They Can’t Erase What We Know

In 1619, at Point Comfort, the first recorded enslaved Africans were brought to this land. That was not just a moment in history — it was the beginning of a system. A system built on stolen labor, stolen bodies, and stolen futures.
For over 240 years, Black people were legally property.
The Constitution counted us as three-fifths of a person. In 1857, the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford declared that we had no rights a white man was bound to respect.
And even when slavery was “abolished” in 1865, it came with a loophole, “except as punishment for crime.” That loophole became convict leasing. Chain gangs. Mass incarceration.
Reconstruction gave us a glimpse of democracy, and white supremacy answered with terror. The Ku Klux Klan rose. Federal troops withdrew. Jim Crow was born.
In 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson legalized segregation. Separate but equal, knowing it was never equal.
They lynched us. They burned our towns, like in the Tulsa Race Massacre. They redlined our neighborhoods through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. They denied us wealth, safety, education, and dignity. And yet, we built anyway.
In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education said segregation in schools was unconstitutional. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act said our vote mattered. But progress has always been met with backlash.
The War on Drugs. Mandatory minimums. The 1994 Crime Bill. Policies that filled prisons with Black bodies at historic rates.
In 2012, Trayvon Martin was killed. In 2014, Michael Brown was left in the street. In 2020, George Floyd took his last breath under the knee of the state. And the world finally saw what we have always known.
Even now, voter suppression returns in new forms. Black history is attacked. DEI is dismantled. The racial wealth gap remains wide. The maternal mortality crisis disproportionately kills Black women.
From 1619 to 2026, the system has changed its language, but it has never stopped adapting.
But here’s what they cannot erase: They cannot erase that we survived slavery. They cannot erase that we built wealth when they burned it. They cannot erase that we organized when they criminalized us. They cannot erase that we vote, we lead, we create, we resist.
Oppression is part of the timeline. But so is resilience. So is brilliance. So is power. They can try to rewrite history. They can try to ban the books. They can try to silence the truth. But they cannot erase what we know. And they cannot erase who we are.
From 1619 to today,  we are still here. And we are still fighting.

Written By: RoShawn C. Evans

Slavery by another name: the re-enslavement of Black people in America from the Civil War to World War II / Douglas A. Blackmon
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The Traumatic Impact of Structural Racism on African Americans
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