DAHILL
Well-Known Member
I recently read this on the 5th quarter small talk forum and it was kind of interesting.
Black College celebrates White racism
Black College celebrates White racism
Black College celebrates WHITE racism
- Thread starter DAHILL
- Start date
AAMU Big Dawg
Chief Instigator
Good post...
Information like that makes me want to go back and double check some of the history behind the names of some of the buildings on our campus.
Information like that makes me want to go back and double check some of the history behind the names of some of the buildings on our campus.
J-State Tiger
Senate Candidate #7
Here is the article....
During my time in exile, I came across a great deal of what I consider to be "forbidden knowledge." I have learned a lot of things that are not generally taught, nor would some people choose for others to know. The following post is from the book LIES ACROSS AMERICA: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong After some consideration, I decided to post it here because it teaches a very valuable lesson and hopefully will get you to think about your school and its history.
I don't know if anyone here on the 5th is a student at this particular school, but I wish it to be understood that this is not an attack on them, merely an observation of the policies of the school itself.
---------------------------------------------------------------
College dormitories and classroom buildings are usually named for people, but most students who live and study within their walls have no idea who those people were, what they did, or what principles they embodied. Some buildings are named for major benefactors, but others are named for people who, in the minds of those who control the schools, exemplify ideals to which students and professors should aspire. Unofrtunately, all too often these principles are shameful.
The buildings at Mississippi Valley State University resemble the one- and two-story elementary schools thrown up quickly in the 1950s as school districts struggled to cope with the baby boom. MVSU opened in 1950, timed to contain the educational aspirations of Blacks in the Mississippi Delta in anticipation is the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. The Delta, the prehistoric floodplain of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, stretches almost from Memphis to Vicksburg and at its widest point extends from Greenville on the Mississippi to Carroll County east of Greenwood. almost perfectly flat, the Delta contains some of the richest farmland in America. Following a pattern that has prevailed in the South since slavery, African Americans have comprised most of the people who live on, but do not own, this rich soil. White supremacists hoped these African Americans would not want to attend the predominantly White University of Mississippi, just 70 miles to the northeast, or Delta State, less than 30 miles to the northwest, if they had "their own school."
Part of the college's problem is location. MVSU was first proposed to be in Greenwood, whose 20,000 people made it a relatively large city in the Mississippi Delta. White business leaders in Greenwood worried about having so many young African Americans in their town, so the state proposed to put the school in little Itta Bena, some eoght miles "out from" Greenwood. Amazingly, although Itta Bena's business district was already dying, its leaders too didn't want the college in their town, so it ended up a mile or so "out from" Itta Bena. The school was located on "buckshot land," so called because it doesn't drain well, hence wasn't good cotton land, hence was inexpensive.
MVSU looks nothing like the University of Mississippi. Though the college has had 50 years to be landscaped, its campus seems raw. Small trees hve a just-planted look, and the land still doesn't drain well. White politicians never intended for MVSU to compete with Ole Miss intellectually, either. The V in its name didn't always stand for Valley--originally MVC meant Mississippi Vocational College. "Moderate" White supremacists in the state used "vocational" as a sweetener to persuade more extreme racist legislators to swallow the idea of another college for African Americans. Vocational training could even be construed as a prudent investment, preparing African Americans for low-level positions, especially since cotton plantations were mechanizing so planters no longer needed a huge reserve of underemployed, impoverished workers to hire at chopping and picking times. And no White leader wanted Blacks applying to the state's White colleges and universities.
Throughout MVSU's history, its administrators have had to walk a narrow and tortuous line. If they tried to do a good job--to build an institution that truly served the needs of the Delta, one of the neediest areas in the U.S.--they would only incur the wrath of the Board of Institutions of Higher Learning and the White politicians who appointed it. MVSU's first president, J.H. White, an African American, grasped the stituation. He assured the White power structure that he would never let his students rock their boat and symbolized his servility by naming the college's two most prominent buildings for two of the most racist White political leaders in Mississippi's history, Walter Sillers Jr. and Fielding Wright.
Sillers's family owned cotton plantations near the Mississippi River. His father was one of the Red Shirts, Ku Klux Klan clones who armed themselves and intimidated African American voters to end Reconstruction in 1876. The younger Sillers was elected to the Mississippi House in 1916 and became speaker in 1944. throughout his long tenure as speaker of the house, perhaps the most powerful single position in Mississippi, no one can remember him sponsoring any progressive initiatives. He oppopes compulsory school attendance for example because Blacks stayed out of school more than Whites, which saved the state money.
Fielding Wright was another wealthy planter from the Delta. Governor of Mississippi from 1946 to 1952--years which saw the founding of MVSU--in 1947 he grew outraged because President Harry Truman proposed a civil rights bill. "Promotion of such measures constitutes a greater menace to the nation" than Communism, he fumed. Early the next year he convened a meeting of White Democrats from ten Southers states. They agreed that unless the national Democratic Party turned its back on civil rights, they would walk out of the 1948 national convention. When the convention passed a civil rights plank, Wright led a walkout of the Mississippi delegates joined by half of the Alabama delegates. Later, racist Democrats from across the South met to nominate Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president and Wright for vice president on what became known as the Dixiecrat ticket. They didn't expect to win but hoped to carry enough states to throw the election into the House of Representatives.
Thurmond and Wright won nearly 88 percent of the votes in Mississippi in 1948 because most Blacks were not allowed to vote and most Whites were racial extremists. Truman won reelection, however, and the Dixiecrats faded into oblivion. Not Wright, however. Decades after his death, Fielding Wright Hall remains one of the two largest buildings on the MVSU campus. It honors a man who gave this advice to Black Mississippians seeking integration: "If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with Whites, then kindness and true sympathy requires me to advise you to make your home in some other state than Mississippi."
University president White agreed with Gov. Wright. After the 1954 decision requiring school desegregation, Mississippi Gov. Hugh White convened 90 African Americans from across the state and asked them to support a voluntary segregation plan. He was shocked when several Black leaders spoke in favor of abolishing segregation. MVSU president White was one of only two African Americans at the meeting to support the governor's plan. In accord with state policy he hired only Black faculty members and allowed only Black students to attend MVSU. When an African American named Clyde Kennard dared apply to a White state university, President White even tried to talk him out of it.
(To eliminate him as a threat to the segregated system, Kennard was framed for a theft he did not commit and sent to Parchman Penitentiary. There he contracted stomach cancer, was denied medical attention, and was finally released to die in a Chicago hospital.)
In February 1970, students at MVSU revolted against President White's regime in the name of academic excellence. They boycotted classes to protest White's repressive campus regulations and demanded a better library, better facilities, and a better faculty. To halt the demonstrations police arrested more than 900 students--about half the student body--probably the largest mass arrest in the history of American higher education. MVSU's neglect of its library during President White's tenure was the foremost reason the school went unaccredited for decades. Despite these problems, in 1973 MVSU named it the J.H. White Library.
A majority Black insitution honoring men like Sillers and Wright by naming buildings after them might be excused in view of the desperate political circumstances under which it operated in the 1950s. For the college to retain these names and White's into the next millenium, however, shows an abscence of leadership or historical knowledge or both. MVSU has never labeled a single building after an African American whose name would be recognized off campus. No Medgar Evers Hall, even though the NAACP leader slain in 1963 lived for years just 25 miles northwest of MVSU. No Fannie Lou Hamer Hall, even though the famed civil rights pioneer lived less than 20 miles from the college. No B.B. King Hall of Music, even though the popular bluesman grew up almost within shouting distance of the campus. And no Blanche K. Bruce Hall of Political Science, to honor the first African American to serve a full term in the United States Senate, even though Bruce lived in the same nearby Delta county as Walter Sillers.
MVSU has changed some names recently. In 1998 it renamed eleven buildings, mostly for former university administrators. But it did not have the will to remove the names "Sillers," "Wright," or "White" from its campus. And, as we have seen, the institution also changed its own name in 1964. A decade later Gov. Bill Waller changed the name again from Mississippi Valley State College to Mississippi Valley State University. Nevertheless, Mississippi Valley State is not a university as that term is commonly understood. It is a liberal arts college. Gov. Waller was not complimenting the school for a job well done, nor was he conferring a higher status on MVSC so it could expand its offerings. he was merely relabeling it as part of the state's defense against looming pressure from civil rights groups. African Americans filed suit anyway, claiming that MVSC and the other two Black state colleges, also renamed "universities," did not equal the University of Mississippi and the other two White state universities. They were right. Calling MVSC a university changed nothing but the name; it is just another lie on the landscape.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ironically, that lawsuit almost resulted in MVSU's closure in the 1990s, when the state claimed it could not desegregate the school because few Whites would choose to go there. Thus the state used its own neglect of the institution to justify closing it. This argument failed, and there is now some consensus to improve the school.
The lesson to be learned from all this is: Does anyone really, really know the true history fo the school to which they attend and give their money? Do any of us really know who the buildings on our respective campuses are named for, and what those people stood for?
It may do well for us to do some serious research on this subject, and maybe get some intellectual discourse going about who our schools choose to honor on the landscape of history.
During my time in exile, I came across a great deal of what I consider to be "forbidden knowledge." I have learned a lot of things that are not generally taught, nor would some people choose for others to know. The following post is from the book LIES ACROSS AMERICA: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong After some consideration, I decided to post it here because it teaches a very valuable lesson and hopefully will get you to think about your school and its history.
I don't know if anyone here on the 5th is a student at this particular school, but I wish it to be understood that this is not an attack on them, merely an observation of the policies of the school itself.
---------------------------------------------------------------
College dormitories and classroom buildings are usually named for people, but most students who live and study within their walls have no idea who those people were, what they did, or what principles they embodied. Some buildings are named for major benefactors, but others are named for people who, in the minds of those who control the schools, exemplify ideals to which students and professors should aspire. Unofrtunately, all too often these principles are shameful.
The buildings at Mississippi Valley State University resemble the one- and two-story elementary schools thrown up quickly in the 1950s as school districts struggled to cope with the baby boom. MVSU opened in 1950, timed to contain the educational aspirations of Blacks in the Mississippi Delta in anticipation is the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. The Delta, the prehistoric floodplain of the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, stretches almost from Memphis to Vicksburg and at its widest point extends from Greenville on the Mississippi to Carroll County east of Greenwood. almost perfectly flat, the Delta contains some of the richest farmland in America. Following a pattern that has prevailed in the South since slavery, African Americans have comprised most of the people who live on, but do not own, this rich soil. White supremacists hoped these African Americans would not want to attend the predominantly White University of Mississippi, just 70 miles to the northeast, or Delta State, less than 30 miles to the northwest, if they had "their own school."
Part of the college's problem is location. MVSU was first proposed to be in Greenwood, whose 20,000 people made it a relatively large city in the Mississippi Delta. White business leaders in Greenwood worried about having so many young African Americans in their town, so the state proposed to put the school in little Itta Bena, some eoght miles "out from" Greenwood. Amazingly, although Itta Bena's business district was already dying, its leaders too didn't want the college in their town, so it ended up a mile or so "out from" Itta Bena. The school was located on "buckshot land," so called because it doesn't drain well, hence wasn't good cotton land, hence was inexpensive.
MVSU looks nothing like the University of Mississippi. Though the college has had 50 years to be landscaped, its campus seems raw. Small trees hve a just-planted look, and the land still doesn't drain well. White politicians never intended for MVSU to compete with Ole Miss intellectually, either. The V in its name didn't always stand for Valley--originally MVC meant Mississippi Vocational College. "Moderate" White supremacists in the state used "vocational" as a sweetener to persuade more extreme racist legislators to swallow the idea of another college for African Americans. Vocational training could even be construed as a prudent investment, preparing African Americans for low-level positions, especially since cotton plantations were mechanizing so planters no longer needed a huge reserve of underemployed, impoverished workers to hire at chopping and picking times. And no White leader wanted Blacks applying to the state's White colleges and universities.
Throughout MVSU's history, its administrators have had to walk a narrow and tortuous line. If they tried to do a good job--to build an institution that truly served the needs of the Delta, one of the neediest areas in the U.S.--they would only incur the wrath of the Board of Institutions of Higher Learning and the White politicians who appointed it. MVSU's first president, J.H. White, an African American, grasped the stituation. He assured the White power structure that he would never let his students rock their boat and symbolized his servility by naming the college's two most prominent buildings for two of the most racist White political leaders in Mississippi's history, Walter Sillers Jr. and Fielding Wright.
Sillers's family owned cotton plantations near the Mississippi River. His father was one of the Red Shirts, Ku Klux Klan clones who armed themselves and intimidated African American voters to end Reconstruction in 1876. The younger Sillers was elected to the Mississippi House in 1916 and became speaker in 1944. throughout his long tenure as speaker of the house, perhaps the most powerful single position in Mississippi, no one can remember him sponsoring any progressive initiatives. He oppopes compulsory school attendance for example because Blacks stayed out of school more than Whites, which saved the state money.
Fielding Wright was another wealthy planter from the Delta. Governor of Mississippi from 1946 to 1952--years which saw the founding of MVSU--in 1947 he grew outraged because President Harry Truman proposed a civil rights bill. "Promotion of such measures constitutes a greater menace to the nation" than Communism, he fumed. Early the next year he convened a meeting of White Democrats from ten Southers states. They agreed that unless the national Democratic Party turned its back on civil rights, they would walk out of the 1948 national convention. When the convention passed a civil rights plank, Wright led a walkout of the Mississippi delegates joined by half of the Alabama delegates. Later, racist Democrats from across the South met to nominate Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president and Wright for vice president on what became known as the Dixiecrat ticket. They didn't expect to win but hoped to carry enough states to throw the election into the House of Representatives.
Thurmond and Wright won nearly 88 percent of the votes in Mississippi in 1948 because most Blacks were not allowed to vote and most Whites were racial extremists. Truman won reelection, however, and the Dixiecrats faded into oblivion. Not Wright, however. Decades after his death, Fielding Wright Hall remains one of the two largest buildings on the MVSU campus. It honors a man who gave this advice to Black Mississippians seeking integration: "If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with Whites, then kindness and true sympathy requires me to advise you to make your home in some other state than Mississippi."
University president White agreed with Gov. Wright. After the 1954 decision requiring school desegregation, Mississippi Gov. Hugh White convened 90 African Americans from across the state and asked them to support a voluntary segregation plan. He was shocked when several Black leaders spoke in favor of abolishing segregation. MVSU president White was one of only two African Americans at the meeting to support the governor's plan. In accord with state policy he hired only Black faculty members and allowed only Black students to attend MVSU. When an African American named Clyde Kennard dared apply to a White state university, President White even tried to talk him out of it.
(To eliminate him as a threat to the segregated system, Kennard was framed for a theft he did not commit and sent to Parchman Penitentiary. There he contracted stomach cancer, was denied medical attention, and was finally released to die in a Chicago hospital.)
In February 1970, students at MVSU revolted against President White's regime in the name of academic excellence. They boycotted classes to protest White's repressive campus regulations and demanded a better library, better facilities, and a better faculty. To halt the demonstrations police arrested more than 900 students--about half the student body--probably the largest mass arrest in the history of American higher education. MVSU's neglect of its library during President White's tenure was the foremost reason the school went unaccredited for decades. Despite these problems, in 1973 MVSU named it the J.H. White Library.
A majority Black insitution honoring men like Sillers and Wright by naming buildings after them might be excused in view of the desperate political circumstances under which it operated in the 1950s. For the college to retain these names and White's into the next millenium, however, shows an abscence of leadership or historical knowledge or both. MVSU has never labeled a single building after an African American whose name would be recognized off campus. No Medgar Evers Hall, even though the NAACP leader slain in 1963 lived for years just 25 miles northwest of MVSU. No Fannie Lou Hamer Hall, even though the famed civil rights pioneer lived less than 20 miles from the college. No B.B. King Hall of Music, even though the popular bluesman grew up almost within shouting distance of the campus. And no Blanche K. Bruce Hall of Political Science, to honor the first African American to serve a full term in the United States Senate, even though Bruce lived in the same nearby Delta county as Walter Sillers.
MVSU has changed some names recently. In 1998 it renamed eleven buildings, mostly for former university administrators. But it did not have the will to remove the names "Sillers," "Wright," or "White" from its campus. And, as we have seen, the institution also changed its own name in 1964. A decade later Gov. Bill Waller changed the name again from Mississippi Valley State College to Mississippi Valley State University. Nevertheless, Mississippi Valley State is not a university as that term is commonly understood. It is a liberal arts college. Gov. Waller was not complimenting the school for a job well done, nor was he conferring a higher status on MVSC so it could expand its offerings. he was merely relabeling it as part of the state's defense against looming pressure from civil rights groups. African Americans filed suit anyway, claiming that MVSC and the other two Black state colleges, also renamed "universities," did not equal the University of Mississippi and the other two White state universities. They were right. Calling MVSC a university changed nothing but the name; it is just another lie on the landscape.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ironically, that lawsuit almost resulted in MVSU's closure in the 1990s, when the state claimed it could not desegregate the school because few Whites would choose to go there. Thus the state used its own neglect of the institution to justify closing it. This argument failed, and there is now some consensus to improve the school.
The lesson to be learned from all this is: Does anyone really, really know the true history fo the school to which they attend and give their money? Do any of us really know who the buildings on our respective campuses are named for, and what those people stood for?
It may do well for us to do some serious research on this subject, and maybe get some intellectual discourse going about who our schools choose to honor on the landscape of history.