Inside My Head

The first slaves came to Jamestown, VA in 1619 as indentured servants and were traded for food. 244 years later, former President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, but the recorded date for the last slave to be freed happened on June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas. Now in 2008, the United States has its first black presidential candidate, so have we finally overcome?

Racism has been and continues to be a learned behavior that is passed down from one generation to the next and is also brought about by one’s own fear of the unknown and of the differences of the next person. June 19, 1865 IS the day all slaves were “freed”, but freedom is only a word because the act of being free depends on all those involved to acknowledge and respect freedom. Examples supporting this run rampant throughout our nation’s history from the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1866 to the Southern states unanimously rejecting the 14th amendment of due process and equal protection under the law for all citizens. Former President Andrew Johnson went so far as to establish the “Black Codes” which severely limited the freedoms and citizenships of Southern Blacks. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was the congressional approval of equal rights to Blacks in public accomodations and jury duty, but in 1883, this law was invalidated by the supreme court on the grounds that the 14th amendment forbade states, not citizens, from discriminating. In 1887, Homer Plessy staged the first sit-in on a white-only railroad car, and was arrested and brought before Judge John Ferguson and even with Plessy’s argument that his civil rights had been violated, Ferguson found Plessy guilty. The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson was then brought before the supreme court and “separate but equal” facilities were ruled constitutional under the 14th amendment.

In the 1900’s even with the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, the city of Baltimore, Maryland approved the first city ordinance designating black and white neighborhoods while 8 more cities quickly followed suit. On April 11, 1913, former president Woodrow Wilson’s administration began government wide segregation of work places, bathrooms and even cafeterias and restaurants. In 1915, filmmaker, D.W. Griffith, released the controversial “Birth of A Nation” which depicted Blacks as inferiors tricked into rising above their current situation by misinformed abolitionists and vindictive reconstruction congressmen who had betrayed Lincoln’s benign plans for the defeated South. This movie created black stereotypes that other film studios used for years to come and the success of this movie is evident in the $18 million dollars it grossed which translates to $360 million in these times. In the summer of 1919, there were approximately 21 different riots in various cities and states that were so violent and bloody, it was called the “red summer”, but arguably the deadliest racial confrontation happened June 1, 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma which destroyed a 30 square block area of a primarily black neighborhood and the exact number of people killed was never truly able to be determined.

Now that you have an idea of what blacks have had to go through, how much better off are we now? True enough, our ancestors suffered through much so that now we don’t have to. Black people enjoy the millionaire lifestyle as platinum rappers and celebrated athletes, but where is the Martin Luther King or Malcolm X of this generation? Is the majority of society happy to see blacks in the field of sports, but not as enthusiastic about a black person that chooses to flex their mental muscle instead? We are applauding 2008 as the year we have Barack Obama, but only 10 years ago in Jasper, Texas, James Byrd Jr. was killed by 3 whites by being bound with a logging chain and dragged to his death. We as black people have shown through the years that we won’t take racism lying down, but we as a nation also need to stand up and take more active strides against all forms of racial injustice.

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