Cracker History 101

BY NOW, you probably know about the videos of the New Black Panther Party's angry Philadelphia leader, King Samir Shabazz, standing outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 holding a nightstick and wearing militia-style clothing while claiming to be "security."

Now, more recent videos of Shabazz have surfaced in which he states, "I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracka, I hate him." At a South Street festival, he shrieks into a mike: "You want freedom . . . you gonna have to kill some crackers. You gonna have to kill some of their babies."

If Shabazz were aware of all of the great things some "crackers" actually did to help end slavery and the oppression of blacks in the U.S. and to help them get the civil rights they deserved, he might not be so angry. But I can forgive him because he's a victim of revisionist history and hate-group rhetoric - seemingly ignorant of the efforts of white individuals to rid this society of discrimination, prejudice and racism.

Africans came to America against their will, abducted and sold by Muslim slavers in Africa to Dutch traders bound for America starting back in 1619. But this tragic beginning notwithstanding, black Americans overcame slavery and oppression with the help of some great individuals, black and white.

"From the moment the first slave ship arrived in the British colonies in America, so very many white people were against the concept of enslaving humans, so much so that numerous abolitionist groups formed. White people worked tirelessly to not only free the slaves but educate blacks as well," says Amy Reid, of the New Jersey Frederick Douglass Foundation and the Pennsylvania Conservative Council.

Surely Shabazz wouldn't hate British member of Parliament William Wilberforce, who made it his life's work to help abolish slavery in England, finally achieving that with the passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.

Would Shabazz hate President Thomas Jefferson, who signed a bill in 1807 permanently prohibiting "the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States," making the slave trade illegal in the United States?

Would Shabazz hate President John Quincy Adams, the "hell-hound of abolition" who successfully defended the mutinous slaves of the Spanish slave ship La Amistad, eventually helping them earn their freedom and return to Africa?

It was Adams who said, "The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself," Thomas Jefferson. Adams and Jefferson were not only critics of the British policy of slavery, they were in favor of abolishing slavery in America.

Surely Shabazz wouldn't have hated Noah Webster, founder of the Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery, in 1791, who proclaimed, "Justice and humanity require it, Christianity commands it. Let every benevolent . . . pray for the glorious period when the last slave who fights for freedom shall be restored to the possession of that inestimable right."

What New Black Panther wouldn't admire President Abraham Lincoln, signer of the Emancipation Proclamation, who routinely sought counsel from black abolitionist and scholar Frederick Douglass? Surely Shabazz would respect Ulysses S. Grant, who not only led the Union Army during the Civil War, but then led southern Reconstruction as president by signing civil-rights laws and tirelessly combating Ku Klux Klan violence of the Democratic Party.

Perhaps Shabazz and his New Black Panther cohorts wouldn't be so angry if they knew of the efforts of James Garfield, who served as a general in the Union Army, then a member of Congress and later as president. Garfield, opposed to both slavery and secession, led the passage of nearly two dozen civil-rights bills, and, in his inauguration speech, proclaimed, "The elevation of the Negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787."

And what about the efforts of President Dwight Eisenhower, the first president to appoint a black American to an executive position in the White House, tireless in his efforts to end racial discrimination in America?

For his 1956 re-election, Eisenhower welcomed substantial support from black Americans. He introduced two civil-rights bills in 1957 and 1959 (both opposed by congressional Democrats) and created the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

In light of what so many notable Americans have done to end slavery, racial discrimination, racial oppression and prejudice in this country, Shabazz and his hateful rhetoric are downright deplorable.

Can there possibly be a place for such hateful speech in any national dialogue on racism in America? What Shabazz's speech shows is that racism isn't a white or black problem, but a human one.

Booker T. Washington, the author, abolitionist and adviser to presidents McKinley, Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, vowed, "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."

Washington understood that collaboration with compassionate whites was the best way to achieve equality for blacks.

The New Black Panthers would do well to emulate Mr. Washington in both thought and deed.

Jane Gilvary is a freelance writer from the City of Brotherly Love.