Winter 2019 Your Opinion Matters


African American History: Moments and Migrations


The HBCU Advocate 13


Governor Northam Would Be Wise to Step Down


statues Senate


BY REVEREND JESSE JACKSON, SR. Photo courtesy of Sitinmovement.org


Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has


Picking crabs for market, on banks of Chesapeake Bay Photo courtesy of LOC BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX


Every year the Association for


the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) choses a theme for Black History Month. This year they have chosen, Black Migrations emphasizing “the movement of people of African descent to new destinations and


subsequently to new social


realities.” Their theme is important, especially when we think of the “Great Migration”, the time after World War I when Black folk fled the oppressive south looking for a new reality.


Why not flee? Black men were lynched in their uniforms when they came


back into realities even as they embraced


enslavement-type a


country that did not appreciation them. Just a few years after Black men returned from World War I, white people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so jealous of African American economic accomplishment, torched the 30 block Black-owned Greenwood community on a pretense.


Nowhere to run,


nowhere to hide from virulent racism. And yet,


Black folks had


mobility. Often, we came together to create community. We left oppressive spaces to find new ones that were only marginally less oppressive. As ASALH puts it, “African American migration patterns included


relocation from


southern farms to southern cities; from the South to the Northeast, Midwest, and West; from the Caribbean to US cities as well as to migrant labor farms; and the emigration of noted African Americans to Africa and to European cities, such as Paris and London, after the end of World War I and World War II.”


Here’s what it means – Black


folks were moving, migrating, making it happen, grasping at reality and opportunity


despite every barrier.


Black folks moved because they were looking for safe places to survive and thrive, to enjoy life despite the racial obstacles that were thrown at us. Black folks moved because movement was preferable to standing still. We moved because we had to.


At the same time, migration is not only about a movement of space, but also about a movement of mindset. The Mississippi men and women who moved to Chicago had to change the way they chose to encounter the world. They had to move from being sharecroppers to being entitled voters. Their movement changed the way that politics and economics influenced major cities. Even though their movement did not necessarily result in “fairness”, their movement and their changed participation made things far more fair, and the political process somewhat more representative.


Migration. Movement.


Mobilization. A shifting of the brain. A shifting of the heart. While ASALH would like us to focus on the physical migration that happened in the 20th century, I would also like us to focus on the necessary heart migration that must take place to propel us through the 21st century. Our Black History Month story can’t simply be a story of the ways we moved to accommodate economic shifts, but it must also be a story of the ways we have moved our hearts.


What do we mean when we say


Black community? What do we mean when we embrace the theme


admitted that he blackened his face as part of a Michael Jackson costume for a dance party. He also initially admitted that he was one of the participants in a racist photo — of one person dressed in full Klan regalia and another in blackface —that appeared on his 1984 yearbook page.


The next day, however, he


reversed himself, saying it could not have been him, bizarrely arguing that given how difficult it was to get shoe polish off his face after the dance contest, he surely would not have done it again.


The governor apologized,


noting: “In the place and time where I grew up, many actions we rightfully recognize as abhorrent today were commonplace.” Yes, 1984 was a long time ago, but it was two decades after the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights laws, and three decades after Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation unconstitutional.


In 1984, I made my first run for


the presidency. In 1985, Douglas Wilder became the first African- American elected


statewide as


lieutenant governor in Virginia, on his way to being elected governor four years later. Northam’s actions were offensive and wrong even at the time he committed them.


America’s long, sordid tradition


of blackface minstrelsy — white people in blackface — was designed to burlesque black people, to portray them


as dumb, grotesque and


lascivious and was not incidentally part of propaganda for slavery.


The governor said that his actions


then do not reflect his attitude, his views or his policies now or at any time throughout his military, medical and


public career. All of us are


sinners. Grace and redemption must be accorded to all who atone. I believe deeply that a person can be redeemed from a hideous past.


Northam’s record has been


positive. In stark contrast to President Trump, he acted bravely during the


Leader


racist protests in Charlottesville, Va., that resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer. Trump infamously embraced the neo-Nazi protesters, arguing that there were “good people on both sides.” Northam has advocated taking down the Confederate Virginia.


in


In stark contrast to Republican Majority


celebrating Mitch


McConnell, portrayed in an infamous picture


the Confederate


flag, Northam has pushed to advance voting rights in Virginia. McConnell recently scorned legislation to expand and defend voting rights as a “power grab” while defending Republican efforts to suppress the vote across the country.


Trump and McConnell remain


in power, yet the right-wing talking heads who celebrate Trump and McConnell are condemning Northam, demonstrating not their virtue but their rapacious partisanship.


Trump and McConnell have


plenty of company on their side of the aisle. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions contended the Voting Rights Act was “intrusive” on states’ rights.


Then there’s Republican Sen.


Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi. She was elected in November despite saying she’d happily sit in the front row of a “public hanging” if invited by a supporter. She didn’t say it 35 years ago. She said it a few months ago.


The recently elected Republican


governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, also played the race card with little to no blowback from his party. He warned the voters of his state not to “monkey this up” by electing his African-American opponent, Andrew Gillum.


And before narrowly defeating


African-American gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, Brian Kemp was the Georgia secretary of state and purged hundreds of thousands of Georgians from the voting rolls, most of them African-Americans.


As a practical matter, it will be


impossible for Northam to lead the state of Virginia after this revelation. His press conference in which he denied what he had admitted the day before did not help his cause.


Our leaders must represent the


values that we espouse and honor the diversity of the coalition that we seek to build.


Virtually the entire


leadership of the Democratic Party in the state has called on the governor to resign. He would be wise to accept their advice.


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