Philadelphia Daily News Editorial Page

New Normal XI: Trump and Desperation
By John Burl Smith

Desperately and flagitiously thrashing about and while bailing, trying to keep his sinking ship of state afloat to reaches election day, Donald Trump lashing out, on the attack against “Black Lives Matter.” Calling them “thugs and rabble-rousers” will paint them as the enemy of America. Casting them as the number one problems in America, which pushed out COVID-19, he hopes such brush strokes will make voters see him as Rembrandt. However, hordes of news reports are deluging readers with a very different picture.
Snapshots of the Tulsa, Oklahoma debacle, following his claim of over a million adoring starry eyed Trumpers would pack his uptown throw down for his MEGA, so much so, they planned for a parking lot spill-over shindig for the thousands that could not crowd into the 19,000 seat arena. However embarrassed again, they folded their stage and sneaked out of town, before the hoopla began, like snake oil salesmen just ahead of the sheriff. The sparse crowd, less than 7,000, (993, 000 short of hysterical predictions) barely filled floor space. Trump hid out in his dressing room, until aides pushed him on stage. Limping out of town, like a car with a flat tire, he arrived back in Washington D.C. tie flapping, while crunching his MEGA hat, looking like a wet puppy. Well, so much for Trump’s triumphant return, before huge MAGA rallies, and hysterical rabid fans.
Returning from la la land, trying to reinvigorate his waffling campaign, Trump has made another colossal miscalculation, hoping to paint “Black Lives Matter,” as a dark force, threatening America with “DOOM!!!!” But, Trump’s daily shenanigans keep him in the foreground, upstaging “Black Lives Matter” every time he opens his trap. Saying Trump is his own worst enemy is a compliment, considering how he is truly viewed out in the country. Trump’s problems are many, but I don’t believe convincing the nation that “Black Lives Matter” is a monolithic group of “thugs and rioters” will pull his fat**s out of the fire.
My case in point is Taylor Griffin, the 25 year old former assistant and press secretary for Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. An insider for years, as an activist, Griffin has been involved with the “Black Lives Matter” movement, but now she watches the group go mainstream, after moving to podcast streaming giant Spotify. Talking with Christina Wilkie of CNBC Griffin says back then, “Those were lonely days. There weren’t many staffers involved in the movement. Flash forward to 2020, and now members see it as a political advantage to join protests.”
Griffin served as Speaker Pelosi’s envoy accompanying her on a recent demonstration on Capitol Hill, attending what Griffin called a “full circle” moment. “I’m laughing because the contrast is remarkable, from organizing in the streets of D.C. in 2014 to being here now in 2020. Four years ago, only 43 percent of American adults supported ‘Black Lives Matter,’ according to Pew Research Center. But that number has shifted dramatically, and now two-thirds of respondents viewed the movement positively, with 38 percent offering ‘strong’ support, according to a survey taken in June.”
Contrarily, Trump, trying to create contrast between what he stands for and how he wants voters to see “Black Lives Matter,” has doubled down, double vision. He has pulled out lackeys, like Candice Owens and Walter “Hawk,” Newsome, as FOX contributors, to lay the groundwork for his dastardly plots. Trump tweeted highlights about this “knock-off” pretender from a FOX News interview. Quoting the “Hawk” Newsome, “BLM activists should be applauded for arming themselves with guns and threatening to ‘burn down this system!’” Trump went on ranting falsely as he described Newsome as a “Black Lives Matter leader.”
But again, what Newsome has done is “knocked-off” the “Black Lives Matter” moniker to raise money, while espousing a far more militant approach to racial justice than what the mainstream “Black Lives Matter” movement represents. Although upset with Newsome’s con game, founders of the official “Black Lives Matter” movement have kept their emotions in check and concentrated on social justice and social change. When Trump did not get a rise from “Black Lives Matter,” he began railing about New York Mayor Bill De Blasio’s recent decision to paint a “Black Lives Matter” mural on Fifth Avenue in front of one Trump Tower, of course Trump was livid. Five such murals are painted throughout the city and others across America, with the first painted in Washington D.C. in front of the White House.
Over the past seven days, Trump made an even harder right turn, demanding a toppled Confederate statue in Washington be restored and he posted US Park Service officers to keep it safe. It is tragic the President of the United States does not feel the same need and urgency to protect the American people from COVID-19, which has slaughtered over 120,000 citizens. He is more concerned with stoking America’s racial fire than addressing coronavirus.
Trump took a really sweet video of black and white babies running to meet and embrace, then doctored it so it seemed the black child was running away from the white child. And, of course he tweeted former President Barack H. Obama was guilty of “treason.” Desperation knows no bounds for Trump at this point. So, I will trump Trump’s fading frantic fear filled frolic and failing fortunes for first place in the polls, while Trump’s joke on America, takes an ominous turn for the United States, after donning the mantra of the “Law and Order President.” Trump is planning another Tsunami level event, which he is convinced, will wash over the American electorate, and flood him into the White House. However, by all indications from Native People, his boondoggle to kick off his sputtering campaign, as Trump re-MAGA-vates his reelection bid on Independence Day. The symbolism is lost on me and Native People.
Resembling the logic behind the original rally set for Tulsa on Juneteenth, the Mount Rushmore site has Native People doing real War dances in opposition. For them, the monument on sacred land and the chiseled faces on Mount Rushmore is desecration of their heritage, especially considering the violence they endured with actual thief of their sacred land. Even more egregious, they feel their land was taken, simply to pay homage to leaders that spent their lives robbing native people. Their sharp and pointed criticisms are palatable to descendants of American slavery’s total disdain for confederate flags, statues and monument.
Several groups of Native American activists plan protests for Trump’s July 3 visit. This farcical attempt at what the Trump campaign calls a “comeback” campaign tour for a nation reeling from sickness, unemployment and recent social unrest. The event is slated to be a “very big,” “really big” “like nobody ever did before.” “I will make Mount Rushmore famous, with flights of fighter jets thundering overhead.” “Mount Rushmore is a symbol of white supremacy, it reflects America’s structural and systemic racism that’s still alive and well in society today,” according to Nick Tilsen, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe and the president of a local activist organization called NDN Collective. “It’s an injustice to actively steal Indigenous people’s sacred land and then carve the white faces of the conquerors who committed genocide”
My words for “Black Lives Matter” are reflections from the Invaders beginning days in the late 1960. The Invaders were the group Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recruited to help with the “Poor People’s Campaign.” It became obvious to Dr. King civil rights leaders were not being supportive. J. Edgar Hoover had successfully isolated Dr. King, but black power came to his rescue, when the Invaders agreed to recruit other black power groups to join the “Poor People’s Campaign.” I believe, Dr. King’s assassination was tied directly to him getting agreement from the Invaders, which gave him a ground game and allowed him to change strategy and keep the “Poor People’s Campaign” alive. After the Invaders help to bring a positive image to black power with Invaders agreement to support Dr. King, J. Edgar Hoover began recruiting individuals to set up black power groups. He promoted interlopers, as very reasonable leaders for the black community.
However, simultaneously Hoover unleashed his Co-Intel-Pro death squads on black power activists in support of Richard Nixon, the first “law and order” president. The most blatant episode of that deadly time for black power was the assassination of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago, which followed the bloody police assault of young progressive protestors at the Democrat Convention. While Invaders and other black power activists were being railroaded into prison, Hoover’s knock-off black power leaders were paid to mislead and set-up those fighting for the black revolution.
Today, I stand with one foot in the 1960s and one foot in today, I see a similar process being revived for “Black Lives Matter.” Since protests began Bill Bar’s Justice Department has been out among protestors, taking pictures and names. Even pretending to be protestors at times, as Trump and Bar urges and encouraged military tactics against peaceful protestors. Trump has made statements to the affect, groups like “Black Lives Matter” need to be looked at as “domestic terrorists”—Co-Intel-Pro all over again.
And, with these knock-off individuals, like the “Hawk” Newsome, Trump’s playbook put in play those who will lie about their involvement with “Black Lives Matter.” I see them baiting Trump’s trap by fabricating plots to entrap “Black Lives Matter leaders. Identical to what happened to black power leaders, the scheme is to implicate leaders in Black Lives Matter. The scenario reads like this, “Hawk” gets arrested in connection with a plot against the government or plot to blow up an office. Subsequently, Hawk confesses, pleads guilty and turns state’s evidence on the people he implicated in the plot. Trump pardons the “Hawk” later, as “a very fine fellow.”
Meanwhile, “Black Lives Matter’s” leaders will serve real prison sentences. All of the negative publicity from media outlets like FOX will over shadow and muddy the water, obscuring the good work “Black Lives Matter” is doing. Other closet Trump supporters will swoop in and take control of the movement, as William Bar’s Justice Department picked off any new leaders, with trumped up charges and more young people will be railroaded into prison. This is a look back through the rearview mirror at high speed, because it is an instant replay of what Hoover did to kill black Power. Support for this scenario is in the US House of Representatives investigation into Dr. King’s assassination files. Trump must be reading J. Edgar Hoover’s playbook.
Today, through young progressives, like Tamika Mallory, who was an organizer with the Women’s March in 2017 and is a staunch supporter of gun control, feminism and black movements in general have shown America the leadership ability and dedication of young progressives. For me she became the face and voice of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, following George Floyd’s lynching. She stood out, delivering highly emotional, fiery and powerful speeches, which went viral and helping to motivate demonstrators around the world. Such leaders should be prime candidates for the Democrats mentoring program for congressional candidates. Such rising leaders will help drive some of these “do nothing” Republicans out of Congress.
However, she and many others are also top candidates for DA Bill Bar’s Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies, which are gearing up to silence dissident voices, as Hoover trapped black power activists, during the 1970s and 1980s. Even the CIA is revving up new recruitment videos for social media. Young activists must be intelligent and begin to turn their “street protest into street politics.”
“Black Lives Matter” street protestors must understand that politics is the art of the possible and take the best option to not only save their movement, but their lives. I point to the way they have been willing to throw their bodies at American racism, the way we did in the 1960s because we loved America, while at the same time we hated what those in charge of America were doing to keep power. Most Americans, as the polls I cited earlier show “two-thirds view the “Black Lives Matter” movement positively, with 38 percent offering “strong” support, which is as good, or better than Trump. So young progressives already have the trust of the American people, and now is the time to build on the goodwill you have established.
Moreover, there is no better time than now for young people to garner even more respect and appreciation from the American people by helping to save America’s electoral system. Trump’s refusal to support vote by mail will put many Americans at risk, especially when considering what happened in Wisconsin, Georgia and Louisville. I believe young people today feel and believe as we did in the 1960s. But, young people today have an advantage we did not have, America needs you. “Black Lives Matter” and other groups of progressives, whose names I do not know, are the ones who have awakened America’s spirit of equality and justice. While on the other hand, elected politicians are afraid to speak out against Trump or make so much money they did not care about what was happening to black people and other poor in American.
This is why politics, as the art of the possible, comes into play. It makes young progressives the wild card in this marked deck. All Americans face a critical choice between Trump’s America and America are all work, in our own ways, to improve and maintain that America. Progressives must put aside personal political desire for the greater good. We must be “BIGGER” than Donald Trump, who is calling his racist base of white nationalist militias and bikers for Trump to ride down on anyone who opposes him.
Former Vice President Joe Biden desperately needs a ground game and I believe “Black Lives Matter” and other young progressive groups can become Joe Biden’s balance of power, not only as voters but as poll workers. A strong ground game is essential in states without vote by mail. Coronavirus is going to impose some truly unique circumstances on the electoral process. The need to beat the bushes to bring out the disinterested, disaffected, intimidated and disabled voters that do not get mail in ballots, even though they should, will be crucial. These voters will need help filling out, signing and returning mail in ballots, particularly those voting by mail for the first time.
Reports say Republicans have recruited and will pay over 50,000 so-called poll workers, whose job will be to intimidate black voters, by accosting voters, demanding answers to questions, as they approach the polls. Right wing gun carrying, confederate and N**i flag waving truckloads of white nationalist militias, who are Donald Trump’s strongest supporters, have vowed to repeat their siege of Michigan’s Capitol at polling places on election day to suppress black voting across America.
I believe, if black voters see groups of “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts at polls, they will be assured they have help on their side. Young progressives took to the streets and gave others courage to stand up also. And with your stand confederate flags, statues and monuments are coming down, which is something black people in America never thought they would witness. Each one that falls, and the others which will fall, will be testaments across America of your courage.

“We Charge Genocide”
John Burl Smith
We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of Genocide by the United States Government against the Negro People is a petition presented to UN Secretary-General Trygve Halvdan Lie in 1951. Although I was a pre-teen in 1951, and living in Memphis, I never heard a word about “We Charge Genocide” then or during my entire education in any school I attended throughout my life. It was in 1992 when I was writing for my wife, Dot’s, e-magazine The DISH (Dot’s Information Service Hot Line) that I encountered “We Charge Genocide.” After reading it, I was amazed that such a momentous document could escape my attention so completely, having been a black power activist since1967. If one reads “We Charge Genocide,” they will understand why.
Not only was the document amazing, but the efforts to bring this jaw-dropping account to the world were even more amazing. I detail the account, at length, in “The 400th”: From Slavery to Hip Hop. I will not retell that story here. However, I will address how that amazing saga bears on today. “We Charge Genocide” was a response to the United Nation’s Genocide Convention adopted by the General Assembly in December 1948—any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, or religious group is genocide!!! Paul Robeson (4-9-1898/1-23-1976) was very well known as an artist, athlete, concert singer, actor and activist along with William L. Patterson (8-27-1891/3-5-1980), a well-to-do New York lawyer, head of the International Labor Defense (ILD) and a black outspoken leader in the Communist Party-USA. (For those who want to know the real story of the Communist Party-USA check out scholar Mary Helen Washington’s book “The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s”). Looking at black American’s penniless emancipation, the lynching period inspired by president Woodrow Wilson that lasted until 1950, white’s “Red Summer’s riots against blacks in 1919, share cropping and convict leasing, Robeson and Patterson and volunteers compiled a 237-pages petition, detailing America’s crimes of genocide against its slavery descendants.
Among other things, “We Charge Genocide” accused the US government of committing thousands of wrongful executions and lynchings. It documented 10,000 cases of discrimination, disparate treatment in employment, education, and public accommodations. It charged further that the US had disenfranchised black people using voter suppression to prevent African American citizens from voting, with intimidation, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests. Although some of these voter suppression tactics have been outlawed, with computers new tactics are commonly used and acknowledged today by Republicans to deny black voters access to the poll in 2020.
“We Charge Genocide” cited thousands of police brutality cases, which also continue today, and black people are murdered on the streets and in their homes, without consequences. It cited convict leasing to show there were no fair courts in the US, as well as its criminal justice system being rigged against black people. Southern states judicial systems legitimized using trumped-up charges to imprison millions of African Americans, who had to pay fines in cash or be sold to businesses that paid their fines.
I raise this issue today, because there seems to be absolutely no knowledge, concern or desire to address this systemic racism by governments on any level in the US. This charge I extend to the world and international organizations to call America’s hand in any formal way. “Black Lives Matter” worldwide protest is the first event as illuminated the many deadly episodes American descendants of slavery endure daily on some level at the hands of whites in America, while the UN or the world ignore America’s genocide.
There are two instances that caused this situation and made it continuation possible. First, the United Nations refused to grant descendants of American slavery a hearing on its petition, as it was granting other exploited and oppressed people across the world that were requesting hearings on their petitions of grievances. Secondly, America refused to acknowledge “We Charge Genocide” and threaten to cut off and withdraw it funding support to the UN, if it acknowledged Patterson and Robeson’s petition on behalf of African Americans in anyway. Trump has renewed that American threat against WHO, as a scapegoat for his horrendous response to COVID-19! The United States, in 1951, doubled down, refusing to recognize “We Charge Genocide,” so it would not have to deny the truth contained in Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson’s indictment of America.
Today we are back there, watching in amazement, at white leaders, few of whom were around when “We Charge Genocide” was introduced. But, the majority of older white people today have fought to preserve the system of white supremacy, which “We Charge Genocide” exposed. Yet and still the vast majority of white people in America today continue claiming to be ignorant of America’s history of systemic racism and discrimination in America.
Today beyond not having individual memories, America, as a political entity, has no recollection, because “We Charge Genocide” is not mentioned in any history books. The president of the US ridicules any suggestion that the incidents of racism against descendants of American slavery reflecting the reality of “Back Lives Matter’s” protests. Millions of whites witnessed George Floyd’s gruesome and agonizing death has a white policeman kneel on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and could not look away. I ask how can the United Nation look away, when it pledged to address—any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, or religious group is genocide? Only die hard “red neck” in America and around the world, continue defending the overt and callous policing—lynchings and murders of the United States employed against African Americans, and not speak out based on its own charter.
“We Charge Genocide” was hushed us by the world, so all, even African nation are complicit in America’s continued genocide today because no one spoke up back then, and all turned blind eyes and deft ears to victims, like George Floyd cries for his mother not able to breathe. For eighty years of “see no evil,” “hear no evil,” and “speak no evil,” the UN now wears a false face!!! Now that the world has watched American justice for black people in the US—the lynching of George Floyd by white policemen—what will all of you UN delegates do? One policeman kneeled on this neck, for well over eight minutes and 46 seconds, but that knee rested on all African Americans each day and night.

New Normal X: Civil Rights v. Byron Allen
BY John Burl Smith
“Black Lives Matter” and an 8 minutes and 46 seconds video of George Floyd’s horrendous death scene, has African Americans in a war of words about why black people are still locked in Poverty. The fault line in this war of words began with slavery. Most involved in these verbal fisticuffs on both sides are beset by ignorance because their weapons are hearsay. The major reason I wrote “The 400th” From Slavery to Hip Hop was to lay out the major stepwise course of descendants of American slavery’s journey, which has lasted more than four centuries in America’s slave society.
I wanted to construct a narrative that showed their slow but continuous slough across time, asking and answering questions about how they create purpose along their journey. Their survival struggles were assuredly far more difficult than slavery? Slavery would be a piece of cake compared to the challenges of learning to live on their own, after generations of forced dependency, domination, dreary, pain and death. I asked myself, was there a formula that could provide a matrix, which organized the hundreds of years filled with toil and sweat that would flow out of the words and descriptions I gathered into streams that explained how I got here. The what, why and how of my alchemy has produced a narrative, not only which black children are able to stand upon a solid foundation of information before the world and state their claim, as a people.
It is impossible to create one story that includes everyone and every event, which aided former slaves’ survival struggles. Individuals forced to live in slave pens, enslaved Africans developed societies, which served their needs, under such total domination and oppression. They structured those societies on the millions of plantations and it was that knowledge they brought with them into their penniless emancipation. Put another way, it was what they had in their heads, which allowed former slaves to survive amidst confusion, mayhem and death that civil war wrought all about them without real concern or refuge.
Beginning this project, I had accumulated a head filled with information but haphazardly picked up that I came to understand as a family story. Some information I received as a child from my Great Grandfather, Burl Lee, Jr. He was the first Lee born free. My family name came from Burl Lee, Sr. my Great great-grandfather, who was the last Lee born in slavery. His son Burl talked with me until age 11. He told me stories of his father’s times, as well as his. Although, most of those stories faded until I began trying to fill in the blanks of my matrix with real events and people. My wife Dot had a maxim, regarding telling stories, “It must always be a love story, why else bother?” That was her way of saying life is always about the next generation—the children.
Those thoughts revealed eight themes that filled in my matrix. Following emancipation, former slaves decided, not formally and not all at the same instance, to pursue eight lines of development, which began back in those slave pens because that was what they knew. I saw those categories as: making families/building communities; education/communication; entertainment/entrepreneurship; political/ and cultural involvement. Those themes began as individual thoughts or actions that were shared because they were productive and gave former slaves what I have envisioned as eight distinct areas, which the newly freed slaves endure to survive, no matters what white people threw at them. Even though descendants of American slavery were affected negatively by their penniless emancipation, it was white people’s use of the legal system and terror to dominate former slaves to relegate them in poverty, as “cheap labor” on bottom of America’s capitalistic economic system.
The one thing most African Americans were not taught in school or in the street is they are in the place they are today because of their ignorance of what really happened, after Republicans in Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. A United States federal law—the Civil Rights Act of 1866 defined citizenship for newly freed slaves and affirmed that all citizens were equally protected under the law. It was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of newly freed slaves and descendants born in or brought into the US, as slaves.
However, before becoming law, US President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee vetoed this legislation twice, but each time a two-thirds majority vote in each chamber of Congress overrode Johnson’s vetoes. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866” became the law of the land without a presidential signature. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866,” protected “the Civil Rights of all Persons in the United States, and furnishes the Means of their vindication, by declaring that all people born in the United States who are not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.” A similar provision (called the Citizenship Clause), was written into the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution also a few months later.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 also declared that “any citizen has the same right that a white citizen has to make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.” Additionally, the act guaranteed to all citizens the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, like punishment, pains, and penalties... Persons who denied these rights on account of race or previous enslavement were guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction faced a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.
The Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the same language in the Equal Protection Clause that is in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In particular, the act discussed the need to provide “reasonable protection to all persons in their constitutional rights of equality before the law, without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.”
So, here I will use Roland Martin’s favorite expression, “let me help y’all out” to clarify why “The Civil Rights Act of 1866” is important today. First, it is “currently” a federal law passed by the Congress of the United States in 1865 and was not overturned by the US Supreme Court. Southern democrats began employing what they termed “interposition and nullification” to craft a facetious legal theory they enforced as laws. That theory denied former slaves access to fair courts, as plaintiffs. Using their made up justification—interposition and nullification—whites in the South claimed they had the right to void the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and place themselves between the US Constitution and former slaves to preserve their heritage. Based on that claim alone, southerners denied former slaves access to all rights granted by the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
For their claim to stand, southerners needed someone in the White House, like Andrew Johnson, and that person was Woodrow Wilson. Five years after Plessy v. Ferguson—separate but equal—Wilson, in 1912, instituted segregation throughout the federal government and signal southerners states he supported “nullification” of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. A southerner from Virginia and a true son of Robert E. Lee, Wilson was an avid supporter of “The Birth of a Nation.” Wilson held viewing parties at the White House and hosted Supreme Court Judges, Congress, business moguls, industrial magnets, educators, and religious leaders to his soirées. He fed the blood lust era of lynching and roasting of black men, with the Red Summer of 1919.
I did not present The Civil Rights Act of 1866 at this point only because I wanted readers to know and understand that newly freed slaves and descendants were actually given all rights white people had in 1866, but make sure they know they have them now. White people using “interposition and nullification,” as legal theories, which the Supreme Court with Plessy v. Ferguson and Woodrow Wilson to claim southerners had a legal right to disregard the Civil Rights Act of 1866. White people with the support of the federal, state and local government engineered the poverty black people endure today.
However as time, events and Divine intervention would have it, in March of 2020 the US Supreme Court finally reaffirmed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, as the current law in the United States. News headlines stated it this way “Supreme Court Sides with Comcast, Sets Higher Burden for Byron Allen to Win Racial Bias Suit.” The unanimous ruling threw the case back to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. It seemed for many black people that they had lost again, especially considering Comcast’s statement, “We are pleased the Supreme Court unanimously restored certainty on the standard to bring and prove civil rights claims. The well-established framework that has protected civil rights for decades continues. The nation’s civil rights laws have not changed with this ruling; they remain the same as before the case was filed.” That is my point, “The nation’s civil rights laws remain the same as before the case was filed.”
That is what I wanted black people to understand, and maybe they will believe it now that it has come out of a white person’s mouth. The Supreme Court actually “unanimously restored” the integrity of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 in America. It had been unmined by southern states, Woodrow Wilson and the Supreme Court itself, with Plessy v. Ferguson—separate but equal—segregation and white supremacy, following the end of Reconstruction in 1876. I was told in school that The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had been outlawed by Plessy v. Ferguson, which is why segregation was legal in the United States.
Moreover, it is obvious that all the years of “second class” treatment by southern states and white people in them was con-game, a charade perpetrated on black people and supported by the US Supreme Court and federal government. “Interposition and nullification,” made most, with a few exceptions, like Justice John Marshall Harlan, southerners and their state courts violated civil rights of African Americans with impunity, even more to the point, Plessy v. Ferguson—separate but equal—was illegally imposed on black people in 1897, with the blessings of the federal government.
Stated in a different manner, black people in the United States have been “hoodwinked,” by segregation in the South. They were “sold a bill of goods” by the federal government and lawyers “white and black, in order to help white people build wealth at the expense of African Americans. Federal, state and local governments, created this illegal system to force black people to accept “second class status” on the bottom of American society. The federal government was a full partner with southern states in violating the Constitutional rights of black people, with segregation, white supremacy, lynching, banishment, ethnic cleansing, and the “Dark Age” angry white men mob madness for over for 144 years.
All of the denials, restrictions and discrimination imposed on African Americans after 1876 election and the withdrawal of federal troops, set black people up for a murderous pogrom led by Woodrow Wilson and the US Federal Government. This re-enslavement period of black people has been painstakingly and expertly presented by Douglas A. Blackmon in his eye opening book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.