This is why Black History Month is needed
Some Civil Rights icons stand the test of time - Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, MLK, Malcolm X - and I'll throw Thurgood Marshall in there as well.
One story and person I never heard of until this morning was the story of Sgt. Isaac Woodard, who came home from the war 80 years ago today, just for the bus he was riding on the back of due to segregation to come to a stop. Sgt. Woodard asked to get off to use the bathroom. Well, the white bus driver took exception to that, and Sgt. Woodard had the audacity to speak up, wanting to be treated with respect and use the bathroom.
The bus driver relented. That stop. But the next stop, he got off, told police Sgt. Woodard was being drunk and disorderly when he wasn't, and officers beat him so bad with their sticks that it blinded him in both eyes.
Seeing such images and him like this broke my heart, knowing he lived until 1992 like this was infuriating, but it doesn't end there.
Woodard's case led President Truman to integrate the military, and disgustingly, but not surprisingly, an all-white jury acquitted those who beat and blinded him. Yet the judge over the case, Julius Waring, was appalled by the verdict, which inspired him to want to preside over other Civil Rights cases, with his dissent in the case Briggs vs. Elliott calling for the end of separate, but equal and overturning of segregation in schools, which succeeded.
No one taught me about Isaac Woodard in school. Nobody taught me about Judge Waring, and it wasn't until last year when I went to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis that I learned the name Bayard Rustin. It wasn't until I was almost 30 that I learned about the Tulsa Massacre.
I think of what the government did this week in removing the Pride flag from Stonewall, which is an attempted erasure of history. I've seen MAGAts defend it by bringing up the Confederate statues being torn down, but I would argue statues are also a celebration of certain of people. Confederates should be acknowledged, they should be taught, but nobody should be celebrating the lives of Nathan Bedford Forrest or Jefferson Davis or any of these other people. Where is the Isaac Woodard statue? His life should be celebrated.
And don't give me this nonsense about heritage - I've got German in mine; doesn't mean I support the dedication of Nazi monuments and celebration of Nazis. In fact, I read an article years ago where Hitler's descendants are refusing to procreate to let the bloodline die out.
It seems many Civil Rights icons like Isaac Woodard aren't taught in schools, and I completed all my schooling before the felon came down the escalator, can only imagine how worse it is now.
What favors are you doing kids by only tooting this country's own horn and never acknowledging its flaws and shortcomings? Isaac Woodard's story inspired a chain of events - the desegregation of our military, a judge upset an injustice to advocate for desegregating schools, one of the most significant court rulings in our country's history, and so on and so forth. Whitewashing history, and not teaching all (the good, bad and ugly) won't inspire kids to avoid repeating America's past mistakes.
And if people are offended or feel divided by Black History Month, then that's their problem. Maybe they're privileged, because as a straight, white man, I've never been discriminated against on any of those accounts. I don't know racial epithets or any hardships I might've had if I looked different or loved somebody different. We had to have Constitutional amendments in the 13th, 14th, 15th and 24th Amendments just to correct some of our country's injustices.
To think, some people want the Civil Rights Act of 1964 repealed, they want to whitewash history and refer to things they don't like as "woke." Well, you can't tell the story of America without telling the story of its many racist and heinous acts towards non-white people, and many people took their mask off since the felon happened to walk into our lives in 2015.
Thank goodness we have Black History Month, because it's a long, complicated history with a lot of ugliness and setbacks, but also certain progress and victories to rejoice in, because some people in this country haven't moved on and would like to erase the mention of all of this and pretend like it never happened. I'm so thankful the NBA has a Pioneers Game now to honor Earl Lloyd, Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton and Chuck Cooper, and now, more will know their stories.
Here are videos on Isaac Woodard's life.
I also agree with one person in the video who said names of bases named for Confederate people that one of them should be renamed for Isaac Woodard. I think it would be most appropriate to have the next Democratic President rename Fort Bragg as Fort Woodard and to give Sgt. Woodard a posthumous Medal of Freedom.
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