It took more than 100 years to bring the race riot of 1898 into the light. Now, the past seems, once again, to be fading.

A package of laws intended to correct the century-old damage, caused by a white supremacist plot to drive blacks from power in Wilmington, has been all but ignored. And the movement's legislative champion, Rep. Thomas Wright, is embroiled in scandal.

"We agonized over this whole process," said Kenny Davis, a member of a commission that spent six years studying the riot. "We came up with recommendations that would improve the quality of life, not only for African Americans, but for everybody in the community. And now they're not being pursued."

Wright, an eight-term legislator from Wilmington, filed 10 bills on the issue when the legislative session started. All but one have failed even to come up for discussion. The remaining bill -- a simple acknowledgment that the incident occurred -- passed the House but faces uncertainty in the Senate.

Some commission members, who worked to uncover what had been one of the state's least-known and darkest episodes, say they are concerned that Wright is no longer effective and that their work may not result in the change they had hoped for.

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Hidden below the modern skyscrapers lay the ruins of Philadelphia’s history—the foundation of a city, and a nation, built and maintained by the labor of enslaved Africans. An excavation near the cracked Liberty Bell is laying bare the history of the first “White House,” where George Washington resided in the 1790s and kept nine enslaved Africans: Oney Judge, Moll, Austin, Hercules, Giles, Paris, Richmond, Christopher Sheels and Joe. It is also providing strong evidence to support the movement for reparations.

The excavation was planned to clear the site in order to lay the foundations for a memorial pavilion to the presidential house and its occupants, including the enslaved Africans. Intended to be completed in time for Philadelphia’s upcoming annual July 4 extravaganza, reaction to the dig may result in a change of plans as many people echo comments of an African-American visitor who murmured, “They should leave this. The truth is finally there to see.”

The first weekend the archaeological dig opened in mid-May, it drew over 1,000 visitors, stunning Park Service officials. A steady stream of visitors gathered on a small elevated viewing platform for the opportunity to see the building outlines and hear archaeologists explain what they were seeing. The tone was almost solemn, the discussions serious about just what role slavery played in the founding of the U.S.

The floor of the kitchen where Washington’s enslaved African chef Hercules toiled is visible. The dig has uncovered new evidence that the kitchen had a cellar and that an underground passageway connected it to the main house.

The outline of a curving neoclassical window that would inspire the current White House Blue Room and Oval Office lies close to the viewing platform. The “important” visitors Washington received in front of this window, however, could not look out onto the quarters of the enslaved Africans. Archaeologists have uncovered the foundation of a wall they believe was built to hide the slaves from public view. Washington was violating a Pennsylvania law that entitled enslaved Africans to freedom after a six-month residency.

One of Philadelphia’s premier tourist attractions, Independence Hall, is visible behind the dig. Other enslaved Africans, who were never compensated for their labor, built Independence Hall.

That Washington and other early U.S. presidents kept slaves in Virginia has never been denied. But when it was discovered about 30 years ago that he also kept enslaved Africans in Philadelphia, the National Park Service buried the discovery. To keep slaves in a free state, Washington exploited a loophole, by periodically swapping his Philadelphia slaves with some of the 316 he kept in Virginia. When some managed to escape, Washington relentlessly hunted them down. [MORE]

Four of the remaining 70 or so survivors of mob violence in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 31-June 1, 1921 have nightmarish memories:

 Annie Beaird was seven years old. She was wakened by shotgun blasts all around her family’s house. — Kenny Booker was a teenager. He remembers leading his sister through the house in horror as he learned every home on the street was in flames. “Is the world on fire?” his sister asked. “I don’t know,” Booker responded, “but we’re in a heck of a lot of trouble here, baby.” — Beulah Smith, then 14, escaped slaughter by hiding in the family hog pen as truckloads of white men shot black people on sight.

 George Monroe was five years old at the time: “They came in the house with torches, and my mother hid us four wee children under the bed. They set the curtains on fire and, as one guy was leaving, he stepped on my fingers. My little sister slapped her hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming out. That’s what I remember most, my little sister’s hand slapped over my mouth.” The roller rink his father owned was one of the many black-owned businesses destroyed by the mob.

 These survivors were among the lucky. Three hundred others were left dead and their 36-block neighborhood left in smoldering ruins. On the night of May 31, 1921, hatred, fueled perhaps by envy of the perceived economic prosperity of blacks, was unleashed by an armed mob that had gathered at the jailhouse for a lynching. A 19-year-old black man, a shoeshiner named Dick Rowland, had been wrongly accused of trying to rape a 17-year-old white woman, Sarah Page, an elevator operator in a downtown building, the day before. The woman never pressed charges.

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I want to suggest that we recast the immigration debate, by asking ourselves the following question: what is the price that one country must pay for destroying another country? I know this is not a simple question but it is actually central to the current discussions on immigration and it is something that few people want to actually address.

The facts are these. There are approximately 150 million people who are globally considered migrants. The lion's share of them originates in the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean), which were the targets of Western colonialism beginning in the 15th century. To this, of course, should be added the African slave trade and its impact on the Continent, as well as years of further intervention in the internal affairs of formally independent countries in this region by Western Europe and the U.S. beginning in the 19th century.

So, my first point: the economies and social structures of most of the Global South were turned upside down by the West for several hundred years. In this, the U.S. was directly complicit. Looking only at Latin America, for instance, self-determined economic and political development efforts were derailed by the U.S. through a history of what was once called "gunboat diplomacy" (sending in ships and troops), and later by indirect intervention through the propping up of local dictators as well as separate, covert efforts, to overthrow regimes the US frowned upon. If one looks at Central America alone, then, it should be no surprise that refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua would come north to the U.S. seeking a better life as the U.S. was cooperating in destroying their homes.

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