It is now the first week of Black History Month, so it’s time
for a history lesson.
Due
in large part to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Black History Month has been celebrated in America since 1976, but its
origins go back a lot further in history.
Negro History Week was started by Dr. Carter G.
Woodson in 1926. Although it’s impossible to know his motivation for doing so,
it’s likely that the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and the 1924 meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey may have influenced his actions.
Long before the first slaves came from Africa in 1619, the
land that is now the United States was occupied by its original inhabitants,
who we now call Native Americans. In spite of the fact that they spend hundreds
of years living here before the first white settlers arrived here from Europe,
it was not until 1990 that the government finally declared a Native American Heritage
month. That month is November.
On August 3, 1990, President of
the United States George H. W. Bush declared the month of
November as National American Indian Heritage Month, thereafter
commonly referred to as Native American Heritage Month. The bill
read in part that "the President has authorized and requested to call upon
Federal, State and local Governments, groups and organizations and the people
of the United States to observe such month with appropriate programs,
ceremonies and activities". This landmark bill honoring America's tribal
people represented a major step in the establishment of this celebration which
began in 1976 when a Cherokee/Osage Indian named Jerry C. Elliott-High Eagle authored Native
American Awareness Week legislation the first historical week of recognition in
the nation for native peoples. This led to 1986 with then President Ronald Reagan proclaiming November 23–30,
1986, as "American Indian Week".
This commemorative month aims to provide a platform for
Native people in the United States of America to share their culture,
traditions, music, crafts, dance, and ways and concepts of life. This gives
Native people the opportunity to express to their community, both city, county
and state officials their concerns and solutions for building bridges of
understanding and friendship in their local area. Federal Agencies are
encouraged to provide educational programs for their employees regarding Native
American history, rights, culture and contemporary issues, to better assist
them in their jobs and for overall awareness.
The list of events occurring during that month can be found in
the link below:
https://www.nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/
The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism endeavor developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine which "aims to reframe the country's history by
placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States' national narrative." The first publication from the project was in The New York Times Magazine of August 2019 to commemorate the 400th
anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved
Africans in the English colony of Virginia These were also the first Africans in mainland British America, though Africans had been in other parts of North America
since the 1500s. The project also developed an educational curriculum, supported
by the Pulitzer Center, later accompanied by a broadsheet article, live events, and
a podcast. Historians, journalists, and commentators have described
the 1619 Project as a revisionist
historiographical work that takes a negative view of traditionally
reverenced events and people in American history, including the Patriots in the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers, along with later figures such as Abraham Lincoln and the Union during the Civil War. On May 4, 2020, the Pulitzer Prize board announced that they were awarding the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for
Commentary to project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones for
her introductory essay.
In essence, the 1619 Project looks at what effect systematic
racism has had on our society.
About 30 years prior to the publication of the 1619 Project, a
workshop was started to study racism in America, and it was called critical race
theory.
Critical race theory (CRT), is an intellectual and social movement and loosely organized framework of legal
analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded
feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially
constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit
people of color. Critical race theorists hold that racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States insofar as they function to create and
maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and
nonwhites, especially African Americans. Critical race theorists are generally dedicated
to applying their understanding of the institutional or structural nature of
racism to the concrete (if distant) goal of eliminating all race-based and
other unjust hierarchies.
The link below goes into much
detail about critical race theory (which is now taught as a COLLEGE LEVEL
course. It is NOT taught at the k-12 level in schools, although numerous
Republican officials (Glenn Youngkin, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Ron DeSantis)
have prohibited it from being discussed in colleges and schools.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory
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Andrew Jackson was president when the Indian Removal Act was
enacted in 1830. This is what he had to say a few years later:
We have wept over the fate of the natives of this country, as
one by one many tribes have disappeared from the earth. However, we must accept
this, the way we accept when an older generation dies and makes room for the
younger.
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The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by
United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an
exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for
their removal west of the river Mississippi." During the
Presidency of Jackson (1829-1837) and his successor Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) more than 60,000 Indians from
at least 18 tribes were forced to move west of the Mississippi River
where they were allocated new lands. The southern tribes were resettled mostly
in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). The northern tribes were resettled initially in Kansas. With a few exceptions the United States east of the
Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes was emptied of its Indian population.
The movement westward of the Indian tribes was characterized by a large number
of deaths occasioned by the hardships of the journey, which is now
called “the trail of tears”.
Although hundreds of treaties were signed by the government
and the natives, they were frequently violated by the government, which led to
the Indian wars. Although they officially started in 1609, the peak years were
between 1850 and 1890, and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 190 was the culmination
of decades of strife. The majority of the battles took place in what is now present-day
Arizona.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars
https://www.britannica.com/place/Wounded-Knee
There are politicians today (are you listening, Ron DeSantis?)
who claim that racism does not exist in our country – but that is simply not true.
For a period of time, Indian boarding schools existed in this
country, and their purpose was to eradicate native culture and replace it with white
culture Their motto was “kill the Indian, and save the man.
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/12/indian-boarding-schools.html
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