Clarence A. Haynes - The Legacy of Jim Crow

As a radio and television news writer and editor for seventeen years, I was used to a certain pace of work. Broadcast newsrooms are like hospitals: The day can hum along quietly, efficientlyuntil out of nowhere, a bomb goes off, a plane crashes, or a fire wreaks havoc on a community, and suddenly, youre moving at one hundred miles per hour. The difference, of course, is that reporting the news isnt usually a matter of life or death (unless youre reporting from a war zone).

There is an addictive quality to journalismwaiting or searching for the next story; wondering when the adrenaline rush will come, kicking the newsroom into high gear. In broadcasting, those stories can come fast and furiously, and there isnt always an opportunity to delve into a subject. Thirty seconds might be all you have to report on the deadly tornado that ripped through a small town.

Writing about history forces you to move in the other direction, combing through the lives of the newsmakers of the past and the work of the historians who have tried to make sense of it all. Its a slower pace that requires patience. The mountain of material can be dauntingenormous biographies, detailed historical accounts, online essays, and the letters and financial accounts of an important figure. Its another kind of rush: the joy of uncovering some gem that makes the hours of research worth the trouble, connecting the dots in lives lived hundreds of years ago.

This series doesnt pretend to read all that material or tell every story, each biography in fullnot even close. Ive approached this series as a journalist, in an effort to locate and piece together some of what we miss when were told the story of the United States of America. My goal is to point out some of the half-truths and lies we are taught as children and to present history through a more critical lens, in the narratives that are often just a footnote to the text or left out entirely, through the voices that arent always heard when US students open their history books.

Some Americans prefer to leave those stories out of the text for good, believing that they diminish the United States and teach children to hate their country.

On the contrary, Americans can understand difficult truths about their country and still love it dearly. In the words of the great author James Baldwin, I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Who does it serve if we are taught myths rather than facts, if we only hear from the perspective of the oppressors and not the oppressed? If we are only told the part of the story that glorifies the nations founding and deifies the men who led the way?

The story changes and grows, becomes fuller and more nuanced, when different voices participate. It matters who tells the story, when they tell it, and how they choose to present the facts. Textbooks often present a version of history that is sanitized for young audiences, presented to promote patriotism and American exceptionalism: The idea that the United States, as the greatest country on earth, is a force for good in the world with a unique mission to spread freedom and democracy. In that telling, stories that paint the country in a negative light are often struck from the record.

The True History series seeks to help rectify those shortcomings one subject at a time, through interviews and documentation, perspective, and context.

How does the history of Jim Crow in the United States provide context to the Black Lives Matter movement and the systemic racism that still infects our country? Does the story of the United States first leaders reach different conclusions when women write about the Founders? (Sometimes, yes.) What happens when an Indigenous person looks back to reflect on how the history of his people in the Americas affects Native American life today? And how does the story of immigration in the United States change when we look at it from new perspectives?

With the True History series, were looking back, but were also looking inward at the United States successes and systemic problems and how the past has delivered the country to the present. Were also looking ahead to how we might take the lessons of history and reorient ourselves in the present to find new ways forward.

The Legacy of Jim Crow sets out not to rewrite history but to present some of the existing facts that paint a more honest picture than American kids are usually taught about US history, Black history in particular. Some of that history has been omitted from the books and the lessons kids are taught; some of it has been whitewashed. But all of it must be preserved, taught, and discussed. Our hope is that in the process of learning more about that history, you will better understand the connections of the past to some of the issues facing the country today.

The murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, galvanized a national movement against the police brutality that plagues the United States. That event, and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, underscored how important it is for us to learn the history of that violence and the mass incarceration that disproportionately harms and kills Black Americans.