1906 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

The U.S. Supreme Court grants a stay of execution to convicted black rapist Ed Johnson March 18 and agrees to hear an appeal on grounds that the young black man's right to a fair trial had been violated. An all-white jury has convicted the youth at Chattanooga, Tenn.; local whites consider the high court's ruling an unwarranted federal interference, a lynch mob breaks into the jail where Johnson is confined March 19, parades him through the streets and hangs him from a metal girder on the Walnut Street Bridge across the Tennessee River after he shouts, "God bless you all—I am innocent!" The mob begins shooting at him, a stray bullet severs the rope, Johnson's body falls to the bridge, and one of the men in the lynch mob puts his gun to Johnson's head and fires five times. The Supreme Court responds by conducting its first criminal trial (there will not be another in this century). It finds sheriff Joseph F. Shipp, other local law-enforcement officials, and some members of the lynch mob guilty of contempt of court, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rebukes the Chattanooga criminal justice system, calling Johnson's trial "a shameful attempt at justice." Johnson will be cleared of rape charges in February 2000.

Brownsville, Texas, has a race riot following an August 13 incident. A few members of a crack all-black infantry battalion stationed on the outskirts of town 19 days earlier have allegedly shot up the town of 7,000. One white resident was killed in a burst of gunfire, another wounded, and a woman raped. The townspeople make reprisals, President Roosevelt gives orders November 6 that three companies of black troops (167 men) be given dishonorable discharges for conspiring to remain silent, but evidence will emerge that "evidence" in the form of spent shells was planted in an effort to frame the soldiers.

Atlanta, Georgia, has a race riot September 22 as a spinoff of the Democratic Party feeds virulent white fear and resentment. The city has been noted as a bulwark of racial amity, but sensationalist press accounts create hysteria among white men about black sexuality. A mob armed with guns, clubs, knives, and bricks takes to the streets in the downtown Five Poins area; white men pull black men and women from streetcars, accost innocent people, kill at least 20 blacks at random, and mutilate and otherwise injure scores of others until the state militia is called in to restore order (although the militiamen sometimes subject only blacks to the "rule of law".)

Articles exposing the exploitation of workers in the Belgian Congo begin appearing in Everybody's Magazine (see 1903). Pennsylvania-born journalist-turned-sociologist Robert Ezra Parker, 42, received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg 2 years ago. He was asked to become secretary of the Congo Reform Association, has visited Africa to study the situation firsthand, and will continue publishing his findings next year. Leopold II of the Belgians has since 1885 had workers beaten or whipped to death for failing to meet rigid ivory and rubber production quotas, as many as 8 million have died from diseases introduced by Europeans or from famine as Leopold's army appropriated food and crops while destroying fields and villages; the king has taken some 220 million francs in profits from the Congo, using the money to erect monuments and triumphal arches, build museums, and buy costly villas and dresses for his teenage mistress Caroline (a former call girl) (see 1908).

Johannesburg lawyer Mohandas K. Gandhi, 37, speaks at a mass meeting in the Empire Theater September 11 and launches a campaign of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) to protest discrimination against Indians. Gandhi has been in racially-segregated South Africa since 1893 (see 1913; African National Congress, 1912).

Finland grants women the right to vote on the same basis as men March 7, becoming the first European nation to do so (see New Zealand, 1898); all men and women 24 and older are enfranchised except those supported by the state (see 1907; Norway, 1913).

French suffragists demand a reduction in taxes so that deputies opposed to letting women vote will receive no salaries from the state.

Suffragist Susan B. Anthony dies at Rochester, N.Y., March 13 at age 86. Her niece the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw delivers her eulogy, hailing the work that Anthony has done to advance the cause of woman suffrage.

Britain's Labour Party calls for woman suffrage April 17. A London Daily Mail writer coins the term "suffragettes" for women such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and (Estelle) Sylvia, 24, who campaign for woman suffrage (see 1905). Mrs. Pankhurst has said January 31 that women must become violent and risk arrest if they are to achieve their goals. Labour Party leader Keir Hardie introduces London barrister Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 35, and his wife, Emmeline, 39, to the Pankhursts, and they offer their support. Annie Kenney interrupts a speech by the prime minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and is arrested again. Police jail suffragettes October 24, and they refuse meals beginning December 25 (see 1912).

San Francisco's board of education orders segregation of Asian children in city schools 6 months after the April earthquake and fire that devastate the city. The Japanese ambassador registers an emphatic protest October 25, and the order is rescinded (see Hayashi, 1907).