I pride myself on my knowledge of history. I majored in it, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard; I taught it for ten years; I have written a history textbook and helped make a Sundance Award-winning historical documentary; I spent most of my recent sabbatical touring historical sites, especially those associated with African-American history, a particular passion of mine. Yet I am constant amazed by how much I don’t know.
I just finished a new book entitled Buried in the Bitter Waters: The History of Racial Cleansing in America by Elliott Jaspin. In this amazing book I learned of repeated instances where entire counties were “cleansed” of blacks in the 19th and 20th century through planned, orchestrated campaigns of terror by the white populace. The author documents over a dozen specific case studies, in states like Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Tennessee, of these instances. It made me jaw drop to realize how much our country’s history resembled the more recent histories of Serbia and Rwanda – and the fact that I, a proud student of history in general and African-American history in particular, had no idea these instances had ever occurred.
Turns out I am not alone: when the author asked NAACP President, Professor, and civil rights legend Julian Bond what he knew about the history of racial cleansing in Georgia’s Forsyth County, barely an hour from Mr. Bond’s former home in Atlanta, Mr. Bond was honest enough to reply “Nothing.” Our collective ignorance is not accidental: the author began the book as a series for the Cox newspaper chain (publisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among others) for which he worked, which insisted he remove the term “racial cleansing” and edit the piece in such a way as to remove the brutal truth of it, i.e. that whites had systemically driven blacks out of certain areas through violence, murder, and terror, largely for their own economic benefit (they usually wanted land owned by blacks or to eliminate black laborers as competition for jobs).
As a country, we remain in denial about the uglier aspects of our history and how they might motivate some folks (like say, oh, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright) to feel a tad cynical about our nation’s intention of keeping its promise of “liberty and justice for all” when it comes to black Americans. We certainly have little history of doing so, and a truly appalling history of doing the opposite, as Buried in the Bitter Waters shows. I urge you all to read it.