HISTORY 221 Final Review -- Cases and Readings

Covers lectures 1-8 leading up to an April 30 midterm.

Mississippi Burning

Contextualized by the SNCC’s, CORE’s, and NAACP’S 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, three civil rights activists are arrested, the Klan is alerted, and upon the activists’ release they are pulled over by a mob and killed. Their bodies are only found after a weeks-long FBI manhunt that necessitated local informants/torture (depending on who you believe). Trial in 1967 due to SCOTUS involvement.

• PROSECUTION’S ARGUMENT (John Doar)

  • They did it, we have eyewitnesses

  • We ARE NOT OVERSTEPPING! You still have the power, we just want to punish a murder

• DEFENSE’S ARGUMENT (Many)

  • They would never do this, we have alibis and character witnesses

  • This is a political stunt

  • You can’t trust paid informants as witnesses

  • Hoped judge would favor them

• Judge William Cox

• Verdict: 7 guilty, 8 acquitted, 3 hung jury

  • Between 4-10yrs for all convicted

NOTES

• Defense argues that only the sheriff and deputy can be charged (super narrow interpretation of “under color” of state law), Judge Cox agrees and throws out the other 17 charges. Appealed, SCOTUS strikes down in 1966 and kicks off a 1967 trial with all 19

• Played a role in motivating COINTELPRO programs, both White Hate and Black Nationalist

• Case reopened in 2005, Edgar Ray Killen convicted of manslaughter

  • Prosecution: Neshoba has changed and this will serve as proof

  • Defense: This is a political show trial, MS just needs to convict someone

  • Judge Marcus Gordon

Chicago 8

A bunch of protestors from different organizations charged with the Anti-Riot Act following violent protests over the Chicago DNC. Trial kicks off 1969

• PROSECUTION’S ARGUMENT (Dick Schultz and Thomas Foran)

  • Defendants crossed state lines to disrupt and incite violence, small groups created overall plan

• DEFENSE’S ARGUMENT (William Kuntsler and Leonard Weinglass)

  • Doesn’t believe they proved their case, simple as that

  • Used the trial as a public forum to air their beliefs

• Judge Julius Hoffman

• Verdict: All 7 acquitted of conspiracy, 5 convicted via ARA and given Max sentence. Later overturned in a 1972 appellate court decision

NOTES

• Hoffman was a despotic wackjob who wanted to shoot each and every defendant

OJ Simpson

Beloved celebrity OJ Simpson is accused of killing his ex-wife and Ron Goldman, out of jealousy/rage/a desire for control in 1994. Becomes hugely popular, CNN had 70 correspondents and 90% of TV sets nationally tuned into the sentencing. Enormous media pressure, cast as a racist white police force against a successful Black man. Trial begins 1995.

• PROSECUTION’S ARGUMENT (Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden)

  • OJ murdered out of jealousy and rage, using eyewitnesses and forensic evidence

• DEFENSE’S ARGUMENT (Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran)

  • OJ wouldn’t (temperament), couldn’t (physically injured) have done this

  • Evidence against OJ contaminated by poor policing practices

  • Cops are racist (especially Fuhrman) and trying to take down a successful Black man

• Judge Lance Ito

• Acquitted!

NOTES

Oklahoma City Bombing

Timothy McVeigh bombs the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. While the FBI wants to attack the entire movement, MV sticks to his guns and says he acted independently. Trial begins 1997.

• PROSECUTION’S ARGUMENT (Joseph Hartzler)

  • MV planned and carried out the bombing, a TON of eyewitnesses

• DEFENSE’S ARGUMENT (Stephen Jones)

  • There are a ton of other people involved plus a witness saw someone else! Reasonable doubt

• Judge Richard Matsch

• Convicted and sentenced to death. Appeals fail, executed 2001

NOTES

• MV wanted to mount a necessity defense

• Gvt malfeasance revealed in massive DOJ document release after conviction

• Ties back to Leaderless Resistance essay (1983)

The Rosenbergs

SUMMARY

• PROSECUTION’S ARGUMENT (XXX)

  • GG

• DEFENSE’S ARGUMENT (Clarence Darrow)

  • GG

• Judge John R. Caverly

NOTES

• GG

Billie Holiday, "Strange Fruit"

Describes lynchings, hangings in the South

Mississippi literacy test for voters

Intensely difficult and subjective, would in practice allow for officials to screen voters as uniformly applying the test would disenfranchise 90% of people

Nina Simone, “Mississippi Goddam”

A song railing against both racists and those who advocate for “going slow”/gradual desegregation

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi

Argued that the federal government was "directly or indirectly responsible" for segregation because it gave counties too much leeway to unequally distribute resources. Railed against systemic economic suppression and state-sanctioned violence but also didn’t entirely trust national leadership because they weren’t in MS like she was seeing the impacts on everyday people.

• Worked at Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1963 in Mississippi

  • Extreme racial violence, economic suppression of Black farmers

• Despite Black residents owning 40% of the land in Madison County, federal government allowed counties to distribute cotton allotments, which white officials gave predominantly to white farmers. Created debt/sharecropping-esque conditions for Black farmers

• Sexual violence was used as a tool of control in MS, and Moody’s mental health deteriorated significantly after learning she was on the KKK blacklist. Eventually had to leave the project

• DOJ would refuse to protect key witnesses of white murders

• 1964 Mississippi Summer Project was a direct response to an anticipated summer of white violence and legislative crackdowns on activism

Excerpts from prosecution’s closing argument in MS Burning

Emphasizes that the federal government isn’t overreaching, that MS is retaining all control over the judicial proceedings, and defends paid informants. Overall tries to get ahead of anticipated pushback/instinctive dislike of the federal government

• Criticizes the police officers as going against the very nature of the nation, imperiling democracy

Neshoba: The Price of Freedom

Many people disappointed that there aren’t more indictments, that (what they see as) the prosecutors are just going for Killen because it’s high-profile and nobody else. Killen doesn’t lose a wink of sleep over what he did.

• Says he’s firmly segregationist/against race mixing and believes it to be the natural order, religiously defensible

• Visibly supported by the KKK

• 6-6 initial vote, Killen said he was confident they’d have a hung jury. He was convicted the next day

• Jurors say he would have gotten off if it had just been murder, only got him on manslaughter

• Lost his appeal

The Port Huron Statement

Fused Marxism, liberalism, and religious idealism; fights against the feeling that there is no alternative to the way things are/the present; wants and calls for CHANGE, REFORM.

• Authored by Tom Hayden, a UMich student who had gone to MS to report on SNNC voter registration in 1961

• “We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, and creativity.”

• Desire the establishment of a democracy of individual participation

• A few key principles

  • Important decision-making to be carried out by/in public groupings

  • Politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations

  • Politics brings people out of isolation and into community

  • Political order clarify problems in a way conducive to their solutions; provide outlets for voicing grievances and aspirations; etc.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, “The 10 Point Program of the Black Panther Party”

A list of beliefs/demands of the party that would lead to racial equality/make progress towards righting wrongs.

• Federal government must give every man employment or guaranteed income

  • Means of production should be redistributed instead of perpetuating the current unjust race monopoly

• Wants 40 acres and 2 mules in repayment, restitution — would accept currency

• Decent housing/shelter

• Education should teach true, unfiltered history

• All black men exempt from military service

• Immediate end to police brutality

  • Potentially through self-organized militant groups, deeply controversial

• Freedom for all Black men held in jails

• Wants Black juries

  • “We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.”

Martin Luther King Jr., “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam”

Voices a moral and political opposition to the Vietnam War; argues civil rights and peace movements are necessarily connected/intertwined.

• Frames the war not just as a foreign policy failure but as a symptom of a deeper "malady" within the American spirit that prioritizes profit and property over human life

• Ties Vietnam War spending to failing domestic poverty programs

• Says sending Black men to die is hypocritical and unjust given that they are regularly killed and deprived of rights: more in common with Vietnamese than fellow soldiers

• To defeat the "giant triplets" of racism, materialism, and militarism, the U.S. must undergo a radical shift

• Five Concrete Steps for Peace: King proposes…

  • An immediate end to bombing

  • A unilateral cease-fire

  • Curtailing military build-up in Thailand and Laos

  • Including the National Liberation Front (NLF) in negotiations

  • Setting a firm date for the removal of all foreign troops

Excerpt from the Walker Report

Acknowledges both protestors provocations and unrestrained and indiscriminate police response, calls the event a “police riot” and essentially blamed CPD

• This report was submitted by Daniel Walker, Director of the Chicago Study Team, to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence following the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago

• Acknowledges police were consistently provoked by protestors; obscene epithets and physical objects like rocks, sticks, and human feces. HOWEVER police would target peaceful protestors or bystanders

• Alleges journalists were singled out for attacks to prevent media coverage

• Breakdown of police leadership, officers failed to control/rein in their men

• Three catalysts for violence

  • Threats to the city

  • The city’s refusal to grant march permits

  • The conditioning of police by city officials (Mayor Daley gave a shoot to kill order regarding arsonists)

• Police: 192 reported injuries, with 49 hospitalized; 77.8% of these injuries occurred on Wednesday, August 28

• Demonstrators: Precise numbers are unavailable due to a lack of official records, but the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) treated approximately 425 persons at facilities and hundreds more on the spot

• Arrests: 668 people were arrested; the majority were male, under age 26, and residents of Chicago, though 36 states were represented in the arrest data

"The Chicago Seven and the Sanctuary Eleven: Conspiracy and Spectacle in U.S. Courts,"

Extraordinary parallels between the 1969-1970 Chicago Seven trial (anti-Vietnam War activists) and the 1985-1986 Sanctuary Eleven trial in Tucson, Arizona (sanctuary activists aiding Central American refugees): Federal government infiltrated both movements and prosecuted key members with conspiracy charges, but in both cases the trial became a PUBLIC SPECTACLE. Public spectacles are designed to embarrass the government, mobilize public support, and challenge the state's version of reality

• Repression gave defendants opportunities for resistance in 3 ways

  • Countering Disruption with Unity — charges often unified activists against a common foe

  • Countering Deterrence with Publicity — Threat of imprisonment designed to deter participation BUT court of public opinion/podium offered by the trial was a charge to publicize their work and make their case

  • Countering Criminalization with "Expansion" — Government wanted to define defendants’ actions as crimes, BUT defendants used a technique called “expansion” to mobilize the public around a different interpretation of the case

• Chicago Seven were initially convicted, but their verdicts were overturned on appeal

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Chicago”

Implores people to come to Chicago and protest; optimistic and individualistic message/mission: “We can change the world” and YOU can have an impact

• Decries current state of things as anti-freedom / democracy

Merle Haggard, "Okie from Muskogee"

Clearly some popular anti-protestor sentiment, definitely anti-youth

• Explicitly calls out San Fran hippies

Excerpts from the Chicago Eight trial transcript

Brutal prejudice from the judge; Bobby Seale bound and gagged and deprived of counsel; marshals beat spectators, defendants, press

Excerpts from the Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department — Christopher Commission Report

Created in the wake of the Rodney King beating to investigate the law enforcement structure in Los Angeles and identify factors contributing to the problem of excessive force. Concluded that the LAPD’s excessive force problem is concentrated in a identifiable group of officers who repetitively ignore policy and who are not subject to any meaningful discipline or punishment for their conduct

• Department has the necessary tools (counseling, training) but is not using them

Brenda E. Stevenson, “Latasha Harlins, Soon Ja Du, and Joyce Karlin: A Case Study of Multicultural Female Violence and Justice on the Urban Frontier,”

Examines the 1991 killing of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old Black girl, by Soon Ja Du, a Korean American shopkeeper: legal system masculinized and criminalized Harlins to justify her death, Soon Ja Du’s portrayed as a model immigrant, and Judge Karline enforced elite white hegemony, basically sided with the woman who most aligned with white culture.

• Argues race and class override other factors when it comes to justice

• Black girls are frequently “masculinized”, stereotyped to make it easier to condemn them and deny them victim status

• Catalyst for the 1992 Rebellion: While the Rodney King verdict is often cited as the cause of the L.A. uprising, Stevenson notes that for many, Latasha Harlins was the true symbol of injustice being protested

  • Judge Karlin's decision ledto the destruction of over 3,000 Korean-owned businesses during the 1992 riots

• KARLIN DECISION

  • Rejected request for maximum 16yrs sentence, instead imposed a suspended ten-year term, five years of probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $500 fine

    • Said she was not a danger to society, was provoked and under duress

Excerpts from the trial transcript for OJ Simpson

PROSECUTION: Aims to expose the "private face" of O.J. Simpson, motive rooted in jealousy and control

• Calls OJ a "batterer, a wife beater, an abuser, [and] a controller”

• Describes the relationship as a cycle of violence, cites historical incidents

• Says the killing was, in his mind, a final act of control after she broke the relationship off

DEFENSE: Emphasizes burden of proof, presence of reasonable doubt / prosecution’s theories are strongly speculative

• Says officials were more concerned with publicity than their duties

• “If it doesn't fit, you must acquit” — really hammers that the bloody gloves

• Challenges timeline w/witnesses

• Really hammers Detective Fuhrman

• Totally and unabashedly played the race card, presented OJ as a successful Black man who racist white cops wanted to bring down

Nikol G. Alexander and Drucilla Cornell, “Dismissed or Banished? A Testament to the Reasonableness of the Simpson Jury,”

Defends the jury’s "not guilty" verdict as a reasonable application of the law, argues the public's negative reaction to the verdict ignores the specific evidentiary failures presented during the trial

• EVIDENTIARY FLAWS

  • Blood handling — questioned why blood on a rear gate wasn't found for weeks and why it contained EDTA (preservative), suggesting it was planted + got degraded from being left in a hot truck

  • The jurors found Detectives Vannatter and Fuhrman lacked credibility, the latter lied about having said racial slurs

  • Jurors found timeline implausible

Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

Chapter 8 — Focuses on the crescendo of the white power movement in the 1990s, characterized by violent confrontations with the federal government and the catastrophic 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City

• Two federal sieges transformed the white power movement, shifting the focus of its anger from communists to the federal government itself (aka The New World Order)

  • Ruby Ridge (1992)

  • Waco (1993)

• Ruby Ridge Trial (1993):

  • Verdict: Kevin Harris acquitted of the murder of Marshal Degan and acquitted Randy Weaver of the primary murder/conspiracy charges

  • Sentence: Randy Weaver was sentenced to 18 months only for the original firearms violation and failure to appear

• Vietnam-era military tactics and weaponry were adopted by federal and local law enforcement, militarized law enforcement and made them look like dangerous fighters, soldiers

• Sieges were seen as the beginning of a foretold end-times battle

• The militia movement of the 1990s, Belew argues, was an outgrowth of white power and not an independent development

Chapter 8 — Details the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people. Claims the act was NOT isolated, NOT lone wolf, instead the “fulfillment of decades of white power movement strategy”

• Contends McVeigh was a soldier of the white power movement, part of something bigger than just him; was connected to various white power groups

• The bombing mirrored the plot of the novel The Turner Diaries (the movement's primary "how-to manual")

• FBI and DOJ chose to charge McVeigh as an individual instead of going after the broader movements, essentially swept their involvement under the rug. As a result, public didn’t and doesn’t seem them as a major threat

• The strategy of "leaderless resistance" succeeded in that it allowed movement leaders to avoid prosecution, as McVeigh claimed he acted alone

• Timothy McVeigh Trial (1997):

  • Verdict: Found guilty of murder and conspiracy.

  • Sentence: Sentenced to death by lethal injection (executed in 2001)

• Terry Nichols Trial (1997):

  • Verdict: The jury returned a hung jury regarding his sentence; the government was criticized for failing to investigate other potential conspirators.

Excerpts from the trial transcript for OK Bombing

Immediate area deemed too polarized, trial moved to Colorado (+ jury impartiality is extra critical given death penalty); prosecution opening focuses on human cost, babies killed and families ruined; defense alleges witnesses saw SOMEONE ELSE plus says that there are others involved.

• The defendants were charged with conspiracy, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction of federal property, and first-degree murder following the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 people and caused over $650 million in damage

• Victims were heavily humanized through symbols like teddy bears and purple ribbons

• Prosecution says MV butchered a ton of innocents and caused horrific damage to property and lives

• Defense focuses on whether they got the right man, not whether or not MV’s guilty