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Carolina Times: Racism And Discrimination In The US

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The Carolina Times is a newspaper founded by Charles Arrant in 1921. After his death in 1922, the paper would be taken over by Louis Austin and renamed The Carolina Times. The paper became very important in giving a voice to African-Americans and the issues that they faced. It not only highlighted issues of racism and discrimination in North Carolina, but also throughout the United States. The paper is still in business today, as the grandson of Austin, Kenneth Edmonds, is now continuing it. The newspaper’s archival database has many newspapers available from the 1950s and 1980s; however, there are only a few newspaper issues from the 1930s and 1940s. There were many newspapers highlighting the brutality of whites towards African-Americans …show more content…

The article titled, “Govt. Powerless To Interfere Says Attorney General”, showed the unwillingness of the federal government to outlaw lynchings. Senator Robert F. Wagner had sent Attorney General Homer Cummings, a telegram, to look into the events of two lynchings in Mississippi and Georgia. According to one report, a mob shot and killed an African-American blacksmith named Tom Green for killing his white boss due to a wage dispute. Another was the death of a 60-year-old black man named John Dukes, who was killed by whites in revenge for Dukes shooting a white constable. Dukes was hanged and even set on fire by the mob. Because of these events, and many other previous ones, Senator Wagner requested that the federal government do something. However, the Attorney General said that they could not become involved in state government issues, unless the federal government allowed it. What was even more disappointing was the fact that no anti-lynching bill had been passed on the federal level. This was because of politicians filibustering against the bill. Wagner pledged to reintroduce the bill, and the NAACP wrote to both governors of Georgia and Mississippi, and to a senator from Tennessee to take more action against lynching. This article would be a good resource for showing the different kinds of mob violence and forms of killings that occurred in the south. It would also be good to show how local governments did not take much action, and how many representatives in the federal government failed to act or refused to do

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