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Ron Desantis' Racist Stunt Echoes "Reverse Freedom Rides" Black People Were Subjected To In 1960's. [1]
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Date: 2022-09-16
Ron DeSantis Flew Immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Echoing a Racist Stunt From Exactly 60 Years Ago
In 1962, it was just a bunch of racists; this time the inhumanity comes at the hands of the state.
Written by Kate Storey
snip
It was 60 years ago when this corner of Massachusetts was the center of a similarly cruel stunt. It is a little-told chapter of history called in the media at the time “the Reverse Freedom Rides.” In the summer of 1962, a group of white segregationists and supremacists known as the White Citizens Council passed out leaflets and placed want ads in Southern newspapers to recruit Black families with the promise of jobs up north—and, in particular, in Hyannis, where then-President John F. Kennedy spent summers with his family. The ads read: “President Kennedy’s brother assures you a grand reception to Massachusetts. Good jobs, housing, etc. are promised.”
The deceptive and inhumane plan was a response to the heroic Freedom Rides the year before. Civil rights activists rode buses into the segregated South, and a year later the White Citizens Council sent busloads of Black riders up to the North.
"For many years, certain politicians, educators and certain religious leaders have used the white people of the South as a whipping boy, to put it mildly, to further their own ends and their political campaigns," said Amis Guthridge, one of the White Citizens Council organizers, in footage unearthed by NPR’s Gabrielle Emanuel in 2020. "We're going to find out if people like Ted Kennedy… and the Kennedys, all of them, really do have an interest in the Negro people, really do have a love for the Negro."
Many of the 53 people who arrived at Hyannis—including 33 children—were sent to the Cape Cod Community College, where they were given food and bedding collected by the Cape Cod chapter of the NAACP. “It was one of the most inhumane things I have seen in my years of social action work,” local Cape activist Margaret Mosley said in a 1994 interview.
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When busloads of families were sent to Hyannis, the White Citizens Council made sure the media covered the whole event—reporters were there waiting when the buses pulled up to Hyannis Main Street. The public cruelty was the point. And right after the plane arrived last night in Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama has spent his summers, DeSantis’s communication’s director said in her statement to FoxNews.com, "As you may know, in this past legislative session the Florida legislature appropriated $12 million to implement a program to facilitate the transport of illegal immigrants from this state consistent with federal law.”
The parallels playing out after six decades are jarring. And this time, the cruelty is state-sponsored.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/16/2123335/-Ron-Desantis-Racist-Stunt-Echoes-Reverse-Freedom-Rides-Black-People-Were-Subjected-To-In-1960-s
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