Ukraine is Important- Impeach Trump – Don’t Forget to Follow the Money!

Democrats in the House of Representatives have finally gotten traction against Donald Trump. Revelations of his conversation with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he requested multiple times Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Along with moving transcripts of that conversation along with those with Soviet leader Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, seems to have done the trick. The narrative was simple, Trump traded our national security for his personal political interest; holding up $391 million in military aid approved by Congress unless he “did us a favor” and investigated the Biden’s to hurt Joe’s bid as a contender in the 2020 Presidential Election.

Add to that, revelations that Trump in the Oval Office told two Russians he was “unconcerned” about Russian interference in the 2016 Election because “we do it all the time in other countries,” was simple enough that the White House has yet to issue a response two days later. Surrogates on the Sunday shows twisted themselves in knots trying to defend the President. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy literally denied Trump said what the White House released transcript admitted he said. Stephen Miller pointed to the “deep state” and cited his vast knowledge after three years in government. Lindsey Graham forgot everything he learned in law school by discounting, “second-hand” information, forgetting his own reliance on Linda Tripp during the Clinton Impeachment.

Most of all, the public has reacted to the Ukraine information with a majority of Americans, 55% according to recent polls, now supporting an Impeachment investigation. Nancy Pelosi has indicated the focus of the investigation will be Ukraine and national security which is understandable, but it’s critical not to take their eye off the ball and ignore Trump’s finances which is what Trump clearly has been trying to keep from the view of Democrats and the American public.

As rewarding and the Ukrainian line of inquiry has been. Expecting Republican Senators to vote against Trump in an Impeachment trial based on moving documents to a different server and disobeying the Presidential Records Act is expecting more that they’ve demonstrated they should be credited for. Their ability to ignore the Quid Pro Quo in Trump’s suggestion Ukraine investigate Biden cannot be underestimated, especially after listening to Lindsay Graham, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee put Tump above both Party and Country. What will be needed, is to remind the public, that not only is Trump a lawless traitor, he’s also a crook, which is why the ball shouldn’t be dropped on following the money.

AT this moment, Trump’s personal financial information and that of The Trump Organization is being sought by various Congressional committees, the State of New York, a Manhattan District Attorney, the State of California, and various private groups suing Trump. Trump has gone to extreme lengths to keep that information secret including ignoring subpoenas, instructing the IRS not to comply with rules about providing taxpayer information to the Ways & Means Committee. Trump has sued his banks and accountants to keep them from complying with legally issued subpoenas. He’s using the Malcolm X approach to keep his finances secret… “by any means necessary.”

We’ve heard testimony from Michael Cohen that Trump used fraudulent financial data to secure loans or get better insurance rates. Ivanka and Don, Jr had criminal fraud charges dropped after a Trump attorney visited the Manhattan District Attorney and later made a huge donation to his campaign fund. The Trump Foundation has been shut down as a fraudulent charity. The Trump Organization has been accused of money laundering, and there have been multiple suspicious real estate transactions Trump and his sons once bragged about with Russia and Saudi Arabia. There seems to be fertile ground to uncover illegal activity once the financial records are reviewed. This is no time to give up and chase the shiny Ukranian object.

Yes, Ukraine is important, Trump’s secret conversations with Putin and MBS equally so. But follow the money; in all likelihood it will lead to proof of multiple other crimes, equally understandable by the public and impossible for Republican senators to ignore.

For Those Who Don’t Remember Watergate… Here’s What To Expect

If you were old enough to remember October 8, 1998. That’s the date when Impeachment proceedings were launched against President Bill Clinton. The process itself took 16 months from the House authorizing an Impeachment vote by a count of 258–176. Republicans were supported by 35 Democrats who supported the proceedings.

The year before the Impeachment started was marked by Independent Counsel Ken Starr holding a Grand Jury and steadily leaking his findings to tarnish Clinton. He eventually presented his 3,183-page report to the House of Representatives, dropping off 18 boxes of supporting material and dropping the mike. The Senate trial presided over by Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, began January 7, 1999.

There were breaking news highlights including Monica Lewinski presenting the semen-stained blue dress she’d saved for years without ever cleaning. Her alleged friend Linda Tripp appeared before the grand jury four times producing secret tapes she made of Lewinski baring her soul. When it was all said and done, it was a highly partisan affair and Clinton was acquitted on the two counts presented for trial. Republicans lost seats in the House of Representatives after failing to Impeach Clinton and Newt Gingrich who headed up the charge, resigned as House Majority Leader. Clinton apologized and went on to finish his second term with a high approval rating. That was how Clinton’s Impeachment went, Trump’s will be more like Watergate.

Watergate got very little traction in the beginning. On June 17, 1972, five inept burglars were caught breaking into the DNC headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. One of the five, James McCord, was a security coordinator for the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Committee to Re-Elect the President, aptly named CREEP. He was fired from both positions the day after the break-in. The story would have died out but for the dogged reporting of the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The saga was played out in the film, “All The President’s Men,” starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. If you’ve seen the movie or know your history (perhaps lived it). You already know the ending. Nixon resigned when a few Republican Senators told him he “didn’t have the votes” and he quit to spare his pride the nation the trouble of kicking him out. I don’t expect Trump to have the decency to resign, but here’s where the similarities will be between the upcoming Trump Impeachment and Nixon’s Watergate.

The power of television is what made Trump the President and it’s what will bring him down. Television killed Nixon’s first chance of becoming President as he came off poorly in a televised debate with John F. Kennedy. Nixon had a five-o’clock shadow and came across sour and stiff. Kennedy was youthful and passionate and won the election. Nixon had the experience, Kennedy had the looks and energy. Trump was famous because of his television show, “The Apprentice” and reveled at any chance to perform. He took control of every media opportunity and even those who didn’t like him often watched to see what he’d say next. Impeachment will be different, and Trump will be without control.

Impeachment hearings will be a daily reminder of all the failings of a President with many. Clinton was generally well-liked and his sins as they were, weren’t viewed as that outside the norm by most Americans. Only in recent years has Bill Clinton been viewed as a negative and his popularity helped him. Trump has had negative approval ratings since his first day in office. Even the Republicans in Congress that have steadfastly supported him don’t like him. They stay with him out of fear of reprisal from either Trump’s tweets or his base. As long as the public stays with him, they will too. That’s where television comes in.

During the time of Watergate, there were but a few television networks and all but Ted Turner’s were fixated on the hearings carrying basically the same material. You’ve heard the expression, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” That came from having John Dean testify on live TV about Nixon’s secret tapes. Nixon tried to keep them out but eventually, the nation heard that Nixon led the cover-up of Watergate and even approved the break-in in advance. Nixon was paranoid and would do anything he could to get an edge. Sound familiar?

There was no Fox News at the time or a network of right-wing media outlets to keep Nixon loyalists in a bubble. Trump’s problem today is that Fox is already planning for a post-Trump era. New board member Paul Ryan is already suggesting they move away from Trump. Sean Hannity has conceded the recent coverage “looks bad” and on-air personalities Shepard Smith and Carlson Tucker have hurled broadsides at each other on their shows over coverage of Trump. Impeachment will bring us all the witnesses that Trump has blocked, copies of financial records including his taxes. There have always been suggestions Trump has committed fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and more but they’ve never been dragged out on live television with his own employees testifying against him. That plus evidence he disregarded national security in favor of his personal business interests and re-election ought to be enough to make his most ardent supporters in the Senate consider putting the nation first just one time.

The Trump Impeachment will consume the news cycle on a daily basis. New reports will break regularly and people will flip on him to save themselves, just like Watergate. My interest in politics stemmed from reading all the books published afterward by the participants, especially the guilty ones like John Dean and H.R. Haldeman. The only way they got to be heroes was by baring their souls, at the expense of Richard M. Nixon. Such will be the case with Trump. they’ll all turn on him, and their evolution will be televised.

Republicans Can Rid Us Of This Meddlesome President

They all hate him. They fear being on the butt end of one of his tweets, or perhaps him backing a primary candidate against them for a perceived slight. They wake up each morning scanning Twitter to see what new position they must adopt and defend that they had never previously considered before Trump said it. Many are morally opposed to him, others just want their soul back.

Unexpectedly an opportunity has come to be rid of this menace. All because of a whistleblower complaint that exposed him blackmailing/bribing Ukraine to investigate old charges against Joe Biden and his son Hunter that were long ago investigated and dismissed. In a way only Donald Trump and Rudy Guiliani could have managed. They got caught, lied about it, and changed their story multiple times before White House notes of a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy showing Trump committing a felony, implicating Attorney General William Barr to boot.

Trump being Trump, he initially refused to turn over the transcript of the phone call and the whistleblower which by law was supposed to be turned over to the relevant committees in Congress. Finally showing a spine after allowing countless Trump lackeys to ignore subpoenas or refuse to testify or turn over documents. Nancy Pelosi announced a formal Impeachment Inquiry into the President’s behavior. Trump kept announcing his phone call was “perfect.” Leaving him no legitimate explanation as to why then he couldn’t turn over the transcript? Within hours of the transcript being released to the public and the whistleblower report given to the leadership in Congress. Democrats had the 218 votes required to vote for an Impeachment and a trial to be conducted by the Republican-controlled Senate. With more misdeeds by Trump becoming public by the day, that the House will take that Impeachment vote is nearly certain. Then it’s up to the Republicans in the Senate to decide what they’re going to do?

It takes a two-thirds majority vote to find the President guilty in the Senate and evict him from office. Twice before it was attempted with Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton; each previous attempt failed. Richard Nixon resigned before Impeachment after Republican Senator’s came to him explaining he didn’t have the votes to survive. While it appears that this group of Republicans won’t ever turn on the President. This is their one chance to rid themselves of this lunatic on grounds of national security or perhaps just fatigue.

If they vote to get rid of Trump in the Senate, they could make their first claim to have acted honorably, in the interest of the Republic, since Trump took office. They could claim they put Country before Party, no man is above the law, throw in a few words like truth, justice, and the American way. A group that hasn’t exactly covered themselves in glory as they stayed silent when children were caged and white supremacists roamed the White House can finally stand up and be heard.

The inevitable Impeachment trial in the Senate will be conducted by the Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsay Graham. The former best friend of the late John McCain used to consider himself and hope to be seen as an honorable man. In the past two years he’s gone against much he once believed in, siding with a President way too close to Russia, a country Graham once considered the enemy. Lindsay has turned the other way when Trump cheats at golf and on his wives. He’s dishonored his longtime friend John McCain and made a mockery of his legacy. This will be his last chance to square things with McCain, his PArty, and the American public.

Don’t count out the possibility that Trump could be convicted in the Senate. Their calculation has been that as long as Trump held a significant approval rating with his base, they couldn’t afford to turn against him. We’ve now gotten to the point that did in Nixon. Televised congressional hearings with negative information coming out daily. Then repeated on 24-hour cable news networks. Any sign that the base is leaving Trump and the Senate may well turn on him. We will see?

Thomas Jefferson Did More To Promote Domestic Slavery And Slave Breeding Than Any Other President…

While the current trade war between Donald Trump and China keeps making the news. There’s another trade war guided by Thomas Jefferson we never heard about. That one led to protectionist pricing and massive exportation of what became Virginia’s greatest export, not tobacco but slaves.

Jefferson is considered by some the “Father of the Constitution,” though he didn’t write a word of it. He was serving as the Minister to France at the time and wasn’t present at the Constitutional Convention. It was James Madison who drafted the Constitution including the Bill of Rights. Jefferson was still a great influencer having mostly written the Declaration of Independence and drafts for the Virginia Constitution. His drafts didn’t arrive in time to be considered in the actual document but became part of the foundation for the Bill of Rights when Madison composed them. His views on gun rights made their way into the Constitution. A close reading suggests his views on guns might be tied to slavery and the need for owners to maintain order.

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms within his own lands and tenements.”

The Constitution contained a clause that Jefferson made full use of to enrich not only himself but also fellow Virginia slaveowners. The clause was a compromise with South Carolina which allowed them to continue importing African slaves for no less than twenty years. By the time of the American Revolution, a combination of burned-out fields due to poor crop rotation and a loss of their best customer (Britain) meant that Virginia, in particular, had too many slaves while South Carolina and other Southern states more reliant on rice and sugar, barely had enough. Charleston had become the largest port for receiving African slaves which they were getting relatively cheaply. This reduced the value of Virginia slaves which farmers were breeding (I’ll come back to that) and selling to states with greater needs.

If Jefferson and other Virginians and some New Englanders had their way. The International slave trade would have stopped right along with the adoption of the Constitution. The clause that gave Southern states a twenty-year-pass was to entice the Southern states, especially South Carolina, to join the union. Keep in mind, none of those illustrious founding father wanted to get rid of slavery. They just wanted to limit it to the home-grown kind and keep the prices up. Thomas Jefferson who owned over 600 slaves in his lifetime was chief among them.

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

Constitution of the United States; Article One; Section Nine

For the next twenty years, Virginia and South Carolina (with Maryland a distant third) competed to provide the rest of the nation with slaves. Virginia and Maryland selling off their excess, South Carolina reselling the Africans fresh off the boat. South Carolina knew they had a short window to work with.

Nobody knew at the time that some unruly slaves in Saint Domingue (later Haiti) led by Toussant L’Ouverture would take over the place and give Napoleon such a bad taste in his mouth he soured on America with all its black people and arranged to sell off France’s holdings there with The Louisiana Purchase in 1803. White folks had already been encroaching on land north of New Orleans and west into Tennessee, Kentucky, and elsewhere. Fertile land was begging to be farmed, with the help of slaves of course. Who had slaves? Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina.

Back to that trade war. Though the stage had been set with the finalization of the Constitution in 1787. It only provided that the international slave trade could not be ended prior to 1808. Somebody still had to actually make that happen which is where Thomas Jefferson steps in. In 1800, Jefferson was elected President, assuming office in 1801. He was still President in 1808 when that Constitutional prohibition against ending the international slave trade expired. He didn’t wait that long, getting all the paperwork and legislation out of the way a year early in 1807. In his address to Congress, he denounced the violations of human rights imposed on the Africans, surely giving no thought as to how much richer he and his fellow slaveholding Virginians would be once those pesky South Carolinians were eliminated as rivals.

“I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe.

I don’t mean to suggest Jefferson was insincere, well actually I do. While he claimed to be so concerned about human rights, morality, and reputation. He was fathering several children with one of his slaves. Family members, despite DNA evidence, held all the children weren’t his, some might have been his brother’s children because loaning out one’s property was in vogue back in the day. Finally, in 2017, an organization representing the Jefferson family acknowledged he fathered six children with Sally Hemings who he started raping when she was 14. Getting rid of the international slave trade, instantly made domestic slave traders like Jefferson much richer.

Jefferson banned shipment of slaves to America from Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, and the Dutch so that America would get a better price for its homegrown slaves, eliminating a major source of competition. Because the demand for slaves was still high due to the nations rapid expansion. America’s dirty secret was that they forcibly bred slaves (I said I’d come back to this) to supply the Southern and those more Western states that had adopted slavery. It was no different than banning all foreign cars to improve the market for domestic vehicles. except that cars weren’t a product of forcible rape in many cases to keep the production line going.

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There are those who are devoted to propping up the image of Thomas Jefferson. They say his ending the international slave trade was the first step toward ending slavery itself. The fact it greatly increased his wealth was simply a byproduct. They cite his writings and speeches about the evils of slavery. Of the over six-hundred slaves he owned in his lifetime, he freed only seven, two while he was living, one of whom paid $200 for his release. They say Jefferson would never be involved in something as heinous as slave breeding. Even though he enacted the law that greatly expanded the practice. I’ll let Jefferson have the last word and you decide.

“I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm, what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.” Thomas Jefferson

What do Terre Haute Prisoners, Tuskeegee Sharecroppers, and Guatemalans Have in Common?

It started in Tuskegee, Alabama. The US Public Health Service (PHS) began a study on 600 black sharecroppers in which they were offered free medical treatment. Many of the men had never been to the doctor. Of the men, 399 already had latent syphilis and the control group of 201 men was syphilis free. They all were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a name given for a variety of ailments at the time. While most of the men already had the disease, some of their spouses and unborn children had not yet contracted it and the government effectively gave it to them.

Part of the purpose of the study was to track the full progression of syphilis and the men were given only placebos or aspirin while the disease took its course, ravaging their bodies. By 1947, penicillin had been proven an effective treatment for syphilis but the men were not offered treatment, only watched as they went blind, insane, and many eventually died.

In the mid-1960s, PHS investigator Peter Buxton voiced his concerns that the study was unethical. A committee was formed to review the program but the Public Health Service elected to see the study through its completion until all the men were dead. Years later, Buxton leaked the story to a reporter who told Associated Press reporter Jean Heller who broke the news nationwide. The public outcry forced the study to shut down. At that time, 28 patients had died from syphilis, 100 more from related complications, 40 spouses had contracted the disease and 19 infants got syphilis at birth.

In 1973, Congress authorized a $10 million settlement for the remaining participants and heirs. New laws were established as to what could happen in US Government-funded research. Many people are generally aware of the Tuskegee Experiments but far fewer know of two other government-backed studies on captive populations, involving some of the same doctors who should have known better.

In 1943, at the Federal Correctional Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, the government injected 241 men with gonorrhea so that treatments could be studied as to their effectiveness. The men were offered $100, a certificate of merit, and a letter in their file for their parole board hearings. After several months, the study was concluded in 1944 because injecting men in their penises proved an unreliable method of passing along the disease. There is no information available as to the racial make-up of the Indiana subjects as opposed to the black ones in Tuskegee and the brown ones in Guatemala. One can’t help but wonder?

In September 2011, a report titled, “ETHICALLY IMPOSSIBLE” STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, was released. The following is from the preface:

On October 1, 2010, President Barack Obama telephoned President Álvaro Colom of Guatemala to extend an apology to the people of Guatemala for medical research supported by the United States and conducted in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948. Some of the research involved deliberate infection of people with sexually transmitted diseases (“STDs”)1 without their consent. Subjects were exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, and included prisoners, soldiers from several parts of the army, patients in a state-run psychiatric hospital, and commercial sex workers. Serology experiments that did not involve intentional exposure to infection, which continued through 1953, also were performed in these groups, as well as with children from state-run schools, an orphanage, and several rural towns. President Obama expressed “deep regret” for the research and affirmed the U.S. government’s “unwavering commitment to ensure that all human medical studies conducted today meet exacting” standards for the protection of human subjects.

While the United States expressed “deep regret,” it later declared itself not liable for these tests conducted outside the United States. Guatemalans were not entitled to the $10 million the remaining participants and heirs of the Tuskegee Experiment got. They didn’t get the $100 the Terre Haute prisoners got. The United States of America said Guatemalans were entitled to nothing at all. Judge Reggie Walton said he was following Federal law but was deeply troubled by the study. He urged the government to provide assistance to the affected.

“This lawsuit is simply not the appropriate vehicle for remedying those wrongs.”

Lawyers representing the Guatemalans are now seeking redress against private companies involved and in January 2019, a Federal Court declared that the Rockefeller Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and related entities, and Bristol-Myers who they describe as, “the driving force” behind the study. Several of the doctors worked for Johns Hopkins and received support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Bristol-Myers provided drugs to the small percentage that received treatment. In response to the $1 billion lawsuit lawyers for Johns Hopkins said,

“Johns Hopkins expresses profound sympathy for individuals and families impacted by the deplorable 1940s syphilis study funded and conducted by the U.S. government in Guatemala. We respect the legal process, and we will continue to vigorously defend the lawsuit.”

A spokesman for the Rockefeller Foundation said the lawsuit has no merit and they had no role in the funding, management, or design of the study. Bristol-Myer had no comment at the time.

The US Military had an interest in finding a treatment for syphilis which had no cure when the Tuskegee Experiment began. They estimated that as many as 350,000 soldiers might contract syphilis while fighting overseas wars and at home. Someone in the government thought it was just fine to infect targeted populations of prisoners (race undetermined), poor black people, and brown people of Guatemala. The government was shamed into a settlement with the Tuskegee survivors. They had no concern for the Guatemalans they infected with most receiving no treatment. The trial against the private companies is in discovery and we don’t know what information will be revealed. Here’s hoping that $1 billion is the floor and not the ceiling for compensation.

Why We Need a White History Month

Every February when Black History Month comes around, like clockwork a small percentage of people take umbrage that black people get a month to celebrate their history and there is no White History Month to counterbalance it. I used to argue that white history is taught year-round and there’s no need to set aside a month to focus on it. I’ve come to realize that we do need a White History Month if not two or three. Truth is, a whole lot of white history has been left out of the books and Americans of every color need to be aware.

The white history we’ve been taught is mostly a fallacy. We were taught that George Washington had wooden teeth, not the reality that his false teeth included teeth taken from slaves, likely his own. George Washington treated his slaves like every other slaveowner of the time. He tore apart families long before Donald Trump, he authorized beatings to maintain order.

Washington’s will stipulated if he died before his wife Martha, the slaves he owned (as opposed to those she owned) be freed after her death. Martha ended up freeing his slaves once she realized they had a great incentive to speed up her death and thus gain their freedom. She freed them not from the goodness of her heart but in fear for her life.

We know Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, most famously Sally Hemings with whom he had a decades-long relationship as she bore him six children. Let’s be clear that there’s no such thing as a consensual relationship between slave and master. She was repeatedly raped by Thomas Jefferson although historians would never describe it that way. Many historians and Jeffersons family members denied the lineage of Hemings children, even after DNA established it as fact. Only recently have they grudgingly acknowledged a couple of the children might have been Thomas Jefferson’s, if not his brother’s.

Abraham Lincoln is credited with freeing the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation. He actually only freed the slaves in the Southern states that seceded from the Union. He did that for two reasons; to inflict economic pain on the South and to keep France and Britain from siding with the South against the North because of their recent aversion to slavery. Lincoln himself in the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates, did all he could to avoid being called an abolitionist and repeatedly claimed that black people were not the social equal as white people nor as intelligent. Given his druthers, he’d have sent all the slaves to Liberia or Central America and been rid of them.

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There is so much white history purposefully unknown to most Americans that we truly need to dedicate a month or more to its study. We could understand why the Electoral College that gives additional power today to rural states with low population, was originally intended to protect slave states and ensure more populated ones couldn’t outlaw slavery by the weight of their numbers. We’d know the rationale for the 3/5th’s clause and about the provision of the Constitution that allowed for the ending of the International Slave Trade no sooner than 1808. That prohibition was had nothing to do with ending slavery but was about protectionism of the Domestic slave trade which led to one of the most heinous act ever perpetrated in the world, slave breeding farms.

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America has spent as more time denying the existence of breeding farms than educating people about them. Led by large slave breeding farms in Richmond, VA, and the Maryland Eastern-Shore. Farms whose populations were almost exclusively black women were forced to have child after child that were ultimately shipped to Southern plantations to meet their needs. Some “benevolent” slaveowners offered the women their freedom after they bore at least 15 children. The fathers were often sent from nearby plantations although the owners felt free to sample the wares whenever they chose. The previously mentioned Thomas Jefferson knew the value of a female slave though they may have never tilled the field or harvested a crop.

“I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm, what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.” Thomas Jefferson

Many of the laws that exist today stem from slavery or its aftermath. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which prevents actions of Federal Troops on US soil was to ensure that Federal Troops never again protected the black ex-slaves in the South. Their stationing allowed for the Reconstruction Era while their removal brought Reconstruction to a swift end.

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Even people that have heard of “Juneteenth” may not be aware of the entire history behind it. Yes, it reflects the date that blacks in Texas learned they were free, months after the Civil War actually ended. You won’t learn that the Federal government was complicit in the delay so that one more cotton crop could be harvested. Texas history books would seem the reasonable place to look for an accurate telling of their history but they would rather you be told a tale of “American Exceptionalism,” that suggest slavery was a labor arrangement.

The Ocoee Massacre murdered or burned out the entire black population of Ocoee, FL after two men tried to vote in the 1920 Presidential Election. There was a movie about a similar mass lynching in Rosewood, FL but you still hear almost nothing about it. During the Black Wall Street massacre, the Oklahoma National Guard bombed by air the Greenwood District of Tulsa. Aiding the hundreds of white attackers defending a white elevator operator who claimed (and later denied) she’d been raped. The Groveland Four, Emmett Till, the list goes on and on. Let’s have a White History Month because every effort is being made to sweep it under the rug.

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By 1921, the Greenwood District was the wealthiest black community at the time in America. Attached is the full documentary by The History Channel in 2016. It’s 42 minutes long which may deter some from watching. Should you watch you’ll gain an understanding the history books have yet to share.