The Trump/MAGA/white supremacist administration is ordering the removing of shows of data and depictions of the period of slavery in america. Some of the emblematic photographs of enslavement is the graphic and soul-shocking picture referred to as “The Scourged Again” that depicts the again of Peter Gordon, photographed circa 1863 in Louisiana.
It graphically exhibits his naked again with healed however seen keloid scars. The {photograph} of his scarred again yells loudly the horrors and brutality of enslavement. The injuries on Peter Gordon’s again have been inflicted on him by his so-called proprietor.
The Whitewashing of America
To take away the histories and experiences of Black folks within the U.S. is a part of the tutorial pogrom enacted to “whitewash” America’s actual historical past. To “whitewash” historical past is the political venture to alter the narrative of America and make that narrative into the blessings and triumphs of white folks, whereas ignoring the blemishes, scars, and overcoming that’s as nice part of America’s historical past as some other.
The establishment of slavery within the British colonies of North America started in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. It doesn’t legally finish till 1865. A Civil Battle needed to be fought to settle the query and finish the authorized establishment of slavery. And even when slavery had legally ended, new techniques and schemes have been developed, significantly within the southern U.S., to re-institute slavery de facto.
This method, referred to as Jim Crow, would proceed by way of to its painstaking dismantlement by brave people and actions that uncovered it and caused its demise. Which means that formal enslavement lasted for 246 years. Then the period of Jim Crow lasted for at the least one other 100 years, and its results nonetheless persist for a lot of at the moment.
In 2026, america of America will have fun its 250th birthday. In these 250 years of existence, as compared, there are 247 years of enslavement. Then, there may be de facto enslavement, referred to as Jim Crow or American Apartheid, that lasts for at the least one other 100 years.
A Useless and Empty Narrative
So, there isn’t a method that America was born, existed, or its story informed with out the story of Black folks, and for many of us, our saga from enslavement to liberation, and from hardships to overcoming. To take away the histories and narratives of Black folks in North America is like eradicating the guts from a dwelling physique, and together with its coronary heart, it additionally loses its soul.
The physique and its story with out Black historical past is mostly a lifeless and empty narrative and can stay so till America has the braveness to inform the entire story.
The American narrative is the statue of Liberty greeting scores of individuals arriving at Ellis Island. The phrases on a bronze plaque invite: “Give me your drained, your poor, your huddled plenty craving to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”. And within the statute’s left hand, within the type of a pill, is the date July 4, 1776.
The Genealogical Brick Wall
There’s a limitation in figuring out the total historical past of most Black folks. It is because we have been handled as property and given names for stock — purchased, bought, raped, and labored to demise. Doing genealogies, there may be often a brick wall that Black households encounter. What we do know exists by way of oral traditions that try to show and convey to us experiences and historical past in a world the place we dwell and work, however by no means existed.
The opposite story for me is earlier than Ellis Island. My household arrived on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. This was a serious market and public sale block for the dear and enriching cargo of Black folks. When speaking to my household, it appears from the narrative that they and their descendants have been on the identical plantation in South Carolina for at the least 200 years — 46 years, kind of, shy of the existence of this nation.
Denying Our Existence and Contributions
There have been ludicrous causes introduced for eradicating photographs and recollections of slavery. One is that it makes white folks really feel responsible. The Trump/MAGA/white supremacist administration says it’s “corrosive ideology” which implies that a brand new ideology is being fomented. Evidently, the present ideological narrative that features slavery and overcoming that ordeal one way or the other eats away and corrodes the so-called American narrative.
In actuality, those that are being bothered and really feel corroded are the individuals who need to sanitize and de-color the actual historical past of America. It’s not that they’re embarrassed by the brutal historical past of enslavement, however they embrace a politically racialized framework proffering that the historical past, experiences, and existence of Black folks don’t actually exist.
This administration has confirmed how racialized it’s. Their efforts by way of DOGE price 350,000 Black girls their jobs. Mobs referred to as legislation enforcement, some in masks and with no identification, roam the streets eradicating Brown and Black immigrants. They’ve succeeded in some circles at criminalizing immigrants in order that they may perform their agenda of eradicating non-whites from the inhabitants. And never recognizing the presence and historical past of Black folks is to render in notion, historic understanding, and official narrative the pronouncement and indoctrination that america is a white Christian nation with out blemish or scar.
We Will Not Be Silenced
A scripture says that “You shall educate them diligently to your youngsters, and shall speak to them if you sit in your own home, and if you stroll by the best way, and if you lie down, and if you stand up.”
Our story will likely be informed regardless of this racist agenda of erasure. We’ll speak concerning the good, the unhealthy, and the ugly. We’ll inform the story into generations, and we’ll grow to be loud about who we’re, what we’ve got skilled, how we’ve got overcome the unimaginable with prospects, and declared, irrespective of how arduous we’ve got been pressed down and ignored, within the spirit of Maya Angelou, “Nonetheless I rise!”
And so will the historical past of our experiences rise to the heavens and invade all of American historical past, and we is not going to be erased.
Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler is the senior advisor on the Fellowship of Reconciliation–USA, director and chief visionary of Religion Methods, LLC, and pastor emeritus of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ.
