Misplaced Pages

#847152

34-637: Nine-tenths of all lynchings during the 1890s to the 1940s in the United States occurred in the South. Lynching had been declining, but in 1930, there was a sudden rise in lynchings. In 1930, there were 21 reported lynchings, and 20 of the victims were African Americans. On November 1, 1930, twenty-six "prominent Southern women" assembled in Atlanta in order to discuss the problems of the increase in lynchings, causes, and possible ways women could help eradicate

68-883: A change because before the ASWPL was watching, "lynchings were 'hushed up' and therefore soon forgotten." Jessie Daniel Ames Jessie Daniel Ames (November 2, 1883 – February 21, 1972) was a suffragist and civil rights leader from Texas who helped create the anti-lynching movement in the American South. She was one of the first Southern white women to speak out and work publicly against lynching of African Americans, murders which white men claimed to commit in an effort to protect women's "virtue." Despite risks to her personal safety, Ames stood up to these men and led organized efforts by white women to protest lynchings. She gained 40,000 signatures of Southern white women to oppose lynching, helping change attitudes and bring about

102-679: A decline in these murders in the 1930s and 1940s. Ames was born Jessie Harriet Daniel in Palestine, Texas , on November 2, 1883. Her mother was Laura Maria Leonard and her father was James Malcolm Daniel. In 1893, the family moved to Georgetown, Texas . Ames was admitted to the Ladies Annex of Southwestern University at the age of 13 and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1902. After graduation, she moved with her family to Laredo, Texas . Ames followed her mother and sister and converted to Methodism despite her father's objection as

136-401: A new interpretation of law and religion; we will assist all officials to uphold their oath of office; and finally, we will join with every minister, editor, school teacher and patriotic citizen in a program of education to eradicate lynchings and mobs forever from our land. Ames opposed a federal anti-lynching law and advocated instead for individual state laws outlawing lynching. Senators from

170-860: A nonbeliever. She had joined them in church activities from an early age. In 1905, Ames married Roger Post Ames, a surgeon in the United States Army , who had worked with Walter Reed in Cuba to prove that mosquitoes caused malaria . During much of their unhappy marriage, Roger Ames lived in Central America where he worked as a physician to the American Consul and the United Fruit Company . Roger Ames died in 1914 in Guatemala from blackwater fever . Ames had

204-595: A son and two daughters, the last of whom was born in 1914 after her husband's death. After the death of her father in 1911, Ames helped her mother run the family's telephone company in Georgetown. She also became involved with several Methodist women's groups. This led to her initial participation in the women's suffrage movement. In 1916, Ames organized the Georgetown Equal Suffrage League and became its first president. She also wrote

238-886: A weekly suffrage article in the Williamson County Sun newspaper called "Woman Suffrage Notes." Ames became a protégé of Minnie Fisher Cunningham , the president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA). In 1918, Ames was elected treasurer of the TESA. Texas became the first Southern state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment in June 1919. In October 1919, Ames founded the Texas League of Women Voters and served as its first president until 1923. In 1923, she represented

272-664: Is buried in the family plot in the I.O.O.F. Cemetery in Georgetown, Texas. In 1985, the Jessie Daniel Ames Lecture Series began at Southwestern University. Her career as an activist for suffrage and against lynching was the subject of the Freshman Symposium at Southwestern University in 1985 and the Brown Symposium at the university in 1986. James V. Allred James Burr V. Allred (March 29, 1899 – September 24, 1959)

306-745: The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas , to a new seat authorized by 52 Stat. 584. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 16, 1939, and received his commission on February 23, 1939. His service ended on May 15, 1942, due to his resignation. Allred was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate from Texas in 1942 . He then returned to private practice in Houston , Texas, from 1943 to 1949. Allred

340-449: The disenfranchisement of African Americans across the South. Senator Tom Connally of Texas used a letter written to him from Ames to show widespread Southern opposition to the federal bill. Ames intended the letter to be private in order to allow her to speak out in opposition to lynching when the bill failed. Ames served as the director of the ASWPL until 1942. By February 1937, 81 state, regional and national organizations had endorsed

374-608: The ASWPL recalled that, "We were determined not be just another body of resolution-passer. So we went to work where it meant the most: on the county sheriffs." In 1934, Sallie L. Hanna, who led the ASWPL in Texas, "secured the pledges of seven gubernatorial candidates to use the power of the governor's office to end lynching." The winner, James V. Allred , was one of the men who had pledged to end lynching in Texas. In 1938, forty known attempts at lynching were prevented by police officers and sheriffs, "many of them pledged in writing to support"

SECTION 10

#1732772297848

408-636: The ASWPL's program. In addition to speaking with law enforcement, the women of ASWPL talked to church groups all over the South about lynchings. They also created a network of women who were able to find out about lynchings before they happened and report the possible attacks to law enforcement, or even, in some cases, "go themselves to stop the lynchings." Later, the ASWPL sought ways to work with local newspapers to publicize potential lynchings so that those involved could not keep their activities secret. The ASWPL also demanded "thorough investigation" of any mob killings of African Americans. The investigations marked

442-813: The Petticoat Lobby, and was on the Board of Education of the Women's Division of the Methodist Church. In 1924, Ames became the director of the Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC) based in Atlanta . In 1929, she moved to Atlanta to become the national director of the CIC Woman's Committee. The project to create a home and training school for delinquent African American girls

476-665: The South filibustered the proposed federal Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill , which was advocated by an African American women's group called the Anti-Lynching Crusaders. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had created the Anti-Lynching Crusaders in 1922 to mobilize support for the Dyer Bill. White Democrats from the Solid South commanded powerful congressional positions due to

510-683: The United States Immigration Service. He served in the United States Navy from 1918 to 1919. He received a Bachelor of Laws in 1921 from Cumberland School of Law (then part of Cumberland University , now part of Samford University ). He was in private practice in Wichita Falls , Texas from 1921 to 1923 and from 1926 to 1931. He was district attorney in Wichita Falls from 1923 to 1926. He

544-720: The anti-lynching platform of the ASWPL. That year, the CIC was replaced by the Southern Regional Council . The number of lynchings decreased as the Great Depression came to an end, although notable lynchings took place in the postwar era, including of black men in uniform. Ames retired to Tryon, North Carolina , before returning to Texas in 1968 to live with her younger daughter. Jessie Daniel Ames died of pneumonia on February 21, 1972, in Austin, Texas . She

578-500: The claim of lynchers and mobsters that they are acting solely in defense of womanhood. In light of the facts we dare no longer to permit this claim to pass unchallenged, nor allow those bent upon personal revenge and savagery to commit acts of violence and lawlessness in the name of women. We solemnly pledge ourselves to create a new public opinion in the South, which will not condone, for any reason whatever, acts of mobs or lynchers. We will teach our children at home, at school and at church

612-429: The control of government to any fit and proper citizen because of race." By the early 1940s, there were 109 affiliated associations, with a combined membership of 4 million. Funding for the ASWPL came from the CIC. In May 1940, the ASWPL celebrated 12 months without a lynching. The year before, there had been only three. In 1940 members of the ASWPL opposed an anti-lynching bill that was up for review at Congress . Ames

646-401: The crime of lynching is a logical result in every community that pursues the policy of humiliation and degradation of a part of its citizenship because of accident of birth; that exploits and intimidates the weaker element ... for economic gain; that refuses equal educational opportunity to one portion of its children; that segregates arbitrarily a whole race ... and finally that denies a voice in

680-588: The director of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , wrote a book, Revolt Against Chivalry , about the activism of Ames and the work of the ASWPL. The ASWPL used the "moral and social leverage of women in their local communities to create a 'new climate of opinion,'" and accomplished this by networking with these women in order to grow the movement. They also educated Southern women about

714-485: The down payment on a home. The organization bought land in San Antonio and was able to offer $ 5,500 as a downpayment. In 1926, Ames toured the state speaking on behalf of the project to white women's organizations. The Texas legislature passed a bill in 1927 creating the home and school for delinquent black girls but made no appropriations. It took 18 years before the Texas legislature approved funding. In 1945,

SECTION 20

#1732772297848

748-584: The economic greed and sexual transgressions of white men." In her writing and speaking for the group, Ames used language taken from evangelical missionary societies and based the issue-oriented focus of the group on secular organizations such as the League of Women Voters . On that day in November, about twelve women signed a public statement against lynching. Over time, the same statement would have more than 40,000 signatures from Southern women. A core group

782-811: The legislature appropriated $ 60,000 to establish the Brady State School for Negro Girls located in a former prisoner of war camp near Brady, Texas . In 1950, the school relocated to Crockett, Texas , and was renamed the Crockett State School for Girls . In 1930, Ames, with the CIC's financial help, founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) with headquarters in Atlanta. The organization excluded African American women and appealed directly to white Southern women to stop lynching. The ASWPL secured

816-466: The myth of lynching, which held that lynchings only occurred as "retribution for an attack on a white woman, especially rape." The ASWPL provided facts and figures to back up their claims. Their own position as a "cultural symbol of the southern lady" gave them added "authority" to destroy the myths. The ASWPL members spoke to men involved in law enforcement in their own communities and asked them to protect African Americans from being lynched. One leader in

850-517: The name of women. We repudiate this disgraceful claim for all time." Ames established her own state-level ASWPL chapter in Georgia in January 1931. By April, there were groups formed in all the southern states, except Florida, who created an organization later. In 1934, there was an annual meeting where the ASWPL adopted a formal resolution which stated: "We declare as our deliberate conclusion that

884-825: The national League of Women Voters at the Pan American Congress. She also served as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1920, 1924, and 1928. Ames served in several other organizations including the Texas branch of the American Association of University Women , Texas Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor, and the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs . She was an officer of the Joint Legislative Council in Texas, also known as

918-436: The problem. One of the many excuses used to conduct lynchings was that it was done in the name of "protecting" white women. ASWPL founder Jessie Daniel Ames pointed out that the alleged rapes of white women by black men, "the supposed rationale for a lynching, seldom occurred and that the true motive for lynching was in racial hatred." In addition, Ames felt that white women were exploited in this narrative "in order to obscure

952-599: The signatures of 40,000 Southern women on its 'Pledge Against Lynching' (see below). Despite encountering hostile opposition and threats of violence, the women conducted petition drives, lobbying and fundraising across the South to work against lynching. By 1940, more than 100 women's organizations had joined the movement against lynching. Pledge: We declare lynching is an indefensible crime, destructive of all principles of government, hateful and hostile to every ideal of religion and humanity, debasing and degrading to every person involved...[P]ublic opinion has accepted too easily

986-503: Was Attorney General of Texas from 1931 to 1935. He was Governor of Texas from 1935 to 1939. He was an ardent Democrat and supporter of the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt . Allred received a recess appointment to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas on July 11, 1938, but he declined the appointment. He was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 5, 1939, to

1020-405: Was a strong state's rights advocate and felt that anti-lynching efforts were better handled at the state level. Instead of the bill, they urged support of continued education, cooperation of both law enforcement and media to prevent lynchings and increased membership. In 1942, judging that the purposes of the ASWPL had been achieved, Ames wound the association up. In 1979, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall ,

1054-527: Was formed with twelve women agreeing to hold local meetings against lynching in their home states. Women from Texas , Louisiana , Oklahoma and Arkansas met with Ames in Dallas a few days later in a "conference similar to that held in Atlanta." The group's declaration was: "Lynching is an indefensible crime. Women dare no longer allow themselves to be the cloak behind which those bent upon personal revenge and savagery commit acts of violence and lawlessness in

Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching - Misplaced Pages Continue

1088-478: Was nominated by President Harry S. Truman on September 23, 1949, to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas , to a new seat authorized by 63 Stat. 493. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 12, 1949, and received his commission on October 13, 1949. His service ended with his death on September 24, 1959, in Corpus Christi , Texas. The James V. Allred Unit ,

1122-531: Was one of the few instances of interracial cooperation among Texas women. Between 1916 and 1945, the Texas Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (TACWC) campaigned for the creation of the institution and offered to donate the land. In 1923, the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs and the Joint Legislative Council, both white women's organizations, endorsed the concept. That year, the TACWC raised $ 2,000 for

1156-485: Was the 33rd governor of Texas . He later served, twice, as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas . Born on March 29, 1899, in Bowie , Texas , the son of Renne Allred Sr. and Mary Magdalene (Henson), Allred graduated from Bowie High School in 1917. He enrolled at Rice Institute (now Rice University ) but withdrew for financial reasons. He then served with

#847152