For MLK Day - Let's Remember States' Rights


Let’s remember Martin Luther King by remembering state’s rights.
For those too young to have seen the brutality of Southern police during the civil rights era, it is important to remember that a key argument used to keep blacks from exercising their rights was that it was that such matters were up to the states and not the federal government. Had these pronouncements been followed by a series of state laws protecting black citizens from the evils of Jim Crow, we could respect states rights as a serious matter, but states rights has always been a lie. Used to suppress blacks - first under slavery and then under Jim Crow laws that created virtual slavery. And when Southerners found that the sovereignty of other states went against them, they asked for fugitive slave laws to help recapture lost slaves. 
After the Civil War, the South re-established virtual slavery via an aggressive system of imprisoning blacks for minor violations of law - and then harnessing them as cheap labor. There was also sharecropping which tied a farmer to his land almost as a serf. 
Even in the 20th century as magazines and later on radio and newsreels made the fact of lynching more well known outside of the South, Congress was still unable to pass anti-lynching laws or serious civil rights bills. Rural folks from the mountain west often allied themselves to Southern Democrats to thwart civil rights bills. For example, it was Senator Borah from Idaho who killed the Dyer Anti Lynching bill in 1918. 
After WW2, President Truman’s push to pass a civil rights bill led to the defection of the Dixiecrats who ran Strom Thurmond for president and Strom won 38 electoral votes - all from the deep south. 
And when Northern states did pass legislation that pushed into new areas such as environmental law or gay rights, a conservative alliance of rural and racist legislators - instead of respecting states rights, argued for federal laws to end state sovereignty. California was able to keep its strong environmental laws (but even now, these are under threat) but the Defense of Marriage Act was an example of a push against states rights, led by states rights advocates. 
So on Martin Luther King Day let’s remember not just the rights he fought for but the states rights which have been used to suppress freedom.
Pictures show:
Martin Luther King with other black leader with President Johnson (above). 
Rosa Parks - Dr King is in the background
A lynching... such events were well attended and pictures were made to be sold as postcards.




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