Wow, that was really tremendous writing. I had been debating within myself if calling slavery genocide would be offensive to black Americans after reading the UN definition after they declared the Uighur concentration camps in Western China. The qualifications of the definition fit them and no one was killed, which made me think that retroactively calling the “official” 89 years of American slavery (1776-1865) genocide would be too offensive. (Full disclosure as a white offending whites doesn’t bother me, we have done evil). Now after that lucid piece of writing with supporting details and evidence, I see I may not have gone far enough.

The period when the black vote was “officially” suppressed by deliberate violence with the purpose of suppressing the black power, expressed through their right to vote, overturned the 14th and 15th amendments entirely, and created the democratic “solid south” racist voting block. The political voice expressed through voting was quashed by what started with democratic political reign of terror meant to cease the black vote at polls starting with massacres in 1876 —the Ellenton and Hamburg massacres. That terror letting to crushing of the black vote until 1965, or a period of 89 years again (1876-1965). Perhaps I should think of the period as genocide as well. (From 1619- 1776 it was British).

There appears to 16 holocaust museums in the United States, concerning an atrocity that lasted for perhaps 16 years (though anti-semitism existed before and during WWI), America did not commit the holocaust and genocide. It did commit its own genocide that lasted at least for 89 years as slavery, even if we do not counting 89 after. Yet there is only one Black Holocaust I’ve spotted from a Google search just now, apparently started by a lynching victim who managed to survive his attempt murder in contrast to the two other blacks who did not who were lynched alongside him. Why can’t we have more of these museums for the atrocity we did commit than for those we didn’t? How would we feel if Germany had 16 black holocaust museums about American slavery? Which only sounds fair.

Not enough is done to recognize the atrocities we committed as a nation. Printing this article in high school history books on America as the first chapter would be a good start. The museums and reparations both paid for the U.S. government would the necessary second step.

Thanks for sharing and writing such an inspiring piece.