Stamped: Section 4

Just as John Cotton and Richard Mather had planned several generations before, these ideas were coming out of Du Bois’s Ivy League classrooms, where he’d basically been fed the same narrative that Black people had been ruined by slavery. That they were irredeemable, in desperate need of fixing but unfortunately unfixable, which meant he was obviously exceptional, and...an exception.

But the accusation of rape could make it easier for southern White men to puff up and act maliciously, all in the name of defending the honor of White women.

Washington wrote Up from Slavery, which outlined the diligence, faith, and fortitude it took (and takes) to survive in America, coupled with the idea of the “White savior.”

Washington wrote Up from Slavery, which outlined the diligence, faith, and fortitude it took (and takes) to survive in America, coupled with the idea of the “White savior.”

Stories featuring White people having antiracist epiphanies or moments of empathy resulting in the “saving” of Black people—White savior stories—were becoming a fixture in American media, and the problem with them wasn’t that there weren’t any “good” White people in real life, it’s that the stories gave the illusion that there were more than there really were.

Washington was even invited to the White House once Theodore Roosevelt got into office, while the always sophisticated Du Bois publicly critiqued Washington, calling him old-fashioned for being so accommodating to White people, for presenting the idea that Black people should find dignity through work, and that no education was complete without the learning of a trade.

In the sequels and subsequent stories, Tarzan protects a White woman named Jane from being ravished by Africans.

Rape isn’t something to be taken lightly or to be turned back on the victim as a sharp blade of blame. But during this time, allegations of rape were often used as an excuse to lynch Black men, rooted in the stereotype of the savagery of the Black man and the preciousness of the White woman.

Rape isn’t something to be taken lightly or to be turned back on the victim as a sharp blade of blame. But during this time, allegations of rape were often used as an excuse to lynch Black men, rooted in the stereotype of the savagery of the Black man and the preciousness of the White woman.

And from this he fashioned a sample set of Black people who sat at the converging point. Black people to be “positive” representatives of the race. Like, if Blackness—“good” Blackness—was a brand, Du Bois wanted these Black people to be the ambassadors of that brand.

And from this he fashioned a sample set of Black people who sat at the converging point. Black people to be “positive” representatives of the race. Like, if Blackness—“good” Blackness—was a brand, Du Bois wanted these Black people to be the ambassadors of that brand.

But Du Bois would get a wake-up call. A slap in the face, even. Not from Washington, but from a man named Franz Boas, who had immigrated to America from Germany in 1886 because of anti-Jewish persecution.

Boas had become one of America’s most prominent anthropologists and had been drawing similarities between the way his people were mistreated in Germany and the way Black people were being mistreated in America—with each nation justifying the treatment by saying the persecuted group was naturally inferior.

For Black people, however, sports and entertainment were, and still are, a way to step into the shoes of the big-timer. It was a way to use the athlete or the entertainer—Johnson being both—as an avatar.

So Garvey decided to set up shop in Harlem and start his own organization, called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Its purpose was to focus on African solidarity, the beauty of dark skin and African American culture, and global African self-determination.

Eugenicists—people who believed you could control the “quality” of human beings by keeping undesirable genetics out, meaning the genetics of Black people—were criticizing and berating the mixing of races, because Whiteness was seen as pure.

Eugenicists—people who believed you could control the “quality” of human beings by keeping undesirable genetics out, meaning the genetics of Black people—were criticizing and berating the mixing of races, because Whiteness was seen as pure.

He’d tried to provide White Americans with the scientific facts of racial disparities, believing reason could kill racism, as if reason had birthed it.

Like I said, Garvey was a staunch antiracist; though Du Bois was making antiracist strides, he was still straddling the assimilationist line, and Garvey thought he was condescending to his own race.

Like I said, Garvey was a staunch antiracist; though Du Bois was making antiracist strides, he was still straddling the assimilationist line, and Garvey thought he was condescending to his own race.

It was a new form of uplift suasion—media suasion—which basically just means using media, in this case, art, to woo Whites.

Du Bois wrote and published what he thought was his best work, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880. In it he debunked all of Bowers’s arguments and described how, if anything, Reconstruction was stifled by White racist elites who created more White privileges for poor White people as long as they stood, shoulder to shoulder, on the necks of Black people.

Du Bois wrote and published what he thought was his best work, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880. In it he debunked all of Bowers’s arguments and described how, if anything, Reconstruction was stifled by White racist elites who created more White privileges for poor White people as long as they stood, shoulder to shoulder, on the necks of Black people.

White wanted to transform the NAACP into an organization of “refined” folks like himself, whose mission was to go before courts and politicians to persuade the White judges and legislators to end racial discrimination.

Inspired by Karl Marx, Du Bois broke ground on a new idea—antiracist socialism.

And even though the sitting president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, had developed an initiative called the New Deal, a flurry of government relief programs and job programs to keep people afloat, Black people needed their own New Deal to keep them safe from the old deal, which was the racist deal, which was no deal at all.

After the United States entered World War II in 1942, Du Bois felt energized by Black America’s “Double V Campaign”: victory against racism at home and victory against fascism abroad.

He wanted the new United Nations Charter to become a buffer against racism.

The United States emerged from World War II, looked over at the ravaged European and east Asian worlds, and flexed its unmatched capital, industrial force, and military arms as the new global leader.

But if you were to guess that White people started to perpetuate lies about Black people being inferior to keep the world of racism spinning, you’d be right.

On February 2, 1948, Truman urged Congress to implement a civil rights act, despite the lack of support among White Americans.

A year later, a fourteen-year-old boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi, for supposedly “hissing” at a White woman. They beat Till so ruthlessly that his face was unrecognizable during his open-casket funeral in his native Chicago.

And though supremacists in power continued to blame Brown v. Board of Education for the problems, young Emmett’s death lit a fire under the civil rights movement, led by a young, charismatic preacher from Atlanta who idolized W. E. B. Du Bois—Martin Luther King Jr.

Nine days later, on Good Friday, eight White anti-segregationist Alabama clergymen signed a public statement requesting that these “unwise and untimely” street demonstrations end.

But just as Du Bois had done in 1903, and later regretted, in his letter King erroneously conflated two opposing groups: the antiracists who hated racial discrimination and the Black separatists who hated White people (in groups like the Nation of Islam).

But just as Du Bois had done in 1903, and later regretted, in his letter King erroneously conflated two opposing groups: the antiracists who hated racial discrimination and the Black separatists who hated White people (in groups like the Nation of Islam). King later distanced himself from both, speaking to a growing split within the civil rights movement.

But just as Du Bois had done in 1903, and later regretted, in his letter King erroneously conflated two opposing groups: the antiracists who hated racial discrimination and the Black separatists who hated White people (in groups like the Nation of Islam). King later distanced himself from both, speaking to a growing split within the civil rights movement.

More and more battle-worn young activists were becoming frustrated with King’s nonviolence and were more often listening to Malcolm X’s sermons.

Sure, he was a polarizing force, but he was also an antiracist persuading away assimilationist ideas.

And King closed the day with what’s probably the most iconic speech of all time—“I Have a Dream.”