America’s Untouchables
In honor of Black History Month, Chrysalis Lab will highlight African American individuals and organizations who have made tremendous contributions to society. We continue our tribute with esteemed author Isabel Wilkerson.
Isabel Wilkerson is an impassioned voice who helps us understand how history can be used to uplift ourselves and improve our country. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1994, making her the first African American female journalist to win. She then devoted fifteen years and interviewed more than 1,200 people to document the story of the Black people who defected from the Jim Crow South. This resulted in her debut work, The Warmth of Other Suns, which won a litany of literary awards. The book examined the Great Migration -- the movement north and westward by six million Black Southerners between 1910 and 1970.
Wilkerson noted that the Great Migration marks “the only time in our country’s history that American citizens had to flee the place of their birth just to be recognized as the citizens they had always been. It was the seeking of political asylum from within the borders of one’s own country.”
Her latest book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an expansive account of the system of divisions that govern our world. Wilkerson says racism is an insufficient term for the systemic oppression of Black people in America. Instead, she invokes the tenets of the centuries old systems of caste to explain the racial tensions and structures that undergird all aspects of American society and culture Wilkerson describes caste as an artificial hierarchy that helps determine social standing, respect, competence, and access to resources. In 2023, filmmaker Ava DuVernay wrote and directed, Origin, a biographical drama based on Wilkerson’s book.
Through her writing, Wilkerson explores the need to reconcile America’s karmic inheritance and our shared commonality. “If we truly want to end caste, each of us, every single one of us, needs to search our souls for the ways in which we may be complicit in upholding caste and stereotype and hierarchy, as our society has so cleverly trained us to do, and to consciously work against this programming in our everyday lives if we are ever to overcome it.”
Recently, there has been a staunch resistance to teaching the history of racism, caste, and slavery in our public-school systems. Many Americans find it uncomfortable to talk about the sordid parts of our past. However, all of us need to know our history in its totality. We cannot avoid our history because we are living it and we must learn from it.
A vital component of the work of Chrysalis Lab is to aid in dismantling America’s caste system by shining a floodlight on it and helping individuals and organizations confront it. We are inspired by Wilkerson’s works as it provides creative and compelling context for resolving the underlying issues that plague American society. As noted by Ava DuVernay, “this is a time when we need to be alert. We need to be aware of the stripping of freedoms and rights. The intention of certain people to distort history, to say it doesn't matter, to say it never happened. …This is the time when we have to push through our fatigue and open our eyes and engage. “
Black History Month
In honor of Black History Month, Chrysalis Lab will highlight African American individuals and organizations who have made tremendous contributions to society. We begin with Carter G. Woodson, the “father of Black history” and founder of Black History Month.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson was a distinguished Black author, editor, publisher, and historian. Woodson was born on Dec. 19, 1875, in New Canton, Virginia to parents who had been enslaved. He worked as a sharecropper and in a coal mine during his childhood. He did not begin high school until he was 20. He attended Berea College in Kentucky, obtained a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and in 1912 became the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
After earning his doctoral degree, no predominately White university was willing to hire him, so he taught in public schools. He later joined the faculty at Howard University as a professor and eventually as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Woodson recognized the role of Blacks in American history was being ignored or misrepresented by the academic community. Instead of becoming disillusioned, he dedicated his life to creating an institution that would make it possible for Black scholars to study history. Woodson believed that education and increasing social and professional contacts among Black and white people could reduce racism, and he promoted the organized study of African American history partly for that purpose.
Woodson established “Negro History Week” in 1926. He explained the idea behind the celebration -- “It is not so much a Negro History Week as it is a History Week,” he wrote. “We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in History. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hatred and religious prejudice.” In 1976, Negro History Week was lengthened to include the entire month of February.
In 1933, Woodson published “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” a classic work on advocating for excellence in the education of Black students. The book argued that school systems across America should correct curriculums designed to deliberately “mis-educate” Black children and promote the fallacy of white supremacy.
“If a race has no history,” Woodson wrote, “it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”
Dr. Woodson’s tireless work is just as relevant today as it was a century ago. In the past three years, more than half of U.S. states, including Georgia, have passed measures against the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Critical Race Theory is a framework that sees race not mainly as a biological factor, but as a social construct deeply embedded in society.
The First Amendment includes the freedom to read and learn, free from censorship. In 2024, state and local lawmakers across the country will continue their crusade against a complete, accurate, and inclusive education. This isn’t new. On many occasions throughout history, African Americans have witnessed lawmakers trampling on the US Constitution to further the aims of white supremacy. If Americans don’t defend the Constitution from those sworn to uphold it, anarchy can ensue as witnessed by the January 6th Insurrection. This battle isn’t a Black thing. Defending against censorship in public in schools is a fight for maintaining a democratic nation where all voices are valued and where history is based on truth, not “a fable agreed upon.” That’s why we’re grateful to trailblazers like Dr. Carter G. Woodson who recognized the value of inclusion in education and dedicated his life to upholding it.
