WHITE SUPREMACISTS MARCH IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

 

We are shocked by this sight today, but this is not new.   There was a time in the past, in the history of white people  of this country, in the history of our own families, when this was accepted.  

 

In 1924, thirty thousand KKK members marched in Washington, D.C.   They were not just from the south, But from Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and as far away as Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.  The Klan claimed that sixty-four percent of Congress were Klan members. 

 

 

My maternal grandmother was born in 1893 in Mississippi.   She was the youngest of seven children, four brothers and two sisters.  One of her brothers was a Klan member, another was the warden of the infamous Parchment Penitentiary, and her older sister was married to Fielding Write, a governor of Mississippi, who ran as the Vice President nominee for the Dixiecrat Party alongside Strom Thurmond.

 

And yet, one of my maternal great-great-grandfathers died at the Battle of Shiloh, fighting for the North.

 

We can not explain our families.   They were people of their time and place, and they adhere to different norms.   We should not be plastered with their sins, but willing to call them out.

 

It is a safe bet that the majority of families with generations in Mississippi have ancestors who were Klan members. 

 

It has been one hundred and two years since thirty thousand Klan members marched in the nation’s capital. 

That there were only a few hundred white supremacist marching in our nation’s capital today speaks both to progress and shame; and a knowledge that there is still a segment of our population that is so ignorant they can be easily manipulated, is an indication of our failing education system. 

To be truthful, we have a President in the White House that is a confirmed racist, and a Republican Party that is guilty of racism by omission - unwillingness to call him out. 

 

Not all Republicans are racist, but if you are a racist, a white supremacies, a Klan member, there is a place for you in Trump’s Republican Party.  "There were good people on both sides."  

the Ol'Buzzard