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Other notable Black-White alliances

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Throughout American history there has existed a benevolent but cautious working relationship between famous and powerful Whites and a number of great names in African American lore. Such bonds, although at times tenuous, came full bloom with the election of President Barack Obama when huge numbers of influential Whites supported his campaign.

President Obama’s ability to rally consensus in traditionally non-Democratic and in majority-White voting blocs (i.e. Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina) may have been the final nail in the southern-style in-your-face racism in the nation. But such alliances have always existed in America. Here are some of more outstanding ones:

Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison

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In the 1830s, William Lloyd Garrison, the fiery abolitionist publisher of The Liberator, formed a public, social consensus with journalist Frederick Douglass (The North Star) to shed more light upon the wicked practice of chattel slavery. In 1845, Garrison introduced to the world one of great slave narratives in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as Told by Himself.” The last four words of the title are there because, at that time, African Americans were not believed to know how to read, write, do arithmetic or compile a memory of traditions within the African American Diaspora.

Like authors Harriet Jacobs and Olaudah Equiano before him, Douglass’ literacy had to be certified and his literal “pen-to-paper” verified by a top literary agent. Although Garrison and Douglass would differ greatly on Black equality with Whites—a vastly different discussion, as opposed to humans being held in shackles—the two men would wield great influence in the Lincoln administration enroute to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. The success of the “American Anti-Slave Society” (founded by Garrison) was due partly to Douglass’ outstanding oratorical skills, which would carry the former slave to Europe, Canada and throughout the American north to sound an early death knell to slavery and give impetus to the women’s suffrage movement.

Charles Young and Teddy Roosevelt

Col. Charles Young was the first African American to graduate with distinction from West Point Academy. Although two other Black men graduated some years prior, Young is remembered as one of the nation’s most highly decorated combat veterans. Young’s 1889 matriculation led him to the famous Buffalo Soldiers, so named because the Native Americans in the Lakota Territory remarked that the African American soldiers resembled bison.

The 10th Cavalry was charged with violently dispatching Native American tribes from their ancestral homelands. Most of these men had served in this roughly charted territory, which ranged from northern Nebraska through the Dakotas and to the Canadian border, since the end of the Civil War. And this military campaign would be the nation’s last exercise in Manifest Destiny—the widely held belief in the United States in the 19th century that American settlers were destined to expand across the continent.

During this service, Young met a New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt who was sent to this family-owned land to recover from many years of ill health. History reveals that Young and Roosevelt became fast friends, both by virtue of their common love of the natural environment, and intellectually, because Young was an early professor of military intelligence (later teaching at Wilberforce University) and could consistently match wits and discuss classical military theory and strategy with the learned Roosevelt.

Young would be awarded a commission as a major in the 9th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and, at the outset of the Spanish American War, Roosevelt formed the famous Roughriders and tapped Young and several other African Americans to serve in that regiment.

At the beginning of America’s entry into World War I, Young wrote to President Woodrow Wilson offering to resign his commission in effort to be granted a command in Europe. A vehemently racist, Wilson (who earlier had banned all African Americans from working in any capacity within the federal government) denied Young’s request. Roosevelt wrote Wilson to ask reconsideration of his decision, noting that Young was of the “highest character and courage” on the battlefield, but the plea availed nothing.  Roosevelt and Young would remain friends until the former’s death in 1919.

Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt

When Roosevelt was swept into office after President William McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, he lacked a broad base of support within the Republican Party. Knowing that the South had recently disenfranchised practically all of its African American population, these citizens still retained an important level of influence within the Republican Party, mostly via control of Southern delegates to the national convention every four years. As such, Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House in the fall of 1901 to discuss the issues relevant to southern African Americans.

Publicity surrounding the dinner was awful for the new Roosevelt Administration. The resulting furor caused Sen. Benjamin Tillman from South Carolina to threaten violence against African Americans. Former President Grover Cleveland remarked to the press that the dinner invitation was the most “despicable affront” to the [presidency] he had ever witnessed.

George Herbert Walker Bush and UNCF

Prior to an illustrious political career, former President George Herbert Walker Bush was one of the early board members of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). After combat service in World War II, Bush returned briefly to Yale University in 1948 (he was an All-American first baseman there prior to military service) and helped form a committee of educators and business executives to discuss what he called a “ . . . vision for higher education.”

During his undergraduate years at Yale, Bush said he first saw the pressing need for more investment in higher education, particularly among African American youth. Such charitable pursuits are not uncommon among White American family dynasties such as the Kennedys, the Rockefellers or the Vanderbilts. “The gentler impulses of mankind was high on the teaching agenda. It (UNCF) has helped society’s disadvantaged cast off despair and poverty.”

At Bush’s urging, President Ronald Reagan in September 1981 signed Executive Order 12320 committing the federal government to increase its support to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Bush said the goal of that decision was to “ . . . identify and eliminate unfair barriers to participation federally sponsored programs.” A similar executive order was issued by Franklin Roosevelt during World War II that outlawed racial discrimination in the hiring practices among defense contractors.

Martin Luther King and Robert Byrd (CUTABLE)

The social philosophy of the late West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd is a portrait of change and redemption. Like Associate Justice Hugo Black, Byrd was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. In a letter to the Klan’s imperial wizard in 1946, Byrd wrote: “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.” By 1980, the segregationist Democrat had become a passionate advocate of civil rights, even though he joined other members of his party, led by Richard Russell of Georgia, to try to kill the 1965 Civil Rights Act. Back then would-be obstructionists were required to stage a filibuster rather than merely threaten one. Byrd held the Senate floor for 14 hours in a futile effort to maintain second-class citizenship status for African Americans.

When riots erupted nationwide after the April 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Byrd said, “If it requires the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines, we should put the troublemakers in their places.” Former Washington, D.C., representative Walter E. Fauntroy once said of Byrd: “His tongue was smoother than butter, but war was in his heart.”

Since those years, however, the onslaught of office-holding African Americans convinced Byrd that his wanton resistance to the 14th Amendment was out of step with a changing society. Byrd would provide [tepid] support for the Johnson Administration’s “Great Society” programs, worked with the Carter Administration to provide more educational opportunities for southern African Americans, helped garner regional support for the establishment of a national holiday honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., worked closely with the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on healthcare legislation for the disadvantaged, loudly condemned the second Iraq War and was a leading booster of President Obama’s presidential campaign.

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