Tag Archives: black-history

10.09.25
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THE IDEA OF AMERICA/DARREN WALKER

I have not read a more incisive overview of inequality in all of its forms than in Darren Walker’s THE IDEA OF AMERICA.

The book is a series of speeches and essays written and delivered by Walker during his tenure as president of the Ford Foundation. It is the embodiment of his work in transforming the foundation’s mission from grant making to addressing the issues of inequality and social justice in America.

In many ways THE IDEA OF AMERICA is a history lesson based upon the premise that the founding father’s, however flawed, enshrined a fluid document of promise and hope for democracy’s future. That even, “All men are created equal,” allowed for a promise for a better future, even though codified by all white men over half of which were slaveholders and all women were excluded. Of the founders Walker adds, “They initiated a grand, complicated experiment in self-government. It led to abolition and suffrage and worker’s rights and women’s rights-however slowly, however unevenly.”

The book is not an optimistic treatise. Many thoughts are foreboding. Walker sees an America diminished by division in a climate worsening daily. ” As certain democratic norms fall away it becomes harder to motivate oneself to act. We get exhausted by, even acclimated to, the daily onslaught.”

Walker is cautious about America’s future. ” In the not-too-distant past the American people would turn to their elected leader’s the president- for guidance and moral clarity. Today, in a vacuum of such moral leadership, fear temps many Americans to hunker down , protect themselves and their interests and withdraw for the purposes of safety and self-preservation .”

Walter Isaacson casts an optimistic note in his praise for THE IDEA OF AMERICA. “Darren Walker summons us, on the 250th anniversary of our founding, to remember our higher calling.”

I commend to you this very important read on the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding.

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06.18.24
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JUNETEENTH/TWO IMPORTANT TITLES

John Swanson Jacobs, son of Harriet Jacobs both of whom escaped slavery, is now available in a rediscovered narrative titled A TRUE STORY OF SLAVERY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNED BY SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DESPOTS.

The book goes far beyond Jacob’s bondage and escape there from to crystallize his views on the very government and the US Constitution that allowed the institution to continue and thrive through the end of the Civil War. Jacob’s SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DESPOTS are clearly defined by his narrative as the white American oligarchy that that allowed and supported slavery’s existence. In his own words, Jacobs holds all American citizens, North and South accountable for writing -absolute rule over an unfree people- into the democratic charter. Jacob’s narrative is one of the very few first hand accounts of slavery that survive, including his mother’s Harriet Jacob’s INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL and also the NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMErICAN SLAVE. Before leaving America for Australia and then a life at sea he briefly joined the lecture circuit with Frederick Douglas. The book also includes a biography of Jacobs by Jonathan Schroeder titled NO LONGER YOURS.

Another important Juneteenth volume is Matthew Stewart’s AN EMANCIPATION OF THE MIND RADICAL PHILOSOPHY, THE WAR OVER SLAVERY, AND THE REFOUNDING OF AMERICA.

This volume is a highly charged analysis of how government, the white oligarchy, American’s prominent religious denominations and the economics of the plantation/cotton economy forced and kept four million human beings in bondage. In the effort to dominate the national political system the slaveholders were able to count on the antidemocratic aspects of the US Constitution: The overrepresentation of the small states in the Senate and the Electoral College; the growing power of the unelected judiciary: and the absence on meaningful checks on the corruption of state governments.

Of great interest to this reader was the influence of German revolutionaries, progressives and intellectuals upon the American abolitionist movement. They called themselves the 48ERS, having been among the some 10,000 Germans emigrating to America during that period. They included Friedrich Knapp, Ludwig Feuerbach, journalist Ottilie Assign, August Willich, Carl Schurz and many others. There were some 10,000 German immigrants living in the Ohio Valley by the start of the Civil War whose abolitionist views were made well known to President Lincoln.

Two volumes written over 250 years apart, one by an escaped slave the other by a modern day historian zero in on the same underlying issues that allowed slavery to exist and in some cases remain a threat to American democracy to this very day. I can think of two more timely reads.