“ The struggle is not yet over...”
It may have been the stark difference between the Freedom Train’ s version of American history and that which found its way into Pryor’ s biting satire that accounts for the train’ s low attendance from residents of Atlantic City, where nearly half of the population was Black.
It is easy to see why Black Americans lacked interest in the story of America that filled the cars of the American Freedom Train. As the African proverb holds,“ Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunters.” Black Americans may have understood instinctively there would be little true Black history on that train.
On August 3, 1980, Ronald Reagan wrote another chapter of American history when the Hollywood actorturned-politician, stepped to a podium at the Neshoba County Fair, in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Having served two terms as governor of California, Reagan went to this sparsely populated town, in a sparsely populated Mississippi county, to make national news.
In the searing heat, with the temperature hitting 101 degrees that day, Reagan – the Republican Party’ s presidential nominee – launched his White House campaign with a simple phrase that for more than a century had been the password of Southern racists.
“ I believe in states’ rights,” Reagan told his audience that day.
“ States’ rights” is the refrain that launched the Civil War. It is the byword of the architects of the Jim Crow era, and the mantra of the Ku
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner
Kluxers who murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi on June 21, 1964.
When Reagan spoke these words, he wanted people outside of the South to think he was making a“ big tent” appeal to Southern Democrats who publicly pined for states to have greater control over their affairs – and less federal government oversight.
But many Black people who heard him embrace“ states’ rights” that day understood Reagan was making a direct appeal to the voters who put racists like Lester Maddox and George Wallace in Southern statehouses and sent Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms to Congress.
Reagan’ s use of that racist trope worked. In November 1980, he won a landslide victory over President Jimmy Carter, beating him in every Southern state, including Carter’ s home state of Georgia.
Once in the Oval Office, Reagan stocked his administration with opponents of anti-discrimination laws. The most prominent among them was Edwin Meese. As counselor to the president, Meese spearheaded Reagan’ s assault on civil rights from the White House.
But the greatest harm Reagan did to the cause of civil rights occurred on May 1, 1981, when he nominated Clarence Thomas to be assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. Over the next 10 years, Thomas – a little-known, 32-year-old Black conservative – would become the leading nemesis of the nation’ s civil rights community.
In 1983, the civil rights community had its own rising star. That year, Jesse Louis Jackson, the charismatic disciple of Martin Luther King, Jr., became the first Black man to seek the presidential nomination of a major political party in the United States.
Jackson’ s campaign was launched 12 years after Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, sought the Democratic Party’ s presidential nomination. Chisholm entered 12 primaries in 1972 but didn’ t win any. Still, her candidacy plowed a path that other Blacks would follow.
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