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The JCRC, in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, hosted Dr. Ernest "Rip" Patton, Jr., a veteran of the 1961 Freedom Rides organized to end segregation in interstate travel – specifically passenger bus service.  In conjunction with Facing History, Dr. Patton spoke to the Minnesota National Guard, St. Cloud State University, Fairview Alternative High School in Roseville and participated in a panel discussion following the October 11 Guthrie production of Appomattox.

Ernest "Rip" Patton, Jr. meeting with Students at Fairview Alternative High School in Roseville

The Battle of Antietam on September 22, 1862, was a significant if incomplete Union victory providing President Lincoln with the confidence and credibility to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation freeing African American slaves in the Confederate states.  At the end of the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were ratified ending slavery, providing citizenship for African Americans and providing male African Americans with the right to vote.  Approximately one hundred years later, particularly in the South, few African Americans were voting and segregation was ubiquitous in hotels, restaurants, barber shops, bathrooms and practically all public accommodations.  (Indeed, the United States Supreme Court as early as 1960 [Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454] had outlawed segregation in bus terminals and busses where the Interstate Commerce Commission had also through administratively rule made segregation illegal.)  Thus, African Americans were fighting for dignity and the right to eat, sleep and live where they please – like all Americans.

Dr. Patton personified the struggle.  As a 21 year old Tennessee State student, Patton was a drum major in the University marching band when, in 1961, he became involved in the Nashville Movement.  Patton arrived in Montgomery, AL, on Tuesday, May 23, to help reinforce the riders meeting at the home of Dr. Harris after the May 21 firebombing and siege of Montgomery's First Baptist Church.

Patton took part in the May 24, 1961, Greyhound Freedom Ride to Jackson, MS, where he was arrested and later transferred to Mississippi's notorious Parchman State Prison Farm.

Patton was one of 14 Tennessee State University students expelled for participating in the Rides.  Following the Freedom Rides, he worked as a jazz musician, and later as a long-distance truck driver and community leader. For the past three years, Patton has served as the Freedom Rider on an annual university sponsored Civil Rights tour of the Deep South.

At St. Cloud State, Dr. Patton met with students.  Prof. Kyle Ward described Dr. Patton's impact as follows:

"It was an incredible opportunity to have Dr. Patton come to the St. Cloud State University campus to talk to our students.  His experiences, insight and comments on the world today were very beneficial for our students as well as enlightening.  I thought it was even more interesting to see how many students not only came to this event but also to see a number stay after and have more personal conversations with Dr. Patton about a variety of topics.  

On a personal note, I was extremely pleased at how many Social Studies majors came to hear Dr. Patton talk.  Knowing that students working towards this major will be able to pass on his stories and message to hundreds of their future students is fantastic.   And that these future teachers will be able to start out their lessons on the Civil Rights era by saying, "when I listened to and met a Freedom Rider..." I think it will add special significance and help explain the importance of having Dr. Patton come to SCSU to talk."

St. Cloud State University's Daniel Wildeson and Kyle Ward with Ernest "Rip" Patton, Jr.

Dr. Patton also spoke to a group of Minnesota National Guard personnel including Major General (Adjutant General) Richard Nash and Chaplain (Col.) John Morris, head chaplain of the Minnesota National Guard.  Col. Morris spoke poignantly about growing up on an air force base in Biloxi, MS, where he father was stationed.  The base was desegregated per President Harry Truman's Executive Order of July 26, 1948, desegregating the military while life outside the base in Biloxi and throughout Mississippi and, indeed, the South, was segregated leading to a duality in life.

Maj. Gen. Richard Nash with Ernest "Rip" Patton, Jr.

Ernest "Rip" Patton, Jr. meeting with Members of the MN National Guard

Another facet of programming with Dr. Patton was a joint effort with the Guthrie Theater and the play Appomattox in which Dr. Patton participated in a post play discussion with a panel and the audience.  Appomattox is a marvelous play addressing so many critical issues at a time when nearly fifty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act the right to vote is again at the center of American politics.  The Guthrie's commitment to Christopher Hampton's recounting of 1865 and 1965 dovetailed exquisitely with the JCRC's focus on the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation in coalition with the Minnesota African American Museum and many other groups.  It is striking that at the centennial (1962) of the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in a large swath of our country were denied their right to vote and access to public accommodations, often through the use of intimidation and violence.

Panel Discussion of "Appomattox" at Guthrie Theater

That arc of history made the post-play discussion with Dr. Patton, Christopher Hampton and Angela Pierce, Shawn Hamilton and Joe Nathan Thomas so compelling.  It was remarkable to see and hear Rip Patton – the Freedom Rider – in conversation with Christopher Hampton – the playwright – and his interpretation of American history and the cast now seeing the interface of, in a sense, history and historian and their reaction to it.   And all for the benefit of the audience who applied their own experiences to this moment.  It was theatre within theatre representing a tremendous time of learning.

One hundred and fifty years ago this week on September 17, 1862, Union and Confederate soldiers fought one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War near Antietam Creek in northwest Maryland.

The battle--Antietam--with its outcome as a Union victory provided President Abraham Lincoln with the necessary confidence to promulgate the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation which ultimately freed blacks enslaved in the Confederacy.

Before this first step of Emancipation, though, was contemplation of the carnage of Antietam. James McPherson points out in “Battle Cry of Freedom” (Oxford University Press, 1988) the 6,000 dead and 17,000 wounded in one day of combat at Antietam was four times the number of casualties suffered by American forces on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944.  Bruce Catton in “The Army of the Potomac: Mr. Lincoln's Army” (Doubleday & Company, 1962) quotes a member of the 9th New York regiment describing the Antietam battlefield: “The mental strain was so great that I saw at that moment the singular effect mentioned, I think, in the life of Goethe on a similar occasion--the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red.” The nation's great divide between Constitution and Confederacy; emancipation and slavery; and north against south had reached a crescendo of combat.

Into this maw near Sharpsburg, Maryland, stepped the First Minnesota Volunteers.  Their story begins with Minnesota's second governor, Alexander Ramsey, who happened to be in Washington, D.C. when news came of the surrender of Fort Sumter after its bombardment by South Carolina militia.  Ramsey tendered an offer of 1,000 Minnesota soldiers to the Secretary of War.  Thus, Minnesota became the first state, as noted by Richard Moe, to offer troops to defend the Union and the First Minnesota was the first Minnesota regiment raised (“The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers,” Minnesota Historical Press. 1993).

Following battles with the South at Bull Run, Edwards' Ferry and the Peninsula, the First Minnesota found itself in the West Woods section of Antietam.  A fierce Confederate attack had routed much of the Union line in the vicinity of positioning of the First Minnesota.  The Minnesota regiment, though, retreated in good order and demonstrated “steadiness and reliability under heavy fire” according to Moe.  The First Minnesota suffered a casualty rate of 28%. (A year later, the First Minnesota would suffer an 82% casualty rate at Gettysburg attacking a Confederate force five times larger in an effort to buy a few minutes of time to stabilize the Union position on Cemetery Ridge.) Stories of bravery abound from the First Minnesota. Governor Al Quie recalls hearing stories about his grandfather from his aunts and uncles of Halvor Quie fighting for the First Minnesota through 13 battles until he was wounded at Antietam. Governor Quie has wondered ever since the reason one risks his life for people he never met as his grandfather, a Norwegian immigrant, did for African American slaves.

For the Minnesotans and the rest of the Union Army under the command of George McClellan, Antietam was considered a “qualified” victory.  The Union had badly mauled Robert E. Lee's army but had missed an opportunity to destroy it. 

As Britain and France weighed recognition of the Confederacy, Lincoln acted upon this battlefield success after a succession of battlefield defeats in the first two years of the Civil War. As related by McPherson, Lincoln convened his cabinet on September 22, 1862,--five days after Antietam.  He told the cabinet he had a made a covenant with God.  If the Union Army drove the Confederate Army from Maryland he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln's attitude towards emancipation of the slaves was an evolutionary process which fluctuated with the conduct of the war within in his overarching goal of preservation of the Union and continued supremacy of the Constitution.  “The Reader's Companion to American History" (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) notes that by the summer of 1862, Lincoln was favoring a proclamation issued as commander in chief freeing slaves in stares waging war against the Union.  Yet, in a letter to journalist Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862, Lincoln wrote: “the paramount objective is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” Earlier in 1862, Lincoln had advised black residents of Washington, D.C. to consider emigration to save themselves from discrimination and/or mitigate the circumstances of emancipation if there were fewer blacks in the United States receiving their freedom.

Nonetheless, Antietam--as he told his cabinet--had cinched the issue of emancipation in Lincoln's mind.  On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation warning the Confederacy that on January 1, 1863, a final proclamation would be promulgated “committing the government and armed forces of the United States to liberate the slaves in rebel states as an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.”

Some blacks treated the Emancipation Proclamation as their “Independence Day” as Merrill Peterson wrote, although this “thinn[ed] with passage of time” yet many Americans saw Lincoln as a "Moses...deliverer...savior...” (“Lincoln in American Memory,” Oxford University Press, 1994).

The reality and the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation are more complicated than any monochromatic rendering of Lincoln and the consequences of his executive order.  This is one reasons the JCRC and Tolerance Minnesota have joined with the Minnesota African American Museum, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie representing the Civil War Commemoration task force; Minnesota Historical Society; Honorary Consul for South Africa, Judge LaJune Lange; Penumbra Theatre; University of St. Thomas Law School; Macalester College; Augsburg College; Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs; and the Givens Collection to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation starting this September 22, 2012, in the Twin Cities.

All are welcome to participate in the following events: In Commemoration of the promulgation of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, St. James AME Church will celebrate with gospel music and the screening of Don McGlynn’s 2011 documentary, Rejoice and Shout. This event will be held at the Riverview Theater, 3800 42^nd Ave. South, Minneapolis at 9:30 a.m. on September 22.

The Calvary Cemetery, 753 Front Ave., St. Paul, will be the site of a grave marking ceremony at 11:00 a.m. on September 22.

“Preliminary Issuing” Salon Discussion with Panelist Dr. Bill Green, Dr. John S. Wright, and Professor Peter Rachleff on September 22, 2012, (2-4PM) at the Sabathani Community Center.

Benjamin T. Jealous, the President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), will be featured at the Anniversary Celebration Reception Dinner at the University of Minnesota on October 12. He will be addressing remedies to Racial and Ethnic Economic Inequality.

As a point of departure for learning about the Emancipation Proclamation and its aftermath, Peter Rachleff--Professor of History, Hamline University--has distilled these themes:

“If we could imagine the Emancipation Proclamation to be a pebble and U.S. history to be a pool of water, tossing that pebble into the water would generate expanding waves and circles which would include:

1.  The centrality of slavery to the conflicts which led to the Civil War.

2.  The important role(s) played by African American soldiers in the critical battles of the War.

3.  The important role(s) played by the slaves themselves in the struggle for their own emancipation -- by striking on the plantations, by running away, by aiding and abetting Union forces, by demanding the right to take up arms in their own behalf, by demanding to be paid wages for labor performed for the Union Army.

4.  The efforts by former slaves and former free blacks to shape and improve their lives during Reconstruction -- by resisting Black Codes; by seeking land; by participating in the writing of new constitutions for the Southern states; by demanding full citizenship rights, including the right to vote and serve on juries; by running for public office; by building community institutions, such as churches and mutual benefit societies; by organizing unions and demanding access to skilled jobs, higher wages, and a voice in negotiating work rules.

5.  The efforts by the descendants of slaves and former free blacks to create, maintain, and protect a quality life for themselves and their families during the disturbing decades of Ku Klux Klan terror, lynching, de factor and de jure segregation, disfranchisement, restricted access to public education, sharecropping, debt peonage, and convict labor.

6.  The migration north, between 1915 and 1970, of more than a million African Americans, seeking access to jobs for themselves, education for their children, and inclusion in citizenship.

7.  The participation of African Americans, North and South, in efforts to unionize and to expand workers' political voice, during the Great Depression.

8.  The participation of African Americans in the U.S. military in World Wars I and II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

9.  The efforts or African Americans, North as well as South, to build a civil rights movement in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, which radically transformed American society, not only expanding political and economic rights for African Americans, but also inspiring Chicanos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans to organize on their own behalf, and creating a rights discourse which has been employed effectively by women, gays and lesbians, disabled people, and more.  The Civil Rights Movement changed how we all think about American society and our roles and responsibilities within it.

10.  The creation of a rich and complex culture which has long challenged the negative representations, images, and stereotypes of black people, and has offered rich ways to understand, engage, and transform the world.  From the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement of the 1920s to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, to hip hop and black science fiction today, African Americans from their vantage point and experience have offered cultural expressions to our entire society, indeed, to the entire world

All of this because the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation has yet to be fulfilled.”

The increasing internalization of Minnesota is reflected by the presence of foreign consulates (and honorary consulates) in Minnesota.  Canada has such a diplomatic presence in Minnesota.  It is a position of great importance within the Canadian diplomatic corps.  The Canadian Prime Minister ultimately selects the Consul General for the Minneapolis office which serves Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

For well over 100 years, the United States and Canada have been strongly allied.  In 1970, Canada expanded its diplomatic network in the United States and opened the Minneapolis Consulate.  Four decades later, the Consulate General of Canada in the Twin Cities continues to strengthen the bonds between Minnesota and Canada.

I have had the pleasure of working with Consul General Martin Loken over the past few years and he is truly a wonderful steward for Canadian-Minnesota relations.  He shared with me a few highlights of Canadian-Minnesota ties over the last 40 years as he completed his posting as Consul General in Minneapolis:

·         In 1972, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was signed committing Canada and the U.S. to control pollution in the Great Lakes.  In 2009, the two countries agreed to further update the successful agreement;

·         In 1979, Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S., Peter Towe, became the first foreign diplomat to address a joint session of the Minnesota Legislature;

·         In 1984, the Minnesota National Guard and the Canadian Armed Forces conducted joint training drills, one of many examples of close Canada-U.S. cooperation in the defense of North America;

·         In 1986, the 50^th anniversary of the first supply of electrical power from Manitoba to Minnesota. To this day, Manitoba Hydro continues to be a reliable partner for Minnesota’s energy needs, supplying the state with clean and renewable energy;

·         In 1993, two-way merchandise trade between Canada and Minnesota topped $5 billion for the first time.  Ten years later, trade surpassed $10 billion, and in 2008 it topped $20 billion;

·         In 1999, the Minnesota Twins picked British Columbia native Justin Morneau in the amateur draft.  Morneau was named MVP of the American League in 2006; and

·         2009 marked the 100^th anniversary of the Canada-U.S. Boundary Waters Treaty, which was the world’s first international environmental agreement.  Through the treaty, the U.S. and Canada protect 134 rivers and lakes that run along or across the border.

Beyond economic ties – the U.S. and Canada share the world’s longest undefended border – the U.S. and Canada have closely aligned foreign policies.  Like the United States, Canada is a great friend of Israel.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said, “Under our government, Canada will remain an unyielding defender of Jewish religious freedom, a forceful opponent of anti-Semitism in all of its forms and a staunch supporter of a secure and democratic state of Israel.”  Just last week, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird announced the closing of Canada’s embassy in Tehran calling Iran “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.”

Please view my interview (video 1 and video 2) with Consul General Loken that I conducted with him this past July.

A few days after the Kristallnacht on November 15, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the pogrom and property destruction that he “could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization.”

You could apply a similar sense of incredulity and outrage of the decision of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to attend the summit of the Nonaligned Movement in Tehran next week.  Most observers are commenting that the Secretary General's demarche is providing a strong measure of international validation to Iran's defiance of international norms as the world's “leading” sponsor of international terrorism (a State Department designation) while pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.  This blundering is “scarcely believable.”

Some would say this course of action is perfectly consistent with an entity seemingly obsessed with heaping hatred upon Israel judging by the numbers of resolutions condemning it in relation to the full body of work of the General Assembly.  Nevertheless, the Secretary General strikes many as a competent administrator for a United Nations which is part of the “Quartet” responsible for monitoring Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.  Yet, precisely at the moment when an international regime of sanctions may be pressuring Iran, the Secretary General goes to Tehran and provides solace to the regime.

The Secretary General’s travels, temporally, comes after another eruption of genocidal incitement against Israel by Iranian leadership in August and in the past few months.

On August 17, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “You want a new Middle East? We do too, but in the new Middle East ... there will be no trace of the American presence and the Zionists.”

On August 2, President Ahmadinejad said, “Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the way for world justice and freedom.”

Such insinuations, if not explicit threats of the destruction of Israel, make the course of action of the Secretary General, “scarcely believable.”

Fortunately, from a sanctions perspective, the Obama Administration and Congress on a bi-partisan basis recognize the threat presented by Iran.  Congress recently overwhelmingly passed the Iran Threat Reduction Act.  The legislation will strengthen Iran sanctions laws to peacefully compel Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons and other threatening activities.

According to the text of the legislation, some of the provisions included in this Act are:

·         Expansion of sanctions with respect to the energy sector of Iran;

·         Expansion of sanctions with respect to development by Iran of weapons of mass destruction;

·         Imposition of sanctions with respect to transactions with persons sanctioned for certain activities relating to terrorism or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;

·         Expansion of, and reports on, mandatory sanctions with respect to financial institutions that engage in certain activities relating to Iran; and

·         Expansion of Sanctions Relating to Human Rights Abuses in Iran.

The aim of such legislation, in concert with international sanctions, is to peacefully thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons ambition for a nation which threatens to destroy another nation and poses a serious threat to the entire Middle East, if not the world.

The Congressional delegations of Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota voted unanimously in favor of the Act--supporting the legislation were Tim Walz, John Kline, Erik Paulsen, Betty McCollum, Keith Ellison, Michele Bachmann, Collin Peterson, Chip Cravaack, Rick Berg, and Kristi Noem.  The corresponding bill in the Senate was passed without objection by a voice vote with Senators Klobuchar and Franken supporting it.

The actions of the Obama Administration and Congress dovetails, also, with the will of the people of the upper Midwest, whose legislatures in Minnesota and South Dakota have divested their respective state pension fund holdings from international companies doing business with Iran's energy sector--the segment of the Iranian economy responsible for financing the regime's development of weapons of mass destruction.

At this juncture, in light of the blundering and “scarce believability” of the Secretary General’s actions, we can only hope that he will use his international platform in Tehran to warn the regime of the extreme danger which its rhetoric and actions present to the world.

Historian David Pietruska reminds us in his book "1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America" of the muddle that was that remarkable election – the year in which Hubert Humphrey was elected for the first time to the United States Senate.

Only 51.3% of Americans bothered to sort out the four major candidates and vote.

Many prominent Democrats openly supported drafting Dwight Eisenhower right up to the Democratic National Convention.

Thomas Dewey's running mate, Gov. Earl Warren of California, detested his presidential candidate's leadership circle.  Ironically, Warren’s wife voted for Harry Truman.

The arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond nearly threw the election into the United States House of Representatives.

Henry Wallace, the second Vice President for Franklin Roosevelt, turned a blind eye to the Communists who were running his campaign for their own purposes.

Thomas Dewey, who had come to prominence as a bold prosecutor of mobsters, campaigned in a style resembling the "prevent defense" in football – take no chances and let the election day clock run out, as though he was the incumbent.

The incumbent, Harry Truman, written off as a certain loser by the pundits pounded the Republicans ("the 80th Congress stuck a pitch fork in the farmers' back") in a manner unprecedented – many said demeaning – for a President.

The consensus expectation from Roper to Gallup was a Democratic Party fractured along its antebellum and Progressive Party axes could not win a national election after 16 years in power with a standard bearer missing the magnetism of FDR to hold together the New Deal coalition.

Truman and his advisors saw things differently.  Workers, despite the post war recession and inflation, saw low unemployment rates unimaginable during the Depression with which the Republicans were inextricably connected.  African Americans saw the desegregation of the armed forces in 1947.  From Appalachia to the West Coast, the power of the federal government brought everything from the TVA to the Grand Coulee Dam meaning electricity and a higher standard of living for tens of millions Americans.

These successes aside, for the Democrats, the muddle within the muddle was civil rights.  The person in the middle of the muddle was Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey.

On one hand, Humphrey had led the civic fight against the pernicious anti-Semitism and racism of the City of Lakes.  Minneapolis passed among the first open housing and anti-job discrimination ordinances in the country – models for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

On the other hand, Humphrey was face to face with his own electoral destiny as the DFL candidate for United States Senate in 1948, a mere four years after he helped create the party.  He even harbored, according to Pietruska, a hope he could be the Vice Presidential candidate. 

Humphrey faced pressure from all sides.  The diluted majority report for civil rights for the Democratic platform was a terrible insult to returning African American Second World War veterans who returned to Jim Crow after fighting and dying for their country, among other things.  Other party mandarins told him leading the fight for a vigorous civil rights platform would splinter the Democratic Party and finish off any slight chance of a Truman victory as well as Humphrey’s political career.

Aided by the big city bosses of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia – people later excoriated by the Democratic party – who acknowledged the time had come for civil rights,  Humphrey marched up to the podium of the Philadelphia convention and the Democratic Party  marched forthrightly into the “bright sunshine of human rights” with the adoption of the minority report.

Humphrey, by doing the right thing, took a major step towards immortality. As Ira Shapiro noted in the "Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crises": "the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was probably the most important legislative accomplishment in American history."

On August 4, the State of Minnesota will honor the immortality of Hubert H. Humphrey with the unveiling of a statue on the Capitol grounds.  If you take a look you can imagine the bi-partisan promise of American governance with Thomas Dewey and Everett Dirksen to name a couple – from a time when a more magnanimous impulse radiated through American politics.