David French writes about the importance of remembering both our country's achievements and its failures.
David French is a conservative attorney, military veteran and opinion writer who currently writes a column called The French Press for The Dispatch. He's also an Evangelical Christian whose writings often contain illuminating spiritual insights. His column for this weekend, entitled, "When Our Forefathers Fail", dwells on the horrific Tulsa racial slaughter, including how little-known it is among many white Americans, and the importance of knowing and remembering.
As I'm among those who knew very little about what happened in Tulsa 100 years ago, his column is a sort of conviction of me and those who educated me.
How old were you the first time you heard about the Tulsa Race Massacre? I’m ashamed to say that I was in my forties. Some of my readers might be today years old when they learn of one of the most horrific and brutal events in American history. And it didn’t occur in the early days of the republic. It didn’t occur in the midst of the American Indian wars.
It happened 100 years ago this weekend. On May 31, 1921, a 19-year-old black man named Dick Rowland was arrested after an encounter in an elevator with a 17-year-old white elevator operator named Sarah Page. We don’t know definitively what happened in that elevator, but Page apparently screamed, Rowland ran, and word soon spread across town that a black man had been arrested for sexually assaulting a white woman.
As an angry white lynch mob numbering in the hundreds gathered, a small band of 25 armed black men arrived to try to protect Rowland’s life. At the sight of armed black men, a number of white men left to gather their guns, and the white crowd continued to grow. Approximately 75 more black men arrived to help protect Rowland. At around 10:00 p.m., one of the white men demanded that a black World War I veteran surrender his sidearm. He refused, a shot was fired, and immediately a gun battle broke out in the streets--killing people of both races.
As the outnumbered black men retreated, the white mob surged forward into Tulsa’s prosperous Greenwood District, home of Black Wall Street, a thriving neighborhood of black-owned businesses. What happened next is beyond horrifying. The district was set ablaze. In spite of valiant attempts at self-defense, black Americans were shot dead by the dozens (unofficial accounts put the number as high as 300), and there were reports white attackers dropped incendiary devices on the neighborhood from the air. By the end of the massacre an entire neighborhood lay in ruins, black men and women were herded into internment centers, and the dead were buried in mass graves.
French then moves to the present. He observes how toxic our treatment of race is today, with radical and extreme elements of both right and left seeking to set the tone and control the conversation. And he notes that how we remember our history determines how we think of ourselves today.
At the center of the conversation is a battle about the past, and it’s not just a battle over what we should remember, but how we should remember it. What is it that defines us as a nation? There are some events that we can’t seem to remember enough—when was the last time you heard anyone say that we pay too much attention to June 6, 1944 and the veterans of Omaha Beach?
Indeed, one of the best things our nation does is remember and honor the men who fought, bled, and died to preserve American liberty. That’s the purpose of this very weekend. The memorials to their sacrifice deservedly and rightfully cover this country. When we look at their courage and valor—and repeat those stories to our children and grandchildren—we aren’t just remembering the past, we’re defining the present. We’re saying this is who we are.
Indeed, we often even derive a sense of unearned pride and self-worth from the sacrifices of our ancestors. We delight in telling about the great-grandfather at Iwo Jima or the great uncle at Midway. My own family’s legacy of service begins in the bitter cold of Valley Forge.
It’s that deep emotional tie to the present that renders battles over our past so bitter and brutal. We’re more than willing to feel pride over the virtues of our ancestors. But when the past is grim, we separate ourselves. We forget. We grow defiant. “How dare you,” we say, “impose any responsibility or accountability on me for something I did not do.”
French then takes a theological turn. He notes that holding descendants responsible for the sins of their forefathers would have made sense to the people of the Old Testament. He cites a number of examples: King Josiah, Nehemiah, Daniel, and the Israelites in the Book of Leviticus.
French observes - correctly, I think - that when those past sins have implications for our present-day situation and social arrangements, then remembering those sins, and allowing them to compel us to conversion, is right and good.
It is not “hating America” to acknowledge this [the Tulsa riot] is part of our story. It is not unpatriotic to understand that much of our present reality exists because the legacy of past atrocities does not fade as quickly as their memory.
So, what do we do? Perhaps we can take a cue from the way in which we honor the glories of the past, but with a very different emphasis. When it comes to our great moments, we remember them, we celebrate them, and we teach our children to emulate the courage and virtue of our heroes. We cover the countryside with tributes.
If it is right to celebrate, it is also right to mourn. When it comes to our darkest moments, we should remember them, we should lament them, and we should take a page from Josiah and seek reform to ameliorate their effects. Unless we remember our worst moments, we simply can’t truly understand our own nation, nor can we relate to all its people.
Humanity has not transformed its fundamental nature in the last 100 years. A nation full of people no better than us can do great good. A nation full of people no worse than us can commit great evil. Remembering our nation’s virtues helps give us hope. Remembering our sin gives us humility. Remembering both gives us the motivation and the inspiration necessary to repair our land.
I think French is on to something here. The United States, in its civic life, has a tremendous capacity to celebrate its victories and achievements. If this weren't a time of pandemic, my suburb would be having a parade tomorrow, replete with military units, veterans organizations, marching bands and scout troops from all over the local area. It would culminate with a memorial service at a downtown park dedicated to citizens of this area who gave their lives in our wars, going all the way back to the Civil War. That service draws hundreds of family members of those who lost their lives in battle more recently, including in on-going conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the kind of thing America is good at acknowledging and honoring.
But, to be blunt, when it comes to lamentation, we kind of suck. We don't have a civic tradition - perhaps don't even have a civic vocabulary - to examine our failings, articulate them, and think about their implications.
I think it's possible that, if the United States were to develop the civic-ritual capacity for acknowledging and mourning the times we've failed, as with the 1921 Tulsa riot, it could become an occasion for fostering civic unity and healing.
I Like David French's articles. I think he has some good insights. He is right that it's important to remember both the good things and the bad things about our history. If we remember only the good, it's a kind of triumphalism. If we remember only the bad, it's a distortion as well.
ReplyDeleteI had heard about the Tulsa massacre, but it was only recently that I learned just how horrific it was. Nebraska has its own "hall of shame" event, the lynching of Will Brown in Omaha in 1919.
I'll admit that as a kid I was barely aware of Memorial Day as a remembrance of fallen soldiers. It was the day we picked irises and peonies and placed them in Mason jars on the family graves, including that of my grandfather, who was a WWI veteran. And had hot dogs or fried chicken and potato salad for lunch. And they hung a flag out on the porch. That was the days before displaying a flag was a political statement.
I came across a good quote a couple of days ago, "Guilt for the past, no. Responsibility for the future, yes."
I have some trouble wrapping my mind about remembering our national ”failures” because I have never been much a part of celebrating our national “achievements.”
ReplyDeleteMy father did not serve in WWII. At first it was because he was in an essential industry. Then it was because my mother became pregnant with me. Neither of my grandfathers served. I had an uncle who served in the Air Force during WWII but he lived far away. My aunt served in the Waves, and another Uncle served briefly stateside during the Korean conflict. So veterans were never much of a family matter, and we never traveled to any veterans events. I remember there was a little parade down our block to the veterans’ memorial with playing of taps and firing of rifles there. Not a big deal.
Memorial Day was mainly the time we went to the cemetery to decorate the graves of our relatives, e.g. my grandmother and aunt who had died relatively young. So Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day were family holidays like Thanksgiving. Mostly they were family gatherings rather than anything symbolic. There was not much thanksgiving at Thanksgiving.
I guess I do not see the past as something that one inevitably inherits. Francis says in the Joy of the Gospel “becoming a people demands … an ongoing process in which every new generation must take part: a slow and arduous effort calling for a desire for integration and a willingness to achieve this through the growth of a peaceful and multifaceted culture of encounter.”
While as an immigrant I could reclaim my ancestry in Germany, Poland, and Lithuania, I have chosen not to do that. That was something my grandparents were. However as the descent of immigrants I have chosen not to identify with the White Protestant origins of the US. I identify very much with my immigrant Catholic origins. They came here for freedom and opportunity to be themselves. I have appropriated selectively much of my Catholic heritage but that has mostly been the reformist elements of religious orders, the Desert Solitaries, the Benedictines, and the Jesuits. I think I have done and continue to do what Francis asks of us. I have taken my immediate experience (Thomas Merton, the Benedictines, the Jesuits) and mined the past of
Catholicism to help reshape the future of America. But I am only one person promoting the growth of a peaceful and multifaceted culture of encounter in our Church and Society.
Until recently I had heard little or nothing of Tulsa. This post is more than I have read before. I guess I have tended to not pay much attention to things that occurred in the South. That is a far distant as Germany and Poland. All things which I don’t have to process one way or another.
We do have to process the things that are happening now, e.g. racism, the Trump presidency, the assault on the Capitol and on democracy. We don’t have much time to spend on the achievements and failures of the past except as a means to face our present problems and chart our future.
Like Jack, neither my family nor my husband’s have much military history. My husband’s father was an engineer at the Navy Dept during WWII and was exempt from military service. My father did not serve in WWII because he had a permanent leg injury from sometime in high school. . His father came to the US from Germany in the late 19th century to avoid being drafted to fight in any of of Bismarck’s wars. We did not go to cemeteries. I don’t even know where my grandparents are buried, much less aunts and uncles.
ReplyDeleteFor us, Memorial Day weekend was mostly about the beginning of the summer high season in the small resort town where I grew up. It was the first of the three big weekends. Most of the small businesses made about 75% of their annual earnings between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend. There were no parades or other community activities related to military history. It was all about the beginning of the summer season on the lake.
I was totally unaware of the Tulsa history until very recently. It was not part of the history I was taught. All of the history we were taught in high school was pretty much airbrushed to remove anything unsightly in US history. In college I took a course in western civilization that didn’t include much US history. The same was true of what little church history I was taught. A whole lot was left out.
I am from the generation whose members were drafted to go to Viet Nam. My high school class was about 80 students, pretty much evenly divided between boys and girls. So 40 boys. About 6 of our classmates died in Viet Nam. In college some of my classmates lost brothers and boyfriends. I was raised in a very conservative home by my mother. My father was mostly gone when I was growing up. My mother was very anti- communist ( following the church’s lead, especially Pius XII) and strongly supported the war in order to prevent the nations of Southeast Asia from all falling to the communists - the domino theory. So I supported the war effort also. It was years before I realized how wrong that war was. And how wrong most wars are. Some can be morally justified - the US Civil War, WWII, but many cannot be justified.
ReplyDeleteI now find myself to be very ambivalent about how we honor veterans and wars. So many died needlessly. So many suffered physical and mental injuries for their whole lives. We should honor their sacrifices, made too often out of a combination of naïveté and a. sometimes distorted patriotism. Too often our young soldiers are like lambs to the slaughter. Honoring them without honoring war also is a challenge.
I think the culture too often glorifies war, I would like to see more honor given to those like Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King and others who tried to resist wrong, or bring about change, without violence. Not many hit movies are made about heroic peaceful resisters. I guess they aren’t “ exciting “ enough.
I do agree with this French observes - correctly, I think - that when those past sins have implications for our present-day situation and social arrangements, then remembering those sins, and allowing them to compel us to conversion, is right and good.
We need to learn more about the Tulsa’s of our history too, for the reasons you stated above.
My father was a marine at Iwo Jima. He never talked of it. I'm no psychiatrist but I think his war experience triggered his problems. He had a bad case of OCD. My mother had to leave him when I was one. They never divorced.
ReplyDeleteI managed to stay out of the Vietnam War. If drafted, they would have seen my physics degree and sent me to an R&D facility. I would never have seen combat. At the time, I viewed that war as a tactical mistake. I viewed it as immoral as far as it was killing a bunch of poor, uneducated peasants who didn't know communism or capitalism or democracy from a ham sandwich.
On Labor Day, they should memorialize all the workers who died establishing unions, killed by capitalist funded goons. The instruments of control are much subtler now, but they are as or more effective than the old ones.
Memorial Day related, the Proper Decorum Police are after VP Kamala Harris because she tweeted "Enjoy the long weekend!" on Saturday. Because that means she doesn't properly respect our fallen heroes." Even though previously in the week she had said words of support.
ReplyDeleteFunny, I really don't remember Memorial Day being that military and solemn in my youth, it's always been a long weekend. Of course nothing Harris said would have pleased some people.
Harris's comment, which I suppose qualifies as a gaffe, simply illustrates the uncomfortable truth that our country fights wars these days which don't have much personal impact on many Americans. Few of us send sons or daughters to the military anymore, especially those of us whose children are on the college track.
DeleteEarlier today, I read an interview with a general in which he rues that Congress isn't even asked to raise taxes to fund a war effort such as what we have pursued in Afghanistan since 9/11. His thought was that if we had to pay more, we'd "feel" the war more than we do now. He thinks Biden is right to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan because he doesn't see the will on the part of Americans to do what would be necessary to achieve a decisive military victory, so why waste further blood and treasure on it?
Written on a wall of a Marine headquarters in Iraq in the early years of that war: "America's at war? America's not at war. America's at the mall". We could cut our military budget in half and we'd still spend more than any other country. Let's do it.
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