In early 2013, the Racine Public Library hosted a program highlighting Polish heroes — people who helped Jews escape death at the hand of the Nazis — during the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. But Jessica MacPhail, the library’s director, felt there was more that needed to be said.
So, MacPhail, who has been involved with a Racine anti-racism group since 2005, invited Black Holocaust Museum Head Griot Reggie Jackson to speak on the black holocaust. MacPhail said the presentation was so well received that the library invited Jackson back. Since then, he has given a talk on Joshua Glover, a runaway slave who took refuge in Racine and flouted fugitive slave laws, and other race-related topics. Most recently, in early July, Jackson debuted a series titled #DoBlackLivesMatter.
The series of four talks examines the historical context of the statement “black lives matter,” which has become widely repeated, and derided, as a result of a series of high-profile killings of unarmed black men and boys by police, starting with the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. A second series of talks will be held at the Villard Square branch of the Milwaukee Public Library (MPL) on Aug. 3, Aug. 5, Aug. 10 and Aug. 12 from 5:30 to 7:30.
Jackson’s series addresses the 400-year-long history of black people in America, starting in 1619 when the first Africans were brought to the British colonies. Within 20 years, Massachusetts passed a law legalizing slavery and all of the other 13 original colonies followed suit.
“There’s been a … consistency in the way blacks have been devalued,” Jackson said in an interview. “We don’t study our history in-depth enough to realize it. We don’t talk about these things because they’re ugly things to talk about.”
Jackson begins his presentations by making the statement ‘black lives matter’; then, he asks the question ‘do black lives matter?’ “We can say that black lives matter … but when you look at the history of how blacks have been treated you have to question it,” he said.
Slavery “set the foundation” for the devaluation of black lives that Jackson said continues today in America. West African and European relations began as a “power relationship” as early as the 1400s when Portuguese sailors kidnapped a group of Africans who became servants and slaves.
“You’re in this situation where, from day to day, generation after generation, you are debased as a human being,” he said, adding that an 1811 manual on “how to control your slaves” mentally and physically recommended that “you debase them in such a way that they begin to accept their condition.”
Jackson said, as slaves, black men weren’t able to protect their families and it was against the law in every state to teach blacks to read and write. “You begin to have a … lack of self-worth — you don’t value yourself, you don’t value people who look like you,” said Jackson. “And, this is part of the mindset that continues even after slavery ends.”
On the other end, the mindset that enabled slavery resulted in “legal and extra-legal violence against blacks.” Jackson said during slavery it wasn’t illegal to kill a black person and someone doing so would not face criminal charges. The killer, however, could be held liable for trespassing against a slaveholder’s property. Jackson also cited Jim Crow laws, which promoted segregation, the refusal of Congress to pass anti-lynching laws and that “the first police departments in America were slave patrols.”
“In order for you to enslave millions and millions of people over several centuries, you have to develop a mindset where you don’t value their lives. You can’t have a situation where you look at them as your equals and treat them the way that these people are treated,” Jackson said.
Eventually, people — both black and white — began to question slavery. To justify slavery, purported scientists such as Samuel George Morton, Josiah Nott and others studied black bodies with a purpose of showing anatomical and intellectual differences between blacks and whites. But this research, influenced by the racial biases of its proponents, resulted in misreporting of data.
“If you go in thinking that blacks are inferior to whites … you’re going to prove that that’s true,” Jackson said, adding that the flawed research was accepted and “became the lasting justification for devaluing black lives in America.”
These pseudo-scientific justifications for black inferiority allowed for scientific and medical experiments to be perpetrated on black people by pharmaceutical companies, prisons and the United States government. The continued devaluation also resulted in the perpetuation of caricatures that promoted blacks as lazy, unintelligent and inarticulate.
“That’s part of the psychology that allowed this mass incarceration to occur,” said Jackson, referring to the fact that about 40 percent of America’s 2.3 million prisoners are black, despite being 13 percent of the population. “We criminalize blacks in the minds of America and, so, we have no problem throwing a million of them in prison, and throwing away the key and not really caring.”
“It has to have this debilitating impact on you, mentally,” Jackson said. “You have to begin to believe that you deserve this.”
Under such conditions, “it becomes very difficult to have a positive view of who you are as a person,” Jackson said. The emergence of the black power movement, Black Panther Party and the civil rights movement changed some of that perception but much of the momentum that had been built dissipated with the advent of the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and COINTELPRO, an FBI program that aimed to discredit King and infiltrate domestic political organizations such as those fighting for black civil rights.
Jackson said that before King’s death the civil rights leader had shifted his focus to concentrate on economic issues and inequality because he realized that “if you can’t uplift people economically then all the other stuff you do will not make a difference.”
Programs were created, the War on Poverty was declared but a covert effort persisted to break up black leadership to assure, in the words of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, another “black messiah” would not emerge.
Though Jackson isn’t sure whether America is ready to have an honest conversation about the value of black lives, he hopes that providing information and context will inspire people to “challenge the system we live in.”
MacPhail said the power of his presentation is that people get a perspective they might not have thought about before. “Once you’ve heard the truth, once you’ve seen something that changes how you think about something or how you feel about something, you can’t go back and un-see it, you can’t go back to being the person you were before,” she said.
“I was appalled, to put it mildly,” said Mark Giese, a technical writer who is white and has attended a number of Coming Together Racine film presentations. Giese recommended attending the presentations even though the information might make people uncomfortable.
Maria Cunningham-Benn, who is a digital projects librarian at MPL and also works with the Black Holocaust Museum, said she expects a diverse audience of people who “want to discuss issues of race and issues of economic disparity” and that “the library is becoming, more and more, that place that people can go and have these discussions.”
“We’re excited to be hosting,” added Villard Square Branch Manager Rachel Collins. “It’s important to know that type of history.”
Jackson agreed. “We can’t just say ‘black lives matter’ and just leave it at that. We have to question whether or not it’s really true,” he said. “Because if you just assume that they do then there’s no problem, there’s nothing to fix.”
Mark M Giese says
Among the many things I learned from Reggie was that the infamous Nazi doctors were preceded by about 100 years by American doctors experimenting on enslaved African-Americans. These Hippocratic oath-violating American doctors continued well into the 20th century.
Suzanne says
I am a European American, born in 1953. I remember as a young girl, my brother saying, “Mom, there is a nigger at the door. I asked what a nigger was and was told many distasteful things. We lived in housing projects designated for Veterans returning from WWII, which my father was one. Our block of the projects faced homes that people owned. A “Negro”(the proper term used then) family purchased a home across the street and soon afterwards had a cross burned in front of their home.
I always wondered how these actions left people feeling. Not good, I assumed.
The first long book that I ever read was, “Manchild in the Promised Land,” by Claude Brown. During the 60’s I read a lot. To the question, “Do Black lives matter?” I would say that depends on who you ask. In the scope of society, hardly. As a parent, I would say a lot.
I am a mother of a bi-racial daughter who identifies herself as Black. She married a Black man and I have two Black grandsons, who matter the world to me.
We have never as a country apologized for enslaving Africans so brutally, or made reparations in any way. Affirmative Action, originally meant to help ended up helping white women the most. White privilege is the “Affirmative Action” whites have held since inception. Yet anything to be helpful for others is fought tooth and nail.
Statistics for Black males are horrible, “The New Jim Crow,” by Michelle Alexander, and this is the world that my 4 month old and three year old grandsons are living in. Incarceration or a bullet does not discriminate what kind of home they are raised in, if their parents graduated from college or just getting by as best they can.
When society begins to value the lives of everyone, that may enable one to value their own life, though I am not feeling this happening now.
So again, “Do Black lives matter?” It depends on who you ask.
Don Rogers says
I grew up as a preachers kid and was heavily indoctrinated with christianity. As I grew older many questions the church couldn’t answer for the socio economic issues and historical fallacies being taught to us. I began to search for truth in our history and ancient religions and found that Africa was the source of all the world’s religions, sciences, sacred geometry, mathematics etc. We were being taught that anything that was african was evil or demonic and to cling to the conquerors religion and politics. The more I dove deep into my ancestors way of life the more conscious I became of the game that is being played internationally for Melinated people. It’s not a coincidence we are the most incarcerated, most infected by the aids virus (part of the eugenics system), the largest consumers in the world yet none of those dollars comes back into our communities. We do not have a culture of our own that promotes progress or healthy living. We do not have our own politics or our own media. Everything we get is from elitist groups who not only have knowledge of our ancestors wisdom and systems of power but give us their watered down version of religion and politics to keep us ignorant of our true power. It’s no coincidence these secret societies use ancient african symbols and concepts to rule the world when our ancestors used it to liberate man’s soul. Many african americans only trace their history back to slavery so they never get the full picture of the world’s history where africa was the central place where all nations of the world traveled to learn under their schools and initiation systems. Even biblically all the patriarchs spent extensive time in egypt and left powerful and rich (abraham, joseph, moses, jesus). Ethiopia and egypt are the two most talked about nations in the bible and we never connect the dots as to the source of where all knowledge stemmed from. Aristotle, platos and pythagoras all admit to spending extensive time in egypt learning for decades under their schools yet our American schools teach us the greeks were the father’s of philosophy, mathematics etc.
Black lives matter because we were the first to have inhabited this planet and create systems of government, spirituality, culture, laws and balance (Maat). We worked together as communities and no man was greater than the next. With the implementation of capitalism it destroys community and promotes greed and selfishness. On a molecular level any cell that operates this way in the body outside the harmony of the other cells becomes cancerous and inevitably kills the entire body if not treated. We have become a cancer to our societies and enviornment due to these new systems of thinking that our ancestors would have not allowed because of their understanding of the laws of correspondence (as so above so below). What happens in the physical affects the spiritual and vice versa.
Blacks lives definitely matter to the genetic defect who depend on us for their survival and spiritual evolution even if they don’t recognize it.
JWC says
Reggie Jackson is doing a great job presenting the series ” #Do Black Lives Matter ?”.
I appreciate Don Rodger’s comment/contribution as well. Amazing food for thought.
Ann Parsons says
“The Bell Curve.” Milwaukee, Home of the Bradley Foundation. The publication argues that African Americans and Latinos are inherent intellectually inferior. The CEO of The Bradley Foundation is heading the transition team for Gov. Walker’s bid for America’s Presidency.