e-Mailbox Issue 8

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J.C. Watts: Where’s the Camera?

We received a number of e-Mail letters concerning the departure of J.C. Watts, the lone Black Republican currently sitting in the U.S. Congress. (See July 11 issue.) Watts, a true-blue representative of a mostly white Oklahoma district, will doubtless settle into plush seats on many corporate boards while he ponders which niche of crony capitalism best suits his particular talents. That’s a lot of unearned money to think about. (Or, very well earned, depending on how one measures the value to the GOP of Watts’ endless-photo-opportunity career.)

Some perspective is needed. Let us contrast J.C. Watts, darling of the Rich-and-Right, with another lonesome Black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On a shivering, rainy night in 1900, Congressman George Henry White was a hunted man, fleeing for his life through the swamps around Wilmington, North Carolina. The city had been stormed by an army of white Democrats who, with cannon, rifles, knives, whips and fire chased down and murdered scores of Black Republicans and white Populists, members of the duly-elected local “Fusion” government. Cold, wet and fearing extermination, virtually the entire surviving Black population of Wilmington huddled in the swampy darkness, furtively seeking friends, neighbors and relatives and wondering when, if ever, it would be safe to return to the site of Reconstruction’s last gasp.

No one knows how many died in the military assault that heralded America’s New Century. The capture of Wilmington was the final, martial triumph of Jim Crow – the truest expression of the national plan and purpose.

George White, last of the Black Reconstruction congressmen, did not pause in his flight from Wilmington until he got to Washington, D.C. He pleaded in vain for federal action to reverse the racist insurrection that had toppled democracy by force of arms in North Carolina. For more than a generation, until the election of Chicago Republican Oscar De Priest, in 1928, no Black person would occupy a congressional seat. White’s 1901 farewell address to the U.S. House is among the most poignant ever delivered “in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised, and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal people-rising people, full of potential force.”

Fast-forward to July, 2002. “I just wanted people to see my black face on camera,” said retiring Black Republican Congressman J.C. Watts. “It’s just a reality of the atmosphere we operate in.”

Watts felt compelled to explain to the Washington Post his weird presence in photos of almost every conceivable Republican-oriented event.