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Opinion | How to rig an election — with deadly, racist consequences (Washington Post 4/3/23) [1]

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Date: 2023-04-03  

Screenshot taken from the Tom Hanks and Jeffery Robinson Opinion Piece/Video from today's Washington Post

I have a history of complaining about “hit and run” diaries, but there’s absolutely nothing that I could possibly add to this amazing and critically important opinion piece/video by Tom Hanks and Jeffery Robinson from today’s Washington Post (online anyway — I haven’t seen the print edition).

PLEASE, stop whatever you’re doing and read the piece and watch the video. I know there are some real history buffs around here, but for the rest of us, WOW, JUST WOW!

The piece starts with a broad overview of the topic at hand:

Opinion | How to rig an election — with deadly, racist consequences By Tom Hanks and Jeffery Robinson April 3, 2023 at 9:01 a.m. EDT Tom Hanks, an actor, filmmaker and author, and Jeffery Robinson, founder and executive director of “The Who We Are Project,” collaborated on the new animated documentary “How to Rig an Election: The Racist History of the 1876 Presidential Contest.” Watch the film exclusively with Post Opinions, and join them for a Post Live conversation on April 6 at 3 p.m. EST. Recent efforts to erase Black history have a lot in common with the slogan of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s “1984”: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” It’s an effective strategy and, in the United States, it has been especially so when it comes to discussions of Black history. If the past contradicts your narrative about the present and the future, just erase it. Take the presidential election of 1876, which was resolved by the Compromise of 1877. If you don’t remember the details, you’re not alone. This pivotal event is scarcely more than a footnote in most U.S. history classes. But its narrative provides lessons we need to fight the onslaught of truth-canceling legislation being introduced across the nation and already implemented in Florida.

And from there, the history lesson begins:

In the decade following the end of the Civil War, the United States was barely reunited. More American combatants had died in that war than would die in either World War I or World War II. Families were healing from the trauma of relatives fighting on opposing sides. In an effort to integrate 4 million newly freed enslaved people into American society, Congress passed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, promising those people the rights and protections of citizenship. This was Reconstruction: Our fragile democracy beginning to remake itself as a more participatory system, bringing us closer to the cherished ideal that all people (well, men) were created equal. During this period, more than 1,500 Black men held public office, from the local level up to the U.S. House and Senate.

That’s the extent of what I’m going to quote from the piece as I strongly urge everyone to read the rest for themselves.

That being said, I am going to embed the video from YouTube just to make it front and center and so that everyone can watch it NOW by just clicking the PLAY button:

PLEASE watch this and share it widely, it’s a crucial history lesson and incredibly well done!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/3/2161873/-Opinion-How-to-rig-an-election-with-deadly-racist-consequences-Washington-Post-4-3-23

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