In today’s society, it is no surprise to log on to Facebook, scroll through Twitter, or turn on the TV and find another story about a young black man or woman who has been killed at the hands of a white police officer and the riots that broke out as a result. This lack of surprise comes from a long history of African-Americans struggling to have the same freedoms as their white counterparts. In fact, a number of the Americans in the population today have either lived through or have heard first-hand accounts of the most recent struggle that is better known as the Civil Rights Movement. However, the long line of injustice and inequality dates back much further than the 1960s, stretching all the way back to the time of slavery — back to the time when the American identity was formed and the roots of hate took hold on American soil. It is because of these deeply rooted traditions of hate and inequality that I argue the large over-arching story of America is the story of the “black freedom struggle.”

When Thomas Jefferson wrote “Notes on the State of Virginia,” his intentions were surely not to predict what the story of America would be. However, the comments that he makes on slavery in this text does precisely that. While discussing why slaves must be sent away and could not be kept in America, Jefferson reasons, “Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extinction of the one or the other race” (Lauter, 2006). From this quotation, it is clear that Jefferson makes a statement that proves to be much more accurate than he surely intended it, or rather, “It shows that Jefferson had a deeper understanding of the true nature of America’s racial dilemma than many are comfortable admitting” (Gordon-Reed, 2004). Not only does this quotation make an eery statement about the future of America, but the argument that it supports gives Jefferson an image that would also prove to become all too familiar for the American story. In her article for TIMES, Annette Gordon-Reed argues that Jefferson is placed “firmly within the world of Southern plantation society, where the rules of the game featured public denunciations of ‘amalgamation’ but private practice of it all levels of society." By Jefferson acknowledging the severity of slavery and also arguing against the mixing of the races, he is not only being hypocritical, but also setting up the image of the white man who, because of his status, is placed above the law and his own reasoning. This image continues all throughout the story of America in characters like white police officers and the government, and Jefferson’s theory on deep rooted hate having a negative effect on Americans proves to be true over time.

Reading Crèvecoeur’s "Letters from an American Farmer" while considering Jefferson’s frame of the American story, then, makes “Letter XI” the most telling and true for the formation of the identity of American politics regarding equality. In the middle of “Letter XI,” the narrator reasons, “the word slave is the appellation of every rank who adore as a divinity a being worse than themselves, subject to every caprice and to every lawless rage which unrestrained power can give." In this description, it is clear that a slave is a person who, although they must listen to an authority that is lesser in character than they are, must listen to and respect this authority in whatever state it presents itself. If this is true, then it can be argued that numerous blacks have been made into slaves today by the force of police departments in areas all across the country. In Doreen Saar’s article on "Letters from an American Farm," she argues that literature, such as Crèvecoeur’s, played a role in the morals and politics of society. Saar argues, “The Revolutionary generation believed in literature’s social role: literature guided and formed the moral sense and thus formed all facets of communal life, including politics." From this description, one can assume that the morals and politics expressed in “Letter XI” would have played an influence the very early Americans that formed our nation, thus allowing for their political beliefs to become an aspect of what it means to be an American. Therefore, white supremacy that lacks good character becomes a social norm that plays a large role in both the morals and the politics of the time, and it continues on through generations to become a deeply rooted American tradition that aids in the struggle for African-Americans to reach equality.

In the early 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement was born out of increased racial tensions and violence, resulting in increased rights for African-Americans during the time. However, many blacks had to die and overcome great obstacles in order to obtain these rights, like the deaths of four young black girls in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, as well as the emergence of Jackie Robinson on the baseball scene in 1945 (McClain, 2014; Byas, 2015). Today, there is a repetition of history and, as Dani McClain put it in her article "It’s 1963 Again," “We find ourselves at a similar moment fifty years later–with 'Again?' on our lips…” In July of 2013, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman, a police officer, who was exonerated of all charges based on a self-defense argument, even though Trayvon Martin was not armed at the time of altercation. Trayvon was also black, and Zimmerman was mixed race. A year later, Eric Garner, a black man, was choked to death by a New York City police officer who was white, based on an inclination that Garner was selling cigarettes illegally. The police officer was not indicted for the murder of Garner. A short month after the death of Eric Garner, “Michael Brown, a 17-year-old African American boy in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot while holding his hands in the air indicating that he was unarmed” (Nelson, 2014). The police officer that shot Brown was also white, and it was this event that caused mass riots in Ferguson, Missouri, which will undoubtedly be an event that makes the history books for this generation. In every instance discussed, a black man has fallen victim to white man who has gained superiority through the politics of being a police officer, and acts on morals that are by all means questionable, and then walks away without punishment.

The backlash of these events, like the riots in New York City and Ferguson, further prove that the resentment discussed by Jefferson in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” could now be easily translated to our time by becoming “Notes on the State of Present Day America.” In his article “What Killed Black Progress?” Steve Byas states, “Modern victimization of blacks is a 'legacy of slavery' extending to the present day…with local police as a key exponent of the alleged white racist power structure supposedly suppressing blacks." From this quotation, it is clear that the both the texts from Jefferson and Crèvecoeur have reached fruition in modern day society, and also that slavery still exists both in politics and morals to this day. While discussing Crèvecoeur’s "Letters," Saar provides the reader with an understanding of slavery that is interesting when considering it in a modern context. She describes, “in the eighteenth century, slavery had a specific political meaning that it would lose for future generations: it meant the loss of power by an independent people, usually the result of a corruption in the body politic that destroyed the desire and capacity of the people to retain their independence” (Saar, 1987). Today, this description of slavery seems to fit pretty well with the descriptions of the treatment of black lives. The corruption of police departments across the nation has led to the loss of justice for the black community, especially in cases where lives are lost and courts do not punish the murderers due to their status. However, it is also clear that today, the desire and capacity is very much alive for African-American citizens to keep their individual freedoms.

While America has deeply rooted racial issues, Frederick Harris also makes the case in his article “The Next Civil Rights Movement?” that there are equally deep roots embedded in appealing to humanity, which are also making a comeback appearance today. Harris states, “The 18th-century anti-slavery campaign roused the consciousness of nations by pleading to those who kept them and profited from their bondage, 'Am I Not a Man and a Brother?'... With Black Lives Matter, we now have a revival of these historical roots” (2015). Black Lives Matter is an organization that maintains the peaceful tactics of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while also pushing a very Thoreau-esque ideal of “clogging the system.” In an article written in The Atlantic, Black Lives Matter spoke out directly and stated, “We think that everybody, no matter where you are, no matter what your socioeconomic status is, whatever your job is -- you have a duty in this moment in history to take action and stand on the side of people who have been oppressed for generations” (Garber, 2015). Here it is clear that, while the legacy of slavery may persist, the nature of those oppressed by slavery has not, and the appeals that Black Lives Matter are making to Americans today are made with the intentions of a revolution. Thus, Black Lives Matter not only clogs the social and political systems in America, but also clogs the cyclical narrative of the black freedom struggle that is the American story.

References

Byas, Steve. “What Killed Black Progress?” New American 31.18 (2015): 37-38. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Crèvecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. “Letters from an American Farmer.” Lauter 922-957.

Garber, Megan. “The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter.” The Atlantic (2015). Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Harris, Fredrick C. “The Next Civil Rights Movement?” Dissent 62.3 (2015): 34-40. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Notes on the State of Virginia.” Lauter 994-1010.

Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.

McClain, Dani. “It’s 1963 Again.” Nation 299.26 (2014): 3. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

Nelson, J.H. “A Call for More Than Judicial Remedies to the Killing of African American Boys and Men.” Network News (2014): 21-26. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.

Saar, Doreen A. “Crèvecoeur’s ‘Thoughts on Slavery’: Letters from an American Farmer and Whig Rhetoric.” Early American Literature 22.2 (1987): 192-203. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.