This speech was delivered at Edgewood College as part of their ‘Common Read’ program. I was one of four panel members asked to respond to the book: The Other Wes Moore. The book is about two African American males, with the same name and similar backgrounds that grew up in the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland. One became a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.
The Other Wes Moore did cause me to critically examine the social reality in which many urban blacks are forced to exist and reflect on the serious problems facing American society like poverty, race, crime, and limited opportunity. For me it was never about which Wes Moore succeeded but rather the need to explain the conditions that causes too many Wes Moores to fail.
The author Wes Moore succeeded not because racism has died, but because of a support system that got him through. We must ask ourselves what is it about our system that continuously fails the poor and black males in particular. Is poverty an individual problem or a structural one? Those who believe it’s an individual problem typically blame the other Wes Moore for his fate in life. They’ll say if he wasn’t raised in a single family household; or if he just had more determination or if he would have just done this or that. To be sure all of this carries a grain of truth, but it places the blame for his condition primarily on his shoulders as if external factors bare no blame.
The condition in which both Wes Moore’s found themselves just didn’t happen overnight. I often tell my students that if you want to get at the root causes of contemporary problems (especially involving race), you have to study their historical origins. So I’d like to use my 10-minutes to take a look back and put The Other Wes Moore into a broader historical perspective and perhaps point out some similarities between then and now.
There were at least 3 significant historical periods that had a profound impact on black Americans quest for equality in this country: 1) The Indentured Servitude Period; 2) Reconstruction and 3) the modern Civil Rights Era.
INDENTURED SERVANT PERIOD
When Blacks first arrived on American shores in 1619 (although there is ample evidence they arrived earlier), they came not as slaves but as indentured servants with basically the same rights (or lack thereof) as white indentures. This means for a brief period in our history, class differences were more significant than racial differences. However that all changed in the mid 1660s when a Virginia court ruled that black indentured servants, must be servants for life.
That’s an important turning point.
The white and black indentured system gave way to black slavery and ultimately the 1857 Dred Scott Decision ruled that a slave, an ex-slave, or a descendant of slaves could not be a citizen of the United States and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. This meant that white supremacy became the law of the land. So no matter how low a white person was on the economic scale his or her white skin made him better off than blacks. There was no incentive for poor whites to fight for black rights or emancipation, when to do so would undermine their own privileged status. As a result the indentured period represented a lost opportunity for this country. Just imagine if poor whites and blacks could have united back then and nipped racism in the bud. We’d have a different America today. We’ll never know what life would have been like for the other Wes Moore if his ancestors were allowed to go from indenture to freedom.
RECONSTRUCTION
During Reconstruction America was given another chance, to build an interracial democracy. The 13th, 14th and 15th “Reconstruction Amendments” that abolished slavery, granted citizenship and gave blacks the right to vote were passed. There was this great promise that for the first time since they had been in this land, the U.S. constitution would protect Blacks and grant them their true rights as U.S. citizens. The Freedmen’s Bureau was founded by Congress to provide relief services for former slaves.
Nearly 2,000 black politicians were elected all over the Deep South including senators and governors. However instead of envisioning a world where black men and women could live as equals and in dignity with the majority population, the rise of black political power triggered a southern white backlash that eventually destroyed Reconstruction. It was this backlash that laid the groundwork for a segregated society that still exists today. Let me explain:
Although Republicans like to rail against Obama care-the nation’s first ever national health care system actually started right after the civil war to serve free blacks. When the enslaved were freed, most were turned loose penniless and homeless, with only the clothes on their backs and were vulnerable to yellow fever, smallpox and typhus epidemics. They literally died by the tens of thousands. The federal government responded by creating the Medical Division of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The division built 40 hospitals and hired over a hundred doctors to treat more than a million former slaves from 1865 until it was shut down in 1870.
Critics at the time said the new health care system would make blacks too reliant on government. Even when healthcare was expanded to include the elderly, children and the disabled, southern whites still saw it as a black handout. The backlash didn’t stop there.
After a series of civil rights laws were passed banning discrimination in public accommodations, the violence against blacks started almost immediately. Ex-confederates founded the Ku Klux Klan and vowed to never accept blacks as social equals. If federal troops hadn’t been stationed in the south, the death toll among blacks, which was high, would have been astronomical.
However it was the new voting rights acquired by blacks that caused the greatest backlash. As blacks used the vote to achieve positions of power that previously had been reserved solely for whites, historians say many southern whites felt like their country no longer belonged to them and they vowed to take it back. Does that sound familiar?
Through the Compromise of 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the south and the “Redeemer” Party took control of most Southern statehouses. It may help, if you think of the Redeemers as modern day Tea-Party members. They defunded public schools, closed public hospitals, and eliminated the safety net, while cutting taxes for the wealthy plantation owners, the 1 percenters of their day. But they didn’t stop there.
They passed numerous voting suppression laws, returning Congress to an all-white institution. At the same time a reactionary supreme court ended black civil rights protection, enshrined segregation through the separate-but-equal doctrine, and in perhaps the most heart-wrenching case of all- U.S. vs Cruikshank ruled that the federal government couldn’t prosecute armed militias like the KKK that attacked blacks-that it had to be prosecuted at the state level- This decision, gave birth to “legal” lynching. This was the other side of emancipation where high expectations gave way to heart-crushing disappointment.
It wasn’t until World War II—nearly 100 years after the Civil War—that a major positive change occurred for black people. There was a big demand for workers in the defense plants and other factories, because the war cut off the flow of immigrant labor from Europe. Thus began the second great migration of blacks from the sharecropping fields of the rural south to the urban north.
When Wes Moore’s ancestors arrived in Baltimore it wasn’t like a welcome mat was extended to these new arrivals-oh no. Instead Black people were refused the subsidies that white people received to buy houses, and even when Blacks had the money they were prevented, either by restrictive deeds, government policy, or straight-out violence from buying homes in “white” neighborhoods. They were literally forced into overcrowded ghettos which sprung up in just about every major urban city. Our own Milwaukee didn’t get fair housing legislation passed until the mid-60s and still remains one of America’s most segregated cities.
1960s Civil Rights Era
America had another chance to get it right during the civil rights era of the 60s. A young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. lead a non-violent movement that would change the country. In the North a Muslim preacher called Malcolm X spoke truth to power about the oppressive conditions that blacks had to endure.
Many blacks were given opportunities to enter college and professional careers. Social programs like welfare, community clinics, and early education programs were expanded. Government spending for training and jobs increased. Although discrimination continued, these advances were significant.
Equally as important were the “intangibles.” The consciousness of not just African-Americans but other people of color, and millions of white folk radically changed. The real history of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the whole period of the 20th century began to be researched and exposed.
The Civil Rights era showed that when masses of people challenged the system, and when that was coupled with political action they were able to change the dialogue of a nation. What could hardly be imagined yesterday suddenly became a real possibility. Many blacks thought that surely the civil rights era would be the time when racial equality would become a reality. Once again, this was NOT done and our cities exploded. The promise of equality was once more betrayed—as it had been after the indentured servant period and during Reconstruction.
During this same time, between 1967 and 1987, the four cities of Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Detroit together lost over one million factory jobs—and things have actually gotten worse sense.
Perhaps the most devastating attack on the black community and especially black males occurred when the “War on Drugs” was declared.
In 1969, H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s top assistant, wrote in his diary that “[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” Thus was born the “war on drugs or as many have described it the ‘war on black males.’ This “war on drugs” was taken to a whole new level during the Reagan Administration.
Researchers have gone back and looked at newspaper headlines and were able to track when crack was introduced into urban areas and track the flood of violence that followed. The vast amounts of money that could be earned quickly was too tempting to pass up by many black youth who lacked jobs, and where education and health care resources had been severely cut.
Instead of providing better education and the promise of new opportunities for these youth, drugs were and are allowed to flood the inner city resulting in thousands of youth caught up in the drug trade—where they are subjected to harassment, arrest, imprisonment and death.This is the environment that both Wes Moores were born into.
HOW DO WE GET OUT OF THIS HELL HOLE?
Are there any solutions?
I couldn’t find any from reading THE OTHER WES MOORE and the author admitted he didn’t know. Perhaps the reelection of President Obama a few weeks ago offers a glimmer of hope. Here’s why. In the past whenever there’s been a white backlash over black political gains, we’ve seen how this backlash devastates the black community. But for the first time in history this nation’s changing demographics may allow us to checkmate that backlash and build a multiracial coalition that truly represents all of us. If we join hands, we have yet another chance to get it right. Unfortunately just like in reconstruction, we have powerful forces wedded to the status quo and that’s why I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime.
My life and my generation’s lives are still needed to plant seeds. We’ll never get to sit under the shade of the tree of true equality. I always hoped that my son would be able to sit in the shade but now I’m afraid it may not happen until my grandson comes of age. Let me give you an example to help you understand my point of view.
Over 35 years ago when I was in school I could have graduated from Edgewood and never have been taught by a black instructor. In fact there were no tenured black instructors back then. 15 years ago when my son was in college he could have gone all the way through Edgewood and never be taught by a black instructor in most majors here. Now that, my grandson is ready for college not much has changed in terms of black instructors. We always think the answers lie out there somewhere, but it really must start with us.
Although I don’t agree with the other Wes Moore’s choices, I certainly understand them. I sincerely believe that the vast majority of young men like Wes Moore would prefer legitimate work. But when you remove jobs, gut the safety net of welfare, allow drugs to thrive, make it easy to buy guns, you create the conditions for the Other Wes Moore to flourish.
The fact that these youth really have nothing to lose under this system—could become the very same driving force that could impel them in a whole new direction if they could be separated from that “gangster” lifestyle and if their anger, alienation, and rebelliousness could instead be channeled at the source of the problem. This happened in large numbers during the 1960s, when many former gangbangers and prisoners got out of that life and into questioning the system and marching for a cause that was bigger than themselves.
Despite the gains of the civil rights era and the re-election of our first black president we are still a nation shaped by segregation and inequality that has its roots in slavery. Acknowledging this fact is not a case of playing the victim but rather of seeking justice.
I don’t want to sound like we haven’t made considerable progress because we have. But according to Bill Clinton, the challenge of our past remains the challenge of our future: Will we be one nation, one people, with one common destiny — or not? Will we all come together, or come apart?
That’s why we must begin a national dialogue, so someday we can heal the wounds of our troubled past. That’s what the other Wes Moore meant to me. Thank you.
Partial Annotated References
Bertrand, M and Mullainathan, S. (2003) “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2003. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf
Blackmon, Douglas A. (2008) Slavery By Another Name, The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Doubleday, New York.
Blake, John (2012)Parallels to country’s racist past haunt age of Obama
http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/01/parallels-to-countrys-racist-past-haunt-age-of-obama/
Civil Rights Act of 1866-This site discusses the civil rights act and why it failed to protect Black American rights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1866
Cruikshank-This site provides an overview of one of the most devastating Supreme Court rulings that led to mob violence against Blacks and lynching. Cruikshank prohibited the federal government from using the 14th Amendment to prosecute armed mobs that were attacking Blacks. Many believe that this ruling gave the green light to hate groups like the KKK, The Red Shirts and many others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Cruikshank
Davis, David B. (2006) Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, Oxford University Press US, New York and Research Triangle, North Carolina.
Disenfranchisement after Reconstruction-This site provides detailed information how blacks were stripped of their voting rights after reconstruction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_Reconstruction_era
Downs, Jim (2012) Sick from FreedomAfrican-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, Oxford University Press, NY, NY.
Dred Scott Decision-This site provides information about the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, as well as history about the case and Mr. Scott. http://www.historynet.com/dred-scott
Freedmen’s Bureau-This site features a copy of the law that created the bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/fbact.htm
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I- Life as a Slave, Part II- Life as a Freeman, with an introduction by James M’Cune Smith. New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan (1855); ed. John Stauffer, Random House (2003)
Freedmen’s Bureau-This site features a copy of the law that created the bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/fbact.htm
Great Black Migration-This site offers a good historical look at the movement of millions of blacks from the south to the north. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)
Grogger, J. and Willis, M. (2000). The Emergence of Crack Cocaine and the Rise in Urban Crime Rates. The Review of Economics and Statistics. Vol LXXXII Nov 2000, #4.
“Haldeman Diary Shows Nixon Was Wary of Blacks and Jews,” New York Times, May 18, 1994. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE2DA1438F93BA25756C0A962958260]
Haldeman, H.R., (1995). The Haldeman diaries: inside the Nixon White House. Berkley Books, NY, NY.
Indentured Servitude- Slavery and Miscegenation [inter-racial marriage] in America by: Linda Allen Bryant: This is a 3-page article that does a great job of describing the early years of indentured servitude where class differences were more important than racial differences.
Ku Klux Klan-This site offers a history of the Klan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
Irons, Peter. (2006) A People’s History of the Supreme Court-The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution: Revised Edition. Penguin Press, NY, NY.
Lynching Statistics–Between 1882 and 1964 the Tuskegee Institute kept records of 4,742 people being lynched, 3,445 were Black. Statistics from the Tuskegee Institute Archives, posted at University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law’s website. [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html
Massey,Douglas (2007) Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System, Russell Sage Foundation, New York.
Orfield, Gary and Lee, Chungmei (2007) “Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation, and the Need for New Integration Strategies,” Civil Rights Project, UCLA, August 2007. http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/historic-reversals-accelerating-resegregation-and-the-need-for-new-integration-strategies-1/orfield-historic-reversals-accelerating.pdf
Pager, Devah (2003) “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American Journal of Sociology, Volume 108, Number 5, March 2003, pp. 937-75.
Reconstruction Amendments-This site provides a great history and discussion of the 13th, 14th and 15th “Civil War” Amendments. http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/reconstruction/essays/reconstruction-amendments-official-documents-social-history
Redeemers-This site offers a brief but thorough history of the Redeemer party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redeemers
Rivera, Amaad , et al (2008) (Institute for Policy Studies), “State of the Dream 2008: Foreclosed.” United for a Fair Economy, January 15, 2008. [http://www.faireconomy.org/files/StateOfDream_01_16_08_Web.pdf]
Sugrue, Thomas J. (1996) The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
The Oppression of Black People. The Crimes of this System and the Revolution we need. Revolutionary Communist Party Publication. N.D. http://www.revcom.us/a/144/BNQ-en.html
Urban Riots-“How the 1960s’ Riots Hurt African-Americans,” National Bureau of Economic Research. [http://www.nber.org/digest/sep04/w10243.html]
Wilson, William J. (1996). Interviews with white managers are in When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, Knopf, New York, 1996.
Voter Suppression-This site has great information on voter suppression in the 19th century up to today. http://www.movingforwardgc.org/userfiles/VOTER%20SUPPRESSION%20BRIEF.pdf
War on Drugs-This site provides a short history of the War on Drugs, from Nixon’s official declaration in 1971 to 2006. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490
