During this year of 2024, like almost everyone else, my attention has been drawn to the presidential campaign, which is uniquely historical and unprecedent by both the personal and political histories of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. The public rhetoric and tenor of the race seem to be just as unprecedented, often painfully intense and uncomfortable to observe. Yet, what I have found particularly captivating are the themes of each campaign, one seeking a new way forward and the other to make our nation great, again.
It is the history of this nation moving forward and being great that takes on a special meaning for me as a Black American Catholic. As captivating as the campaign has been, 2024 has been an anniversary year for several events and voices that are the finest examples of this nation moving forward and toward greatness in its aspiration to be a democracy for all of its citizens and a beacon of light and hope for the world.
Forty years ago on Sept. 9, 1984, 10 Black bishops of the United States Catholic Church published a pastoral letter entitled, “What We Have Seen and Heard.” While the letter was a call to Black American Catholics to do the work of evangelization and to share our African American heritage with the Church, they made a poignant observation about our nation’s history and the important role its Black citizens have played in shaping it:
“If the story America is told with honesty and clarity, we must all recognize the role that Blacks have played in the growth of this country. At every turning point of American history, we come face to face with the Black man and Black woman. What is true of our national history is even truer of American Catholic history.”
In describing the “opportunities and responsibilities” for Black Catholics in evangelization, the letter notes “the causes of justice and social concern are an essential part of evangelization... As Black people in a powerful nation we must have concern for those who hunger and thirst for justice everywhere in the present world... Let us not ignore those whom others tend to forget.”
As I thought of the other anniversary events recognized in 2024 that are emblematic of our nation’s growth and the role that the Black citizens played in moving it forward and its greatest advancements toward justice and equality for all citizens, they each reflect the truth of the bishops’ statements. The first of these anniversaries was the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, issued 70 years ago in May of 1954. Through this decision, the Court reversed its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson,163 U.S. 537, upholding the “separate but equal” doctrine, permitting the separation of races in public accommodations.
The question before the Court was whether “segregation of children solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?” The Court held it did, noting the negative “intangible considerations” of segregated public schools. Sociological studies of the devastating impact of racial segregation on Black children presented during the litigation had been profound in revealing the scars of the indignities of racial segregation on children restricted to Black-only schools.
Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the Court, noted that state-sanctioned separation of Black children in grade and high schools “from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” (347 U.S. at 494). While the actual desegregation of schools would take decades to happen in some states, the decision had moved the nation forward toward the Constitutional commitment to equal protection and opportunity under the law for all citizens.
Another important anniversary recognized this year was the 60th year anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Pub. L. 88-352), signed into law on July 2, 1964. This act prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in public accommodations, public education, employment practices and in voter registration requirements, and it established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency with enforcement authority to implement the law. The act was a major outcome of the Civil Rights Movement because of its wide sweeping purpose to outlaw and eliminate longstanding Jim Crow laws and practices that affected all aspects of life for Black Americans and other minority groups in the nation.
The civil rights activism of 1964 provided some of the most moving testimonies about racial discrimination and hostilities endured by Black Americans in our nation up to that time. One such powerful and unforgettable speech was made by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She would encounter resistance and objections to her speaking at the convention so much that her testimony was not televised as she spoke. But it was recorded, and that recording would be played for all to see, and its power continues to resound to this day.
Mrs. Hamer would speak for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to be recognized by the credentials committee as a democratically representative delegation for all citizens of Mississippi, instead of the regular all-white delegation that deliberately and consistently excluded participation of Mississippi’s Black citizens in the electoral process. In a firm and steady voice, Mrs. Hamer vividly described the harassment, brutal treatment and persistent resistance of the state against her and other Black citizens in their efforts to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. She would passionately present this question in her testimony:
“[I]f the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives are threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”
While the Freedom Democratic Party would not be seated as delegation representatives at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, the 1972 Democratic National Convention would implement rules to achieve better representation among minority groups and women and voters under 30 in various states’ delegations to achieve greater democracy in the political process of its party deliberations.
When I vote this November, I will be remembering Ms. Hamer’s words, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and many other moments in our nation’s history when it moved forward and with greatness in “concern for those who hunger and thirst for justice everywhere.”
(Veryl Miles serves as special assistant to the President of the Catholic University of America and is a professor of law at the University’s Columbus School of Law.)
