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Honor the legacy of Rep. John Lewis.
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The title of today's newsletter should say "honor the legacy of Rep. John Lewis, and C.T. Vivian, and the civil rights leaders of generations past and present that, among so much more, advocated for all voices to be heard at the polls". But this email analyzes specifically how we can respond to the outpouring of love and support for one person with actions that center the perspectives and legacy of many.
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– Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Contact your state senator to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act (you can text "Senate" to 50409 to send a message directly from your phone).
2. Sign the petition to rename the Edmund Pettis Bridge.
3. Find the closest landmark (street, highway, bridge, etc) to your home and review:
What is the landmark named after?
What story does it say about the community you're a part of?
Which voices does it elevate? Which voices may be minimized in the process?
GET EDUCATED
On Friday, July 17, 2020, prominent civil rights activist and politician Rep. John Lewis died after a battle with cancer. Read more about his life at CBS News, tributes from his sister and dear friend / civil rights fellow at Alabama News and NYTimes, respectively, and tribute from President Barack Obama).
His death, along with protests over the two months, re-ignited conversations about renaming the bridge where one of the most prominent civil rights events happened. (Although the petition mentioned in today’s action was created months ago, it’s important to note that people have been advocating for change for years, including another Change.org petition created by a student-led organization that received nearly 200,000 signatures over five years ago).
On Sunday March 7, 1965, hundreds of protestors, led by Lewis and Reverend Hosea Williams, participated in a nonviolent civil rights march through Selma, but were met with violence from state troopers who assailed them with tear gas and clubs when they stopped to pray. The photos of the protestors being beaten by police, including Lewis, who suffered from a fractured skull among other injuries, were circulated widely in the days and weeks following, prompting national outcry and more demonstrations. This monumental day, referred to as "Bloody Sunday," accelerated the passing of the Voting Rights Act in August that year (Politico).
But the bridge where the incident occurred, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is named after a decorated Confederate general and a leader in the Alabama Ku Klux Klan (Smithsonian Magazine). His family, who ran a plantation and enslaved Black people, profited greatly from slavery. But his views on slavery and the Confederacy were rooted in white supremacy. As he gained recognition, first as a general in the war, then as a chairman of the state delegation to the Democratic National Convention and Grand Dragon of the KKK, Pettus was considered a “living testament to the power of whites to sculpt a society modeled after slave society” says University of Alabama history professor John Giggie (Smithsonian Magazine).
Pettus died in 1907, but the bridge wasn’t erected and named until 33 years later (remember our previous newsletter on how many Confederate symbols were erected long after the end of the Confederacy). Ironically, the bridge at the time was celebrated as “the answer to ‘The March of Progress,’ a reference to The Road to Homo Sapiens image that simplifies the evolution of man (Smithsonian Magazine). I doubt that anyone at that time expected the bridge to represent an entirely different type of march towards justice and equity for the people systemically oppressed by white supremacy.
“If the bridge is being so heavily identified with the black freedom struggle, we should be able to appreciate how much of an act of reclamation this is. People need to know that”.
Jelani Cobb, American writer, author and educator, for Smithsonian Magazine
Although the petition for the rename is gathering national attention, local leaders aren’t in agreement. Some people feel the name needs to stay – whether to encourage visitors to continue learning the area’s deep history, or simply because the bridge’s name has transcended the man it shares the name with (NYTimes).
“The name Edmund Pettus no longer is about Edmund Pettus from the Civil War, from the Confederacy. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is now a staple and symbol of civil rights and voting equity, as well as voting rights. It’s a symbol of hope, of freedom. And that’s been a name that has passed through generations”.
Collins Pettaway III, a political communications specialist and Selma native, for the NYTimes
Others advocate for renaming the bridge, but not after the late Rep. John Lewis. Some feel that this action would minimize the impact of local civil rights activists that were critical to the movement. Some call for the bridge to honor leaders like Amelia Boynton Robinson, a prominent civil rights activist who was also on the bridge during ‘Bloody Sunday,’ or Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose brutal death during a peaceful voting rights march in February 1965 sparked the marches that defined the movement (Alabama News). Rep. Prince Chestnut notes that he hasn’t spoken with a single local survivor of the attack who supports renaming the bridge for Lewis, but is in favor of “Bloody Sunday Bridge” or “Historic Selma Bridge” (Associated Press). A local group was organized to make sure the residents of Selma are heard.
A more fitting way for us to take action in honor of Rep. John Lewis is to protect the voting rights that were established in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 but reversed in the June 2013 ruling of Shelby County v. Holder. Since then, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting that make it difficult for many, particularly marginalized communities, from exercising their right to vote. Although the Voting Rights Advancement Act was passed by the House in December 2019 to restore more equitable practices, the bill is still stalled in the Senate. We’ve discussed this issue in full in our June 24th issue of the Anti-Racism Daily – please read to gather more perspective of this issue.
Today’s action includes signing the petition because we believe it may encourage whatever change the local community decides. But regardless of whether the bridge is renamed, and what it is ultimately called, that action is only part of how we can honor the legacy of the late Rep. John Lewis and the other civil rights activists that risked their lives that day. Our right to vote is still tenuous, and access to the ballot this November is critical for civil rights. Regardless of its name, let’s ensure the bridge is symbolic of the change we’re committed to protecting for generations to come.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The bridge that acted as the stage for "Bloody Sunday" is named after a Confederate general and KKK leader
Although national attention calls for the bridge to be renamed to honor the late Rep. John Lewis, local leaders say otherwise
Changing the name is part of a larger initiative to take down Confederacy statues and symbols
We must protect the voting rights that Lewis and other civil rights activists fought for decades ago
The Voting Rights Advancement Act, which aims to restore voting rights lost in 2013, is still stalled in Senate
Related Issues
June 29, 2020 | Don't vote for Trump.
June 25, 2020 | Fight voter suppression.
June 18, 2020 | Take down Confederate symbols.
June 17, 2020 | Learn about the history of lynching in America.
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Take down Confederate symbols.
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Hello all!
Thank you so much for your kind notes re: yesterday's difficult piece. I appreciate it. And I'm glad so many of you are committed to taking an unflinching look at our past and present.
Thank you to everyone that has contributed one-time or monthly to make this possible. If you haven't already, you can make a contribution via PayPal, Patreon or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza).
– Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. See if your U.S. state has any Confederacy symbols on this map. If so, contact your state representatives to remove. Some states even have petitions in place for you to sign.
2. If you're from outside the U.S., use this lesson to discover how racist symbols are still pervasive in your country.
Please note: today's email is not encouraging you to personally deface public or private property :)
GET EDUCATED
Tear every statue down.
Let's start with the basics: there's a lot of monuments and symbols (like a flag) that honor the Confederacy, an unrecognized republic of seven states that seceded from the United States during the American War. And right now, protestors are taking them down.
Although there have been consistent and ongoing pressure by local communities to remove these statues for decades, this conversation got significant attention five years ago, nearly to the date (June 17), when Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina during Bible study and opened fire, killing nine Black people. There's a lot more to this story and its relevance to current events, but for brevity's sake, I encourage you to read this NPR article that reflects on its impact five years later.
Investigations of Dylann Roof illuminated (among many racist and harmful things) his fervor for the Confederacy, and his dedication to uphold it, which began a larger rally to remove Confederate flags and statues from public display. At this time, the Confederate flag was still flying high in front of the South Carolina state capitol (until activist Bree Newsome scaled the pole and took it down herself).
These conversations were amplified in 2017, when a right-wing rally in Charlottesville, VA to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee turned deadly. James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into supporters of the statue removal, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 28 others. Read more here >
Before we go any further let's get one thing crystal clear: the Civil War was about slavery. Many people will argue otherwise – that it was about the economy, or state rights – but those concerns were all rooted in their relationship to enslaved people. Southern states were worried about the economic impact of slavery being abolished, with so much capital already defined by the ownership of people, the labor they provided, and the burden of integrating those people as actual citizens upon their freedom. Also, as the United States started to expand to new lands, and some of those lands were settled as free states where slavery was illegal, those pro-slavery saw the value of those lands decrease from the offset. States wanted state rights for slavery. So I don't care how anyone tries to justify it – this was about slavery. Here's a few places you can read more.
So the Civil War happened, the Confederacy lost, and the end of that war marks the end of slavery as we know it in America (known as Juneteenth, which we will discuss in tomorrow's newsletter). But there wasn't a happily ever after ending here, obviously. The Reconstruction era began, and, as we discussed in yesterday's newsletter, people, particularly in the South weren't all that happy about the new freedoms of African-American people. Raising the Confederate flag and honoring Confederate soldiers was an act of rebellion in the face of changing times. Which is why even a bumper sticker of a Confederate flag says much more than others may want to admit: a declaration of support for states that believed, at minimum, that slavery is economically justified.
And since there's people around today using these symbols to justify and accelerate violence and harm, it's long overdue for them to come down. As of 2019 the Southern Poverty Law Center found 1,747 Confederate monuments, place names and other symbols. Aljazeera has a map of 771 statues across the country. What's wild to consider is that, despite the fact that the Confederacy lasted for five years, most of these symbols were established in the 60 years following the war. In fact, at least 32 Confederacy monuments were dedicated or re-dedicated since 2000, well after I was born! So how have we spent lifetimes commemorating a five-year period of our history? Are these statements of an event in history, or how we see the future?
Many people, including Trump, believe that the statues should stay, citing that it erases the character of the brave people that fought for our country. Some also believe taking them down may make it easier for us to forget. You can read some of the nuances around taking down the statues in this article. But it's not hard to understand why so many protestors are toppling them now, perhaps as a long overdue performance of dismantling the systems that have oppressed Black people for far too long.
We can pretend that the debate over Confederate symbols is about preserving or erasing history, but really, it’s about our values. It’s about whether we care more about statues standing than people falling. Because we know, through statistics, video evidence and story after story, that the people who are most hurt by those symbols of hatred are falling at disproportionate rates across the country.
― Theresa Vargas for this article in the Washington Post
Let's remember that the Confederacy lasted for five years. Five years! So many things in American history have lasted longer than five years. Countless humorous articles and memes have been written about this, but I particularly like this list from Buzzfeed back in 2015.
Here's my list of things that have lasted longer than the Confederacy:
246 years (and counting): Slavery in America
The first enslaved African people were brought to America in 1619 and was "abolished" at the end of the Civil War in 1865 – although you can argue there's plenty of systems in place that still enslave African America people to today's time.339 years: Laws prohibiting anti-racial marriage
Laws prohibiting interracial marriage were first established in 1661, and Alabama was the last to abolish in 2000.5 years: "Justice" for Eric Garner
Eric Garner was murdered by a NYPD police officer who put him in a chokehold in 2014. It took over five years for the NYPD to terminate that police officer, and for a grand jury to decide he will not be indicted with any federal charges. I use justice in quotations because, to me, justice would be Eric Garner not being dead in the first place – and nothing will come close to that.131 years: The time it took for Quaker to change the Aunt Jemima branding
I'm probably going to do a whole newsletter on this topic, so if you're curious, read this article to understand how racist and harmful this type of branding is.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza