JuLY 2024 Edition
Remembrance of Benjamin Thomas to be held at Shiloh Baptist Church
Join Us For the Remembrance of Benjamin Thomas, Aug. 8, 2024, 6:30 p.m. Shiloh Baptist Church, Featured Speaker, Rachel Laser.
Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024
Doors open at 6:15 p.m. Program begins at 6:30 p.m.
Shiloh Baptist Church, 1401 Jamieson Ave.
Featured Speaker: Rachel Laser, CEO of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and educator on racism, will speak on “Why the Parental Rights Movement is Anti-Civil Rights”
Free
On Mon. Aug. 28, 1899, more than 600 people attended a mass meeting at Shiloh Baptist Church for two reasons, to memorialize Benjamin Thompson and to protest his lynching. At the packed event, leaders from churches in Alexandria and the District, called for an economic boycott of any business associated with those who took part in the mob. This event was the last in a string of protests that began soon after Benjamin Thomas was arrested.
To mark the 125th year since the brutal murder of Benjamin Thomas and pay tribute to the efforts of the Black community to first protect him and then to hold those who killed him accountable, ACRP will also hold a Mass Meeting. Join us for an hour long program of memory, music and learning. Rachel Laser, an educator on racism and the head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, will focus her remarks on attempts to stifle an honest account of our shared history in our public schools as well as ongoing attacks on schools and libraries.
In addition to the Remembrance Event on Aug. 8, 2024, the site of the lynching of Benjamin Thomas, Alexandria’s City Hall and The George Washington Masonic Memorial will be illuminated in purple, the color of mourning, on Aug. 7-12.
Please visit Benjamin Thomas’ In Memoriam page on the ACRP website to learn more about what happened to him and see how Alexandria has remembered and memorialized him in past years.
Rachel Laser is a lawyer, advocate and strategist dedicated to making our country more inclusive, learn more about her here.
Feature Article
The Pursuit of Truth
Thursday, August 8, 2024 marks the day in 1899 that Alexandrians lynched a 16-year-old boy.
Benjamin Thomas was Black and when a seven-year-old white girl showed up at his door and asked for an ax his family had borrowed from hers, he allegedly treated her in a way that made her feel bad. After Thomas’ arrest, there was a threat to lynch him, but hundreds of Black men spent the night protecting him. The perceived slight, and the Black community’s attempt to protect Thomas, left white Alexandrians feeling insulted. The next night, they reacted hastily and violently, torturing and killing an innocent youth.
More than a century later, a parental rights movement wants to halt truthful history lessons about our shared past in the name of protecting the feelings of white children. A number of white authorities have responded by putting policies in place to chill the racial reckoning that surged after George Floyd’s death. In Virginia, schools have been instructed to eliminate lessons, books and classroom teaching if it had the potential to make white children feel bad.
In a 2022 Executive Order schools were instructed to cease teaching “divisive concepts,” remove Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives (such as implicit bias lessons) as well as eliminate the word equity from education programs, and replace it with “opportunity” whenever possible. The order unfortunately furthered misinformation used by the parents rights groups by implying that Critical Race Theory, a college level theory, was being taught in public school classrooms. But the most unpopular aspect of the host of new directives was a short-lived Orwellian tip line that allowed the state to reach into classrooms. Parents and students were encouraged to use it to rein in wayward instructors. This more than any of the other policies caused teacher morale to sink.
Statewide, the impact of these policies has been felt most acutely by African American, as well as marginalized and vulnerable students and their teachers. In Alexandria, where the High School is a majority minority campus, meaning that Hispanic and Black students outnumber white peers, such policies have left students and teachers feeling chilled and anxious.
Recently, educators preparing to teach a high school level African American History elective developed during Gov. Northam’s Administration learned the Department was preparing changes to the new class that would make it difficult to teach history in a meaningful way. According to VDOE documents, obtained by a watchdog group and published in the Washington Post, when VDOE staff applied Executive Order 1 to the content they found changes would be necessary to bring the course into compliance.
Little-big-changes to words such as white supremacy, white privilege and racist were made throughout the course outline. The Lost Cause mythology and Redlining practices can still be taught, but in the past tense, implying teachers shouldn’t focus on the lingering effects still felt by people today. Under the “Seeking Social Justice” section of the course, it was recommended, “The War on the Persistence of Institutional Racism” be changed to “The Persistent War on Racism.” A change that seems to ignore the continuing impact these policies have on communities of color.
The recommendations include banning antiracism readings, as well as all lessons on implicit bias and equity. Articles on teaching tolerance by the Southern Poverty Law Center were eliminated, along with essays published under the 1619 Project, which offers an alternative to white centered history for Americans to consider.
An AI summary of the VDOE document states:
“The revisions include renaming and removing certain content, removing statements that imply racial superiority or inherent racism, and addressing topics such as slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, racial stereotypes, redlining and the impact of racism on African Americans throughout history.”
VDOE is engaging in semantics in an attempt to comply with the Executive Order while also allowing room for instructors to teach truthful history. A spokesperson for VDOE told the Post no changes have been made yet and the review is ongoing. Maybe they can run out the clock.
The roots of Virginia’s Executive Order 1 sprout from a Presidential Executive Order calling on Federal agencies to halt diversity training, discussions of “critical race theory’ and/or white privilege. Then-President Trump was attempting to freeze the awakening and reckonings happening across the nation and halt the push for change. Trump issued the dictum four months after the murder of George Floyd sparked the largest movement in U.S. history ever, three years after the first Black President, Barack Obama, left the White House and five years after Bryan Stevenson began working with communities to expose our history of racial terror and the role of white supremacy in our past and present. The timing is not surprising to those who can see the pattern of racial progress followed by white suppression that has been a part of American life since the end of the Civil War.
All in all, by 2024, at least 44 states have considered bills or issued regulations or executive orders to suppress teaching topics related to race, gender, and American history, according to Education Week. Six states have agreed to allow a conservative media organization, PragerU, to provide lessons to public school children that seriously distort history.
More than 1,100 books have been banned from public schools, 30 percent of which were authored by writers of color, according to Education Week. At least 22 states have banned or rolled back DEI measures at their public colleges and universities.
In his book, The False White Gospel, Georgetown University’s Jim Wallis writes about the attacks on Public Schools and Public Libraries, stating, “One of the greatest obstacles to the pursuit of truth in America today is the growing pressure of a deliberate suppression and denial of our country’s history of slavery and racism. In the name of parents rights in education, with school district and board meetings becoming public forums, state legislatures are opting to edit out the inconvenient truths ingrained in our nation’s story.”
The parental rights movement has spawned a network of organizations in Virginia all of which are considered to be hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
- Moms for Liberty has at least nine chapters (seven of which are in NOVA);
- Parents Against Critical Race Theory are in Ashburn,
- Constitutional Rights PAC in McLean,
- No Left Turn in Richmond,
- Parents Defending Education in Midlothian.
Hate groups focused on public schools statewide include, Virginia Parents Involved in Education, Virginia Moms for America and Parents Rights in Education.
Equity Expert Shaun Harper wrote in Forbes Magazine that the parents rights movement is fueled by “exaggeration, misinformation and outright lies.” “Parents and families are being manipulated by the movement,” that he describes as undergirded by racist, homophobic, xenophobia, sexist, Islamaphobic, white supremacist philosophies.
Propublica uncovered documents revealing plans by a wealthy group of conservatives to use the parental rights issue to unite and rally conservative voters in 2024. While these goals are political, the outcome of their efforts harm students of color, as well as, our society's most marginalized and vulnerable children.
As our public schools continue to work to meet our children where they are at, they have been attacked by these “parent groups” and at times taken to court. Already exhausted teachers are further frustrated and some have resigned, quit and/or been forced from their jobs.
Our school age children live in a multiethnic, multi gendered generation that will define America’s future in coming years. Our schools are merely responding to this reality, which is new and scary to some as white people become a minority.
Bryan Stevenson told Wallis, “I am not interested in talking about this history because I want to punish people. I’m interested in talking about this history because I want us to be liberated. I want us to get on the other side of repentance and experience redemption and restoration and reparation and recovery. But those are words that can’t happen until we give voice to the pain and the anguish and the sin and the burdens that we have created by our silence.”
By invoking parents' rights to protect white children from this history so they won’t feel bad, white conservatives have been able to stave off the much needed acknowledgement and reconciliation for another generation. We can’t let this happen, schools need to be able to teach the truth, students, especially those who have benefited from white privilege, deserve to learn about our past honestly. It is the only way to forge a just future.
In The News
Two tragic events that happened in recent weeks are a stark reminder that much work is still needed to end discrimination and ensure safety for all. On June 30, a Black man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin died after security guards at a hotel pinned him to the ground for an extended time ignoring his pleadings that he could not breath. At D’Vontaye Mitchell’s funeral, Rev. Al Sharpton said firing the guards was not nearly enough and his family vowed to fight for justice in D'Vontaye’s name. On July 6, a white Illinois police officer killed Sonya Massey in her home after she called to report her fear that there was an intruder on her property. Civil Rights lawyer Ben Camp has made the connection between Massey and other cases of police violence against Black people. She joins Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson, who were also killed by law enforcement on their own property.
Volunteers Needed
Oral History Project: Black-Jewish Relations in Alexandria
Former Remembrance Student Yahney-Marie Sangaré is working on a project and needs volunteers to provide an oral history. She is focused on Black and/or Jewish community members who experienced Alexandria during the 1950s-60s. She would like to learn about your perceptions, experiences and perspectives.
This oral history project, in collaboration with Beth EL Jewish congregation, aims to understand the under-documented perceptions, interactions, and relationships between these two groups as they concern Alexandria’s unique position as a Southern city adjacent to Washington, D.C. It will also encapsulate important personal narratives and preserve subjective historical accounts and reactions. Please contact her if you, or someone you know can help with this vital research.
Upcoming Committee Meetings
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project Steering Committee Meeting will be held Tues. Aug. 6 at 5 p.m. at Alexandria Black History Museum.
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project (ACRP) is a city-wide initiative dedicated to helping Alexandria understand its history of racial terror hate crimes and to work toward creating a welcoming community bound by equity and inclusion.
In Memoriam
Write "ACRP" in Comments on the donation form.
Office of Historic Alexandria
City of Alexandria, Virginia
ACRP@alexandriava.gov