op-ed: know your black history: the american lie of black underachievement (we are on to this)

Today a new generation of Americans are becoming activists. These people are on to something. These Americans are on to the lie of American history. The lie is that black Americans are underachievers and lack initiative. Nothing could be further from the truth.


This point was driven home to me after a visit to New Orleans and then meeting my cousin who was attending a NMA conference in Los Angeles. 



The National Medical Association (NMA) is a national organization of African American physicians and their patients. It was formed in 1895 by a group of twelve black physicians.



Its mission was explained by C.V. Ronan, M.D., founding member and first editor of the NMA’s journal, in 1908: “Conceived in no spirit of racial exclusiveness, fostering no ethnic antagonism, but born of the exigencies of the American environment, the National Medical Association has for its object the banding together for mutual cooperation and helpfulness, the men and women of African descent who are legally and honorably engaged in the practice of the cognate professions of medicine, surgery, pharmacy and dentistry.”



By Nick Douglas*, AFROPUNK contributor





As you might expect, during Jim Crow black physicians were not eligible to join the American Medical Association (AMA) due to segregation. They were not only denied membership in the AMA, but had to practice in segregated medical facilities and schools. But the NMA had another issue that put its members at odds with the AMA.




 As early as 1910 the NMA advocated compulsory healthcare. The AMA opposed compulsory healthcare during the “Red Scare”—the American fear of Communism, which was spreading throughout Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. The AMA believed in the superiority of the capitalist system of medicine in the U.S. 




 Black physicians were the first physicians in the U.S. to advocate universal healthcare. The existence and policies of the NMA blow away the lie of American history about black underachievement and lack of initiative.

By the early 1800s the high level of black achievement and initiative had become a huge problem for America. Free black entrepreneurs were using their newly accumulated wealth promoting the anti-slavery movement. Many became active abolitionists, formed abolitionist organizations and supported abolitionist newspapers.



 After 1830 one-third of all legislation in the U.S. was formulated and passed to try to control and thwart black Americans initiatives and power on all fronts.



 From 1830 to 1860 sixteen states moved to create legislation to disenfranchise black voters. A white reaction to black American’s growing political power.



 In 1866 black Radical Republicans (Republicans who insisted on radical civil rights reform in former slave states before they could re-join the Union) called for black voting rights at the Louisiana State Constitutional Convention. They were attacked at the New Orleans Mechanic Institute by white Southern Democrats and former Confederate soldiers. Forty-four blacks and three white Radical Republicans were killed.



 After the end of Reconstruction individual states again took away the rights of black citizens to vote by introducing poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests and a myriad of other restrictions. During this period states used the same tactics on Native Americans and Mexican Americans.



 In 2010 the Supreme Court again provided the means for state legislators to disenfranchise people of color by gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act.



 But today people are on to this.



 State appellate courts recently overturned voter registration restrictions in Texas, North Carolina and Wisconsin because Republican- controlled state legislatures had put undue burdens on voters to provide identification, which specifically targeted people of color.



 It is a lie that black Americans were underachievers and lacked initiative. Black Americans have achieved and initiated so much that throughout American history there have been attempts to strip blacks of the wealth, property and thriving communities they have built.



 White rioters destroyed property and businesses and killed hundreds in black communities in Chicago in 1919, New York City in 1919 and East St. Louis in 1917. Motivated by the fear of large communities of blacks taking “white” jobs, white Americans justified the murder and destruction of black communities to enforce their entitlement.



 These incidents share an eerie connection with present-day rhetoric. Today some Americans blame immigrants for taking “American” jobs. After the riots of Chicago, New York City and East St. Louis black Americans were forced to leave the area because their houses and communities had been destroyed. Today there are promises to forcibly dislocate Mexican immigrants from their communities by mass deportation.

Chicago Race Riots

Detroit Race Riots

But today people are on to this. People who know their history know this is only a partial list of when reasons have been found to attack citizens of color and destroy their wealth and property.



 White-initiated riots in Atlanta in 1906, Tulsa in 1921(the prosperous black neighborhood known as Black Wall Street), and Washington, D.C. in 1919 left hundreds dead and once-prosperous black communities destroyed.

Atlanta Race Riots

In 1894 New Orleans passed segregation legislation that made the French Quarter exclusively for white citizens. The French Quarter was an area largely built and controlled by Creole and black citizens for nearly 150 years. It was the heart of New Orleans and a thriving business area. Homes in the French Quarter, that had been in black families for generations, had to be sold to white citizens for pennies on the dollar. Black-owned property in New Orleans was valued at $15 million in 1860 (412 million in 2012 dollars). This was a huge transfer of wealth from rich blacks to poor whites brought on by segregation legislation.



 In New Orleans in the 1960s, the 10 freeway was routed along Claiborne Ave. a center of black life and commerce in New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood. Inhabitants protested so much that the Department of Transportation in New Orleans started construction on the project at 3:00 a.m. so that potential protesters would be asleep. A scenic boulevard of oaks trees, open space, and thriving black businesses was replaced with an eyesore called “The Monster.” Despite the despicable intent of I-10, to disrupt black businesses and a thriving community, black people in New Orleans have incorporated the I-10 into their lives.

New Orleanians embrace the I-10 structure

Today examples of contemporary land grabs and destruction and disruption of thriving black communities abound. In Oakland in the 1960s Eminent Domain was used to raze hundreds of houses to make way for a U.S. Postal Service Distribution Center. In the 1970s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) chose 7th Street, the center of black life and commerce in West Oakland, as the route for BART trains going to San Francisco. What had been a thriving black community with numerous black-owned businesses was reduced to blocks of boarded up storefronts.



 Ferguson is the latest example. The Justice Department has concluded that law enforcement in Ferguson used the black community to generate municipal revenue by disproportionately targeting the community for citations and fines. This same law enforcement pattern has been unearthed in majority black cities in other parts of the country like Baton Rouge. Not surprisingly these same places have had eruptions of violence and protests over egregious police misconduct.



 In the New Orleans Mechanic Institute riots described above the police were active participants. Police were accessories to murder. So when groups like Black Lives Matter talk about systematic and historic police brutality and murder they are citing a well-documented pattern of police behavior.



 When we know our black history we know this is true and we are on to this. Murdering unarmed citizens is just as unacceptable as murdering innocent police officers.



 We know that the slogan “Take America Back” is a not-so-subtle innuendo to return to greater white control. This rhetoric feeds the unfounded fear that somehow by cooperating with minorities Americans will be losing something. Making life better for all Americans is not a zero-sum game. If you know your black history you are on to this. There have always been Native American, Mexican American, Asian American and white Americans who have helped and cooperated with black Americans to improve our country. Black Americans and other Americans of goodwill have historically turned anger and protests into positive actions.



 The lie of American history is trying to disconnect current black Americans and activists from the achievements and initiatives of their ancestors. The killing of innocent black citizens or the burning and razing of prosperous black neighborhoods, or the paving over of black business districts does not cover-up the perpetual and unquenchable legacy of achievement that black Americans own.



 If history is any indicator black American activists who know their history will not “Take American Back”—they will move the country forward.



New Orleans’ I-10

*Nick Douglas is the author of Finding Octave: The Untold Story of Two Creole Families and Slavery in Louisiana. The book is available on amazon.com and those wishing to contact the author can contact him at:  www.findingoctave.tumblr.com

Further reading about the I-10 in New Orleans: http://wwno.org/post/monster-claiborne-avenue-and-after-interstate
Further reading about 7th Street in West Oakland: http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Seventh_Street_in_Oakland