We need to put slavery in its place

By Sophia A. Nelson

A few weeks ago, a solemn ceremony took place at the US Capitol. The president of the United States, the first lady, Cabinet members, congressional leaders and dignitaries from around the world gathered for the National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance, an event honoring the victims of the Holocaust that has been observed annually in the United States since 1980. As I watched later on C-SPAN, I was struck by the depth of emotion expressed by each speaker. President Bush reminded us that we all have a responsibility to ensure that such an injustice is never again allowed to occur. “The events that we recall today have the safe distance of history,” Bush told the assembled. “There will come a time when the eyewitnesses are gone. And that is why we are bound by conscience to remember what happened and to whom it happened.”

Filtered through my perspective as an African American, I found the president’s words striking and hopeful. But I wondered: Why doesn’t slavery occupy the same place in the national consciousness? The day before the Capitol ceremony, Bush gave another speech, this time at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. “We must never forget,” he said, adopting the language that has become synonymous with the worldwide effort to remember the Nazis’ barbaric acts. The existence and location of the Holocaust Museum — in the nation’s capital, close to the majestic memorials of the National Mall —is proof of the diligence and success of the Jewish people in making sure that the world knows what happened in the World War II concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Dachau. American Jews, and Jews worldwide, never became silent. They never let the world forget.

This is where we, as black Americans, have failed. Many brave men and women raised their voices loudly during the civil rights movement. But there is still no agreement in America that “we are bound by conscience” — to use Bush’s phrase — to honor the victims of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.

There is no museum near the Mall where the world can learn about the inhumanity of slavery, a horror that took place on American soil. There is no national day on which the president and the Congress gather to remind the nation of the injustice of slavery, the devastating damage caused by the Jim Crow laws, the crushing cost of inequality.

The current debate over whether the government should issue a formal apology for slavery — and the related issue of whether the government should pay reparations to the descendants of slaves — demonstrates just how much of a division exists between many black and white Americans. Part of why we all feel so offended and outraged by the Holocaust is that we have been educated about it. Most Americans, I would venture to say, can speak in a sophisticated manner about the crimes committed by the Nazis. I don’t think the same statement can be made about slavery or the plight of blacks in the United States.

A national black history museum, dedicated in part to promoting an understanding of slavery and its consequences, would help the nation to acknowledge the lingering effects of several hundred years of systematically being broken, beaten and chained, of being denied economic opportunity, prevented from raising a family freely or simply realizing one’s God-given potential. As a Republican who has run for public office, I believe strongly in the need for people to help themselves. But I think it’s foolish to dismiss what we see around us — grinding poverty, failing urban educational systems, broken families — as having nothing to do with the slave-holding system that, only several generations ago, deprived so many Americans of humanity’s most basic rights.

While it is undeniably true that African Americans have made great strides in many walks of life, we still lag behind in economic wealth and opportunity. I think that Charles Krauthammer had it right in his April 6 column in The Washington Post (in which he argued that reparations were a better idea than affirmative action): “The American people owe a special debt to black Americans. The key word here is special. That debt does not apply to any of the other groups — women, Hispanics, now gays, etc. —that have been grasping for the prestige and special benefits of victimhood. The African American case is unique: There is nothing to compare with centuries of state-sponsored slavery followed by a century of state-sponsored discrimination.”

In recent months, the drive for a museum has picked up bipartisan support in Congress. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Max Cleland (D-Ga.) and six other senators have introduced a bill calling for a national museum of black history and culture. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) top a list of many representatives sponsoring a House version. The bill would provide an initial $25 million in public and private funds to create a museum that would focus on, among other things, slavery and the civil rights movement. It would be housed in an existing Smithsonian building, some of the sponsors have said, to avoid the “complicated issue of additional construction on the Mall.”

For those who wonder why we need yet another museum, I would say: We know that millions perished in the concentration camps and gas chambers, and yet a visit to the Holocaust Museum is an unforgettable experience for many. Why not a national museum to remind today’s young men and women that, only 40 years ago, a black American who wanted a hamburger couldn’t go to just any Southern restaurant and order one? Why not a museum to show the photos of blacks lynched by white mobs, including soldiers still wearing their uniforms? Why not a museum to tell the story of blacks prevented from voting by such nefarious devices as poll taxes and literacy tests?

How many of those reading this essay know that more than 4 million people— Africans and their descendants — were enslaved here between 1619 and 1865 and that, as a result, the United States was able to secure its grand place as the most prosperous country in the world? Many Irish immigrants, as well as others, arrived here as indentured servants. But they were set free once their debt had been paid. They were not sold away from their families, beaten, or even killed, or forbidden to learn reading or writing.

Unlike the many immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, Africans did not gaze upon the face of the Statue of Liberty with hope. We came here as property, to be owned and oppressed. We were packed in ships like sardines in a can, enduring a voyage filled with terrible misery and disease. And then, after the people of America sanctioned this institution for more than 200 years, they sanctioned legalized segregation until the mid-1950s and beyond.

Reparations, which the US government made in 1988 to 60,000 Japanese Americans who were unjustly interned during World War II, might be both a symbolic and substantive act. While the call for reparations is growing louder in the black community, the first order of business must be truth and education, which is the very role that a national museum can fulfill. If we, as a nation, can come to believe that we are bound by conscience to understand the full scope and impact of slavery and its aftermath, than maybe we can finally begin to heal our wounds and make racial reconciliation a reality.

Source: Grassroots Media Network: www.geocities.com/rootmedia