By Gary Franks

WASHINGTON — Can we learn from the past? We must.

Immediately after the Civil War, radical Republicans collaborated with President Abraham Lincoln to assist the newly freed slaves with a program called Reconstruction. This truly brief period ended after the controversial election of President Rutherford Hayes via the Compromise of 1877, when the northern troops were removed from the South.

At this point, the former slaveowners and like-minded folks returned to power. It led to a period of domestic terrorism against Black people, which in turn forced the Great Migration of former slaves to the North and West. My parents were among those who left the South; they arrived in Connecticut.

As part of Jim Crow laws and practices, Black people were only allowed to have “Black jobs.” With social pressures on white people in power, for decades you did not see any Black people working in stores, factories, or the military. Black people were also not allowed to attend elite colleges. In the South, they were largely limited to sharecropping which immediately put most Black people in debt while white people flourished.

Conversely, during the brief Reconstruction period over 20 Black men were elected to Congress during the 19 th Century, along with many other amazing achievements for former slaves. Suffice it to say this assistance, Reconstruction, which was wrongfully perceived as giving former slaves an “advantage” while hurting white people, was stopped. It was believed then that Black people were inferior to white people and had to be suppressed and discriminated against.

“Separate but equal,” which condoned the belief in racial segregation, quickly became the law of the land as codified by an unwise Supreme Court in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. It took until 1954 when the Supreme Court via Brown vs. the Board of Education decision overturned “separate but equal.”

Regardless, since 1954 these folks have been quietly continuing their quest to prove their superiority with de facto segregation and covert discrimination.

The attitudes and desires of the former descendants of slaveowners and like-minded folks prevailed. They may have lost the Civil War, but they were determined to win the issue – the perpetuation of the belief that Black people are inferior.

Though this belief was in direct conflict with the God they claimed to love, by inferring that God made lesser men and women (a belief not found in the Bible), they believed the unbelievable. Sadly, some still do.

In the early 1960s, when I was a little boy, the Ku Klux Klan attacked my family by burning a cross in front of our house, shooting a dog on our lawn, giving us nightly life-threatening phone calls, and finally by placing a dead possum in our mailbox. I remember taking it out and saw that it was wrapped in a white sheet and was dripping with blood. I quickly dropped it in the snow.

They had attached a note to it, which said that we would end up like that possum unless we moved. This was actually a blessing in disguise as the FBI got involved and ended a three-month nightmare in three days.

When it had ended, Jewish individuals arrived at our door to console our family. My mother welcomed them. I had no idea what was happening. After all white people were trying to blow our house up and kill us.

I was doing my best to listen from another room. After they left, my mother explained to me why they were being so empathetic. This memory has lasted with me for nearly 60 years. I had rekindled it with my friend and former Senator, the-late Joe Lieberman, many times.

My first foreign trip as a congressman was to Israel. While there, I was scheduled to talk with a young man who former Congressman and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp predicted would become the future leader of Israel. He was a guy by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Jewish people had suffered discrimination and hatred to an extreme degree when millions of Jews were killed for no other reason than their race in the Holocaust (there had been many pogroms against them leading up to that as well).

This was clearly one of the world’s greatest tragedies. Six million Jews had perished in the Holocaust, murdered by an evil German mad man. This man, who should remain nameless, was one of the world’s most evil human beings.

He blamed one race of people for everything that had gone wrong in his country. He encouraged the open hatred of Jews who he claimed were inferior.

He led a faction of extremists who took over Germany. And after that, he ruled like a dictator, dispensing with parliament.

He quickly started a war with his neighbors, with whom Germany had been on good terms. He boasted that he would turn around an inflation riddled country. He intimidated his adversaries. He promised to return his nation to its former greatness. He rose to the top due to very weak prior leaders and an impotent parliament.

He threatened and forced folks to comply with his wishes or face severe retaliation. He led a propaganda effort to create his own reality while controlling the media. He demanded loyalty. He tried to aggressively expand Germany’s rule over Europe.

astly, prior to rising to the top, he led a failed effort to overturn the government.

Yes, the names can change; the victims of racism can change; but good and courageous people as well as nations have stepped forward to stop evil. We must realize that evil and hate will always morph into different forms, after all the devil first appeared as a snake (just ask Adam and Eve).

However, the world has changed for the better over the decades. The will of good people in the long run has always prevailed. Good people must continue to have faith and to walk with God. Evil and hate have never beaten love and God. And they never will.

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Gary Franks served three terms as a congressman from Connecticut’s 5th District. He was the first Black conservative elected to Congress and first Black Republican elected to the House in nearly 60 years. Host: Podcast “We Speak Frankly” www.garyfranksphilanthropy.org