(Text of a talk given in February of 2021 to The Livingston Diversity Council)

With calls again for “going back to normal” I think it’s time for a repost. The very real concerns for public health aside, I’m making the case to move forward – away from “normal” – not back. In large, due to fact that we really don’t have a true accounting of how we go here.

After 4 explosive years under our last chief executive, a very contentious election, and a full-blown insurrection on January 6th (2020), there is a strong call in the land for unification. In fact, it is a regular talking point of our recently elected president. We live in frightening times. Threatening inflammatory rhetoric has been turned up “well past eleven” for quite some time. And there is still a very real threat of fascism ascending to the federal seat of power under an authoritative strongman. Besides, our country is under the threat of economic collapse brought on by a world-wide pandemic. Wouldn’t now be the time to unify under the American banner?

Well, it depends. Unification for whom? Certainly not for black Americans. In fact, unification is a direct threat to the welfare of black citizens. We only have to look to history to understand why.

At the end of the Civil War a crowd gathered on the front lawn of the White House in celebration of the defeat of the Confederacy, clamoring for a speech from President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln respectfully declined and promised a speech for the following night. In consolation, he requested that the Marine band play “Dixie.” Lincoln declared, “I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it.” As the crowd cheered him on, he added, “It is good to show the rebels that with us they will be free to hear it again.” In choosing to welcome the Union’s “adversaries” back into the fold with that song, Lincoln helped set a pattern for the betrayal of the formerly enslaved for decades. Not only was “Dixie” enjoyed by the throng on the White House lawn that day, it became emblematic, along with the rebel battle flag, of the oppression and degradation of black Americans for decades to come. Oppression and degradation that began with the end of the Reconstruction era.

Contrary to what generations of children were taught in school, the Reconstruction Era immediately after the Civil War was very successful. For 11 years the formerly enslaved, aided by the protection of Union troops and with the sanction of the federal government, worked tirelessly to secure full citizenship in these United States. Ironically it was “radical abolitionist wing of the Republican Party” in opposition to the efforts of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, who triggered the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867. Included in the law were the following measures:

• It divided the south into 5 districts governed by military governors until such a time that acceptable state constitutions could be written that eliminated all vestiges of slavery.

• All males, regardless of race, excluding former Confederate leaders, were allowed to participate in the constitutional conventions forming the new state governments.

• These new state constitutions were required to provide universal voting rights for all men regardless of race.

• States were required to ratify the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed black citizenship, in order to be readmitted to the Union.

Marinate on this a minute if you will. 1867, The Republican Party calling for full citizenship rights of black Americans at the exclusion of former Confederates from involvement in the process. Confederates who were legally barred from interfering in the lives of black citizens. Think of what could have happened if this had continued into the 20th century. Think of what highly motivated, industrious, and capable men and women could have done when granted the freedom afforded white Americans, afforded the often celebrated European immigrants, to pursue the full rights and benefits of American citizenship. Unfettered by Jim Crow, allowed to flourish as their imaginations and their industry dictated.

What did happen? As I said, for 11 years the United States actually began to live up to its promise. Congress passed the Freedman’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Bills, successfully overriding Andrew Johnson’s vetoes to pass them into law. They even moved to impeach Johnson.

Ulysses S. Grant, elected after Johnson, supported Reconstruction and enforced the protection of African Americans. He used another law, The Enforcement Act, to put down the Ku Klux Klan, essentially wiping them out by 1872. Grant integrated the federal ranks, extending job opportunities to black Americans. He championed equal rights. He supported a 2nd Civil Rights Act of 1875. During this era, black Americans enjoyed the highest representation in government ever. Across the south and in Missouri, there were 1517 black state officeholders, 6 of them lieutenant governors. At the federal level 16 congressmen, 185 federal officeholders in all.

Furthermore, across the south, local officials had great success in creating integrated governance. Accordingly, the formerly enslaved prospered in land and business ownership, in education, in all phases of life.

That is, until the cause of white unity became more important. The election of 1876 did not produce a clear electoral winner between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. Neither had the 184 electoral votes required at the time to be declared the winner. The parties formed a bipartisan Electoral Commission to decide the race. To break the deadlock, the 2 parties came to an agreement to provide Hayes 20 disputed electoral votes to win the vote. To secure the support of southern Democrats, the terms of the agreement included that the federal government would remove all troops remaining in southern states and that southern democrats had the right to deal with black citizens without “northern interference.”

Unity achieved.

Southern whites immediately resurrected the Ku Klux Klan and began a campaign of violence and terror that by 1905 had removed any significant traces of black political power.

In 1898, unified in their opposition of integration, the white population of Wilmington, South Carolina staged an actual coup. A mob of 2000 white men overthrew the legitimately elected local Fusionist party consisting of black and white leadership of the city. They expelled city leadership who would comply, murdered those who wouldn’t. They destroyed private property and businesses, burned the only black newspaper to the ground and killed an estimated 300 people. By this point, Mississippi had passed a new Constitution which disenfranchised black voters. South Carolina and the rest of the south followed suit. In effect, “whiteness” nullified the 14th Amendment and overrode any claims of legal citizenship by black citizens. The Wilmington Coup appears to be the watershed moment that cemented this notion across the land. And it became the template for the unity of whites at the expense of black lives and livelihoods for the decades to come.

In a show of labor unity and solidarity a series of massacres the summer of 1917 in East St. Louis, Illinois left an estimated 250 black citizens dead and another 6000 homeless. The violence was triggered in reaction to the recruitment of black workers to replace white union employees striking the aluminum and meatpacking industries. The very same unions that had denied black workers membership. Reporting at the time indicated that East St. Louis’s white police force either ignored or participated in the violence. And the National Guard, called in by Illinois Governor, Frank Lowden, largely allowed the massacre to continue. Much of East St. Louis’s black population fled over the bridges spanning the Mississippi river, connecting their city to St. Louis, Missouri, never to return.

In the summer of 1919, Eugene Williams a black 17 year old living in Chicago was playing on raft in Lake Michigan with friends. The raft drifted into a white swimming area and angry white beach goers began throwing rocks at the raft. Williams fell in and drowned because, according to the official coroner’s report, the rocks that white bathers continued to throw at him prevented him from coming ashore. The white beach goers were unified under the need to keep recreation strictly segregated.

When black beach goers on the scene complained, they were attacked by a white mob that spread into the black community. The rioting continued for 5 days. As with East St. Louis, police arrested black participants but steadfastly refused to arrest whites. At the end of it 15 whites and 23 blacks were killed. 500 total were injured, over 60% of them black. Over 1000 black families were left homeless. Not one white rioter was convicted of a crime. That summer there were similar incidents in Washington, D.C., Knoxville, Tennessee, Longview, Texas, Phillips County, Arkansas, and Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1921 white rioters, unified by the mandate to protect a white woman’s virtue, destroyed over 35 blocks of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Greenwood community, also known as “Black Wall Street”. Greenwood had been organized in 1906 after Booker T. Washington toured the Arkansas Indian Territory and Oklahoma.

At the time, Greenwood was the wealthiest black community in the nation. It contained several grocers, 2 newspapers, 2 movie theaters, several nightclubs and churches. Estimates have ranged from 75 to 300 black citizens killed. The violence was precipitated by the claim that Dick Rowland, a 19 year old black shoe shiner, had assaulted Sarah Page, a 17 year old white elevator operator. Note that much of the violence was organized by the very same Klan that US Grant had eliminated in 1872.

Rowland was taken into custody and word quickly spread through the black community that a crowd of white men was gathering at the jail to likely lynch the young man. A group of 75 black men stationed themselves outside the jail to protect Rowland. Upon the assurance of the local sheriff that Rowland would be protected, the black citizens agreed to disperse. As they were leaving, a member of the white mob attempted to disarm a black man and the confrontation devolved into a firefight. 12 men were killed, 2 black, 10 white. White rioters gathered and rampaged through the black community that night and into the morning. At least one plane was reported to fire on the black community from the air. Reportedly, the first instance of the use of air power on American soil. When the dust settled, 10,000 black people were left homeless. Property damage estimates ran to more than $1.5 million. There are other examples that echo through our collective history; Detroit, 1943, St. Louis 1949, Charleston in 2015, Charlottesville in 2017. And while last 2 instances involved single actors, they were by no means “lone operatives” as they were radicalized by their exposure, in unity, with like-minded affiliates.

Black History is the story of the struggle for liberation. Starting effectively in 1619 on through to Ferguson (Mike Brown), Staten Island (Eric Garner) and Kenosha (Jacob Blake) to name just a few. We struggle to liberate ourselves from racism which, I take pains to emphasize, is not a defect of individuals, but a system and structure designed to serve white supremacy, to serve white people who often unify in its service. Often violently.

I recently heard the celebrated activist, Angela Davis, say that “unity is an abstract.” She had been asked about the concept of America unifying in this moment in history. Dr. Davis suggested that to be effective, people must unify around “something.” She suggested that unity in struggle makes sense. Otherwise, she implied, it’s just lip service. The struggle for black liberation goes beyond allyship, beyond just “listening” and lip service to commitment and “action.” Let our country unify around liberation of its black citizens. Too often it has unified against us.