Will the Empire Strike Back?
In my new book, Fantasy Five (Cascade Publishing House, Atlanta, 2024), about the 1975 election of the first five Black members of the Macon, Georgia city council, I also recount the historic campaign of Rev. Julius C. Hope, a Black Baptist preacher, who made a landmark run for the Macon mayor’s office during the summer of 1975. He did not win but shared an axiom with his audience at every campaign rally. He offered up the adage, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
As I approach the 2024 General Election next week, words from Rev. Hope’s adroit tongue keep popping into my head, along with a long-form essay from Norman Mailer published in a 1972 edition of Life Magazine following the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami, where Mailer, through his brilliant prose, handicaps the presidential race between Minnesota Senator George McGovern and President Richard Milhouse Nixon. Sitting on the “Ignorant Bench” on the campus of Tuskegee Institute reading Mailer’s piece, Saint George and the Godfather, at the start of a new school year, the idea exploded in the mind of this political science major, to my chagrin, that Nixon would win a second term in the White House.
Presidential elections don’t often give us such stark contrasts in the country’s mood like the contest between McGovern and Nixon and, for better or worse, the consequences of an election on the future course of the nation’s well-being.
Mailer said of McGovern, “…he would rather be a secular saint than President,” and hinted that Nixon would do anything in the fashion of the main character in Mario Puzo’s famous novel, The Godfather, to win re-election, which we now know, included checking off a carefully crafted enemy’s list containing political opponents and journalistic antagonists.
In the weeks following Nixon’s re-election, Mailer’s ominous polemics and “wicked pen” proved once again that he had felt the national pulse. Dread roamed the land, threatening to derail nearly two hundred years of democratic rule in the Republic given to European settlers who had successfully revolted from the tyranny of the British Monarch.
In a few days, the nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men (today we include women, Negroes, and all others similarly situated, but exclusive of immigrants) are created equal and endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness finds herself near the abyss, testing whether the red states or the blue states will dominate the political landscape.
America is as divided as she has ever been, and she has always existed in a state of division when on the brink of war, whether war with an external enemy or war from the enemy within.
We are facing an uncertain future!
Since 1776, we have been down this road many times, most recently in the presidential election of 2016. As with Nixon in 1972, we have seen the presidency besmirched, for lack of a better word, under Trump. Just like Nixon, there were signs all around us that Nixon would seek to crush his media critics and stifle the First Right given to the “People” under the government created in 1789.
Yet Nixon’s hue and cry of “Law and Order” pitted us against them, the good Americans versus the bad. Nixon pontificated against hippies, radical Black Power advocates, bra burners, and natives. On the strength of this clamor, Nixon’s actions won the day and ushered in the first sitting President to resign rather than face impeachment.
Today, Trump, the first twice-impeached President in our country’s history, is on the brink of pulling off a victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, like the improbable Dodgers victory over the New York Yankees in the 2024 World Series or Nixon beating a man considered a saint before Congressman John Lewis wore the mantle so well.
What is propelling Trump is the absence of Black voters in the early voting phase of the 2024 General Election. Throughout Georgia, Republicans are outvoting Democrats by huge margins. Black voters typically are early voters. This year, Black voters are not showing up for early voting in the exact percentages as in previous presidential elections.
For instance, according to veteran political activist Rev. Dr. Henry Clay Ficklin, in Macon-Bibb County, Georgia, only 32 percent of Blacks have voted early. For Harris to win Georgia, she must pick up the remaining 68 percent of the Black Middle Georgia vote. There is no guarantee that the remaining Macon-Bibb County Black voters will turn out or vote 100 percent for Vice President Harris. Three days before the election, Trump scheduled a campaign rally in Macon-Bibb County, Georgia, no doubt to erode the Black vote in Central Georgia further.
Georgia Republicans are outvoting Democrats in Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb, and Clayton Counties. The key unanswered question is whether Republicans left enough in the tank that Tuesday’s turnout will deliver the State’s electoral college votes to the Trump political machine.
In Louisiana, young political operative Gary Chambers, Jr. says there are 942,000 Black voters. Still, only 244,074 have voted early, leaving 697,926 Black voters; the Vice President must get to the polls on Tuesday. Turning out nearly 700,000 voters in one day is a monumental task. Doing it in multiple states compounds the problem and increases the need for walking around money to pay canvassers to hold campaign signs on street corners. What is happening in Georgia and Louisiana is happening throughout the country in Black voting precincts.
In an election so critically important to the continued success of Black Americans in their march from enslavement to freedom, the majority of them are taking a nonchalant attitude towards this election and either have not made up their minds or simply will sit out this election.
Both of these positions are unfathomable, but they are distinct possibilities given the divide-and-conquer disinformation efforts and the keen ability of the Trump campaign to obscure clarity on the issues. Like Nixon, Trump is doing what he has to do to make a vocal minority the electoral winner.
The White Church posits: “I don’t like how Trump acts, but I like his policies. The White Church opts for condoning the postulations of the Devil without any thought that you can’t accept the Devil’s apple without pledging alliance to him. As Darth Vader told Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars Movie, “I am altering the deal.” Since those days in “The Garden,” once you lure the weak-minded, the deal constantly changes.
Over my head, I can hear the voice of Rev. Julius C. Hope saying, “Wake up my people before we are all through because if you “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
The American people don’t have to be fooled a second time. Like in Star Wars, the Empire can strike back with a record-setting turnout on Tuesday.
Harold Michael Harvey, JD, is the Living Now 2020 Bronze Medal winner for his memoir Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is the author of a book on Negro Leagues Baseball, The Duke of 18th & Vine: Bob Kendrick Pitches Negro Leagues Baseball. He writes feature stories for Black College Nines.com. Harvey is a member of the Collegiate Baseball Writers Association, HBCU and PRO Sports Media Association, and the Legends Committee for the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Harvey is an engaging speaker. Contact Harvey at [email protected].