From assassination attempts to black on black character assassinations (op-ed)

Last year a local group organized Pittsburgh’s Juneteenth: Martin R. Delany Fest and Third Annual Community Day. In downtown Pittsburgh there is a historical marker that reads: Martin R. Delany (1812-1885) a promoter of African-American nationalism. He attended Harvard Medical School, practiced medicine in Pittsburgh, and was commissioned as a major in the Civil War.

The Juneteenth festival advertised a re-enactment of the 1870 Freemen Parade, the original parade was a national event that celebrated the ratification of the 15^th amendment which granted black male suffrage. The event planners also advertised a voter registration drive. That sparked my interest. I imagined a re-enactment of the assassination attempt on Martin R. Delany when he encouraged blacks to vote for the Democratic Party.

In 1876 Martin R. Delany no longer resided in Pittsburgh and established himself as a prominent figure in South Carolina. It was a decade after the Civil War and 11 long years into reconstruction, a time period in which federal troops occupied the southern states.

Immediately following the Civil War all blacks were Republicans.

Blacks naturally aligned with the party of “The Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln and supported the Radical Republicans who passed amendments that abolished slavery and granted citizenship.

But the Radical Republicans in congress could not oversee how the southern states would conduct their long term internal affairs after readmission into the union.

By 1876 restoration of the union was complete, the national mandate returned to pre-civil war westward expansion, and two years prior the Democratic Party regained control of the House of Representatives. That meant federal troops, the enforcers of Radical Republican policy, were going to be removed from the south.

Martin R. Delany, who began as a radical, felt blacks shouldn’t be enslaved to an ideology of powerlessness and vulnerability, and no political party should hold a group hostage.

Delany saw the shift in power.

He argued that blacks in the south had to make political partnerships with “the powers that were going to be” instead of expecting the edicts passed by a vanished authority to be eternal.

That year Delany endorsed Democrat and former confederate general Wade Hampton for governor of South Carolina. Hampton supported equal rights for all citizens and Delany felt Hampton was a politician in which compromises were possible.

(Politics is the art of compromise)

But most blacks were furious with Delany’s decision.

At a campaign rally for Hampton a black militia noticed there was a black man gathering support for the ex-Confederate general. One member of the militia said, “Who has ever heard of a black Democrat!” And the militia decided to assassinate Delany and opened fired. Delany escaped unharmed.

Hampton won the election and Delany served as a trial justice in Charleston, but in 1877 reconstruction ended, the federal troops were removed, and the democrats eventually removed all blacks from public office.

Delany was further ostracized, but the failure of his attempt doesn’t make his instincts incorrect.

Now, let’s fast forward to the present. Has there been any progress since 1876 or has there only been a party switch?

During the Primary when a group of black pastors met with presidential candidate Donald Trump because Trump was “a power that could be” the pastors were called a disgrace and ostracized. Now that Donald Trump won the presidency and some blacks have accepted invitations from The President to discuss problems in the inner cities, they too have been demonized and called “Mediocre Negroes”.

This is the same hostility Martin R. Delany faced over a century ago.

Fortunately the black on black assassination attempts are only aimed at character, but the assassins still don’t understand the dynamics of power.

First published in New Pittsburgh Courier 2/ 1/17