Our nation is reeling from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, just one of many African Americans who have lost their lives in police violence in recent years. The streets are filled with demonstrators venting pent up rage and frustration at the “system” (the justice system, the economic system, the political system) that has so often fallen short of endowing non-white America with full equality.
As protesters gather outside the White House, let us remember that slave labor built that White House. Let us remember that an estimated 9,000 freedmen served in the Continental Armies that led to American Independence. That roughly ten percent of Lincoln’s Union armies were black enlistees, tipping the balance against the Confederacy. That a third of a million were on the Western Front in World War One. That decorated but segregated units like the Tuskegee Airmen finally led to the desegregation of the armed forces after World War II. That twenty-one African Americans were Medal of Honor recipients during Vietnam. That today about forty-three percent of active duty forces in the U.S. military, serving across the world in Syria, Afghanistan and other far flung locales, are people of color.
There can be no argument that black labor built our country and that African Americans have defended it against its enemies in its hours of greatest need. Records from George Washington’s era show 395 payments for “Negro hire” (the euphemism for rented slaves) to construct the Capitol Building on the D.C. mall. But no one in the President’s family, and very few in Congress, have ever had the guts or grit to put their own lives on the line when it matters.
My own belief is that the protests now shaking our streets in Minneapolis, Washington, D.C. and other cities are emanating from people willing to put their lives on the line, just as Congressman John Lewis of Georgia put his life on the line in Selma to dismantle Jim Crow in the 1960’s. They are being doused with tear gas and shot with rubber bullets, like Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio who was pepper sprayed by security forces this past week. They are risking health and safety to call attention to a broken pattern of criminal justice where more black men are behind bars in 2020 than lived in slavery in 1864.
We pray for peace and tranquility. But let us remember too that it was Thomas Jefferson (a slave owner) who called for a little revolution now and then. Let us remember that democracy is a messy and often disorderly affair. That Afro-American Crispus Attucks, the very first patriot killed in the American Revolution, was part of a pre-Antifa street mob throwing snowballs and wooden sticks at British soldiers who shot him dead at the Boston Massacre. John Adams, who to his credit defended the King’s soldiers in court--believing that even fascists deserved a legal defense--denigrated the insurgents as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and mulattoes.”
Protests are part of our nation’s history. From abolition to suffrage to Civil Rights, the people have taken to the streets when necessary to win their freedom. Who shall we stand with now? Which side are you on? My heart is with those who cry for equality under the law. My heart is with those who, in the words of the prophet Micah, “seek justice and correct oppression.” My heart is with the patriots, the protesters.
Reverend Gary Kowalski
Unitarian Congregation of Taos, NM
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