Solomon Ortiz Quotes
When no other schools in the Southeastern Conference or the former Southwestern Conference would award them athletic scholarships, African Americans had been recruited by and playing for Texas Western since the 1950s.
Ortiz, Solomon P. "Recognizing the 40th Anniversary of Texas Western's 1966 NCAA Basketball Championship." Congressional Record, vol. 152, no. 24, 28 Feb. 2006, p. H426.
Following the lead of Arkansas, many southern schools were closed by order of the Governor when they received a court order to desegregate. Southern education was the poorest in the nation and the Southern students not able to go to school made the situation worse. Governor Almond changing his position realized that the cost of defying the Constitution and the courts was the ignorance of the students of the state, and became a major force persuading the state to integrate their schools. He is remembered for his leadership of desegregation and most people have forgotten that at the beginning of his term as governor he was as bad as most of the other Southern segregationist politicians.
Perhaps there is no more dramatic quotation illustrating MacArthur’s arrogance where his own views and decisions should obviously prevail regardless of the policies of his superiors and his commander-in-chief. The army had been officially integrated by President Truman, The reality was that the general honestly believed that he had no superiors among the military, that civilians should not control the military, and in any event that the President—Truman—was not fit to be Commander-in-Chief.
Sumner would later become a Senator. However over a century before Brown v. Board of Education finally outlawed segregated schools, Sumner made one of the basic legal arguments that was involved in the case.
There are few people today who could believe that a United States senator would castigate the head of a Federal Agency for spreading “racial equality propaganda.” But at the time—1943—the actions of Education Commissioner John W. Studebaker and his Assistant took remarkable courage.
When passed, the Social Security Act did not cover domestic or agricultural workers. But these were the two occupations that between employed over half of all African Americans. The Black labor leaders like A. Phillip Randolph, supported the Act as their union membership was covered. The Congress, although controlled by the Democrats had the albatross of the "Solid South" which would obstruct anything that would strengthen the Negro. The strategy the President Roosevelt and his new dealers adopted was to institutionalize Social Security for the majority of American workers and then bring in the occupations and groups that had originally been excluded. And this is what they did however, enforcement of Social Security coverage with individual domestic workers was still a problem in the 21st century.
Billy Sunday was the most famous preacher of the day. Unlike the vast majority of white preachers, he not only preached to black audiences but exuded an atmosphere of friendliness and comfort around Blacks that amazed most. Most Black leaders thought Sunday was very good for race relations, but there were some critics like Grimke. Sunday was castigated by many racist whites for preaching to Blacks, but he did not go as far as to condemn or preach against racism and the discrimination of the day and he would not preach to an integrated audience. See {585416} for another critique.
This quotation is one of the most enlightening about Reconstruction. The Congress was debating the first Civil Rights Act and Harris was one of the few Southern Whites left in the Congress as Maryland had not seceded. He told the other members of Congress that no matter what they did including passing the Civil Right Act of 1866, the states will ultimately control what happens in the states without worring about the Federal government. All the efforts at equality and civil rights would fail, and the Negro must be kept inferior. Harris lost the debate and the Civil Right Act of 1866 was passed. It was vetoed by the Southern President Andrew Johnson but both Houses of Congress overrode the veto easily. But Harris was right historically as to what would happen, and it would be 100 years before civil rights legislation would be meaningful.
In 1848 a free Black applied for admission to Harvard College, amidst protests from the white students:
This gun control was not even the first in the nation. See {613055}. However it even applied to free Negroes, halfbreeds, as well as slaves. Five years later even though Virginia needed militia for the French and Indian Wars they passed a law barring even Free Blacks from serving in the Militia except “as drummers or trumpeters.” This the whites felt was critical in that most whites did not own firearms. See {613056}.
Jessie Helms was his young assistant who drafted this race baiting ad. There are two vicious but subtle aspects to this kind of attach ads. First, not that the ad does not address the problem of white men working along side of blacks. It only refers to wives and daughter. This interracial sex innuendo played on and increased the fear of whites that Blacks would commonly rape white women. The second nasty aspect of the ad is the specific attack on the opponent. Instead of saying that he favored desegregation, the phrase “mingling of the races” was used which implied that Graham was in favor of biracial intermarriage and children—again another sex innuendo. When integration of the workforce finally occurred in the South, there was no increase in Black men sexually assaulting white women. There has been a substantial increase in racial intermarriage however as racial bigotry has diminished in America.
Booth was the younger son of a very prominent Northern family of actors. His older brother was considered the greatest American actor, and the rest of the family were abolitionists and vehement Union supporters. They found young John’s views reprehensible.
Solomon Porfirio Ortiz is the former U.S. representative for Texas's 27th congressional district, based in Corpus Christi, serving from 1983 until 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party. In 2010, Ortiz was defeated by Republican challenger Blake Farenthold. Ortiz's son, Solomon Ortiz, Jr., is a former state representative.
