For Black Americans, The White Terror In D.C. Looks Familiar | HuffPost - 0 views
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This was the case for pro-Trump rioters in 2021. It was also the case for white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, in America’s first and only successful coup d’etat.
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His refusal to accept the results of a fair and free election, as well as his spread of lies and conspiracy theories about election fraud, emboldened his base to besiege the U.S. Capitol building, riot on its steps, fire bullets in its halls and terrorize elected officials.
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Nooses, unambiguous symbols of mob mentality and racial terror against Black Americans, were strung up on the Capitol grounds to remind everyone exactly what the rioters stood for — and who they stood against.
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Many saw this coming. The rioters had been planning in plain sight. But perhaps Black Americans were the least surprised by the day’s events. The precedent had been set, time and again. We don’t have to look back that far for reminders: Whether in 1900, or 1925, or 1939, or 1965, or 2020, white terror has been deeply embedded in American culture, especially in the face of Black progress and the quest for freedom and equality.
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For more than a century, Black Americans have documented and warned us of similar moments where racial terror and white supremacy were the status quo.
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Less than a year later, at the height of the KKK’s popularity, 30,000 members descended upon Washington, and were welcomed by the city.
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Civil rights activists, including the late John Lewis, set off to peacefully march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to advocate for equal voting rights. Lewis, then 25, was beaten by Alabama state troopers and his skull was fractured. Activist Amelia Boynton Robinson was knocked unconscious. They were tear-gassed.
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And then there are too many instances to list from the last six years of the Black Lives Matter movement. At protest after protest against police brutality, Black activists were met with state-sanctioned violence at the hands of police.
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“I guarantee you if that was a Black Lives Matter protest in D.C., there would already be people shackled, arrested or dead,
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“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” he said. “We all know that’s true, and it is unacceptable.”