Historian Gerald Horne on Slavery and Freedom If you’re right and if the U.S. was largely founded in defense of slavery rather than in the name of liberty — if that kind of white supremacy is so embedded in our very beginnings — how is it that descendants of slaves were ever able to claim greater rights, first by ending slavery and then dismantling Jim Crow? I think that there’s a lesson here, and it is that, historically — before the crumbling of Jim Crow in the 1950s — black Americans had sought out allies, beginning with the Spanish in the late 17th century and then the British from the late 18th century until the U.S. Civil War. And then, in the succeeding decades, sought alliances with Mexico, with India (as exemplified by the figure of Martin Luther King Jr. and his creative adaptation of the Indian passive resistance movement) and the African Liberation Movement and on to the present. So I think that there, too, lie lessons as well, particularly for contemporary political activists, who have an anti-racist agenda in mind. Seek allies … try to lengthen the battlefield, so to speak, and not just be limited to those who carry blue U.S. passports in terms of trying to forge social change and political transformation in the United States. salon/2014/05/30/white_supremacy_and_slavery_gerald_horne_on_the_real_story_of_american_independence/
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 18:09:10 +0000
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