Political Gumbo: Sorry Lincoln, But I’d Rather Work Today

Last week, the Human Relations Commission voted to recommend the City Council remove the portrait of one racist mayor, who along with a lawyer, led the way to keep Black people from owning local property.

However, it’s not the photo that’s the problem. It’s the need to worship men and elevate them as heroes. 

I’m against holidays and memorials for men altogether.

Men are not made to be placed on pedestals. 

Black, white or otherwise all men are flawed.

And that includes Honest Abe Lincoln. 

Today is the annual celebration of Lincoln’s birthday.

Yes, he held the highest office in the land, but at the same time Lincoln was not the stalworth of freedom that history preaches.

Hey, it’s Black History Month and if they won’t say this in the schools, I’ll say it in this space.

Yes, Lincoln freed some of the slaves.

Some of them.

Truth to tell, the Emancipation Proclamation was a military action that applied to states that seceded from the union. African Americans held in bondage in border states loyal to the union continued to face inhumane brutality, including rape, beatings and being sold just to have the cycle repeated.  

The proclamation also provided some exceptions to some confederate states the Union had already taken.

Here’s the Emancipation Proclamation in the context of Lincoln’s own words.

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

He opted for the latter.

He also said in the fourth debate against Stephen Douglas.

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races,” he began, going on to say that he opposed Black people having the right to vote, to serve on juries, to hold office and to intermarry with whites.”

That’s the man they call the “Great Emancipator.”

Let me be clear, this cat like many of the past presidents would struggle to win the presidency today.

The only reason I won’t say he couldn’t be elected, is because Trump was in fact elected in modern times.  

Back to Lincoln.

He was simply trying to win a war when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Of course it wasn’t just any war.

Brother fought against brother on US soil.

So intentional or otherwise to win that war, Lincoln sowed confusion. 

Just-freed slaves ran off and the confederacy lost much of its forced free labor and some men were forced to hunt slaves instead of waging war. 

Conversely, the proclamation also allowed many of those freed slaves to then fight for their own freedom. 

Some numbers say as many as 200,000 Black men joined the Union military.

Yes, the only guarantee of some slaves remaining free came with Lincoln’s side winning.

Yes, Black people were once again duped to fight in a war. 

Don’t get me wrong, yes, that fighting helped secure their freedom.

And then …

The south instituted Jim Crow laws, and the federal government did not lift a finger to stop it.

Eventually eugenists like Woodrow Wilson and others made their way to the White House and reportedly clapped and cheered in the White House during a scene from “Birth of a Nation” where the KKK rode into the south. 

And during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s time in the White House he cut “gentlemen’s deals” with congressmen from the South to get the New Deal passed.

Under those deals, FDR would not go after Jim Crow laws, which his wife Eleanor was pushing him to do.

You know how those gentlemens’ deals work. Nothing on paper, at best you get a handshake over brandy or mint juleps, or one of those concoctions Thurston Howell III would drink.

Mentioning which, why aren’t Gilligan’s Island reruns on TV anymore? 

Back to the point, across the country and locally, schools have been named after these men. 

I don’t care if the name is changed. Lincoln, FDR, Wilson and a host of others should not be erased from history. 

It’s what we teach the kids that concerns me.

And I never read that in a history book at John Muir High School, which coincidentally is on Lincoln Avenue. 

I hope they’re not teaching from the same text today. 

The record should be set straight and taught properly which means history must be taught in context. 

And perhaps we should add this as the lessons are taught. 

Worship of men twists history.

And that history in turn twists minds.

Look at Mt. Rushmore, Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt. 

Three slave owners and a eugenist.

Yes in full context it must be said, in earlier drafts of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson denounced slavery as a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberties.”

But at the same time he “visited” his slaves and fathered at least six known children.

Yeah, there is a reason a lot of Black people have the surname Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson. 

In the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Maxwell Scott said “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Maybe, the point is legends shouldn’t become fact in the first place.