"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." - G.K. Chesterton 1/
Why do I care so much about a statue paid for by former black slaves and inaugurated by Frederick Douglas in 1876? Because #BlackLivesMatter yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 2/
It outrages me & saddens me that a mob in the present, who claim outrage over slavery & Jim Crow in the USA that disregarded the humanity & agency of black people, would ignore the choices made by black people because they can no longer speak for themselves. 3/
The lives of black slaves matter too, and we must remember them and their voices. Not erase them or the monuments they erected to suit the fashions of today. 4/
The scenes of young people shouting down their black elders trying to educate them on the historical import of the Emancipation Memorial at Lincoln Park were straight out of the Chinese cultural revolution in the 1960s. 5/
Back then young Chinese attacked their elders and tore down ancient Chinese relics. They desecrated, looted and destroyed the graves of Confucius and his descendants. This was done on the orders of Mao Zedong to erase history. 6/
We must embrace the best of our history both black and white. Our true history of national liberation that began in 1776 was called forth in an imperfect fashion in 1781 made stronger but still suffered the fatal flaw of slavery in 1787 but strengthened by the Bill of Rights. 7/
Slavery was routed after a long and bloody war and the Union consolidated. And over 12 years we saw the Constitution amended, slavery outlawed, & blacks made full citizens of the USA, but then a corrupt bargain ended this spring of freedom and the Dream was deferred 80 years. 8/
80 years of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, & it’s rebuilding. Despite best efforts to destroy blacks in America this community survived and grew. Black culture came to dominate in the USA & its influence felt around the world. 9/
Thurgood Marshall and other black lawyers with the NAACP successfully challenged Jim Crow in the Courts and brought the system of legal institutional racism down in a series of cases that reached the Supreme Court in the 1950s and early 60s. 10/
Between 1955 and April 1968 Martin Luther King Jr & the civil rights mvmt that he led thru a series of nonviolent actions first made real what the Supreme Court had affirmed ending segregation & pushing for voting rights in legislation that was signed by Eisenhower & Johnson. 11/
MLK was assassinated on April 4, 1968 & that same month in his memory the 1968 Fair Housing Act was made law. The riots celebrated and promoted by the Black Power Movement engulfed the United States afterwards led to the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. dademag.com/features/2020/…
