politics – Ben Jacques Stories

1936 & 2026–What will we remember?

The black-and-white photos are eerily compelling. A giant airship, the Hindenburg, hovers above the stadium. In another, a runner in white, carrying a torch, leads other runners through the streets. A third shows Adolf Hitler and his entourage as they pass through the Brandenburg Gate. The Führer is standing in his open Mercedez Benz. A fourth shows him arriving in the massive Olympic stadium as 120,000 Germans raise their arms in Nazi salute.

We remember the 1936 Olympics as a pivotal event, showcasing the glory and the infamy of the Third Reich. It took place three years after Adolf Hitler came to power and three years before Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. I think of these games with all their ceremony as I watch the final games of the World Cup, hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.

When the Olympics opened in 1936, anyone who was paying attention knew of Germany’s persecution of Jews, Roma and others. As early as 1933, the Nazis had instituted an Aryan-only policy in all athletic organizations. Jews were excluded from sports facilities and associations. Other actions were more sinister.

In April of ’33, the government barred Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions. That same month it instigated boycotts of Jewish businesses and shops. In May, across the street from the University of Berlin, mobs burned over 20,000 books. That spring, the Nazis opened the first of 23 main concentration camps near Dachau.

In the next two years Hitler pushed through a series of “Nuremburg Laws,” stripping Jews of their citizenship and prohibiting intermarriage. Germany also began compulsory sterilization of the “unfit,” mentally and physically disabled persons in nine categories. Euthanasia would come later.

In the summer of 1936, in preparation for the Olympic games, the Nazi government put on a kinder face for the world. Antisemitic signs and posters were taken down and government pronouncements muted. To show its racial tolerance, Germany included in its Olympic team of 433 athletes one Jew, the star fencer, Helene Mayer, whose father was Jewish.

Considered a triumph of propaganda, the 1936 Olympics showcased Germany as a respectable and welcoming member of the international community, a nation built by hard work, family values and patriotism.

What most Americans remember about the Berlin games, however, was the brilliance of Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, defying the Hitler’s racial ideology. With his stunning victories, Owens became a household name, with little thought to the racial prejudice he and other African Americans faced back home.

There were 359 athletes in the American team, including 18 African Americans and two Jews. The Jews were Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, both talented sprinters. Controversy would later erupt when it was learned that on the day of the 4×100-meter relay, for which they had trained, they were pulled from the race, many believe, to spare Hitler further embarrassment.

Despite the success of the Americans, the Germans won the lion’s share of Olympic medals, 38 gold and 101 total, bolstering the Nazis’ claims of Aryan superiority.

As we watch the finals of the World Cup on Sunday in New York, we close one of the most successful international sports events of our time. Sixteen cities in three North American countries have hosted 102 games, rich in ceremony and bonhomie. The 46 teams came from five continents, thrilling fans and spectators with their passion, pride and skills on the pitch.

I’m wondering, though, how we will look back on the 2026 World Cup, and particularly, our country and what was going on out of sight. In writing this, I am not saying things in America are the same as in Germany in 1936. They are not. But there are similarities.

While athletes from around the world have been chasing soccer balls, the government has been chasing immigrants in what it promised would be the largest mass deportation project in American history. The slogan for ramped up enforcement in Maine was titled “Catch of the Day.” Arresting thousands a day in streets and job sites around the country, the government is holding some 70,000 men, women and children in 212 detention centers, where they await deportation. Thousands more are being flown every day to countries they had fled or other unsafe destinations.

Fathers and mothers have been taken from children. Wage-earners arrested have left families stranded. Men and women have been shot and killed, leaving their blood in the streets.

Targeting not only those without documentation, but 1.3 million here legally under the Temporary Protected Status, the government has in effect instituted ethnic cleansing, considered a crime against humanity. Most of those arrested are black or brown.

Before mass deportation began, the President and others engaged in persistent slander of people from Haiti, Africa and Latin America. Is this not reminiscent of the Nazis’ decades-long efforts to dehumanize Jews, necessary before action can be taken against them? Necessary before “the final solution”?

Years from now, we will recall the glorious World Cup games of 2026, a time when athletes and fans from around the world joined us, competed against us and celebrated with us. Yet so much has been going on behind the curtain.

What will we remember?

Photos from the National Archives

DU BOIS, JUNETEENTH AND THE SOUL OF AMERICA

At the dawn of the century, 123 years ago, W. E. B. Du Bois published a remarkable book, titled The Souls of Black Folk. Drawing back the veil that separated black and white Americans, he portrayed in lyrical prose a people of separate and unequal status.

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, just three years after the Civil War, Du Bois studied at Fisk University, then became the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard. Sociologist, teacher, activist and author, he fought a resurgent racism that relegated African Americans to the lowest rung of society, denied them voting, and terrorized them with violence.

In his introduction, Du Bois wrote: “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” I submit that it is still true today.

Tomorrow, as we celebrate Juneteenth, the day enslaved folk in Texas finally learned they were free, we must look again at race as the defining marker in President Trump’s campaign to remove millions of black and brown people from America.

In the 21^st century, as in Du Bois’ time, we are witness to the orchestrated dehumanization of people of color. Consider the slander coming out of the White House against Haitians, Mexicans and Somalis. Consider the targeting of minority officials, judges and politicians. Consider the redistricting of voting maps to exclude African Americans.

Consider the daily arrests of our immigrant neighbors—the vast majority who are black or brown. Taken from their families, they are flown to detention prisons to await deportation.

The Brookings Institute reports that in Trump’s second term, well over 100,000 children have been separated from their parents. (Remember the outcry in 2018 when about 5,500 children were removed from their parents?)

There are now some 70,000 immigrants held in 371 detention centers in the United States, and the Trump administration wants more. An estimated 290,000 have already been flown to other countries, the most going to Mexico. But not all are sent to their countries of origin. The New York Times reports plans to send 1,100 Afghan refugees, who aided the United States during the war, to the Congo.

At the same time President Trump has opened the door to 10,000 white South Africans to re-settle in America.

Some 13 million of our neighbors are still vulnerable to deportation, either because they are undocumented or have had their temporary protective status (TPS) removed. Besides revoking their TPS, Trump is now targeting immigrants applying for Green Cards. He is also targeting Dreamers, young adults who came here as small children. As he said in his campaign rallies, he wants them all gone.

A detainee’s wife holds a photo of her husband, held in detention in New Jersey, and their two children.

Under the guise of immigration enforcement, the federal government is waging what can only be described as ethnic cleansing, the term used when a country systematically attempts to remove residents of a certain race, ethnicity or religion. This is a crime.

In his landmark book, Du Bois hoped white folk would come to know black folk, that they would take to heart their essential humanity and intrinsic value as full members of the American community. The same is true about the millions of immigrants, the majority black and brown, who want nothing more than freedom to live in safety, raise their families, work and be a part of the American dream.

America needs immigrants, families, hard workers, builders, care providers, entrepreneurs. But more than that, we need to know the Soul of Immigrants and affirm their humanity. As in 1903, America needs a change of heart.

What Happens There Matters Here

Sunday morning Becky and I walked through heavy rain to a tent set up just outside Delaney Hall, an ICE detention prison holding over a 1,000 men and women in Newark, NJ. We had driven over from our daughter’s home in a Newark suburb. She had arrived earlier, joining other volunteers to set up coffee and food along with clothing, diapers and toys for families hoping to visit their loved one inside.

“Come to the Tent” in Spanish is posted by volunteers providing support to families of detainees at the Delaney Hall Detention Center.

Situated off the turnpike in New Jersey among huge gas tanks, warehouses, depots and a state prison, Delaney Hall has been the flashpoint for protests of its inhumane treatment of inmates. On Friday, around 300 detainees began a weekend hunger and labor strike and called on Gov. Mikie Sherrill to visit Delaney Hall, a private, for-profit facility, and address their complaints.

The day before, Senator Andy Kim (Dem-NJ) had visited Delaney Hall and met with inmates and advocates. Voicing his support for the detainees, he wrote this on his Facebook page:

I rushed to ICE detention center Delaney Hall yesterday when I heard detainees began a hunger strike. Here’s what I saw:

An 18 yr-old high-school student crying and saying she just wanted to graduate senior year;

A pregnant woman unable to get full OBGYN medical support;

A woman who had a miscarriage in the detention facility and left to manage all on her own;

A mom not allowed to spend more that a few minutes with 4-month-old baby;

A husband of an American-citizen wife and kid;

A carton with the milk inside congealed solid (expiration date is tomorrow); [there were also complaints of worms in the food.]

A man there for nearly a year with no movement in his legal efforts;

A document showing next Tuesday’s court docket showing 74 cases before one judge in one day (averages about 5 minutes a case);

A man telling me ICE is trying to deport him to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is an active Ebola outbreak (he’s from South America originally);

Numerous people who were arrested at scheduled interviews for Green Cards (trying to follow the formal process);

A family unable to find out what hospital their family was sent to (ICE said they cannot give any medical updates to families of hospitalized detainees);

The Statue of Liberty as I left the facility to drive home. [You can see the Statue from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, not far from Delaney Hall.]

In another column, I’ll write more about what happens at Delaney Hall, and in the tent where volunteers provide support to families of detainees. Because what happens there, even if it’s not on the 6 o’clock evening news, must matter to us.

Delaney Hall Detention Center in Newark, NJ

“Bam, you’re dead!”

At age seven I was thrilled by the Lone Ranger. We didn’t have a TV, but the family that rented above us did and invited me and my brothers up to watch on their black-and-white.

Years later, I looked forward to “Gunsmoke,” which my uncle would let us watch with him in the family room. Our hero was, of course, Marshall Matt Dillon, who kept the peace in Dodge City, along with his sidekick, Chester, Miss Kitty and Doc Adams.

Then came Wyatt Earp, Maverick, the Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel and others. What all the characters had in common was they knew how to solve problems and settle disputes. They did this with their guns.

As did boys did across America, I imagined myself as a heroic keeper of the peace. Our parents didn’t allow us store-bought six-shooters, but we made our own versions out of wood. In my reverie, I was the quickest draw in town.

My fascination with Westerns was an early immersion in a culture wedded to guns. Guns represented power, and the destruction they caused was justified by the need to protect and establish order or to settle old scores.

If our heroes shot and killed other human beings, this was all right because they were clearly the bad guys. We enjoyed seeing their theatrical demise. “Bam, you’re dead,” one of us would yell. “You got me,” the other would respond, spinning and falling to the ground.

Over time, on TV and in movies, the weapons became more sophisticated. Colt 45s and Winchester rifles were followed by .44 Magnums and AR7s. Then came Glocks and M60 machine guns. Star Wars and Jurassic Park brought us Mauser pistols and SPAS-12 shotguns. Today, AK47s are the weapons of choice.

Beyond the arguments over gun proliferation and control in America, and whether our Constitution sanctions unfettered access, is the simple reality that we Americans are in love with our guns. We want them, we have them, and we use them— despite the horrendous suffering they inflict.

This is true on a national scale as well. Too often and too quickly we turn to our weapons—ever more sophisticated—in our cities and in the world. We choose war over defense, “death from above” over mediation and conflict resolution.

Accompanying our threats of violence to our perceived enemies is their dehumanization. Nowhere is this more evident than in the words and deeds of our current commander in chief and secretary of the War Department.

The president who labeled Somalians “garbage” and African nations “shithole countries,” has called Iranians “crazy bastards” and threatened to “bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

Hegseth has taunted Iranians as “barbaric savages” and called for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

When you deny your opponents their humanity, it’s much easier to destroy them. You can shoot protesters in the street. You can blow up boats in international waters, summarily executing suspects. You can conduct a “precision” strike into another nation to arrest its leaders, killing 80 people in the process.

And you can start an unprovoked war, unleashing missiles, bombs and drones that you know will kill and wound not only our own soldiers, but thousands of civilians—including children—their suffering out of sight and out of mind.

After 250 years, will we ever understand the true consequences of our violent impulses, combined with our love of weapons? Will we ever learn to holster our six-shooters and commit ourselves to making peace? God help us.

Calibri, Fraktur and “Saving America”

When Marco Rubio announced recently that the State Department was switching its official typeface, I wondered what was going on. Having taught a course in typography, I am well aware of type design and the nuanced notions associated with certain fonts.

I also immediately thought of a typeface called fraktur, a Germanic font Adolf Hitler loved, then hated, and the controversy over typefaces during the Third Reich.

The typeface Rubio doesn’t like is Calibri. It’s a standard sans-serif font. For many years it was the default in Microsoft programs, most recently replaced by a similar one called Aptos.

“Sans serif” means the letters are simple strokes without serifs, the little hands and feet at the end of lines. There is also no variation in line width. Their development was part of the avant garde movement in art, meant to express simplicity and modernity.

One of many sans-serif fonts in the modernist or humanist style, Calibri was created by Dutch typographer Lucas de Groot. With clean lines and slightly rounded corners, it is easily readable online and print and is often selected for presentations. Used during the Biden presidency, it is easier to read in small sizes and considered more accessible for those with disabilities.

So, what’s wrong with it? According to Rubio, Calibri is too informal, not befitting the dignity and tradition of America. In a directive to all diplomats, Rubio mandated the use, instead, of Times New Roman, a traditional serif typeface. He called the use of Calibri by the previous administration a capitulation to DEIA–that’s diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. In short, Calibri is too “woke.”

But why Times New Roman?

One of many classic serif typefaces, Times New Roman was designed in 1931 as the typeface for the Times of London and has long been a go-to font for books and newspapers. Its condensed letter forms and spacing make it efficient for presenting large amounts of text. I use it occasionally, when I want a traditional look in my designs.

The hullabaloo about typefaces reminds me of what happened in Germany in the 1930s, just as the modernist typefaces were gaining popularity. It should not surprise you to learn that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis abhorred the sans serif designs. Instead, they wanted a typeface that would reflect their heritage and status as a Nordic power. They chose an old typeface called fraktur.

Fraktur is distinctly unlike both the sans serifs and traditional “romans” in use throughout the Western world. Designed in the 16^th century, it’s an updated version of a German blackletter, with thick, angular forms similar to what we know as Old English. As the official Nazi typeface in the 1930s, it was used in all government documents and propaganda.

That ended abruptly in 1941, however, when the Nazis discovered that the designer of fraktur was–can you imagine their shock–a Jew. In an about-face, the Nazis then outlawed its use and instead mandated that Antiqua, an old roman typeface, be used.

Fraktur and similar blackletter designs never disappeared, however, and since World War II have been widely used by neo-nazis as a link to the Third Reich. Appearing in banners, graffiti and tattoos, they have also crept into mainstream use, as on U.S. Army football jerseys in a recent Army-Navy football game.

In another appearance, Fraktur is used in an ICE recruitment video in which ice agents smash down doors and unleash an attack dog on a suspect. At the end of the video are three phrases: HUNT CARTELS, SAVE AMERICA, JOIN.ICE.GOV.

So, what can we say about typefaces? It’s important to know how typefaces work, why one font works better than another. It’s also important to understand that the typeface you use is part of the message. In some cases, it is the message.

A Ballad for our Time, Too

Woodie Guthrie wrote the lyrics. Martin Hoffman set them to music. Since then, it’s been sung by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.

It’s a ballad called “Deportees” and it tells of an airplane crash in California’s Los Gatos Canyon. On board were 28 migrant farm workers from Mexico.

The lyrics are as searing now as in 1848 when Guthrie wrote them:

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees.”

Guthrie wrote the ballad one night after news reports listed the names of the pilots, attendant and immigration guard lost in the crash, but referred to the farm workers only as “deportees.” After the braceros’ bodies were recovered, they were buried in a mass grave without names, marked “Mexican Nationals.”

The roundup of the Los Gatos laborers was just one episode in several government campaigns to remove Mexicans and those with Mexican ancestry. Mass deportation began in 1930 and continued through the Great Depression. Then in 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) brought out “Operation Wetback.” Under this federal program, officials used strong-arm tactics to arrest tens of thousands of immigrants across the country. Caught up in the raids were farm and factory workers, including American citizens.

In July of 1955, several thousand deportees were found wandering the streets of Mexicali, a desert town bordering California. Yanked from their jobs and families, they had simply been dumped across the border. According to one account, 88 died of heat exposure in the 112 degree heat.

In Texas, thousands of deportees were crammed onto boats bound for Mexican ports. Testimony before a Congressional committee described conditions akin to those on slave ships. Other immigrants were packed into trucks. By the end of Operation Wetback, the INS claimed it had “repatriated” 1.3 million Mexicans.

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees.”

Accompanying the mass deportations were media depictions of Mexicans as dirty, disease-bearing and lazy. News coverage focused on border and immigration officials conducting raids.

Only in time did most Americans come to see this as something shameful. In a 2012 ceremony in Los Angeles, Governor Jerry Brown and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa formally apologized for California’s role in the deportations.

On Labor Day in 2013, United Farm Worker President Arturo Rodriguez joined hundreds gathered at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California, to memorialize the 28 farm workers killed in Los Gatos Canyon. They were 25 men and three women. This time, inscribed in the headstone, was each person’s name.

Now, deportation planes are again in the sky. Planes to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Planes to India and Rwanda. Planes to Eswatini, a tiny country in southern Africa.

Through October 2025, the Department of Homeland Security operated 1,701 deportation flights to 77 countries. And it recently bought six Boeing 737s, expanding capacity.

Meanwhile, 66,000 men, women and children await deportation in detention centers. Arrested, often with brutal force, they were tracked down in streets, courthouses, parking lots, fields and construction sites.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contracts out and we have to move on.
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

Compared to programs of the past, Donald Trump’s campaign is Operation Wetback on steroids. The president wants 3,000 arrests a day, or one million by the end of his first year in office. Each day, it seems, he expands his list of targets, Somalis, Haitians, Venezuelans, Afghans. What they have in common is their darker shades of skin.

As I listen to Woodie Guthrie’s song, I think of my children and grandchildren. I wonder, what song will they sing in years to come? Who will write the words, and who will remember the names?

Will there be, one day in the future, a public apology, a ceremonial mea culpa for the cruelty, the harm inflicted on so many? If so, what song will we then sing.

She loves us, she loves us not

She loves us, she loves us not. She loves us, she loves us not. So the petals of the daisy tell the story of America’s love-hate relationship with her immigrant people—homesteaders and refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, those fleeing poverty, war, persecution and famine.

President Donald Trump, aide Stephen Miller, DHS’s Kristi Noem, and ICE tsar Tom Holman are not the first ones in our nation’s history to tilt America against immigrants. Anti-immigrant sentiment has been fanned into flames on and off from our earliest days. Posing as populists, politicians have railed against foreigners “poisoning the blood of our country,” as Trump put it in during his presidential campaign.

Since the first Europeans arrived without visas, and Africans arrived in chains, America has opened doors to newcomers, then shut them, opened, then shut them again. In the 19^th century, we needed workers for our factories and farmers for our prairies. We needed merchants and tradesmen, engineers and inventors. It helped if you were Protestant and white. It wasn’t good if you were Chinese or Irish or Mexican.

Although doors for a while swung open to “your tired, your hungry, your masses yearning to breathe free,” by the 1920s they had all but closed again. Laws approved by Congress in 1917 and 1921 slowed immigration to a trickle, setting quotas based on national origin. These laws and anti-Semitic sentiment kept out thousands of Jews attempting to flee Nazi Germany. Included among them were 907 passengers–men, women and children–aboard the M.S. St. Louis. Refused permission to dock in Miami, the ship turned back to Europe. Some 250 perished in concentration camps.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 preserved a restrictive quota system favoring Europeans, but made an important change. The bill abolished the “alien ineligible to citizenship” category applied to Asians, although it limited the number of those who could qualify.

Deciding who to allow in America is one thing. What to do with those already in is another. The answer has often been harsh. For example, the Chinese and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. For example, the braceros invited in to plant and harvest our crops.

In 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) brought out “Operation Wetback.” Under this federal program, officials used military-like tactics to arrest tens of thousands of immigrants across the country. Caught up in the raids were farm and factory workers, including some American citizens. Deemed unwelcome, they were flown, trucked or shipped across the border.

I was thinking of all this as I sat in a café in Woburn the other night, listening to the stories of three immigrants. From Nicaragua, Turkey and India, they shared stories of their arrival and the challenges and obstacles they faced. As they pursue remarkable careers in science, health care and technology, they are reaching out to others, mentoring and building community.

Above all, they are sharing their love for America. She loves me. She loves me not.

Like many Americans, I am pained by the policies and actions of our government, by the slamming of doors to thousands of refugees who were already been vetted for resettlement. By the ending of legal protections for thousands fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries. By the brutal and cruel tactics of ICE agents as they take parents from children and children from families.

The simple truth is, we need immigrants. We need them, not only for economic reasons, to bring young life to an aging demographic, but for their love ethic.

It’s time to love our immigrants again.

Slavery, the Smithsonian and Stoneham

African slaves first arrive in Boston in 1638

Our President is attacking the Smithsonian for its portrayal of slavery. He wants exhibits that show the horrors of slavery taken down. We don’t want our children to get the wrong idea.

It reminds me of comments I heard in the ‘60s. Comments like, most slave owners treated their slaves like family. Or, slaves benefited from slavery because they could learn a trade—a viewpoint recently written into the Florida public schools curriculum.

Which brings me to a document that surfaced this summer in the Stoneham Public Library titled “A History of the Black in Stoneham.” Written in 1969, it was published in the Stoneham Independent.

Disregarding the awkward reference to “the Black,” the reader is left with the impression that slavery was not so bad.

The article covers three periods, Colonial, pre-Civil War, and modern, and provides much good information. But it starts to break down when it compares slavery to indentured servitude, implying little difference. The authors failed to distinguish between the contractual—and finite–obligations of the indentured person and the ownership in perpetuity of slaves and their offspring. In other words, barring exceptional actions by their owners, enslaved men, women and children labored with no rights and no expectation of freedom. They were chattel.

That hopelessness is expressed in the will of one slave owner: “I bequeath unto my son … one negro woman named Fanny and her children now in his possession and one Negro man named Harry and all their increase to him and his heirs forever.”

A few of the article’s statements about enslaved people in Stoneham can only be described as absurd, like this one: “They were all shoemakers and they laid stone walls, but none was exploited!” And another: “Conditions must have been good because free blacks settled here.”

As we celebrate three hundred years of our history, it’s important to understand the role slavery played in Stoneham. It’s important to know that apart from how individuals were treated and the degree of physical trauma or deprivation they endured, they would have suffered deep and lasting psychological wounds.

Some basic facts. From the colonial period, we have records of some three dozen enslaved men, women and children in Stoneham. Named and unnamed, they show up in church and town records, wills and inventories. Like a “Negro woman and her children” mentioned in Daniel Green’s will. Like the 8-year-old “Mulatto Negro” purchased by James Hay in 1744.

Like “a Negro named Cato, the son of Simon, a Negro servant of Deacon Green,” or a maid named Dinah, owned by the school teacher William Toler.

Like a woman named Phebe, purchased that same year for 75 British pounds by the Rev. James Osgood, and listed along with his house furnishings after his death as simply, “a Negro Woman—70 £.”

Like Jack Thare, 40, “a servant of Joseph Bryant, Jr.,” one of six free or enslaved Black men from Stoneham who fought at Bunker Hill. When Jack failed to return from his enlistment, his master posted a fugitive want ad. Here’s what it said:

Ran away from the subscriber on the 24th of February, a Negro fellow, named Jack, of a — stature, has lost his upper teeth; had on when he went away, a blue coat, with large white buttons. Whoever will take up said Negro, and convey him to the subscriber in Stoneham, shall have three dollars reward. Joseph Bryant, Jr.

The 1969 article on Blacks in Stoneham was published the year I graduated from college. Our nation was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We were being challenged to examine not only our actions and prejudices, but a long history of subjugation and dehumanization of Black people.

As we celebrate our Tricentennial, let’s look honestly at our history. The value of doing so is that it will affect who we will become. By insisting that we tell the truth about our past, we commit to embracing the full humanity of all those around us.

They Love America, but …

They love America, but America doesn’t love them back. “They” are the millions of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers facing deportation.

Built by immigrants, America has now turned its back on them, thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA followers, who for decades have demeaned and dehumanized them, especially those with skin darker than theirs.

Ironically, many immigrants and asylum seekers have come here legally, through government programs granting them the chance to live here in safety. Others, like Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Milford high school student taken by ICE while on his way to volleyball practice, have grown up among us and know no other life.

Marcelo, who came to the United States from Brazil when he was six, is an honors student. A junior, he plays in the band and would have performed at Sunday’s graduation. According to a friend, he was shackled feet and hands and shoved into a holding cell with 25 older men.

Here’s what’s happening. Trump wants Homeland Security and ICE to roundup 3,000 “illegal” immigrants a day. They haven’t been meeting their quota, though they’ve tried. To make it easier to find bodies to deport, Trump changed the rules. Now a half million immigrants—families, parents and children who were here legally—have had the rug, no, the ground, pulled out from under them.

Fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries, they were granted “humanitarian parole” or “temporary protected status.” They were fingerprinted and documented. By revoking these programs, Trump has made them easy to find.

ICE has also found other easy targets, immigrants who show up at courthouses for hearings. They’ve been nabbed in hallways and stairwells. A judge was arrested and accused of helping one immigrant leave by a back door.

Masked ICE agents are raiding factories and farms, bodegas and restaurants. They are grabbing people off the streets, taking mothers and fathers from children and children from siblings. The word has gone out. No place is safe, including churches, hospitals and schools.

All this is going on while the Trump administration is calling on Americans to have more babies to counter the declining birth rate. He wants more babies, more young families, yet the clear message is that he wants white families, not black or brown. How else to explain the counter-intuitive break-up and deportation of families already here–those who want nothing more than to live in a safe and free country. Those who love America, even if America doesn’t love them back.

If ICE can meet its 3,000 per day quote, over a million of our neighbors will have been arrested and deported this year, one big step towards the deportation of the 15 to 20 million Trump has threatened.

To millions of Americans, sadly, that is a good thing. They voted for someone to do just that. To millions more, however, it is a travesty. It goes against everything they believe in and stand for.

The largest segment of Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 were Christians, especially white Christians. They put Trump in office. They could be the ones, now, to stop him. Leaving their pews, they could pick up the phone, march in the streets, demand an end to the cruelty, whether to our immigrant neighbors, or to the millions of poor who will lose their health insurance if his budget goes through.

Last Friday in an interfaith rally, some 70 clergy did just that. Marching from the Lexington Green to the Boston Common, they protested the cruel treatment of immigrants and international students.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D. C., a group of ministers praying in the Rotunda of the Capitol were cuffed with zip-ties and taken out, arrested for protesting against cuts to Medicaid and the harm it would cause millions. They were led by the Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

These faith leaders, like the prophets of old, are calling us to action. It’s time we pay attention.

Protect the Babies We Have

Let’s see if I get this right. The Trump administration wants us to have more babies. What with Covid and a declining birth rate, we need more young people to offset those of us with gray hair. We need them to replenish our communities and pay our bills. Trump recently talked of giving a bonus of $5,000 to each new mother.

At the same time his administration is deporting mothers, fathers, and, yes, babies. He is rounding up immigrants, including those who are paying taxes and contributing to Social Security and Medicare. He is breaking up families.

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ICE recently took a mother away from her 1-year-old girl and deported her to Cuba, separating them indefinitely. ICE also deported three children ages 2, 4 and 7 along with their mothers to Honduras. The children are U.S. citizens. The 4-year old has a rare form of cancer.

It’s become clear that Trump’s pro-baby, pro-family approach is meant for one type of family, one type of baby–white families and white babies. And that all this talk about encouraging women to give birth and to stay at home to raise their children is rooted in white nationalist ideology.

What is white nationalism? White nationalism is “advocacy of or support for the perceived political interests of the white population within a particular country, especially to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups.”

White nationalism, along with white supremacy, has always been around. It was behind the enslavement of millions of African Americans. It was behind the Chinese Exclusion Act. It was behind the “separate but equal” Supreme Court decision that affirmed racial apartheid in Southern states. It was given new energy with the re-election of Donald Trump.

Consider the makeup of Trump’s cabinet and advisors. Consider his history of demeaning comments and slurs. Consider the attacks on DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion—and the government’s punitive policies directed towards racial and ethnic minorities. Consider Trump’s revoking of “temporary protected status” for asylum seekers from Haiti and Venezuela.

Consider his shutting down of our refugee resettlement program, stranding thousands of already approved refugees from Africa and the Middle East. At the same time, he has put out the welcome mat for Afrikaners in South Africa, whom he claims are victims of “white genocide.”

Last week 59 white South African “refugees” arrived at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D. C. A photo of them shows young families holding babies in their arms. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau told them: “We’re excited to welcome you here to our country where we think you will bloom.”

All this, while Trump denies a haven to black and brown families fleeing famine, war and persecution.

So what do we do about it? First, we need a stop to the deportations of non-violent immigrants—full stop—and the affording of due process to all. And we need a resumption of our long-standing refugee-resettlement program, applied fairly to everyone.

Second, we need immigration reform. For too many decades, we have let Congress off the hook. The last significant immigration reform came during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when millions of immigrants were granted pathways to citizenship. The failure of Congress and past administrations to legislate common-sense reform has victimized millions of our neighbors, who want nothing more than to build lives for their families in a safe and free country.

As for the Administration’s push to have more babies, I say let’s protect the babies we have, and their parents and siblings–refugees, asylum seekers, DACA enrollees, immigrants. They are part of our communities. We need them. Diverse, multi-cultural, hardworking, creative, they, with us, can build an American future based not on white-nationalist ideology, but on equal opportunity for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or religion. A future aligned with our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Let’s hold the babies we have.