By Ben Jealous

Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to try to elevate his presidential chances while doubling down on banning Black history. Meanwhile, the rest of us would be better served by reading more of it. We should go even further by mining American history to find what’s been hidden from us by previous political opportunists that can give us blueprints for how to create a national politics of unity rather than division.

I decided to start by digging into my own family’s history. What I found shocked me.

At the end of the 19th century, my maternal great-great-grandfather, who had been born into slavery, helped build a political party called the Readjusters that took control of the state of Virginia. Here’s what got my attention — it was a multi-racial populist party led by a former Confederate general and a freedman that was pro-workers’ rights, pro-civil rights, pro-voting rights, and pro-public education.

Stop here if anyone taught you that 15 years after the Civil War, Johnny Reb and the freedmen came together to form a new party that won elections for local, state, and federal offices.

How could people who had been enslaved come together with people who had fought a war to keep them in slavery? They all wanted a better future for their kids and to hold on to the new public schools their children attended.

At the time, plantation-class oligarchs were using the state’s Civil War debt as a wedge issue to anger whites. But their class bias pushed them too far. They said they would shut down the newly created public schools to pay for the debt.

In response, many white men (remember only men voted in those days) whose families relied on and supported the schools fled the Democratic Party. They launched the Readjuster Party. Their name came from their demand: readjust the terms of Virginia’s Civil War debt to save the public schools. My grandmother’s grandfather, Edward David Bland, led the state’s Black Republicans into the Readjusters. It was an easy argument to make; after all Black Republicans had created the state’s public schools a little over a decade before. In the process, they became the majority of its new party’s base.

In less than five years, the Readjusters saved Virginia’s public schools, expanded Virginia Tech, and created what is now Virginia State University, the first publicly supported college for training Black teachers. They raised taxes on corporations and the property they owned, reversing a deficit into a budget surplus. They did away with the poll tax and with the public whipping post.

White men who rented their farms or were otherwise too poor to own land had only had the right to vote since the 1820s. Black men had only had it since the 1860s. And by the early 1880s large numbers of both groups had united in multiple states and were winning major political victories.

To break up a thriving coalition of Black and white farmers and workers, the old plantation owners turned to a tried-and-true playbook. They spread vile disinformation to make other whites fear the loss of political superiority.

They accused Black men of fictitious crimes. The disinformation sparked violence in Danville where there was a majority Black city council and a fully integrated police force. Two white men responded to the propaganda by murdering whites and Blacks in the streets.

With the Readjusters defeated, white supremacist politicians went on to pass an annual poll tax (equal to $50 today). It slashed the Black vote by 80% and the white vote by 50% and it eventually was enshrined in the state Constitution.

By denying the vote to so many Blacks and low-income whites, white supremacists essentially outlawed the kind of multiracial coalition that had beat them in Virginia and was chalking up victories in other states.

Even when students learn about the poll tax, that’s not the story most are taught. It’s truly a lesson in the promise of the power of coming together. It’s also a lesson in the lengths to which wealthy special interests will go to divide us.

Meanwhile, that’s a lesson that DeSantis and his wealthy donors are teaching us again. After all, it’s the history we forget that is most easily repeated.

Ben Jealous is incoming executive director of the Sierra Club, the oldest and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the country. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.

By Ben Jealous

It strikes me that the days we’re living through represent a metaphor for our national dilemma. Jan. 6 and the weight of history that date carries are in the rearview mirror, at least on the calendar. Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream still is on the horizon.

America’s existential challenge is to put the former behind us permanently so we can finally achieve the latter and be what we pledge allegiance to — one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. After the attack on the Capitol, I sat down to figure out how we might finally do that, and my answers have filled a book.

As my mother’s family has for four centuries, I live south of the Mason-Dixon Line close to the Chesapeake Bay, which was a literal superhighway for slavery. Casual conversations about the likelihood of another Civil War are frequent at my favorite waterside bar. Combine that with the political fault lines running through many families and friendships (including my own) and we feel more divided than indivisible. It’s clear why so many fear for our republic’s survival.

I have always been an optimist about America. Even for me, witnessing a failed coup shook my usually hopeful outlook.

Like many whose Southern roots run deep, I often turn to the past for answers. What I discovered in questioning our current differences revived my faith that the United States always will overcome our troubles and emerge even stronger on the other side.

In the 1880s, formerly enslaved men and former Confederate soldiers in Virginia — home to the Confederacy’s capital — banded together to fight for the future of their children. They built a political party called the Readjusters. Their demand was simple: readjust the terms of Civil War debt so that we can maintain free public schools for all.

Not only did they win that victory, they also won control of the state’s government and achieved several more: they abolished the poll tax, they abolished the public whipping post, they created the first public Black college in the South, and they expanded Virginia Tech to make it the working person’s rival to the University of Virginia.

The Readjusters’ short-lived multiracial populist movement eventually was attacked violently by white supremacists and defeated politically by wealthy special interests spreading vile disinformation; their party is all but erased from history books.

Still, they defined the future of Virginia and our nation by planting early seeds for FDR’s New Deal coalition and by creating a bold legacy in public education that endures to this day. Moreover, their example reminds us that the spirit that moved Dr. King to dream hopefully about Black and white children has always run deep in our nation, and always will. When we lose faith in our neighbors, that hope reminds us that the path to a stronger nation is to remember we still have more in common than we don’t, and to act on the beliefs we share.

If men who had been enslaved could find common cause with men who fought to keep them enslaved to build a better future for all their children, we should never lose faith that we can unite for the sake of ours.

Ben Jealous is incoming executive director of the Sierra Club, America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization; former national president of the NAACP; and professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania. His new book “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free” was just published.

By Ben Jealous

As the dust settles on the midterm elections and the warnings of a “Red Wave” evaporate, it’s time to take a deep breath and take stock of what we’ve learned. There are many takeaways from the elections this year – and here are a few that top the list for me.

If there’s one thing that’s crystal clear by now, it’s that elections don’t end on Election Night. With more mail-in ballots to count and plenty of close races, it’s normal to wait a few days for final results. So don’t listen to folks who say there’s something suspicious about vote counts that take a while. There isn’t. We have to be patient and make sure every vote is counted.

Another development is that early voting is here to stay. One day before the election, nearly 41 million Americans had cast early ballots. Georgia broke its all-time record for early votes. Again, there have been some fearmongers out there throwing shade on early voting, as if it’s somehow not the norm. Ignore them, too. Early voting is totally legitimate and a great idea. Do it if you can.

By now we’ve all seen the attempts by far-right activists in Arizona to scare people away from early voting, by camping out fully armed near drop boxes. We have to recognize that the Right may become more aggressive in its efforts to suppress the vote. The Justice Department stepped in this time to protect the vote and it will have a role to play in protecting it in the future; we should expect and welcome that.

These are all aspects of the new normal in our election process. But what about the issues? What are the takeaways there?

There’s no question that Americans came out in force to support reproductive freedom. In state after state where measures on abortion rights were on the ballot, people voted to uphold those rights. In California, Michigan, Vermont, Montana, and even deep-red Kentucky, voters came out for the freedom to control their own bodies.

Abortion rights were also among the top issues motivating voters to go to the polls. Exit polls show inflation topped the list with abortion second – and way ahead of crime, which the Far Right had hoped to use as a winning issue against progressives. Of course, the Right’s spin – that progressives’ only answer is to “defund” police – was never accurate anyway, and we shouldn’t ever let that argument about public safety stand. Progressives have plenty of alternatives to offer when it comes to public safety and ending police violence. We need to be more clear and more forceful in making that case.

As for election deniers on the ballot, it comes as a relief that some of the loudest and potentially most dangerous ones were defeated. Yes, it’s true that a significant number of them won or kept seats in Congress and lower offices, and that’s deeply disturbing.

But Doug Mastriano will not be governor of Pennsylvania, Tim Michels will not be governor of Wisconsin, and Tudor Dixon will not be governor of Michigan. Lee Zeldin will not govern New York, and Derek Schmidt will not govern Kansas. Election-denying candidates lost secretary of state races in Michigan, New Mexico, and Minnesota. I’ll go out on a limb and say I hope the Right is learning that election denialism is not a ticket to victory.

I’ve saved one of the biggest takeaways for last, and it’s one that’s close to my heart.

It’s the importance of down-ballot races like sheriff, state representative, or city council person. These candidates don’t get all the attention and the big rallies like folks at the top of the ticket. But these are critical positions where a small amount of support can make a huge difference.

They’re also the races where you’ll find rising stars: people like Malcolm Kenyatta in the Pennsylvania House, Anna Eskamani in the Florida House, and Darrin Camilleri and Sarah Anthony in the Michigan Senate – part of a wave that flipped the state’s senate this year. We need to pay attention to these races, and we need to support these young people who are our future.

Thanks for voting – this time and every time.

Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way and Professor of the Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. A New York Times best-selling author, his next book “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free” will be published by Harper Collins in January 2023.