CANFIELD — If racial reconciliation and healing are to occur, the nation must come to terms with its past sins, and more people must exercise the courage to talk freely about the topic that is difficult for many, a Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past member says.

“It has been said that the United States has two original sins: racism against blacks and genocide against indigenous people,” Brittany Bailey of STTP said. “If we don’t understand the full story of our nation’s founding, then we will never become a just society.”

Bailey and fellow Mahoning Valley STTP members Lekeila Houser and Rylee Stanley discussed that and many other topics during an anti-racism workshop they conducted Tuesday evening at the Canfield branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

About 30 people attended the workshop, which was developed in August 2020 in response to the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis,

Penny Wells, Sojourn to the Past’s executive director, said the event also was to honor the late Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis.

The workshop is important because of today’s racial climate in the U.S., Wells said.

Those who attended included Ashley Kanotz, chairwoman of the Canfield Racial Equality and Diversity group. Canfield RED plans to hold quarterly events centered around greater racial awareness and to see how Canfield compares with other local communities regarding diversity in its school system, police department and city government, Kanotz said, adding that Tuesday’s workshop was Canfield RED’s kickoff event.

Stanley said that more people need to overcome the fear of talking about racism, even if it’s an unpopular subject.

“We need to get out of our comfort zones,” she added. “The truth can be uncomfortable.”

ETIOLOGY OF RACISM

The group traced the etiology of racism in this country from 1619 to the present, sought to give others a perspective of racism from the black American point of view and focused on what can be done to combat the centuries-old problem.

Bailey noted that in the late 1400s, the term “white,” as applied to race, didn’t exist. Instead, Europeans were known by being English, French and other nationalities. The concept of whiteness was first used in the 13 Colonies in 1691, she said.

In 1493, Pope Alexander XI issued the Doctrine of Discovery, which stated any Christian can take over the land of non-Christians. The move later became the foundation for the United States’ western expansion and was “synonymous with white,” Bailey said.

In 1619, the first 20 blacks were brought to Jamestown, Va., on a Dutch ship from Africa in advance of slavery. Also in the 1600s, the Virginia House of Burgesses, modeled largely after the British Parliament, passed a series of acts that set definitions for those considered slaves.

Bailey also discussed Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 in which Nathaniel Bacon Jr., a poor farmer, led many former indentured servants and others in western Virginia to revolt against Gov. Willian Berkeley. They also resented wealthy planters in another part of the colony making the laws for them.

Houser noted that at the end of the Civil War, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issued an order to give former slaves small parcels of land in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, but that President Andrew Johnson “overrode that order, and land was given back to whites.”

Even though the 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, freed some slaves, it made an exception for those convicted of crimes.

“In the state of Alabama in the 1890s, over 70 percent of the state revenue came from convict leasing,” Houser said about the practice that forced black convicts to work under dealdy and inhumane conditions.

WORLD WAR II

In the 1940s, racism manifested itself in a variety of federal policies, such as disparities in GI Bill benefits between white and black soldiers returning from World War II. In addition, the Federal Housing Authority often issued insured home loans with no required down payments to whites, whereas blacks usually were given uninsured mortgages with higher interest rates, Houser said.

Also, the FHA implemented a practice that fed into housing discrimination, she continued.

“Block busting occurred when Realtors encouraged whites to sell at lower rates because of fear of blacks moving in,” Houser said. “Then the Realtor would sell the house to blacks at a higher price.”

She also cited a study by the Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative that shows more than 4,400 lynchings took place between 1877 and 1950.

In November 2019, several Sojourn to the Past members traveled to Sandusky to initiate a memorial service for William Taylor, a black man who was lynched in 1878 after being falsely accused of killing a white woman in a barn. The group collected a jar of dirt from the site and it’s in the Legacy Museum in Montgomery.

Stanley, an Ursuline High School senior, discussed the massacre in Tulsa, Okla., on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which a mob of angry armed whites burned and looted homes and businesses and shot many blacks who lived and worked in a wealthy section called Greenwood, often referred to as “Black Wall Street.”

Other topics she mentioned included the Tuskegee Study from 1932 to 1972. Six hundred black men were part of an experiment to test how syphilis affected them and were told they were being tested for “bad blood,” though nothing was done to treat those with the disease. In 1974, reparations were given to the men who were still living, or to family members of those who were deceased. In addition, many poor black women were sterilized between 1933 and 1973 without their knowledge or consent — something that occurred in more than 30 states.

“This practice of eugenics was to weed out the disabled and so-called feeble-minded; however, it was distinctly racial,” Stanley said.

Houser, Stanley and Bailey urged attendees to listen to and learn from others’ stories without passing judgment, build relationships with those of other races and cultures, vote for politicians who are anti-racist, stand up to injustices, protect their sense of hope and expect some resistance.