For Blacks across the United States, it’s been a long walk to freedom, paved with discrimination, injustice, domestic terrorism, and an unrelenting fight towards showcasing, “I, Too, Am America.”
That long freedom walk is ongoing. And the most perilous parts of the inhumane treatment of Black Americans—beginning with 400 years of slavery—are now getting a rebrand thanks to the culture war generals in the Republican Party.
Of course, this is a misguided approach. We can’t create a future of progress without taking lessons from our past—and slavery was America’s original sin.
ADVERTISEMENT
But to let Florida’s new Black history curriculum tell it, slaves developed skills that could be used for personal benefit. The narrative turns an economic engine for white wealth where the buying and selling of Black bodies, lynchings, beatings, rape, and forced labor with no pay were all commonplace—into essentially a public works program where slaves were the apprentices learning valuable skills.
Rightfully so, the curriculum has drawn strong rebuke from civil rights leaders, advocates, educators, and the Black community writ large. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke out against the Florida curriculum saying, “How is it that anyone could suggest that amidst these atrocities [of slavery], there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”
As civil rights-era policy wins unravel across the country, our children now face obstacles to even learning about freedom fighters. Book bans and the silencing of teaching “divisive concepts”—including tragic chapters of the American experiment like slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and more—spread like wildfire across red states.
Any narrative that doesn’t tell America’s complete story—which any rational adult could tell you has both “good” and bad” elements—is a slap in the face to Black America. But Republicans know this. They also know it’s good politics to reel in white grievance voters as part of their “big tent.”
Contrast GOP efforts to whitewash slavery with President Joe Biden signing a proclamation this week designating a national monument to honor Emmett Till, the young Black child who was abducted, beaten, and murdered by white vigilantes in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The national monument will have multiple sites in Chicago (Till’s hometown) and Mississippi.
Till’s brutal murder—and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s advocacy to show the world the evil of commonplace lynching in the Jim Crow South—ignited the nation and served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.
Erecting monuments is a welcome, overdue gesture—but it comes at a curious time.
When Mamie Till-Mobley allowed photos of her son’s open casket—revealing his savagely brutalized body—to be published in Jet magazine, she knew it would be provocative—even divisive. But that was the point. For Mamie, it was more important to show the world the extent of suffering Blacks faced, put a face to the evil of white supremacist terrorism, and spotlight why everyone in America should care, not just those living in the Jim Crow South.
US President Joe Biden signs a proclamation to establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Illinois and Mississippi during an event in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Tuesday, July 25, 2023.
Demetrius Freeman / GettyToday, Republicans seek to shield children from such harsh truths about America, lest white children be made “uncomfortable.” That is the goal of the book bans. Silencing history. Silencing the fight for equality. Silencing Black America.
Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton—the state’s first Black lieutenant governor—told me in an email, “[Emmett Till’s] story reminds us that still today, being a Black person in America can often be a death sentence because of discrimination and hatred fueled by systemic racism. ” She added, “As some state legislatures in our country attempt to water down Black history, and minimize the pain and trauma of racial violence, it is as important as ever that we not only remember these wounds, but also the individuals who refused to be silenced. We stand on their shoulders, and this memorial serves as a reminder that we must remember our past to build the brighter future we seek.”
In modern day America, one political party is doing everything in its power to turn the clock back on racial progress, as the other major party moves to honor Black history—because it is American history.
Black people cannot be erased, neither can the American history that treated them as second class citizens, the Constitution that saw them as three-fifths of a person, or the current Republican Party that argues Blacks were better off because of slavery.
If the most damaging, brutal, and inhumane multi-generational course of pain and suffering isn’t seen for what it is—how do we even attempt to make sense of the laws passed after slavery ended that continued to create underclass status for Blacks? Like voting rights restrictions, restrictive covenants prohibiting Blacks from having housing in white communities, and the vast array of Jim Crow laws and segregationist policies—slavery laid the groundwork for systemic racism and unbridled white supremacy.
The murder of Emmett Till was the culmination of these things. Remembering Till is remembering America for who she is and, if Republicans get their way, sadly who she might return to.
