By Dr. Selika Ducksworth Lawton
Contributing Writer
Dr. Selika Ducksworth Lawton is currently a Professor of history at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Dr. Ducksworth-Lawton is a specialist in Twentieth-Century African American Military, National Security, and Civil Rights History. She works in the intersection of race, national security, civil rights, and protest. Her book, Honorable Men: Armed Self Defense and the Deacons for Defense and Justice, is under contract with University Press of Mississippi and expected in press early next year. Honorable Men describes how African Americans veterans in the Deacons for Defense and Justice combined their military service knowledge with an African American vision of republicanism and citizenship to create a militia in Louisiana that successfully fought the Klan in the 1965-8 activists and protects white and African American Congress of Racial Equality activists. Dr. Ducksworth Lawton is the co-author of Minority and Gender Differences in Officer Career Progression. She is working on a new book on the impact of culture and geography on the activists’ choices between non-violence and armed self-defense in several states in 1964-1967. She earned her PhD in 1994 from Ohio State University in 20th Century military and African American History.
Juneteenth is the celebration of the freeing of the last slaves in Galveston, Texas by the United States Army. It celebrates Black survival and achievement despite obstacles. It stands for resistance to lynching and regulations (like the destruction of Tulsa or the expelling of Blacks from Forsythe County, Georgia.) It stands for the refusal to give in to humiliation, submission, or slavery by another name… otherwise known as Jim Crow. It stands for the first step towards liberty and justice for all, instead of liberty and justice for some.
Yet we still have liberty and justice for some. George Floyd’s death has shown us how very little has changed since 1968. The Supreme Court gutted federal police accountability within the Enforcement Acts of the 1870s. This activist Court created an idea of qualified immunity, and now uses it to shield rogue peace officers. Some Democrats and most Republican jurists on the Court support this gutting of the Fourteenth Amendment. This destruction helped bring about this moment.
Juneteenth gives this world a moment to reflect on how people can watch a man die, and deny his humanity because of the color of his skin and the mythology of the coon. We ponder how so called Christians applaud and wave away protecting the life of a person who served his time. We interrogate how an alleged pro-life movement deems some lives less worthy of protection because of “responsibility” and “moral hazard” … and yet have the nerve to claim that All Lives Matter. If Floyd can be summarily executed for a mistaken accusation, and his death excused because of a past criminal record… then “all” is a fiction, and certain lives do not matter. Given the lack of enforcement for discrimination and false accusation… my Black female life does not matter to some whites. That is my reality.
What scares me this Juneteenth is the number of previously covert racists who are now displaying overt racism. Black people have always known that “microaggressions” cover covert racism… they are racism leaks. Now my white friends are seeing how many people they know… feel free to be overtly racist. Even as pictures of white looters predominate in the news, supremacists blame “the blacks.” Even as images of police brutality against peaceful protesters proliferate, supremacists defend the brutality using the stereotypes of the Coon/thug, the Sapphire, the idea of Black inferiority. “Good whites” don’t get it. They can not understand these supremacists… some allies deny that they can be as numerous. Or try to tell us that these people are “ignorant.” And need “education.” We have had fifty-five years of education. As a university faculty member, I can say that people only learn when they want to learn. You can not force people to believe anything. Decades of research show that many people will believe what they want to believe, discard evidence contrary to their beliefs, and condescend to those who actually are experts.
I come to this Juneteenth with mixed emotions. I have witnessed a supremacist and opportunist uprising on my TV. I read supremacist, racist comments in my local newspaper and TC comment sections. I see videos of emboldened racists. I see people writing long screeds to defend a Lost Cause mythology long debunked by historians. I see that racial propaganda is hugely effective within the unregulated sphere of the Internet. It makes me fear for my family’s safety.
Yet I am called to fight anyway by the memory of Juneteenth. I helped integrate schools. My husband was bused to integrate schools. Jim Crow was only abolished by law in 1965, fifty five years ago, and in practice, laws for equality were and are rarely enforced. Too often today, the racists are protected by powerful, monied interests who keep their riches by dividing us by race, and preying on the fears of the prejudiced.
My ancestors fought in that Civil War, and in other wars, for the promise of this country. They marched, boycotted and sat in. They resisted and persisted. They are my legacy, Black history is my wealth in a country that legally and illegally denies marginalized people monetary wealth in many ways. Juneteenth is their wisdom of the ages. Juneteenth will sustain us and keep us. Some Black people will grow tired and give in. The rest of us, with our allies of many races, will continue to fight for the enforcement of equal rights for all.
A new generation arises. And this generation embodies the spirit of the Black and White soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th and the Louisiana 16th, and many others. This new generation has no patience for excuses. They are the New Abolitionists of the Third Reconstruction. They work with my generation to lead us. We are many races. This new generation has many races in it. This generation, born of this pain, takes up the unfinished work of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.
Juneteenth is hope. It is the hope that we can work together. It is the hope that we can dismantle this racism. It is the determination to rid America of the original sins of stereotyping, racist complacency, and institutional racism. It is the song we sing, the prayer we chant, the air we breathe.
We rise. We survive. We will win. We will create King’s Beloved Community from the ashes of the new Jim Crow. We are Juneteenth.
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