"Really Now": article draft by Roosevelt Fitzgerald

REALLY NOW BY ROOSEVELT FITZGERALD
I know that there are some people who believe that black people are dumb, stupid, naive. Well, there are some black people who are indeed dumb, stupid, naive just as there are people within every other racial group who are dumb, stupid, naive. Anyone who thinks that there are not such people are dumb, stupid, naive. I suppose if someone were to run a test they would find that there are probably just as many such people among every group.
I do not have a problem which the recognition and acknowledgement of such facts. I do have a problem when someone, by word or deed, imply that all black people are dumb, stupid, naive. President Bush has inferred that by his actions of the past few days and he has received support from such mental giants as Hatch, Thurmond, Dole, Danforth, Buchannan, and a few others who will kiss the butt of anyone worth seven figures or more.
You can learn a lot from studying history and sometimes it comes in handy. Eight years following the discovery of gold in California and three years before the Comstock strike in Nevada, all the way on the far eastern side of the country Booker T. Washington was born in a slave cabin somewhere in Virginia. His mother was a slave and his father was her owner. In the terminology of the day, Washington was born a bastard but his father was self- made .
I don't imagine if you read all of the "rags to riches" stories ever written would you ever find one which could top Washington's humble beginnings. Sure, I know, you've read about Abraham Lincoln being born in a log cabin and how he rose from that to become the President of the United States. I remember when my grandfather, who was born the year after Washington was born in 1857, first heard the Lincoln story his comment was: "We wasn't born in no log cabin but as soon as we got ahold of a few dollars we moved into one." There
are beginnings and there are beginnings.
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Anyway, Washington came into the world a slave and was forced, by that circumstance, to begin to work almost as soon as he was able to walk. He worked and managed to survive the next and final nine years of slavery in this country. He managed to learn to read and to write and he survived all of the transgressions which the former slaves had to endure during those awful years of our national history. He managed to go to school and to complete his studies. He entered the teaching profession teaching in the negro school of the south. By the time he was approaching the age which Martin Luther King had attained by the time he was assassinated, Washington had made a name for himself, His renown, however, was still ahead of him.
After the "Redeemers", with the help of the federal government under president Rutherford B. Hayes and the terrorist activities of the Ku Klux Klan, had reclaimed political control of the former states of the confederacy and through such devices as Grandfather Clauses, poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation and outright murder had all but disenfranchised black men (women would not get the right to vote until 1920 with the adoption of the 19th Amendment), someone had the bright idea of putting on a Southern States Exposition whose objective would be, at least partially, to show just how well the races were getting along. Sure they got along but on whose terms? So long as black people stayed in their respective place there was no problem. Forget the Constitution. Forget the Bill of Rights. Forget that the 13th Amendment had ended slavery and the 14th had extended citizenship to the former slaves and that the 15th had provided the right to vote to the men. Forget all the things that you've ever heard about rights and responsibilities. Forget that American citizens had certain guarantees under the nation's great documents and that black people born or naturalized in this country were citizens of this country even all the way back then. Forget all of that and remember that in the nineteenth century, if you were black, your life wasn't worth two cents. Our lives wouldn't become worth a plug nickle until the
3 twentieth century and then, anyone who acted like they knew that, usually would get plugged.
The Exposition was planned for 1895 and would take place in Atlanta, Georgia. Almost as an afterthough, it was realized by the organizers that the activity, designed to show how well the races were getting along had absolutely no black participation.
Enter Booker T. Washington the former slave. He was invited to make a few remarks and he did just that. The long and the short of it is his remarks provided the raving, raging, redeeming racists of the south just the weapon they needed to beat us over the heads. He told them, us, the remainder of the country and the world that when it came to matter of social equality and political involvement that black people were willing to put those things on a back burner. He told them that we were not interested in such things as those. Those black people who were not dumb, stupid or naive collectively said; "Aw shoots."
The following year, 1896, the Supreme Court rendered in the infamous Plessy vs. Ferguson decision, the legitimization of the concept of "separate but equal."
We've been fighting it and its results ever since.
Washington wrote a book, Up From Slavery, in which he outlines his life.
Born in a slave cabin, the hard work in the coal mines, studying by candlelight at night and how through his own grit he was able to overcome all of the obstacles of the day. At a time when people said such things as "one must rise by his own bootstraps" Washington didn't even have boots but he rose nonetheless. Well isn't that great. Sure. But why do it if you don't have to. He did it because he had to and so did many others that we've never heard about because their stories are not entered into the history books. There were several million black people released from slavery and they too had to make it and they did. They, however, were not invited to come to Atlanta to make
a few remarks.
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Why do I mention these things? Booker T. Washington sold us down the river in spite of the fact that he was born a slave and had a clear understanding of the destructive effects of prejudice, discrimination and racism. Now president Bush comes along and nominates Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court and it is made known that Thomas is the son of a Georgia sharecropper and that is supposed to make him alright in the minds, eyes and hearts of every black person on the face of the Earth. What does president Bush think—that we are dumb, stupid, naive. Does he believe that we believe that every black person is concerned about the welfare of every other black person? I'll tell you sportsfans, this kind of thinking scares me to death. There are a lot of black people that I don't trust right here in Las Vegas.