Recently, I read that in 1988, a decision was made in Russia to stop giving their more than 50 million school children history examinations because they did not wish to continue to spread the “lies” the history was spreading.
When I read this, I mistakenly concluded this effort was designed to shield the children from the truth, but instead, as I later learned it was an effort to stop them from internalizing the negative historical narratives that had been put in place by repressive past administrations. Many of our current leaders are working tirelessly to rewrite our history in ways that support their racist and supremacist narratives also.
This was a Nazi strategy as well: Burn the books, create the narrative you want to enforce and then do all the heinous things necessary to enforce the will of the dictator in chief. Replace the truth with lies.
Catherine Meeks
But today, I want to be one of the many voices to tell Stephen Miller and his Project 2025 agenda comrades it is too late for that strategy to work in this country. We know what you’re trying to do.
Yes, the destruction of the gains of the newly freed people did work to some degree during Reconstruction because the foundation to support them was not strong. The formerly enslaved Africans were turned back by many Post-Reconstruction attacks including the institution of the Jim Crow era with all the terror of lynching, convict leasing and the many other Black Codes put into place to control them because they did not have the tools to resist.
The progress that had been made by the formerly enslaved was so new and the foundation so shaky, and they did not have any laws to support them. It is amazing they resisted as much as they did.
But this is the 21st century, and it is a new day for the formerly enslaved and we are not going back to slavery no matter whose agenda it might be. It is too late, Stephen Miller: Your Nazi playbook will get you your 15 minutes of fame, but it will not take hold as you and your team imagine. You can work until the end of your tenure to destroy the gains that have been made, but it will fail. The formerly enslaved came from slavery to this present moment and how short-sighted it is for you and your team to fail to see who those formerly enslaved folks have become.
“Your Nazi playbook will get you your 15 minutes of fame, but it will not take hold as you and your team imagine.”
A few months ago, I had the amazing privilege of traveling with a small group of pilgrims from New York on an eight-day journey to our major African American museums and historical sites in several of the former slave states. It was very enlightening for me, even though I have spent the past 50 years working in the racial healing arena and I am convinced one of these days America will be the America that it can become. I was deeply moved by what I witnessed.
Prior to our pilgrimage, I had been describing this current moment under this reign of terror with the shadow president Stephen Miller and his Project 2025 cohort as being much like Post-Reconstruction, but that journey with my fellow pilgrims showed me I was wrong. Post-Reconstruction cannot happen again here because we have a much better foundation than existed then and the story of the journey of the enslaved Africans from slavery to freedom is now ingrained in the American psyche in ways that were not true during the early days of Reconstruction.
Our institutions are filled with massive scholarship that bears a truthful witness to that story; the museums are filled with the evidence of the story; and so many folks know how important the story is, and they are committed to telling it.
During our pilgrimage, we met teachers from Kentucky who had brought all their middle school students to the Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss., and another group of teachers and students from California in Montgomery, Ala., who had brought their students. These teachers were white and people of color. A white male history teacher from Kentucky said, “I am a history teacher, and I am going to teach all the history.” I am thankful for this teacher and his passionate dedication to the teaching the truth.
All across America, we have gotten the clear message that the history — which includes the good, the bad and the ugly — has to be told. This crew that imagines itself leading us into the abyss of their racism and deconstruction of freedom are much like the little girl, Hush Puppy, in the movie The Beasts of the Southern Wild who seeks safety in a cardboard box when her trailer house is on fire. This crew thinks the remedy for managing the truth is simply to ignore it, lie about it and refuse to allow it to be read, heard or experienced.
Oh, don’t we all wish our magical thinking could solve all our problems? But it never has worked, and it stands less than a snowball’s chance on a hot Georgia sidewalk of working in the 21st century. If these head-in-the-sand dwellers would take a look at history in all its particularities, they would realize they are running a fool’s errand.
So, Stephen Miller and company, we are on to you, and you will not prevail. History will outlast you. Thanks to the recorders of the truth, for the wisdom bearing elders and the spirit of all who love the truth. You and your agenda will not be sustained.
Catherine Meeks was given the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement and Service Award in August 2022; was listed by Georgia Trend Magazine as one of the 500 women to watch in Georgia in 2022; retired as the Clara Carter Acree Distinguished Professor of Socio-Cultural Studies at Mercer University; is a community and wellness activist and midwife to the soul; and the author of The Night Is Long, But Light Comes In The Morning, Meditations on Racial Healing, She previously served as founding executive director of Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing and currently serves as founder and executive director of the Turquoise and Lavender Institute for Transformation and Healing. She lives in Atlanta.
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