Why Pioneer Black Lawyers Matter
By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
[Introduction: The words of boredom lingered in me. Stories of pioneer black lawyers bored a young writer out there somewhere. I felt the passion. She yawned. And so as I fell asleep a few days ago, I watched a podcast Western Civilization is Already Dead. I drifted off to sleep and dreamed of pioneer black lawyers as civilization already dead. I woke up and this essay was born based on said podcast. Consider these words a poem of the heart to a writer who no longer believes in pietas.]
Maybe, we should understand pioneer black lawyers as metaphorical saints. They are the roots of the culture and must be written about. It is about going back to our roots which we will find in their stories. Let’s tell stories of the saints. Let’s go write about how pioneers changed the landscape. It is how we build a civilization. It becomes a thing we need to do. Pietas. Stories are the way we navigate reality.
The root of a civilization that has gone wrong is a story that has gone wrong. So let’s tell the right stories. This becomes a really exciting thing to do for me. It’s not about a culture war or anger or giving up. Let’s go back to the desert and tell the stories and dig out the old stories that no one knows about, of what our ancestors did. So that we can listen to them and be inspired by them.
This is a way forward.
Absolutely! Santayana's observation that "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" is too often applied to societies as a whole--the mistake of waging a land war in Russia being a classic example. On a community and individual level, though, forgetting history means that past achievements, milestones, resolutions, are diminished; time and effort are thus expended in reaching conclusions or outcomes already established by previous generations, often under far more hostile and uncertain conditions. Learning about past achievements, basing our actions on received knowledge and understanding, is the only means by which an individual, if not a community, can grow and advance intellectually. No contributions to society based on self-centered and ignorant notions of innovation, disruption, or censorship will ever be truly positive.
I might have something to contribute here later.