COM 0314.036 1996-1998 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

(Left to right, upper row:) (Left to right, lower row:) Jackie Gleason Cab Calbway Dizry Gillespie r` ' .Y; lhebnbus Munk Count Basis 4 ,t~ ~ L'anel Hampton Louis Armstrong Kate Smith Milian Berle Duke Ellington -'Vi'a ti~;e ~~~~~~111111 4 f ~ fig! s .'p~yi ' a ,I p+ :a yi~li"f la White racists wrote articles and passed city and state laws without this knowledge for almost two MERICAN-AMERICANS decades, chiefly because of Negro/Mexican vicious In 1915, California and Utah passed state laws out- "insolence"* under the effect of marijuana. lawing marijuana for the same "Jim Crow" rea- ' Vicious Insolence: Between 1864 and 1900, s,soo documented sons-but directed through the Hearst papers at deaths of black Americans were caused by ),ynchinga; between 1900 CihlcaI103. and 1917, over 1,100 were tecerded. The real figures were mdoubN wily higher It ie estimated that one-third of these Lynchings were for "insolence," which might be anything from looking (or being aaveed Mexicans under marijuana's influence were of looking) at a white woman twice, to stepping oa a white man§ demanding humane treatment, looking at shadow, even to looking a white man directly in the eye for more than three seconds, not going directly to the beck of the trolley, etc. white women, and asking that their children It was obvious to whites, marpuana caused Negm and Mexioaa'bi- be educated while the parents harvested sugar ciovenesa' or they wouldn't dare be "insolent'; etc... Ire¢ts; and other insolent" demands. Hundreds of thousands of negroee and Chicanos were sentenced from 10 days to 10 yeah mostly on local and state "chain gangs' for such silly crimes as we have just listed. Colorado followed in 1917. Its legislators cited ex- Thia was the nature of'Tim Cmw+' Laws until the 1950e and 60e; the laws Martin Luther King, the NAACP, and general public outcry ceases of Pancho V'illa's rebel army, whose drug of have finally begun remedying is America. choice was supposed to have been marijuana. Which, We can only imagine the immediate effect the Black if true, means that marijuana helped to overthrow entertainers' refusal to wear blackface had on the one of the most repressive and evil regimes Mexico white establishment, but seven years later, 1917, ever suffered Storeyville was completely shut-down. Apartheid had The Colorado Legislature felt the only way to pre- its moment of triumph. vent an actual racial blood bath and the overthrow of No longer did the upright, up-tight white atizen their (whites') ignorant and bigoted laws, attitudes have to worry about white women going to and institutions was to stop marijuana. Storeyville to listen to "voodoo" jazz or perhaps be Mexicans under marijuana's influence were de- raped by its marijuana-crazed `Black adherents" who manding humane treatment, looking at white wom- showed vicious disrespect (insolence) for whites and en, and asking that their children be educated while their "Jim Crow Laws" by stepping on their (white the parents harvested sugar beets; and other "inso- men's) shadows and the like when they were high on lent" demands. With the excuse of marijuana (Killer marijuana. Weed) the whites could now use force and rationalize Black musicians then took their music and marl- feu'violent acts of repression. Juana up the Mississippi to Memphis, Kansas City, This `4~eefer raasm" continues into the present day. St. Louis, Chicago, etc., where the (white) city fa- In 1937, Harry Anslinger told Congress that there there, for the same racist reasons, soon passed local were between 50,000 to 100,000* total marijuana marijuana laws to stop "evil" music and keep white smokers then in the U.S. and moat of them were women from fall'nro prey to Blacks through jazz and "Negroes and Mexicans, and entertainers," and their marijuana. music, jazz and awing were an outgrowth of this mar- -67 -