We hope you enjoy our #VRABlackHistory Series 2025
“Facing Extremism: How Our Ancestors Successfully Fought For Our Rights and #WeWillToo”
From the Transformative Justice Coalition and the Voting Rights Alliance
Please note, if you’d like to opt out from only the upcoming daily Black History Month Voting Rights Alliance #VRABlackHistory series, please email carnwine@tjcoalition.org. Unsubscribing at the bottom of this email unsubscribes you to all Transformers, not just from this special February Series.
Past American Insurrections (1867 and 1875)
Deadly violence has plagued the African-American quest for racial justice since the end of the civil war. Sadly these insurrections oftentimes resulted in the destruction of Black voting power. We must recognize this true line of violent history of the past to the violent history of the present.
“It’s not that the [January 6th, 2021] rioters were duped by Trump, but that his lies found fertile ground amid their fears…’The word ‘disinformation’ is off,’ [Robert] Pape [a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has been gathering information on rioters who faced prosecution for their involvement on January 6th] says. ‘It’s about demographic change and whether you’re afraid of it or not.’…[His research found] [t]he more a county’s white population declined, percentage wise, the more likely it was to send a would-be rioter to the Capitol…To believe that whiteness is on the decline is to accept what Theodore W. Allen, author of The Invention of the White Race, calls the Great White Assumption: ‘the unquestioning, indeed unthinking acceptance of the ‘white’ identity of European-Americans of all classes as a natural attribute rather than a social construct.’ This assumption is what allows the media to discuss a point of paranoia-fueled Klan dogma—that whiteness is a thing to be protected and Blackness a thing to be negated—as a ‘theory’. Such distinctions—between reality and the stories we tell ourselves— matter a great deal…we miss opportunities to transform the systems that uphold America’s story by means of fiction instead of truth. As Pape puts it, the insurrectionists ‘are motivated by what they see as their interest to believe the lie…They’re developing this understanding of their interests where race is at the center of it. This isn’t just about disinformation as magical thinking,’ he adds. ‘There’s a conservative set of beliefs here.’ Indeed, narratives of whiteness under threat are conservative talking points as old as the Civil War.”
Please note that in a future article we will place into context President Trump’s pardons of the January 6th, 2021 insurrectionists.
This article was curated by Caitlyn Arnwine (formerly Caitlyn Cobb) in 2023 and slightly updated in 2024 to take out 2023-specific articles. Note from the author: This article is comprised of quotes from many different articles in order to provide a more comprehensive account of this time period as well as to keep this article more brief. A complete reference list can be found at the end of this article.
Today, February 6th, 2025, we remember past American insurrections that occurred in 1867 and 1875.
In 2025, facing a hostile federal administration determined to perpetuate racial division, fear, hatred, and retaliation by using “the Great White Replacement Theory”, it is important to note the nefarious history of political insurrections and coups to staunch or destroy African American political power.
