It wasn’t until Germany inaugurated its camps for the Hereros that the term Konzentrationslager entered the German language. In a letter from Berlin, von Trotha was ordered to cease his extermination policy to salvage usable laborers, that is, to, “establish Konzentrationslager for the temporary housing and sustenance of the Herero people.” This is the first known use in German parlance.

 

On April 5, 1915, Johnson lost his title to Jess Willard, a working cowboy from Kansas who started boxing when he was 27 years old. With a crowd of 25,000 at Oriental Park Racetrack in Havana, Cuba, Johnson was knocked out in the 26th round of the scheduled 45-round fight. Johnson, although having won almost every round, began to tire after the 20th round, and was visibly hurt by heavy body punches from Willard in rounds preceding the 26th-round knockout.

 

Johnson is said by many a year after the fight to have spread rumors that he took a dive, but Willard is widely regarded as having won the fight outright. Many people thought Johnson purposely threw the fight because Willard was white, in an effort to have his Mann Act charges dropped. Willard ironically responded, "If he was going to throw the fight, I wish he'd done it sooner. It was hotter than hell out there."

 

East St. Louis Race Riot, 1917

Chester, Pennsylvania Race Riot, 1917

Houston Mutiny and Race Riot, 1917

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Race Riot, 1918

Charleston (South Carolina) Riot, 1919

Longview Race Riot, 1919

Washington, D.C. Riot, 1919

Chicago Race Riot, 1919

Knoxville Race Riot, 1919

Elaine, Arkansas Riot, 1919

 

After losing his world heavyweight championship, Johnson never again fought for the world or colored heavyweight crowns. His popularity remained strong enough that he recorded for Ajax Records in the 1920s. Johnson continued fighting, but age was catching up with him. He fought professionally until 1938 at age 60 when he lost 7 of his last 9 bouts, losing his final fight to Walter Price by a 7th-round TKO.

​

It is often suggested that any bouts after the age of 40—which was a very venerable age for boxing in those days—not be counted on his actual record, since he was performing in order to make a living.

 

He also indulged in what was known as "cellar" fighting, where the bouts, unadvertised, were fought for private audiences, usually in cellars or other unrecognized places.

 

There are surviving photographs of one of these fights. Johnson made his final ring appearance at age 67 on November 27, 1945, fighting three one-minute exhibition rounds against two opponents, Joe Jeanette and John Ballcort, in a benefit fight card for U.S. War Bonds.

 

As World War I loomed, Johnson's victories in the ring were paralleled by the struggles of black people in Germany. The presence of African colonial troops in the Rhineland led to significant racial tensions, with black soldiers facing discrimination and harassment. Despite these challenges, they persisted, breaking down the barriers of prejudice and asserting their place in society.

 

World War I Timeline:

 

• June 28, 1914: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

• July 28, 1914: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, marking the beginning of World War I.

• August 1, 1914: Germany declares war on Russia.

• August 4, 1914: Germany invades Belgium, prompting Britain to declare war on Germany.

• November 11, 1918: Armistice signed, ending World War I

 

Again, after World War I, Germany was stripped of her African colonies as part of the Treaty of Versailles. German Southwest Africa and its other African colonies were set on a path to independence, albeit under close direct and indirect European tutelage. The loss of its colonies might have convinced many Germans that Africa was part of a dark past. Not so.

 

Conscription and recruitment had been introduced into France’s African territories decades earlier. Nearly half a million fearsome fighters, mainly from Senegal, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco — all generally referred to as Senegalese Tirailleurs regardless of their national origins — fought in the French Army in World War I. At times, Africans comprised about 14 percent of the wartime French army. During World War I, French Colonial African regiments fought in great numbers in the European theater.

​

Treaty of Versailles, in Article 428, stipulated that the Allies would occupy the Rhineland for fifteen years. In 1919, French troops occupied this part of Western Germany. Between 20,000 and 40,000 of these occupying soldiers were Senegalese Tirailleurs — about half from Arab North Africa, and about half from central and interior Africa.

 

The presence of African soldiers in authority caused hysteria in Germany and shock on both sides of the Atlantic. Germans popularized a national panic over the so-called “Black Horror on the Rhine.” Deviant racial sexual imagery, including caricatures of monkey-like soldiers — often possessed of giant phalluses — ravaging helpless German damsels spread widely in print and public discourse.

 

Everywhere, fear gripped German society that its racial superiority would be poisoned by Negro blood. By 1920, mass rallies had been convened in 25 German cities, including one with 50,000 attendees at Hamburg’s Sagebiel Hall. Sympathetic rallies by German-American groups were organized across the United States by “The American Campaign against the Horror on the Rhine.” One such demonstration at Madison Square Garden attracted 12,000 protesters of Irish and German descent.

 

In the contentious presidential contest of 1920, some supporters of Warren G. Harding were fond of verbalizing support for his apparent promise that “he would do his best to get those niggers out of Germany.” Even Pope Benedict XV and his successor Pius XI voiced objection to African presence on German soil.

 

Occupation by African soldiers was seen among the German people as a further wound-salting French humiliation of German honor and prestige. Certainly, there were a number of rapes, but there were also consensual marriages as people mixed. From these came a class of mixed-race Afro-Germans popularly called mulattos. Estimates vary widely, but many observers surmise some 20,000 mulattos, that is, Afro-Germans with legal German citizenship, were now amongst them.

 

Everywhere, fear gripped German society that its racial superiority would be poisoned by Negro blood. The “Black Horror on the Rhine” coincided with the advent of American and international eugenics, a pseudoscience born on Long Island that found intellectual partnership with German racists of the day.

 

Eugenics was an early twentieth-century American crusade to create a white, blond, blue-eyed, Germanic utopian society that would rise following the systematic elimination of all people of color or of unwanted mixed ancestry. A famous founding document of the American movement was a 1912 German study,

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The Bastards of Rehoboth and the Problem of Miscegenation in Man, which claimed to document the corrupted moral and biological nature of black-white offspring. The author was German biologist and race scientist Eugen Fischer. He was stationed in colonial Southwest Africa, where he studied local Dutch African families cited in the work.

 

From studies such as Fischer’s sprang the fraudulent science of American eugenics that medicalized racial theory. Propelled by abundant financing from the Carnegie Institution, Harriman Railroad fortune, and Rockefeller Foundation, eugenics ultimately led to the sterilization of some 60,000 Americans under laws in 27 states, as well as racial and ethnic incarceration.

 

Carnegie and Rockefeller poured millions of dollars into proliferating the pseudoscience in Germany after World War I. Average Germans everywhere embraced the American theories, elevating their visceral racial hatred into an entrenched university science with broad acceptance.

 

The German and global public outcry against claimed biological and cultural debasement by French African troops finally got its way in May 1920, when Paris announced its troops were almost entirely being transferred to the Mideast to fight the war against Arab nationalism in Syria.

 

But if in late 1920, Germany once again thought its juncture with Africa was over, they were wrong. Thousands of French African soldiers returned in 1923. The Treaty of Versailles had imposed a massive $33 billion war debt on the newly established Weimar Republic, successor to the Second Reich. Germany struggled to pay its debt in cash and raw materials.

 

When it defaulted on the delivery of 140,000 telegraph poles, thousands of French troops occupied Germany’s Ruhr industrial region to seize the value of local factory output. German workers walked out on general strike. Berlin began printing worthless money to support the striking families — which led to the famous hyperinflation, where worthless cash was carted in wheelbarrows to buy bread.

 

Franz Ritter von Epp was an early leading figure of the Third Reich. He formed the Freikorps Epp in 1919, which was one of the many street-fighting units that evolved into the Nazis. Indeed, von Epp’s personal aide was Ernst Röhm, who would later become the founding leader of the Storm Troopers.

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In 1922, Stoddard issued his tract The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man. Later, many historians thought this vocabulary triggered the German adoption.

 

However, the racial view that Africans were actually not humans, but rather subhumans first appears in German usage in Southwest Africa. It was von Trotha who archetypically wrote, “A humane war cannot be waged against those who are not human.” Southwest African colonial officials and military men took the view that the Herero were actually a form of baboon or other monkey, but not human. One German in Southwest Africa wrote: “We should burn all these dogs and baboons.”

 

African people were commonly thought of as talking monkeys by many eugenicists worldwide. Von Epp hired a young informant named Adolf Hitler. Later, von Epp helped raise 60,000 marks to purchase the official Nazi newspaper Völkische Beobachter. Hitler appointed von Epp Reichskommissar for Bavaria in 1933, and as such, von Epp was involved with the inauguration and oversight of Germany’s first concentration camp, Dachau.

 

Jews were termed untermenschen or “sub-human.” This concept underpinned Nazi Jew hatred. The Nazi conceptualization of Untermenschen is often traced to the American eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard, a close colleague of Margaret Sanger and a director of her American Birth Control League, a forerunner organization of Planned Parenthood. Stoddard’s writings were a personal favorite of Hitler.

 

The Nazis spoke of the “Final Solution.” The German word was Endlösung, suggestive of extermination. It was uttered first in German by Georg Hartmann in 1904, decades before the Third Reich. Hartmann, manager of the Southwest Africa Company, prepared a special report asserting that “the final solution to the native question can only be to break the power of the natives totally and for all time.” The German word Hartmann used, for the first time as a code word for murder, was “Endlösung.”

 

However, there was some opposition to his membership from within the lodge, but mainly from the Grand Lodge who tried to stop the initiation from going ahead due to most Grand Lodges in the USA threatening to withdraw their Scottish Grand Lodge representation if it did. The Forfarshire Lodge was suspended by the Grand Lodge of Scotland, and Johnson's fees were returned to him, and his admission was ruled illegal.

​

By 1921, American eugenicists had so firmly implanted fears of racial pollution that 15 states had passed laws permitting involuntary sterilization. Between 1907 and 1927, over 8,000 such operations were performed. The shameful decision opened the door to forced sterilization across the nation.

 

Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility.

 

Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization.

 

These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.

 

“Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization.”

 

J D Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy

 

White trash is a phrase that conjures up images of dirty rural folk who are poor, ignorant, violent, and incestuous. But where did this stigmatizing phrase come from? And why do these stereotypes persist? Whether they say “white trash” or not, most Americans are unaware of its long and ugly history. Pressed to venture a guess, you’d probably say that the term arose in the Deep South, sometime in the middle of last century, as a term that whites coined to demean other whites less fortunate than themselves. Try again. The term white trash dates back not to the 1950s but to the 1820s.

 

It arises not in Mississippi or Alabama, but in and around Baltimore, Maryland. In 1854 Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her bestselling Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, devoted an entire chapter to “Poor White Trash,” explaining that the slave system produced “not only heathenish, degraded, miserable slaves, but it produces a class of white people who are, by universal admission, more heathenish, degraded, and miserable.”

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Matt Wray deviled the long history behind this term of abuse and others like it. Ranging from the early 1700s to the early 1900s, Not Quite White documents the origins and transformations of the multiple meanings projected onto poor rural whites in the United States. Wray draws on a wide variety of primary sources—literary texts, folklore, diaries and journals, medical and scientific articles, social scientific analyses—to construct a dense archive of changing collective representations of poor whites.

 

“The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included socalled “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

 

"Poor white trash," the crudest of these terms, is nonetheless still routinely used in televised comedy and talk shows and even general conversation. It also is the one that most starkly reveals the fundamental tensions in all these words between a, supposed normative racial identity ("white") and an antinormative (indeed, uncivilized) cultural and social status and outlook.

 

Throughout the early 19th century, the term was employed for different purposes by African Americans, abolitionists, and slavery apologists and defenders, all of whom used the label to critique (explicitly or implicitly) or justify the institution of slavery and its impact on southern Society.

 

In the early 20th century, textile mill operators and. middle-class Progressives who were heavily shaped by the predominant Social Darwinist view of biological social determinism also used the concept as a way of culturally bounding poor whites as lazy, dirty, criminal, and imbecilic degenerates who threatened national progress ... The term thus was a means to assert the unquestionable superiority of their own cultural valley system. By the late 20th century, the term had lost altogether its southern regional specificity, instead becoming a generalized if increasingly cartoonish critique of non-people of color who rejected middle-class standards of social advancement and ways of living.

 

These words thus we’re ultimately means of avoiding concerns about the failures of capitalism to truly benefit all in society.

 

The explicitly political origins and consequences of these terms and their deftly derogatory connotations, however, were hidden behind their ostensibly comical overtones, particularly for middle- and upper-class whites in positions of authority, but also, in a different context and with a different intent, for working-class whites and people of color. Accordingly. They have proved to be remarkably semantically and geographically malleable. As noted, " since at least the 1970s, "hillbilly," "redneck," "cracker," and, more recently. , even "poor white trash" have all been, reappropriated by some working-class and lower-middle-class whites as badges of class and racial identity and pride.

 

The oldest numeration system was found in Zaire by Dr. Jean de Heinzelin with markings on the Ishango Bone dated 8000 BC. She also said that the people were familiar with prime numbers and multiplication by two since the markings were paired at 3-6, 4-8, and 5-10.

 

Astronomy and astrology are believed to have existed for almost 50,000 years. The oldest stellar calendar is dated 4241 BC. It has 365 1/4 days and 12 months with 30 days in each month. The ancient Africans were also the first to divide the day into 24 hours and to begin the day at midnight.

 

African medical textbooks have been found that are over 5,000 years old. Ancient Africans were very well versed in medical diagnosis and treatment with as many as 1,000 animal, plant and mineral products used in the treatment of illness.

 

All religions are believed to have originated in Africa, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. General Massey states that the religious records of all religions including the Christian Bible are traceable and in many cases are direct copies of the religious records of ancient Egypt and Nubia.

 

St. Augustine, one of the founding fathers of Christian Theology, wrote " What is now called the Christian religion has existed among the ancients and was not absent from the beginning of the human race."

 

The ancient Black Egyptians, before they were ripped off the content by history books, created paper about 4000 BC, which made the recording of history and science more practical for library storage. It is estimated that over 700,000 books were in the libraries of Egypt before Homer, the father of Western literature, was even born. Gerald Massey states that the religious records of virtually all religions including the Christian Bible, are traceable and in many cases, direct copies of the religious records of ancient Egypt. J.A. Rogers says, "every Christian priest from Moses through Jesus was taught in the Egyptian mysteries system". Acts 7:22 in the Bible confirms that Moses was learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians. Every Greek philosopher and writer from Homer to Pythagoras and Aristotle are known to have studied in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians were also the first to produce paper and had over 700,000 books in their libraries when invaded by Alexander.

​

Could it be that Black history is the best-kept secret in the world or have politicians, including past presidents, denied Black history to accelerate Black disenfranchisement?

 

African Slaves were brought to America against their choice. They were kept here against their wishes. If they choose to become a part of "America"...they are denied the choice to exercise their full access and full rights within America.

 

Basically, poor black and white people who were all suffering under white supremacist capitalism joined forces to tear it down, albeit at the expense of indigenous tribes—several of whom also enslaved Africans.

 

After the war, a guy named Massaquoi was able to emigrate to the United States, where he became a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. Later, Hans became a marcher alongside Martin Luther King in Chicago. In Chicago, he took a job with Jet Magazine and then Ebony, where he rose to become the managing editor. For years he served with distinction, chronicling the saga of civil rights giants such as Dr. King and Muhammad Ali.

 

Despite his rise in a free post-war country, he always remembered that day in America on a train crossing south over the Mason-Dixon Line when the conductor gruffly demanded that he change seats to the segregated “colored car.” Angry, the conductor shouted, “Go where you niggers belong.”

 

According to his memoirs, Massaquoi could not resist frequent visits back to Germany, which he always considered his “homeland.” There were about 20 to 30 thousand black people from mixed marriages from the colonies in Africa.

 

They had to move to Germany because Germany had to give up their colonies in Africa after the First World War. He didn't find them a threat. He was concerned that there wouldn't be any blonde women left after a while. He had the black men sterilized. The Nazis hated NonWhite people especially Blacks. The Nazis killed at least 20,000 Blacks in the Holocaust, but they were not as targeted as the Jews. The Nazis also sterilized Blacks without their consent. The Nazi Nuremberg laws were mainly against the Jews but also made mention of Blacks and Romany.

 

Wealthy white people across the colonies gave "crackers" more power to solidify racial dominance and avoid what Martin Luther King Jr. would later attempt before his assassination—a "Poor People's Campaign." This power often took the form of being plantation overseers and, eventually, paddy rollers or "slave patrols." Then the police we all know and love.

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Common Sense was written in the language of ordinary people and used the Bible for inspiration. Paine used an angry, raging tone, ignoring the polite, rational style of his classically trained and educated contemporaries.

 

The conspiracy, commonly referred to as "THE WALL", is an ongoing expansion of the Mexico–United States barrier. Contrary to popular partisan rhetoric, the barrier is not one contiguous structure, but a series of physical obstructions realistically classified as a "fence". The total length of the continental border is 1,954 miles. Our U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that only 307 miles of the border wall have been renovated, and only 5 miles are new construction.

 

Between the physical barriers, security is provided "virtually" by a series of sensors, cameras, and other surveillance equipment used to dispatch United States Border Patrol. In January 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that it had almost 800 miles of fences in place.

 

Critics say, expanding the wall would not stop the routine misuse of legal ports of entry by people smuggling contraband, overstaying travel visas, using fraudulent documents, or stowing away.

 

They also point out that in addition to the misuse of ports of entry, even a border-wide wall could be bypassed by tunneling, climbing, or by using boats or aircraft. Additionally, along some parts of the border, the existing rough terrain may be a greater deterrent than a barricade.

 

Rough and remote terrain on many parts of the border, such as deserts and mountains, would make the construction and maintenance of a wall expensive. According to experts and analyses, the actual cost to construct a wall along the remaining 1,300 miles would cost a whooping $45 billion, with the cost of private land acquisitions pushing up the total cost further. Maintenance of the wall could cost up to $750 million a year, and if the Border Patrol agents were to patrol the wall, additional funds would have to be expended.

 

For some people, the term WALL may bring up thoughts of the physical walls mentioned above at the border or a house or walls that divide one property from another like in the story. However, the walls in this book are mostly theoretical. Our walls are not visible, but their impact has sabotaged and hindered the growth of America far more than any physical barrier.

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In real life, walls are supposed to create the feeling of being protected and safe. The problem is, they not only keep shit out; but also conserve hide conceal repress and stifle what is inside. In our story, like Mr. Block, sometimes you end up creating your own prison. Logically it makes sense that certain walls may create issues. Emotions also construct walls, like when someone cuts themselves off from others. In lay terms, all walls can lead to all kinds of consequences.

 

There is an inherent human need, to connect and to be with others, so even though someone is trying to protect themselves by having walls, all that ends up happening is the creation of detachment.

 

To understand why, we need to look at how the mind works and how past experiences can shape how people see the world.

 

Mass sterilization

 

Afro-Germans were under constant threat in Nazi Germany. The Reich was adamant that their bloodlines be terminated. Some offspring were traced to the African colonies. But those with a clear lineage to occupying French African colonial soldiers or American troops were the most detested among Nazi policymakers. These children were labeled with the derogation “Rhineland Bastards.”

 

Hitler made frequent references in Mein Kampf and in his speeches to ‘the Rhineland Bastards’.

 

After WW1 the French installed a permanent garrison in the Rhineland area of Germany, composed mostly of colonial troops. Frequent intermingling between this garrison and local German women produced a population of mixed-race children numbering somewhere close to 600 children.

 

These were the people Hitler referred to as ‘the Rhineland bastards. To ensure they could not further pollute the white race, a special Gestapo commission was created with the specific purpose of ensuring the forced sterilization of every single one of ‘the Rhineland Bastards’. Around 500 children were forcibly sterilized as part of this program- boys and girls, some as young as 11 years old.

 

A key member of the Nazi Party wrote, “It is essential to exterminate the leftovers from the black Shame on the Rhine. These mulatto children were created either through rape or by white mothers who were whores. In either case, there is no moral obligation whatsoever to this progeny of an alien race.”

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Because they were German citizens, the regime concluded that deportation or expulsion was impractical. Instead, Berlin decided to eliminate the group through sterilization. However, under the 1933 mandatory sterilization law, African descent was not listed as a justification.

 

So, in 1935, a secret working group was ordained, Special Commission Number 3, led by Fischer and two colleagues. Genealogies were evaluated one by one to prove ancestry to French African or African American parentage. A typical evaluation read: “C.M.B. of German nationality, born July 5, 1923, living in Koblenz, is a descendent of a member of the former Allied occupation forces, in this case an American negro, and shows corresponding typical anthropological characteristics, for which reason she shall be sterilized.”

 

The survey process took two years. Implementation finally began in 1937 after the triumphant visit of Jesse Owens. Approximately 385 youngsters of either French or American occupying troops were quickly sterilized at several hospitals, such as Bonn University’s Women’s Clinic.

 

Allied POWs in Nazi custody were treated according to the Geneva Convention, except those of the Russian army who were, in some situations, killed in large numbers. A second exception was the treatment of black soldiers, either from France or the United States. Scholarship is still emerging, but it is thought no direct order mandated the murder of black soldiers. But when captured, there were many instances of massacre. Those sent to POW camps were often, but not always, singled out for special brutal treatment.

 

French Africans, the Senegalese Tirailleurs, suffered great losses. It is suggested by military historians that 1,500 to 3,000 French African troops were summarily murdered when discovered by the Germans during the first weeks of War, known as “the Blitzkrieg.” The first such massacre is believed to have occurred on May 24, 1940, near the French village of Aubigny, when German units marched 50 captured French Africans into the distance and shot them. Some scholars believe the total killed, either in captivity or in combat, is between 55,000 and 60,000.

 

Flowers adorn one of three monuments at the Wereth 11 Memorial, dedicated to a group of black soldiers killed by the German SS during the early stages of the Battle of the Bulge. (Steven Hoover, Public Affairs Office of U.S. Army Garrison Benelux/American Forces Press Service.

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The record of African American GIs is even more obscure. Historians reviewing the events of 1944 have discovered a case in Salzburg. The SS shot African American airmen as a group. In Budapest, the Gestapo hung three pilots. On September 1, 1944, the SS murdered eleven young artillerymen of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion (FAB) after they surrendered from their hiding place in a private home. These were the so-called “Wereth 11.” Their bodies were disfigured and showed signs of torture. Despite this, Washington did not quickly investigate this war crime. It seems their horrible deaths were not a priority for the Pentagon.

 

The Mind

 

The mind seems illogical at first. This is because it associates things with their level of being safe. Once something is interpreted to be safe, the mind will hold onto it and won’t want to let it go. And what is classed as familiar can be functional and healthy or it can be dysfunctional and unhealthy. Now, this could be a way of seeing life and other people or a way that one behaves.

 

King Kong 1933, “It provokes our racial instincts to show a blonde woman of the Germanic type in the hand of an ape … For the German people, this film is unbearable,” a leading Nazi academic warned a film censorship committee.

 

When Jesse Owens, grandson of a slave, triumphed over Aryan athletes, garnering a record four medals in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, his victory was more than an Olympic feat — it was a prodigious defeat for the long-held German concept of racial hierarchy.

 

 

Nazi policy impacts American civil rights

 

During Hitler’s pre-war years, IBM helped the Reich cross-index those identified as Jews in the census with professional and industry registers and organizations. Once German Jews were exposed in their professions, they were summarily fired. Now Nazi policy directly impacted African Americans in the United States — but with a great benefit. Under Hitler’s repression, some 2,000 German and Austrian refugee scholars fled to America.

 

More than 50 German-Jewish academics relocated to a number of historically black colleges and universities, such as Howard University in Washington, D.C., North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University), Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia, and Talladega University in Birmingham.

 

The influx of German-Jewish academics offered an unexpected stimulus to many African Americans’ educational experiences during the formative years of the preCivil Rights era. Refugee professors helped set the stage for the intellectual movement to come.

 

So, if one has built walls around themselves, it is for a reason. Whether it was for their own survival or a pretend comfort zone, walls can be dysfunctional and unhealthy. Yes. They allowed one to stay safe and to cope with a situation that may be scary. But the trouble is that most of the time, the dams we build lead to a flood of pain and separation.

 

Trump claims the US/-Mexico border wall is necessary to stop crime, drugs, and caravans of immigrants from illegally entering the United States. Republicans and Democrats have longtime claimed that illegal immigrants will take jobs, smuggle drugs, kidnap people, bring in cartels, rape, murder, and do other horrible things, no wonder we need the wall, right? however the real reason for the wall: racism, xenophobia and nativism.

 

Grouping together an entire race or ethnicity, and judging them negatively on the actions of a few, is both a generalization and racism. When the police do bad things, it is a few apples…

 

Hell, anything associated with people of color, has been criminalized, from the shape or features of our bodies to simply expressing our disgust, it’s the whole bunch that needs to GO…

 

Why was it so easy for Americans to fall for the limits of an “us” vs. “them” situation? Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger has a theory.

 

Remember the thrill of building walls as a kid? Forts made from snow, or a giant cardboard box. Burying ourselves in blankets and pillows.

 

Walling ourselves off from our enemies — real or imagined — to fight heroic battles until it was time for dinner, that was our go too as kids. As adults, nothing has changed. Some folks swear undying loyalty to sports teams and literally hate their rivals. While the athletes themselves flit from one team to another in search of bigger contracts. The beloved politicians sneer, shake fists, and belittle the opposing right or left, all while dining, lobbing, and making deals with corporate America to sell out to the very folks who elect them. Each team making their stance to save the America they want or believe is their birthright.

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With passion, sometimes to the point of violence, they scream,” this is for the future”, while fucking up everything in the present.

 

Even though everyone knows ALL this shit is part of the game.

 

People construct artificial partitions out of anything they don’t feel comfortable confronting: Democrats and Republicans, black and white, millennials and baby boomers. Even those of us who are against building walls find ourselves pointing accusing fingers at those wall-builders.

 

Being human means there is a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we’re all one babel, yet we still divided ourselves into imagined races from made up places.

 

Why are we this way, what are the costs of being like this — and what, if anything, can we do about it?

 

So again, why are we this way?

 

Sebastian Junger points out that we evolved as a species to survive in harsh environments. For thousands of years, our ability to band together against a common enemy (weather, wild beasts, other tribes) was lifesaving.

 

Those who were most inclined to form a community were more likely to survive and pass along their genes. Facing common dangers as a group made people feel close and cooperative.

 

As time develops the mind, groups begin to define themselves. Caucasian, Male, born in Iowa, vegan, catholic, good at learning languages, etc. With these labels, I form a individuality I call myself. Psychologist Erik Erikson wrote, “there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.”

 

Personal ego’s put labels on entire groups of people to make Id’s feel better. It is easy to ignore things I don’t like about myself and even easier to locate those qualities in others. If all New Yorkers are pushy, or all politicians are dishonest, we do not have to do the hard work of figuring out who’s who or what’s what.

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Orwell, whose book 1984 depicts this with terrifying accuracy, defined nationalism as “the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad.” Once we slap a label on others, we don’t bother to look more closely, and our fears feel safe to grow.

 

Then we have the infamous voices of media like Fox and MSNBC growing ever more partisan, it’s easy to restrict ourselves without even realizing it. We wall ourselves off into smaller and tighter bubbles of people like us. Whose views we agree with. The result is that we’re mystified by the beliefs of those on the other side of social and economic divides: “those Trump supporters”; “those Hillary supporters”; “those Brexit voters.” Our fears about others increase, with no chance to see how much of the basic “one race” humanness we share.

 

Labeling entire groups of people as good guys or bad guys is dangerous, because we end up accidentally putting white hats on bad guys and black hats on good guys. If all Muslims are terrorists, we don’t pay attention to exactly who it is who’s heading toward extremism — whether Muslim, Christian, vegan, or carnivore. We are actually less safe.

 

We waste precious resources. Trying to wall ourselves off from entire groups of people is exhausting and inefficient. We’ve spent a trillion dollars protecting the United States since 9/11, and Steven Brill notes that we are arguably no safer than we were 15 years ago.

 

Detroit — Dwight Smith never thought much about the six-foot-high wall that snakes a half mile through his northwest neighborhood near Eight Mile.

 

He became aware of it as a middle schooler in the 1950s, when classmates talked about which side they lived on. Later, he visited with neighbors whose homes included a stretch of the wall in their backyards.

 

But it wasn't until seven years ago — when Smith, 70, started exploring the history of his neighborhood, known as Garden Homes — that he learned why the wall was built in 1941: To separate black families living in the community from white residents expected to move in.

 

Why do we build walls? Walls in a home provide a barrier to keep out the elements, to ensure privacy, and to hang pictures. Why do we build walls? Fear! For protection. As a defense against hostile forces.

 

Hadrian’s Wall in Great Britain was built for a similar reason: to keep the wild tribes of the north from threatening civilized Roman settlements in the south. It was built in the second century and ran 73 miles long through the English countryside.

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The Great Wall of China was built to keep out the invading hordes of Genghis Khan and other powerful enemies. This amazing defensive palisade stretches for 6700 kilometers over the Chinese frontier. It has stood for over 2000 years and is a symbol of a peoples’ desire to be safe.

 

The Walls of Benin the capital of present-day Edo, Nigeria consist of 16,000 kilometers described as "the world's largest wall by the Guinness book of Records.

 

In more recent history we will recall the infamous Berlin Wall and its notorious purpose of keeping people in. Those who had visited the wall before its destruction in 1989 said that they could feel the built-in suspicion and mutual distrust, the hatred and hostility, and the outright defiance represented by that wall. When the wall finally came down, it believed, the Germans discovered an invisible wall that was even more difficult to tear down.

 

There were two cultures at odds: one of an oppressed people, the other free-thinking and prosperous, almost like America.

 

Why do we build walls?

 

All of us have invisible walls that are difficult to deconstruct. If we are honest about who we are, most have to admit that they do not allow others to see their true selves. They are afraid people will see too much. Afraid they will lose something if others are allowed to influence or change who they think they are, the scared safe comfortable person they hide behind walls of dissonance and fallacies. These walls are created by hostility and hatred and distrust.

 

Evangelicals forget that Jesus came to destroy walls. His mission was to remove the barriers that keep us from knowing God, knowing each other, and ultimately living together as God’s children. You are not foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens and members of God’s household. Christ has created a new society where we are no longer outcasts but members of God’s Kingdom, right?

 

The end of the stain of forced physical bondage brought about significant changes, but the legacy of this history continues to impact society in 2025.

 

In Galveston, Texas, the remnants of fortifications like Fort San Jacinto stand as a testament to the region's strategic importance during various conflicts. These walls, once built to protect the ports and maintain control, now serve as historical markers reminding us of the past.

 

The physical walls of these forts are not the only barriers we must contend with. The invisible walls—those nuanced and insidious obstacles, are just as formidable. These walls manifest in societal attitudes, institutional policies, and the lingering echoes of discrimination. They are the invisible fortifications that seek to limit progress and perpetuate inequality. Yet, they also become battlegrounds where victories are fought and won.

 

The United Daughters of the Confederacy played a significant role in erecting statues and naming schools to maintain the memory of the Confederacy. These monuments and institutions were often intended to glorify the Confederate cause and perpetuate the values of the antebellum South. They stand as visible walls, tall and imposing, stark in their ugliness and what they represent. Each statue and school name serves as a reminder of the systemic efforts to uphold a narrative that sought to subjugate and oppress.

 

But the story is not one of victimhood; it is one of hard-won resilience against the generational "foot on the neck." The dismantling of these walls, both invisible and visible, is a testament to the relentless struggle for justice and equality. Each act of defiance, each challenge to the status quo, chips away at these barriers, inch by painful inch.

 

The question, the elephant in the room, must be addressed: Black history is not a separate narrative, but a fundamental part of everyone's history. It's the other side of literary and theatrical misrepresentations, the truths obscured by convenient lies. Acknowledging this history is like climbing a formidable wall, where each step reveals more of the story that has been hidden from view.

 

Hiding from the battering ram that threatens to demolish these walls of disillusion does not make the impending change any less real. Just as Santa had to be slain— metaphorically speaking—to confront the reality that follows, so too must these walls come down to reveal the truths they have concealed for so long. The dismantling of these barriers is not just a necessary act of destruction but a crucial step toward constructing a more honest and inclusive narrative.

 

By challenging these walls, we confront the uncomfortable truths of our shared history. These are not victories easily won or stories neatly concluded. They are ongoing struggles, fraught with setbacks and marked by small, often uncelebrated, gains. The fight against these walls is real, gritty, and unflinchingly honest.

 

It is about demanding acknowledgment, reclaiming space, and rewriting the narrative to reflect the full, unvarnished truth of our past and present.

 

The legacy of Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19th in Galveston and across the nation, is a powerful reminder of this ongoing struggle. It marks the day Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay in 1865 to announce the end of slavery, a momentous occasion that symbolizes the breaking of physical chains. Yet, it also serves as a call to continue the fight against the invisible chains that still bind us. Juneteenth is a celebration of liberation, and a recognition of the victories won against the forces that sought to keep generations oppressed.

 

In the broader context of American history, the fight against these walls extends beyond Galveston. Across the country, ongoing efforts to confront and dismantle these walls are a testament to the enduring spirit of defiance and resilience. It is a recognition that while the battles may be long and arduous, the victories are profound and far-reaching. The legacy of those who have fought and continue to fight against these barriers is one of triumph, not of victimhood. It is a story of overcoming the generational "foot on the neck" and emerging victorious in the face of adversity.

 

Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921

Rosewood Massacre, 1923

Harlem Race Riot, 1935

Beaumont Race Riot, 1943

Detroit Race Riot, 1943

Columbia Race Riot, 1946

Peekskill Riot, 1949

Urban Uprisings, 1960-2000

Cambridge, Maryland Riot, 1963

The Harlem Race Riot, 1964

Rochester Rebellion, 1964

Jersey City Uprising, 1964

Paterson, New Jersey Uprising, 1964

Elizabeth, New Jersey Uprising, 1964

Chicago (Dixmoor) Riots, 1964

Philadelphia Race Riot, 1964

Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles), 1965

Cleveland’s Hough Riots, 1966

Chicago, Illinois Uprising, 1966

The Dayton, Ohio Uprising, 1966

Hunter’s Point, San Francisco Uprising, 1966

The Nashville Race Riot, 1967

Newark Race Riot, 1967

Plainfield, New Jersey Riot, 1967

Detroit Race Riot, 1967

Flint, Michigan Riot, 1967

Tucson Race Riot, 1967

Grand Rapids, Michigan Uprising, 1967

The King Assassination Riots, 1968

Hartford, Connecticut Riot, 1969

Asbury Park Race Riot, 1970

Camden, New Jersey Riots, 1969 and 1971

Miami (Liberty City) Riot, 1980

Crown Heights (Brooklyn) New York Riot, 1991

Rodney King Riot, 1992

West Las Vegas Riot, 1992

St. Petersburg, Florida Riot, 1996

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College Campus Violence

 

University of Georgia Desegregation Riot, 1961

Ole Miss Riot, 1962

Houston (Texas Southern University) Riot, 1967

Orangeburg Massacre, 1968

Jackson State Killings, 1970

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21st Century Racial Violence

 

Cincinnati Riot, 2001

Oscar Grant Oakland Protests, 2009-2011

Ferguson Riot and Ferguson Unrest, 2014-2015

Baltimore Protests and Riots, 2015

Charleston Church Massacre, 2015

Milwaukee Riot, 2016

Charlotte Riot, 2016

Jackson State Killings, 1970

 

Walls, both invisible and visible, are not insurmountable. They are challenges to be met and overcome, symbols of the ongoing struggle. In Johnson’s fight, the climb ended. He skipped bail and left the country, joining Lucille in Montreal on June 25, before fleeing to France. To flee to Canada, Johnson posed as a member of a black baseball team.

 

For the next seven years, they lived in exile in Europe, South America and Mexico. Johnson returned to the U.S. on July 20, 1920. He surrendered to federal agents at the Mexican border and was sent to the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, to serve his sentence in September 1920. He died in a car crash in 1946 at the age of 68. In 2018, Johnson was posthumously pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump.

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Brown, Gillian. “The Quixotic Fallacy.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32 (1999): 250.

 

ANOTHER HOLOCAUST: Arab traders exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, to the Middle East, and to North Africa. African slave exports via the Red Sea, transSahara, and East Africa/Indian Ocean to other parts of the world between 1500- 1900 totaled at least 5 million Africans sent into bondage. Between 1450 and 1850, at least 12 million Africans were shipped from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean--the notorious Middle Passage"-- primarily to colonies in North America, South America, and the West Indies. 80% of these kidnapped Africans (or at least 7 million) were exported during the 18th century, with a mortality rate of probably 10-20% on the ships enroute for the Americas. Unknown numbers (probably at least 4 million) of Africans died in slave wars and forced marches before being shipped. News headlines in 1989 highlighted significant global events: tanks moved through Tiananmen Square, East Germans celebrated as they brought down the Berlin Wall, and Tim Berners-Lee introduced a hypertextual information management tool called the World Wide Web. Additionally, Pepsi Co. purchased twenty Soviet warships. Pepsi wanted to more than double its presence in the country, adding 26 bottling plants and two Pizza Hut locations. The only problem? Despite the increased presence of Western investments, the Ruble's international prospects had not improved. McDonald's, for example, had to spend millions of dollars to solve its foreign exchange problems when opening its Pushkin Square location. Luckily, Pepsi already had a blueprint, but this time, vodka and tomato sauce couldn't cover the billion-dollar price tag. To diversify their offering, the Soviets sold the Cola manufacturer 17 submarines and a collection of warships. On paper, the deal tied Pepsi with India for the 7th largest fleet of military submarines. Being angry all the time wears you down and adversely affects all of your relationships. No one wants to be with someone who is angry and resentful all the time. Let go of it. Let go of it because you refuse to judge others for their past and you have released your own shame and accepted yourself the way you are. Embrace your love for yourself and others. Use that

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