Gary Franks: Black history and the Holocaust

Can we learn from the past? We must.

Immediately after the Civil War, radical Republicans collaborated with President Abraham Lincoln to assist the newly freed slaves with a program called Reconstruction. This truly brief period ended after the controversial election of President Rutherford Hayes via the Compromise of 1877, when the northern troops were removed from the South.

At this point, the former slaveowners and like-minded folks returned to power. It led to a period of domestic terrorism against Black people, which in turn forced the Great Migration of former slaves to the North and West.

As part of Jim Crow laws and practices, Black people were allowed to have only “Black jobs.” With social pressures on white people in power, for decades you did not see any Black people working in stores, factories or the military. Black people were also not allowed to attend elite colleges. In the South, they were largely limited to sharecropping, which put most Black people in debt while white people flourished.

“Separate but equal,” which condoned the belief in racial segregation, became the law of the land as codified by an unwise Supreme Court in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. It took until 1954 when the Supreme Court via Brown v. the Board of Education decision overturned “separate but equal.”

In the early 1960s, when I was a little boy, the Ku Klux Klan attacked my family by burning a cross in front of our house, shooting a dog on our lawn, giving us nightly life-threatening phone calls and finally by placing a dead possum in our mailbox. They had attached a note to it, which said that we would end up like that possum unless we moved. This was actually a blessing in disguise as the FBI got involved and ended a three-month nightmare in three days.

When it had ended, Jewish individuals arrived at our door to console our family. My mother welcomed them. I had no idea what was happening. After all, white people were trying to blow our house up and kill us.

After they left, my mother explained to me why they were being so empathetic. This memory has lasted with me for nearly 60 years.

The Jewish people had suffered discrimination and hatred to an extreme degree when millions of Jews were killed for no other reason than their race in the Holocaust, murdered by an evil German madman. This man, who should remain nameless, was one of the world’s most evil human beings.

He blamed one race of people for everything that had gone wrong in his country. He encouraged the open hatred of Jews who he claimed were inferior. He led a faction of extremists who took over Germany. And after that, he ruled like a dictator, dispensing with parliament.

He quickly started a war with his neighbors, with whom Germany had been on good terms. He boasted that he would turn around an inflation-riddled country. He intimidated his adversaries. He promised to return his nation to its former greatness. He rose to the top due to very weak prior leaders and an impotent parliament.

He threatened and forced folks to comply with his wishes or face severe retaliation. He led a propaganda effort to create his own reality while controlling the media. He demanded loyalty. He tried to aggressively expand Germany’s rule over Europe.

Lastly, prior to rising to the top, he led a failed effort to overturn the government.

Yes, the names can change; the victims of racism can change; but good and courageous people as well as nations have stepped forward to stop evil. The will of good people in the long run has always prevailed. Evil and hate have never beaten love and God. And they never will.