Justice

Rohwer

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The last American concentration camp to close was Rohwer, Arkansas, deep in the delta near the Arkansas Post. There’s an echo of history, since that site is part of the Trail of Tears, when another group of Americans were forcibly removed from their homes unconstitutionally and sent to live in government reservations. The vast camp soon returned to farmland, so little remains besides the cemetery above. Several of the graves mark infants and elderly inmates. The monument to the right is to the 442nd Regimental Combat team, the most highly decorated unit in US military history. They served in Europe, while their families were imprisoned. 

The neighboring town of McGehee maintains the excellent WWII Japanese American Internment Museum about both Rohwer and Jerome. The sculptor Ruth Asawa was imprisoned here. Another inmate at Rohwer was a 5 year old boy named George Takei, who later played Lt. Sulu on the original Star Trek. 

“And it became normal for me to go to school in a black tar-paper barrack
and begin the school day with a pledge of allegiance to the flag.
I could see the barbed wire fence and the sentry tower
right outside my schoolhouse window
as I recited the words,
‘with liberty and justice for all’.”

George Takei, speech at the museum on 16 April 2018

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

letter from a Birmingham jail

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Strength to Love

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

Lincoln Memorial

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Carl Sandburg reported that Lincoln felt that the important monument was not the marble one but the “more enduring one in the hearts of those who love liberty, unselfishly, for all men.” Lincoln gave his life to extend our ideal of liberty, “that all men are created equal”, to all men. To understand Lincoln is to recognize his cause: to reform the Union to include African Americans equally. To misunderstand Lincoln is to ignore that this condition is required to participate in our Union.

In addition to the Gettysburg Address, the other inscription here is from his Second Inaugural Address. “With malice toward none with charity for all” are only two thirds of what Lincoln said were necessary to achieve peace. His next five words must not be ignored: “with firmness in the right”. He spoke before the war ended, saying that slavery was an offense against God and that paying the cost for that debt in blood was true and just. Lincoln did not act out of hatred, but, because those who fought for slavery were so absolutely, profoundly and unacceptably wrong morally, he was right to go to war against them.

Those who deny freedom to others,
deserve it not for themselves

Abraham Lincoln

General Grant National Memorial

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As General, U.S. Grant won the Civil War, and as President, he saved the Union. He created the Justice Department, supported the 15th Amendment and fought the Ku Klux Klan. Over a million people gathered to watch his funeral procession in 1885, and his mausoleum became one of the top tourist destinations in the nation.

Racists like President Johnson were determined to resist letting African Americans vote, and Grant agreed to run for President in large part to protect those rights. This divide of bigotry, which festered after the Civil War, continues to divide our country. After Grant’s death, the descendants of traitors promulgated the big lie (known as the Lost Cause) that the confederates were honorable, benevolent to slaves, and were the moral victors of the Civil War. To do so, they maligned Grant as a drunk, ignoring his reform efforts and associating him with corrupt officials. The campaign was effective, and Grant was often ranked among the worst Presidents.

Grant’s Indian policy illustrates the problem. Grant appointed the first Native American to be Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and Grant pledged “proper treatment of the original occupants of this land—the Indians.” Supporting peaceful reconciliation, his administration allowed many Quakers and Episcopalians to “help” the natives, instead of continuing genocide. Grant was a firm believer in the separation of church and state, but the religious people believed that converting the Natives was the best way to help them and thus erased so much of their culture. And many people still wanted to take Native American land, so well-intended land policies were similarly corrupted.

Like most of the park rangers I’ve spoken with, I’m a fan of Grant. We believe he was, generally for his time, on the right side of history and does not deserve the vitriol he received in life and death from those on the wrong side of history. I wish he had better understood the depths of and had proposed better solutions against systemic racism, but he was an ally of the Americans who were denied their rights by many white Americans. The struggle to secure the voting rights of African Americans and to restore justice to Native American communities continues over 150 years later. Grant recognized both his own failures of judgement and the moral sins of our nation. But Grant also said victory goes to those who keep fighting.

“Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.”

Ulysses S. Grant