Columbia, Tennessee February 26, 1946 -- Will America Whitewash This?
New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1946. [3]pp. on a bifolium. Previously folded. Minor wear at edges. Some toning and dust soiling. Still very good. Item #6516
A scarce petition to President Harry Truman from the Civil Rights Congress of New York concerning the racial violence that occurred in Columbia, Tennessee, during late February 1946. "This post-World War II race riot occurred in the town of Columbia on the night of February 25-26, 1946. Like other outbreaks of violence in the South in the immediate postwar era, this incident involved military veterans who were unwilling to accept prevailing racial norms upon returning to their hometowns" -- Tennessee Encyclopedia (online). The violence escalated from a disagreement between a black customer and a white clerk at a repair shop on the afternoon of February 25 to a full-on white riot in the Black business area of Columbia called the "Mink Slide." in which several hundred state police attacked the people of community, looted and destroyed property, confiscated weapons, and arrested more than 100 people. Two days later on February 28, two of the Black men in police custody were shot and killed.
The episode helped to focus and to galvanize the postwar civil rights movement. Thurgood Marshall and Walter White of the NAACP traveled to Tennessee to organize the defense of those arrested. The present protest and petition was distributed by the recently-formed Civil Rights Conference of New York, a more radical group that organized public campaigns to bring attention to racism, racist violence, and the struggle for equality and justice, that became known for events such as the 1949 Freedom Crusade and the 1951 We Charge Genocide campaign. The cover prints a vivid and disturbing photograph of the riot's aftermath -- a Black man lying face down, either unconscious or dead, with blood from his head wounds running -- with a bold caption asking, "Will America Whitewash This?" The interior of the bifolium comprises one page of text elucidating the mistreatment of the Black community in Columbia and calling for justice, and one page carrying a petition to President Truman to order a new grand jury investigation of the case, with space for fifteen signatures and addresses. The beginning of the text reads as follows:
"President Truman: U.S. Government must act! The Klan-like raid of 500 state and local police on the Negro community of Columbia, Tennessee, last February has been whitewashed by a federal grand jury. No indictments have been issued against police and state troopers who wrecked and looted Negro business establishments, conducted house-to-house raids without search warrants , arrested more than 100 men and women and held them without formal charges for days. No action has been taken against the officers who shot and killed two of those they were holding. No restitution has been made for the vandalism and looting, for the damage to life, limb, and property. BUT -- 31 Negro men and women are on trial on trumped up charges ranging from attempted murder to carrying concealed weapons."
A rare survival from the racial violence and nascent civil rights movement of the immediate postwar era. We locate one separately catalogued example, at Georgia State.
Price: $1,750.00