Dear brothers, sisters, thank you for inviting me.
What is happening in the world today, especially in America? Believe it or not, it has happened before, but only if we really honestly study our history and see it with clear eyes. After the U.S. Civil War – the deadliest war in U.S. history – the South, the loser in the war, struggled to win the tenuous peace by waging war against Reconstruction, the U.S. government plan to give Black folks their rights to American citizenship.
White terrorists waged war against these newly freed people by making their citizenship empty and meaningless. They were attacked at their jobs, assaulted in the streets and denied their right to vote, to serve on juries, or to join unions. The country that wrote, approved and signed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution into law, then proceeded to ignore it for over 100 years, when it came to the rights, privileges and immunities of Black people in America. That’s because what ruled the U.S. wasn’t the Constitution. It was unwritten rules of white supremacy. Any country that can ignore its own constitution for over 100 years can do anything.
For what did the Constitution mean for Black folks? It meant nothing. What mattered above all else was whiteness. It took decades of struggles of the Black Freedom Movement to put a dent in the long dirty history of white terrorism and white supremacy. This historical rhythm has created a cycle of U.S. history and replays itself in this very hour across the nation. That’s the real reasoning behind the mindless assaults on Black history by the government of the U.S. They want to make Black history disappear as if it didn’t really happen.
The late, great revolutionary Dr. Frantz Fanon, saw something similar during the Algerian Revolution. Fanon, speaking of the intentions of the French colonialists, wrote in his classic work The Wretched of the Earth, the following: “Colonialism is not satisfied with snaring the people in a net or of draining the colonized brain of any form or substance. With a kind of perverted logic, it turns attention to the past of the colonized people and distorts it, disfigures it, and destroys it.” The words are of Dr. Frantz Fanon from The Wretched of the Earth.
Remember this: No government can wash away the history of a people. Resolve to teach your children our people’s history so it can bloom in their hearts. There it will reign within for generations. With love, not fear, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
