were the American Indians. I’ve barely seen the 1619 Project touch on Indians, by the way, which is why I’m not a huge fan of it- it’s a good place to start, but it is mostly written by journalists instead of historians and lacks the necessary nuance, depth, and context.

I invite you to go to Sparta Live or my blog (tnwordsmith.blogspot.com) and take a second look at my Feb. 25 column (“History Is the Key to Everything”) and the one from the following week, March 4 (“Understanding the Many Types of Privilege”). Both of them contain elements of both critical race theory and whiteness theory. Did they seem unpatriotic to you? Did I seem to be trying to stoke up hatred between races? Or was I trying to foster more cooperation? That’s a big part of the problem with this (mostly meaningless) legislation- rather than narrowly defining things, proponents of it have quoted the most revolutionary statements they could find and conflated every way of talking about race or slavery that goes beyond what a 1930s textbook would say, or that is frank and honest instead of euphemistic and “positive”, into a lump of unpatriotic, racially divisive vitriol when that’s not what it is. The result is going to be that teachers will be afraid to have real discussions about race in America, and students will not be allowed to even think about it. And nothing will ever change for the better.

I’ve written before, in those first couple of columns, that when you have a gaping wound it’s not going to get better if you just pretend it’s not there. It will keep getting worse. Now I’m going to use a different analogy.

Let’s say you have a cake pan. It’s not just any old cake pan, it’s in a special, complex shape that produces cakes people marvel at. But it also has a big dent in it. No matter how fancy or impressive the overall cakes are, every single cake that comes from that pan is going to have that big dent. Now let’s say you and your family get together and say “you know, I am sick to death of cakes with dents in them. So from now on, we are not going to look at the dents and will pretend they are not there. THAT’LL fix the problem.” Except it won’t. The only way to fix that problem is to carefully pound that dent out. To change the structure.

The structure of this country is, in my opinion, very impressive. The idea of what this country should be is as beautiful and sacred to me as it ever was. But it has never been perfect. Our job is to slowly pound away at the dents in it “in order to form a more perfect union.” Pretending the problems aren’t there will never solve them.

Finally -how about you let the trained teachers decide what to teach and how to teach it instead of making it political?

  

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found HERE

A list of historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Troy D.Smith's official author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

A Liberal Dose, May 6, 2021 "The Legacy of Haymarket Square"

 

A Liberal Dose  May 6, 2021

"The Legacy of Haymarket Square"

Troy D. Smith

Although there have been labor actions for as long as we’ve been a country, the roots of the modern labor movement as we now know it go back to the 1870s, during the “Gilded Age.” It was a time of rapid technological change, expanding industry, and saw the making of great fortunes (names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Carnegie come to mind). Working class people, however, fell behind. The gap between rich and poor –which, of course, had always been there –widened significantly. Farmers, railroad workers, factory workers, and so on felt that they were being treated unfairly and started calling for more rights. A forty-hour workweek, for example, as well as safety regulations for the workplace and compensation when injured on the job. Some successful entrepreneurs –called “robber barons” by people who didn’t like them –justified the rampant economic inequality by adopting some of the ideas Charles Darwin had introduced, especially “survival of the fittest,” in a philosophy called “social Darwinism.” This philosophy essentially stated that, if you’re poor, it’s because you are an inferior person –either lazy, incompetent, or morally deficient, with no consideration of circumstances. If you are rich, on the other hand, it is because you deserve to be –or you wouldn’t be rich to begin with. This viewpoint shows the contempt in which poor and working class people were held by those who prospered on their labor, and sadly it has been making a comeback in the 21^st century.

In 1877 railroad workers went on strike after having a ten percent reduction in their wages, the third such cut in a year. Many workers were already frustrated that year because of the presidential election. Working class people around the country had voted in large numbers for Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York, who won the popular vote. Neither he nor Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio had an electoral majority –but Tilden was only one vote shy. Despite all that, in a Congressional move known in history as The Compromise of 1877, the victory was given to Rutherford in return for ending Reconstruction. Workers felt disenfranchised. Unfortunately, though the strike had heavy participation and support from workers in other industries, it was not efficiently organized and fell apart under the weight of violent union-busters (around 100 strikers were killed). This failure led to more emphasis on organizing, and the growth of groups like the Knights of Labor (which grew tenfold in two years) and the Farmer’s Alliance.

This brings us to May 1, 1886. Labor unions around the country coordinated to call a general strike on that day in support of an 8-hour workday. It is estimated that up to 500,000 workers walked off the job that day and joined protest parades. In some cities, the protests lasted for days. In Chicago, tensions escalated between protesting strikers and replacement workers at the McCormick Harvesting plant; 400 police were dispatched to keep order, and they wound up firing into the crowd of strikers and killing at least two. Strike supporters were outraged, and immediately another protest was called for the next day –this one a protest against police violence, to be held at Haymarket Square. One of the principal organizers was a man named Albert Parsons.

Albert Parsons was from Alabama. Orphaned at a young age, he had moved to Texas to be raised by an older brother in the newspaper business. When the Civil War started, 13-year-old Albert joined the Confederate Army. He initially served as a “powder monkey,” a common job for young teens, but by the end of the war four years later he was in the cavalry and the veteran of many battles. After the war, he continued in his brother’s newspaper trade, eventually becoming a reporter and an editor. He came to openly support the struggles of freed slaves, who were terribly mistreated in general, which did not make him popular in Reconstruction Texas. He became even more unpopular when he went from supporting ex-slaves to marrying one: a multiracial woman named Lucy Gonzales. In the early 1870s, Albert and Lucy moved to Chicago, where he continued to work in newspapers. However, after writing an editorial in support of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 while it was going on, Albert was fired from his reporting job. He left the Republican Party and joined the Social Democratic Party, and after a few years moved farther left than that and became an anarchist. Anarchist is another of those terms that most people today misunderstand, thinking it means “someone who wants to sow chaos.” The word anarchy literally means “without government,” and as a political ideal it calls for absolute freedom of the individual. If there were no government imposing authority, anarchists say, everyone would get along better and be more free. An anarchist, then, in the classic sense, is basically a libertarian on steroids.

Parsons and several other anarchists either in or closely aligned with the labor movement called for and organized the Haymarket Square rally on May 4, 1886. There was a large police presence, but at first everything was pretty peaceful, even boring. It started raining, and several protesters went home. Albert and Lucy Parsons, who had brought their children to the event, were among those who left. Later in the day, though, a match was metaphorically (and in a sense literally) struck on the powder keg. The police advanced on the protesters and ordered them to disperse; the workers insisted that they were being peaceful and had done nothing wrong. As the police drew closer, someone in the crowd threw a homemade bomb at them, and seven officers were killed. The other officers opened fire on the crowd, killing four. As is often the case, each side blamed the other for starting the violence.

To this day, no one knows who threw the bomb. The Chicago city government, though, decreed that someone had to pay. They arrested the people who organized the rally on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Seven anarchists, including Albert Parsons (who had not even been present) were sentenced to death, and an eighth to prison. Two of the five had their sentences commuted to life, and one of the remaining five committed suicide, but Parsons and the other three were hanged on a public scaffold despite appeals from around the world. On the way to the scaffold they sang the “Marseillaise,” the French national anthem and a call for revolution against corruption. Parsons asked to be allowed a final statement, and the trapdoor was sprung on him mid-sentence. Lucy Parsons remained a labor activist for the rest of her life, and went on to be a co-founder of International Workers of the World.

The U.S. adopted Labor Day in 1894, but President Grover Cleveland did not want it to be May 1 like everyone else because it would draw attention to the Haymarket event (which was by then already a national embarrassment) and embolden anarchists. Instead, May 1 is “Law Day” and “Loyalty Day.”

Most of the reforms they were protesting for eventually came to pass. If you’ve ever been paid overtime or worker’s compensation, never forget what it took to get you there.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found HERE

A list of historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Troy D. Smith's author web page: http://www.troyduanesmith.com/