And the final question is...If you had a relative in that parade of shame, do you now stand for what they marched for that day, and would you like hatred to become your children's legacy or do you want our gerneration to become the generation that began the healing paths leading toward reconcilitation?
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Let us never forget him, for how he rose above hate in his life experiences is a lesson for us all, and how he overcame such adversity is the essence of his story. Many of our present day problems stem from attitudes that developed during the course of events coetaneous to Young's military experience. The resolutions to these problems lie only in a thorough understanding of our past and an accurate assessment of our many mistakes in the area of human relations. From this standpoint, his story is by no means unique but it does stand as public testimony of how one can work within a system to effect change. And for the final time, I must reiterate...how Charles Young overcame such adversity is the essence of his story. Many of our present day problems stem from attitudes that developed during the course of events coetaneous to Young's military experience. The resolutions to these problems lie only in a thorough understanding of our past and an accurate assessment of our many mistakes in the area of human relations. From this standpoint, his story is by no means unique but it does stand as public testimony of how one can work within a system to effect change. Therefore, let us never forget the events of the 1920's - the decade of Young's death - events that solidified racism in America. We will never be able to go forward until we look back, for we can never begin to heal unless we take off the blinders of denial. Until and unless we look back, we will never be able to have a sincere national dialogue and reconciliation to vanquish these senseless, age-old hatreds, which recent events have shown are still very real. The problem is that the "race card" is put in play somewhere in America every day...by people of all races. But to understand that we have all become victims of racial hatred does not mean that we must continue be victimized. The 1920's were an important era because we were becoming a World Power after World War I. We had been a country built not on cheap labor but rather on "free slave labor." But, after the '20s when we were becoming more industrialized, people of color, especially African Americans, were looked upon with resentment as a threat to the white labor pool. Whites who did not want the job market competition from the former slaves were the founders of many of the racist organizations like the Klu klux Klan - their policy was intimidation. For Example, there were black World War I veterans who were lynched while wearing their military uniforms. In January of 1923, the same year that Colonel Young was buried in Arlington National Cemetry, Rosewood, a small predominately black community in Florida, was invaded and burned by a white mob when a white woman, Fannie Taylor, falsely claimed that she was raped by a black man.
In the 1920s, there were reportedly approximately 6 million registered Ku Klux Klan members in the United States. On the 4th of July in 1924, thousands of Klansmen converged on a field in New Jeresy where they burned crosses in celebration of the defeat of New York's Catholic Governor Al Smith. They were also celebrating the defeat of the Democratic Platform that would have condemned their racist platform.
In Texas in the 1920's, the Klan launched some of the first documented campaigns of hate against American immigrants. But it was not just the Klan who were racist because in the Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Riot of 1921, an entire black community was wiped out. Thousands of African Americans fled the city while their homes, schools and churches were burned and many were killed. It was not Klansmen who burned down the black side of town, but rather white Klan sympathizer...and not one white person was ever arrested.
How Charles Young and others African Americans of his generation withstood these horrors and came through them with clarity - never allowing HATE TO DEFEAT THEM - is a primary reason for telling their story. To endure life in a dehumanizing, racist society, and yet not be dehumanized, is an American story that must be told. Colonel Charles Young's ability and capacity to forgive must be understood. But let us not forgive ourselves if we continue to allow his "Great American Story" to go untold. | |
-------- Copyright © 2007 by Joann Helene Sanneh All Rights Reserved
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