June Message From Our Founder

By Ivan Kilgore

As the nation celebrates Juneteenth this month, it pains me to know and continue to experience what remains of the dehumanizing culture that sprung from the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Without question, slavery lives with us to this day. The prisons I have resided in for close to three decades were designed after the hull of slave ships that scattered my ancestors across the globe. The guards that watch over me are equally, if not more, sadistic and brutal as the plantation overseers who chained and whipped my ancestors some 400 years ago. The very courts that sentenced me to die in prison wrote into law I had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect….” To this end, I quote Chief Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), because it remains controversial to this day both inside and outside courtrooms across America. While courts today portray this opinion as deplorable and a moral and legal abomination, black men and women experience intense levels of police brutality, racial profiling, sentencing disparities, make up over half the prison population in most states, and are overrepresented in death sentences. And this is to say nothing of recent U.S. Supre.me Court rulings that resound Tanley’s sentiment on matters of abortion, affirmative action, and voter suppression schemes.
The irony is obvious and calls to mind the famed abolitionist Frederic Douglass’s July 1852 speech where he rebuked celebrating Independence Day. “What to the slave is your 4th of July?” he asked. In doing so, he signaled to the enslaved this was not a celebration of liberty from tranny, but rather a reminder of their continued bondage. In a similar vein, Juneteenth has become yet another political pawn mocking black freedom. While President Biden has declared it a national holiday, we are reminded that the tentacles of slavery remain intact and the struggle for freedom continues as political forces in conservative states like Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and some 17 others introduce or sign into law legislation that restricts educators from teaching this history or limits how racism or sexism are discussed in a classroom. The impact of which I am all too familiar with and have written extensively about in our February newsletter celebrating Black History Month. Still, I am compelled to explain here how doctoring history or limiting access to it operates to suppress or erase a people’s identity. More importantly, I must reemphasize how it shapes their future.
Last summer, our organization attended the 108th Association of the Study of African American Life and History Annual Conference in Jacksonville, Florida. We were invited as part of an effort by our partners at Stony Brook University to promote the “Writing Beyond Prison ‘Living Archive'” project we are to launch this summer, which showcases the writings of some 100 incarcerated intellectuals. My participation, of course, was via phone from a prison cell in Northern California. As I sat there listening to the presentations given by our team of graduate students, I was immediately struck with the profound realization of one student’s experience who had worked with us during the editing and transcribing phase of the project. She was a brilliant elementary teacher from New York. Her presentation focused on Florida’s ban on teaching critical race theory and how textbook publishers had censored content in their publications contracted with the state’s school system. Consequently, much had been omitted on subjects surrounding slavery, the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist Movements, and other crucial points concerning sexism and gay rights. “The very same textbooks in New York and Florida’s schools are as different as day and night!” she explained to an audience of academics, students, and community leaders. She went on to speak about how working on the archive had assisted her to place in context the impact this was having on shaping the futures of particularly Black students. What she said that was so profound was how in reading and editing prisoner writings, she repeatedly read stories from men such as myself who had written about not learning the history of black America until we were imprisoned. Whereas, the discovery awakened in us a sense of pride, purpose, and responsibility to further educate our community and ourselves as to the struggles we had overcome and those we must continue to fight.
This is what is at stake! The ban on teaching a version of American history that does not comport with the legacy of white supremacy will forever render holidays like Juneteenth meaningless classroom discussions in states like Florida that omit the controversies surrounding structural impediments created by the likes of Chief Justice Taney. Here, it is important that we observe a constant: power relations hold people in bondage, free them, then subject them to oppressive educational practices. This is especially so when it comes to understanding the extent and continued impact slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, mass incarceration, etc. Here, the relations, political in nature, are of such that, if ever we are to create a just and equal society, we must strive to make future generations conscious of the dangers of consuming a pedagogy designed to preserve white supremacy.
That said, it is important that we observe that America’s holidays are designated to foster a national character rooted in the values it strives to embody as a nation. This in turn provides a sense of identity as to who Americans are as a people. Therefore, if Juneteenth is to serve as a mantle of racial reckoning with the nation’s past, then let us demand more than simply acknowledging it was some two years late in delivering the promise of freedom. Instead, let us empower our educators with the tools and information to create healing in a nation torn by the evils of slavery that continue to live with us to this day. Let us empower future generations to build a nation that does more than simply designating a day to recognize its wrongs, but also works to build collective action to deliver the promise we have yet to fulfill for every citizen of this country. Will you join us in this fight? Volunteer today! Donate!