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In the anthology Sites of Memory, the architectural historian Kenrick Ian Grandison recounts the story of Robert Moton, President of Tuskegee Institute. In 1923, Moton secured federal funding to build a hospital for black World War I veterans. When local white leaders heard that the hospital would be managed and staffed by black management and health care workers, a mob gathered at Motons home with an agreement to sign. If he did not agree to white management, they would blow up the campus within 24 hours.

We have the legislature, we make the laws, we have the judges, the sheriffs, the jails. We have the hardware stores and the arms, he was told by one among the mob.

Grandisons essay, Negotiated Spaces, captures the racial conflict between black colleges and the segregated towns around them. The unevenness of the stakes is vivid. On one side, a mob who touted control of the government and the legal system, and weapons to kill Moton and destroy the college. On the other side, a community that wanted to build a hospital and care for black veterans.

The Moton attackers made clear that their way of life couldnt tolerate black growth because their culture relied on black compliance. A failure to comply would then require domination and possibly violence. Again, they were mad about a hospital.

The veterans hospital was built, despite the violent mobs that were normalised in America. The threat that stopped at Motons doorstep in Tuskegee did not stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where in 1921 a white mob burned down 40 city blocks in Greenwood, an African-American neighbourhood famous for social and economic mobility (see the image above). Men dropped kerosene bombs from airplanes and used firearms on the ground. By the end of the massacre on June 1, many of the 300 victims were buried in unmarked mass graves before being properly identified. The injured had no hospital, because it was burned as well.

After Trump officials announced their plans for a June 20th campaign rally in Tulsa, the violence of the massacre has been widely discussed. Beyond that, the echoes of Tulsa can be heard in President Trumps racist rhetoric. For another President, the Tulsa trip could be coincidental, but the cultural agency of President Trump relies on violent protection of the status quo.

After white supremacists staged a violent and deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, Virginia, Mr. Trumps referred to attendees as good people. His language choice welcomed comparisons to the countrys history of racial violence. The mobs in Charlottesville, Tuskegee, Tulsa, are consistent with the viewpoint Mr. Trump has championed in the so-called culture wars.

As the threat to Moton showed, government forces and mob justice were both means of forced compliance and domination. Sometimes they worked in tandem, and sometimes they were separate paths to the same violent ends. We have the judges, the sheriffs, the jails

The Presidents most overt calls for domination have come through calls for aggressive policing. In a July 2017 speech to Long Island police officers, he urged them not to be too nice, when arresting suspects. He not only condoned violence during arrests, he encouraged it. The current Department of Justice has abandoned most oversight of police departments, and this, coupled with the Presidents encouragement, has worsened historical tensions. The sense of a culture war between police and the citizens has either ignored or minimised the harm inflicted on the people whom law enforcement officers are meant to protect.

Motons aggressors stopped at his doorstep. Breonna Taylors did not. Three Louisville, Kentucky police officers, Brett Hankison, Johnathan Mattingly, and Myles Cosgrove entered her home in plain clothes, without identifying themselves, looking for a man already in custody. They shot her eight times, killing her in her bed. The war on cops has become a dangerous myth, and the warlike posturing has given cover to Breonna Taylors killer. Last week when the Louisville Police Department released the incident report, the nearly empty page listed no forced entry and no injuries. In their reckoning, she has been killed and then erased.

When I read Grandisons recount, the name Robert Moton was familiar. I have visited the Tuskegee Army Air Field named in his honor and seen the artifacts that mark the history of the place. Once the Tuskegee Airmen completed their flight training, they fought fascists and helped to liberated Europe. In stories about the Airmen, its common to hear about the war they fought abroad and the one they faced in America when they returned in 1945, three years away from a desegregated U.S. military, nine years away from the Brown decision, and twenty years away from the Voting Right Act of 1965. Call this a culture war, certainly, but only one side can rightfully be called just.

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America's long culture war - TheArticle