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.