The outside world
By Josh Resnek
During the tenure of nearly every American president from Washington to Lincoln, America was a slave-keeper democracy.
Black men and women were sold to cotton farmers and planters down south to work without freedom as beast of burden.
This means from the formation of our first government in 1776 until Lincoln emancipated the slaves in 1863, people were bought and sold like property.
Hard to grasp, really, considering what we are taught in school as part of our national history.
Washington was the largest slave-holder in the land when he died. Lincoln would rather have died than own a slave.
Until President John F. Kennedy came along in 1962, blacks couldn’t attend school at the University of Alabama.
The Justice Department of the United States did nothing to alter this situation. In other words, all those finely trained and highly educated legal minds dedicated to upholding the US Constitution, couldn’t find the legal excuse to endorse the idea that all men are created equal – that is – until JFK ordered his brother the US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to send the National Guard and US Marshalls down to Alabama to allow blacks to enter the university to change the world – and he did.
The Justice Department is not, and has not always been the last best hope of this country.
The Attorney General of the United States works for the president – even if the president is Donald Trump and you hate him.
