What Celebrating Black History Month Can Teach Us About Resistance and Building Community During the Trump Years

1. Resist

Yes, the story of Black Americans includes slavery and oppression, but it also includes creativity, innovation, and RESISTANCE. From the Africans who revolted against European enslavers, to the mutinies aboard slave ships like the Amistad, to the untold thousands who jumped overboard, to the slave rebellions of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, and others, to the runaways and the poisoners, to the Blacks who built thriving segregated communities, to the unnamed millions who marched and protested during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and beyond ... resistance is in our DNA. 

If our ancestors had just given up when things got too hard, none of us would be here today. When the government fought against them and laws were passed to oppress them, they still found ways to resist. Those acts of resistance started off small, but they eventually grew into movements that changed the course of history. We can learn from this. There's no such thing as powerlessness. Ordinary people can accomplish impossible things when they work together to fight for what they believe in.

2. Organize

When I was growing up, every school, church, and McDonald's celebrated Black History Month. I always knew when it was February because I would start hearing all about Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and black inventors. I'm thankful for those celebrations, but they always left me with questions. For instance, it seemed like the Civil Rights Movement could have happened by accident. I mean, Homer Plessy sat in the wrong train car. Rosa Parks was tired. Black people in the South seemed to all snap around the same time, and I guessed Dr. King came in to get everything organized. This is definitely NOT what happened!

The Civil Right Movement is basically a master class in organization and strategy. Both Homer Plessy and Rosa Parks were engaging in civil disobedience, which means disobeying the law as a form of protest. Both were part of organizations trying to end Jim Crow segregation. (Rosa was actually the secretary of her local NAACP.) Plessy's activism may have backfired, but Rosa's changed everything!

The lesson here is to organize. Every city and town across America should have groups for like-minded individuals to share their concerns and create a plan for resistance. If your community doesn't already have something like this, build it! Start a new organization or charter a new chapter of an existing one. Once you create a space to organize, use it! Meet regularly to support each other and share your ideas. Then work together to take concrete steps toward change. 

3. Step Up

Let's be honest, everything I've said so far has been inspirational, but you're probably still not going to run for office or start an organization. It doesn't mean you don't care. It doesn't mean you aren't paying attention. Most people just have too much going on in their daily lives to get personally involved. But just think about it for a moment. What if you did?

We remember sit-ins as one of the main tactics of the Civil Rights Movement, but do you know how they started? In 1960, four students at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro decided to take matters into their own hands. They saw boycotts and marches happening across the South and wanted to get involved, but they didn't know how to organize anything like that in their community. They didn't know Dr. King. They didn't have an organization or a budget behind them. All they had was themselves. They changed history by sitting at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter and refusing to leave despite all forms of verbal and physical abuse. After the first day, dozens of other students appeared to back them up. Within months, sit-ins were happening across the South. A key civil rights organization called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) also grew out of the bravery of those four students. 

I hope their story inspires you to get off the sidelines and get involved. I think it was Marc Elias of Democracy Docket who recently said, "No one is coming to save us. We're on our own." Some people took this as an attack on the media and the Democratic Party, but I took it as a call to action. This is not one of those times where we sit around and hope the politicians in Washington figure things out. Now is the time to find ways YOU can take action. Run for something. Encourage someone you trust to run. Join or start an organization. Start a book club or meetup group to discuss current events with your friends and family. Contact your representatives. Attend a rally or protest. Better yet, organize your own. Talk to the young people in your lives, and help them process what's going on.  

The thing about oppression is it creates resistance. Every step it takes to silence opposition also inspires people to rise up against it.   

4. Understand How to Use the Media

The true genius of the Civil Rights Movement was its leaders' understanding of the power of media. The strategy of nonviolent resistance repeatedly showed the brutality of Southern law enforcement officers and racists on live televisions and in newspapers around the world. 

Have you ever wondered how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott when he was just a 26-year-old relatively unknown pastor in 1955? Well, he was new in town, well-educated, articulate, and attractive, so he was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which organized the boycott. His charisma and captivating speaking style helped him rally support for the boycott in Montgomery. These same qualities helped him capture the nation's attention and eventually the world's.

Opposition leaders need to better understand how to use the media to advance the causes they care about. When it comes to new forms of media like social networks and podcasts, this may require a generational shift. However, the principles of using all forms of media are essentially the same. Media is a powerful way to grab people's attention. Images and videos are, unfortunately for this writer, worth thousands of words. They can also be an impactful way to send a message to authority. 

At the end of the day, civil rights protesters just confronted America with the consequences of its actions. Everyone knew that conditions in the South were bad for Black people, but they didn't know the details. Suddenly, they were forced to watch peaceful protesters (men, women, and children) being beaten and killed on live television--sometimes by law enforcement. It became too much for the public to stomach. Congressional opposition folded and legislation quickly followed. 

5. Sue, Baby, Sue!

Don't think for a minute that resistance is just about protesting. Protesting is an important way to make a political statement, but it doesn't always lead to concrete changes. That's why legal efforts have always been an important part of Black resistance strategies. Black people have been suing America since before the Civil War in an effort to force this country to live up to its ideals and stand behind the things written in our Constitution. 

I have to be honest. Sometimes lawsuits don't go the way you plan. In 1857, Dred Scott thought he was going win his freedom; instead the Supreme Court ripped citizenship rights and legal standing away from him and every Black person in the United States. In 1896, Homer Plessy thought he could force the federal government to outlaw Jim Crow segregation in the South; instead the Supreme Court established the "separate but equal" doctrine. Despite these infamous setbacks, countless legal victories eventually brought segregation to an end. 

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision is probably the most well-known of these legal victories. Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first Black Supreme Court Justice, argued that separating people by race can never create equality. Black sociologists Mamie and Kenneth Clark helped him prove this with their heartbreaking "doll studies," which gave little girls a black doll and a white doll and asked them which doll had a list of positive and negative traits. With stunning agreement, the little girls all seemed to associate positive traits like happiness, beauty, and being a good girl with the white doll, while associating negative traits like ugliness, laziness, and being bad with the black doll. The saddest part was that the little Black girls seemed to internalize this racism just as much as the little white girls. This is what finally made the judges realize that no matter how "equal" separate accommodations may be in theory, the separation itself creates a stigma of white superiority. 

The moral of this story is sue, baby, sue! Sue to challenge America to stand behind its own ideals. Sue to activate our government's built-in checks and balances. Sue when you have already failed because next time, you might actually succeed. 

Lawsuits get your facts on the public record. Court decisions create precedents that can be built upon in future cases. Suing can slow down the pace of unpopular legislation and executive orders. It shows the powerful that you won't be pushed around. So sue, baby, sue!

6. Educate

Carter G. Woodson showed us what we can accomplish when we take it upon ourselves to educate our own communities. No disrespect to America's teachers. I love you guys to death, and I know you're out there doing the Lord's work, but schools are not the gatekeepers of knowledge in this country. Learning does not stop when you leave high school or college or finish your degree. At that point, we all have a responsibility to keep ourselves and our communities informed. 

Speaking of which, have you ever heard of Ida B. Wells? She was a pioneering African American journalist, activist, and researcher who fearlessly exposed the horrors of lynching in the South. Her investigative reporting, characterized by meticulous research, data collection, and powerful storytelling, challenged the prevailing narratives of racial violence and injustice. Her work got anti-lynching laws passed in Congress and laid the foundation for modern independent journalism by demonstrating the power of investigative reporting to hold the people in power accountable and advocate for social change.

We can learn a lot from her, but the lesson I want to focus on here is twofold: create and support independent media. I have always believed that writers and journalists are educators. We collect information about what is going on in society and present it to the public in a palatable way. Sometimes we do this as therapy, to keep our own anxieties at bay. Sometimes we do it seeking fame (good luck with that!). But regardless of our motivations, we all of have a desire to inform people and empower them with information at a time when they need it the most. We may not all be dealing with issues as important as Ida's, but a lot of us are trying to create a public record and bring attention to things the Administration is desperately trying to sweep under the rug. We're dedicating our time and effort to resistance, so support us. And if you have something to say, create your own blog or video channel, and give us the chance to support you!