An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America: Part I

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America:  Part I


A Promise of Rectification Through Transformation of K-12 Education 




I must in behalf of white America offer the apology to my African American friends that the nation as a whole seems reluctant to extend to you.


I have long felt that the nation owed this apology to you and now feel moved to offer these words of contrition, admiration, and appreciation.


I am sorry that 25,000,000 of your mostly youngest and strongest ancestral family members were ripped from the Bight of Benin, the realm of the Ashanti, the kingdom of Dahomey, many places along the Ivory Coast, and numerous other areas of the continent that gave birth to humanity. How ironic that the gift of humanity was returned with so many acts that we term, “inhumane.”


I am sorry that your ancestors were confined to cages until ships came to transport them across the Middle Passage through the Atlantic Ocean to toil on plantations variously producing sugar, tobacco, rice, cotton, and whatever else the owners and manufacturers could secure for profit--- with no regard at all for your needs. So many of those strong young people were confined to subterranean decks with little space to rest, chained together, lying for days in urine, feces, and other detritus until at last allowed to emerge on the upper deck to be doused with water, led around, and returned to nautical Hades.


 How despicable that the wager was that enough people would survive under those conditions to be offered on the auction block to the highest bidders, all rejoicing that a sufficiency of inhumanely treated humanity had endured the sweat, stench, urine, blood, and chains to give their free labor to the agricultural South so as to feed the factories of the industrial North in these United States.


I am so very sorry.


I apologize that once on the plantations and farms of the American South, so many of your ancestors worked almost all of the time, that they were whipped for the smallest infractions or merely perceived slights to masters and overseers, and that via some combination of abuse and overwork they lived out their lives stooped, marred, scarred, limping, lame.


I am so very, very sorry that an overabundance of the women of your heritage were used as breeders and objects of pleasure, valued for the young slaves to which they could give birth and as the outlet for the urges of many a white master and male inhabitant of the plantation. I am appalled that so many women of African provenance were separated from their children, sold as mere units of production rather than treasured offspring, and that these young people grew up without knowing who their mothers and fathers were.


Please accept this apology.


I am sorry that an otherwise brilliant document, the Constitution of the United States of America, democratic in much of its spirit, mocked this spirit internally in failing to extend full rights of citizenship to women and implying that people in conditions of servitude should be considered just one-third of a human being for the purposes of population enumeration and ranking of states for representation in the United States House of Representatives.


I am sorry that the Dred Scott decision labeled enslaved humanity as transportable chattel and that Justice Roger Taney declared that Negroes had no rights that white America and authorized judiciaries had an obligation to respect.


How remarkable, though, that within a year of the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act, the great abolitionist Sojourner Truth stood before an assembly of assertive women and oppositional men, gathered in upstate New York to discuss women’s right to suffrage and full citizenship, and delivered one of the most eloquent speeches in the history of American oratory, as follows:




Sojourner Truth


Ain’t I a Woman?


Delivered at Women’s Convention in New York, 1851


Well, children, there is so much racket there must be something must be out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the Negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?


Look at me! Look at these arms! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man--- when I could get it--- and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most of them sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?


Then they talk about this thing in my head; what’s they call it? [“Intellect,” someone whispers.] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or Negro’s rights? If my cup won’t holds but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to give me my half-measure, full?


Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as a men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did you Christ come from? From God and woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.


If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.


Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner Truth ain’t got nothing more to say.


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I am sorry that Sojourner Truth’s appeal for women’s suffrage was not honored until 1920; and that her entreaty for the abolition of slavery was so imperfectly realized even after the passage of a constitutional amendment (13th) to that effect. But I thank my African American brothers and sisters for the gift of this great seeker of justice under the law, for her energy, her optimism, and her relentless courage.


But I apologize that the ideals of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution were subverted under the doctrines of interposition and nullification in the former slave states, that Reconstruction came to an ignominious conclusion in the Compromise of 1877, that unequal equality was deemed sufficient in Plessy V. Ferguson (1896) by the very Supreme Court Justices who were sworn to uphold statutory and constitutional law, that sharecropping incorporated many of the features of slavery in a wickedly innovative agrarian system, and that Jim Crow and the Black Codes were allowed to trump the Law of the Land.


I am so very sorry.


I apologize profusely for this abnegation of citizenship in a polity that projects itself as a paragon of democracy.


I am so sorry that the party of Lincoln reinvented itself as the champion of corporate interests.


But I thank you for this eloquent reply from Frederick Douglass to an assemblage of African American leaders in 1883:


Frederick Douglass


Who Would Be Free, Themselves Must Strike the Blow        


Delivered at Convention of African American Leaders in 1883.


Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. You know that liberty given is never so precious as liberty sought for and fought for. The man outraged is the man to make the outcry. Depend upon it, men will not care much for a people who do not care for themselves.


Our meeting here was opposed by some of our members, because it would disturb the peace of the Republican Party. The suggestion came from coward lips and misapprehended the character of that party. If the Republican Party cannot stand a demand for justice and fair play, it ought to go down. We were men before that party was born, and our manhood is more sacred than any party can be. Parties were made for men, not men for the parties.


If the six millions of colored people of this country, armed with the Constitution of the United States, with a million votes of their own to depend upon, and millions of white men at their back, whose hearts are responsive to the claims of humanity, have not sufficient spirit and wisdom to organize and combine to defend themselves against outrage, discrimination, and oppression, it will be idle for them to think that the Republican Party or any other political party will organize and combine for them or care what becomes of them. Men may combine to prevent cruelty to animals, for they are dumb and cannot speak for themselves; but we are men and must speak for ourselves, or we shall not be spoken for at all.


We have conventions in America for Ireland, but there should be none if Ireland did not speak for herself. It is because she makes a noise and keeps her cause before the people that other people go to her help. It was the sword of Washington that gave Independence the sword of Lafayette.


In conclusion, we have to say that we meet here in broad daylight. There is was nothing sinister about us. The eyes of the nation are upon us. Ten thousand newspapers may tell if they choose of whatever is said and done here. They may commend our wisdom or condemn our folly, precisely as we shall be wise or foolish. We put ourselves before them as honest men and ask their judgment upon our work.


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Thank you for the great gift of Frederick Douglass, who believed so fervently in the very Constitution that was soon given such scurrilous short shrift by those Justices sworn to uphold it.


Thank you for the relentless pursuit of justice under the law, by which courageous African American patriots held the mirror of the nation’s own legal institutions up to the American populace, extolling a beautiful vision of justice amidst horrendous brutality.


How terrible it was for your ancestors, my African American brothers and sisters, to walk amongst their kinfolk hanging from trees, burned at the stake, tarred and feathered, maimed for life for faults as slim as spitting on the lawn of a white person or failing to step aside for one of lighter skin hue to pass.

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America: Part II

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America:  Part II


A Promise of Rectification Through Transformation of K-12 Education 


I am sorry.


 Please accept my apology.


And I know that your acceptance of this apology will take much in the way of a forgiving spirit when you stare straight at the terrible legacy of terrorism that saw 4,500 children, women, and men lynched between the years 1882 and 1965.


 But amidst this very horror, thank you again for the eloquent appeal to law, reason, ethics, and spirituality that came pouring from the richly endowed voice of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, when she spoke to the matter of “this awful slaughter” at the first official meeting of the NAACP in 1909:


 Ida B. Wells-Barnett        


What Is the Cause of This Awful Slaughter?


Delivered at NAACP Convention, 9 May 1909


The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits the thoughtful study of the American people. It present three salient facts:


First, lynching is color-line murder. Second, crimes against women is the excuse, not the cause. Third, it is a national crime and requires a national remedy.


Proof that lynching follow the color line is to be found in the statistics that have been kept for the past twenty-five years. During the few years preceding this period, while frontier lynch law existed, the executions showed a majority of white victims. Later, however, as law courts and authorized judiciary extended into the far West, lynch law rapidly abated, and its white victims became few and far between.


Just as the lynch-law regime came to a close in the West, a new mob movement started in the South. This was wholly political, its purpose being to suppress the colored vote by intimidation and murder. Thousands of assassins banded together as the Ku Klux Klan, “Midnight Raiders,” “Knights of the Golden Circle,” et cetera, et cetera, spread a reign of terror by beating, shooting, and killing colored people by the thousands. In a few years, the purpose was accomplished, and the black vote was suppressed. But mob murder continued.


From 1882 to the present, lynching has been along the color line. Statistics show that 3,284 men, women, and children have been put to death in this quarter of a century. Twenty-eight human beings burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of them children, is the awful indictment against American civilization--- the gruesome tribute which the nation pays to the color line.


Why is mob murder permitted in a Christian nation? What is the cause of this awful slaughter? This question is answered almost daily--- always the same shameful falsehood that “Negroes are lynched to protect womanhood.” Standing before a Chautauqua assemblage, John Temple Graves, at once a champion of lynching and apologist for lynchers, said: “The mob stands today as the most potential bulwark between the women of the South and such a carnival of crime as would infuriate the world and precipitate annihilation of the Negro race. This is the never-varying answer of lynchers and their apologists. All now that it is untrue. The cowardly lyncher revels in murder, then seeks to shield himself from public execration by claiming devotion to woman. But the truth is mighty, and the lynching record discloses the hypocrisy of the lyncher as well as his crime.


The only certain remedy is an appeal to law. Lawbreakers must be made to know that human life is sacred and that every citizen of this country is first a citizen of the United States and secondly a citizen of the state in which he belongs. The strong arm of the government must reach across state lines whenever unbridled lawlessness defies state laws.


 Federal protection of American citizenship is the only remedy for lynching. Foreigners are rarely lynched in America. If by some terrible mistake a foreigner is lynched, the national government quickly pays the damages. Thousands of American citizens have been put to death, and yet no President has yet raised his hand in effective protest. If the government has the power to protect a foreigner even from insult, certainly it has power to save a citizen’s life.


In a multitude of counsel there is wisdom. Upon the grave question presented by the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children there should be an honest, courageous conference of patriotic, law-abiding citizens anxious to punish crime promptly, impartially, and by due process of law, and to make life, liberty, and property secure against mob rule.


Time was when lynching appeared to be sectional, but now it is national--- a blight upon our nation, mocking our laws and disgracing our Christianity. “With malice toward none but with charity for all” let us undertake the work of making the “law of the land” effective and supreme upon every foot of American soil--- a shield to the innocent; to the guilty, punishment swift and sure.


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What an erudite woman, eloquent speaker, stalwart citizen. How remarkable that time after time the very people who year after year were denied their full rights of citizenship reminded us with such clarity what good citizenship means. How ironic that the very people who were denied their rights, so clearly stated in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and elsewhere in the Constitution, understood better than anyone what an astounding quest for the ideal of democracy can be found in that great document.


How lucky for the people of the United States that African America relentlessly pursued the democratic ideal and brought us closer, if still imperfectly, to that exalted political condition.


But I am sorry that the process was so arduous and that the Constitution as amended in the 1870s was so callously disregarded for at least a century.


I am so sorry.


I apologize.


I am sorry that the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was necessary, and from 1909 until 1954 so much effort had to be expended by Thurgood Marshall and other first-rate attorneys in calling upon the nation’s citizens to observe their own expressed ideals.


I am sorry that millions of African Americans gave their energies to fighting World War I to “make the nation safe for democracy” but frequently felt neither safe nor democratically honored for their service or for their citizenship.


 I am sorry for the thousands who continued to be tortured, lynched, emotionally abused in the persistent pursuit of citizenship.


I am sorry.


 I apologize.


But I thank the African American people for giving us Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes as literary masters of the Harlem Renaissance, that remarkable cultural flowering that sprouted literary blossoms from humanity on a very thorny national field of inhumanity.


I thank and appreciate Langston Hughes for writing, in “I, Too, Sing America”:


I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.


Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.


Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed---


I, too, am America.


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Thank you so much, African America, for giving us Langston Hughes.


You are indeed beautiful. And I am so very ashamed of this nation for the abuse that it has heaped on you.


You, too, most certainly are America.


More than that, you are America at its best--- in its art, literature, music, citizenship, patriotic spirit.

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America: Part III

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America:  Part III


A Promise of Rectification Through Transformation of K-12 Education 




I am sorry for all that you have had to endure.


But I thank you for oratorical eloquence, democratic spirit, and artistic genius. I thank you for the foresight and courage of A. Philip Randolph in leading the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and planning a March on Washington that in the 1940s forced the hands of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, impelling those presidents to bring greater fairness to federal hiring practices and service in the military.


And, oh my goodness, thank you so very much for the brilliance of Thurgood Marshall in arguing the Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas case; the courage of Rosa Parks in sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott; for the tenacity of the Little Rock Nine; and for the ascendance of that preeminent leader and nonpareil orator, Dr. Martin Luther King.


Thank you specifically for his classic call for brotherhood, sisterhood, love, and justice--- once again based on that claim to the Constitution that he staked, as had Douglass, Barnett, Randolph, Marshall, Parks, and the persistent African American people as a whole--- when he joined others in fulfillment of the March on Washington envisioned by Randolph:


Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


     I Have a Dream


Delivered at the March on Washington, 28 August 1963


I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”


I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.


I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.


I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.


I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day “every valley shall be exalted, the hills and mountains shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the Glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."


This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we can hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.


And this will be the day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring”---


And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped mountains of Colorado. Let freedom ring form the curvaceous slopes of California.


But not only that.


Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!


Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!


Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.


And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will speed that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last."


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But I am sorry.


I am so, so sorry for the injustice heaped upon Emmett Till; James Meredith; and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair--- four precious little girls whose lives disappeared in flames of hatred at 16th Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, Alabama) in 1963.


As tenaciously as you had been holding the Constitution high for all to see, how catastrophic were these acts of terror and intimidation. You deserved accolades, African America. But you received hateful threats for seeking education, and you died when American-grown terrorists perpetrated ghoulish disembodiment and murderous arson.


I am so very sorry.


 I am sorry every day that my feet hit the ground.


 I am sorry to my very soul.


You deserved none of this.


 And at the midpoint of the 1960s, in the aftermath of such horrific acts inflicted upon the young and promising, you sent forth another spokesperson, who proclaimed loudly and eloquently that enough was enough:


Malcolm X

Address to Mississippi Youth


Gathering Sponsored by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),
31 December 1964.


One of the most important things I think young people, especially today, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself. If you form the habit of going by what you hear others say about someone, or going by what others think about someone, instead of searching that thing out for yourself and seeing for yourself, you will be walking west when you think you’re going east, and you will be walking east when you think you’re going west. The most important thing we can learn to do today is think for ourselves.


It’s good to keep ears wide-open and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make decisions, you have to weigh all of what you’ve heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you’ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies. This is one of the things that our people are beginning to learn today--- that it is very important to think a situation out for yourself. If you don’t do it, you’ll always be maneuvered into a situation where you are never fighting your actual enemies, where you find yourself fighting your own self.


I think our people are the best examples of that. Many of us want to be nonviolent and we talk very loudly, you know, about being nonviolent. Here in Harlem, where there are probably more black people concentrated than any place in the world, some talk that nonviolent talk too. But we find that they are not nonviolent with each other. You can go out to Harlem Hospital where there are more black patients than any hospital in the world, and see them going in there all cut up and shot up and busted up where we find they got violent with each other.


My experience has been that in many instances where you find Negroes talking about nonviolence, they are not nonviolent with each other, and they are not loving to each other, or forgiving with each other. Usually when they say they’re nonviolent, they mean they’re nonviolent with somebody else. I think you understand what I mean. They are nonviolent with the enemy. A person can come to your home, and if he’s white and wants to heap some kind of brutality on you, you’re nonviolent; or he even take your father and put a rope around his neck and you’re nonviolent. But if another Negro just stomps his foot, you’ll rumble with him in a minute. Which shows you there’s an inconsistency there.


So we here in the Organization for Afro-American Unity are with the struggle in Mississippi one thousand percent. We’re with the efforts to register our people to vote one thousand percent. But what we do not go along with is anybody telling us to help nonviolently. We think that if the government says that Negroes have the right to vote, and then some Negroes come out to vote, and some kind of Ku Klux Klan is going to put them in the river, and the government doesn’t do anything about it, it’s time for us to organize and band together and equip ourselves and qualify ourselves to protect ourselves. And once you can protect yourself, you don’t have to worry about being hurt.


That doesn’t mean we’re against white people, but we sure are against the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils; and anything else that looks like it’s against us, we’re against it. Excuse me for raising my voice, but his thing, you know, gets me upset. Imagine that--- a country that’s supposed to be a democracy, supposed to stand for freedom and all of that kind of stuff--- when they draft you and put you in the Army and send you to Saigon to fight for them--- and then you’ve got to turn around and all night long discuss how you’re going to just get the right to register and vote without being murdered.


You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it. When you get that kind of attitude, they’ll label you as a “crazy Negro,” or they’ll call you a “crazy nigger”--- and they don’t say Negro. Or they’ll call you an extremist or a subversive, or seditious, or a red or a radical. But when you stay radical long enough, and get enough people to be like you, you’ll get your freedom.


So don’t go around here trying to make friends with your enemies. They’re not your friends, no, they’re your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them, and you’ll get your freedom: and after you get your freedom, your enemy will respect you. And we’ll respect you. And I say that with no hate. I don’t have hate in me. I have no hate at all. I don’t have any hate. I’ve got some sense. I’m not going to let someone who hates me tell me to love him. I’m not that way out. And you, young as you are, and because you start thinking, you’re not going to do it either. The only time you’re going to get in that bag is if somebody puts you there. Somebody else, who doesn’t have your welfare at heart.


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So on you went.


Some of you seized the American Dream that became more attainable with the passage of civil rights, voting rights, fair employment, and fair housing legislation. But others of you were left behind, as Dr. King knew in organizing the Poor People’s March at the moment that more homegrown terrorism blew him away in 1968.


 I am sorry for the loss of Malcom X and Martin Luther King to assassination.


I am sorry that so many of you languish still at the urban core, and as a teacher I apologize profusely for our wretched public schools from which if you graduate at all, you graduate with nothing resembling the education that a high school diploma should signify.

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America: Part IV

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America:  Part IV


A Promise of Rectification Through Transformation of K-12 Education 


I am sorry for the loss of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to assassination.



I am sorry that so many of you languish still at the urban core, and as a teacher I apologize profusely for our wretched public schools from which if you graduate at all, you graduate with nothing resembling the education that a high school diploma should signify.


I am sorry.


I apologize and hope that you can forgive this poverty, this loss, these murders on top of so many murders.


But thank you for the gift of Maya Angelou, who in January 1993 urged as at the first presidential inaugural of Bill Clinton to reexamine ourselves for what we can be, having learned that what we have been and what we are falls far short of our potential and those transcendent values to which we should aspire:


Maya Angelou


On the Pulse of Morning


Delivered at the Inaugural of William Jefferson Clinton as President of the United States January 20, 1993


A Rock. A River. A Tree.
Hosts to species since departed.
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On the planet floor.
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.


But, today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly,
           f orcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow,
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Facedown in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words


Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today,
You may stand upon me;
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song.
 It says, Come, rest here by my side.
Each of you, a bordered country.
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace,
And I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me
when I and the
Tree and the Rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.


There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbit, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.


They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today.
Come to me,
Here beside the river,
Plant yourself beside the River.


Each of you, descendant of some passed-
On traveler, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers--- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.


You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede.
The German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
The Italian, the Hungarian, the Pole,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stole, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.


Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree
I am yours--- your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.


Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of you hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need.
 Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space
To place new steps of change
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me,
The Rock, the River, the Tree, you country,
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eye
And into your brother’s face,
Your country,
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.


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I thank you for the great gift of Maya Angelou.


But I remain sorry.


And I apologize.


I am sorry and aghast that so very recently 16 year-old Trayvon Martin, 19 year-old Michael Brown, 12 year-old Tamir Rice, and 28 year-old Akai Gurley were shot and killed by police--- sworn officers of the law who acted without subtlety, without adept professional judgment, upon an abiding fear of young black men everywhere, whom white America refuses even now to understand as young people born to conditions of raging terrorism, stark fear, broken families, lousy schools, all flowing from a brutish history,


Perhaps, now that the national economy is according to many indicators back on track--- understanding that abiding features of familial cyclical poverty, crime-ridden communities, and inadequate public education have produced an underclass for whom the economy is never good--- we can shift our attention to the perennial inequities from the daunting economic challenges that Barack Obama urged people to meet head-on in his both stirring and reality-grounded first inaugural speech:


Barack Obama


First Inaugural Address


Delivered in January 2009


My fellow citizens, I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you’ve bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.


I thank President Bush for his service to the nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout the transition.


Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people, have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our celebrated documents.


So it has been, so it must be with this generation of Americans.


In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those that prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things--- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor--- who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.


For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops, and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip, and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg , Normandy and Khe Sahn.


Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might have a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.


This is the journey we continue today. Starting today we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.


We have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united. We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds will some day pass, that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve, that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself, and that American must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.


This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served in a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.


In this winter of our hardship, let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter, and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.


Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.


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I am sorry that the economic conditions that served as a backdrop to President Obama’s first inaugural speech fell so heavily on many of you.


I am sorry that the condition of cyclical poverty in which so many urban African American families have been stuck has never been understood as a product of historical circumstances, the remedy for which must be a viable K-12 system that can start each child out with an equal chance to have a culturally enriched, civically prepared, professionally satisfying life.


But I thank you for the great gift of this president, who has moved us closer to universal health care, superintended policies allowing us to emerge from that dark economic time that described the start to his presidency, and with grace and style has advanced our national discussion on a wide variety of social issues.


………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………


I am sorry.


I apologize.


I am sorry and I apologize in behalf of white America, which has never reckoned with the terrorism witnessed at each phase of United States history, and which has never offered this sort of apology to you.


I am sorry for the treatment that you as African Americans have received in the course of four centuries on the American continents. I am sorry for the conditions on the slave ships, the humiliation of the auction blocks, the brutality of forced labor on farms and plantations in the American South. I am sorry that amendments 14 and 15 went for a century before any protracted and dedicated enforcement ensued.


I am sorry that the effect of the 13th amendment was vitiated by the conditions of sharecropping. I am sorry that the Republican Party sold you out in the Compromise of 1877, that the Democratic Party was suffused with such a mean spirit for so long, that Supreme Court Justices rendered such an unjust decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, that so many of your ancestors died hanging from a tree or were charred on the stake.


  I am sorry that because of all of this so many of you felt the need to leave the home and the family and the region of your nativity in an attempt to find a better life at the end of a Northern Migration. But how wrenchingly awful were the restricted housing covenants, job discrimination, and racist white attitudes that dashed so many hopes and dreams that you had carried to New York City, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, and eventually on to St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis/ St. Paul.

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America: Part V

An Apology to the African American People in Behalf of White America:  Part V


A Promise of Rectification Through Transformation of K-12 Education 


I apologize most of all for the terrible quality of the K-12 schools upon which your urban hopes depended but on which they have foundered.


In the spirit of addressing the substandard conditions of K-12 education, I offer the following poem as an indication of a way out and mutual ascent at last to a mountaintop of hope that would honor the life of Martin Luther King:


The Entreaty of Melissa McCoy


By Gary Marvin Davison


Note: Melissa McCoy is a composite, fictional character whose lament and entreaty is drawn from the experiences of the many young people with whom I have worked and whom I have loved in the course of a more than 40-year journey.


I’m just wantin’ y’all to know that I’m
hurtin’ so bad hurtin’ so bad
hurtin’ so bad
hurtin’ so bad
'cause I’m beginnin’ to understand
how long it’s been
long it’s been
long it’s been.
Four hunn’ed
years ago
years ago
years ago
you ripped my great-great-great-great granny
mine
mine
mine
my
my
my
great-great-great-great-granny
from the depths of the Bight of Benin.
You locked her in a cage
until the ship came and took her away
‘cross that long, lonely ocean
lonely ocean
lonely ocean
lonely ocean
and then
took joy that she survived the
sweat
stench
urine
feces
chains
fever
blood.
You took joy ‘cause you could set her on the block
and open her mouth to show that her teeth
had somehow not rotted.
You pointed to her skin and put her naked young body
on display in evidence that she likely could produce
more free labor to get your
cotton
tobacco
rice
whatever you needed
you needed
you needed
and ‘course you had no regard at all for
her needs
her needs
her needs.

And you kept her there and millions with her
millions with her
millions with her
unda the hot sun
hot sun
hot sun
but took care to place her in the evenin’
where she could have
mo’ babies
mo’ babies
mo’ babies and
give you pleasure
you pleasure
you pleasure
not her pleasure
not her pleasure
your pleasure
‘cause that’s all that ev’a matt’ed
was your pleasure
what you needed
you needed
you needed
that’s all that ev’a matt’ed to you.


And you kept us there until war broke out
for yo’ own purposes
own purposes
own purposes
but promisin’ us freedom that was supposed
to be as simple as 13, 14, 15.
But then you Compromised in 1877
And you gave us unequal equality in 1896
Till we scrambled Northward on an Migration
To freedom
But found none.
‘Cause y’all said,
“No, not here,
You can’t live
here
here
here
But you can live
there
there
there
'cause you got lots in common
with da Jews and Polacks and Wops and all.


So we
waited
waited
waited
and worked
hard
hard
hard
‘til just as things seemed to be gettin’
betta
betta
betta the many
still-frustrated
still-frustrated
still-frustrated
didn’t wanna wait no more wait no more
wait no mo’
no mo’
no mo’
no mo’.
So there went the stones bricks bats clubs
anything handy
and the glass cracked
and the store owners departed
and mostly just us
poorest
poorest
poorest
stayed behind.


So you put us here,
And we have stayed here
stayed here
stayed here
stayed here and
even though you never understood us
and never believed in us
you promised us an education that never came.
But the time has come,
Bernadeia Richard, Kim, Jenny, Rebecca,
Alberto, Tracine, Carla, Josh, Mohamud,
the time has come,
come,
come.
The time came a long time ago,
but the education didn’t,
so now is the time that it’s got to come.


‘cause you know that they still don’t care,
those folks who came up from the plantation
to live on Lowry Hill and Linden Hills
 ‘cause they got Blake and Breck and all those,
for what good they are, or aren’t,
but that’s where their kids go now
while we wait for ya’ll to do the right thing.


Bernadeia, I hear good things about you.
They say that we’re gonna learn new things about our
great-great-great-great-grannies and about
the Great Wall
Iroquois
Laws of Motion
Relativity
Operant conditioning
Cognitive dissonance
Id
Ego
Superego
Oedipus
Electra
Troy Maxson
Hamlet
Ma Rainey
King Lear
Joe Turner
Macbeth
Achilles
Hector
Beowolf
Caged birds
Dreams deferred.


So, please, Bernadeia, you gotta keep your word,
‘cause we want our dreams
deferred no more
deferred no more
deferred no more
no more
no more
no more,
deferred
no more,
no mo’,
no mo’
no mo’.


We want to know about
Hindus
Muslims
Black Muslims
Nation of Islam
Jains
Buddhists
Confucianists
Shintoists
Daoists
Animists


‘cause alla these is people,
All of these are people,
Alla these is people,
All of these are people,
and if we understood each other
maybe we wouldn’t kill each other,
maybe my little brotha wouldn’t a taken that bullet,
my big brotha wouldn’t be in prison, and
my big sista gotten pregnant with a baby
while she was still a baby,
and there wouldn’t be all that fightin’ any more---
no mo’
no mo’
no mo’.


We want to know all there is to know.
I gotta a mighty fine brain.
I’m ready for you to teach me.
So show me that you can.
Now.
This school year,
in 2014 and 2015, too.
Now.
We have waited a long time
for the education
that you promised and
we ain’t gonna wait no more.
We aren’t going to wait any more.
We ain’t gonna wait no mo’.
We aren’t going to wait any more.
We ain’t gonna wait no mo’.
We aren’t going to wait any more.


Give us our education,
so I can face my
Great-great-great-great-granny
and tell her what you would never tell her
what you won’t tell her:
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am so, so, sorry.”


But now you and I both can sweep away all that
stench
urine
feces
chains
fever
blood.
‘Cause we gonna look at that hot sun
in a whole new way.


‘Cause my future is gonna be bright.
And I ain’t gonna be no baby havin’ a baby.
I’m waitin’ to be a woman with a family of my own,
and then my family will have that education,
just like I’m gonna have mine,
now,
now,
now.
‘Cause there’s so much I wanna know
want to know
wanna know
want to know,
and I will be
what I want to be
what I wanna be
what Melissa want to be
wanna be
want to be
and
will be
because at long last I will have my
Melissa will have
her
my
our


EDUCATION.


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Sorry and full of contrition as I am on behalf of white American, I pledge to you that will work every day of my life for excellence in K-12 education for all of our precious children, doing this so that all of these treasured specimens of humanity will have lives of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction. If we serve the needs of African American people through better K-12 education, the very people whom we have mistreated throughout United States history will have once again pointed the way to a better life for us all. All of our children need better education, to have their heads rid of intellectual refuse and replaced with the best of the human inheritance in mathematics, natural science, language arts, history, and the fine arts.


In better serving the needs of so many African American children living at the urban core, we will find a way to the kind of strong liberal arts education that all of our children need.

So thank you, African America, for always pointing us toward a better way.


Thank you for Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Louis Armstrong, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Scott Joplin, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Elijah McCoy, Charles Drew, A. Philip Randolph, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Tupac, Jay Z, Mos Def, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Shirley Chisolm, Jessie Jackson, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Barbara Jordan, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, August Wilson, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Barack Obama.


Thank you for giving us so many major figures from the spheres of intellect and culture who have insisted that we be the democracy that we have claimed to be--- or who sang, danced, played musical instruments--- and who found a way to tell stories and express wisdom and laugh uproariously even in the direst of circumstances, when we were far from being republic of uniform justice.


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Do accept my thanks for the manifold contributions of African American people to the United States.


But here, now, most of all, accept my apology in behalf of white America, in the hope that we can at last attain ablution and reconciliation, moving forward together toward a better nation, a better world.


To all of my African American sisters and brothers, I praise what you have contributed and accomplished, and I am sorry for what you endured.


Please accept this apology.

Academic Rigor Throughout the K-12 Years Should Be the Guiding Policy Principle for the Minneapolis Public Schools with Regard to All Matters, Including Graduation Requirements

Anyone who reads the second edition (Volume I, No. 2, August 2014) of my new Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Articles from Minneapolis, Minnesota, can easily infer my response to the issues raised by the current review of graduation requirements at the Minneapolis Public Schools.


The responses are as follows:


1) Present a plan for phasing in over the course of the next five years or less a requirement that all high school students will take at least two full years of a foreign language (international language other than English).


2) Far from cutting the current physical education requirement from two semesters to one, expand the requirement to two full years of general physical education, with strong encouragement that students take two additional years of more specialized physical education training (aerobic exercise, track and field, weight training, and the like) as electives.


3) Revise the curriculum to include in the general physical education courses given above the essential material that typifies the currently standard health course. Much material currently covered in health courses--- which tend to be ill-taught and not taken very seriously--- is also naturally covered in the Advanced Placement Biology that all students would take according to the curriculum that I present in the second (August) edition of the new journal.


4) Pursue, under the aegis of Focused Instruction, a course of study in history and literature throughout Grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 that would enable students to opt for specialized courses in high school, including such offerings as Latin American Literature and African American History. The latter courses should be preferred over more amorphous offerings in “Latin American Culture” or “African American Culture.”


Academic rigor should be the guiding principle for all the policy initiatives that augur a promising and protracted tenure for Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson as change agent for the Minneapolis Public Schools. If policy defined by the initiatives of Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and Shift work as they should, students of the Minneapolis Public Schools of all demographic descriptors will receive an education from Grade K right on through Grade 12 replete with strong subject area content in the key areas of math, language arts, natural science, history, and fine arts.


Under Focused Instruction, teachers impart important skill and knowledge sets across the liberal arts curriculum, logically sequenced for acquisition at certain grade levels and consistently taught at about the same time of year at all schools encompassing the given grade levels. The curriculum imparted under Focused Instruction should be continually upgraded with the aim of bringing ever more challenging and substantive subject area knowledge to students as they progress through their K-12 years.


The experience of educators who have taught the Core Knowledge curriculum of E. D. Hirsch shows that many of the mathematical concepts now taught in middle school could be mastered by students during their K-5 years. Much more quality literature could be read at the K-5 level, preparing students for richer and richer literary experiences at the middle school and high school levels. Students could cover many concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics during the K-5 years currently not encountered until high school. Strong American and world history content could be absorbed during the K-5 years, completing a historical survey that would prepare students for more specialized courses in history at the middle and high school levels. Similarly, courses in music and art history; in music composition and instrumentation; and in a variety of techniques pertinent to painting, drawing, and sculpture could be mastered at the K-5 level, as well.


At High Priority Schools, the effort should be to bring all of this rich subject area content to all students on a foundation of particularly strong math and reading skills. A very intentional and assertive program must be implemented, utilizing all tutorial assistance and academic interventions necessary until all students are performing mathematical operations and comprehending reading selections at grade level; then all of the benefits of ever stronger subject area content under Focused Instruction should be imparted to students at schools where academic performance has languished.


And if Shift is to work as it should, the centralized bureaucracy at the Minneapolis Public Schools will be greatly streamlined, so that teachers and other educators at the school building level are supported with all necessary resources and remunerated at levels proper to increased expectations for student performance.


If students of all demographic descriptors are given the full benefit of the promising initiatives of Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson in the form of Focused Instruction, High Priority Schools, and the “Shift” of resources toward the immediate needs of the students themselves, the recommendations given at the beginning of this article become desirable, realizable, and necessary.


This superintendent, whom I greatly admire, should take note of my proposed graduation requirement adjustments that are highly consistent with her own initiatives at their best.