Black History Month Message

By Ivan Kilgore 

I once had no perspective or understanding of the importance of black history. I grew up in Wewoka, Oklahoma, a conservative red-state with an extremely biased perspective on this matter. We know the story… The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Malcolm, Garvey, MLK, were all in one chapter, if not a single paragraph, in the American history text we were provided in school. We were slaves… That is all we were taught. Consequently, my first lessons in black history were in the Seminole County Jail. 

My Aunt Beverly (R.I.P.) was visiting from Oakland, California. Before returning, she visited me and gave me one of those three-books-in-one volumes of writings by W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Fredrick Douglas, and another book, the Autobiography of Malcolm X written by Alex Haley. I was 21 years old and knew little of these men. Yet, I begin studying them with fervor not realizing that years later they would become a doorway to a framework and understanding of cultural perspective and institutions long lost, destroyed, and regenerated. But why? 

By 2011, I was in my eleventh year serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. We were on lockdown in maximum-security at California State Prison Sacramento (a.k.a. “New Folsom”) in Folsom, California. The yard had exploded with racial violence. To remain sane, I read and wrote from sun-up to sundown. One day, after putting the final touches on an essay I wrote entitled Afflicted Deliberations, I asked my neighbor, a former gang member who had converted to Islam, to read it and give me an honest critique. The next day he rapped on my vent to get my attention and after doing so complimented me as a good writer, but offered that I wrote from a Eurocentric perspective. Indeed, I prided myself on having developed a fair command of the English language. However, he went on to explain that the Freudian, Weberian, and other Eurocentric perspectives I quoted in the essay had shaped my conscious and cultural development, as well as that of the majority of Africans in America. The “African American” was a cultural byproduct. It was then that I began to realize that my writings, while seeking to address the plight of black America, had fallen short because my culture and education were the product of white supremacy and western ideology. 

Having requested this critique, I vividly recall asking him if he could assist me to gain a better understanding of where he was coming from. How had white supremacy and western ideology shaped my views, values, and beliefs? Moreover, how did they prevent me from developing another lens to which I could see and interpret the world differently? Particularly, a black-culturally centered, pan-African perspective rooted in community development, service, and black love. His response? A 700+ page book, Dr. Amos Wilson’s Blueprint to Black Power: A Moral, Political, Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century. It was a game changer to say the least. In time, I studied all his work, which greatly assisted my understanding of the impact that white supremacy and western institutions had on the construction of the black conscious development and their designed intent to oppress. Even more, studying his work would prompt me to begin questioning the narrative taught by my history teachers. Eventually, this inspired me to explore Wewoka’s history, which led to the University of Florida’s archives. The discovery would be life changing. There was a hidden history. One, that little black boy I was so desperately needed. It was a history that my racist school administrators had intentionally omitted that played a vital role in shaping not only my worldview, but also that of black America. 

My research would eventually inspire me to write King: the Early Years, a work of historical fiction about a black boy whose father was tragically murdered in Wewoka. Thereafter, in an effort to save him from the streets, his grandparents sought desperately to teach him about his family’s legacy–the Black Seminole Indians, Black Freemasons, and James Coody Johnson, the first African American civil rights attorney and activist to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, the Black Seminole Indians, Freemasons, and James Coody Johnson, existed! To my surprise, they were the descendants of my formerly enslaved African ancestors. They were captured on the Banana Islands off the coast of Sierra Leone. For centuries, they escaped the Carolina plantations and fled into the Florida Everglades to amalgamate lineage and culture with Native Americans. Together, they fought the Seminole Wars of 1817-1818, 1835-1842, and 1855-1858 to defeat the U.S. Army. Eventually, they agreed to relocate to Oklahoma Territory (n.b., the “Trail of Tears”) where they established Wewoka as one of the first black homesteads prior to the emancipation of African slaves. 

Last year, after speaking with my 80 year-old great aunt about this history and the book we published, she floored me with another twist on history: J.C. Johnson was her four-time removed great grandfather! It was then that I began to understand why this history had to disappear from my school textbooks. I understood now why the Cedar Street I grew up on, which once bolstered his successful law offices, had become a place of ill repute (I.e., a place of prostitutes, drugs, violence, and crime). Johnson was not simply a successful black attorney. He owned vast land holdings in Wewoka, a number of successful businesses, and sponsored Oklahoma’s first black state fair. Even more, he had successfully litigated in the Oklahoma courts a landmark case that made the Black Panther Oil Company he owned one of the most successful oil businesses to rival Standard Oil. He was, by all accounts, a significant black historical figure who played a vital role in industrializing America. Knowing this history would have had a substantial impact on that little black boy I was. To say it was significant would be an understatement. Without question, it had the potential to influence me in profound and amazing ways that would have allowed for more than pride. It would have provided me a guidepost to exceed the boundaries to which white supremacy and western ideology sought to confine me as an ambitious black boy struggling to find purpose. Consequently, my political ambitions and moral compass would suffer because such an exemplary figure as represented by J.C. Johnson’s success, activism, and perseverance was erased from my classroom curriculum and replaced with a pedagogy designed to oppress me. 

Today, when I think about all this and look at the current political climate in America, I see more of the same in terms of efforts being made to erase history from the textbooks that shape our children’s worldview. And it is scary to think about what the powers-that-be are creating within them. I look at what it created in me as a young misguided man and how my zip code and a past I did not know created a void in the essence and direction of my future. Recognizing this, I now realize and wholeheartedly accept the responsibility to change this predicament. The only question that remains now is: Will you join us in this fight?