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 47th 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 ruthlessly to 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.
