"George and Martin and the American Dream": article draft by Roosevelt Fitzgerald

GEORGE AND MARTIN AND THE AMERICAN DREAM BY
ROOSEVELT FITZGERALD
At first glance it might seem superfluous to initiate an essay on the subject of Dr. Martin Luther King by speaking of George Washington. Even though it is acknowledged that the two are profoundly different, I am of the opinion that it is due to those differences that an interdependence exists.
When we think of George Washington we often begin in the realm of mythology before we are able to break through to reality. We remember the childhood stories we learned in grade school of his never telling a lie or of his penchant for tossing coins across a river. After we recognize how unlike that we are, we end up with what I call the "Joe Friday" syndrome: "just the facts". The latter tells us that Washington was Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the course of the American Revolutionary War. We further remember that at war's end he "retired" to his plantation at Mount Vernon where he was a gentleman planter with Black slaves. Finally, we recall that he came out of retirement after Being unanimously selected to Be the first President of the United States and being inaugurated in April of 1789. As such he is generally referred to as the "father of our country".
Being termed the "father of our country" carries a certain symbolism. Washington's task was to protect the newborn nation both from within and from without. During the last decade of the eighteenth century ours was a nation suffering growing pangs-8 a nation made up of thirteen "children" with the kinds of sibling rivalries usually encountered within families. During those formative years domestic passions had to be juggled in search of reciprocity on the one hand while external affairs had to be addressed on the other.
Washington managed to protect the country from itself and its possible external enemies. He established a foreign policy of strict neutrality,
followed Alexander Hamilton's fiscal policies and demonstrated the power
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of Ms federal government in domestic affKirs by suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 which arose among backwoods farmers of the Monongehela Valley of western Pennsylvania who were discontented over enforcement of the excise tax.
George Washington was the kind of person the country needed at the helm during those early years of growth. His abilities of leadership and the respect he so richly deserved from the populous dating back to the days of the war, stood him in good stead as he and others laid the foundation upon which the "holy experiment" would be based.
For his efforts, Washington is rewarded by being one of only two presidents of the United States for whom there is a national holiday: WashingtonBFor having "fathered the nation and Lincoln for keeping it together.
As we all know, providing the baste necessities of life in rearing children is not enough. Certainly, those needs must be met but there is more. A roof over one's head, food on the table, protection from harm and such are all part of basic human needs. But what of nurturing? Where does it fit in? During its infancy, the country was primarily concerned with survival. Some of the stronger nations of Europe were biting at the bit to move in and take over. Even England did not fully accept the fact of our independence and we had to go to war with her yet a second time in 1812 to remove all doubt.
By the time that war ended in 1815 the country was expanding into the old southwest of Mississippi, Alabama and those places which would later become the "Cotton Kingdom". The Louisiana Territory had been explored a dozen years earlier by Lewis and Clark and, even though it was at a snail's pace, the westward movement was underway. Those events had to do with land. What of the people?
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For the century and a half following Washington's death in 1799, the country grew to reach from ocean to ocean and from Canada to Mexico. However, during that time span the great proportion of Americans were excluded from full participation in the government. One needed to be free, male, white, at least twenty-one years old and own property in order to be extended the full rights of citizenship. In more ways than not, the domestic history of the United States for those years has to do with the struggle of those excluded groups to gain recognition.
The history of the process of becoming insiders is, at th.e same time, both overwhelming and depressing. Perhaps the first major movement in that direction—in the direction of the nation beginning to grow out of its adolescence and begin the long trek toward maturation--took place just beyond the mid-way mark of the nineteenth, century with the American Civil War.
While that war was waged over the question of sectional ism--anch.ored on the question of slavery and its expansion--it was not until war's end that legal steps, affecting the quality of life of black people, were taken. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery and in 1868, both.the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution were passed. The first extended citizenship and the second provided the opportunity to vote.
Until 1877, blacks particularly in the south and in the remainder of the country in general, experienced the rights of full citizenship for the first time in the nation's history. These changes did not occur until sixty-six years following George Washington's death and seventy-six years after his inauguration as.President of the United States. The "Father" of this country, during the interim, did nothing to improve the condition and quality of life of many of the people who lived in the country and cause the country to become more democratic.
Washington's idea of democracy was based in large part on that of the ancient
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Greeks who many, then and now, believed to be the originators of the concept of democratic government. Those same Greek philosophers who wrote and theorized about democracy also condoned slavery. While slavery in antiquity might not have been as dehumanizing as that which would occur in America, it was slavery just the same and Washington, perhaps, in his mind, practiced, democracy.
At the end of Reconstruction, all pretense of Democracy for blacks disappeared. For the remainder of that century, the federal government turned its back on black Americans. Not only were their rights taken away but also their lives. Lynchings at the hands of mobs—most notably the K.KK--became common. Though it is rarely so described, the United States became a lawless nation. The law of the land—the U. S. Constitution was ignored and those elected to enforce those laws, and who had sworn on the Bibl e to do s, did not. They became liars, oath breakers, law breakers, traitors—nothing better than the nation's enemies because they dishonored the nation's Constitution.
By the time the Twentieth. Century got underway, the killings, riotings and beatings had spread to the north and west. Some historians refer to the period as the "Era of Segregation" and it would eventually reach, to Nevada and to Las Vegas. The NAACP grew out of those conditions in 191Q--the same year as "The Fight of The Century" between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries took place in Reno, Nevada. Just over a half-dozen years later, black soldiers went "over there" to make the world "safe for democracy" only to find, upon their return, that democracy still had not hatched in the United States.
Through the "Red Summer" of 1919, the Harlem Renaissance, Marcus Garvey's "Back To Africa" movement and the era of prosperity, blacks suffered. As "flappers" flapped and amateurs played the stock market and "Silent Calvin Coolidge" kept his mouth, shut blacks, suffered. Racial conditions in America began to move in much the same direction as land in the dust bowl--growing worse. The country grew worse and seemed hell bent on keeping its rendezvous with destiny.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK