America's Violent Past and the question of Race

By Tamar Manasseh -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Jan 24, 2011 - 11:32:28 AM

The unfortunate news that 19 people had been shot, 6 dead and a member of Congress clinging to life after being shot in the head in Tucson, Arizona Jan. 8 sadly came as no surprise to me.

If anything, it was expected earlier. However, the one thing that I did find surprising was how shocking this event seemed to be to everyone else.

It began with the so-called “birthers” questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, then escalated into the Tea Party's racist rhetoric and imagery. Let's not forget the power of the National Rifle Association and when gun rights activists converged on the U.S. Capitol in April of last year with loaded weapons in tow!

We've seen violence during the midterm campaigns, when apparently a Rand Paul supporter stomped on the head of a female protester, and we all remember the wrath that was unleashed upon any Democrat who would dare to support President Obama's healthcare reform bill. Oh, and do you remember Republicans, led by Michelle Bachman (R-MN) cheering the Tea Partiers?

The threats have increased, the intimidation has continued. This has been coming. We all saw it coming.

America's race problem

Whether we like it or not, any time this country is confronted with the question of race, it responds violently.

In 1865 with passage of the 13th amendment, slavery was abolished. Then came the 14th amendment, passed in 1868 giving Blacks citizenship and all rights and privileges which would come along with it. Then came the 15th amendment in 1870 which would give Blacks the right to vote. On paper, this looked good, but to the people it was a much different story. In 1865 the Ku Klux Klan was organized as a “social club.” In May 1866, 46 Blacks were killed when their schools and churches were burned by a mob of White men in Memphis, Tennessee.

In July of the same year, 34 Blacks were killed in New Orleans by an angry White mob. Author George C. Wright reported in his study on Kentucky that more than one third of the lynchings that occurred in that state (117 of 353) happened between 1865 and 1874, “with 2 years alone, 1868 (with 21) and 1870 (with 36) accounting for the extremely high number of 57.” Estimates that are more recent suggest that as many as 20,000 Black people may have been lynched by the KKK during Reconstruction. In the 1880s and 1890s the numbers would gradually increase.

One would think that the government passing laws that would give freedom to an enslaved people and would allow people who were, before ratification of the 14th amendment, considered only 3/5 of a person, to go on and not only vote but to also be office holders themselves would be a good thing but it absolutely was not.

For the first time, the slave supposedly had the same rights, more skills allowing him to be more productive and prosperous than their former masters, and to hold office which would help form and create laws to govern those who once governed them. This was a blow to not only the social structure of the south but to the very psychology of southern society. After all, they had not been the builders, cooks, farmers, and blacksmiths. It was their former Black slaves who held the expertise. The only skill the Whites had was counting the money they made from the blood and sweat of their slaves.

Clearly, they could not live in a world like this, so through murder, intimidation, and Jim Crow Laws, they had found a way to keep Black people picking their cotton, cooking their food, cleaning their homes and raising their children. To them sanity had been restored for a while, until Black people decided that they had, had enough and wanted to take advantage of the rights the law had given them a generation earlier.

Then the Civil Rights struggle came. Blacks wanted to vote. They wanted to shop, eat, sit, work and go to school with everyone else. They no longer wanted to be relegated to the back of the bus or the “colored” entrance or segregated schools. This desire would set off a brand new torrent of White anger. Not much different than the one seen during Reconstruction, however, this time their behavior would be met with a more determined and militant Black generation. One that never knew bondage. They would start a movement that would catch on all over the country. That, coupled with a seemingly unsympathetic government the old Dixie establishment seemed to be the right recipe to crush injustice. Or so we thought.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would spark a mass exodus of Democrats from the party. Assassinations, bombings and of course lynchings followed. Even in the face of all of that “progress” that had been made. There was no going back.

Blacks would go on to accomplish much during the next fifty years, even electing a Black president. This very existence of this president would go on to make America confront the question of race yet once again.

This time the White establishment would create a brand new party just for people who hate Blacks and anybody else that is not White. Ironically, one was already in existence, but apparently, they did not hate Blacks enough!

I am not surprised by this event and I don't think I would be surprised by anything that is done by a people desperate to restore order to “their” country. Unfortunately, I believe there are more would be assassins out there waiting to be activated. As long as the American people “want their country back” and are being told “don't retreat, reload,” we will see these things.

As if to underscore the point, that sentinel of sagacity, the infamous Sharon Angle of Nevada, advocaing the possibility of dissatisfied Americans exercising “their second amendment remedies,” along with the recent tragedy in Tucson demonstrates that there will always be another little “Terror Baby” waiting on their chance to show the “Mama Grizzlies” what they can do.

(Tamar Manasseh is the youth coordinator at Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken EHC in Chicago. She can be reached at [email protected])

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