We Charge Genocide

This is from the opening statement to the general assembly of the united nations. "In addition, the great majority of Negroes are for peace, and peace endangers profits. George Bott, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, has formally ruled that advocacy of peace by a worker is cause for discharge. The venerable Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, elder statesman of the Negro people, man of letters and scholar of international renown, has been indicted by the Government of the United States for his advocacy of peace. Such advocacy, it is charged, makes him a "foreign agent." Paul Robeson, a spokesman for the American Negro people who is known and honored the world around, has been denied a passport for travel abroad because he speaks uncompromisingly for peace. His voice, too, endangers the profits from war. All these factors combine to make the Negro people in the United States the increasing target of reaction's genocidal fury."

By this time I have read Lemkin's views from several sources including a letter to the New York Times on June 14, 1953 in which Lemkin reduces the plight of African Americans to individual acts of terrorism and instances of "fright". Oakley C. Johnson responded in a letter to Lemkin on June 24, 1953 articulating that Lemkin was missing the point that African Americans were not just being discriminated against or harassed in massive numbers, they were being terrorized. The resistance to the acceptance of the murder and oppression of African Americans as genocide centered around several key political issues: the involvement of some African American activists in communist groups, the view of oppression and discrimination cases as human rights issues as opposed to genocidal, and several key misunderstandings about whether the genocidal murders where individual or institutional. Additionally, there was the ongoing debate about being able to prove special intent to destroy the entire group of African Americans and again, misunderstandings about the meaning and application of the UN definition of genocide and confusion on the part of Lemkin and subsequently hosts of others about including genocidal massacres that do not unfold as the Jewish Holocaust did. This project will delve into reasons that Lemkin may have overlooked the evidence presented to the U.N. on behalf of African Americans due to important events in his personal background and strong anti-communist sentiments here in the U.S. More importantly, I will propose some very practical suggestions about how to utilize the phenomenal work that has been done by William Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress, along with the work that was spurred by the publications that followed to educate high school students and their parents. I will also propose several mechanisms of teaching students to gather data about their individual, communal, and familial lives that highlight the ongoing nature of the genocidal activities in U.S. These data can be used to incite students to enter their writings into the wealth of available, essay, article, and poetry contests offered each academic year. As a mathematics and science teacher in an alternative school, I have suggestions for activities in those areas as well.