By James Strong
Whites have a history of taking credit for the accomplishments of Blacks. As a result, the attempt by some whites, and their Black surrogates, to tarnish the recently released movie “Selma” for its attacks on President Lyndon Baines Johnson during the Selma, Alabama, march of 1965 makes sense.
When Napoleon, the famed French dictator and general, invaded Egypt in 1798, he saw the splendor of the Egyptian pyramids and obelisks. But he concluded that Blacks were too uncivilized to have built such enchanting monuments. And so his soldiers shot off the noses of the Great Sphinx and other sculptures, and he had his historians claim that the Greeks and other Europeans constructed such magnificence.
When Black slaves came to America from Ghana, Nigeria and other African countries, they brought with them some of the finest cuisines America had never tasted. They taught Southern whites how to cook okra, sweet potatoes, chit’lins and fried chicken. Yet, to this day, some whites swear that those delicacies resulted from white ingenuity.
And even though jazz emerged from the spirited pleasure of the Black experience and originated formally in New Orleans many historians believe, some whites give such racists as Nick Larocca credit for Jazz’s birth and liveliness.
This latest attempt to usurp Black achievement comes from Joseph A. Califano, Jr. and others. Califano was President Johnson’s top assistant for domestic affairs from 1965 to 1969. Califano wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post defaming director Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” movie.
In the article, Califano says “the film falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself.”
Then, he makes an astonishing assertion, “In fact, Selma was Johnson’s idea.” He asserts this point boldly, as if the 20 years or more prior to the march, when Black Selmans discussed such a march, had been erased from even the smallest paragraphs in history’s memory.
Califano’s assertion is a lie. Hence, this Califano is a wretched Califano, one who argues with a bayonet in his mouth.
Thus, we need no drones or pigeons, no bald eagles or National Security Agencies to spy on the intentions of men and conclude that data on Black truth is as much in danger of being deleted from the pages of history now as they were when the nation was founded.
As a further instance of this concern, about a week later, The Post continued its rape of truth by printing an op-ed piece by Alvin B. Tillery, Jr. defending Califano. Tillery claims to be an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.
Tillery says that “in 2009, the late Hanes Walton, Jr., of the University of Michigan and I initiated a study on how presidents were portrayed in African-American media. We gathered and examined thousands of editorials about presidents that appeared in five [major] Black newspapers between 1900 and 2012.”
Though the study has not been completed, Tillery makes this statement regarding his current study: “Our results show that of the five presidents between 1948 and 1972, Johnson had the highest approval ratings among the editorial boards of these newspapers. Astoundingly, all 34 of the editorials on Johnson’s civil rights record that ran in these five papers during his administration evaluated him positively.”
He then implies that these editorial boards represent the opinions of Johnson in the whole Black community. And, consequently, Black America welcomed him as their savior on a sturdy white horse.
Tillery’s conclusion, of course, is ridiculous. It is as untidy as a beaver’s dam.
First, Tillery commits the fallacy of drawing a false conclusion when the facts don’t warrant it. (That’s why polls are rarely trusted these days.) Tell the Nation of Islam that they loved Johnson. Tell Amiri Baraka, the Black Panthers, the followers of Marcus Garvey, Daddy Grace and his adherents – tell many Black scholars of that day, tell all African Americans – that they adored Johnson and they will spit in your face, if they don’t shoot you first.
Second, most Blacks during the 1960s didn’t have the information about Johnson’s true self that we have now. We now know that Johnson was a conniving little leech, that he couldn’t stand Martin Luther King, Jr., that he used the FBI to spy on King, that he tried desperately to discredit King, that he initially opposed the Selma march, that he insisted on not providing ample federal protection for the marchers during the first “Bloody Sunday” march, and that some white historians and bigots hide these truths to maintain fiction.
If Blacks during that time were fully aware that Johnson was an anti-Black fox with a Southern drawl, not one Black would have cared about him. Well, maybe we would have mildly clapped when he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But not because he signed it willingly, knowing that he endorsed it reluctantly.
Thus, Tillery’s conclusion is similar to saying that because no more ebola cases have been found in Liberia, no more ebola cases exist anywhere in the world either. The roasting of a single pig insinuates more validity than the logic of Tillery’s argument.
And so, we see again how some whites and their Black proxies think. They are experts as stealing the achievements of Blacks. They begin with the facts, the facts are reshaped into half-truths, half-truths barter to become lies, and lies are recycled into whole truths for white consumption and Black deception.
One long bandwidth of fact, strong and clear, streams from this reality. Whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, sane or insane, some whites will fire any weapon – display any police badge, swing any billy club, pass any legislation, propound any wild, ferocious fallacy – to shoot down the amazing triumphs of America’s Blacks.
Copyright © 2015 by James Strong. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of this column, or any part of this column, without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Send your comments to strongpoints123@gmail.com.
