The assassination of Charlie Kirk remains a shock to the American public sphere. After he was killed while debating college students in Utah, his critics galvanized themselves by saying he was not a good debater and therefore in some substantial measure, brought the assassination upon himself. I have seen many in my own profession endorse such a view, and it is unsurprising yet an increasing danger on all college campuses.
One of the myriad of salacious criticisms of Charlie Kirk is his rejection of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This public argument designed to impugn Kirk as a white supremacist and/or racist is like the flood of false claims designed to overwhelm defenders of his campus activity. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was a highly important success of the Civil Rights movement and leaders such as James Farmer Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr.. It was not an achievement that was uniformly affirmed by all advocates fighting for the rights of blacks in the United States. Malcolm X said that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a fraudulent deal designed to trick blacks into “voting for white liberals.” James Meredith was so opposed to the term “Civil Rights” that he refused to ever use the term. He believes strictly in local action to solve anti-black racism. Assassinations of both men were attempted, but neither man deserved this violence in response to their criticism and they certainly were not anti-black. Malcolm X had said controversially of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that “the chickens have come home to roost,” hateful rhetoric mirrored by recent American academic and Jacobin Ward Churchill writing about 9/11. Malcolm X was disciplined by Elijah Muhammed for that remark and yet even that speech did not justify the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965.
Many black activists today do agree with Charlie Kirk about the abuse of the black community prompted by “white liberals.” The primary victories won against anti-black racism were won by public dialogue and argument in local settings between 1941 and 1965. The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights act secured victories won in thousands of local contests that most Americans are rarely informed about in the misleading forms of history they receive about American racism in high school and college today. Joe Biden’s close friend and partisan ally Democrat Robert Byrd led the 14-hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, but both men are granted rhetorical pardons for unflinching arguments and activism against the bill and its results such as desegregation though busing. Biden’s Jacobin allies never called for or committed an assassination against Robert Byrd and voters returned him to Congress again and again. James Meredith is likely the most significant elder of the civil rights era who is still alive. Despite King’s incredible homage to him in the conclusion of Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Meredith is largely not 'remembered as a hero’ for reasons quite similar to Charlie Kirk. Meredith constantly defends traditional Christian and American patriotic values. For this he has been ostracized and excluded from public memory. Meredith worked for Republican senator Jesse Helms. He urged support for David Duke in Louisiana. Whether anyone agrees with Meredith on any particular point, he never did and never does deserve the assassin’s bullet. Malcolm X did not deserve the assassin’s bullet.
Most Americans do not understand that the word “republican” between its inception in 1854 and at least the 1930s was an intellectual term of derogation referring to partisans who were either black or sympathized with the civil rights of black people. That notion was a central argument of the Democratic Party in 1920 and presented as a disqualification for Republican candidate Warren Harding. Democrats said Harding had ‘black blood’ in his lineage and was therefore not fit to serve as President. Meredith believes to this day that no federal act was needed to recreate those civil rights. Those rights already exist in the Constitution, according to Meredith, and that was precisely why he locally engaged Governor Ross Barnett to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962. Today’s Jacobins, overzealous for gun control, will not acknowledge the racist premises of the advocacy that actually sought to keep guns out of the hands of black people defending themselves against racist bigotry. In this same era, Malcolm X urged blacks to form rifle practice clubs in the South and Meredith told reporters that self-defense was an important inherent right to preventing white supremacy from killing blacks in the South.
One of the most audacious lies of our contemporary Gleischaltung paraded on college campuses is the absurd idea that white liberals or the Democratic Party are the historical champions of rights for black Americans. These educators deserve the most thorough deconstruction for this propaganda. Malcolm X and James Meredith are highly dissimilar in their political ideologies and both harshly criticized the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The idea that Charlie Kirk hated black people or sought to reintroduce white supremacy is an audacious lie like so many other things falsely said about him. We need to urgently understand the deceptions laid before us by teachers and professors who engage in selfish lies for their own partisan obsession. These lies by educators fully capable of knowing better is a deliberate attempt to further the cycle of violence. The arguments about the Civil Rights Act made it a better bill and sharpened the vastly divided viewpoints all aimed at ending anti-black racism even among some who opposed the bill. The truth will set us free.
Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, genocide and James Farmer Jr.: The Great Debater.
Image: Gage Skidmore