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100 years ago from May 31 to June 1, 1921, the vibrant community colloquially known as "Black Wall Street," in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was razed because of race. 100 years later, America continues to wrestle with acceptance of the indisputable fact that Black people are human beings, to be acknowledged as such and accorded rights and privileges that humans are endowed with and entitled to.
Every reason under the sun — biology, culture and religion — has been advanced and refuted for why Black people should not be considered human or minimally should be considered sub-human. Black humanity comes to be through the same biological processes as other humans. Black people celebrate birth and rites of passage, they solemnize marriage, and eulogize death, just as other humans.
To be sure, we could baseline any year in Black History in the American colonies or America, measure out the time of 100 years and come face to face with a legacy of white brutality toward Black folk. Take for example the 100 years from 1619, the year slavery was established in what is now America, to the 1719 Natchez Slave Resistance, which lasted several years and ended with the loss of life for many enslaved Africans and Indians. Or how about the 100 years between Emancipation in 1863, signed by Abraham Lincoln, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s multiple appeals to President John F. Kennedy for a second Emancipation Proclamation in 1961 and 1962, followed by the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
Right now, in some parts of America, there is an all-out prohibition on anything that frames white legacy as the brutal over the benevolent in its historical or present interactions with non-white people. Schools across all grade and academic levels, as well as some state and local governments, are banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory or the 1619 Project. Just recently, Nikole Hannah Jones, a distinguished alumna of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, had her tenure offer revoked by the university's Board of Trustees and has instead been offered a fixed-term position with the possibility to be considered for tenure once the fixed-term contract expires. Referred to as a "work-around" by a trustee member, it is undoubtedly a move to "save face" with UNC faculty while simultaneously assuaging the outrage of conservatives who are not fans of “The 1619 Project.”
In Alabama, if children want to take yoga classes in school, parents must sign a permission slip acknowledging that yoga is connected to a religion, the inference that Hinduism is not a “preferred religion” or is somehow unpatriotic. This, by the way, is in contravention to the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.
The generations of Black historical harm are, sadly, immutable for our ancestors. The good news is that it is not too late to change the legacy of white brutality and repair the history of Black harm. We can move from brutality to benevolence.
