When Booker T. Washington dined at the White House in 1901 with President Theodore Roosevelt of New York, the invitation and dinner symbolically suggested a social status of equality between blacks and whites, which irked some, and outraged many, white politicians, who pursued white supremacists' beliefs, doctrines, power-politics.
No other cross-racial invitation had caused such consternation across the segregated nation, until the "Negro Leagues Baseball" team, Kansas City Monarchs' star second baseman, Jackie Robinson, of Los Angeles was signed away to play for the New York Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, which happened nearly 50 years later.
The irony is that blacks and whites had lived in much closer proximity to each other in the slavery era--inside the White House also--than either of these, above mentioned involving Washington or Robinson for over a century! But, it was the prospect of social equality that had frightened, infuriated racist fiends.
Saturday, November 25, 2017
EARLY SEGREGATION EROSIONS
When Booker T. Washington dined at the White House in 1901 with President Theodore Roosevelt of New York, the invitation and dinner symbolically suggested a social status of equality between blacks and whites, which irked some, and outraged many, white politicians, who pursued white supremacists' beliefs, doctrines, power-politics.
No other cross-racial invitation had caused such consternation across the segregated nation, until the "Negro Leagues Baseball" team, Kansas City Monarchs' star second baseman, Jackie Robinson, of Los Angeles was signed away to play for the New York Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, which happened nearly 50 years later.
The irony is that blacks and whites had lived in much closer proximity to each other in the slavery era--inside the White House also--than either of these, above mentioned involving Washington or Robinson for over a century! But, it was the prospect of social equality that had frightened, infuriated racist fiends.