In sixth grade I got a D in social studies. Mostly because I was a brat, copping an attitude to hide my insecurities. “Who cares about what people did 150 years ago in Russia?” Eye roll. Cutting off my nose to spite my face, though, because secretly I found the stories of the serfs and their emancipation fascinating. I think my teacher suspected. She gave me a journal and a book. Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl. She also slipped me newspaper accounts and letters from that same time period. Some from the pro-German point of view, some from the Resistance. I fell for it hook, line and sinker.
By eighth grade I had unwittingly won several history awards. I had also come to the realization that history often depended upon the viewpoint of the historian. And to that point, so did current events. It has long been fascinating to me that many of the heroes we now revere were once upon a time branded as hoodlums, criminals, traitors, even terrorists.
Nelson Mandela was connected with the South African communist party. He was also convicted of terrorism in 1963. At his trial he freely admitted that he planned sabotage against the apartheid government. “I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation.” The Reagan administration followed the lead of the South African government in naming the African National Congress a terrorist group. Eventually the U.S. did pass economic sanctions against the apartheid regime, which played a role in its demise, but as late as 2008 the Nobel Peace Prize winner was on the U.S. terrorism watch list, which required Mandela to get special State Department clearance to visit. “It’s frankly a rather embarrassing matter,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the time.
From 1957 until his assassination Martin Luther King Jr. was under constant surveillance by the FBI. The state treated MLK as a threat to peace, and many newspaper accounts branded him a dangerous agitator and an enemy to the United States. In 1999 the family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won a civil trial that found U.S. government agencies guilty of the wrongful death of King. Although adamantly nonviolent, using the definition of terrorism as “the unauthorized use of intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”, it seems clear King’s preaching, resisting and lawbreaking would have earned him the label. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
After his family was murdered, Geronimo fought against the U.S. army for 28 years, from 1858 to 1886. Often his small band was outnumbered 10 to 1. He and his 24 men ultimately surrendered to an army force of 5,000 soldiers and thousands of civilians. He and the members of his band were convicted as terrorists and sentenced to prison at Fort Marion, Florida. Geronimo was later released and became a national celebrity. His name rings as a clarion cry for freedom fighters even today. “There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say.”
Harriet Tubman stole property worth millions across the United States and inspired others to follow in her path. Although she never advocated violence, she carried a revolver and was not afraid to use it. She also aided abolitionist John Brown and supported his goals of armed resistance. She helped him recruit men for his armed slave revolt in which he attempted to seize a United States arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. Brown was convicted of treason and hanged. Tubman praised him, writing, “He done more in dying than 100 men would in living.”
The legitimate government of the American colonies in the 1770’s was Great Britain. The Patriot movement was treasonous - a capital offense. George Washington led thousands into violence against Great Britain with the purpose of intimidating Great Britain into conceding to American demands. “The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.”
Jesus called for an entirely new government - one “not of this world”. Although he spoke of nonviolence (beating swords into plowshares), he also single-handedly wrecked the commercial center of the Jewish temple and announced his plan to destroy the temple before rebuilding it under his command. Roman and Jewish leaders took his threats seriously and had him executed. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Men and women throughout history have been impelled to break the laws of corrupt and discriminatory regimes in pursuit of their natural, God-given right to life, liberty and justice. In every season those dispossessed of power and oppressed of their rights to freedom must determine if they are willing to push against the status quo in their long walk to freedom. And while they may be dismissed as hoodlums, criminals, hate mongers in the moment by their oppressors, the moral arc of the universe bends toward revealing the truth of their heroic fight. On whose side of history will you stand?
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