Convenient Amnesia...

 © June 18, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

On the Eve of Juneteenth,

Celebrated as an official federal holiday,

The first new one since declaring

Martin Luther King Day

In 1983,

My classmates and I skipped class,

At North Carolina A&T,

And I’m sure at other black colleges,

We didn’t need an official declaration,

We were in the aftermath of the Civil Rights struggle,

1980: the only class with more black men in college than in prison,

And, we all knew who we had to thank,

 

Arizona held off recognition,

Losing a Super Bowl,

White supremacy takes an economic toll,

They finally relented

In the year 2000,

It is now on rotation with so many other holiday sales.

 

Thomas Paine and the Tulsa Massacre:

Metaphors for history gaslit out of existence,

 

Tulsa was the home of Black Wall Street,

Booker T. Washington named it,

The residents and Marcus Garvey called it “Little Africa,”

A testament to the efforts of people determined,

To make the best of racist laws against them,

Burned to ashes in a fortnight of terror,

Just like the Red Summer in 1919,

All mislabeled “race riots,”

All systematically not taught,

Immediately buried and unmentioned,

Because that’s how criminals prefer it,

 

Thomas Paine wrote:

“Common Sense,” “The American Crisis,” “Rights of Man,” and “The Age of Reason,”

Best selling author of 500,000 pamphlets,

With the highest-tech being a quill pen, printing press,

And NO telegraph, or Internet,

 

He wrote these words, which stirred the souls of the colonists

Wanting freedom from British rule:

 

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

 

He gave the underpinnings to the Revolution,

He opposed slavery, favoring abolition,

Called for a progressive income tax,

Universal education for both men AND women,

Women’s equal rights before the 19th amendment,

Retirement pensions for all citizens,

A welfare system for relief to the poor,

Friend of humanity,

Foe to tyrants,

 

Yet no statues of him at our nation’s Capitol,

Like that of Nathan Bedford Forrest,

Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan,

As well as others prominently displayed at the Capitol,

The Gadsden flag and Robert E. Lee’s battle ensign on January Sixth was in good company,

Military bases bear the names of insurrectionists,

No counter-narrative about Thomas Paine,

No assignments K-12 to study about him,

 

Like the Tulsa Massacre,

It’s essential to the self-anointed owners of society,

To bury him,

History must only be flattering to their progenitors,

 

Because like most criminals,

They bury the evidence,

Make it criminal to discuss it,

Juneteenth becomes a joyful picnic,

Without context,

 

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported:

“For Opal Lee, Juneteenth is more than a license plate,”

It was the scene of a crime,

In 1939, when she was twelve,

They got to integrate a predominantly white neighborhood,

For four days,

Before their Juneteenth Celebration,

Referred to as Emancipation Day,

Was raided,

By an estimated 500 angry residents,

The cops told her dad,

If he “busted a cap.”

In self-defense: they would let the mob have him!

They fled.

Opal Lee was head of the Fort Worth African American Historical Society,

Organizing Juneteenth celebrations,

It went statewide in Texas in 1979,

The same year as the Greensboro Massacre,

 

She marched until it became a National Holiday,

Signed into law by President Biden,

 

It’s time we stopped gaslighting history,

Teaching fantasy has only led

To more bloodshed,

Death, and violence,

History and sociology,

Shouldn’t be a prolonged hostage crisis,

Sadly boring students trained like Pavlov’s dogs,

To pick the correct answers

On high stakes standardized tests,

Truth

Leads inevitably to E Pluribus Unum,

 

“The secret to freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret to tyranny is keeping them ignorant.” Maximilian Robespierre