The African-American Women in the West

Yaolee Chen

HIS 345 Women US History

The African-American Women in the West

Joyce Hanson

A Defend On The Traditional Marriage

In 1970, Los Angeles

My husband and me got married in 1945, and we had a daughter in 1950. My husband was a soldier of WWII, and he believed that all people, all races, and all nations are equal. We went to a black church on Pleasant Hill, in Los Angeles, where the pastor and the church leaders were the whites and the majority was the black. My husband trained my daughter like a little solider. He required all the members of this family to go to church on time every Sunday morning. When my daughter was on her elementary school, she often woke up late on the Sunday morning and ate her breakfast slowly: and she began to say, “Mom, I don’t feel well today. Can I not go to church?” In the first few weeks, my husband forced her to finish her breakfast quickly; and then for the following weeks at about her fifth grade, she hide herself in the restroom and said to us, “I am sick today, I cannot go to church”. My husband kept saying that, all races are equal; but in reality, my daughter never afford to buy the dollars or toys like those white kids had in our church, and it must made her feel very bad. At home, my husband forced me to prepare the three meals on the table as what he saw from the TVs. Sometimes, I got mad, too; and it goes without saying to a kid.

In the ‘60s, my daughter would hide herself in the bedroom and using the answers like, “I’m studying hard right now that I may go to the University of Berkeley” for the excuses of not being able to go to church. Being a black soldier was few in the WWII, and my husband wants her to be one of the few black woman in American society. My husband didn’t want to force her to church, thinking that she was a good daughter. My husband and me go to the Christian church on the Pleasant Hill every Sunday morning as a routine. My husband loves the daughter so much that he can do anything for her. Newspapers and TVs and church are the major part of our life. My husband and me and the church and the media are one society. My daughter and her schools and the civil right movement are another society. Since the year of 1960, we have two opposite societies lived in the same family.

It was five years ago when my daughter asked me about sex. She was only 15-years-old and her schoolmate invited her to sex. I asked her, “What is his name”, and she answered, “ The girl, who invited me to sex? Her name is Jennifer.”[1]

The African-American families had been changed a lot since my husband and me came to work in the shipyards after World War II.[2] My husband continues to be a warrior of American free fighter for equal rights in his free thoughts: he believed that man and woman had the equal right in a family.[3] But, we never thought that a man can have sex with the other man or a woman can have sex with the other woman. By a chance when my husband and me went to church, my husband opened the Bible and showed me the Holy Scriptures, where it says that it is not OK to be a “homosexual”. We joined the anti-homosexual union with Bishop Paul Morton of Greater St. Stephens Full Gospel Baptist Church, New Orleans, LA, in the year of 1965, in hope we can do something for help to our daughter. The anti-homosexual union was a newly organized union. The union was made out of the TVs, press, medias, church leaders and the volunteer workers. My husband and me were the volunteer workers in the union. My daughter and her generation disagreed with us and they thought that the homosexual is a created progressive sex. Instead, she went to the Islamic meeting conferences with many other women who also were the members of the NAACP for Women.[4]

I know this young generation of black woman hated to stay in Christian churches, where the pastors and the Sunday school teachers were the white people in California. But, for God’s shake, I don’t want my daughter to be a homo. My husband and me became active in the anti-homosexual union. The followings are the ideas of our newly organized union and a newly anti-gays’ event happened in the 1970, which called a defend for the traditional family:

More than 60 African-American pastors gathered in downtown Los Angeles, on May 17, 1970 to oppose a proto-type of homosexual marriage, including civil unions, and they called on the Black Caucus to sponsor a constitutional amendment protecting marriage as a union of one man and one woman. The Traditional Value Coalition sponsored the event.[5]

African-American pastors from around the United States came to California on May 17, 1970, to protest against the proto-type of homosexual marriage in Los Angeles and to defend the traditional type of African-American marriages. They also called the Congressional Black Caucus to support Passage of a constitutional amendment defining the African-American marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

At a press conference on the morning of May 17, the black pastors also expressed their opposition to claims by homosexuals that their struggle is equal to the civil rights battles. But, the white pastors think that the black pastors had no idea what they were talking about. Well, the white pastors think the anti-homosexual union is a slavery system, and the Martin Luther King Jr. is a progressive system.[6] The husband and wife in the white families divided since the King came to power. Usually, a white man supports the anti-homosexual union (the salves), and a white woman supports the civil rights movement (the progressivisms). The recent dead King, Martin Luther, is welcomed by some quarters of the African-Americans; but opposed by the black women and white men.

To explain this, let me say that several years ago, I discouraged my daughter to join to the supporting on the March on Washington. But, it was up to my daughter her own decision, you know, to join with her generation throughout schools and the communities. And she did, as one could expect what this young generation might do. She helped people to the march on Washington without our permission and we could say nothing about it because our neighbors did the same to help the march, too. Our anti-homosexual union is powerful only to them that follow the truth of the Holy Scripture earnestly.

I agree with the Christian church leader, Pastor Price. Dr. Frederick K.C. Price of the Los Angeles Crenshaw Christian Center on the TVs read a statement of our union. He said that, “Marriage” is a union created and recognized by God. Homosexuality is an abomination as far as God is concerned. Marriage is a partnership, a contract if you would, between one man, one woman, and God. Any deviation from this design is unbiblical, unnatural and is not accepted by God. If you Father God doesn’t approve it, neither do I.” But, I cannot stop my daughter. She is a socialist; and we are the individualists. She and her Islamic friends and the members of NWAACP are physically united together, and they are more powerful than us.

Dr. Sammie Holloway of Breath of Life Church in Memphis Tennessee noted: “We are here today to call on the members of Black Caucus and other leaders in Congress to support a Constitutional Amendment that protects marriage, the proto-type homosexual marriage is an affront to our laws and to our spiritual and moral values. Allowing same-sex activities will further erode the African-American Moral values and will degrade our society.”

Bishop Morton was asked what his reaction would be, as Henry Havelock Ellis said, in his book The Science of Sex Psychology, Ellis found that homosexuality is an innate. But the Bishop disagreed with the author of the book and the Bishop replied that scientists have been wrong before, but God has never been wrong.[7]

Joe Scarborough interviewed Bishop Morton on the LA TV station that evening when the proto-type same-sex marriage was legalized. During the interview, Bishop Morton noted: “God is against same-sex marriages, so I represent God, speak on behalf of what he told me to speak on. And he is totally against free sex and it just is not in the will of God… The African-American families, if we don’t try something for help, is going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah…” The other black pastors said, we discriminated against the gays, not because of their skin color. Really, the reason is that the idea is unholy.[8]

On May 20, 1970, the Los Angeles Time published a feature on the anti-homosexual marriage in California to what happened to our nation after Pearl Harbor. He hopes this even will open up the eyes of millions of Americans to the dangers facing them from homosexual activism. “What Pearl Harbor did to American patriotism, the proto-type same-sex marriage should do the Christian level of awareness”, said Sheldon. The daughter of Sheldon, Mrs. Lafferty, she said that the equal sex means “[an] open season [of progressivism] on our children”.[9]

While my husband and I were doing the volunteers for the union to preserve the traditional African-American marriages and biblical morality, Chris Ander says of us that we are the most active anti-gay group there is. And, he said that we are the one group out in the trenches, doing door-to-door knocking. Another man whom we had visited with, and his name is Winnie Stachelberg. He once was a gay; and after our visits, he repented, and now he is a normal African-American young man, a slave of hetero-sex. Winnie said of us that our opposition is deep. And he said that we are out there every day supporting the discrimination against gay groups on nearly every issue, you don’t see that so much from the other African-American community activists. And, we said, thank you, to him. Our anti-homosexual union is for the protection of our own family, my daughter particularly; for sure, our patient is more than the society of civil rights movement. My husband is proud of his being a soldier of WWII and also a warrior of anti-homosexual war.

Philip Wylie predicts that 35 years from now, there will be a new law in California, and the new law will allow man with man, and woman with woman doing the created progressive sex publicly. All these activities we had were outside of our family. There is another spiritual war at home. Since my daughter goes to the University of Berkeley in 1968, she preaches her gospel to my husband, topics about the “anti-war” and “let us not war but making-love, instead”. My husband tries his best to persuade her that the proto-type same-sex marriage is not OK, but the more my husband tries to correct her, the worse she becomes. And in each strike, my daughter is getting worse and worse. She thought that the opposite-sex is bad and the same-sex is good. In this summer of 1970 when my husband and me go to the Christian churches on the Pleasant Hill during the weekends, she sleeps with Jennifer.[10]

1

[1] Ruth Rosen. “Chapter 3 Limits of Liberalism” form The World Split Open, 63-93.

A daughter of African-American Family saw her mother dressed in rags and cleaned the patio of their apartment. The daughter asked why not they had the front yard and back yard like most of the white middle-class family did, and she also asked why not her mom wore the high-hilled shoes as the white women often did on the TVs.

Philip Wylie, The Disappearance, p.93 &94,

"Then for a moment it was if she could hear Bill dissertate: My dear, I don't know whether it's environmental or sex-linked, but the constant, observable unwillingness of women to reason, when they are faced by a problem that will yield to logic but not to emotion, has given the ladies their ageless reputation for intellectual frivolity."

[2] Philip Wylie, p. 50,

"The Disappearance required imagination for its understanding. Women deficient in the quality were unable to assimilate the event and, as a result, their responses were unsuitable. To deal with problems that immediately arose required vast imagination, as well as logic, and also a variety of [information] [,] which are popularly referred to as "know-how."

p. 52&53,

"Hence women, presented with the instantaneous vanishment of the males, were in an extremely poor psychological condition to deal with the aftermath. Whatever pattern innately existed in them, what faculties they owned as individuals, what promptings, urges, intelligent ideas, logical extrapolations and valid hunches they were capable of were hidden; they found themselves without a tradition, without experience, without confidence, and without know-how."

[3] Chris Crass “Looking To The Light Of Freedom”.

Crass in the article, he thought the civil right movement came from the equal rights between the husband and wife in the black families.

[4] In "Great Dames of California", the article talked about Rosa Broadous, who she also was a member of NAACP for women in the '50s.

Philip Wylie, p. 215 & 216

"In nature, sex is an instinct served with felicitous collaboration by paired individuals for procreative purposes. It is the chain of life; it is the trunk from which life's variegations, its evolutions, have branched ever outward toward enhanced consciousness... It is expectable, in a species that has unconsciously perverted its instincts for its immediate vanity (as religions, faiths, dogmas, dialectics, ‘sciences,’ and so on), that strong cultural compulsions and taboos would everywhere surround the ancient, potent instincts of sex. Such, of course, is the case. Western man's religions (and hence his culture) are rooted in sex management and sustained by inculcated sex fears. Disobedience of the "sacred" rules or of the "common" law is ‘sin’ or ‘crime.’ Sex hunger has here been made shameful so as to elevate the vanity of man in relation to other animals and so as to enhance the controlling power of cultural tradition and its agencies -- the churches, courts, and so on..."

Philip Wylie, p.342, I think, the author could be refer to a homosexual marriage, or it could be any Christian, who turned away from his/her original faith on God and joined to the Islamic conference.

"Not many came here, anyway. I regard that as a sign. There is something wrong here. We will tear down this edifice! This mausoleum of God! We will build a bright place, a simple place, and go in search of a new God! We will build a bright place, a simple place. Look at them -- ! We took away the sweetness of their bodies, their soul's temples. We kept them ashamed. We kept them sinning so we could own them through that hangman's rope of perennial repentance! We cut them off from nature. We built the barricade down the ages. We made what was one seem twain! There is only one sex, Bill! Woman, man, are halves. In all the rest of nature they are one. By dividing them we kept them conquered and subservient. I am ashamed of my doctrines!"

[5] “On Anniversary of Brown Vs. Board of Education: ‘Homosexual marriage is not a civil right’”, Gay Rights: Special Rights. 2004

[6] Philip Wylie, p217

"The half of a world that now survives is, in many senses, a whole world. It is a whole world owing to the fact that nearly all of humanity, in nearly of all of its recorded or known existence, has consisted of two worlds: the world of women and the world of men..." and the reason: "Man's greater stature, his considerably greater strength, his apparently greater penchant for the hunt, for aggression, warfare, and the construction of useful apparatus, his emancipation from the reproductive functions of child carrying, childbearing and suckling, and his recently touted larger skull capacity have caused man to regard himself as the "dominant" or "superior" sex... For thousands of years he has exploited the role. A human tribe in which the males think of themselves as substantially inferior to the females is a rarity... But generally, in marked degree, woman has been accorded a secondary place. She had been regarded as a slave in countless societies. She has a property status in numerous areas today. She has been denied many social, economic and political privileges accorded to men. Before the law, she is seldom equal... Where sexuality is concerned -- and in this discussion the concern is nothing other -- woman also has been grossly denigrated. In both the Old and the New Testament (on which Western "culture" so largely rests) woman's biological functions have been repetitiously and remorselessly associated with filth. According to the legendary attitudes, a woman during menses is "unclean..." The female who has borne a child is often supposed to be in an "unclean" condition that demands certain rituals for the restitution of her decency."