Fred Hiatt, of all people, has a nice introduction to a new outdoor museum and memorial to the long term effects of white supremacy. The memorial is in Montgomery.
What the piece captures succintly is the idea that slavery - or more accurately the expendability of black bodies - didn't end in 1865. Chattel slavery may have lasted from 1630-1865, but it was replaced with another power system that replicated slavery until the 1960s. After Jim Crow was dismantled, yet another form of racism was created to make sure black labor and black lives did not threaten white labor and white lives.
After Selma, Martin Luther King went to Chicago, where he worked against the de facto segregation of the North. The first African Americans to flee the Jim Crow South were met with violence in St. Louis, Detroit and Chicago. King - who had been lionized by northern moderates when he confronted the brutality of Jim Crow - was suddenly unwelcome in sensible white circles. His criticisms were too unnerving, too threatening.
That legacy remains unaddressed for many Americans. Slavery or Jim Crow was easy to condemn, but the continuing legacy and the institutions that were created from them remain in place. We will grapple with them and learn to understand them.
Or they will destroy us.
No comments:
Post a Comment