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Unformatted text preview: PROLOGUE WE THE PEOPLE: THE LONG JOURNEY TOWARD A
MORE PERFECT UNION By Vincent Harding Constitution of the United States
PREAMBLE We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the com-
mon defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Con-
stitution for the United States of America. ' I 'he images strike us, sometimes touching home at levels deeper than
we dare acknowledge. Images: Men and women, many of them still alive in our own time, there on the screen, standing firm, unarmed, facing
gun-wielding, menacing police and state troopers, standing their ground,
refusing to give in to fears, discovering powerful weapons, old and new,
at the center of their lives. Men and women, possessed by new power,
determined to be counted as full citizens of this nation, committed to trans—
form this grand and needy country, in search of “a more perfect union.”
Images: Women, men, and children, standing, sometimes being smashed
down to the ground, paying the price for wanting justice, for believing in
a more perfect union. Broken bones, bleeding heads, but spirits undaunted,
returning from beds and hospitals and jails to stand and struggle again“
for justice, for freedom, for the right to vote, for equal access, for a “domestic
tranquility” that we have not yet experienced, for a new society for us all. 2 ' THE EYES ON THE PRIZE CIVIL RIGHTS READER Images: Young people, often children, full of life and play and seri—
ousness. Marching, facing dogs and fire hoses, singing freedom songs on
the way to jail, rocking the paddy wagons with “Ain’t afraid of your jail,
’cause I want my freedom now.” Young people, walking the gauntlets of
hate, ignorance, and fear, listening to the less-than—human shrieks, just to
go to school—~really to redefine “the general welfare,” to educate America
and the world to the meaning of “the blessings of liberty.” Teenagers,
children, not purposelessly wandering through the fantasy worlds of con-
sumer malls, but sitting in jails, singing in jails, determined to create a
land of justice, committed to move with new dignity and hope in their lives. Images: Black and white women and men, braving the storms of violence
and hatred together, marching with King and Fannie Lou H amer together,
taking on the hard, explosive rock of Mississippi together, murdered and
hidden underground together, rising as great inspirations and new hope
together. B lack and white, discovering their common ancestry, their common
pain, and their common hope. U nashamed to cry together. Swaying, singing
together: “We shall overcome.”Singing, “We’ll never turn back/ Until we’ve
all been freed . . .” Living, arguing, sharing together, “to secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . .” ho are these people? Where did they come from, especially these black people, who seemedwat least for a time—to
offer direction, purpose, and hope to an entire generation of
Americans of every racial, social, and religious background? What
did they mean then when they spoke of “redeemng the soul of
America”? What do they mean now? For us, for African—American
us, for Hispanic-American us, for Asian-American us, for Euro—
American us, for the Natives of this land? What do they mean
for our personal, collective, and national prospects, for our
“posterity”? The images and questions insinuate themselves into our beings
and raise fundamental issues about our nation’s past and future.
They present us with many surprises, not only about the historical
similarities between our land and South Africa, but more impor-
tantly they surprise us about humans, ordinary humans like us,
whose names we have never learned, whose faces are both familiar
and unknown. Ordinary human beings at times acting with
extraordinary courage, vision, and hope (at other times stumbling PROLOGUE: we THE PEOPLE - 3 and falling into all the internal and external traps we know so
well). Who are they? How are we related to them . . . we the
people? It is often this way: Women and men who look carefully,
persistently into the face of history are often rewarded with
breathtaking surprises—and a host of questions. Of course, in our
own time, after the furnaces of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, after
the gulags and the “disappeared,” in the midst of South Africa
abroad and the human—created epidemics of joblessness, home-
lessness, and drug addiction at home, some thingy-unfortu-
nately—do not surprise us. We no longer consider it noteworthy
to be confronted with our stunning human capacities for harsh,
ruthless, and inhuman oppression. But considerable evidence
shows us that we are yet capable of being amazed by unexpected
revelations of the great, still largely untapped human potential
for resistance and hope, for compassion and grandeur, for courage
and visionary self—transcendence—even when pressed against all
the walls that oppression has created. In the annals of our own young nation, no greater repository
of such unexpected testimonies to the re—creative powers of the
human spirit exists than the history of the black struggle for
freedom, equality, and social transformation. In the public tele—
vision series Eyes on the Prize—America’s Civil Rights Years, we are
drawn into just one generation’s experience of that struggle,
especially as it developed after World War 11. But no human
history is rootless, and we see the fullest meaning of the post—
1945 events only as we dig deeper. Such probing work could take us back to the coast of Africa, to
the earliest liberation struggles there and on the prison slave ships,
and could open up the long, unbroken history of black resistance
to slavery and the concomitant movement toward freedom in this
country. Digging deep, we might explore the period of great hope
and profound betrayal after the Civil War, examining the unpre—
dictable ways in which a people who had been largely defined as
humanly inferior, ignorant chattel slaves, came bursting out of
the furnaces of the Civil War, bearing the traditions of resistance
and hope, to create their own powerful and impressive postwar testimonies to the meaning of freedom, democracy, and justice in
America. ' i 53
e
i wmcmmiumm‘r 4 ' THE EYES ON THE PRIZE CIVIL RIGHTS READER Indeed, if we looked closely we would discover that the com—
mitment of these former slaves to the transformation of their own
lives and the life of the nation was often so great that it could not
be borne by the majority of white America. For this majority was
not prepared for fundamental changes toward justice, especially
if the changes involved redistribution of landed wealth in the
South and the abandonment of white supremacy everywhere, in
exchange for a truly shared community, a more perfect union.
So we would also need to see the ways in which the postwar black
communities and the relatively small band of white allies who
offered themselves as full participants in the political, economic,
and social/spiritual process to re—create the nation, were effectively,
often brutally, driven back from the footholds they had begun to
gain. We would see this especially in the political institutions of
the postwar South, the region that was home to more than 90
percent of Black Americans. To probe that deeply would bring us to a history of antiblack
repression that had possessed the entire South (and too many
northern outposts) by the end of the 1870s. We would witness
lynchings, ritual burnings, and mutilations, the rise of the Ku
Klux Klan (KKK) and other paramilitary organizations, all im—
plicitly or explicitly approved by much southern white leadership,
with increasing acquiescence from the northern keepers of power.
To dig so deep would reveal to us harsh economic intimidation
in the development of a kind of peonage, often called sharecrop-
ping. It would recount through much of the 18705 and 1880s the
misuses of political, legal, and social systems in a ruthless attempt
to deny, subvert, and destroy the power of blackness that had
briefly appeared in the land during Reconstruction. In other
words, we would see the ways in which a nation—led by southern
white elites, and often in cooperation with the federal govern—
ment—sought to create an ersatz “domestic tranquility,” by re—
pressing the voices, subverting the power, and destroying the lives
of those black people who insisted they were part of “we the
people,” who dared dream of a just society. For this African-
American minority the “manifest destiny” of the United States
was something much richer and deeper than “winning the West,” destroying the Natives of the land, and acquiring material wealth
anywhere, and by any means necessary. ii:
i PROLOGUEI WE THE PEOPLE ' 5 Then in 1895, Frederick Douglass died. The great black symbol
of the movement from slavery to freedom had not been very
active for several years, but he represented something powerful.
He bore within himself a history of protest and challenge, a
tradition of black determination to claim all the rights and
responsibilities of a renewed American citizenship. So it seemed
like an even greater loss when, in the same year, the nation’s
attention was called to Booker T. Washington, head of Tuskegee
Institute. Coming to national prominence after more than a dozen
years of building an important black educational institution in the
heart of Alabama’s dangerous white supremacy, Washington’s
voice carried a different message which seemed to discourage
bold, direct, open challenges to white power on behalf of the
beleaguered black communities. It was a hard time, and for many black persons, it seemed as if
all the broken promises of Reconstruction were finally, ironically
epitomized in the actions of the Supreme Court of the United
States. Ever since the 18705, the Court had been eviscerating the
congressional legislation and constitutional amendments which
had been established at the height of Reconstruction to protect
some of the basic citizenship rights of black people. In 1883,
reversing the intentions of the Reconstruction congresses, it had
claimed that the Reconstruction—bred Civil Rights Acts did not
guarantee black people the same unhampered access to public
accommodations that was due to all citizens. Finally, in 1896, the
court brought to a climax its trashing of the hopes of Reconstruc-
tion, and essentially gave its blessing to a status of second-class
citizenship for African-Americans. The infamous Plessy V. F ergwon
decision ruled that state laws mandating separate facilities for
black citizens did not violate the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, if the separated
facilities were “substantially equal.” With that action, separate—but—equal became both the law of the
land and the symbol of the fundamental schizophrenia at the
heart of American democracy. But there was more: From that
moment on the decision also became the target of a steadily rising,
unrelenting black—led attack against the fundamental injustice of
the court’s action, against its betrayal of the most humane under-
standings of “we the people of the United States.” So Plessy v. 6 ‘ THE EYES ON THE PRIZE CIVIL RIGHTS READER Ferguson became a stimulus to struggle and defiance, a signal to
resistance. It was not surprising, then, that in the same year that
the words of the Supreme Court were hurled against black (and
white) freedom, it was possible to hear the voices of resistance. During the 18905, Nashville, Tennessee (source of much lead-
ership for the continuing freedom movement) was the base of
john Hope, a professor at the city’s Roger Williams University.
Speaking in 1896 to a gathering of black people, immersing
himself in the tradition of Douglass, preparing the way for the
coming times, Hope urged his audience to resist all temptations
to acquiesce and despair. He said, Rise, Brothers! Come let us possess this land. Never say
“Let well enough alone.” Cease to console yourself with
adages that numb the moral sense. Be discontented. Be
dissatisfied. . . . Be restless as the tempestuous billows on
the boundless sea. Let your dissatisfaction break. mountain-
high against the walls of prejudice and swamp it to the
very foundation. Then we shall not have to» plead for
justice nor on bended knee crave mercy; for we shall be
men. Then and not until then will liberty in its highest
sense be the boast of our Republic. This was a response to oppression, but it was more. just thirty
years after the official end of slavery, here was the articulation of
a free people’s fierce determination “to possess this land” that had
enslaved them, to claim a land they had worked so hard to create.
It was an amazing statement of faith in the best possibilities of
our republic, and therefore an expression of profound belief in
their own capacities—and those of their fellow citizens—to create
a more perfect union. Such a complex, powerful, and explosive cluster of human
intentions was at the heart of almost all the struggles for justice,
survival, defense, and transformation which were carried on by
black people as one century ended and another began. This
claiming of the land, this determination to speak the black-
envisioned truth and create a new American reality—~all these are part of the roots of the struggle that became impossible to hold
back. PROLOGUE: WE THE PEOPLE - 7 All these were present in a crusader like Ida B. Wells—Barnett,
who was born into the last years of slavery in Mississippi and
became another of the living bridges between the black freedom
struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the time
she was in her late twenties, the articulate and courageous Wells—
Barnett had been teacher, newspaper publisher, unrelenting pub—
lic scourge of injustice, fugitive from southern mob action, and
preeminent international lecturer and organizer in the antilynch—
ing campaigns of the turning centuries. She spoke and acted in
defense of black rights and life, but she always knew that her
campaign was for the future of democracy in the United States.
That is why, in one of her major speeches (which included a
report on her exile from Memphis, Tennessee, because of her bold newspaper attacks on white mob rule) she could say to the
nation: In one section, at least of our common country, a govern«
ment of the people, by the people, and for the people
means a government by the mob; where the land of the
free and the home of the brave means a land of lawlessness,
murder, and outrage and where liberty of speech means
the license of might to destroy the business and drive from
home those who exercise this privilege contrary to the will
of the mob. Although she was describing her own situation and the fate of
other outspoken black heralds, the nature of Wells’s language
made it clear that she was also reaching beyond the personal. For
her, as for many others, this truth-telling tradition, this protest
against injustice, this unrelenting demand for the maturing of
American democracy was a part of the larger commitment to
possess the land. For them, a necessary part of that process was
the action of forcing white America to recognize the degradation
of democracy that accompanied all attempts to throttle the voices
of black discontent. So the children of the slaves became the major
carriers of the dream of freedom, the quintessential visionaries of
a more perfect union. But there was always a tension in the heart of black America, a
tension that continues yet, one expressed with typical eloquence 8 ’ THE EYES ON THE PRIZE CIVIL RIGHTS READER by the man who was already becoming the nation’s preeminent
Afro—American scholar-activist, W. E. B. Du Bois. For Du Bois, as
the nineteenth century ended, black people could not possess this
land unless at the same moment they claimed, nurtured, and
possessed their own souls, their African—American heritage, their
history, their culture. Du Bois, child of the diaspora by birth and
by choice, born in the North, educated at Fisk, and Harvard, as
well as in Berlin, felt this tension at the center of his being. Later he would speak of it as an “eternal twoness,” this life of
blackness and of Americanness. But in 1897 he described it less
as a tension than as a calling, and he proclaimed, “For the
development of Negro genius, of Negro literature and art, of
Negro spirit, only Negroes bound and welded together, Negroes
inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its fullness the great
message we have for humanity.” This audacious young intellectual
said he saw black people as “the advanced guard of Negro people”
of the world. So he urged his people to see their calling and to
recognize that “if they are to take their just place in the vanguard
of Pan—Negroism, then their destiny is not absorption by the white
Americans . . . not a servile imitation of Anglo-Saxon culture, but
a stalwart originality which shall unswervingly serve Negro ideals.” For Du Bois, the vision was worldwide. While he agreed on the
need for Afro-Americans to lay full claim to the U.S.A., he
cautioned against being possessed by America and its worst values.
Du Bois was setting forth a large, messianic, freedom-fighting,
freedom-shaping task for Afro—Americans. So his statement put
the community of former slaves in its fullest light, declaring that
they “must be inspired with the Divine faith of our black mothers,
that out of the blood and dust of battle will march a victorious
host, a mighty nation, a peculiar people, to speak to the nations
of the earth a Divine truth that shall make them free.” (As his language constantly indicated, while Du Bois conscienv
tiously avoided any commitment to conventional religious creeds,
he was—~like most of his contemporary black colleagues—steeped
in the language, literature, and imagery of the Bible. The Afro-
American freedom movement cannot be fully apprehended with—
out that context.) One of the most fascinating elements of the post—Reconstruction
black movement toward new freedom and extended equality PROLOGUEZ we THE PEOPLE - 9 was the continuing work of creating independent and semi—
independent black institutions. Without them the black community
would have been lost. In addition to the central institution of the
family, they included schools at every level, churches and other
religious institutions, newspapers and other journals, fraternal
and sororal organizations, mutual aid societies, women’s clubs,
banks, insurance companies, unions, farmers’ alliances, and eman-
c1pation soc1et1es. These were only a portion of the internal, self-claiming, self—
defining work that was constantly re-creating the black com-
munity. Sometimes the institutions were a necessary response to the legal and extralegal exclusion of black people from most white—
dominated American institutions. just as often, they were expres- sions of the Du Boisian search “for the development of Negro
genius.” Often they were both. For many wise men and women
clearly understood the paradoxical necessity of developing insti-
tutions which would be the grounds for creating and training
generations of younger people who would eventually venture out
to let their “discontent break mountain—high against the walls of
prejudice and swamp it to the very foundation.” At the turn of the century, black people who were committed
to challenging the fundamental injustice of the nation’s institutions
knew that they must always deal with yet another paradox. In a
country almost 90 percent white, in a society permeated by
conscious and unconscious white supremacist beliefs and social
Darwinist assumptions, black people needed dedicated white allies
in the struggle for justice. Hope, Wells—Barnett, and Du Bois knew
this, as did black miners, farmers, forest workers, and many
others. As a result, the struggle for, with, and against white allies
was t...
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