History's lessons from the past - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

Nearly seven million Americans protested the Donald Trump administration on Saturday as they marched in cities across America in “No Kings” marches. Despite Republican predictions, the protests were generally peaceful, giving no excuse for calling in the National Guard.

 

We are so caught up in the current turmoil surrounding a president who seems to be undermining constitutional guarantees that many times we can forget that many events have threatened American standards over the years.

 

When I was still in school I remember reading a library book on the life of Jackie Robinson. Robinson was a remarkable athlete and war veteran who accepted the offer of Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to become the first Black player to play in the Major Leagues in 1947. It was a difficult move and required an exceptional man to do it, but Robinson withstood the racist slurs and threats to become a huge star. By the time I read the story there were dozens of other Black stars like Willie Mayes and Hank Aaron.

 

On the weekend the American channel MSNBC played a tribute to Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta, Congressman and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. But before that, Young, who is now 93, was an assistant to Martin Luther King. He was with King on April 4, 1968 when he was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

 

Young had been with King during many of the most famous demonstrations to expand American Black civil rights in the U.S. south where black residents were forced to sit in seats at the back of buses and couldn’t eat in many restaurants under what was known as Jim Crow laws.

 

In 1965, 60 years ago, Black residents decided to march 54 miles (87 km.) from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, Alabama, to support the rights of Blacks to vote. On the first day, March 7, 600 peaceful marchers were attacked by police after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, some being badly beaten in what became famous as “Bloody Sunday”. 

 

King wasn’t with them then, but the violence was widely covered by television stations and he went to Selma to head further marches. One march was begun but called off because a federal court issued a temporary injunction against further marches. That night, a racist group murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, who was in Selma for the march.

 

The third march, which started on March 21, was escorted by the Alabama National Guard under federal control, the FBI and federal marshals (segregationist Governor George Wallace refused to protect the protesters). U.S. President Lyndon Johnson ordered the protection.

 

It was a time of rebellion, not only in the U.S. but here in Canada. Throughout the late 1960s the Front de liberation du Québec (FLQ) had been stirring violence by blowing up mail boxes. But in October 1970 (55 years ago this month) they increased pressure, first kidnapping Pierre Laporte, Quebec’s labour minister and then topping that by kidnapping British diplomat James Cross.

 

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau reacted strongly, declaring the War Measures Act, under which 497 people were arrested and jailed on suspicion. When reporters questioned Trudeau about taking away people’s civil rights and wondered how far he might go, the Prime Minister answered famously, “Just watch me.”

 

I was a new editor at the Clinton News-Record at the time and was accustomed to going out to the former Canadian Forces Base, Clinton which was shutting down at the time. One day in October, I pulled in, expecting to drive right in, but was stopped by guards at the gate under the War Measures Act. After a quick identification, I was allowed to proceed.

 

All these episodes do not diminish the threat that the U.S. is under today. The world’s leading Democracy, which celebrates its 250th anniversary next year, is having many of its democratic principles undermined in the dictatorial shift of President Donald Trump, similar to the efforts of southern governors in the 1960s to prevent Black Americans from equal citizenship. In fact Trump’s encouragement for states to increase their representation in the House of Representatives by redrawing lines of voting districts to create more seats, often has the effect of eliminating districts where Black voters were in a majority, because Blacks are more likely to vote for the Democrats.

 

In addition, representatives of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are often arresting Black citizens before deporting captives without trial.

 

It’s ironic that the nation that has been a democratic leader for so long has also been so likely to break democratic rules.