SU BMITTED BY: SUBMITTED TO:

AKSHAY SHARMA ANANDITA JOSHI

IUU16BAL031 FACULTY OF LAW

B.A.LLB (HONS.)

VI SEMESTER
 CONTENTS:
1. MEANING OF JIM CROW LAWS

2. ORIGIN OF JIM CROW LAWS

3. RACIALSEGGERATION AND END OF JIM CROW LAWS

4. RACIAL SEGGERATION – HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS WITH REFERENCE

TO UDHR

5. CONCLUSION
 INTRODUCTION
Jim Crow law, in U.S. history, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South between the
end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Jim Crow was
the name of a minstrel routine (actually Jump Jim Crow) performed beginning in 1828 by its
author, Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice, and by many imitators, including actor Joseph Jefferson. The
term came to be a derogatory epithet for African Americans and a designation for their segregated life.1

From the late 1870s, Southern state legislatures, no longer controlled by carpetbaggers and freedmen,
passed laws requiring the separation of whites from “persons of color” in public transportation and
schools. Generally, anyone of ascertainable or strongly suspected black ancestry in any degree was for
that purpose a “person of color”; the pre-Civil War distinction favoring those whose ancestry was known
to be mixed—particularly the half-French “free persons of color” in Louisiana—was abandoned. The
segregation principle was extended to parks, cemeteries, theatres, and restaurants in an effort to prevent
any contact between blacks and whites as equals. It was codified on local and state levels and most
famously with the “separate but equal” decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
In 1954 the Supreme Court reversed Plessy in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. It declared
segregation in public schools unconstitutional, and, by extension, that ruling was applied to other public
facilities. In the years following, subsequent decisions struck down similar kinds of Jim Crow legislation.

ORIGIN OF JIM CROW LAWS

In January 1865 an amendment to the Constitution to abolish slavery in the United States was proposed
by Congress, and on December 18, 1865, it was ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment formally abolishing
slavery. 2

During the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the U.S.
South for freedmen, the African Americans who had formerly been slaves, and the minority of blacks
who had been free before the war. In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern
legislatures, having used insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and the Red Shirts, to
disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate blacks to
suppress their voting. Extensive voter fraud was also used. Gubernatorial elections were close and had
been disputed in Louisiana for years, with increasing violence against blacks during campaigns from 1868
onward.

1
https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law.
2
Gerald De Jynes: Encyclopedia of African American Society.
In 1877, a national Democratic Party compromise to gain Southern support in the presidential election
(a corrupt bargain) resulted in the government's withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South.
3

White Democrats had regained political power in every Southern state. These Southern, white,
Democratic Redeemer governments legislated Jim Crow laws, officially segregating black people from
the white population. Blacks were still elected to local offices throughout the 1880s, but their voting was
suppressed for state and national elections. Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and
electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks and many poor
whites began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, starting
with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most blacks
and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension
tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements.[14][15] Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted
some illiterate whites to vote but gave no relief to most blacks.

Voter turnout dropped drastically through the South as a result of such measures. In Louisiana, by 1900,
black voters were reduced to 5,320 on the rolls, although they comprised the majority of the state's
population. By 1910, only 730 blacks were registered, less than 0.5% of eligible black men. "In 27 of the
state's 60 parishes, not a single black voter was registered any longer; in 9 more parishes, only one black
voter was. The cumulative effect in North Carolina meant that black voters were completely eliminated
from voter rolls during the period from 1896–1904. The growth of their thriving middle class was slowed.
In North Carolina and other Southern states, blacks suffered from being made invisible in the political
system: "W]ithin a decade of disfranchisement, the white supremacy campaign had erased the image of
the black middle class from the minds of white North Carolinians. In Alabama tens of thousands of poor
whites were also disenfranchised, although initially legislators had promised them they would not be
affected adversely by the new restrictions.

Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They
effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their
interests were overlooked. While public schools had been established by Reconstruction legislatures for
the first time in most Southern states, those for black children were consistently underfunded compared to
schools for white children, even when considered within the strained finances of the postwar South where
the decreasing price of cotton kept the agricultural economy at a low.

3
Woodward, C. Vann and McFeely, William S. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. 2001, p. 6
Like schools, public libraries for blacks and Native Americans were underfunded, if they existed at all,
and they were often stocked with secondhand books and other resources. These facilities were not
introduced for African Americans in the South until the first decade of the 20th century. Throughout the
Jim Crow era, libraries were only available sporadically. Prior to the 20th century, most libraries
established for African Americans were school-library combinations. Many public libraries for both
European-American and African American patrons in this period were founded as the result of middle-
class activism aided by matching grants from the Carnegie Foundation.

In some cases, progressive measures intended to reduce election fraud, such as the Eight Box
Law in South Carolina, acted against black and white voters who were illiterate, as they could not follow
the directions. While the separation of African Americans from the white general population was
becoming legalized and formalized during the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), it was also becoming
customary. For instance, even in cases in which Jim Crow laws did not expressly forbid black people to
participate in sports or recreation, a segregated culture had become common. 4

In the Jim Crow context, the presidential election of 1912 was steeply slanted against the interests of
black Americans. Most blacks still lived in the South, where they had been effectively disfranchised, so
they could not vote at all. While poll taxes and literacy requirements banned many poor or illiterate
Americans from voting, these stipulations frequently had loopholes that exempted European Americans
from meeting the requirements. In Oklahoma, for instance, anyone qualified to vote before 1866, or
related to someone qualified to vote before 1866 (a kind of "grandfather clause"), was exempted from the
literacy requirement; but the only persons who had the franchise before that year were white, or
European-American males. European Americans were effectively exempted from the literacy testing,
whereas black Americans were effectively singled out by the law.

Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat elected from New Jersey, but he was born and raised in the South, and
was the first Southern-born president of the post-Civil War period. He appointed Southerners to
his Cabinet. Some quickly began to press for segregated workplaces, although the city of Washington,
D.C., and federal offices had been integrated since after the Civil War. In 1913, for instance, Secretary of
the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo – an appointee of the President – was heard to express his opinion
of black and white women working together in one government office: "I feel sure that this must go
against the grain of the white women. Is there any reason why the white women should not have only
white women working across from them on the machines?"

4
Michael Perman Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2001, Introduction
The Wilson administration introduced segregation in federal offices, despite much protest from African-
American leaders and white progressive groups in the north and midwest. He appointed segregationist
Southern politicians because of his own firm belief that racial segregation was in the best interest of black
and European Americans alike. At Gettysburg on July 4, 1913, the semi-centennial of Abraham Lincoln's
declaration that "all men are created equal", Wilson addressed the crowd:

How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and
majestic, as state after state has been added to this, our great family of free men!

In sharp contrast to Wilson, a Washington Bee editorial wondered if the "reunion" of 1913 was a reunion
of those who fought for "the extinction of slavery" or a reunion of those who fought to "perpetuate
slavery and who are now employing every artifice and argument known to deceit" to present
emancipation as a failed venture. Historian David W. Blightnotes that the "Peace Jubilee" at which
Wilson presided at Gettysburg in 1913 "was a Jim Crow reunion, and white supremacy might be said to
have been the silent, invisible master of ceremonies."

In Texas, several towns adopted residential segregation laws between 1910 and the 1920s. Legal strictures
called for segregated water fountains and restrooms. Jim Crow laws were a product of what had become
the solidly Democratic South due to disfranchisement of blacks.5

Native Americans, like African Americans, were also affected by the Jim Crow laws, especially after they
were made citizens through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Native American identity was especially
targeted by a system that only wanted to recognize white or colored, and the government began to
question the legitimacy of some tribes because they had intermarried with African Americans. The Office
of Indian Affairs (OIA) employed anthropometrics to determine the blood quantum of Native Americans
in the South, and declared that the only individuals who could claim Native American identity were those
determined to be half- or full-blooded Native Americans, making individuals even more vulnerable to Jim
Crow laws. Native Americans that were part white or were light complexioned would often pass as white
to avoid the persecution of the Jim Crow laws, while family members with reddish-brown skin could not.
Native Americans in the South were especially affected through their education, as schools in the native
communities, like black schools, were poorly funded; some Native American children attended "colored"
schools. Immediate citizenship didn't change the views that White Americans had about Native
Americans, and voter suppression was a tactic that was used against Native Americans in
the South. 6States used five basic arguments in justifying the denial of voting rights to Native Americans:

5
Reese, W. (January 4, 2010). History, Education, and the Schools. Springer p.145. ISBN 9780230104822.
6
Fultz, M. (2006). "Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation." Libraries & The Cultural
Record, 41(3), 338.
(1) failure to sever tribal ties makes Native Americans ineligible; (2) "Native Americans not taxed"; (3)
Native Americans that are under guardianship; (4) reservation Indians are not residents; and (5) tribal
sovereignty precludes participation in state and local governments. Jim Crow laws were carried over into
the West; some states did not allow Native Americans to vote, or made it difficult for them to reach the
ballot boxes.[6] A disproportionate lack of access to voter registration was often made with Native
Americans having to travel excessive miles from a reservation. During the antebellum period of the
United States, minstrel shows were extremely popular. White actors in blackface would perform as
exaggerated stereotypes of black people for entertainment’s sake. Thomas Rice was a famous minstrel
performer; among his most popular acts was titled “Jump Jim Crow”. In the mid-1830s, Jim Crow
became synonymous with black people broadly, but still in that caricatured form. With this in mind, it
may be easier for you to remember the goal of Jim Crow laws: to make black Americans feel inferior, to
represent these individuals as less than human, and, most importantly, to keep the vestiges of slavery’s
social order intact.

WHAT WERE JIM CROW LAWS?

For a brief period of time following the end of the Civil War, it seemed as though the United States was
serious about making emancipation mean something real for freedmen and women. The formerly
enslaved now had voting power. As a result, blacks were elected to Congress during this period of
Radical Reconstruction.
However, this would not last long; after the Compromise of 1877, any hopes of black equality were
swiftly squashed. As a result of this compromise, it was clear that there would be no federal oversight to
make sure that the formerly enslaved in the South had any rights. Jim Crow laws were established during
this time period and were in effect until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.7
Each Southern state established its own set of laws restricting the political, economic, and social rights of
African Americans. There were, of course, the larger issues that you likely know about, such as “separate
but equal” schools and employment discrimination. But Jim Crow laws got much more specific than just
that. In Georgia, black barbers couldn’t cut white hair; Mississippi made it illegal to print and distribute
literature regarding equality between the races; and North Carolina made it illegal for blacks and whites to
share school books.8 Jim Crow laws were meant to be humiliating and made sure that the minutia of
everyday life was radicalized and oppressive. Some of the Jim Crow Laws (Black Code) were very
extreme; the laws were so strict it was almost like the African American people were still in slavery.

7
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/effects-of-jim-crow-laws-english-literature-essay.php

8
ibid
9
However, some would say that the Jim Crow Laws were there to make sure the African American people
knew there place. And even though African Americans were free from slavery, in all actuality they would
still never be equal. The segregation of public schools, and public transportation, and the segregation of
restrooms, restaurants and even the drinking fountains that were separate for Whites and Blacks, are just
some the examples of the Jim Crow Laws. The laws even went so far as to tell you who you could or
could not marry! For no Caucasian person could marry an African American, for if they did, the marriage
would be null and void. This was truly a sad time in American History. One day, the Jim Crow Laws
were challenged by an African American man by the name of Homer Pessly. In 1896 he challenged the
Separate Car Law, (accommodations for riding on the railroad car the U.S. Supreme Court
decided that a Louisiana law mandating separate but equal accommodations for blacks and
whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional” (Bsgu.edu 1997). However this Law was
overturned in 1954 when another case was heard. Brown v. Board of Education, this lawsuit
challenges the schools segregation law. Was this the beginning of the end of Jim Crow? Some
say yes, but upon closer examination and according to Brown Foundation (2004). “That in 1849
a group of African Americans had filed suit against an education system that mandated racial
segregation in the case of Roberts V. City of Boston”. We as Americans know that sometimes it
takes time for a change to come. So while some may say in 1954 they won the fight, in all
actuality, they won the battle! For the fight had started over 100 years earlier.

RACIAL SEGGERATION – HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS WITH REFERENCE TO

UDHR
While the Human Rights Commission worked on drafting the Declaration, some of those leading the
struggle for civil rights in America believed that bringing the case of segregation in America before the
United Nations would help draw international attention to their plight. They felt that a change in
terminology—from “civil rights” to “human rights”—would align their struggle with that of other
oppressed groups and colonized nations around the world. They hoped that the shift would bring pressure
on the United States to live up to the ideals and freedoms inscribed in the American Constitution.

Nearly one million black men and women served in World War II, many of whom believed that wartime
patriotism would earn them full parity with white Americans upon their return. They also hoped that the

9
ibid
struggle to defeat Nazi racism would transform racism on American soil. They were wrong on both
counts.

During the war, blacks began more forcefully to demand their citizenship rights. Weary of Jim
Crow indignities, many Southern blacks refused to be segregated any longer on streetcars and buses,
stood their ground when challenged, and thus provoked almost daily racial altercations. Blacks became
less compliant with conventional rules of racial etiquette, finding small but symbolic ways to challenge
the racial status quo. Black soldiers, frustrated by the constant racial abuse they suffered, began fighting
back; the result was much interracial violence and many deaths.10

The huge industrial boom, precipitated by military production, failed to benefit many black workers and
factory owners. In the military, only a few black soldiers were allowed to assume combat roles or become
officers. Enough was enough. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 (see Part II), which banned government
contractors from discriminating according to race, religion, or national origin, made a big difference.
Within three years, two million blacks were reportedly working in the defense industry11Extraordinary as
this presidential move was, however, the lives of black men and women were little improved when the
war ended. Moreover, hostility toward black veterans increased at the end of the war. The attacks and
violence were neither accidental nor simple crimes of passion (although passionate mobs were often
involved). They were carried out by whites who were determined to put loyal American veterans “back in
their place” and to reinstate segregation. Eleanor was acutely aware of the explosive potential of this
racial friction. But now that she was no longer a White House insider, how could she help? The return of
these soldiers and their bitterly cold reception highlighted the need for uncompromising action. As the
issue of civil rights was forced to the forefront, Eleanor used her popularity, connections, and influence to
promote racial and social equality. She participated in conferences, fund-raisers, and public debates to
raise awareness about America’s racial problem. She also joined the board of directors of several
organizations, including the NAACP.

Frustrated by a country that could demand sacrifice in its moment of need and then turn its back when the
crisis passed, black veterans sometimes took direct action. The results could be chilling:

In Alabama, when an African American veteran removed the Jim Crow sign on a trolley, an angry street
car conductor took aim and unloaded his pistol into the ex-Marine. As the wounded veteran staggered off
the tram and crawled away, the chief of police hunted him down and finished the job . . . In South

10
. Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 177
11
The United States from 1920 to 1945,” Encyclopedia Britannica online.
Carolina, another veteran, who complained about the inanity of Jim Crow transportation, had his eyes
gouged out with the butt of the sheriff’s billy club. In Louisiana, a black veteran who defiantly refused to
give a white man a war memento was partially dismembered, castrated, and blow-torched…In Columbia,
Tennessee, when African Americans refused to “take lying down” the planned lynching of a black veteran
who had defended his mother from a beating, the sheriff’s storm troopers . . . “drew up their machine
guns and tommy guns . . . fired a barrage of shots directly into the black area of town, and then moved
in.”

The events in Columbia, Tennessee, were indicative. In this town of 5,000 whites and 3,000 blacks, racial
tensions actually subsided during the war. But when the returning soldiers did not accept the daily
humiliations of Jim Crow laws, many whites reacted violently. The events began on February 25, 1946,
when a dissatisfied black customer, accompanied by her navy veteran son, got into a fight with a radio
repair clerk who refused to address their concerns and became abusive. The clerk was pushed out the
window, an act for which both the veteran and his mother were arrested. After pleading guilty and paying
their fine, the two headed home. Later that day, the son was arrested again on more serious charges but
was bailed out and released again.

That night, an angry white mob gathered near the black neighborhood. Blacks, including armed veterans,
organized to protect themselves against possible attack. When four police officers attempted to disperse
the crowd, they were shot and wounded. What followed was not uncharacteristic of the way law-
enforcement agents reacted to racial tensions:

Within hours, state highway patrolmen and the state safety commissioner, Lynn Bomar, arrived in town.
Together with some of the town’s whites, they surrounded the Mink Slide [black] district. During the
early morning of February 26, highway patrolmen first entered the district. The officers fired randomly
into buildings, stole cash and goods, searched homes without warrants, and took any guns, rifles, and
shotguns they could find. When the sweep was over, more than one hundred blacks had been arrested, and
about three hundred weapons from the black community had been confiscated. None of the accused were
granted bail or allowed legal counsel.

According to prisoners’ testimonies, three of the black prisoners were later taken for interrogation. Shots
followed; one was injured, and the other two were killed. While the police officers claimed it was self-
defense, fellow prisoners claimed that the men were executed in retaliation for their actions during the
riots. Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s leading lawyer, who would be the first African American to sit
on the Supreme Court, immediately flew in with Walter White. They built a national defense committee
(representing various organizations) whose mission was to provide funds and protection for the prisoners.
They demanded that the alleged violations of black residents’ civil rights be investigated. Walter White
then approached Eleanor to co-chair the committee with Channing Tobias, and she immediately agreed.
Though occupied with her work for the United Nations, Eleanor participated in the committee’s defense
efforts. In a letter she wrote with Channing Tobias to prospective donors, she summarized her views on
the events. The men who were arrested, she argued, more than half of whom were recently discharged
servicemen,

had been the innocent victims of race hatred and violence. The events which took place in Columbia on
February 25th and 26th rose out of a dispute between a white shopkeeper and a Negro customer. They
culminated in lynch threats, an armed invasion of the Negro district, wanton destruction of Negro
property and wholesale arrests and beatings of Negro citizens.

Thurgood Marshall’s spectacular defense saved many of the prisoners the injustice of long prison terms.
But when he and others forced Tennessee Attorney General Tom C. Clark to investigate the actions of the
National Guard unit and highway patrolmen who raided the black neighborhood, the results were deeply
disappointing. Despite the fact that dozens of people witnessed the actions of the National Guard unit and
patrolmen, blacks were not allowed to testify, and the white officers did not cooperate. The record of this
investigation, Marshall later wrote to Eleanor, showed “that none of the witnesses . . . could identify any
person responsible for the property damage which occurred or for any other act prohibited by Federal
laws.”

When Marshall left town, the police followed him and his colleagues. He was arrested for alleged drunk
driving and was almost lynched by white residents of Columbia.
Responding to the maelstrom of violence, representatives of the African American community turned to
the United Nations. W. E. B. Du Bois, a highly accomplished scholar and activist (he was the first African
American to receive a doctoral degree from Harvard), led a team of lawyers and scholars who submitted a
brief to the human rights division in 1947. It was titled “An Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial
of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America
and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress.”

How, asked Du Bois, could the leaders of the United States seek to lead the free world while refusing to
confront the injustices of racism in every American town and city? A “disastrous” policy, segregation, he
wrote, had
repeatedly led the greatest modern attempt at democratic government to deny its political ideals, to falsify
its philanthropic assertions and to make its religion to a great extent hypocritical. A nation which boldly
declared “That all men are created equal,” proceeded to build its economy on chattel slavery; masters who
declared race-mixture impossible, sold their own children to slavery and left a mulatto progeny which
neither law nor science can today disentangle; churches which excused slavery as calling the heathen to
god, refused to recognize the freedom of converts or admit them to equal communion. . . . great nation,
which today ought to be in the forefront of the march toward peace and democracy, finds itself
continuously making common cause with race-hate, prejudiced exploitation, and oppression of the
common man.

America’s “high and noble words,” Du Bois concluded, had been “turned against it, because they are
contradicted in every syllable by the treatment of the American Negro for three hundred and twenty-eight
years.”

“An Appeal to the World” was Du Bois’s plea for the international community to take notice of the
ongoing discrimination, segregation, and racial violence in America. In writing and submitting it to the
United Nations, Du Bois and his colleagues tried to shift from national and internal debate to an
international and universal one. When arguing in court and protesting on the street, African Americans
were fighting to receive their civil rights: rights granted to all the citizens of the United States but denied
to them. Du Bois and the NAACP believed that the United Nations’ discussion of human rights was an
opportunity to mobilize international public opinion for their cause and to align their plight with that of
other oppressed people. This was neither the first nor the last such attempt to “internationalize” the
injustices suffered by blacks.

The brief was to be submitted on October 23, 1947, to Humphrey as the director of the human rights
division and to Henri Laugier of the Secretariat. Walter White, a longtime civil rights activist and the
executive director of the NAACP, asked Eleanor to be present.

She declined:
As an individual I should like to be present, but as a member of the delegation, I feel that until this subject
comes before us in a proper way, in a report to the Human Rights Commission or otherwise, I should not
seem to be lining myself up in any particular way on any subject.

She added: “It isn’t as though everyone did not know where I stand.”
For example, before taking up her duties at the United Nations, Eleanor had often identified racism
directed at African Americans as intolerable. The situation had to change, and in 1942, she repeated
demands she had made many times before—that every citizen of the United States should have the
following rights:
Equality before the law

1. Equality of education
2. Equality to hold a job according to his or her ability
3. Equality of participation through the ballot in the government12

“We cannot force people to accept friends for whom they have no liking,” she argued, “but living in a
democracy, it is entirely reasonable to demand that every citizen of that democracy enjoy the fundamental
rights of a citizen.”

In Eleanor’s essay, “Abolish Jim Crow,” she spoke about the need to align the ethical mission of the war
with the struggle for justice at home, drawing parallels among the persecution of the European Jews, the
Russian dissidents, and the American blacks.

Moreover, since the war, Eleanor had often warned against the hypocrisy of condemning the Nazis for
their racial policies while allowing the free reign of white supremacy in many areas of the United Sates.
In a response to a member of President Truman’s commission on civil rights, she repeated the
comparison: “We cannot look down too much on the Nazis or the Communists, when somewhere in our
land things like this happen.”13
While Eleanor called for patience and for working within the system, but this did not mean that she went
along with official decisions with which she disagreed: she knew how to dig in her heels and push back.
A case in point was the United States’ support for the formation of the state of Israel. In the aftermath of
the Holocaust, Eleanor became convinced that this was the only appropriate response to horrific actions
that had left six million Jews dead and had turned those who survived into unwanted, stateless refugees.

So when the United States seemed as if it would withdraw its support for the formation of a Jewish state
in Palestine, Eleanor threatened her resignation from the United Nations.
But “The Appeal to the World” put Eleanor in a tough position. She believed that receiving petitions from
anyone but a member state violated the guidelines for the Human Rights Commission. The commission

12
Eleanor Roosevelt; Race, Religion and Prejudice.(May 11,1942)
13
Elida Black et al.,The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, 593.
had never been assigned any executive power at all. Both human rights standards and the institutions that
would act to uphold them were yet to be created. Moreover, Eleanor anticipated complications. She knew
that the Soviets would use “The Appeal to the World” for anti-American propaganda (which they later
did). In that case, if Eleanor sided with the petitioners, she would be set against the government she
represented, which was unthinkable.

Nevertheless, Eleanor continued to communicate with White and Du Bois. She also agreed to meet Du
Bois in person to talk things over. In their conversation, recorded by Du Bois, Eleanor repeated her
concern about the potential abuse of the petition by the Soviets, and she pointed out that if the Soviets
and other countries continued to attack the United States for its racial policies, she would be forced to
defend those policies—a situation she deeply resented. According to Du Bois’s account, Eleanor said that
the situation “might be so unpleasant that she would feel it necessary to resign from the United
States Delegation to the United Nations.”

Du Bois’s uncompromising position eventually led to a crisis within the NAACP and to the termination
of his service. In his place, on September 7, 1948, the NAACP sent Walter White to consult with the
United States delegation. His close ties with Eleanor were well known, and the choice suggested that the
NAACP expected that she would continue to support the organization’s mission.
 CONCLUSION
It is way past time for the American public and political elite to stop looking the other way denying the
human rights plague of radicalized mass incarceration and acknowledge its insidious and destructive
effects on the dignity and human rights of millions of its black and brown citizens. As a nation, America
must, ‘come to terms with its past’162 and its present social, political, and economic sin of radicalized
mass incarceration. For too long it has, “circumvented the issue with the narrative skills befitting a
psychopath.”163 America’s mass denial of this terrible reality clearly has not worked as either a political
or social strategy and has only exacerbated an already destructive, insidious, and distressing reality. This
in turn incurs another great cost of this terrible domestic policy against its racial minorities, in the form of
the disapproval and disrespect of the rest of the civilized industrial world for whom respect for the human
rights of a nation’s ethnic minorities has become an increasingly categorical imperative. This widespread
and massive national denial regarding the reality and social costs of radicalized mass incarceration, has
already cost America a generation of young Black and Brown men, and the destruction of countless Black
and Brown families and communities. It now threatens to destroy yet another generation of young Black
and Brown men, their families and communities with little or no hope for any relief in the foreseeable
future. If America is to make any headway in even beginning to solve this problem, it must first open its
collective social, political, and societal eyes and free itself from its willful racial blindness, and from what
Stanley Cohen describes as ‘the mass denial so characteristic of repressive, racist . . . states.’