After January 6th rioters stormed the Capitol, then President Biden famously said, “this is not who we are.” But which people, whose histories, and what narratives have been continually and systematically erased from that “we”? Is the story of us truly a story of all of us? Why is the history of prior coups attempts in American history – in places like Colfax, New Orleans, or Wilmington – largely unknown?
Many of us were never taught about the prosperous Black community of Wilmington, North Carolina, for example, that thrived in the Reconstruction Era, nor about how Wilmington’s Black leaders came to briefly join forces politically with some of their white neighbors in a multiracial city government. The not-knowing makes it harder to grieve the dead, as well as their homes, their churches, and their newspaper that were attacked on November 10th, 1898. An armed white supremacist mob pushed out the duly elected, multiracial government of the city, destroyed Black property, forced thousands to flee, and murdered between 60 and 300 African Americans.
This history has only recently begun to be taught in classrooms and to be written into textbooks, yet it is already under threat of censorship or of being watered down as state history standards are rewritten to appease anti-woke extremists. As Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw and civil rights leader Barbara Arnwine discovered on their visit to Wilmington, even at the memorial, the language used to describe what happened whitewashes the brutality of the attack. Some of the historic sites in Wilmington, like the empty lot where the city’s Black-owned newspaper was burned to the ground, remain unmarked and their history invisible.
How can we grieve these losses and mourn for the people whose lives were lost if the truth is not written in our history books or told in our classrooms? As Barbara Arnwine said, “Until we get to where we can talk honestly about what has happened in this country, we are bound to be in a circle of repetition.”
This is Black history. This is American history. This is history that we must know and understand if we want to preserve our democracy.
TODAY’S PRACTICE:
Watch an interview with filmmaker Yoruba Richen about the documentary “American Coup: Wilmington 1898.”
What are you grieving that’s been erased, made invisible, less visible?
For more: Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s and civil rights leader Barbara Arnwine’s visit to the 1898 Monument and Memorial Park in Wilmington, NC.