The Long and Enduring Struggle: Segue way to a New Vision "We Have Got to Tell the Unvarnished Truth" (John Hope Franklin) Article by Kelson Maynard and Jack Miller

 In the long history of African Americans battle for racial equality and civil rights, state sanctioned police and white vigilante violence have been the strong arm of white racist power. Exaltation of the police and acquiescence to white vigilante violence against African Americans and other people of color are often a manifestation of white entitlement that authorizes and promotes the brutalization of Black, Brown, and other people of color. Racism, sexism, homophobia, mass incarceration, and militarism are interlocking systems of oppression, which have resulted in an epidemic of police violence and murder of African Americans in the United States of America. Centuries of United States of America racial capitalist exploitation, imperialistic practice, racial hierarchy, and structures of white supremacy have negatively impacted this nation. The virulent rot and stench from slavery is still with us in multiple ways. The practice of its sovereignty expressed in race/ethnic based oppressions, expressed through the state’s use of bio-power militarism, and policing to maintain the white supremacist system of power. African Americans enduring and exigent struggle to acquire human rights, justice and social-economic equity has been under assault since the seventeenth century. The proliferation of this confrontation between African Americans and the pillars of State power and authority morphed into a new form of slavery in the post reconstruction period. The expansion of the industrial complexes interlocking systems of oppression manifested into establishing a police agency that would control the movement of the recently freed Black population. Thus, white militias, night riders, bounty hunters, and police were unleashed to continue the reign of terror on Blacks and to maintain their enforced status in society as neo-slaves. The quest of Black, Brown, and other people of color to achieve humane treatment within the social order and processes of U.S.A society is met with systematic resistance from State apparatus, social, and political agencies. These white supremacist entities deny African Americans and others their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The State’s pillars of multi-industrial complex agencies of suppression and their white supremacy cohorts’ impervious commitment to derail the enduring human rights struggle of African Americans and others are a constant roadblock for them to acquire a more equitable place in society. In Louisiana, the State is carrying out antiquated “Pig Laws” enacted after reconstruction to maintain the oppression of Blacks through frivolous laws, enacted after the passage of the 13th amendment. Wayne Bryant is serving a life sentence in Angola State prison for attempting to steal cutting hedge clippers in 1997, in Shreveport, Louisiana. His case recently came before the court and his appeal denied after serving twenty-three years in prison. Six white jurists opposed his appeal while the sole black woman jurist argued for release of Mr. Bryant. The ongoing struggle for racial equality and human rights is often met with acts of depravity by structural institutional racism perpetuated against the Black community. Many truculent acts of the States usually go without notice. Today, however, the luminous roving camera lens of cell phones reveals acts of terror against Black people. In Aurora, Colorado, a young black woman, Brittany Gilliam, was pulled over by police for allegedly driving a stolen vehicle. She was ordered at gun point along with her six-year-old daughter, twelve-year-old sister and two female teenagers to lay face down in the street while handcuffed. This is the same State that was responsible for the death of Elijah McClain in 2019. Also, two Black mothers were handcuffed by Secret Service Agents in Washington, DC, while their infant children remained in the car for nearly an hour. Other cases of alleged stolen cars, where African American folks have been misidentified by false claims, were reported. Their occupants, approached by police officials, presumed guilty without cause. It took the virtual exposé of authorized and vigilante violence against Black people- the knee of a white police officer, confident in his blameless power, blithely crushing the neck of a Black man into the concrete, suffocating and killing him; the “no-knock” police shooting death of a Black woman at home in her bed; the murder of a Black man simply taking a jog- and, the viral death toll during a pandemic, for many white people to acknowledge and confront the affront of homicidal authorized consent of police brutality and public lynching of Black people in the United States of America. It has taken the coronavirus pandemic for others to realize or admit that the racist ideology that pervades the social order and process of U.S.A society negatively impacts every aspect of life for people in the United States of America. More than a century later it seems that many White people have finally begun to grapple with DuBois’s prediction that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line. The long history of committed struggle against this white supremacist bio-power has challenged the denial of Black people’s inalienable endowments of humanity. It has helped us to imagine new systems of justice and social organization. But even though some apartheid laws have changed, economic exploitation and police and vigilante violence persist. Although there were encouraging signs of social and economic progress during WW11 and the decade immediately following it, those advances were only a first step towards liberating Black people in the United States of America from the lower caste status to which they were confined by law, custom, economic exploitation, and white violence- state and vigilante. But those advances left an ironic legacy, because they came at the demise of many Black institutions. For example, thousands of black teachers lost their jobs after the landmark Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. Desegregation also led to the destruction of the “Negro Baseball Leagues.” The enduring journey to eradicate structural systematic racial capitalism is being elevated through varied actions by Black people. It seems paramount for Black people that a new narrative be expressed through the lens of African Americans. The sedge way to a new vision requires a broad, inclusive, and diverse backstory from African American, Latinx, Indigenous, LGBTQ+ communities, and other people of color. One such narrative is the 1619 Project which provides a journalistic view from a black perspective of slavery, reconstruction and Jim Crow’s negative effect on the historic social-economic impact afflicting the African American community today. The 1619 Project is being offered for schools to include in school curriculums which would enhance the one-sided biased view of the States white supremacist interpretation of America’s history. However, in Arkansas, Florida and elsewhere, elected officials reject the idea of including this project in schools. The pathway for restorative measures in creating racial equity in education insists on an all-inclusive access in education for Black, Brown, Indigenous peoples, and other excluded groups. Another action is the judicial narrative of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) which documented over forty-four thousand lynching in the United States of America between 1877 through 1950. This narrative illustrates the prevailing racial terror during that period. The Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, highlights the inhumane killings of Black people at the hand of the State and white terrorists. The unceasing act of lynching- judicial and extra-judicial- today has brought millions to protest in the streets throughout the country seeking to defund or abolish policing as we know it, dismounting confederate statues and renewing the ideal of reparations for descendants of slavery. Advocates on this journey are moving towards a better reimagined new vision for the United States of America. The struggle of African Americans for social justice and equality has been long, brutal, tiring, and demanding. Through this horror there have been many losses. Murder, assault- physical and sexual-, hopelessness, jadedness, and despair are the results of the violence and intransigence of white supremacists. But, for as long as racism and white supremacy persist, so too will the effort to dismantle it. The work is hard. It demands tenacity, insistence, patience, and love. The long struggle and enduring advocacy of African Americans along with this broad diverse coalition of cultures to create a new vision in America while dismantling black codes, Jim Crow anti-social injustices and neo-slavery is a sedge way to a space of truth and reconciliation in the United States of America. We know our oppressors are relentless. But we march on in the footprints left by the determined warriors who came before us. Through their work we can broaden our consciousness to face the humanitarian and environmental challenges of our times. We must use their example to envision the world anew.