I Was There in 1968 and In Minneapolis in 2020

I was there in the city of Wilmington, Delaware on April 8, 1968.  This morning it seems to me like it just happened yesterday.  Perhaps that is because it is happening all over again in Minneapolis (and other cities).  What happened then and what is happening now is the unleashing of rage and anger over America’s “disregard for black life.” 

On that April day in 1968 several hundred residents of Wilmington marched through the streets in solemn remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose funeral was to be held the next day in Atlanta, Georgia.  As the day progressed the grief and rage of some of the mourners was unleashed in violence (as it was all across the nation during that horrendous time) on the symbols and systems that they felt had enacted violence against them and against Black America.  Anger does that when it erupts.  Anger causes us to say and do things we would never do otherwise.

Rather than hearing the grievances and sharing the grief of its Black population (40%), or trying to understand the outburst of rage and anger that possessed them, the city of Wilmington sealed off these citizens by a nine-month military occupation (National Guard)—the longest military occupation of a U.S. city since the Civil War.  Later that month an African-American man was shot and killed by a white Guardsman.  The Guardsman was not charged—and the murder was said to be a matter of a faulty gun. It was a terrible time.  I was there.  I drove through those streets where tanks and armed militia held sway over the Black community, attempting to stifle their pent-up rage and the anger.

The rage and anger of African-Americans in Wilmington in 1968 was stifled by the occupation, but it only festered—as it has festered all across this nation for the last fifty years.  Black lives matter! George Floyd’s life mattered.  Breonna Taylor’s life mattered.  Please don’t respond with “All lives matter.”  What we need to say right now is that “Black lives matter, too!”

Why is it that the president praised the protesters (including armed militia groups) in Michigan last month, but calls the protesters in Minneapolis “THUGS?“  He added in that same tweet:  “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”  This is the president of the United States? (Twitter, by the way,  prevented users from viewing Trump’s tweet without first reading the company’s rules against glorifying violence).  Why do we say when four policemen are caught in the act  of violence against a black man that  99% of the police do a great job, but when black protesters react out of rage and anger about the “disregard for black life," we say they are all thugs?  

Anger and rage cause us to say and do things we would never do otherwise.  Systemic racism in America exists and we must work on it while it is day.  

“I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. 

Certain conditions continue to exist in our society

 which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots.

  But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard.” 

(Martin Luther King, Jr.)