In 2025, the Department of Defense removed baseball legend Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) from their website in a deliberate purge of DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion) content. His life and accomplishments had been reduced to his skin color. In addition to winning awards for 1947’s Rookie of the Year as well as 1949’s National League Most Valuable Player, Batting Champion (.342), and Stolen Bases Leader (37), he was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army during WWII and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1984) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2005). He was a gifted, intelligent athlete whose respect among teammates was often hard earned. On the same day of the removal, Jackie Robinson was restored to the website, with an absurd explanation intimating an error had been committed. In baseball terms, the blunder should not be ruled as an error, but a balk—a deception. “Jackie Robinson was a nightmare for White people who wanted to keep Major League Baseball (MLB) as white as the ball,” my father told me in one of his many baseball stories. Faced with pressure to integrate, teams—from owners down to bat boys—would rather lose games than sign a Black player and win. When alive, Robinson was beaned, spiked, and was a victim of vicious hate speech that included death threats to him and his family. And so, in 2025, in an attempt to erase Robinson, the Department of Defense reminded Americans of the past: not everyone loves baseball legend Jackie Robinson.
“The present is the key to the past,” is the principle of the uniformity principle, a foundation of geology adapted to the study of language change by my linguistic professor, William (Bill) Labov (1927-2024). Bill waged a career-long battle fighting stereotypes and discrimination of Blacks—especially as it relates to language and economic inequality. He defended Black English, providing compelling evidence that neither the language nor the people who speak it are inferior or intellectually deficient and noted that in education, “unfounded notions tend to expand rapidly.” He demonstrated that the same racist tools used today by those who invent myths about Blacks and Black language are the same tools used in the past. His work on how the study of present language change can explain past language change led to my interviews with Black Philadelphians, including my father and his stories about baseball. Every story my father told about Black life in his past has a corollary in my present.
Daddy was in his 70s when I conducted my first interview with him. Born in 1919 (like Jackie Robinson), he was the fourth of six children. His stories described Black life beginning in the 1920s. He taught me more history than all my schoolteachers put together. In his stories, I noted the strategies used to maintain racism and stereotypes for generations—in his, mine, and in the present generation. The future is predictable because systemic racial inequality relies on each generation updating old strategies to fight anti-discrimination measures such as school desegregation, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Acts, fair housing, equal employment, affirmative action, DEI, etc. As the Bible says, there is nothing new under the sun.
Daddy has been gone for more than 20 years, but I still have his photographs and keepsakes to evoke his past. A photograph with his best friend, Jack, captures Daddy’s jazzy 1936 Buick convertible stuck in the mud in the days before paved streets. In their 77-year friendship, only war and racism would separate them. In a photograph that captures the historical segregation of the Armed Forces, he stands with his Army company where he advanced to staff sergeant during WWII: Three White commanding officers in the center of the back row, surrounded by three rows of about 200 Black men.
Among his keepsakes are a 1957 one-dollar silver certificate which belonged to his beloved Uncle Kenneth, a WWI veteran, for whom he was named. As a boy, Daddy loved to visit him and sit at the front window for hours on end, watching the trolleys go in and out of their barns in West Philadelphia. He said, “I told Mom and Pop I was going to drive trolley cars when I grew up. They just smiled and nodded. They knew I’d find out that Black men couldn’t get those jobs.”
I remember our first interview, remarkable for both his contributions to my study about the dialect of Black Philadelphians and for his reflections on Black life. He sat comfortably in a chair on his sunporch in the house where he and my mother raised my two brothers and me. Like his hometown, we lived in a segregated suburb--which is now about 90% Black because of blockbusting and White flight. We were surrounded by the orchids that he finally had time to care for, and he sat with one foot up on an old vinyl ottoman. Long retired from his 70-hour work weeks, he patiently waited for my questions.
“Tell me something really interesting,” I said hoping for something vivid about his days in the Army.
In late 1940, Daddy received his “Greetings,” from President Franklin Roosevelt in the first peace time draft in the U.S. America knew war was coming even before the attack on Pearl Harbor. In August 1941, Daddy was inducted into the Army and reported to Fort Belvoir in Virginia, a base renamed in the 1930s for the Belvoir Plantation on which the camp had been built. In 2022, the Naming Commission declined to rename the base, in spite of its connection to the Confederacy and slavery.
“Well, I missed Jack’s wedding,” Daddy said.
That was not exactly my idea of an interesting wartime story, but he explained.
“My pass was cancelled because of the transportation strike in Philadelphia. I was not allowed to travel from Fort Belvoir to Philadelphia. The Army was afraid there might be racial violence that would keep me from getting back to base,” he said. Clearly, this was quite memorable because he quickly recalled the date: he never even remembered my birthday. I had never heard about this strike, and I was overwhelmed by the coverage devoted to it when I searched newspaper archives at the University of Pennsylvania library.
On August 1, 1944, workers of the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC) called a wildcat strike to block the promotion of eight Black employees to motormen—vacant positions that were historically held only by White men. The promotions were critical for easing manpower shortages in Philadelphia’s transportation system caused by the military draft and defense industry hirings. And PTC was required to comply with nondiscrimination policies of Executive Order 8802, issued by President Roosevelt in 1941 and effected after A. Philip Randolph, the labor unionist and civil rights activist, had threatened a march on Washington protesting discriminatory practices in the government and in defense industries.
In 1944, Black workers at PTC were hired only for low level positions such as janitors, tracklayers, porters, messengers, etc. The planned promotions inflamed the White workers, none of whom were or would be displaced. One leader of the unauthorized walkout defined the protest as ‘strictly a black and white issue.’ In fact, it was a global issue because any vulnerability in Philadelphia’s immense war production capacity was a threat to global peace and world order. This was a racial hate strike with the goal of excluding all Blacks from higher level jobs at PTC. The title of one news article states “Philadelphia transit workers strike against negro workers,” emphasizing the motivation for the strike was competition from Blacks. The goal was to overturn Executive Order 8802, destroying any actions that might end employment discrimination and promote equal opportunity.
Working to keep Blacks out of their jobs, PTC strikers resorted to dehumanizing racist tropes to scare White riders: Black men couldn’t be trusted alone on a bus or trolley with a White woman; Black drivers and conductors—like all Black people—were dirty and had bed bugs. When I read these comments to Daddy from historical newspaper articles, he said matter-of-factly, “Translation: drivers and conductors were jobs for White men only.”
In 1944, the War forced the government to defend the promotions of the Black PTC workers. Later, the U.S. would use similar racist rationale in opposing diversity in the armed forces and Defense Department. The integration of the Armed Forces and the Defense Department (1948: Executive Order 9981) was opposed by the Army itself with the brass believing there would be a decline in national security. Thus far in 2025, three Executive Orders have been issued to end DEI initiatives in the armed forces and to abolish DEI initiatives—now defined as discriminatory—in the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and military academies where topics about diversity, sexism, and racism are also banned.
Staged as a sick-out—which fooled no one—the PTC strike elevated racial tensions. The government feared race riots in addition to violence against “scabs” who might try to cross the picket line. The U.S. needed all the manpower they could get during the War—for military service; for people working in the production of war materials; and for transportation jobs—like those at PTC—to get workers to plants and arsenals that manufactured war materials. On D-Day alone—June 6, 1944—just two months before the strike was called, the U.S. suffered about 7,500 casualties (2,501 deaths and 5,000 wounded). The Battle of Normandy was still raging in August when my father’s pass was revoked. Millions of military and civilian lives were at stake around the world—in Eastern and Western Europe, across the Pacific, in Asia, and in North Africa. In spite of massive casualties, four White men, all of whom had job-related draft deferments, continued to be zealous leaders of the strike. Three were employees of PTC; and one was the former president of a union no longer representing PTC workers.
At the end of August 1, the first day of the strike, more than 300,000 workers who relied on PTC were unable to get to work. Some could walk or ride bikes to their jobs. Driving to work was not an alternative. Gas and tires were rationed due to the War, and car ownership was limited due to the conversion of car factories for military needs. Philadelphia was among the top three cities in America supplying war materials for the Allies, which included building and repairing ships as well as manufacturing tanks, radar, B-17 bombers, railroad equipment, radio equipment, and uniforms. The strike ravaged war production—cutting it by 50%; Navy supplies were cut by 70%, risking the lives of both American and Allied troops as well as civilians who were dying from bombing, disease, famine, and genocide.
White strikers—who numbered over 6,000 at one point—refused to work. The thought of racial equality, suggested by the promotions for Blacks, insulted and enraged White workers at PTC. White grievance is a manifestation of racism; and the White workers focused on White inequality, not Black inequality, galvanizing Whites to keep Blacks in ‘their place’—a racist euphemism for separate and unequal.
Where was “The Greatest Generation”—profiled by journalist Tom Brokaw in 1998—who emerged during WWII? Described as being born between 1901 and 1927, the Greatest Generation defined American sacrifice, patriotism, and courage during the Depression and WWII. However great these individuals were, they were influenced by the social norms and cultural behaviors of their time. They came of age during the Red Summer (1919), the Tulsa Race Riot (1921), and the Jim Crow Era (late 1800s through 1960). From 1901 through 1927 Black lynchings (1518) were about nine times that of Whites (169); and from 1927 through 1945, Black lynchings (172) were more than 12 times those of Whites (14).
How did racism become more important to the strikers than a war which threatened all of humanity? Was this a repudiation of the American-as-apple-pie patriotism? At the beginning of WWII, Americans rushed to buy war bonds, planted victory gardens, volunteered for military service, and signed up to support soldiers in USO clubs. They flew flags and resurrected ‘Uncle Sam Wants You’ posters. But, when the PTC strike took place in 1944, “the Segregation Era” (1900-1939) had only technically ended.
Since the forced migration of Africans, the dehumanization of Blacks has been the cornerstone of racism and segregation and the direct cause of the lynchings, riots, and other racial violence that persists in America. In Philadelphia, segregation has always been a part of the landscape. Philadelphia Black codes of the 1700s controlled movement and meetings of Africans, who were labeled as “idle and slothful.” More than 200 years ago in the City of Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal”; then, several years after American Independence, he specified the inferiority of Blacks in his Notes on the State of Virginia.
Philadelphia’s reputation for welcoming free Blacks and supporting abolition is better known than anti-Black activities such as streetcar segregation in 1867; civil rights suppression and attacks from 1838-1876; and the murder of the Black activist, Octavius Catto in 1911. The Great Migration from the Jim Crow South created more racial tensions, more than doubling the Black population in the Philadelphia area between 1900 and 1920. During that same period, Philadelphia became known as the “Workshop of the World,” and White immigrants who also sought industrial jobs felt threatened by Blacks. Many Blacks, like my grandfather, remained relegated to janitorial and similar low-level positions.
This was the world my grandparents entered around 1900. With third-grade educations from segregated schools in Jim Crow North Carolina, they eventually settled and raised their family in Darby—a suburban town just outside of Philadelphia. They lived on “the Hill” with the rest of the town’s Black population—which represented about 10% of Darby’s population. Most Whites lived at the bottom of the Hill, near Darby Creek textile mills, which offered skilled jobs. Although these Whites had to endure flooding from the creek, they were spared living among Blacks and the generally undesirable Irish and Italian immigrants—some of whom either opted to or were forced to live in the Black community.
Some aspects of housing are not a-changing with the times. In September 2025, the New York Times reported a “Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws” and that “Interviews and internal documents [at [HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development)] show that signature civil rights protections in housing are being dismissed as …D.E.I. in disguise.” One appointee at HUD “described decades of housing discrimination cases as ‘artificial, arbitrary and unnecessary.’” Another warns that “gag orders and intimidation” were being used to “block discrimination cases.”
Redlining, which has been illegal since 1968, continues in Philadelphia and throughout America, exacerbating racial and economic inequalities for people of color. The U.S. government has supported housing segregation through racially restrictive covenants for nearly a century. In 1927, a “model racial covenant” stated that, “…no part of said premises shall in any manner be used or occupied directly or indirectly by a negro or negroes [sic]…” In joint accordance with the National Association of Real Estate Boards and the U.S. Department of Commerce, Blacks were permitted in White homes only as janitors, chauffeurs, or house servants employed on the property.
Despite segregation, discrimination, and racism—which included a 1919 attempted lynching in Darby—Blacks built a vibrant mixed-income community in the small town which included people in both the working and professional classes. A major attraction was the Hilldale Negro League baseball team (winners of the Negro World Series in 1925). Daddy—who lived across the street from the ballpark—regaled me with stories of Hilldale where he spent most of his summers. He shagged fly balls for baseball greats like Biz Mackey and Oscar Charleston, learned how to slide from Judy Johnson, hung numbers on the scoreboard during games, and helped the groundskeeper—including sometimes cutting the grass in the nude to preserve the one pair of pants and shirt that he owned.
“White people LOVED Negro baseball—especially when Negro teams played each other,” Daddy told me. “Exhibition games with White players were dicey.” White fans who attended had concerns about the possibility of losing to a Black team, hence challenging White superiority. Blacks were rightfully concerned about vocal racist sentiments and other backlash from White fans—especially in Philadelphia.
In 1947, after Jackie Robinson had signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, his visit to Philadelphia was marred by diatribes of racist invectives by Ben Chapman, the Phillies’ manager, as well as by fans. He—along with the rest of the Dodgers—were refused service at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel. In 2016, almost 46 years after Jackie Robinson’s death, the city of Philadelphia finally mustered up enough brotherly love to issue a formal apology to the Robinson family. In 1957, perhaps not surprisingly, the Philadelphia Phillies would be the last team in the National League to integrate.
The Great Depression crushed Philadelphia. The Hilldale team disbanded in 1932. Unemployment soared to more than 20%. To help out at home, Daddy worked two jobs as a teenager—one in a Horn and Hardart restaurant, washing dishes and cutting pies for the famous Automat about which he said, “With three brothers and two sisters, the best part of the job for me and my family was my free meals. Times were hard,” he recalled.
He also agreed to help a family friend dig graves at Eden Cemetery, a Black cemetery near Darby. Burials include activist Octavius Catto; Underground Railroad conductor William Still, credited with helping more than 600 enslaved people to freedom; and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, suffragist and abolitionist. Later, Eden became the final resting place of famed contralto, Marian Anderson.
Unlike health disparities which receives some attention, the treatment of Black burials and Black cemeteries—historically segregated and neglected—is less well known. Black graves were targets for bodysnatching. Even after the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act was passed in 1883 to prevent bodysnatching, Black bodies continued to be abducted for dissection at top medical schools in Philadelphia.
In 2022, President Biden signed into law the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act to preserve and document burial grounds. In 2025, it still has not been funded and remains ignored like Black burials of the past in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
In 2024, Eden Cemetery became the final resting place of 19 skulls of African Americans whose graves had been robbed from a public hospital in the 18th and 19th centuries. These crania were stolen by Dr. Samuel Morton, who worked to prove white supremacist theories that Blacks were a different (and inferior) species. A Smithsonian magazine article in 2020 notes that the skulls were used by White supremacists with the goal of proving the inferiority of Blacks, an argument used to justify slavery.
When Eden was established in 1902, the local White community protested by obtaining an injunction against the “colored burial ground.” They even delayed the funeral of the wife of the cemetery’s founder. Daddy’s comment about the attitude: “They should have put a sign at the gate with a Black face on it with ‘Not wanted, alive or dead,’ written underneath.”
I also interviewed Daddy about segregation in the South since he had been stationed at Fort Belvoir in Virginia during the War.
“Mom and Pop had warned me about ‘Southern hospitality.’ They knew all about that,” Daddy told me. “On the base, everything was segregated. And I mean everything. Southerners said racial mixing would hurt the morale of the troops. Northerners were happy to go along with segregation. We had separate quarters, separate mess halls. Separate busloads of Colored and White women were brought to the base from Washington for dances in segregated dance halls.”
“Where were you when Pearl Harbor was bombed?” I asked.
“In the barracks, listening to the Philadelphia Eagles lose to the Washington Redskins on the radio. The game was interrupted to announce the Japanese attack.” In the 1940s, no NFL team was clean of racism, but Daddy had an intense dislike of the Washington team which was the last NFL team to integrate. As the southern-most NFL team at the time, the Confederate flag was sometimes waved at games. “The owner [George Marshall] hated Blacks and refused to sign any Black players. He also had Dixie played during the games, and the fight song was something like ‘Fight for Old Dixie.’”
“Weren’t you afraid of being shipped out for combat duty?” I asked.
“No,” Daddy said emphatically. “Colored soldiers were trained for battle, but mostly we were given support assignments. White men ran the Army. They didn’t think we had the brains, the discipline, or the courage to fight. So, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere—maybe never would.”
“And what did the White soldiers think about that?” I asked.
“I don’t know what they thought, but I’m sure most of them agreed that the Army should be segregated. Like most White people, they didn’t want nothing to do with us—before, during, or after the war. Eventually, I was sent to Okinawa working for the Quartermaster. Most of the fighting was over by the time my company got there. And no one talked about Blacks in combat until after the War.”
To Daddy’s point, seven deserving Black soldiers who served in WWII were denied Medals of Honor until 1997 when President Bill Clinton redressed the wrong. By then, most recipients were dead: all but one medal was awarded posthumously. In another slow roll of recognition, most of the Hilldale heroes of my father’s youth would be inducted into MLB’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York decades after their death. Only Judy Johnson lived to accept his award in 1975, almost 40 years after he stopped playing baseball.
Daddy admitted some of Virginia’s segregation was ‘somewhat new to him.’ “When I returned to base after visiting your mother in Washington, the bus would stop at the Virginia state line. The driver would announce, ‘All Colored move to the back of the bus.’ One time, a White man stood up, yelling at the bus driver, ‘Let the Colored soldiers sit anywhere. They’re wearing the uniform of this country!’ Of course, I just went to the back of the bus like I was supposed to.”
“Do you think that Philadelphia and Darby were the same as Virginia in how they treated Blacks?” I asked.
“I was just used to Darby and Philadelphia,” Daddy explained. “They were segregated too—where Blacks could live or shop or go to the movies. The Woodside Amusement Park in Fairmont Park had certain days when only Blacks were allowed to visit. They had a Crystal Pool—for Whites only, even on Black days. I’m sure they thought we would poison it.” He added, “At the time, the beaches in New Jersey and Delaware were segregated too.”
Daddy summed up his opinion. “Philadelphia just liked to act as if they were somehow better than the South.”
I reminded him, that White people in our segregated town refused to accept Black members in their private swim club. In 1959, we built our own—open to all races. It was the first private swim club in America financed and managed by Blacks. I asked him, “Do you think White people were surprised when the Nile opened?”
“They probably still are,” he said. The Nile has been in operation for more than 65 years; Blockbusting and White flight would force the Yeadon Swim club into bankruptcy, and it closed in 2000.
I returned to the strike. “So, given the racism at the time, did White people in Philadelphia support the strike?” I asked.
Daddy smiled, “The newspapers and radios complained about the strike. Some people supported Blacks getting a shot at jobs. Many talked about how we were supposed to be fighting Nazis and Japanese and not each other. Blah, blah, blah. It was war production that was important to them. Everybody had family in the War, and Americans were dying every minute.” He added thoughtfully, “If White people really cared anything about Blacks, why couldn’t we join unions? Live where we wanted? Try on clothes in department stores? Stay at hotels or eat in restaurants where we cleaned and cooked?”
On August 5, 1944, four days after the strike began, President Roosevelt ordered 5,000 troops to Philadelphia and appointed Major General Philip Hayes to oversee the crisis. They camped in Fairmont Park and—heavily armed with machine guns and ammunition—took over driving trolleys, buses, and subways. Additional soldiers rode on PTC vehicles to discourage interference with the transit routes. On the morning of August 7, 1944, the strike ended, hastened by the threat that military deferments would be revoked for transit workers aged 18-37. However, the Army continued to ride vehicles until August 12.
Economic losses for war production during the strike were estimated at $1 million per day (more than $18 million per day in current dollars) in addition to the loss of more than 4 million man-hours of labor. At the time of the strike, military deaths were estimated at between 9,500 and 11,300 per day. Including civilians, deaths were estimated at between 31,700 and 38,500 per day. By the end of August 1944, the monthly total of Allied casualties (killed, missing, and wounded) were estimated at more than 225,000.
Using the strike for propaganda, both Germany and Japan cited racial unrest in America to rally their own troops and to tempt Black soldiers into deserting. When I interviewed Jack—whose wedding my father missed because of the strike—he told me that French soldiers asked him during the war why he fought for America. The French, too, were aware of the strike and of racism against Blacks.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t explain America,” he said.
After World War II, PTC continued to employ Blacks. Seven (of the eight) Black trainees reported to work on August 9, 1944. By October 1944, PTC reported about 16 Black drivers. Within a year, about 900 Blacks were employed by PTC as drivers, conductors, and in office positions. Daddy was not one of them. He never sought employment with PTC.
Of the 6,000 PTC workers who participated in the strike, four strike leaders were arrested and 30 other operators were later indicted. America’s priority was the War; and the goals were to end the strike, avoid potential racial unrest, and resume production of war materials. The four strike leaders were fired by General Hayes and charged with violating the Smith-Connally Act which prohibited strikes that threatened war production. Two had their military deferments immediately revoked and were inducted into the Army on the spot. The government later dropped the criminal charges against 27 of the indicted strikers and fined them $100 each. None of the strikers or leaders were ever rehired. On August 17, troops left Philadelphia; and PTC resumed running the transportation system. The strike had collapsed.
Ill-conceived at the outset, the strikers knew in advance that the federal government prohibited strikes that interfered with war production. Nevertheless, they struck. It took only four days for President Roosevelt—who was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the time—to enforce the Smith-Connally act and have 5,000 troops bivouacked in Fairmont Park in Philadelphia and ready to run PTC. The government also threatened workers with cancellation of their draft deferments and barred them from employment in federal jobs for the remainder of the war if they did not comply with orders to return to work. There was little public support. PTC’s union actively opposed the strike. The Philadelphia community was not supportive. It was not a strike to improve wages and working conditions or focus on workers’ rights. It was a racist strike undermining American efforts against fascist Axis powers in WWII. As The New York Times wrote: “It would be hard to find in the whole history of American labor, a strike in which so much damage has been done for so base a purpose.”
At a No Kings March in October 2025, Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, called for a strike with a different goal—a nationwide general strike in support of working-class Americans and in opposition to the policies and protections that support the ultra-wealthy and big corporations. Simultaneously—and ironically—the government shut down a few weeks before his announcement. Like a strike, a government shutdown disrupts the life of many Americans, causing economic issues and freezing government services. However, unlike a strike, politicians who called for the shutdown continue to receive a paycheck. The needs of others are ignored.
Mayor Johnson links the present and the past by invoking the memory of enslaved people. Enslaved Blacks, whose labor created tremendous wealth for America, left plantations during the Civil War when White men were conscripted to serve in the Confederate military. The enslaved were the backbone of the southern economy—at one time producing an estimated two-thirds of the world’s cotton. Without the power of Black labor, the Confederate economy collapsed. W.E.B. DuBois coined the term “Great Strike” linking the enslaved people’s migration with Black self-empowerment and Emancipation. The lessons of the Great Strike provide a blueprint for resilience even in the face of unspeakable deprivations, physical horrors, and psychological cruelty.
In an economic context, a parallel exists with modern working-class people—of all races—who are the economic backbone of America. They face food insecurity as well as other financial, health, and other overwhelming challenges in their daily lives. As the Ford Foundation wrote in The Backbone of America: Understanding the Working Class: (October 1, 2025): “Supporting the working class is not a niche endeavor but a national imperative.” Mayor Johnson’s general strike is a rallying cry, confronting the rich and powerful while empowering the working class, the economically disadvantaged, and those who are targets of systemic discrimination.
The world we live in explains the past—including the largest racially motivated strike of WWII which occurred in the birthplace of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. It was covered by major news outlets in America. In the South, newspapers blamed the federal government, not the strikers. The PTC strike is remembered now by an occasional article. In America, the past can be erased or revised to capture an America that is pure of heart and righteous—in its entirety, at all times, both past and present. Daddy and I—40 years apart in schooling—were both subjected to a Gone-With-the-Wind genre of history. That tradition continues. According to facinghistory.org, state laws now restrict what teachers can teach and discuss about racism, including slavery and civil rights. In 2023-2024, the number of banned books had increased by about 200% over the 2021-2022 school year. History textbooks in America are printed with different versions for northern and southern audiences.
In each chapter of Black life in America—Slavery-Civil War-Emancipation-Reconstruction-Jim Crow-Civil Rights-Post Civil Rights-Post Racial Era—racist ideologies reinforce the dehumanization of Blacks. In 2016, Black athletes who knelt during the National Anthem in protest of racial inequality were accused of hating America and labeled as unpatriotic. In 2025, No Kings protested were similarly labeled by some Republican leaders. Black Americans (of which about 10% are foreign born) are still taunted with “Why don’t you go back to Africa?”—a phrase that originated in the U.S. in the 1800s during the Back-to-Africa colonization movement. In 2025, Politico reported online messages attributed to Young Republicans which includes references to Blacks as niggers, monkeys, and watermelon people in addition to abusive antisemitic language focused on Jews. All can be traced from the present back to the past, and the past is always with us.
To quote Yogi Berra, another New York baseball legend, who supported the integration of MLB and was a close friend of Jackie Robinson’s beginning with their minor league days in 1946: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
Contributor Notes
Anita Henderson’s interests in writing focus on the experiences of her family and the lives of Blacks in America, with a special interest in the early 1900s, before the Civil Rights period. Anita holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.
