65th Annual Human Rights Day

2013 Annual Human Rights Day

December 10, 2013

Human Rights Commission & Des Moines Public Library

The Human Rights Commission was started as the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1951 by Mayor A.B. Chambers with support from Des Moines lawyer Addison Parker

First commission members:

• Rabbi Eugene Mannheimer

• James B. Morris, Editor of Iowa Bystander

• James McDonnall, Director, Des Moines Industrial

Union Council

• Rev. B. C. Bobbitt, Pastor of Central Christian

Church

• Mrs. Edith Webber, Radio Station KWDM

• Marvin Schmidt, VP of Deere Manufacturing

• C. L. Sampson, VP of Northwestern Bell

Early leaders of Human Rights in Des Moines

Early Timeline• Jan 1951 – Mayor’s Commission on Human Rights Established• July 1954 – Human Rights Commission established by Des Moines City Council• April 1956 – City Council established a second Commission to deal with Fair Employment Practices• Feb 1957 – The two Commissions were combined and established under ordinance as the Des Moines

Commission on Human Rights and Job Discrimination• Dec 1961 – City Council passed a resolution on housing discrimination• June 1964 – City Council included Fair Housing Practices within the responsibility of the Human Rights

Commission• Sept 1968 – Commission began operating under a new ordinance, No. 5775• Jan 1972 – Sex discrimination added to the ordinance

The Commission

-1952

Eleanor Roosevelt“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.” --Eleanor Roosevelt

League of Women Voters

Edna GriffinEdna Griffin was denied service because of her skin color at Katz Drug Store in Des Moines – July 7, 1948

An 1884 statute made it a crime to discriminate in public accommodations. The State Supreme Court affirmed Katz conviction.

The event sparked picketing, civil lawsuits, and a successful criminal case 7 years before Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

James B. Morris, Sr. & Iowa Bystander

• Graduated as a second lieutenant in the first black-officer class.

• 1919, he purchased the Iowa Bystander newspaper from John Jay

Thompson in 1922 and published it statewide until 1971.

• 1925, he co-founded the National Bar Association, presided over the Des

Moines NAACP and numerous other organizations and was a pioneer of

racial integration statewide for half a century.

• Morris' activist wife, Georgine Crowe Morris, founded the NAACP State

Conference in 1939 and the Des Moines chapter of Links.

Employment Discrimination

Housing DiscriminationThe Housing

Ordinance passed in 1964

Freeway Displacement

Displacement & Discrimination

Neighborhoods

Center Street

In 1965 Evelyn started the Tiny Tots Family Outreach Center at 16th and Center Streets. It was Des Moines' first inner city daycare center for children. Over the next 36 years, Tiny Tots cared for over 12,000 children from the heart of Des Moines.

Evelyn was an early childhood educator and advocate for the poor. In 1992 she led the Mid-City Vision Committee to bring hope and opportunity to an important neighborhood. Instead of watching a public library close, she fought for the Forest Avenue Library to be built. She worked to transform the Model Cities Community Center into a new John R. Grubb YMCA.

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503

(1969)

Robert D. Ray

Tai Dam• Tai Dam leaders dedicated their new U.S. welcome center and

museum to Ray at the opening of the 7th annual festival at their Tai Village in east Des Moines.

• “I didn’t wonder if I was doing the right thing when I helped the Tai Dam, I accepted that as fact and I’ve never been sorry,” said Ray, who served as Iowa’s governor from 1969 to 1983. “I thought ‘how can we sit here with as much good as we have and let people die?’ I just didn’t think we could do that as Iowans.”

• Refugees in the camps were split up to facilitate their resettlement in distant lands. One group wrote a letter to every governor in the U.S. asking to be kept together as a community. Only Ray responded and his efforts contributed to the relocation of 8,000 Tai Dam to the U.S. from 1975 to 1979.

• Governor Ray gave 1500 refugees a home in Iowa. There are now about 8,000 Tai Dam living in Iowa.

Des Moines Firsts

Harriet Curley, Des Moines' first African-American teacher in 1947. Gertrude E. Rush was

admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1918 as its first African-American female lawyer.

Iowa's first African-American lawyer, Samuel K. Adams, joined bar in 1875.

Willie Stevenson Glanton, Iowa's first African-American female assistant county attorney in 1956, and first African-American member of the Des Moines City Council in 1985. Her husband, Luther T. Glanton Sr., was Iowa's first African-American judge.

Nolden Gentry, first African-American Des Moines Public School Board member, 1970

In 1970, the City of Des Moines employed 18 African-American women, five worked at the Des Moines Public Library

Latinos• In 1910 there were only 590 Latino immigrants in the

entire state of Iowa.

• By 1920 this number had increased to more than 2,500.

Mostly from Mexico, these immigrants worked as farm

laborers and others worked in railroad yards

• In the 1990s the Latino population grew by 153 percent to

83,000

• By 2000 Latinos became the state’s largest minority

group, representing nearly two percent of the Iowa

population.

Rob Barron• The numbers of Latinos in elected office in Iowa are

still minuscule, but they’re starting to make their

presence felt at the precinct, city council, school

board and county levels.

• At least 11 serve already, including Rob Barron, who

won a seat on the Des Moines school board in

September 2013. He’s the first Latino elected

citywide in Des Moines history, according to LULAC.

Immigrants in Iowa• In the 1990 census, 42.8 percent of foreign-born Iowans came from Asia, such as Tai

Dam and Vietnamese refugees, and only 13.9 percent came from Latin America.

• In the 2000 census, 36 percent of foreign-born Iowans were from Latin America. In

Iowa’s Hispanic/Latino population (which includes Hispanics born in Iowa and the

United States) the largest group (61,154 or 74 percent) came from Mexico. Others

came from Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and other Latin American nations.

• According to the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services, refugees settled in Iowa came from

Sudan, Ivory Coast, Somalia and other African nations, Russia and other parts of the

former Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cambodia and other parts of Southeast Asia, Iraq,

Haiti, Cuba and Bosnia and other places in the Balkans. -IPTV.org

Americans with Disabilities Act

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (1990) prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, transportation, public accommodation, communications, and governmental activities. The ADA also establishes requirements for telecommunications relay services.

Marriage Discrimination

Same-sex marriage in Iowa became legal following a decision of the Iowa Supreme Court on April 3, 2009