The Government Against the People — By Dr. Julianne Malveaux

By Dr. Julianne Malveaux —

I can’t remember when I met Dr. Olivia Hooker, a Tulsa Massacre survivor, the first African American woman to serve in the Coast Guard (she wanted to serve as a Navy WAVE – or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services – but they weren’t accepting African Americans).  I remember aspects of our first meeting vividly.  We were both slated to speak at Syracuse University and a mutual friend introduced us and invited me to Dr. Hooker’s suite.  I bopped down, cutely dressed in a workout outfit, but miffed that I forgot my workout shoes.  She got my ire immediately and asked what was wrong.  I told her I didn’t have workout shoes and needed a long walk to get stress out of me.  I might have told her I’d be a nasty piece of work (and not in those words) if I didn’t get a walk.  She told me to go into her room and find a pair of walking shoes because she didn’t deal with nasty pieces of work.

We became close.  I wrote about her, interviewed, spoke at her memorial service.  Dr. Hooker loved our country, but from time to time she mused that our country, these United States of America, does not love us.  She was six when the Tulsa Massacre occurred in 1921, and she remembered it vividly.  One of the things that stuck with me was her remembrance of United States militia protecting the whites that attacked Black Wall Street, not the African Americans who lived there.  Looking out of her window, she asked her mother, “why is our government attacking us.”

Throughout our presence in this country, that has been a lament from Black people whose relatives have been lynched, unfairly jailed, attacked, and even in their attempt to walk softly through ordinary life, treated badly.  The lynching of veterans after both World Wars I and II is an example of our government attacking our heroes.  The beating and blinding of Isaac Woodford in 1946 are an example of the ways our government attacked Black people.  No one ever paid for the blinding of the South Carolina Veteran who, still in uniform, was beaten and blinded by police officers, including the police chief, Lynwood Shull, who was acquitted by an all-white jury.

Why is our government attacking us?  Why are they issuing edicts against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). Why are they attempting to erase history?  The answer to that one is simple.  This government would erase history because aspects of it are shameful, and because they are doing it again.

There are two million government employees; more than 360,000 of them are African American.  They, like all other government employees, are under attack with specious layoffs, untimely last-minute orders to stay home, and other distractions to divert our attention from the fact that the 47^th President has instituted inflationary policies that are markedly different from his cost cutting campaign promises.

During this African American History Month, one of the federal workers that must be uplifted is Daniel Murray, who was an assistant librarian of Congress until Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912.  Wilson, a Democrat (they were the bad guys then – because Abraham Lincoln was Republican, so were many African Americans), assiduously courted the African American community, winning the support of notables like WEB DuBois, Booker T Washington, and Monroe Trotter.  Imagine their surprise, then, when just months after his election, Wilson instituted a segregation order for federal employees and refused to accept a delegation of Black leaders.  Hundreds of Black employees were demoted and were forced to take salary cuts.  According to some studies, Black federal employees earned about 35 percent less than their white counterparts doing the same jobs.

Murray was demoted (and likely lost salary) from Assistant Librarian of Congress to Superintendent of the Library’s Division of the Negro Collection. He intended to write an encyclopedia of “Negro” writing but was unable to find support for it.  Still, the Daniel Murray legacy is indelible and is a permanent part of the Library of Congress collections.  The Murray Collection at the library includes speeches, pamphlets, and much more, materials that I have used in my own research.  He is featured in many Library of Congress exhibitions and he is featured in some of the library’s digital archives.

Daniel Murray is important to those who, regardless of race, are grappling with the federal government’s attack on them and their service.  He is also a reminder that the past is prologue.  Like the current president, Woodrow Wilson was a prevaricator who shamelessly courted Black leaders only turn ruthlessly turn on them.  He screened the racist film, Birth of A Nation, at the House that Enslaved People Built.  And he unabashedly spurned any engagement with the people he once cultivated.  He turned the government against its citizens.  Here we go again.