Vital US History

Affirmative Action in America

Source: Amos N. Wilson in Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century

For 300 years the American Colonies, the States and the Federal Government Allotted Untold Billions of Dollars of Public Wealth Exclusively to Members of the white Race

1. 1675: Massachusetts Bay Colony cedes plantation rights in six-square mile tracts to "worthy" individuals. The population of the Colony included Black slaves as well as free Blacks. Neither were treated as "worthy" individuals eligible for land grants.
2. 1683: Maryland and Virginia establish fifty-acre land grants to settlers who pay their own way across the Atlantic. Blacks were given a free ride in slave ships and thus were not eligible for grants.
3. 1785: The Federal Ordinance of 1785 authorizes the sale of 640-acre tracts to settlers for $1 per acre. As slaves, Blacks were legally prohibited from owning property.
4. 1800: The federal government establishes liberal credit privileges in western territories for buyers of public land at a price of $1 and acre. Slaves not eligible and free Blacks generally considered uncreditworthy.
5. 1830: The federal Preemption Act grants land settlers rights to purchase up to 160 acres each at $1.25 per acre. The vast majority of Blacks are still slaves and ineligible to own property. No evidence of significant participation by free Blacks.
6. 1850: The beginning of the massive federal land grant program for private railroad companies. Outright awards of 130 million acres frequently include property for twenty miles on either side of roadbeds. These lands later found to contain billions of dollars of petroleum and mineral reserves. Black businessmen never considered qualified to acquire, finance or operate railroad franchises.
7. 1862: The Homestead Act grants settlers 160-acre tracts of federal lands without charge. Public lands transferred almost exclusively to whites in the most important land program in American history. Negro claimants blocked by lynch mobs, intimidations and refusals of local authorities to protect their claims.
8. 1889: In the celebrated Oklahoma Land Rush, 150,000 white settlers scramble to claim the choicest. Savage lynchings, Ku Klux Klan terrorism and Jim Crow legislation kept Negroes out. Later the heirs and successors of white settlers were to discover billions of dollars of petroleum resources on these lands.
9. 1920: The Mineral Leasing Act authorizes the federal government to lease public land for the exploration of oil, gas, and other minerals. Affluent Negroes need not apply. Race discrimination in public awards was the established policy of the federal government in the 1920s.
10. 1926: The federal Air Commerce Act authorizes the granting of monopoly air routes to qualified aviators. The nation's airlines are born. Twenty thousand white pilots learned their trade in the rigidly segregated World War I Army Air Corps ensuring that the ownership of commercial aviation would be lily white.
11. 1927: The federal Radio Act authorizes the award of radio station broadcast franchises to private citizens. Under settled policy of the federal government, no grants were made to Negroes. Radio broadcast licenses currently valued in the billions of dollars now held almost exclusively by whites.
12. 1939: The Federal Communication Commission issues the first licenses for television broadcast stations. No grants made to Negroes until token awards of the late 1970s. In 1980, all television franchises, valued at $5 million to $10 billion held exclusively by whites.
13. 1941: Government contracting becomes a major factor in the sales revenues, and profits of private enterprises. Race discrimination in government contract awards becomes the official policy of the United States government. During the years 1941 to 1980, approximately $3 trillion in contract awards were made almost exclusively to white-owned firms.

ALL of the above took place before this:

1961: Executive Order No. 10925 [9], issued by President Kennedy. Established the concept of affirmative action by mandating that projects financed with federal funds "take affirmative action" to ensure that hiring and employment practices are free of racial bias.

Elle adds:

So the next time you hear some ill-informed dolt talking smack about Affirmative Action inform them that 50 years (of being considered not automatically winning) out of 300+ is a single raindrop in a thunderstorm; it ain't about to flood the basement.