This article originally appeared in Above the Law on February 20, 2015.
By Renwei Chung
“The movement is a rhythm to us/ Freedom is like religion to us/ Justice is juxtapositionin’ us/ Justice for all just ain’t specific enough” – Common
February is known as Black History Month, but this month represents so much more to us as minorities. It is a tribute to how far our society has come and a reminder of how much further we must go to address racial inequality. We recognize Black History Month because, as Eric Liu writes, “The experience of African-Americans is exceptional in its systematic, multigenerational, reverberating effects. And it’s exceptional in its centrality to the founding and building of our nation. No experience reveals more than the African-American experience both the hypocrisy and the possibility of our national creed.”
This month also represents the 73rd anniversary of Executive Order 9066, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential order to forcibly relocate and incarcerate 120,000 American citizens and immigrants of Japanese ancestry. February 19th, the day President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, is now annually recognized as the Day of Remembrance in the Asian community.
This year, the Day of Remembrance and the Lunar New Year (a.k.a. Chinese New Year) fall on the same day. This is yet another reminder that, as Leslie Chang writes, “The past has been there all along, reminding us: This time–maybe, hopefully, against all odds, we will get it right.” Yesterday, many of us paid tribute to those who were afforded no due process and were victims of mass incarceration based on race. But these types of discrimination are not mere ghosts of the past, these issues are here and present in our society today.
This February marks the 55th anniversary of Congressman John Lewis’s first arrest for protesting. Lewis was one of the original thirteen Freedom Riders, the youngest of the Big Six civil rights leaders, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and a leader of the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma. Lewis was the sixth speaker at the March on Washington in 1963, where Dr. King gave his I Have a Dream speech.
Last week, Congressman Lewis told National Public Radio that he wanted to cry after the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which strikes down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As the Economist noted, now “states with a history of discriminating against minority voters, including Texas, no longer need the federal government to clear new voting restrictions.” In other words, the Shelby decision effectively guts key elements of the landmark Act.
As Lewis recounted to NPR, it was only “fifty years ago next month we were beaten, left bloodied, and almost died in Selma” for the right to vote. Todd Purdum, author of the book An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, And The Battle For The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, states that it’s hard to believe just 50 years ago, government officials like Louisiana Senator Russell Long publicly stated on the Senate Floor:
[T]he good Lord did as much segregating as anyone I know of when he put one race in one part of the world and another race in one part of the world. We folks in the South are not hypocrites about this matter. We think it’s absolutely desirable that the white people should continue to be white and that their children and grandchildren would be the same, and we let our children know we think just that.
In the last few years, race relations have gone backwards. In Mississippi, three young white men murdered a 48-year-old black man while yelling “white power” in what was aptly described as a modern-day lynching; an elected judge (who is seeking re-election) attacked a mentally-disabled black man while yelling “run, n****, run;” and just last week State Rep. Gene Alday publicly stated, “I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call ‘welfare crazy checks.’ They don’t work.” In California, a USC graduate student was targeted and beaten to death because he was Chinese. It was the third Chinese murder near USC’s campus in recent memory, after two students were gunned down in April 2012.
Nationally, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice all had their lives taken too soon in 2014. Just last week, a mosque was burned down in Houston; three Muslims were gunned downed in North Carolina – supposedly over a parking space; and an Indian grandfather was left partially paralyzed in Alabama after police accosted him on a morning walk. Recent court rulings have not been promising for those most likely to be affected by these rulings – the disenfranchised, impoverished, and minorities. Discrimination is not a ghost of the past, it is an issue that haunts our society today.
In his 2013 PBS interview, Congressman Lewis said the March on Washington “was a march for all of America. It was all-inclusive. It was black, and white, Latino, Asian-American, and Native American. It represented the best of America.” For many, Black History Month honors the past. But it should also serve as an annual call to action for those who believe in justice, fairness, and equality. On President’s Day, NPR’s Terry Gross reminded us that “Martin Luther King didn’t have a vote in Congress, but the [Civil Rights Act of 1964] wouldn’t even have been introduced without him and the movement that he helped lead.” Black History Month is an annual reminder that we do not need a microphone to speak up.
Congressman Lewis dedicated March: Book One and March: Book Two “to the past and future children of the movement.” With these words, Lewis pays tribute to past generations as well as his generation. He also dedicated his books to the present and future citizens who believe in justice, fairness, and equality. In the same manner, Black History Month is a tribute to the past and an ode to the future. Black History Month is for blacks, whites, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. It represents the best of America.
My good friend Howard Franklin recently told me he wrote Gideon’s Promise because “the current decade is the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement’s struggle for freedom and social justice.” Franklin elaborated, “I wanted to highlight the role of the newly created Public Defenders Offices in fighting to protect individual constitutional rights in pursuit of justice, in particular for persons who are poor and of color, as part of that revolution, and because those very rights are under attack today.”
Last year Congressman Lewis tweeted, “If the Civil Rights Act was before the Congress today, it would not pass, it would probably never make it to the floor for a vote.” Lewis turns 75 tomorrow. Of everyone who spoke at the March on Washington, he is the only one remaining.
We cannot continue to take for granted the rights we have now. We are the future children of the movement. It is our responsibility, especially as minorities in the law, to learn the history and educate others so that we can stand beside Congressman Lewis and fight for our future. If we in the legal community do not fight for justice, fairness, and equality, then who do we expect to advocate for these causes?
Black History Month is not just a tribute to the past because discrimination is not just a memory of the past. Black History Month is an annual call to action for us to contribute to the movement.
Renwei Chung is a 2L at Southern Methodist University School of Law. He has an undergraduate degree from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Golden Rule: How Income Inequality Will Ruin America (affiliate link). He has been randomly blogging about anything and everything at Live Your Truth since 2008. He was born in California, raised in Michigan, and lives in Texas. He has a yellow lab named Izza and enjoys old-school hip hop, the NBA and stand up paddleboarding (SUP). He is really interested in startups, entrepreneurship, and innovative technologies. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.
