Remember the Black Soldier.

Since it's MLK Day and I, being a government drone have the day off, I guess I should do a post on the most influential civil rights leader of the 20th century with perhaps the exception of his mentor Gandhi.

I'll come right out and say this, I don't think MLK was as big a deal historically as many give him credit for. That is not to say his accomplishments and the accomplishments of many other Black leaders during the early 1960s were not significant, both in a personal and a historical sense. They were. However I would argue that it was not MLK who did most of the work to bring equal rights to Blacks. Like many things it was not the protester or the activist, but the Soldier who gave Blacks Freedom. Freedom won on the battlefields of WWII.

I'm positive throughout American history following the Civil War there were many Black leaders as visionary and charismatic as Martin Luther King. Certainly Fredrick Douglas was one example... and yet they failed where MLK succeeded. Why?

I think the answer lies not in Blacks, but in Whites. Blacks did not take their freedom with force, it was given to them by Whites. This is not a politically correct statement, but it is a true statement. Freedom and equal rights were denied to Blacks by Whites, and during the 1960s White Americans reversed this position and decided to oppress Blacks no longer; beginning the process of racial equality that lasted into the 1980s, and is for the most part complete today.

So the question for me is: Why did Whites change their minds?

Prior to 1945 the United States had a deep commitment to racism and White superiority. This is made clear by law and national attitude at the time. The height of White superiority came during the early 1920s with the reformation of the Klu Klux Klan and it's infiltration into government and especially law enforcement. One need only watch 1919's Birth of a Nation to see first hand White Racism on morbid display. America was at least as oppressive to the Black minority as South Africa ever war - perhaps worse.

And then out of nowhere seemingly, things changed. Why? It certainly wasn't because of MLK. Had Martin Luther King attempted the 1960s civil rights movement during the 1920s or 30s you'd have never known his name. He would have died swinging from a tree in a lynching. Today this is a very politically incorrect statement - and yet it is a true one.

So if MLK could not have accomplished his work with the help of thousands of civil rights activists during the 30s, how was he successful just 30 years later? The answer is the Black Soldier and Black Factory Worker.

White society prior to WWII was far more segregated than today - a fact we are familiar with. Even in the North where segregation didn't carry the force of law, it was enforced in the dark outside the law. Many Whites didn't know any Blacks, didn't want to know any Blacks, and possibly had never met a Black person. In that vacuum of ignorance, a lot of prejudice and ignorant ideas about race were preached and with no data to base counter conclusions on, most Whites accepted what society taught them.

And then war came.

It was hard for even the most virulent racist to hold on to bigotry when his life was saved by Tuskegee Airman, or a driver for the Eightball Express, or any of the many other segregated Black combat units who fought in WWII with great distinction. And White women who poured into factories to arm the arsenal of Democracy while the men were away fighting were able to view first hand Blacks doing things as well as Whites did while both toiled to support the war effort back home. It was the performance of Black Soldiers in WWII that lead to desegregation of the Military, allowing another generation of Soldiers to fight along side and bond with fellow Soldiers who happened to be of African decent during the Korean War.

With this in mind, we can see why during the 1960s when the ugly reality of Jim Crow and segregation and voter disenfranchisement was beamed into the televisions of of Americans during the 1960s White Americans when told the status quo was correct spoke up and said "You know, this does not reflect my experience with Blacks during the war and they don't deserve to be bombed, lynched, hit with fire hoses and beaten by police. This is wrong. They aren't all that different from us. Why shouldn't they have basic civil rights?"

And so a White majority voluntarily surrendered it's superior status. Sure there was strong resistance. A policy over one hundred years old (and predated by even more atrocious chattel slavery) is sure to create that. WWII did not end bigotry. It however caused enough Whites to convert to a more rational way of thinking that when a young, charismatic leader like MLK came along for the first time in history he wasn't lynched... instead people listened.

So remember MLK, that's fine and proper to do so. But today I would rather remember the people who made him possible. Black Soldiers. Much of the credit belongs to them and the respect they earned in battle with their blood.