W. E. B. Du Bois: A forgotten hero

Dr Nicholas Evans

Wilberforce Institute and the School of Humanities, University of Hull

N.J.Evans@hull.ac.uk

In recognition of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, commemorated today, Dr Nicholas Evans talks about the life and work of W.E.B Du Bois, who fought tirelessly against racial discrimination for a fairer society.

On 21 March 1960, one of the most painful moments in the decades-long struggle against racial segregation in South Africa took place. At Sharpeville, on the outskirts of Johannesburg in the northern part of South Africa, 69 innocent people were killed at a peaceful demonstration against the imposition of so-called ‘pass laws’ blighting the everyday lives of all non-white South Africans during Apartheid. Such was the universal condemnation of the massacre that the United Nations has since adopted today as The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a day that we at the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute observe as we strive for a fairer world.

Du Bois was born in 1868, three years after the end of the US Civil War and the ending of slavery in the United States. Whilst brought up in the more tolerant state of Massachusetts, much of his life centred upon trying to realise the freedom most assumed had been won with the end of the war. Educated at Harvard University, he was the first African-American to hold a doctorate and later the first to secure an academic appointment at an American university. He quickly rose to become an intellectual titan who spent his career opposing prejudice.

Rather than fighting an armed struggle, Du Bois used writing as a tool to secure black suffrage, proving to his harshest critics the cultural and intellectual abilities of African-Americans and thereby destroying racial stereotypes popularised during the Jim Crow era. An educational polymath, he mastered history, economics and sociology, literature and public policy. His most famous works were The Souls of Black Folk, The Philadelphia Negro and The Negro. All revealed the triumph of African-American people despite entrenched race-based inequalities in the so-called ‘land of the free’. Rather than perpetuating victimhood, he sought to raise awareness of black achievement in the face of overt racism.

Outside of academia, the civil rights pioneer played a key role in many grassroots organisations campaigning for greater equality in America. These included being one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that sought ‘to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination’. Internationally, he attended the second meeting of the Pan-African Congress in Paris where he persuaded delegates that resolutions should ensure Africa is ruled by Africans. Throughout, his campaigning sought to promote black capabilities during the harsh conditions of Jim Crow legislation in America, and European imperialism overseas, and he was widely revered during his lifetime as a truly gifted scholar. Prevented from attending the ceremonies marking Ghanaian independence in 1957, because anti-McCarthyism resulted in his passport being taken from him for eight years, he decided to move to Ghana once he was free to travel again. Upon his death four years later, he was given a Ghanaian state funeral.

When our Institute opened in Hull’s Old Town in 2006 we rightly added Du Bois’ name to our Names On The Wall, which bridges the city’s Mandela Gardens and the world’s oldest slavery museum – the Wilberforce House Museum. His plaque reminds residents and visitors alike of those who have led campaigns for greater freedoms. In 2007, some of our community were able to visit Du Bois’ final home, now a museum, in Accra, to pay homage to his work fighting racism.

And so on this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, we salute all those, past and present, who, like Du Bois and the protestors at Sharpeville, campaign to make the world a fairer place. We ask you to pause for a moment and remember the figures who inspire you in fighting for a fairer society. They may not be intellectuals like Du Bois, or former victims of Apartheid, however racism tragically remains a barrier to a fairer world in most societies. It is dispiriting that 63 years after events at Sharpeville, and now 29 years after multiracial elections signalled the beginning of multiracial democracy in South Africa, racism remains ‘unfinished business’, a scourge on the lives of so many men, women and children.

Image: The memorial to W.E.B. Du Bois on the wall at the Institute.

Taking a Knee: a gesture redefined for protest

Chloe Baker, Research Intern

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull.

chloe.ambaker@gmail.com

Getting down on one knee has been anything but a threatening gesture. For some examples, it’s used to pay one’s respect, to devote oneself to the Lord in prayer, and to love another human being by asking for their hand in marriage. However, Colin Kaepernick’s and Eric Reid’s decision to Take the Knee on September 1st, 2016, during the American national anthem, was seen as an act of defiance and disrespect, at least that’s how it looked to some of the white population of the United States. For Kaepernick and Reid, this was their way of demonstrating that enough was enough. Why should they stand and salute the flag when it represented a country that continually treated black communities and other minorities as unequal? Since then, a growing variety of sports have become the stage for Black Lives Matter protests involving Taking a Knee, as both have a long history with the struggle for equality and the fight against oppression.

Is Taking a Knee a new way to protest?

The short answer to the above question is no. The Wilberforce Institute has been researching the idea behind Taking a Knee, and what it has uncovered is that while Taking a Knee has been firmly established by 2021 as a way to challenge racism and oppression through George Floyd protests, black individuals have been making the gesture for centuries. Its earliest depiction was in 1787 on a Wedgewood medallion for the abolition cause with the famous words ‘Am I Not A Man and A Brother’. However, this popular abolitionist image is controversial because it was created for a white audience. It shows a supplicant slave in chains with minimal clothing and sanitised of the brutality of slavery, asking white society for the right to be human (Marcus Wood, The Horrible Gift of Freedom, 2010). It was the civil rights era that saw a reclamation of the gesture by black communities as black men and women took a knee in prayer protests and civil disobedience for equality. In the twenty-first century, it is through sports that people of all backgrounds associate Taking a Knee with protesting racism.

Sport as a platform

Since 2016 the question ‘why sports?’ has made its appearance now and then regarding protests taking place in sports settings. The answer to that question can be broken down into several factors. The most obvious one is that sports games congregate the population of the surrounding areas into one spot which means the protest will be seen by a substantial amount of people. Bigger arenas such as the 2020 Olympics are filmed too, and will therefore have the bonus of reaching an even greater audience over a larger radius. Secondly, like any other profession, playing sport is a job and its players are people who wish to create a better working environment with equal opportunities. Scholars Adam Love, Alexander Deeb, and Steven Waller use the National Basketball Association for an example, stating that within the profession people of colour make up 80% of players, but only hold 30% of head coaching positions, 10% of general manager positions, and 6.9% of CEO/President roles.

As outsiders, fans only see that high player percentage, and so they tend to think of sport as removed from ‘everyday concerns of inequality, power, and discrimination’, and the success of athletes of colour as proof that racism is not rampant in the sporting world. Taking a Knee disrupts that view. Thirdly, the reaction the protest receives reflects the attitudes of the area and can therefore prove its point. For example, a football match between Millwall and Derby saw fans boo football players who decided to Take a Knee to protest racism. Lastly, and most significantly, black athletes have been using sports to fight for change for the better part of a century.

Jackie Robinson joined the Montreal Royals, a baseball team, in 1946 and successfully broke the ‘colour line’ of Major League Baseball when appearing on the field for the National League Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 until 1956. Eroseanna Robinson stayed seated for the American national anthem at the Pan American Games of 1959. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked out of the Olympics in 1968 for their raised fist gesture at the podium, and Wyomia Tyus wore black shorts at the same event to subtly protest, all in the name of highlighting racial injustice. The list continues. Why sport? Because it’s where people give their undivided attention.

Taking a Knee in sport is the next step in a sequence that goes back to slavery. Black men and women Taking a Knee for a cause is not a twenty-first-century idea but has appeared in history at crucially important moments. The idea of the gesture within sports means that it is kept in the front of people’s minds via popular events, expressing that racism does not cease to exist because one cannot see it.

‘Am I Not A Man And A Brother’ Chair, Wilberforce Institute. Photo taken by Chloé Baker.

Remembering the Australian Freedom Ride

Historic and present-day campaigns for Indigenous Civil Rights

James Baker, ‘Falling Through the Net’ PhD Research Cluster

Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull

j.baker-2019@hull.ac.uk

In December 2020, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the country’s national anthem will be amended in order to better represent the nation’s aboriginal past. The anthem will no longer refer to Australia as being ‘young and free’, a change that was well-received in the country’s parliament. It came as part of a broader campaign to better recognise indigenous Australians, including the induction of Johnny Mullagh to the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame, the first aboriginal player to receive this accolade. When exploring the role of indigenous Australians in the country’s past, a defining event that is often overlooked is the Freedom Ride of 1965. This was inspired partly by the American Civil Rights movement and particularly the Freedom Rides that took place earlier in the decade. While many Australians continued to support the movement in the US, these events also encouraged people to address domestic civil rights abuses.

This is not to say that Australians at the time had previously been oblivious to indigenous issues. Just one month prior to the Freedom Ride, an article in the Canberra Times explored a recent survey conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald that found that tens of thousands of indigenous Australians were suffering from poverty, wage discrimination and limited access to education. Racism, both institutional and societal, was stated to be the cause, with the article citing substandard legislation as well as social indifference towards these problems. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not yet recognised as Australian citizens and they had therefore been consistently ignored by governments at all levels.

Equally, aboriginal groups had been active in Australia for many decades prior to the Freedom Ride and had taken inspiration from campaigns in other parts of the world. For example, aboriginal dockworkers in Sydney campaigned throughout the early-twentieth century against racial discrimination, low wages and dangerous working conditions. Their occupation required them to travel across the Pacific Ocean which meant that many workers also witnessed first-hand several African anti-imperialist and social justice campaigns. As Alyssa L. Trometter has explained, indigenous labourers understood their struggle to be global and ideas pertaining to the attainment of racial equality were frequently exchanged between both continents. The Australian Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s built upon these earlier exchanges while utilising many of the same methods used in American campaigns for racial equality, including the Freedom Rides.

The Australian Freedom Ride commenced in 1965 in New South Wales. The student-led campaign was largely organised by Charles Perkins who would later become the first indigenous graduate of an Australian university. The event sought to highlight ongoing economic and social prejudices against indigenous Australians in addition to explaining how provincial governments continued to exclude aboriginal people from public facilities. The public baths at Moree became a symbol of the region’s ongoing racial segregation. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had long been banned from these and other such venues, and white opponents of the Freedom Ride subjected the participants to racism and violence during attempts to desegregate the pool. Moreover, after their demonstration in Walgett, a driver of a large vehicle attempted to collide with the bus carrying the Freedom Riders, forcing the bus off the road and placing the lives of the demonstrators in danger. Despite this, local newspapers rarely reported the incident and the culprit was not brought to justice. The Freedom Ride continued undeterred. As the year progressed, the campaign gained increasing indigenous and non-indigenous support with pressure on the federal government to introduce civil rights for First Nation Australians intensifying.

The Freedom Ride succeeded in bringing about many positive changes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Locally, the Freedom Ride led to the desegregation of Moree Baths as well as cinemas, hair salons and other amenities across New South Wales. As for Charles Perkins, after becoming the first indigenous graduate of tertiary education, he would later become the first indigenous Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and would have a substantial influence on Australian politics throughout this career. This event is also widely credited with helping to bring about the 1967 Australian Referendum, the result of which meant that indigenous people were given citizenship and stronger civil protections. The attainment of legal recognition for aboriginal Australians demonstrates that the Freedom Ride was not simply a local movement, but instead influenced public opinion and highlighted injustices nationwide.

Sadly, this did not lead to the outright cessation of discrimination against indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australians are still disproportionally affected by unemployment, economic hardship and reduced access to state education. Furthermore, in 2008 the Australian Federal Government apologised to indigenous children who had been forcibly removed from their families to be raised in governmental and religious institutions. Official estimates suggest that as many as one in three indigenous children were separated from their families between 1910 and 1970. In some states including Victoria, this practice continued until 1976, over a decade after the Freedom Ride took place. Moreover, societal prejudice still persists. A 2020 study at Australia National University found that 3 in 4 people held a negative view of indigenous Australians and recent Black Lives Matter protests highlighted the ongoing issue of aboriginal deaths in police custody, with over 400 having occurred in the last thirty years alone.

It is however important to remember that First Nation Australians have played an active role in advocating for civil rights and legal equality. The Freedom Ride began as a local movement but gained national support and succeeded in creating meaningful legal change for the country’s minority groups. It must be remembered not only as a pivotal moment for the country’s treatment of its indigenous peoples but also for the global campaign for human rights. The influence of this event can still be felt today and underlines the significant contribution that indigenous Australians have made to the country’s history, a contribution that for far too long has been all but disregarded.