A WARNING: If you
didn't like what I've had to say in the past, you’re certainly not going to
appreciate this essay. So if there is the slightest chance you could be
offended by my opinions, then STOP READING NOW!
As we mark
the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which
came about largely as a result of the efforts by the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., and President Lynden B. Johnson, let it be known that I'm not
the first person in history to call it a complete disaster, for Negroes. Of
course, I am well aware at this point in history that speaking about the plight
of Black people in America is like talking about the smog in China — nobody
cares. Which is why I’m not going to speak about the plight of Black people, as
it pertains to America’s failings, no my message is directed toward the
failures of Dr. King, the abject loss of power, and a people who continue to
allow themselves to get played, as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
A year
before on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; August 28, 1963, the Reverend
Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his celebrated I Have A Dream speech, in
which he revealed many of his heart-felt longings — fantasies in
reality, that never had a chance of being realized. It is my belief the
Reverend's dreams were immediately squashed, and with extreme prejudice I might
add, by the very people he intended to benefit from them the most
— Blacks. The best example I can offer is this:
"I have a
dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of
the character. I have a dream today!" Dr. King. I Have A Dream, speech 1963
The Black
Power/Black Culture, Black People Movement put an end to that dream real
fast, by doing exactly the opposite; embracing an ideology that was based on
physical appearances, not the content of character. What did it lead to? I
think the entirety of so-called Black Culture in America can be summed up in
the events, which took place on the Fourth of July in Chicago, with 82 people
shot and 16 dead. Add these to the millions of Blacks shot — yes millions shot and murdered by Blacks over
the last fifty years, which led to the deterioration of Black neighborhoods,
the destruction of the Black family, and alarming illiteracy rates among Black
teenagers and young adults.
It would not
be a stretch to say the survival of two or three generations of so-called Black
people is at stake, right here, right now! Especially when you consider the
current state of Blacks being played by their elected messiah, in the form
of America’s love affair with the new and improved worker class from south of
the border.
While the
1963 March on Washington was the feel-good event of the decade for
just about everyone who attended, in reality, it was at best a farce, worse, a
plot to derail the one true chance Negroes had at achieving equality in
America. It is well known that Malcolm X forbade Nation of Islam members from
attending what he referred to as the, "farce on Washington." I was
eleven years old at the time and very aware of what was going down. What
Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, then head of S.N.C.C., who was also against
the Civil Rights Act knew at the time was that in America, money talks.
Understand,
the Civil Rights Act took the notion of filing of a class-action lawsuit
against the state of Texas and the rest of the southern states, right off the
table. Clearly the Constitutional rights of a certain class of American
citizens had been violated, merely by enacting Jim Crow Laws in the first
place. A class-action lawsuit would have provided the much-needed capital
for achieving equality. Here it is, plain as the noses on our faces;
"No state
shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States." Amendment XIV - U.S. Constitution
Don't take
my word for it. Here's what Thurgood Marshall, Chief Justice of the United
State Supreme Court had to say;
"The rights
of minorities have to be protected by our Constitution. As to whether I, as an
individual am being deprived of my rights, is not legislative, but
judicial."
Thurgood Marshall, from
"Dream makers, Dream Breakers - The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Carl T. Rowan Paragraph 2 - page 201
Being deprived of your rights "Not legislative (Civil Rights Act of 1964), but judicial," which means courts of law! Think I'm pitching a pipe dream? Then name a
single state, city, or local jurisdiction that was sued for a monetary
settlement on behalf of all Negroes, because of a Jim Crow Law? Come on... think about the thousands of court cases
alone that were conducted against Negroes without a jury of their peers,
or being denied a trial at all and instead lynched in the middle of the night?
And that's just the beginning. Also consider the mountain of damning evidence in the form of actual
laws and amendments to State Constitutions. There was absolutely no
defense what-so-ever!
Do you
understand the gravity of the situation for those who saw the possibility of
Negroes suing? We’re talking about a lawsuit that would have
literally bankrupted the south, already reeling from loosing the war. My point
is that just the mere threat of a class-action lawsuit, if nothing
else, would have led to some sort of ground-breaking concessions for
Negroes — something more than a treaty, and then Johnson's Great Society that
followed. But no such threat was ever made. Think about it; we live in the
most litigious country on the face of this earth and a gift-wrapped lawsuit
that could have changed the lives' of Negroes for the better, was never even
presented before a court of law? The groundwork had already been laid out
following the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Thurgood Marshall understood what was at stake. Here he is speaking about the
significance of Brown v. Board of Education:
“Do you know
what we’re up against?” Marshall asked rhetorically. “The weight of bad court decisions over the century. Hell, we’re fighting Chief Justice Taney.” From: The World
of Justice Thurgood Marshall, by carle T. Rowan 1993 pg. 205 1st
paragraph
If you are
unfamiliar with the Chief Justice Taney reference, for more than one
hundred years, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's, Dred Scott majority
decision (1857) was the ghost in the room, so to speak, undermining the
integrity of the XIV Amendment in the south. The south had completely rejected
the notion that Negroes were citizens of the United States and equal to any
White man, as evidenced by the continuation of the Jim Crow Laws. Brown v.
Board of Education in 1954 was crucial for the south — they had to win it to
continue living in the dream world they created for themselves — a world where
Negroes lived under the boot of white men. The ruling for Brown left them in a
state of panic, knowing the possible consequences. From Chief Justice
Taney's majority decision:
"They had
for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order,
and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or
political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the
white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be
reduced to slavery. . .
He was bought and
sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a
profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal
in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in
morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed
to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and
habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of
public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this
opinion."
When you
live in a country where the ruling authority believes and acts against you
according to the belief system above, for god’s sake, you don't go making
treaties with people like this, or playing the fool begging for favors and
handouts — you sue the hell out of them and walk away with the
cash! But when you consider the president in 1964, was Lyndon B.
Johnson, from perhaps the most racist state in the union with the most to
loose, then what I have to say might not seem so far fetched.
Texas was so
racist, that when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in September
of 1863, they didn't even inform their slaves they were free until June of
1865, two years later! What?
Ironically,
today, it's a Holiday celebrated by Blacks called Juneteenth, which
is actually celebrated on June 19th, go figure. But the real tragedy here is
that Blacks are celebrating, when they should have sued the crap out of the
state of Texas a long time ago, for not only ignoring Federal Law, but for the
violations of their Constitutional rights as well. The
14th Amendment was passed in 1864.
Folks, I’m a
college dropout, not a lawyer — this is basic math — it doesn’t take a genius
to connect the dots.
President
Johnson had a reputation for being a pretty crafty southern Democrat, capable
of getting his way. What he needed was a capitulating Negro he could use for an
agenda that would solve America's "Negro problem" for years to
come — a way to get them back on the plantation picking government
checks, instead of cotton. Those government checks would make billionaires
out of drug dealers, liquor store owners, fast food joints selling death by the
bite; sneaker companies; the music business selling ignorance with a beat;
prison systems filled with Y.B.M.s, (young, black, males) as a result, and let
us not forget the hospitals and undertakers.
Welcome to
Johnson's Great Society — class-action lawsuit neutralized.
To make
Johnson's dream come true, would required the services of a
dreamer — a Negro who could capture the hearts and minds of Whites,
Negroes, Jews, and the world. A man he could mold and shape. Preferably, a
religious leader, because just as the Negro's former masr' understood,
Negroes could be controlled through the religion they were taught on the
plantation — the religion of death, sinners, suffering, and salvation
after you die — Christianity! Plantation life with all its misery and hard
work was all a slave had from cradle to grave. Spirituals helped them work
faster, in harmony, and without complaining. The commandments and
religious hierarchy, like Saint Paul and the fear of the Lord, kept them
in a state of submission to power. It is my opinion that the Equal Rights
Movement, was high-jacked by the Civil Rights Movement and religion.
"I have
a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and every
hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made
plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the
glory of the
Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." Dr.
King
He might as well
have just said, 'Gobble-de-goop, goobbally-goop," for all that was
worth. It's just more religious nonsense that hasn't yet proved to be effective
in building the dreams of a people. But the pure resonance of Dr. King's voice
and his poetic, southern preacher style made everything he uttered sound
like it was making sense.
"I have
a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its
vicious
racist, with its governor having his lips dripping
with the words of interposition and nullification…" Dr. King
What...? If
everyone on planet earth knew just how bad Alabama was, as well as her racist
Governor George Wallace, then why weren't these people getting sued?
See what I'm
getting at? Choice 1: A Civil Rights Act and no money out-right to start a new
life, while you're getting the boot into the heart of Capitalism?
Or…
Choice 2: A
Class Action Lawsuit that would have put a lump sum of actual cash in-hand, to
build a new life? Don't believe for a second that people weren't
discussing the later. But like all political intrigues, where great sums
of money are involved, the solution is always in finding the perfect patsy
to convince the people of the rightness of the masr's actions — preferably a
patsy with substantial flaws that could be exploited and used against him in
the court of public opinion. So, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the F.B.I. went
to work. Most men in positions of power are easy targets for sexual
discrepancies. It didn't take long to find out that Dr. King liked to
indulge in extramarital affairs — it was his way of relaxing. People
have been talking about it and not talking about it for years. Most of us
learned about it in David Garrow's, Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King Jr.,
and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. At the time, J. Edgar
was good enough to send audiotapes of hotel trysts to Dr. King’s wife,
Coretta.
The point is
Dr. King was terrified the public would find out. I mean, he was a minister and
even though everyone knows ministers often dip into the parishioners pool,
the White folk and the American press would have had a field-day, especially
since a few of his affairs were reported to have involve white women. There
was also talk of plagiarism and his dissertation for the doctorate
he received from Boston University. Sadly, years later a Boston U. Panel did in fact, find such
evidence.
Again, the
point is information is king to those who do dirty deeds. How much
did Dr. King really know about the efforts to steer him in the direction of a
Civil Rights Act that would thwart a class-action lawsuit? No one really knows.
All we have are the results — no class-action lawsuit, followed by
a stifling, murderous, racist ideology called Blackness.
There's
a certain irony when comparing Dr. King's dreams to the shattered reality
that exists within the Black community today. In fact, the speech doesn't
say anything about Negroes gaining in economic strength, or striving to become
a valuable force for all that is good and strong in America. Nor did he dream
that one day Negro children would stand side-by-side, with all the little
children of the world achieving excellence in education, and skills they
can take into the future. No, instead his dreams consisted of platitude after
platitude, delivered eloquently, but sorely lacking in substance.
The one
thing he said that actually came true, was the cashing of the checks part, but
in the case for Blacks, it was for having babies and kicking the fathers out of
the house throughout the 1970s and 1980s to get the checks. With Johnson's
great Society, the Black family began to disintegrate and Y.B.M.s reverted
to a slave mentality that said; 'your children don't belong to you; they belong
to the masr', which in this case, was the Federal government.'
Listening to
Dr. King's speech again, after all these years, I gotta tell you it's packed
with a lot of completely false beliefs about the position of Negroes in
America, and what it would take to actually rise up from the so-called corners
of American society.
"In a sense we've come to our nations' capital to cash a
check. When the
architects of our republic, wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and
Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which,
every American
was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes,
black men
as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights
of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
To begin
with, Chief Justice Roger B., was correct in asserting the framers of the
original Constitution did not have the Negro in mind, when they were talking
about all men being equal, seeing they all owned slaves. Even the Negroes’
first messiah, Abraham Lincoln admitted to never envisioning a moment in
time, when the Negro and White men would be equal upon this soil. Again, Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney:
"These laws, show, too plainly to be misunderstood, the degraded condition of
this unhappy race. They were still in force when the Revolution began, and are
a faithful index to the state of feeling towards the class of persons of whom
they speak, and of the position they occupied throughout the thirteen colonies,
in the eyes and thoughts of the men who framed the Declaration of Independence
and established the State Constitutions and Governments.
They show that a perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be
erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery,
and governed as subjects with absolute and despotic power, and which they then
looked upon as so far below them in the scale of created beings, that
intermarriages between white persons and negroes or mulattoes were regarded as
unnatural and immoral, and punished as crimes, not only in the parties, but in
the person who joined them in marriage.
And no distinction in this respect was made between the free Negro or
mulatto and the slave, but this stigma, of the deepest degradation, was fixed
upon the whole race."
“And no
distinction in this respect was made between the free Negro or mulatto and the
slave,” really? The idea that Chief Justice Taney's America, would be cashing
any kind of checks presented to it by Negroes was just that, a dream. History
has proved the only way you succeed in America, is with a really excellent
cadre of lawyers. The N.A.A.C.P. had some of the best in the world, but Dr.
King had a better plan — president Johnson’s solution.
The
whole sordid mess has always reeked of capitulation, back room deals,
and outright betrayal to screw a people out of their right to seek legal
redress, for thousands of civil rights violations over a one hundred year
period. And one must completely disregard the notion of reparations for
slavery, especially since the United States wasn’t actually breaking any
laws — slavery was legal in most of the world. But the creation of
laws, designed to impede the Constitutional rights of a certain class of
American citizen, is another matter indeed. Remember, the 14th
Amendment specifically defined a citizen as “a person born,” which unlike the
original document included Negroes. And all citizens have the right to seek
legal and monetary redress, which is what Thurgood Marshall was referring to
when he referenced Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.
Today, we
actually call Dr. King a hero for undermining one of the greatest victories the
Negro had on this soil, since the Emancipation Proclamation. A few years
later, the angry, racist ideology of Blackness sprang from a collective
frustration that turned into burning anger over seeing one dream after another
fade away, like smoke in the rain.
“Mr.
President, we’re asking for you,” one woman said. “You’re spending billions of
dollars in Texas, but we’ve a problem here in Chicago. We will not stand
by this here, and keep letting this senseless killing and shooting happen in
our community.”
Oh, and
while we’re speaking of the violence in Chicago, dreams fading like smoke in
the rain, illegals supplanting the once favored low income, low-class,
slave-class Blacks, and getting played by so-called Black leaders — welcome to Obama’s great new America, and getting played once again!
In the heart
of Texas no less — irony, upon irony!
Written by,
Herman Williams III
