A Liberal Dose
“We Ain’t Gonna Let
Nobody Turn Us Around”
Troy D. Smith
Below is the text of a speech I gave at the Spencer Juneteenth event. It reads more like a speech than a written essay, so use your imagination to get my preachin' voice!
I am a history professor at Tennessee Tech. One of my areas
of expertise is African American history. So you might expect that I’d be here
to tell you about the history of the Juneteenth celebration. But other people
are doing that. Today I’m going to be talking about, not just why today is
important, but why history is important -especially African American history.
For a long, long time in this country, the only kind of
history taught in schools, or portrayed in media, or talked about by
politicians, was the kind that makes people feel good, without a hint of
negativity. I said “makes people feel good”, but what I meant was “makes the
MAJORITY of people feel good.” And little if any regard was given to how it
made the MINORITY feel. In that version of history, America started out
absolutely wonderful and just got better and better. But the fact is: America started out WANTING to be absolutely wonderful, and TRYING to be absolutely
wonderful, and for the most part gradually learning how to do it. The framers
of the Constitution had it right. “In order to form a more perfect union.” If
something starts out absolutely perfect, it cannot be made MORE perfect. The
framers knew there was still work to do. Things could be made better. But it is
impossible to make things better, if you refuse to see how they started, and
how they got to be where they are now. Those are the first steps to making a
more perfect union; without taking them, things can never improve.
Fortunately, many things did change for the better
-including how history was presented. Starting in the 1960s, historians started
paying attention to the words of the great African American sociologist W.E.B.
DuBois, and the great Black novelist and essayist James Baldwin. They started
looking at the whole history, even the disturbing parts, to give a more
accurate representation of it. And great leaders like Dr. King (who always carried with him a copy of The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward) began to study
the previously ignored parts of that history to determine how to solve the
deepest problems still facing the country. And for the next half-century, history
was no longer cheerleading practice -it was a template for progress and unity.
MLK Day. Black History Month. Juneteenth. Native American Heritage Month. Pride
Month. NO ONE’S history was being suppressed -it was all proudly being brought
out into the light.
But some people didn’t like that, and in this decade we have
seen drastic changes in the other direction. We have seen African American
history, and other forms of American history, minimized or outright erased from
our classrooms, our museums, our historical markers, our media, and -if some
people had their way -from our very minds and memories. The political leaders
in charge in 2026 America do not want the slightest thing which might cause the
merest hint of discomfort to those, like them, in the majority, to ever even be
hinted at, no matter how the rest of us feel. Elementary students are getting less REAL history today than even I got fifty years ago. WE MUST NOT LET IT STAND. Slavery
of the mind is as insidious as slavery of the body. We are in the middle of
another Civil Rights Movement. Let it also be a Civil History Movement. Let
today, Juneteenth, not just be a CELEBRATION of past freedom; let it be a DEDICATION
to freedom, in the here and now. Let it
be a DECLARATION of freedom, in the here and now. As the spiritual says:
“I ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around,
turn me around. I’m gonna keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’, Marchin’ up to Freedom
Land.”
That means ALL OF US, TOGETHER. We ain’t leaving nobody
behind. ALL of us. Not just the rich, not just the powerful, not just those of a certain skin tone, ALL OF US- until
the victory is won and freedom is restored. THAT’S what today is about.
--Troy D. Smith
is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech University. His words
do not necessarily represent TTU, nor are they connected in any way with his
job- they are his own opinions on matters of public concern, and an expression
of his First Amendment freedom of speech.
