The first title is called Monumental, by Brian Mitchell, Barrington Edwards and Nick Weldon. In October 2021 at the Brooklyn Book Festival, the author Brian Mitchell was among a panel of graphic novelists. He explained that he is the actual ancestor of Oscar Dunn, his great-grand Uncle. He found out about Dunn from his grandmother, who would tell him stories of their family, while showing him family photos. As a child, he said that his teacher did not believe him, that Dunn was an ancestor of his family and was the first black Lt. Governor of Louisiana – this hurt him deeply and he never forgot it. Mitchell did his doctoral thesis on Dunn, the research that became the foundation of this book. The book was written in graphic form to appeal/engage middle school and high school students.
Oscar James Dunn, the first African American Lt Governor and acting Governor in US history, elected 1868, was born into slavery in 1822. A free man of color, James Dunn, his stepfather, would buy his family’s freedom.
Oscar received schooling until the age of 14, when it was expected for boys his age to learn a trade. Then he apprenticed under white master plasterers. He also began learning music and became a skilled guitar player and started teaching. However, the climate for black men teaching became toxic when a friend was accused of becoming involved with a white female student – Dunn went back to plastering full time. Being a skilled tradesman, led Dunn to be introduced to Freemasonry, a centuries old secret society with lodges worldwide. He apprenticed at New Orleans’ first black lodge, around 1852.
Years later, Louisiana, along with other slave holding states seceded from the Union in January 1861 – the Civil War broke out in April that same year. New Orleans, the south’s largest city at the time, had a major port at the Mississippi River and became a Union target. Barley a year after the start of the war, the city fell to Union control, to the delight of blacks living in the city.
Dunn continued to grow his personal network and became influential in the church, which was the cornerstone of his community. His influence also grew in his lodge during the war. He held leadership posts and helped write the constitution for the Eureka Grand Lodge, and was installed as its first Worshipful Grand Master, the highest office among black masons in the country. These accomplishments and alliances would form the foundation of his political career.
After the end of the Civil War, whites of Louisiana passed legislation creating black code laws, which limited the rights of blacks. These laws emboldened whites, who did not want Reconstruction to take place, to commit acts of violence against blacks residents, which led to a riot where about 40 people were killed. This led to Congress passing a series of Reconstruction acts, creating five military districts in the South, with generals assigned as governors.
A convention was held to rewrite Louisiana’s constitution and elect new leaders for the state. At this convention, Henry Warmoth was nominated as Governor and Oscar Dunn was nominated as Lt Governor to the Republican slate in the next election. They won the election and voters also approved the state’s constitution, which led to the ratification of the 14th amendment (giving citizenship rights and guaranteeing rights to all citizens under the law) and Louisiana was admitted back into the Union. Dunn was sworn into office in July 1868 – the first black Lt Governor in US history.
As Lt Governor, Dunn never stopped working for equal rights and better conditions for blacks in the state and by 1870, a law was passed desegregating public schools. By 1871, Warmoth was involved in a boat accident and left the state to recover, leaving Dunn as the first black acting Governor of the state.
Warmoth’s term as Governor was plagued with corruption, pitting both men in opposing camps with their political allies, to the point that both men headed split conventions in 1871. In the midst of all this turmoil, Dunn fell sick and died of his illness in November of 1871. He was 49 years old.
At Dunn’s funeral, Reverend James Lynch, Mississippi’s first black Secretary of State said, “In Lt Governor Dunn it has been shown that the colored man, crushed to the earth by a tyrannic power, could, when his shackles were broken, rise to dignity, usefulness and the loftiest patriotism.” His funeral was one of the largest gatherings in New Orleans history.
The tyrannic power that Reverend Lynch spoke of, white supremacy, never went away. By 1877, President Rutherford Hayes, in order to secure electoral southern votes, removed federal troops from the South, which effectively ended Reconstruction, erasing all the progress of blacks in the South. Because Oscar Dunn died unexpectedly, at such a young age, he left no writings documenting his life. His accomplishments and the gains of the Reconstruction era were practically erased, which is why a teacher did not believe a young boy about his great-grand Uncle. Read Monumental by Brian Mitchell.
The Day The Klan Came To Town by Bill Campbell, is another graphic novel from the same panel of authors in 2021 mentioned above. This is a fictionalized account of an actual event that happened in the author’s hometown of Carnegie, Pennsylvania. The author grew up in the town where the events happened but it was never mentioned. He found out about it and had to do his own research, working with the Historical Society of Carnegie, to tell this story.
The story is set in 1923, during the era of the rise of the Second Klan, founded after the popular D.W. Griffith film, The Birth Of A Nation. This Second Klan expanded to the North and Midwest and also lengthened their hate-list of targets to include not only blacks, but immigrants, namely, Italians, Irish, Jews and Catholics. The town of Carnegie was home to a diverse population of most of these groups and the Klu Klux Klan of Pennsylvania, once they grew in membership and popularity, decided to march through this town. The police chief gave the Klan mob access to the town, saying he had no authority to stop them. However, the town of Carnegie, blacks, Italians, Jews, Irish, Catholic, banned together to confront and drive the KKK from their town. The town members the author created are fictional, but the town’s mayor, police chief and Klan members are real, for they were documented in official and news records.
In the beginning, this country was basically created for the white Anglo-Protestant male and his female, not Italians, Irish, Jews, Catholics and certainly not anyone of color. The author creates a character, Primo Salerno, an immigrant from Sicily, to illustrate this. But this is a largely forgotten story, once groups have been upgraded to “whiteness”, admitted into the club and benefit from all that being white has to offer in this country, things are erased and forgotten, the author explains. You should not forget however, because when you do, what others go through to get here and what they go through once they are here, is no longer your story. The Day The Klan Came To Town by Bill Campbell, is an important story, a story of resistance, of people from different backgrounds coming together to face an age-old enemy – hatred, under the umbrella of white supremacy. Read and don’t forget.
The third title is a BookBub pick. Surrender White People! by D.L. Hughley, is a commentary on relations between blacks and whites in America. After centuries of oppression, things are changing. America is becoming a majority black and brown nation and whites need to come to terms with, and face this history. While giving the reader a concise and excellent account of American history’s racism and slavery, he offers solutions and proposes and lists terms of a treaty.
White people’s perception and continued denial or refusal to cope with the past and present of America’s indoctrinated bias against people of color is a basic problem. Racism/slavery cost all of us, black and white, and it’s time we come together – truly coming together will help heal us all. Hughley presents a serious argument, while inserting his brand of humor – some parts are laugh-out-loud-funny!
Hughley has a rebuttal for the aged-old arguments/comments against reparations; giving a helping hand to immigrants and the poor; you don’t belong here, go back where you came from; black people never accomplished anything; and the excuse/myth that whites came here with nothing, worked hard and prospered, so why can’t you.
Reading this rang true; I’ve had many of these thoughts, living and growing up in black America. I recommend everyone give this one a read – for people of color, you’re not crazy, what you experience and feel is real and – for whites, a look on the other side to try to understand what it’s like, don’t ignore our experience. It will do us all good if we understand one another – Surrender White People! by D.L. Hughley!
I hope you give all three of this month’s picks a read.