Tonight I learned: 90 years before Rosa Parks, Blacks in NOLA desegregated Streetcars.

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Money and power was more important than race in NOLA back then.

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today, race issues are being used to get money and power

New Orleans wasn’t the first city to have this happen.

Elizabeth Jennings Graham did it in New York 13 years earlier. Also if you search, many cities in the south were having street car desegregation movements in 1867 during the Reconstruction.

Race relations actually advanced pretty significantly during Reconstruction, but that was mainly because they were forced to due to the Union army's occupation of the South. Nevertheless, there was an unprecedented level of integration going on until the Ku Klux Klan began their reign of terror.

Looks like the streetcar system was segregated in the beginning, but after protests and riots in 1867, the city ordered it integrated, and that lasted until 1902 when it was RE-segregated. Wikipedia: Streetcars in New Orleans

The federal troops during Reconstruction had supported integration on trains and such for a while after the Civil War, but that ended when the local whites got control again after the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops.

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[W]hite and black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for “Negro” or “colored” passengers.

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History.com

Then a New Orleans train segregation case established the separate but equal doctrine that lasted until Brown v Board. In 1892, Homer Plessy, an "octoroon" (seven-eighths white) resident of New Orleans, violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, which required "equal, but separate" train car accommodations for white and non-white passengers.

He was charged with boarding a "whites only" train car. He lost at trial, and his conviction was affirmed on his appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

He next went to the US Supreme Court, which issued a 7–1 decision against him, ruling that the Louisiana law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause.

The only dissent came from Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky who had originally opposed emancipation and civil rights for freed slaves. But he changed his views due to actions of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

With that 1896 ruling about trains in hand, it appears the New Orleans authorities did not wait long to again segregate the street cars in 1902.

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Why the downvotes? Its a fact...

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When facts contradict official dogma, it hurts people's feelings so they downvote.

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Ironically enough, P.T Beauregard is considered the actual father of the civil rights movement in the south

He integrated his business and argued for full integration back in the 1800s. So yes, the guy who’s statue was removed from city park for being racist actually fought for black peoples rights in the south

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John McDonough left his fortune to the black and white children of New Orleans In the form of educational grants. Many of those schools are still around today.

Stonewall Jackson also educated slaves which was against the state laws as well as taught them religion to further help educate him. He himself was a deeply religious man. In his interpretation God had created the institution of slavery so he didn’t speak out against it.

Not to mention Robert e Lee being openly against it. Even freeing his slaves before the Civil War

The institution of slavery is vile and wrong. We know this unequivocally today. These men didn’t have the benefit of an extra 170 years of hind site like we do today. They didn’t have readily or easily available tools to a broad and worldly education. outside of the wealth and educated most never traveled probably 20 miles from home. These were by definition a nation and even a world of ignorant people compared to us today.

Yet people go crazy and don’t want to look at any nuance and just see specific facets of their lives and destroy and dismantle anything related to their memory. And the politicians allow them and enable them to score political points. It’s 1984 shite. The high using the low to manipulate the middle. These flawed men who actually did make significant contributions to their country and who are so vehemently desecrated were clearly starting to see the light. They just happened to be born 100 years or more too early. There are things we all do and fight for today that in 170 years will seem appalling to our ancestors. Things that we take for granted and believe are just and necessary.

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These men didn’t have the benefit of an extra 170 years of hind site like we do today. They didn’t have readily or easily available tools to a broad and worldly education. outside of the wealth and educated most never traveled probably 20 miles from home. These were by definition a nation and even a world of ignorant people compared to us today.

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but the question can and must be asked, do you really need intellect to know that owning another human being, no matter at what part of the timeline of human history, is wrong?

at least we can agree

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The institution of slavery is vile and wrong.

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Its a fact Parks was a trained operative for the CPUSA/Soviet Union.

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Got a link for that? I've never heard it before and am curious what it's based upon.

There’s a lot of backwards things about LA, but, Nola is so far ahead of the curve in the rest of the country when it comes to acceptance of different folks. In all ways.