This trial has everyone paying attention.  It is no wonder; the right to display pin-up art in men’s magazines is on trial.  Post Master General Walker is in Supreme Court against Arnold Gingrich and various brilliant lawyers of Esquire.  The prosecutor Walker assembles four assistant post masters to prove that Esquire’s Varga pin-ups “had gone too far in exploiting the female form”.  The famous Peruvian born pin-up and celebrity portraiture artist Alberto Varga with his risqué, half-naked models illustrations is charged with obscenity.  Esquire magazine employs Varga and therefore is the defendant in this landmark case Esquire v. Walker.  The exhibit in question at these hearings consists of literally hundreds of pounds of Varga prints and illustrations that result in almost two thousand pages in testimony.  The testimonies are interviews of clergy members, pillars of the community, stewards of the faith based communities, and elderly people.  “I wouldn’t care to exhibit this in my Sunday class” retorts the honorable Edwin Hughes when confronted with a tantalizing Varga image.  The morally righteous do not support the Varga Girl seen below.

However, Esquire’s ties to the military would shield them from morally superior brow-bashing.  The war is still on and morale and wanton woman go hand in hand.  The military and the federal government even fund dates for service men.  During the trials there dances, balls, picnics and events are in full swing setting service men up with attractive young girls and supplying alcohol.  Esquire magazine salute of the sweet and sultry girl next door images and capitalize in the real life counter parts of these enigmas- i.e. “Victory Girls”.  The men friendly magazine had supplied military hospitals with magazines for wounded veterans.  Varga was a service man’s everyday hero because he got to eyeball and “enhances” the kind of women service men only dreamt about.  The Esky Service Men’s kit was a popular favorite staple in the all male indulgent inventory and included Varga playing cards.  It is by no coincidence that during the trial the Varga calendar in 1943 doubled in sales.  While on trial in Washington for two months in the fall of 1943 when the court confirmed the images “innocent”.   

 Paralyzed by fear she sat in the cellar praying to survive the Union attack on Dixie.  The Berry estate was a sitting duck amongst cross fire between Union and Confederate soldiers as ammunitions echo in the yard.  Carrie Berry describes the daily “shellings” or constant barrage of gunfire as it penetrates the house, ricochets off trees and pierces the ground above.  Sometimes the ammunitions included cannon-fire as she recalls her father “white as a corpse” as he flees a Yankee Ambush in the garden.  Amidst all of chaos she is up to speed on her daily routines of “nursing her lil sister”, sewing doll clothes and personal items, mastering arithmetic lessons and even celebrates her 10th birthday highlighted by “ironing”.  She recalls the harsh bite of the white frost all around and how the family must now survive on bread because General Sherman’s men nearby steal their pig.   General Tecumseh Sherman wrecks far greater havoc on all of Atlanta with the “dreadful burnings all around” or the use of total warfare to choke out civilian support to the Confederate Army.  This predecessor to the“March to the Sea” left the city in utter ruins.

 Fortunately the Berrys have a provost guard to watch the house (probably because her father did work for the Union Army) and shield it from the Union torch.   However, they have no choice but to watch in suspense as enraged flames swallow the city whole.  One Union soldier recalls the grizzly fire that could be seen 50 miles away in poignant terms-“great tongues of flame shot up fifty feet above the roofs and constantly the walls would fall in with a crash which sent a cloud of embers up among the stars”.  Another union soldier concludes that General Sherman must not have “any mercy in his composition” as he witnesses Sherman as he simply walks unaffected through the streets as though he is immune to the panic and spectacle of the fire.  The streets are ablaze as Union Soldiers change uniforms while in march as spectators question their dignity and convulse at the shameless pillage on city.  Some vigilante army men even hunt after stray southerners and torch homes from back alleys much to the dismay of the Union army. 

The time is now eleven at night and the fire is at its zenith and so is the morale of the Sherman’s Headquarters Party.  The 33^rd Massachusetts division strikes up the band in a burst of patriotism and belts out Verdi’s “Miserere” Opera Trovature and “John Brown’s Body”.  The incensed arsonists of the headquarters party sing in unison “Glory, Glory, hallelujah!” as they march onward at seven in the morning.  One official of the SVW Post of Fourteenth Corps Union Army says in reaction to the music “Nero made music while Rome burned, why not (the) Post make a little while Atlanta burns?”.  

Soon thereafter, the Berrys are made to relocate.  Carrie shows her capacity for defiance as one soldier relates the little girl “behaved very badly…nobody knows what we have suffered”.  Carrie journals   nothing of her struggle against the relocation rather she feels more positive after they are settling down and the Holidays draw near.  She delights in a “Christmas Tree” lighting activity, makes cakes with the women of the house and feels secure in matters of imminent safety.  However, in very same entry her hopes diminish because she fears that the following day her “father may be tried and put away in the army”.  Her final entry reveals that her father is spared from the draft.  Going beyond the Carrie Berry journal timeline many historians contest that Sherman’s “March to Sea” would not have been possible without the total war tactics as those used in burning Atlanta.  

It was Christmas 1956.  Taking the place of presents and songs, Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and family woke up to the sound of sixteen dynamites exploding from underneath their home.  By looking at photographs of the damage, you would think everything within ten feet of the home was dead.  However, Shuttlesworth and his family reemerge unharmed.  Shuttlesworth being a religious man gave God all the credit and looked at the big picture.  He said, “If God saved me through this then I’m gonna stay here and clear this up.  I wasn’t saved to run…I was saved to lead the fight”.  Shuttlesworth truly embraced his role as leader of integration.  

Rev. Shuttlesworth was the fearless leader of the Civil Rights Campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. He was “the negro most feared by whites…the voice of the Negro in Birmingham”.  He would eventually invite Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Birmingham.   White supremacists, some including politicians, businessmen, and police wanted him dead or vanished from Birmingham.  Numerous attempts were made on his life.  Therefore, Shuttlesworth had a security detail posted at his home around the clock.  Colonel Stone Johnson was organizer of the volunteer security detail for Shuttlesworth and his organization, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.  I had the opportunity to converse with ninety year old Johnson during a recent visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.  Johnson, like Shuttlesworth is a very religious man and looked at this incident from a spiritual perspective.  Johnson stated, “Shuttlesworth knew how to stay in his lane, God put you in a lane….Shuttlesworth was on God’s program before he was born”.  Two years later, Johnson helped remove a second bomb from Shuttlesworth’s home before it exploded in the street.  Yet again, no one was injured.  History has proven that God had a destiny for Shuttlesworth.

            February 7, 1942, was a day that changed America. Segregation and discrimination had reached a point that was no longer tolerable, and according to the Pittsburgh Courier, it was time for a campaign. The “Double V Campaign,” as it was called, stood for two victories for black Americans: a victory at home and a victory abroad. 

            This campaign was orchestrated by the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly black newspaper that helped influence public opinion among black Americans. According to the Courier's February 14^th headline, “The Courier's Double 'V' for a double victory campaign gets country-wide support.” This support showed that black America was tired of being oppressed and ready for change. The Double V campaign helped tremendously the plight of black Americans. Blacks everywhere were discriminated against based on their color, and the armed forces at this time was no exception. If blacks were allowed entrance into the army, they were only given menial jobs such as cooks or stewards. The Double V campaign called for integration and for the possibility of fighting for freedom everywhere. The Courier went on to say in its’ February 14^th article, “We, as colored Americans are determined to protect our country, our form of government and the freedoms which we cherish for ourselves and the rest of the world, therefore we have adopted the Double ‘V’ war cry—victory over our enemies at home and victory over our enemies on the battlefields abroad. Thus in our fight for freedom we wage a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who will enslave us. WE HAVE A STAKE IN THIS FIGHT...WE ARE AMERICANS, TOO!” Not only did the campaign gather blacks together in support of racial equality, but afforded them the opportunity to feel part of a bigger struggle for freedom everywhere. The shared struggles of black America were also felt by black service men in the armed forces. According to Lawrence P. Scott, a black airman in the 99th, and an eventual Tuskegee Airman, "every man in the 99th was aware that the success of the 99th would impact the status of blacks in the Army Air Force and the army as a whole and that each man performed his job as if the race depended on him."

            At war’s end, the campaign would serve as a reminder of why black service men and women fought. Not only was the war fought to free enslaved people abroad, but was also fought for the equality of black Americans at home who were willing to fight and die for their country. This campaign would later help to serve as an impetus for the future civil rights movement of the 1960s that would eventually grant black Americans the equality for which they lived, fought, and died.

John Knox - Alabama’s Convict Labor System Martyr

Ex-sailor and convicted felon Mr. John Knox was sent to Flat Top Mine in Jefferson County to carry out what would be his death sentence.  In 1923 Mr. Knox came out of the mine claiming that he “gave out in the mines and the deputies contended that he was a big strong man and was malingering”.  This day, which proved to be Mr. Knox's last, he was burned and drowned to death in a large concrete vat of boiling water by two convict deputies.

In an attempt to conceal the murder, Warden Charles Davis, who was the man in charge for the state, stuffed bichloride of mercury pills down Mr. Knox’s cold dead throat and claimed that he took them and was died.  They then buried the body without further question.

Upon hearing the story of Mr. Knox in 1926, three years after the incident, Attorney General Major Harwell Goodwin Davis discovered that bichloride of mercury has to enter the circulatory system via the bloodstream to cause death.  Major Davis discovered that the ingestion of bichloride of mercury pills could not acutely kill a person.  Major Davis went out to Flat Top Mine Cemetary and exhumed Mr. Knox’s body only to discover the pills were still lodged in his throat.

Although Charles Davis was never convicted of any crime, this controversy incident served as the catalyst for the abolition of the convict lease system in Alabama.

In Tennessee, the abuse of the convict labor system was putting many coal miners out of work in the late 1800’s.  If an employer was unsatisfied with wages or conduct of his workers, he could hire convicts as employees of the state.  Thousands of Tennessee miners rose up against the use of convict labor by the state’s coal companies in 1891.  This involved significant mountain communities in a revolt against government involvement in the state’s convict labor system.

Driven by the common anti-elitist ideals of populism and unionism, the miners initially sought to abolish the convict lease system in a legislative and legal manner.

Peaceful tactics failed to achieve reform in the lease system.  In a more aggressive move, one of the mountain communities overpowered and destroyed a convict camp.  The desperate group of white miners took control of the stockades and liberated the black convicts from the mining wards. 

The miner’s revolt accelerated the termination of convict leasing in Tennessee.  The decision to end convict labor helped repair the local coal economy at the cost of greatly weakening organized labor in the state of Tennessee.

On April 8, 1911 the Banner Mine ignited killing 128 convict laborers.  The actual cause of death was attributed to blackdamp asphyxiation.  Blackdamp is a mixture of unbreathable poisonous gases which displaces oxygen.  "Clark McCormick, accompanied by former miner J.R. Baird, went into the mine.  Their first discovery was less than reassuring.  Not far from the mine entrance and pathetically near to safety, they found a man, seated but leaned forward and quiet as though asleep.  He was convict boss O.W. Spradling, dead from the blackdamp.” This scene set the tone for what is the most notorious convict labor controversy of the early twentieth-century. The Banner Mine was located in Littleton, Alabama (Jefferson County) and was owned by the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company.

This event turned the state and national spotlight towards the controversy of the convict lease system. Abolishing the lease system in Alabama did not go without resistance.  Leasing convicts to work in the mines was inexpensive and proved to be very profitable.  In fact, it was so profitable that Alabama passed legislation for mine safety to help relieve criticism so they could keep the system.

The convict labor system shutdown was long overdue.  Governor Bibb Graves’ successful campaign for governor included the promise to end the leasing.  On June 30, 1928 Alabama finally passed a law to abolish the convict labor system.

     Two men stand between the ropes among a crowd of blood thirsty white faces. In the United States, a black man physically assaulting a white man would have resulted in a lynching; however, when colorful trunks and padded gloves are added to the skirmish, the event becomes a spectacle. 

     Late Victorian culture identified the powerful, large male body of the heavyweight prizefighter as the pinnacle of manhood and evolution. The July 4, 1910 heavyweight championship bout in Reno, Nevada between the white challenger Jim Jeffries and the black champion Jack Johnson was supposed to be an easy victory for the undefeated Jeffries; his superior intellect and Anglo-Saxon masculinity were supposed to vanquish the black brute. Johnson decimated Jeffries, and race riots occurred in numerous cities. Johnson had defeated the so-called epitome of white male. Johnson was seen as an animal that destroyed ideals, dated white women, and was openly belligerent to the status quo; and therefore could never be America’s hero.

     On the other hand, the “Brown Bomber” Joe Louis is viewed as “one of the greatest stories ever written in the ring.”  Max Schmeling boasted that “the Negro would always be afraid of him.” The German audience stays up for the 3:00am radio broadcast of the fight. The heavyweight bout lasts only two minutes and four seconds, and “the ardor of German radio parties and café gatherings are quickly dampened.” Schmeling’s maid is so embarrassed by the fight that she keeps the news from Mrs. Schmeling. Louis avenges his earlier loss to “Unser Maxe” Schmeling and dealt a major blow to the Nazi idea of Aryan supremacy. Parties and riots break out in major cities in the United States. Louis did not “rock the boat” as his predecessor Jack Johnson and was thus loved by most of the public and labeled as an “Uncle Tom” by others. 

     In many sports, there is the strange phenomenon that many of the players are African American, while the majority of the spectators are Caucasian. This leads to a search by fans and media for “the Great White Hope” to snuff out the success of the black athlete. This anomaly leads to the media creation of racial feuds between black and white players. One of the most significant examples is the basketball rivalry between Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson which began in college and continued into the National Basketball Association.

     The stories of boxing legends Jack Johnson and Joe Louis established the dominance of African American athletes in sports in America. While Johnson may be one of the founders of the tension between the superior black athlete and the white fan searching for their athlete avatar, Louis is viewed as a sports hero. Because of their polar personalities Johnson is seen as a brute among his contemporaries and Louis is portrayed as an “Uncle Tom” in some circles.    

     The difference between the North and South in the United States has been similar to that of night and day. During the period between the 1870s and the 1970s, the South is generally viewed by outsiders as a backward, ultra-racist region, and the North is seen as tolerant and progressive. Only a year apart, Birmingham, Alabama praises its successful Negro League Baseball team, while New York sneers at the courage of a man standing against a racist institution.

     Cooper Green as President of the Commission of the City of Birmingham praised the Birmingham Black Barons Negro League Baseball team. Green was “proud of the team’s reputation of winning.” He declared Thursday, May 9^th, 1946 as “Black Baron’s Day.” This was an official in segregated Alabama acknowledging and praising an African American institution

     A year after the Birmingham Black Barons were honored for their success, Jackie Robinson bravely stepped onto Ebbets field for his historic Major League Baseball debut. During the game, Robinson “unenviable hit into a rally-ending double play” and was booed harshly; but his “tremendous speed afoot did accomplish one thing, it set up the winning run.” The New York Times described Robinson as a “muscular Negro that minds his business and shrewdly makes no effort to push himself. He speaks quietly and intelligently when spoken to.” After the game, One of his teammates admitted that he “just did not know how to act with Robinson.” One of the veterans made the surprisingly progressive statement of “other sports had Negroes. Why not baseball?” The most important news media in the nation described one of the greatest accomplishments in sports as “quite uneventful.” 

     An interesting disparity in our country although African Americans make up approximately 12% of the population of the United States, this group is the majority in the world of professional sports. The people in charge of Birmingham, Alabama were Caucasian; however, at this was and still is a majority “black city.” This phenomenon could explain the city’s appreciation of the city commission to a Negro League team. New York at this time was an eclectic city made up of multitudes of people.

     For approximately a century, the United States was one of the most polarized countries in the world. Among the stereotypes that the North and the South carried, this is at least one instance in which the roles were reversed. 

     During the 1930s, J.T. White was a man living and working in hard times. He did what he could to heal the pains of Birmingham. White served as the organizer for the Tennessee Coal Industry (T.C.I.) intramural baseball team. White may not have made a dent in the ailing economy of the United States, but he did manage to boost the morale of the people around him.

     White wrote to a Mr. Tom Appleyard an intramural baseball tournament organizer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in order to enroll his T.C.I. team. He asks about a double-header in order to “show these boys a real good time.” He hasn’t “promised these boys any more than a good time but of course they will be expecting eats after the game,” and he “would like to see a large crowd out as we are proud of our squad.” This correspondence depicts the jocularity and the optimism even in a period of social and economic hard times.

     In the United States the post civil war period of modernization witnessed the “proletarianization” of the once elitist game of baseball. Strenuous physical labor may well have required strenuous physical release. In the interest of high productivity, employers wanted a healthy work force and sport came to be seen as a way of ensuring physically fit and happy workers.

     Sport's appeal was connected to its potential for providing an exciting and even effervescent escape. This is to be understood not in the context of physical release but more in terms of a dream world far removed from the monotony of industrial work and the harsh reality of urban life. Like religion it could serve as a more socially acceptable opiate than drink or drugs. Yet, especially for males, sport was more effective than religion. It was 'real' with a reward not in the hereafter but in the here and now.

     An examination of American baseball during the 1930s and 1940s reveals that when faced with the challenges of the Great Depression and World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt used baseball to ward off despair and retain American pride and morale during a period of crisis. Roosevelt and his speech writers manipulated baseball metaphors in order to explain the New Deal. When selling his New Deal, Roosevelt used phrases like “I have no expectation making a hit every time I come to bat”.

     Sports, particularly baseball, had an enormous social impact on the United States during the Great Depression era. Baseball gave hope to the nation on a local and national scale with local leagues sprouting and leaders’ addresses riddled with baseball rhetoric. J.T. White helped the men of T.C.I. to forget their economic troubles and enjoy life.