Thaddeus Stevens is a white role model

I recently took the time to read about a man who long ago set a standard for white people to step up and support what this nation owes Black people.

It may sound strange, looking for white people to do the right thing. Many see and hear the wrong being perpetrated against Black people or anybody who is not white. They do not speak up.

If you haven’t read about Thaddeus Stevens, you’ve missed a man who kept hope alive to his dying day. History wrote him off. Today, there is an effort to erase Black history in the same way. 

Mr. Stevens was born in rural Vermont in poverty, and with a foot deformity which left him with a limp. This probably gave him a sense of what it’s like to be different.

He moved to Pennsylvania as a young man and became a successful lawyer in Gettysburg. He was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he became an advocate of free public education.

Abe Lincoln is often given more credit than he deserved for freeing enslaved Black people, while Stevens said ending slavery was not enough. He respected Lincoln, but he offered his perspective on how Lincoln had no interest in interfering with slavery. Lincoln did what he thought was in the best interest of the nation.

Former slaves were due land, and resources for what had happened to them, Stevens believed. He maintained that land distribution was owed to them because freedom without economic independence meant nothing.

He was outspoken and had no interest in compromise. He disagreed with President Andrew Johnson and supported impeachment of him. Stevens was so opposed to Black people’s treatment, he indicated he didn’t want to be buried in the white cemetery.

White supremacists hated Stevens — and they still hate us for no reason other than our being Black. I’m not calling all white people I know racists, but I don’t see enough stepping up to the plate to discredit racism, support reparations, and call on Trump and his crew to not be so racist.

President John F. Kennedy once said that his Harvard education misled him, and he thought that maybe Thaddeus Stevens might have a good point referring to the racial justice he worked for. Voter suppression is back with us, and we must work to dismantle it again.

Stevens doesn’t deserve to be erased from history while voter suppression still exists. Are you registered? Did you vote in the presidential election of 2024? What Stevens and others worked for is still a vital issue.

Women who changed their names to the names of their husbands, be sure to have your birth certificate or another document to show you are a U.S. citizen. Otherwise, you might walk out on the street one day and be considered “deportable!”

Whatever you have to prove your citizenship, keep a copy with you. Keep up with the laws and obey them. Stevens was a white man truly fighting for our rights and was portrayed as an unhinged radical. Let us not do less than he did, or less than John Lewis, Dr. King, Fannie Lou Hamer and others, to ensure our right to vote.

E. Faye Williams is president of The Dick Gregory Society (www.thedickgregorysociety.org).