This is what Deoliver47 talks about in her diary that's currently topping the Rec List:
We will watch. I am watching. What do I see? I see a group of self-absorbed keyboard warriors pompously proclaiming their righteous indignation over a bill in Congress. A bill that might let some corporations off the hook. A bill that violates their understanding of a piece of toilet paper. A bill that has no meaning. Laws that have no meaning. A system fatally flawed from its inception that over the years we try to fix – cut and paste – with amendments. Howls of outrage take up bandwidth. Crucify him, crucify him. How dare he......he has failed us – quick ....let us turn our backs. Quick let us cut off his money ...quick let us vomit up the kool aide ...quick let us do the job of the republicans.
We must maintain our principle they rant, brandishing words of scorn. The Constitution they intone in solemnity ...has been violated! To arms...the battle cry....lash Obama...false Obama...Obama – they gasp, "is a(hushed tones) politician!" Oh My!!!
And so they rant on...in diary after diary after diary...and I sit in wonder and wonder – where were you when we were dying? Where are you when were crying? Who among you challenged COINTELPRO? Who fought J Edgar Hoover? Who among you will go to jail for me? Will die for me, will call out the names of the dead killed by that piece of paper you now brandish like a sword to impale your former Hero? Oh how your Champion has fallen and will you banish him from your side of this game called politics? For I see now that for you it is but a game.
Deoliver's not alone in the AA community for thinking that. The late Steve Gilliard expressed similar opinions:
Unless George Bush brings back segregation, I think fleeing is a severe overreaction. Because many of you really don't understand how hellish America can be. Until 1967, blacks couldn't go into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They would be refused entry by the guards. Thomas Hoving stopped that as one of his first acts as director. That wasn't Alabama, that was New York, three years after my birth.
People forget or are unaware of what a real American police state was like. You can call it Mississippi. When ONE black man, a crazy man named James Meredith, tried to go to Ole Miss, there were days of riots. People died. When little girls wanted to go to a "white" school, they had to bring in the 101st ABN.
The state of Mississippi had a three level repressive network, the white citizens council, state and local police and the sovergnity commission:
The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (Commission) was created by an act of the Mississippi legislature on March 29, 1956. The agency was established in the White Millsaps students marching in protest of death of JSU student Ben Brownwake of the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Like other states below the Mason-Dixon Line, Mississippi responded to Brown with legislation to shore up the walls of racial separation. The act creating the Commission provided the agency with broad powers....................
The Commission's activities were shaped by the preference of the governor and skills of its staff............... Ross Barnett had no patience for the muted methods of the Commission. He envisioned an overt and expanded role for the agency, and under his direction, the Commission initiated a Speakers Bureau to travel the nation presenting the Mississippi perspective. The Commission also sponsored a film entitled "Message from Mississippi," which portrayed segregation in glowing terms. Following the integration debacle at the University of Mississippi, the Commission also assisted with the printing and distribution of the Mississippi General Legislative Investigating Committee's report on the incident, as well as sponsoring and distributing a movie on the subject entitled "Oxford USA."5
[...]
The Sovregnity Commission is what a police state does. Not the Patriot Act, not some fundies. Not losing a close election. They interfered in the political process, used police powers against political opponents and covered up criminal acts. Nothing the current administration has done is close to this. But few whites remember it or consider this in their rantings. They didn't build concentration camps, they didn't order murders, they just used the power of the state against those who opposed them. When they weren't attacking protestors, and I don't mean with nets and short term arrests, but with violence.
So how did people respond to this war on their rights?
During the 1960's Fannie Lou Hamer became interested in the civil rights movement. She became involved in voter registration when members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to Mississippi. She remarked, "One day in early August, I heard that some young people had come to town teaching people how to register to vote. I have always wanted to do something to help myself and my race, but I did not know how to go about it. So, I went to one of the meetings in Ruleville. That night, I was showed how to fill out a form for registration. The next day, August 31, 1962, I went to Indianola, Mississippi to fill out a form at the registrar's office. I took the test."
During this time, African-Americans were deterred from voting in the South. When Hamer and others from her city went to register to vote, they were asked to interpret the state's constitution. So, naturally, being unable to do so, Hamer flunked and was not allowed to register to vote. On the return trip home, the bus in which she and the others were riding was stopped for being "the wrong color." She and the others were jailed and later released. This sort of harassment was a typical experience for blacks in the South. When she returned home, Marlow, her landowner gave her an ultimatum, either stop trying to vote or leave his property. Hamer chose to leave the property and her family. Her husband remained on the property to continue working. Hamer stayed with various friends and neighbors. At each house in which she was staying, night riders caused violence.
In 1963, after her third attempt, Hamer passed the test and became a registered voter. In order to assist other African-Americans in registering to vote, Hamer became a field secretary for SNCC and traveled across the South. On June 9, 1963, during one of the trips to South Carolina, the bus in which she and other SNCC workers was riding was stopped in Winona, Mississippi. When some of the workers went into the "white only" waiting room, the whole group was arrested. While in custody, Hamer and other workers were beaten unmercifully. Hamer suffered extreme injuries, which bothered her throughout the rest of her life. She said of the incident:
"Three white men came into my room. One was a state highway policeman...They said they were going to make me wish I was dead. They made me lay down on my face and they ordered two Negro prisoners to beat me with a blackjack. That was unbearable. The first prisoner beat me until he was exhausted, then the second Negro began to beat me until I was hard, 'til I couldn't bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That's how I got this blood clot in my eye--the sight's nearly gone now. My kidney was injured from the blows they gave me on the back."
SNCC lawyers bailed her and the others out and filed suit against the Winona police. All the whites who were charged were found not guilty. This injustice made Hamer more determined to fight for equal rights in Mississippi. She is famous for the words she said when she awoke in the mornings, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."
1964 was an election year. Unable to attend a local precinct meeting of the Democratic Party, SNCC formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). At the Democratic national convention in Atlantic City, Fannie Hamer and other delegates challenged the Party for not addressing the concerne of the blacks of Mississippi. Hamer spoke to the Credentials Committee during the convention about the injustices of the all-white Democratic delegation. In part of the speech she asked, "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we are threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings?" A compromise was made in which two seats would be given to the MFDP. The Democratic Party promised never to have an all-white delegation again. In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights act, empowering federal registrars to register African American votes in the South.
Hamer continued to work to better conditions in Mississippi by organizing grass-roots antipoverty projects. She became a sought after national speaker and worked to unite the black and white factions of the Mississippi Democratic party. In 1965, "Mississippi" magazine named her one of six "Women of Influence" in the state. In 1968, she helped create a food cooperative, to help the poor obtain more meat in their diet. In 1969, she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in which 5,000 people were able to grow their own food and own 680 acres of land. In 1972, she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus. During the last ten years of her life, she worked on issues such as school desegregation, child day-care, and low-income housing.
If you want, you can google the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and see the hundreds of pages of files they have on her. It might take a while to read through them. This is the kind of thing people really do when they want change. They fight, sometimes against really long odds and they risk themselves.
[...]
People forget what American used to be like. They forget that repression actually didn't just exist in America, it was the law of the land.
Could things get bad? Sure. But you don't whine about it, you fight to change it. These people weren't playing, they weren't talking about adjusting the law, they didn't follow any law and they damn near killed Hamer for asking for the right to vote. They followed her, sent informents on her, used the law to get her.
People forget that if there had been a national vote on segregation, the law would not have changed. The FBI and state police fed every dirty tidbit of info they had on these people, leaked it to the media, tried to pick more suitable leaders. People remember the civil rights strugle from a few key moments, but it was an 11 year fight from Brown to the Civil Right Act of 1965. And even within the black community, challenging the white power structure was not a popular act. It was nasty political battle from day one, and a lot of people sat on their hands or sided with the people in power, and they had good excuses. But they were only excuses.
So when people talk about Bush, I remember America has been a lot worse if you weren't white.
Steve also noted how deadly it still was, even in 2007, to be a black man running for office in places like Louisiana.
And there is of course the late Langston Hughes:
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!
I think you get the picture by now.
America hasn't really been America for a large number of people, not until relatively recently. Things were bad beyond the imaginings of those of us who didn't grow up black. Even today, America is still not America for blacks in much of the South or even the North.
So really, for those who think "oh no, things have NEVER NEVER EVER before been as bad as they are now!" Deoliver, Steve and Langston beg to differ, and say that they've been much worse -- and that people who were willing to take risks, who didn't run away to London or otherwise go into exile when the going got tough, are the ones who got things done.
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