Four hundred years of African American history - call to historical action

https://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/columnists/hannibal-b-johnson-years-of-african-american-history-cannot-be/article_85daa3f5-3ec0-533c-8d81-93e9f691798a.html


An editorial published in Tulsa World- by Hannibal B. Johnson

400-years of African American history.
As Maya Angelou said: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived; but, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

Hannibal B. Johnson: 400 years of African American history cannot be unlived, but it should be chronicled

"We have evolved, but our evolution is incomplete."

I am honored to serve on the 15-member 400 Years of African American History Commission. This national body will develop and carry out activities throughout the United States to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of 20 enslaved Africans in the English colonies at Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619. Thus began American chattel slavery.

The legacy of that peculiar and odious institution still plagues us. We will never understand the history of our nation until we acknowledge and examine the centrality of the slave trade to colonial and early American society.

At a time when racial tumult dominated the airwaves and the Civil Rights Movement captured headlines, James Baldwin remarked: “To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.” Baldwin’s provocative prose highlighted the wide gap between the ideals and aspirations of American citizenship and the realities of the black experience.

We have evolved, but our evolution is incomplete.

The commission aims to recognize the courage, steadfastness and resilience of African Americans from that seminal moment in 1619 forward, while simultaneously highlighting the myriad contributions of African Americans to American society.

From enduring slavery to fighting in the Civil War to working against the oppressive Jim Crow laws to prolonged civil rights struggles, the rich history of African Americans in the United States and their prodigious gifts to the nation began hundreds of years ago and extend to the present.

The robust narrative the commission will draw upon includes both troubling and triumphant times.

Those troubling times include the “nadir of race relations in America,” i.e., the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early part of the 20th century; lynchings, a variant of domestic terrorism, including the infamous 1911 lynching of Laura Nelson and her son, L.W., in Okemah; the 1919 “Red Summer” riots; and the (tragic) 1921 Tulsa Race Riot.

The triumphant times include the proliferation of all-black towns in Oklahoma; the emergence of “Black Wall Street”; the Harlem Renaissance, an intellectual, social, and artistic explosion in the 1920s; and the galvanization of black masses and allies into a powerful and effective Civil Rights Movement (!) that arguably continues today.

The commission’s work includes planning, developing and implementing a series of programs and activities throughout 2019 to tell the full story of African Americans over the last 400 years, adding context and nuance to an American history curriculum too often short on both.

As part of its work, the commission will establish a clearinghouse for commemorative events; collaborate with initiatives that support its work; utilize information-sharing networks to push forward information about the commemoration; and award grants for suitable projects and initiatives.

This work reminds me of my ongoing efforts with the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, www.tulsa2021.org. 

In fact, that body leverages the rich history of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, in ways that tell the story of Tulsa’s African American community and promotes the entrepreneurial and community spirits that defined the Greenwood District's pioneers.

Central to both undertakings is crafting an inclusive, honest rendition of American history that pulls in and integrates heretofore marginalized narratives. African American history is part and parcel of American history. One can neither understand nor appreciate the latter without sufficient grounding in the former.

We each have a role to play in adding underrepresented voices to our historical chorus. Your investment in the process — be it through time, talent or treasure — is essential to our success.

Read about the contributions of persons of African descent to our shared American adventure. Volunteer with an organization whose mission work centers on diversity and inclusion, civil rights advocacy or education reform. 

Contribute to causes that help heal our history and narrow racial disparities.

As Maya Angelou so cogently noted: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived; but, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

Let us mark 400 years of African American history with a view toward leveraging the triumphs and avoiding a repetition of the tragedies.

Hannibal B. Johnson is a Harvard-educated attorney, author, consultant and college professor.

Fueling the tragic Ferguson firestorm is grandstanding prosecutiing attorney Robert P. McCulloch

Sometimes, people really do have to "blame the messenger". St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert P. McCulloch behaved with annoying bravado and should be fired for mishandling the police shooting of the young unarmed black man named Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. 

Race relations between Blacks and Whites in America are obviously at an all time low. 

Therefore, we didn't need the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert P. McCulloch to incite more trouble. With what appeared, to me, to be a smirk on his face, he stepped up to the international television cameras with the bravado of the swashbuckling antagonist Gaston, to explain the secret Grand Jury's decision about whether or not there was probable cause to bring police officer Darren Wilson to trial, for killing Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, in August 2014.

Although I do not intend to second guess the Grand Jury's decision to protect Officer Darren Wilson from prosecution, I can evaluate the behavior of the prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch. His inept handling of this race relations tragedy has made a bad situation much worse. 

Police Officer Wilson, 28, will face no charges for shooting Michael Brown. As reported by McCulloch, the Grand Jury examined the evidence and did not find probable cause to bring forth any prosecution of the police officer for the killing.  Following McCulloch's reading of this decision, the streets of Ferguson Missouri became torched, as the decision caused a firestorm of destruction. Demonstrators believed the Michael Brown shooting was another example of enabling the police to single out young black men, without allowing due process, if they become suspects of misconduct of any kind.

Obviously, McCulloch is a miserable communicator. He rehearsed the cold reading of the Grand Jury's decision statement, after keeping the public and reporters waiting for at least 4 hours to hear the anticipated decision. Following the reading, he gave condescending answers to questions from reporters during the press conference. More to the point, knowing how the decision would likely be ill received, why did McCulloch wait until after sundown to grandstand his announcement? In my opinion, McCulloch created an incendiary situation by timing his announcement concurrent with late night prime time television coverage and thereby enabling the violence that, predictably, erupted after the information was made public.

Missouri public officials must've known that McCulloch was the worst person to give this outcome information to the community, to the US and, ultimately, to the world. Although I have no idea about protocol for reading a Grand Jury decision, it seems to me a judge would have been a better communicator than McCulloch. If a press conference was deemed to be necessary, it seems to me, there should've been more than one person available standing alongside McCulloch, to answer questions. Instead, the prosecuting attorney stood alone before TV cameras, like he was the victorious gladiator in a struggle for the "up" or "down" vote of his supporters. Indeed, McCulloch gets a "thumbs down" from me. His communications failure resulted in the worst night of violence since the August 2014 incident, where Michael Brown was shot dead in Ferguson, at about 12 noon, and then laid in the street for four hours afterwards. 

At this point, the sad death of the unarmed Michael Brown is nearly secondary to the unraveling situation resulting from prosecutor McCulloch's arrogant mismanagement.

Perhaps the only justice, as tangential as it may be, to the killing of the unarmed Michael Brown might be to see the prosecuting attorney  McCulloch fired. 

This man has misrepresented our judicial system by self appointing himself to be the judge, jury and communicator about this horrific incident.

Nevertheless, Michael Brown's death cannot be avenged. Race relations in the U.S. are probably worse than they've ever been. The more this particular Ferguson incident is discussed, the worse it gets for everyone, because there's no apparent resolution. Sooner or later, there will be another person in the litany of incidents without resolution.....Rodney King...Treyvon Martin and....Michael Brown....?  

Perhaps Americans need to experience a 1960's Civil Rights Movement revival.    

Meanwhile, our sympathies continue to grow for the family of Michael Brown and for all the victims in Ferguson, Missouri, who are trying to understand how to fix this racial tragedy.

Civil Rights History - Living on the Outside and Looking Inside: Through the camera of The Butler

Being a Caucasian,  I can only wonder what it was been like to be born a Negro in the 1920s, and live through the 1950's and 60s, American Civil Rights Movement.  This racially difficult time was even more conflicting for hard working Blacks who were trying to succeed in a White Man's world.  Having grown up in Baltimore, Maryland, I certainly saw The Civil Rights Movement blowing up around me, but I was never on the inside looking out.  Rather, I pretty much stood back and watched it happen.

My take away from the movie "The Butler" was, "Did I really - REALLY?...know what it was like to live through that difficult era"? The answer: "Of course not", even though, I was there when it all happened.

Consequently, I departed the movie theater after viewing "The Butler', feeling ashamed that I didn't know, or maybe, didn't much care, what Black people felt during the 1950s and 60s, when our nation was ransacked by racial turmoil and divisiveness with The Vietnam War.  

Having seen the movie "The Butler", therefore, I wondered if the version I saw was the same, or somewhat different, than the one describe by David Denby in The New Yorker August 26, 2013.

Denby is a well known film critic. Nevertheless, his qualifications for writing his review of "The Butler' sure don't show up in his critique of the Lee Daniels movie, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, about some ordinary lives of Blacks living on the inside of the history of the Civil Rights Movement.  

Rather than inform readers about the salient points of the movie, Denby writes a nonchalant review, thereby, missing the point of the story.  He beings with several paragraphs about another movie "The Last King of Scotland" (starring Whitaker), before he finally starts his critique, about two paragraphs down, writing, "As 'The Butler' tells it, Cecil Gaines was born in the twenties, on a cotton farm in Georgia that was run like a plantation....".    This ambiguous sentence sets the review reader up for a disingenuous plot.  

"As 'The Butler' tells it"...certainly doesn't reach out and grab a reader. Rather, it sets us up as though the plot might not be true. Yes, "The Butler" is a story about a real person who worked as a butler in the White House for several US Presidents. Some personal facts in the movie might not be true, but the narrator of the film is entitled to his veracity, as this is, after all, a movie.  Nevertheless, Denby sets the reader up for something like, "oh, yes...I forgot to mention, Cecil was born on a plantation..." (inappropriate yawn here).

In fact, the movie's opening scene looks like a pre-Civil War plantation with Negroes working just like slaves when one of the cruel owners of the property wants to have his way with a woman who happens to be the mother of one of the children workers, named Cecil Gaines.  This little boy witnesses his father murdered in front of him for challenging the abuse of his mother.  "As 'The Butler' tells it," is a condescending and desecrating statement describing the movie's opening.  Really, Mr. Denby, maybe you should live on a cotton plantation and work like a slave before you write another ambiguous opening about "The Butler".

I initially thought, hmmm, maybe Mr. Denby just didn't experience The Civil Rights Movement living in the United States; or, maybe he just didn't understand this racially divided time in American history.  But, not so! Mr. Denby is older than me and, therefore, has no excuse for snubbing "The Butler" with his uppity arrogance.

Neither me or anyone in my extended family will ever know what it was like to be born on a cotton plantation where land owners use their labor like objects of desire and beasts of burden.  

In the Lee Daniels movie, The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, the story transports those of use who lived through the Civil Rights Movement inside what it was like to be among those who participated in this embarrassing and tumultuous time in American history.

The soul of the lead, "The Butler", Mr. Cecil Gaines, is the character's steadfast dignity while he lived through, inside as well as with those sadly conflicting times.  Gaines dedicated himself to his formal duties as a White House butler, while his family became enveloped in the challenging social fabric of their economic middle class status and day to day existence.  His oldest son, Lewis (David Oyelowo), falls out of this charade by joining the Civil Rights Movement and the Freedom Riders.  When this happens in Gaines' family, the functions he tends to at the White House are seriously challenged by reality. This crescendo builds, especially when Mr. Gaines witnesses world events unfold, first hand, in the presence of several US Presidents, who are framing policies impacting his two sons lives.  Eventually, this duplicity becomes critical when his younger son joins the Army to fight for a nation where he doesn't have equal Civil Rights, but, nevertheless, says he wants to fight "for my country", in The Vietnam War.

Mr. Denby's superficial analysis of "The Butler" lacks emotion. He seems to feel like there's just too much going on in the Daniels movie, like a parallel to the ridiculous escapades of Forrest Gump, only with a Black cast.  Indeed, Forrest Gump was also born in the South on a plantation, but we know, at the outset, that he's a special child who lives life like "a bowl of chocolates".  

A totally different experience is described by "The Butler", who lives his life organizing pretty service trays, while observing history through his dedication to hard work.  

Let's be honest, Forrest Gump was never a believable movie but it gains nearly 10 starts on the iMDb website reviews.

Conversely, "The Butler" story is based on a real person's life. Challenges experienced by the lead character, Gaines, are those only a person on the inside of these tumultuous times could possibly understand.  

"As 'The Butler' tells it"... is a riveting story packed with historically generated emotion.  Not only did Mr. Denby miss the point of the movie, he wrote a review that makes me even more embarrassed about my naive lack of empathy for The Civil Rights Movement.  

Although I'll always be a Caucasian, viewing Civil Rights on the outside while looking inside of the life of Black America, I will, hopefully, always remember to be humble in the presence of people who are on the inside looking out.  Those behind the camera, while filming "The Butler", should be very proud of their experience, which is now immortalized in a terrific film.