When Truth Does Not Get Traction - Lerone Bennett Jr. - RIP

Lerone Bennett, Jr., entitled “Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream.”

Lerone Bennett, Jr. ( 17 October 1928 - February 14, 2018 ) was an African-American scholar, author and social historian, known for his revisionist analysis of race relations in the United States. His best-known works include Before the Mayflower(1962) and Forced into Glory(2000).

He is most notable for his decades as executive editor for Ebony Magazine, to which he was promoted in 1958. It has served as his base for the publication of a steady stream of articles on African-American history, some of them collected into books.

"...I was a child in whitest Mississippi, reading for my life, when I discovered that everything I had been told about Abraham Lincoln was a lie….for I discovered that I lived in an Orwellian world where scholars with all the degrees the schools could give could say in all seriousness that a separatist was an integrationist and that a White supremacist was the ultimate symbol of race relations and the American Dream.

Lincoln or somebody said once that you can’t fool all of the people all the time.  By turning a racist who wanted to deport all Blacks into a national symbol of integration and brotherhood, the Lincoln mythmakers have managed to prove Lincoln or whoever said it wrong.  This is the story of how they fooled all of the people all the time and why..."

So with his book, Lerone laid out the truth. The media/government, happy with Lincoln's fictional place in history ignored him ... but so it goes with truth-tellers, you just have to keep speaking truth to those who might question the narrative .. once other narratives prove to be false.

1. Emancipation Proclamation - freed blacks .. ah no, not so fast, read the fine print! L. Bennett Jr. states: "...The testimony of sixteen thousand books and monographs to the contrary notwithstanding, Lincoln did not emancipate the slave, greatly or otherwise….  John Hume, the Missouri anti-slavery leader…said the Proclamation “did not…whatever it may have otherwise accomplished at the time it was issued, liberate a single slave.” …Lincoln himself knew that his most famous act would not of itself free a single Negro.  The second and most damaging point is that “the great emancipator” did not intend for it to free a single Negro, for he carefully, deliberately, studiously excluded all Negroes within “our military reach.” What Lincoln did – and it was so clever that we ought to stop calling him honest Abe – was to “free” slaves in Confederate-held territory where he couldn’t free them and to leave them in slavery in Union-held territory where he could have freed them..."
2. Lincoln's Solution - to free blacks across the United States .. ah no, not so fast, read the fine print! L. Bennett Jr, states: "... In five major policy declarations, including two State of the Union addresses and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the sixteenth president of the United States publicly and officially called for the deportation of Blacks….it was, in fact, the only racial solution he ever had .." "... In his first State of the Union Message, Lincoln didn’t mention emancipation, but he mentioned Negro removal and urged that steps be taken for colonizing Blacks freed by Congress or acts of war “at some place, or places, in a climate congenial to them.” .. A. Lincoln's own words: ".. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution….has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government, shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, including that of persons held to service….  I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable..."

I guess our prayer is that more people are stirred to read source material (as long as it is available) that helps reveal truth ... for only with truth can one know who to trust in this world.