In 1916, Black reparations activist, Callie House was charged w/ obtaining money or property by false or fraudulent pretenses, by “placing or causing to be placed, any letter. . .in any post office.” The penalty was $1,000, imprisonment for up to 5 years, or both. https://twitter.com/ZinnEdProject/status/1249367605938446336

Elected 1898 to be the only female officer (assistant secretary) of the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association, House travelled to every single former slave state, recruiting & organizing formerly enslaved people to petition congress for pensions.

The Pension Bureau Inspector W.L. Reid said the pension movement was "setting the negroes wild, robbing them of their money & making anarchists of them."

Were it to continue, the gov't would have "some very serious questions to settle in connection w/ the control of the race.”

Accordingly, the Justice Dept and the Post Office Dept at made war on the Association & House & her comrades. They justified charges of "fraud" by saying House knew there had “never been the remotest prospect” that Congress would appropriate pensions for formerly enslaved people.

An all white, all male jury found her guilty. With no $ to pay her fines, the judge sentenced her to a year in prison.

Since there was no federal prison for women, House was placed in jail in Jefferson City, MO, a facility that also jailed Emma Goldman at the same time.

The Nashville postmaster wrote of House: “She is defiant in her actions, & seems to think that the negroes have the right to do what they please in this country.”

The post office was critical to the effort to organize formerly enslaved people all across the country, which is why Black activists like House — any many others — were denied access to it with trumped up charges of fraud.

All the vignettes, quotations, & info from this thread is from the book “My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations,” by Mary Frances Berry! @DrMFBerry