Periods of political violence, social injustice, corruption and incivility are part of our history. We are a nation which has always grappled with notions of white superiority and enforced rigid social hierarchy, often cloaked in fake science (eugenics) and Bible verses from the pulpit.
I just finished an excellent read, “A Fever in the Heartland” by Timothy Egan (2024) about the meteoric rise of the KKK in the 1920s in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and elsewhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Everyday neighborly folks in small towns donned hoods, burned crosses, and denied even basic rights to Jews, Catholics, Blacks and immigrants. The northern KKK bought their way to power through the purchase of white Protestant preachers and well placed politicians.
But they were ultimately defeated, forced to fade into the background. And civil rights advanced.
Also reading “Devil in the Grove” by Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize Winner of 2012 about rape charges made against four young black men in Groveland, Florida in 1949. The back story of lynchings, police brutality, and the complete failure of the local justice system is mind numbing. But the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, and the federal justice system fought back. And won. It took years, iconic leaders, and grassroots activism, but justice eventually triumphed.
Social norms changed; we moved forward.
Today is another uprising of hate. Ultimately, I do not think it will carry the day. But history shows us that the embrace of new norms, like the enfranchisement of women, takes time. Not a single woman who started the suffragette movement in the nineteenth century was alive when the Constitutional Amendment was finally adopted in 1919. It took generations of steady, fierce committment.
Whether we are once again able to subdue the intolerance, injustice, and falsehoods of today is not in question. It may not be with this election, but it will happen. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King
Periods of political violence, social injustice, corruption and incivility are part of our history. We are a nation which has always grappled with notions of white superiority and enforced rigid social hierarchy, often cloaked in fake science (eugenics) and Bible verses from the pulpit.
I just finished an excellent read, “A Fever in the Heartland” by Timothy Egan (2024) about the meteoric rise of the KKK in the 1920s in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and elsewhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Everyday neighborly folks in small towns donned hoods, burned crosses, and denied even basic rights to Jews, Catholics, Blacks and immigrants. The northern KKK bought their way to power through the purchase of white Protestant preachers and well placed politicians.
But they were ultimately defeated, forced to fade into the background. And civil rights advanced.
Also reading “Devil in the Grove” by Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize Winner of 2012 about rape charges made against four young black men in Groveland, Florida in 1949. The back story of lynchings, police brutality, and the complete failure of the local justice system is mind numbing. But the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, and the federal justice system fought back. And won. It took years, iconic leaders, and grassroots activism, but justice eventually triumphed.
Social norms changed; we moved forward.
Today is another uprising of hate. Ultimately, I do not think it will carry the day. But history shows us that the embrace of new norms, like the enfranchisement of women, takes time. Not a single woman who started the suffragette movement in the nineteenth century was alive when the Constitutional Amendment was finally adopted in 1919. It took generations of steady, fierce committment.
Whether we are once again able to subdue the intolerance, injustice, and falsehoods of today is not in question. It may not be with this election, but it will happen. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King