2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 14: The Revolution of 1930

 Appendix 14

The Revolution of 1930

The Revolution of 1930 (Portuguese: Revolução de 1930) was an armed insurrection across Brazil that ended the Old Republic. The revolution replaced incumbent President Washington Luis with defeated presidential candidate and revolutionary leader Getulio Vargas, concluding the political hegemony of a four-decade-old oligarchy and beginning the Vargas Era.

For most of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brazilian politics had been controlled by an alliance between the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. The presidency had largely alternated between the two states every election until 1929, when incumbent President Washington Luís declared his successor to be Julio Prestes, both of them from Sao Paulo. In response to the betrayal of the oligarchy, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, and Paraíba formed a "Liberal Alliance," backing the opposition candidate Getulio Vargas, president of Rio Grande do Sul.

When Prestes won the March 1930 presidential election, the Liberal Alliance denounced his victory as fraudulent, though no revolutionary fervor persisted until late July when Vargas's running mate, Joao Pessoa, was assassinated. Though the assassination was largely the result of a personal feud, Pessoa became a martyr for the revolutionary cause. On October 3, 1930, Rio Grande do Sul, under the leadership of Vargas and Goís Monteiro, broke out in rebellion. By the next day, the revolution had reached the North and Northeast under Juarez Tavora, and Minas Gerais formally declared allegiance to the revolution within a week of its start despite minor resistance.

Chief military officers, acting independently of either the government or the revolutionaries, and worried about the potential for a protracted civil war in the country, swiftly led a military coup to depose Washington Luis in Rio de Janeiro, the capital, on October 24. Hoping to deter further bloodshed, three higher military officers, Generals Augusto Tasso Fragoso, Joao de Deus Mena Barreto, and Admiral Isaias de Noronha formed a military junta and briefly ruled the country for less than two weeks. After negotiations between the revolutionaries and the junta, Getulio Vargas arrived in Rio de Janeiro, taking power from the junta on November 3. For the next seven years, Vargas would perform an unprecedented consolidation of power through transitory governments until proclaiming his Estado Novo dictatorship in 1937 via a military coup. Vargas was only forced out of office in 1945.

By 1900, Brazil was producing seventy-five percent (75%) of the world's coffee supply. However, the price of coffee had dropped since then, and in 1906, the states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Sao Paulo, the largest coffee-producing states, signed an agreement to limit exports and production to manipulate the price of coffee. The attempt to raise the price of coffee failed but prevented it from declining even further.

Brazil had seen high inflation after World War I, but its economy saw great improvements in the 1920s. Although still dependent on coffee exports, the world prices for Brazil's coffee had more than doubled by 1925, with slight decline afterward. The economy saw turmoil with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and coffee prices declined sharply as the economy failed. The mobilization of industrial workers throughout that period was another leading cause of the revolution.

The political life of the First Republic (1889–1930) was dominated by an alliance between the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. An oligarchic practice known as coffee with milk politics combined coffee producers in Sao Paulo with the dairy industry that dominated Minas Gerais. Taking advantage of their economic power and influence, it allowed the two states to alternate the presidency between each other.

The paulista Washington Luis won the 1926 Brazilian presidential election with ninety-eight percent (98%) of the vote, and his administration was an unusual period of prosperity, domestic peace, and tranquility.  In accordance with the coffee with milk tradition, the designated presidential candidate for the 1930 election should have been Antonio Carlos Ribeiro, the Governor of Minas Gerais.  However, Ribeiro's backing for mandatory religious instruction in state public schools, coupled with the close relationship between Washington Luis and Julio Prestes, the Governor of Sao Paulo, led the Paulista Republican Party to support Prestes instead.

The Prestes nomination created an anti-Prestes opposition, mainly in Minas Gerais, Paraiba, and Rio Grande do Sul. The three states formed a "Liberal Alliance" backing Getulio Vargas, the Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, as President of Brazil. Joao Pessoa, a politician from Paraíba, was selected as Vargas' running mate. 

Dissent in the Brazilian military led to an ideology of tenentism. The movement consisted of young officers (tenentes, meaning lieutenants) opposed to the oligarchic federal system of coffee and milk politics. In 1922, the first of several military revolts by members of tenentism took place at Fort Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro and cost the lives of 16 young officers who were part of the movement. The tenentes would later back Vargas' nomination for the presidency and assist in the revolution.

The presidential elections were held on March 1, 1930 and gave the victory to Prestes, who received 1,091,709 votes against 742,794 given to Vargas. Notoriously, Vargas had almost one hundred percent (100%) of the votes in Rio Grande do Sul, 287,321 to Prestes's 789.

The Liberal Alliance refused to accept the validity of the elections claiming that Prestes' victory had been due to fraud. In reality, both sides had manipulated the electorate. That led to a conspiracy based in Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais. 

On July 26, 1930, Joao Pessoa, Vargas' running mate in the 1930 election, was assassinated by Joao Dantas in Recife for political and personal reasons. The assassination of Pessoa became the flashpoint for armed mobilization, and anarchy ensued in the capital of Paraiba as a result of the murder.  Paraíba's capital was also renamed João Pessoa in his honor. Pessoa's murder contributed to creating a favorable climate for revolution and promoted social change, as the government was deemed responsible for his murder.

The 1930 revolution was planned to have begun on August 26, but the date was delayed to allow the Brigada Militar of Rio Grande do Sul to participate in the movement. Vargas, now in charge of picking a date for the revolution, decided to begin the uprising at 5:30 p.m. on October 3 in Rio Grande do Sul.

Vargas lured General Gil de Almeida, who was in charge of the Brazilian third military region, into a false sense of security at Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. Then, by 10:00 p.m. on October 3, the revolutionaries claimed the city of Porto Alegre and had defeated Almeida and his gaucho troops, at a cost of 20 people dead.

Aranha and Flores da Cunha led an attack on the military headquarters with 50 men and captured the headquarters and its commander. Joao Alberto led a movement with members of the Brigada that successfully captured an arms store on the Menino Deus hill. On October 8, the Ministry of War continued to report the military forces in Rio Grande do Sul were still loyal to the government. However, the revolutionaries controlled the entire state by October 10. 

At Sao Borja, a small resistance was formed, but the besieged regiment fled across the River Uruguay to Argentina.

The revolution proceeded relatively smoothly in the state of Santa Catarina. At the coastal capital of the state, Florianopolis, however, Admiral Heraclito Belford refused Aranha's request to come into the capital and fired on revolutionaries approaching the town although the revolution had control of most of the state. Belford, with five destroyers, a scout vessel, and a cruiser, delayed movement into the capital and remained until October 24, when electricity was cut off.

On October 5, in the state of Parana, General Plinio Tourinho advised Vargas that it would be safe for him to establish his headquarters in what was now the frontlines of the revolution. In the Southeast of the country, the new state President of Minas Gerais, Olegario Maciel, delivered a revolutionary proclamation to all of the state's local administrators, with the state police arresting and rounding up federal officers. The well-supplied 12th infantry regiment, however, defended itself in the state capital until October 8.

In the Northeast of the country, the revolution was slow to gain movement, mainly because of a quarrel between Aranha and Captain Juarez Tavora.  Tavora insisted the revolution should begin at dawn on October 4, instead of October 3, when it began in the south. What resulted was federal officers in the northeast being warned about the revolution before the revolutionaries had been prepared to fight.  In the state of Pernambuco, the pro-federal state President and former Vice-President of the country, Estacio Coimbra, and revolutionaries quickly formed hostilities. With the strategic leadership of Carlos Lima Cavalcanti, civilians began wrecking the telephone station. A former Pernambuco police officer attacked a munitions dump at Soledade, Paraiba, a state of the Liberal Alliance that had joined the cause, alongside 16 men, and weapons were handed out to the public.

Tavora and his men entered and captured the state capital, Recife, which was already being controlled by Cavalcanti. The capture of Recife resulted in 38 deaths and 120 wounded, and Tavora continued throughout the Northeast, where state governments continued to collapse to the revolutionaries.

The state of Bahia was now being invaded by Juraci Magalhaes, where a counter-revolution attempt occurred. The former President of Maranhao and Senator Magalhaes de Almeida volunteered to recover his state from revolutionaries and to restore it to Luis. Luis allowed Almeida to recover his state if he also supported the pro–federal loyalists in the state of Para.  Magalhaes, now aboard a ship dually-armed with cannon, planned to bombard the capital of Maranhao from the sea but halted his expedition as the governing junta in the state planned to execute pro-federal prisoners if the senator were to take any action. The counterrevolution ended, and Magalhaes was arrested.

On October 19, the popular Cardinal Sebastiao Leme, the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, arrived in the capital from Rome. Two days earlier, he had been convinced by Cavalcanti that in the interest of peace, he should procure Luis' resignation. When Leme tried to discuss this with Luis, the President replied, "What! Then Your Eminence doubts the loyalty of my generals!"

Many generals believed that the President's continued stubbornness was useless, and they feared a civil war.  One such general was Augusto Tasso Fragoso, the former Army Chief of Staff, who earlier told the former Rio Grande do Sul deputy Lindolfo Collor that he might join the revolution if it turned nationwide.  After attending Mass for a general who had been killed in Paraiba, Tasso Fragoso told General Joao de Deus Mena Barreto that a rebellion in Rio seemed imminent. Mena Barreto was being urged by his Chief of Staff, Colonel Bertoldo Klinger, on behalf of a group of young officers, to intervene to end the hostilities in a military coup favorable to revolutionaries. Concerned about the military hierarchy, Mena Barreto suggested Tasso Fragoso, the most senior officer, head the movement. On the morning of October 23, however, one of Mena Barreto's sons convinced Tasso Fragoso to head the movement.

Mena Barreto told Klinger to write an ultimatum to the president. Many were reluctant to sign it, but Klinger received approval from key members of the Army's general staff. What was being proposed was a "pacification coup." Tasso Fragoso reworded Klinger's document to make it seem like more of an appeal to the president. Tasso Fragoso, Mena Barreto, and their associates convened on the night of October  23 at Fort Copacabana to make plans for the ousting and received favorable news from the Military Police and the outlying barracks at Vila Militar.

The operation to depose the president was initiated on the morning of October 24.  Before dawn, the Minister of War and commander of the 1st Military Region came to talk with Luis, and it became clear the situation was unsustainable and irreversible. Shortly before 9 a.m., Leme called to speak with Minister of Foreign Affairs Otavio Mangabeira that he had been told Fort Copacabana ordered the President to leave by 11 a.m., and, as a warning, they would begin shooting dry powder after 9 a.m. Luis determined that his wife and other ladies in the Guanabara Palace, Luis's residence, would evacuate and seek shelter in their friends' house in Cosme Velho. Shots of dry powder began as they left, which scared the entire population of Rio.

Klinger's appeal, signed by the generals, appeared early in the press. Consequently, mobs were soon enthusiastically setting fire to pro-government newspapers. Meanwhile, rebel troops were moved from the regiment at Praia Vermelha to the Guanabara Palace. The movement was hindered only by crowds of armed civilians hoping to join the march. The president gathered those present and allowed them to leave, but none did so, and all stuck by his side. Though the president was told that he could count on 2,600 soldiers, the police brigade defending the Guanabara Palace chose not to resist. Tasso Fragoso and Mena Barreto, as well as Alfredo Malan d'Angrogne, entered. They found the president, who got up to speak with them, sitting solemnly in a small gloomy room and surrounded by his cabinet, sons, a few friends, and congressmen. In the distance were taunting cries from the crowd outside.

President Luis remained every inch the proud man who would fulfill his duty as he saw it. "Only in pieces I leave here," the president said to his ministers. He said that there were still soldiers to defend his government. He was completely mistaken, and Tasso Fragoso later explained, "No one wanted his son to put on a uniform and die fighting a man frankly divorced from the common interest." After bowing, Tasso Fragoso offered Luis his life to which the president proclaimed, in a firm and dry tone, "The last thing I cherish at a time like this is my life. My blood will soak the soil so that a better Brazil may emerge, a true national regeneration." After Luís refused to resign, and tensions climaxed, the general replied, "Your Excellency will be responsible for the consequences," and Luís accepted. Bowing again, Tasso Fragoso left.

That afternoon, Cardinal Leme, calling on the president at Tasso Fragoso's request, told him that the generals had established their provisional government on the first floor of the Guanabara Palace. He used his influence with Luis to ease him out of office in safety.

 Noting the ugly mood of the crowd, Leme said that Fort Copacabana would be the safest place for the President, and got the generals to agree that he would be allowed to set sail for Europe without delay. Those who were by his side concurred, and at 5 p.m., he agreed and was driven to Fort Copacabana. In the presidential limousine with Luis were Leme, Tasso Fragoso, and several others. The president explained to Leme, "Since this morning, I have been a prisoner in this room, with the palace and gardens invaded by troops. I leave, bowing to violence."

In the aftermath of the coup, the president had been replaced by a three-man provisional governing "pacifying junta" composed of Tasso Fragoso, Mena Barreto, and Admiral Isaias de Noronha.  Appointing officials and informing the fighting fronts of what was happening in Rio, they did not imply that they would transfer power to those who had initiated the revolution on October 3. Their intentions became more unclear after Klinger, the new police chief of Rio de Janeiro, promised to subdue any popular manifestations in the capital promoting the revolution. Though anti-revolutionary forces laid down their arms, and the battle at Itarare never happened, Tavora claimed that he did not recognize the junta and so he continued marching his troops toward Salvador, the capital of Bahia. Mobs caused chaos in Rio while the transfer of government to Vargas was being worked out.

Eventually, an agreement was made by Oswaldo Aranha and Collor,  Vargas' emissaries, and Tasso Fragoso on October 28. The former had sent a message to the junta a few days earlier that stated that the revolutionaries "cannot stop in the middle of the road." After Getulio Vargas arrived in Rio on October 31, the acclaim was tumultuous. 

The junta gave up power to Getulio Vargas on November 3, a month after the revolution had broken out. The transfer of power to Vargas started a fifteen-year long presidency.  About a week later, on November 11, he issued a decree granting himself dictatorial powers.  A few ministers appointed from the junta were retained, such as the junta member Noronha, who became navy minister.

After Vargas had assumed control as interim president, three revolts broke out in Brazil throughout his reign. The first was the 1932 Constitutionalist Revolution, led by Sao Paulo. The revolution led to a new constitution on July 16, 1934, which resulted in Vargas being elected by delegates in the 1934 Brazilian presidential election. 

A communist revolution broke out in 1935, but it, like the 1932 revolution, was effectively suppressed.  However, a fascist revolution in 1938 led to a political crisis. Vargas, in the name of law and order, repealed the constitution, abolished political parties, canceled the 1938 presidential elections, and pronounced a new Constitution: the 1937 Estado Novo Constitution. Vargas' powers were expanded exponentially.  He abolished the legislative assembly and replaced most state governors with men whom he approved, which led to a lack of any check on his powers and started the Third Brazilian Republic, better known as the Estado Novo, in which Vargas essentially became a dictator with unlimited powers from 1937 to 1945.

*****

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 13: Rastafari

Appendix 13

Rastafari

Rastafari, also spelled Ras Tafari, is a religious and political movement, begun in Jamaica in the 1930s and adopted by many groups around the globe, that combines Protestant Christianity, mysticism, and a pan-African political consciousness. 

Rastas, as members of the movement are called, see their past, present, and future in a distinct way. Drawing from Old Testament stories, especially that of Exodus, they “overstand” (rather than understand) people of African descent in the Americas and around the world to be “exiles in Babylon.” They believe that they are being tested by Jah (God) through slavery and the existence of economic injustice and racial “downpression” (rather than oppression). Looking to the New Testament book of Revelation. Rastas await their deliverance from captivity and their return to Zion, the symbolic name for Africa drawn from the biblical tradition. Ethiopia, the site of a dynastic power, is the ultimate home of all Africans and the seat of Jah, and repatriation is one goal of the movement. Many (though not all) Rastas believe that the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie I, crowned in 1930, was the Second Coming of Christ who returned to redeem all Black people. The movement takes its name from the emperor’s pre-coronation name, Ras (Prince) Tafari.

Jamaican Rastas are descendants of African slaves who were converted to Christianity in Jamaica by missionaries using the text of the King James Version of the Bible.  Rastas maintain that the King James Version is a corrupted account of the true word of God, since English slave owners promoted incorrect readings of the Bible in order to better control slaves. Rastas believe that they can come to know the true meanings of biblical scriptures by cultivating a mystical consciousness of oneself with Jah, called “I-and-I.” Rastas read the Bible selectively, however, emphasizing passages from Leviticus that admonish the cutting of hair and beard and the eating of certain foods, and that prescribe rituals of prayer and meditation. Based on their reading of the Old Testament, many Rasta men uphold patriarchal values, and the movement is often charged with sexism by both insiders and outsiders. “Iyaric,” or “Dread-talk,” is the linguistic style of many Rastas, who substitute the sound of “I” for certain syllables.

Rastafari “livity,” or the principle of balanced lifestyle, includes the wearing of long hair locked in its natural, uncombed state, dressing in the colors of red, green, gold, and black (which symbolize the life force of blood, herbs, royalty, and Africanness), and eating an “I-tal” (natural, vegetarian) diet. Religious rituals include prayer services, the smoking of ganja (marijuana) to achieve better “itation” (meditation) with Jah, and “bingis” (all-night drumming ceremonies). Reggae music grew out of the Rastafari movement and was made popular throughout the world by the Jamaican singer and songwriter Bob Marley. 

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 12: "Memories of You"

Appendix 12

"Memories of You"

"Memories of You" is a popular song about nostalgia with lyrics written by Andy Razaf and music composed by Eubie Blake and published in 1930. The song was introduced by singer Minto Cato in the Broadway show Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1930. A 1930 version recorded by Louis Armstrong featuring Lionel Hampton is the first known use of the vibraphone in popular music.

The Armstrong recording in 1930 was reviewed by Time magazine's monthly record review alongside opera records and Western art music records of composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Ravel.

A version of the song recorded by The Four Coins from the biopic The Benny Goodman Story reached #22 on the Billboard magazine chart in 1955.

Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra performed an instrumental version on the final episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, on May 22, 1992. The song played over a five-minute montage showing brief silent clips of some of Carson's favorite guests, seen interacting with him through the years. This was also the final song on the final album Frank Sinatra recorded for Capitol Records, Point of No Return, in 1962.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 11: Coffee With Milk Politics

Appendix 11

Coffee With Milk Politics 

Coffee with milk politics or café com leite politics was a term that referred to the domination of Brazilian politics under the Old Republic (1889–1930) by the landed gentries of Sao Paulo (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais (dominated by dairy interests), being represented by the Paulista Republican Party (PRP) and the Minas Republican Party (PRM). São Paulo's coffee interests were by far the stronger of the pair.

Under Brazil's Old Republic, the patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled agrarian oligarchs, especially coffee planters in the dominant state of São Paulo, to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies.

Under the Old Republic, the coffee with milk politics rested on the domination of the republic's politics by the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais — the largest in terms of population and wealth. One can understand the extent of that domination by noting that the first presidents of the republic were from Sao Paulo and thereafter succeeded by an alternation between the outgoing governors of the two leading states in the presidency.

The coffee with milk politics rested on an oligarchic system known as coronelism. Known as the "rule of the colonels", this term referred to the classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a "colonel", particularly under Brazil's Old Republic, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.

Meanwhile, other states resented this grip on the central state by Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. The severe drought of 1877 in the Northeast and the ensuing economic collapse — along with the abolition of slavery in the 1880s — propelled the mass labor migration of emancipated slaves, and other peasants from Northeast to Southeast, precipitating the decay of established sugar oligarchies of the North. With the concurrent growth of coffee in the Southeast, Sao Paulo, now emerging as the central state, began to increase in power under the Old Republic. Northeastern landowners bitterly opposed rival oligarchs in Sao Paulo, thus explaining their role in the Revolution of 1930.

There were more cases of organized political opposition to the coffee with milk politics before the Revolution of 1930, such as the 1910 presidential election, disputed by Hermes da Fonseca  (PRC [Partido Republicano Conservado - Conservative Republican Party]), supported by Minas Gerais, and Ruy Barbosa (PRP [Partido Republicano Paulista - Paulista Republican Party]), endorsed by Sao Paulo by means of the Civilist Campaign; the election of Epitacio Pessoa (PRM [Partido Republicano Mineiro - Mineiro Republican Party]) in 1919; and the creation of the Liberator Party (PL [Partido Liberador] in 1928, in Rio Grande do Sul.

In time, growing trade, commerce, and industry in Sao Paulo would serve to undermine the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of the same state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais (dominated by dairy interests) — known then by observers as the politics of café com leite. Under Getulio Vargas, ushered into power by the middle class and agrarian oligarchies of peripheral states resentful of the coffee oligarchs, Brazil moved toward a more centralized state structure that has served to regularize and modernize state governments, moving toward more universal suffrage and secret ballots, gradually freeing Brazilian politics from the grips of coronelismo.

However, the legacy of café com leite is still strongly visible. Brazilian politics is still known for being highly patrimonial, oligarchic, and personalistic and Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais remain the country's dominant states.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 10: The Old Republic

 

Appendix 10

The Old Republic 

The First Brazilian Republic or República Velha ("Old Republic") is the period of Brazilian history  from 1889 to 1930. The República Velha ended with the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 that installed  Getulio Vargas as a new president. During this time, the official name of the country in English was the Republic of the United States of Brazil.

On November 15, 1889 Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca deposed Emperor Dom Pedro II,  declared Brazil a republic, and reorganized the government.

From 1889 to 1930, the government was a constitutional democracy, but democracy was nominal.

In reality, the elections were rigged, voters in rural areas were pressured or induced to vote for the chosen candidates of their bosses and, if all those methods did not work, the election results could still be changed by one sided decisions of Congress' verification of powers commission (election authorities in the República Velha were not independent from the executive and the Legislature, dominated by the ruling oligarchs). This system resulted in the presidency of Brazil alternating between the oligarchies of the dominant states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais.  This regime is often referred to as "café com leite", 'coffee with milk', after the respective agricultural products of the two states.

This period ended with a military coup that placed Getulio Vargas, a civilian, in the presidency.  Vargas remained as dictator until 1945.

The Brazilian republic was not an ideological offspring of the republics born of the French or American Revolutions, although the Brazilian regime would attempt to associate itself with both. The republic did not have enough popular support to risk open elections. It was a regime born of a coup d'état that maintained itself by force. The republicans made Deodoro president (1889–91) and, after a financial crisis, appointed Field Marshal Floriano Vieira Peixoto Minister of War to ensure the allegiance of the military.

The officers who joined Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca in ending the Empire had made an oath to uphold it. The officer corps would eventually resolve the contradiction by linking its duty to Brazil itself, rather than to transitory governments. The Republic was born rather accidentally: Deodoro had intended only to replace the cabinet, but the republicans manipulated him into founding a republic.

The history of the Old Republic was dominated by a quest for a viable form of government to replace the monarchy.  This quest lurched back and forth between state autonomy and centralization. The constitution of 1891, establishing the United States of Brazil (Estados Unidos do Brasil), granted extensive autonomy to the provinces, now called States. The Federal system was adopted, and all powers not granted in the Constitution to the Federal Government belonged to the States. It recognized that the central government did not rule at the local level. The Empire of Brazil  had not absorbed fully the regional pátrias, and now they reasserted themselves.  Into the 1920s, the federal government in Rio de Janeiro was dominated and managed by a combination of the more powerful states of Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and to a lesser extent Pernambuco and Bahia.

 

As a result, the history of the outset of republic in Brazil is also the story of the development of the Brazilian Army as a national regulatory and interventionist institution. The sudden elimination of the monarchy reduced the number of masterful national institutions to one, the Army. Although the Roman Catholic Church continued its presence throughout the country, it was not national but rather international in its personnel, doctrine, liturgy, and purposes. The Army assumed this new position not haphazardly, occupying in the conservative national economical elites' heart, part of the vacuum left by the monarchy with slavery abolition, and gradually acquiring support for its de facto role, eclipsing even other military institutions, like the Navy and the National Guard. The Navy attempts to prevent such hegemony were defeated militarily during the early 1890s.  Although it had more units and men in Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul than elsewhere, the Army's presence was felt throughout the country. Its personnel, its interests, its ideology, and its commitments were national in scope.

In the last decades of the 19th century, the United States, much of  Europe, and neighboring  Argentina expanded the right to vote. Brazil, however, moved to restrict access to the polls. In 1874, in a population of about 10 million, the franchise was held by about one million, but in 1881 this had been cut to less than two hundred thousand. This reduction was one reason the Empire's legitimacy foundered, but the Republic did not move to correct the situation. By 1910 there were only 627,000 voters in a population of 22 million. Throughout the 1920s, only between 2.3% and 3.4% of the total population could vote.

The instability and violence of the 1890s were related to the absence of consensus among the elites regarding a governmental model; and the armed forces were divided over their status, relationship to the political regime, and institutional goals. The lack of military unity and the disagreement among civilian elites about the military's role in society explain partially why a long-term military dictatorship was not established, as some officers advocating positivism wanted. However, military men were very active in politics; early in the decade, ten of the twenty state governors were officers.

The Constituent Assembly that drew up the constitution of 1891 was a battleground between those seeking to limit executive power, which was dictatorial in scope under President Deodoro da Fonseca, and the Jacobins, radical authoritarians who opposed the paulista coffee oligarchy and who wanted to preserve and intensify presidential authority. The new charter established a federation governed supposedly by a president, a bicameral National Congress (Congresso Nacional; hereafter, Congress), and a judiciary. However, real power was in the regional pátrias and in the hands of local potentates, called "colonels."

There was the constitutional system, and there was the real system of unwritten agreements (coronelismo) among local bosses, the colonels. Coronelismo, which supported state autonomy, was called the "politics of the governors". Under it, the local oligarchies chose the state governors, who in turn selected the president.

This informal but real distribution of power emerged, the so-called politics of the governors, to take shape as the result of armed struggles and bargaining. The populous and prosperous states of Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo dominated the system and swapped the presidency between them for many years. The system consolidated the state oligarchies around families that had been members of the old monarchical elite. And to check the nationalizing tendencies of the army, this oligarchic republic and its state components strengthened the navy and the state police. In the larger states, the state police were soon turned into small armies. The Head of the Brazilian army ordered that it would be doubled so they could defend them.

Around the start of the 20th century, the vast majority of the population lived in communities, though accumulating capitalist surpluses for overseas export, that were essentially semi-feudal in structure. Because of the legacy of Ibero-American slavery, abolished as late as 1888 in Brazil, there was an extreme concentration of such landownership reminiscent of feudal aristocracies: 464 great landowners held more than 270,000 km² of land (latifundios), while 464,000 small and medium-sized farms occupied only 157,000 km².

After the Second Industrial Revolution (circa 1870 to 1914) in the advanced countries, Latin America responded to mounting European and North American demand for primary products and foodstuffs by focusing on producing the products most in demand. A few key export products— coffee, sugar, and cotton —thus dominated agriculture. Because of  this specialization, Brazilian producers neglected domestic consumption, forcing the country to import four-fifths of its grain needs. Like most of Latin America, the economy around the start of the 20th century, as a result, rested on certain cash crops produced by the fazendeiros,  the large estate owners who exported primary products overseas and who headed their own patriarchal communities. Each typical fazenda (estate) included the owner's chaplain and overseers, his indigent peasants, his sharecroppers, and his indentured servants.

Brazil's dependence on factory-made goods and loans from the technologically, economically, and politically superior North Atlantic retarded its domestic industrial base. Farm equipment was primitive and largely non-mechanized; peasants tilled the land with hoes and cleared the soil through the inefficient slash-and-burn method. Meanwhile, living standards were generally squalid. Malnutrition, parasitic diseases, and a lack of medical facilities limited the average life span in 1920 to twenty-eight years. Without an open market, Brazilian industry could not compete, within a comparative advantage system, against the technologically superior Anglo-American economies. In this context the Encilhamento (a Boom & Bust process that first intensified, and then crashed, in the years between 1889 and 1891) occurred, the consequences of which were felt in all areas of the Brazilian economy throughout the subsequent decades.

The middle class was not yet active in political life. The patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled the coffee oligarchs to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies. Known as coronelismo, this was a classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.

Under this system, high illiteracy rates went hand in hand with the absence of universal suffrage by secret ballot and an almost non-existent demand for a free press, independent from the then dominant economic influence. In regions where there was not even the telegraph, far from major centers, the news could take 4 to 6 weeks longer to arrive. In those circumstances, for lack of alternatives, along the last decade of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, a free press created by European immigrant anarchists started to develop, and, due to non-segregated conformation (ethnically speaking) of Brazilian society, spread widely, particularly in large cities.

During this period, Brazil did not have a significantly integrated national economy. Rather, Brazil had a grouping of regional economies that exported their own specialty products to European and North American markets. The absence of a big internal market with overland transportation, except for the mule trains, impeded internal economic integration, political cohesion and military efficiency. The regions, "the Brazils" as the British called them, moved to their own rhythms. The Northeast exported its surplus cheap labor and saw its political influence decline as its sugar lost foreign markets to Caribbean producers. The wild rubber boom in Amazonia lost its world primacy to efficient Southeast Asian colonial plantations after 1912. The national-oriented market economies of the South were not dramatic, but their growth was steady and by the 1920s allowed Rio Grande do Sul to exercise considerable political leverage. Real power resided in the coffee-growing states of the Southeast— Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro —which produced the most export revenue. Those three and Rio Grande do Sul  harvested sixty percent (60%) of Brazil's crops, turned out seventy-five percent (75%) of its industrial and meat products, and held eighty percent (80%) of its banking resources.

Following the Declaration of the Republic in 1889, there were many political and social rebellions that had to be subdued by the regime, such as the Two Naval Revolts (1891 & 1893–94), the Federalist Rebellion(1893–95), the War of Canudos (1896–97), the Vaccine Revolt (1904), the Revolt of the Whip (1910) and the Revolt of Juazeiro ("Sedição de Juazeiro", 1914). Therefore, with the onset of World War I, Brazilian elites were interested in studying the events of the Mexican Revolution with more attention than those related to the War in Europe.

By 1915, it was also clear that the Brazilian elites were dedicated to making sure Brazil followed a conservative political path, meaning they were unwilling to embark upon courses of action, whether domestically (i.e. adopting the secret ballot and universal suffrage) or in foreign affairs (making alliances or long-term commitments), that could have unpredictable consequences and potentially risk the social, economic and political positions held by the Brazilian elite. This course of conduct would extend throughout the 20th century, an isolationist foreign policy interspersed with sporadic automatic alignments against "disturbing elements of peace and international trade".

In August 1916, after almost four years, another rebellion, the Contestado War ended.

By the end of the 19th century, many immigrants from Europe had arrived, and with them came communist and anarchist ideas, which created problems for the very conservative regime of large estate owners (aka the "Café com Leite" republic). With the growth, masses of industrial workers became unhappy with the system and began engaging in massive protests, mostly in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. After a General Strike in 1917, the government attempted to brutally repress the labor movement in order to prevent new movements from beginning. This repression, supported by legislation, was very effective in preventing the formation of real free labor unions.

Ruy Barbosa was the main opposition leader, campaigning for internal political changes. He also stated that due to the natural conflict between Brazilian commercial interests and the Central Powers' strategic ones (demonstrated for example in the German submarine campaign as well as in the Ottoman control over the Middle East), Brazilian involvement in the war would be inevitable. So he advised that the most logical way to proceed would be to follow the United States, which was working for a peace agreement, but at the same time, since the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, was also preparing for war.

There were two main lines of thought regarding Brazil's joining of the war: One, led by Ruy Barbosa called for joining the Entente; another side worried about the notices of bloody and unfruitful fighting in trenches, nurturing critical and pacifist feelings in the urban worker classes. Therefore, Brazil remained neutral in World War I until 1917. However, internal problems, aggravated by denunciations of corruption created the need for then president Venceslau Bras to deviate attention, something that could be accomplished by focusing on an external enemy to eventually take advantage of a sense of patriotism.

During 1917, the sinking of Brazilian civilian ships by the German Navy off the French coast created such opportunity. On October 26, the government declared war on the Central Powers; Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Soon after, the capture of ships from those countries that were on the Brazilian coast was ordered and three small military groups were dispatched to the western front. The first one consisted of medical staff from the Army, the second consisted of sergeants and officers, also from the Army, and the third group consisted of military aviators, both of Army and Navy. These groups were attached respectively: the Army's members to the French Army and the Navy's aviators to British Royal Air Force.  By 1918 all three groups were already in action in France.

By 1918, Brazil had also sent a Naval fleet,  the DNOG (acronym in Portuguese for Naval Division in War Operations), commanded by Pedro Max Frontin to join the Allies' Naval Forces in the Mediterranean. However, during 1918, the turbulent social situation that generated in protests against the military recruitment plus the repercussion of the events in Russia that led to the overthrow of the monarchy only strengthened the provision of the Brazilian elites to remain obstinate with its doctrine of minimal involvement in international conflicts. In addition, the devastating advent of the Spanish flu, amongst other reasons, meant that Venceslau Bras' administration in the end of its term of office, refrained from getting involved more deeply in the war. Finally, the end of the war in November 1918, prevented even the government that succeeded the Venceslas Bras administration, could carry out its plan for war.  Despite its modest participation, Brazil gained the right to partake in the Versailles conference.

From 1875 until 1960, about 3 million Europeans emigrated to Brazil, settling mainly in the four southern states of Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Caterina, and Rio Grande do Sul.  Immigrants came mainly from Portugal, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, Poland, and the Middle East. The world's largest Japanese community outside Japan is in Sao Paulo. Indigenous full-blooded Indians, located mainly in the northern and western border regions and in the upper Amazon Basin, constitute less than one percent (1%) of the population. Their numbers are declining as contact with the outside world and commercial expansion into the interior increase. Brazilian Government programs to establish reservations and to provide other forms of assistance have existed for years but are controversial and often ineffective. 

The plurality of Brazilians are of mixed African, European, and Indian lineage. Immigration increased industrialization and urbanization in Brazil.  Demographic changes and structural shifts in the economy, however, threatened the primacy of the agrarian oligarchies. Under the Old Republic (1889–1930), the growth of the urban middle sectors, though retarded by dependency and entrenched oligarchy, was eventually strong enough to propel itself to the forefront of Brazilian political life. In time, growing trade, commerce, and industry in Sao Paulo undermined the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of that state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais, dominated by dairy interests, known then by observers as the politics of cafe com leite -- "coffee with milk".

Long before the first revolts of the urban middle classes to seize power from the coffee oligarchs in the 1920s, however, Brazil's intelligentsia, influenced by the tenets of European positivism, and farsighted agro-capitalists, dreamed of forging a modern, industrialized society—the "world power of the future". This sentiment was later nurtured throughout the Vargas years and under successive populist governments before the 1964 military junta repudiated Brazilian populism. Although such lofty visionaries were somewhat ineffectual under the Old Republic (1889–1930), the structural changes in the Brazilian economy opened up by the Great War strengthened these demands.

The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 was the turning point for the dynamic urban sectors. Temporarily abating Britain's overseas economic connections with Brazil, the war was an impetus for domestic manufacturing because of the unavailability of British imports. These structural shifts in the Brazilian economy helped to increase the ranks of the new urban middle classes. Meanwhile, Brazil's manufacturers and those employed by them enjoyed these gains at the expense of the agrarian oligarchies. Coffee being a nonessential though habit-forming product which affords it a measure of stability and resilience, world demand declined sharply. The central government, dominated by rural gentries, responded to falling world coffee demand by bailing out the oligarchs, reinstating the soon-to-be disastrous valorization program. Sixteen years later, world coffee demand plunged even more precipitously with the Great Depression. Valorization, government intervention to maintain coffee prices by withholding stocks from the market or restricting plantings, then proved to be unsustainable, incapable of curbing insurmountable decline in coffee prices in world markets. By World War I, the reinstatement of government price supports foreshadowed the vulnerability of Brazil's coffee oligarchy to the Great Depression.

Paradoxically, economic crisis spurred industrialization and a resultant boost to the urban middle and working classes. The depressed coffee sector freed up the capital and labor needed for manufacturing finished goods. A chronically adverse balance of trade and declining rate of exchange against foreign currencies was also helpful. Brazilian goods were simply cheaper in the Brazilian market. The state of Sao Paulo, with its relatively large capital-base, large immigrant population from Southern and Eastern Europe, and wealth of natural resources, led the trend, eclipsing Rio de Janeiro as center of Brazilian industry. Industrial production, though concentrated in light industry (food processing, small shops, and textiles) doubled during the war, and the number of enterprises (which stood at about 3,000 in 1908) grew by 5,940 between 1915 and 1918. The war was also a stimulus for the diversification of agriculture. Growing wartime demand of the Allies for staple products, sugar, beans and raw materials sparked a new boom for products other than sugar or coffee. Foreign interests, however, continued to control the more capital-intensive industries, distinguishing Brazil's industrial revolution from that of the rest of the West.

With manufacturing on the rise and the coffee oligarchs imperiled, the old order of cafe com leite and coronelismo eventually gave way to the political aspirations of the new urban groups: professionals, government and white-collar workers, merchants, bankers, and industrialists. Increasing support for industrial protectionism marked 1920s Brazilian politics with little support from a central government dominated by the coffee interests. Under considerable middle class pressure, a more activist, centralized state adapted to represent the interests that the new bourgeoisie had been demanded for years — one that could utilize a state interventionist policy consisting of tax breaks, lowered duties, and import quotas to expand the domestic capital base. Manufacturers, white-collar workers, and the urban proletariat alike had earlier enjoyed the respite of world trade associated with World War I.  However, the coffee oligarchs, relying on a devolved power structure relegating power to their own patrimonial ruling oligarchies, were certainly not interested in regularizing Brazil's personalistic politics or centralizing power. Getulio Vargas, leader from 1930 to 1945 and later for a brief period in the 1950s, would later respond to these demands.

During this time period, the state of Sao Paulo was at the forefront of Brazil's economic, political, and cultural life. Known colloquially as the "locomotive pulling the 20 empty boxcars" (a reference to the 20 other states) and still today Brazil's industrial and commercial center, Sao Paulo led this trend toward industrialization due to the foreign revenues flowing into the coffee industry.

Prosperity contributed to a rapid rise in the population of recent working class Southern and Eastern European immigrants, a population that contributed to the growth of trade unionism, anarchism, and socialism. In the post-World War I period, Brazil was hit by its first wave of general strikes and the establishment of the Communist Party in 1922.

Meanwhile, the divergence of interests between the coffee oligarchs—devastated by the Depression —and the burgeoning, dynamic urban sectors was intensifying. The task of transforming society fell to the rapidly growing urban bourgeois groups, and especially to the middle class, which began to voice even more strongly its discontent with the rule of the corrupt rural oligarchies. In contrast, the labor movement remained small and weak (despite a wave of general strikes in the postwar years), lacking ties to the peasantry, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Brazilian population. As a result, disparate social reform movements would crop up in the 1920s, ultimately culminating in the Revolution of 1930. The 1920s revolt against the seating of Artur da Silva Bernardes as president signaled the beginning of a struggle by the urban bourgeoisie to seize power from the coffee-producing oligarchy.

This era sparked the failed but famed tenente (lieutenant) rebellion as well. Junior military officers, who had long been active against the ruling coffee oligarchy, staged their own failed revolt in 1922 amid demands for various forms of social modernization, calling for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalization of mines. Though ultimately unsuccessful, the Tenente revolts illustrated the conflicts that would go on to underpin the Revolution of 1930, and with this historical setting, Getulio Vargas emerged as president about a decade later.

*****

The Great Depression set off the tensions that had been building in Brazilian society for some time, spurring revolutionary leaders to action.

The elections of 1930 pitted Julio Prestes, of the pro-establishment Paulista Republican Party, against Getulio Vargas, who led a broad coalition of middle-class industrialists, planters from outside Sao Paulo, and the reformist faction of the military known as the tenentes -- the "lieutenants". 

Together, these disparate groups made up the Liberal Alliance. Support was especially strong in the provinces of Minas Gerais, Paraiba and Rio Grande do Sul, because in nominating another Paulista (Julio Prestes) to succeed himself, outgoing President Washington Luis had violated the traditional alternation between Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo. Vargas campaigned carefully, needing to please a large range of supporters. He used populist rhetoric and promoted bourgeois concerns. He opposed the primacy of Sao Paulo, but did not challenge the planters' legitimacy and kept his calls for social reform moderate.

The election itself was plagued by corruption and was denounced by both sides. When the victory of Prestes with 57,7% of votes was declared, Vargas and the Liberal Alliance refused to concede defeat, sparking tensions in the country. On July 26, 1930, vice-presidential candidate Joao Pessoa of the Liberal Alliance was assassinated in Recife, sparking the beginning of the Brazilian Revolution. 

The 1930 revolution began in Rio Grande do Sul on October 3, 1930 at 5:25 pm. Osvaldo Aranha telegraphed Juarez Tavora to communicate the beginning of the Revolution. It spread quickly through the country. Eight state governments in the northeast of Brazil were deposed by revolutionaries.

On the 10th of October, Vargas launched the manifesto, "Rio Grande standing by Brazil" and left, by rail, towards Rio de Janeiro, the national capital at the time.

It was expected that a major battle would occur in Itarare (on the border with Parana), where the federal troops were stationed to halt the advance of the revolutionary forces, led by Colonel Gois Monteiro. However, on October 12 and 13, the Battle of Quatigua took place (possibly the biggest fight of the revolution). Quatigua is located to the east of Jaguariaíva, near the border between Sao Paulo state and Parana. After the victory by the forces of the Liberal Alliance at Quatigua, a battle did not occur in Itarare because the generals Tasso Fragoso and a Mena Barreto and Admiral Isaiah de Noronha ousted President President Washington Luis on October 24 and formed a joint government.

At 3pm on November 3, 1930, the junta handed power, and the presidential palace to Getulio Vargas. The new administration abrogated the 1891 Constitution, dissolved the National Congress and started to rule by decree, thereby ending the Old Republic. A Constituent Assembly was convened in 1934, following the failed Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932.  The Assembly enacted a new Constitution and elected Vargas as new President of Brazil, starting the Second Brazilian Republic. 

*****

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 9: The Song of the Century

 

APPENDIX 9

THE SONG OF THE CENTURY

In 1999, Time magazine named the song “Strange Fruit” to be the Song of the Century.  “Strange Fruit” is a tragic song famously performed by Billie Holiday, one of America’s most star crossed singers. The devastating image of “strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” is the mournful heart of this anti-racism song. The lyrics were written by Abel Meeropol, an English teacher from the Bronx who in 1937 ran across a photograph of a lynching that both disturbed and inspired him. The resulting poem became the basis of the song two years later. Holiday’s live version of “Strange Fruit,” with only a piano backing her, is even more raw and heartfelt than the recording. The listener can feel her anguish, can feel her sadness, can feel her anger. As sung by Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” became a song that is complicated in a unique way — such beautiful humanity expressing soulful anguish over a grossly inhuman act.

The shocking symbolism of “Strange Fruit” made it a song that no one who heard it could forget.  This jarring song about the horrors of lynching was not only Holiday’s biggest hit, it also would become one of the most influential protest songs of the 20th Century – continuing to speak to us about long term consequences of racial violence even today.  The story of the conception of “Strange Fruit” has entered legend. Originally a poem called “Bitter Fruit,” it was written by the Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol under the pseudonym Lewis Allen in response to lynching. Although Abel Meeropol never personally witnessed a lynching, he wrote “Strange Fruit” after seeing Lawrence Beitler’s distressing photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. Beitler’s photographs like the song they would inspire seared these graphic images of the inhumanity of lynching into public consciousness.

Soon after publication of “Bitter Fruit”, Meeropol set the song to music. It was performed at union meetings and even at Madison Square Garden by the jazz singer Laura Duncan. It was there that Robert Gordon, the new floor manager at the jazz club Café Society, supposedly first heard “Strange Fruit” in 1938. He mentioned it to Barney Josephson, the club’s founder, and Meeropol was invited to play it for Holiday.

After listening to the song, Holiday began the process of molding it.  Holiday, her accompanist Sonny White and arranger Danny Mendelsohn, worked solidly for three weeks before debuting the revamped “Strange Fruit” at Café Society. In his 2001 book Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song, the writer David Margolick suggests the club, with its policy of complete integration, was “probably the only place in America where Strange Fruit could have been sung and savoured”. To ensure that it was indeed savoured, Holiday and Josephson created specific conditions for the performances. It would be the last song in the set, there would be absolute silence, no bar service and the lights would be dimmed save for a single spotlight on Holiday’s face. As Josephson said, “People had to remember Strange Fruit, get their insides burned with it.”

What happened on the first night Holiday performed “Strange Fruit” at Café Society foreshadowed the response it would get when released as a record. “The first time I sang it I thought it was a mistake … there wasn’t even a patter of applause when I finished. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. Then suddenly everyone was clapping,” said Holiday in her autobiography. To hear Holiday sing of “the sudden smell of burning flesh” minutes after her jazz ballads was disquieting.

As the song became a feature of her sets, Holiday witnessed a range of reactions, from tears to walkouts and racist hecklers. Radio stations in the United States and abroad blacklisted it and Holiday’s label, Columbia Records, refused to record it. When she toured the song, some proprietors tried discouraging her from singing it for fear of alienating or angering their patrons. It was not just the song’s political nature that startled and moved listeners but the way Holiday performed it, a manner often described as haunting.

While the symbolism of “Strange Fruit” is unquestioned, what has escaped many is that the title of the song is arguably the accurate name for not just the song but for other consequences that transpired from the events that occurred some ninety years ago in Marion, Indiana.

On August 7, 1930, a large white mob used tear gas, crowbars, and hammers to break into the Grant County Jail in Marion, Indiana, to seize and lynch three young black men who had been accused of murder and assault. Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both 19 years old, were severely beaten and hanged, while the third young man, 16-year-old James Cameron, was badly beaten but not killed.  Photographs of the brutal lynching, taken by a local studio photographer named Lawrence Beitler, were shared widely. The photos featured clear images of the crowd posing beneath the hanging corpses. Thousands of copies of these photographs were purchased over the next ten days.  Despite clearly showing the faces of those who participated in the hanging, no one was ever prosecuted or convicted.  It was these haunting images which would inspire writer Abel Meeropol to compose the poem that later became the song "Strange Fruit".

However, one of the more unusual aspects of this lynching was that there was a survivor … the only known record of anyone having survived a lynching.  James Cameron survived and his life story is also a “strange fruit” that came about from this inhuman act.

On the night of August 6, 1930, when Cameron was 16 years old, he went out with two older teenage African-American friends, Thomas Shipp (age 18) and Abram Smith (age 19). A white couple, Claude Deeter (age 23) and Mary Ball, was parked in a lovers’ lane when the trio came upon them and one of the group suggested robbing the couple. Later, Shipp and Smith killed Deeter.  Deeter's girlfriend, Mary Ball, said she had been raped.  Cameron said he ran away before Deeter was killed.  The three youths were caught quickly, arrested, and charged the same night with robbery, murder and rape.  (The rape charge was later dropped, as Ball retracted it.)

A lynch mob broke into the jail where Cameron and his two friends were being held. According to Cameron's account, a lynch mob gathered at the Grant County Courthouse Square and took all three youths from the jail. The older two, Shipp and Smith, were killed first.  Shipp was taken out and beaten, and hanged from the bars of his jail window. Smith was dead from the beating he received from the mob.   The mob then hanged both of the boys from a tree in the square.

Then came Cameron's turn.

In his autobiography, Cameron recalled the raw, inhuman sound of the mob, which included members of the local Ku Klux Klan. He once said he still could remember the faces of the 2,000 white people who gathered there, some with their children, some eating. He prayed for his life.

Cameron was beaten and a noose was put around his neck. Then, as the noose grew tighter around his neck, the voice of an unidentified woman called out: "Take this boy back. He had nothing to do with any raping or shooting of anybody." Frank Faunce, a local sports hero and football All-American from Indiana University, also intervened and removed the noose from Cameron's neck, saying he deserved a fair trial. Faunce then escorted the young man back to the jail. Cameron's neck was long scarred from the rope.

Flossie Bailey, a local NAACP official, and the State Attorney General worked to gain indictments against leaders of the mob in the lynchings but were unsuccessful. No one was ever charged in the murders of Shipp and Smith, nor for the assault on Cameron.

Cameron was convicted at a trial in 1931 as an accessory before the fact to the murder of Deeter, and served four years of his sentence in a state prison. After he was paroled, he moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked at Stroh Brewery Company and attended Wayne State University. (In 1991, Cameron was pardoned by the State of Indiana.)

Cameron studied at Wayne State University to become a boiler engineer and worked, off and on, in that field until he was 65. At the same time, he continued to study lynchings, race, and civil rights in America and trying to teach others.

Because of his personal experience, Cameron dedicated his life to promoting civil rights, racial unity, and equality. While he worked in a variety of jobs in Indiana during the 1940s, he founded three chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  This was a period when the Ku Klux Klan was still active in the Midwest, although its numbers had decreased since its peak in the 1920s.

Cameron established and became the first president of the NAACP Madison County chapter in Anderson, Indiana. He also served as the Indiana State Director of Civil Liberties from 1942 to 1950. In this capacity, Cameron reported to Governor of Indiana Henry Schricker on violations of the "equal accommodations" laws designed to end segregation. During his eight-year tenure, Cameron investigated more than 25 incidents of civil rights infractions. He faced violence and death threats because of his work.

The emotional toll of threats led Cameron to search for a safer home for his wife and five children. Planning to move to Canada, they decided on Milwaukee when he found work there. In Milwaukee, Cameron continued his work in civil rights by assisting in protests to end segregated housing in the city. He also participated in both marches on Washington in the 1960s, the first with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the second with King's widow, Coretta, and with Jesse Jackson. 

Cameron studied history on his own and lectured on the African-American experience. From 1955 to 1989, he published hundreds of articles and booklets detailing civil rights and occurrences of racial injustices, including "What is Equality in American Life?"; "The Lingering Problem of Reconstruction in American Life: Black Suffrage"; and "The Second Civil Rights Bill". In 1982, he published his memoir, A Time of Terror: A Survivor's Story.

Cameron worked in a brewery for a few years and at Milprint packaging company awhile. He also went to a trade school to become a boiler engineer. He worked at one of the biggest malls in Milwaukee, Mayfair Shopping Center, until age 65. He also owned a rug-cleaning business, which afforded him the chance to travel.

After being inspired by a visit with his wife to the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel, Cameron founded America's Black Holocaust Museum in 1988. He used material from his collections to document the struggles of African Americans in the United States, from slavery through lynchings, and the 20th-century civil rights movement. When he first started collecting materials about slavery, he kept the materials in his basement. Working with others to build support for the museum, he was aided by philanthropist Daniel Bader. 

America’s Black Holocaust Museum started as a grassroots effort and became one of the largest African-American museums in the country.  In 2008, the museum closed because of financial problems. It reopened on Cameron's birthday, February 25, 2012, as a virtual museum.

James Cameron died on June 11, 2006, at the age of 92, after a long and productive life … a life that was a product … a “strange fruit” of the lynching that occurred on August 7, 1930.  In many ways, James Cameron’s life was a song … a Song of the Century that was.

Another “strange fruit” that can be attributed to the lynching that occurred on August 7, 1930, is the life of the songwriter, Abel Meeropol.  

Abel Meeropol was born in 1903 to Russian Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, New York City. Meeropol graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1921. Meeropol earned a bachelor of arts degree from City College of New York, and a master of arts degree from Harvard.  He taught English at DeWitt Clinton High School for 17 years. During his tenure, Meeropol taught the notable author and racial justice advocate, James Baldwin.

Meeropol wrote the anti-lynching poem "Strange Fruit" (1937), which was first published as "Bitter Fruit" in a Teachers Union publication. He later set it to music. The song was recorded and performed by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone among other artists. Holiday claimed in the book Lady Sings the Blues that she co-wrote the music to the song with Meeropol and Sonny White. 

Meeropol wrote numerous poems and songs, including the Frank Sinatra and Josh White hit "The House I Live In."  He also wrote the libretto of Robert Kurka's opera The Good Soldier Svejk (1957), which was premiered in 1958 by the New York City Opera. 

The songs "Strange Fruit" and "The House I Live In," along with the Peggy Lee hit "Apples, Peaches and Cherries," provided most of the royalty income for the Meeropol family. 

Meeropol was a communist and sympathetic to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage, leaving behind two sons, Michael and Robert.  Not long after the execution, Michael and Robert were introduced to Meeropol and his wife, Anne, at a Christmas party held at the house of W. E. B. DuBois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  A few weeks later, the boys were living with the Meeropols. In due time, Abel and Anne adopted the Rosenbergs' two sons, Michael and Robert, and lovingly raised them as their own. Michael and Robert, in tribute to their soft-hearted father, took the surname Meeropol.

Abel Meeropol died on October 29, 1986, at the Jewish Nursing Home in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. He had many significant legacies.  Indeed, his life was truly a song, … a song which in itself could be described as the “Song of the Century.”