For American Racism, Slavery was Only the Beginning
Who can identify the historical figure introduced below and suggest how he might be connected to Minneapolis' ongoing racial agony?
Here are clues, presented as if our mystery man were speaking in our 21st-century idiom:
" 'We have abolished the slave. The master remains.' I called out this warning in every speech I delivered (close to 30 in all) as I traveled across the northern states in 1866, the year after the 13th Amendment had ended chattel slavery.
"People jammed into lecture halls to hear me because I was what you'd call today a 'superstar.' I possessed charismatic power as a public speaker and that brought me fame, influence, a wealth of box-office income and often red hot controversy.
"Why controversy? Because I believed in my bones that people are absolute equals no matter what their skin color and I lived out that cause for close to half a century. And that's why I kept insisting back in 1866 that 'We have abolished the slave. The master remains.'
"Emancipation meant next to nothing so long as viciously bigoted whites ruled over those who were technically liberated.
"To put this truth in your 21st-century terms, I was insisting that equality for Black people was unattainable so long as their world was ruled by the guardians of structural white supremacy."
For those who have not identified him, our mystery man is Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), abolitionist par excellence and the inspiration for the naming of the Phillips neighborhood, that slice of Minneapolis that is bordered by battle-scarred Lake Street near George Floyd's memorial.
Were Wendell Phillips to visit his namesake neighborhood today he would very likely conclude that long after the Civil War, still the master remains. The dark-skinned residents of Phillips are indisputably free. But much like those emancipated in 1865 they battle against the profound inequality that results from structural white racism.
What might Phillips recommend as we struggle with today's racial agonies? Since I'm his most recent biographer I'll venture that one of his strongest suggestions would be for us to end our addiction to vehement disagreements over slavery and the Founding Fathers' Constitution.