A letter to DA Partners from President Pamela Shifman
February 2025
Just as we mark Black History Month, we have received sad news. Rev. Dr. Nelson N. Johnson, who inspired so many of us with his powerful words at our 2023 conference in North Carolina, has passed away.
In 1979, Rev. Johnson was leading a march with labor and civil rights organizers when over 40 Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members opened fire. Five marchers were murdered in what would come to be known as the Greensboro Massacre.
Twenty-five years later, Rev. Johnson and his wife Joyce launched a profound experiment to uncover the truth of that day—and a chance for healing. Modeled on the process used in post-apartheid South Africa, their Truth and Reconciliation Commission included a remarkable program of public conversations so that thousands of residents could finally confront the causes and consequences of the massacre in the only way possible:
By looking history—and truth—in the face.
This year, Black History Month arrives amid an assault on DEI—which is actually an assault on longstanding civil rights and racial justice infrastructure that confronts the reality of racial injustice and its long history in our country. A backlash that has been brewing for years has now coalesced into a barrage of executive orders and threats from the White House.
Black history—otherwise known as American history—is under attack. At a confirmation hearing last week, Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education nominee, refused to say whether teaching Black history is permissible under Trump’s executive orders. Earlier this month, the Air Force temporarily removed videos from its website about the Tuskegee Airmen, the heroic Black military pilots who defended our country during World War II, out of fear that they ran afoul of the new administration’s policies.
When I was working in South Africa in the 1990s, one of the most profound lessons from leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu was that the only path to democracy is through truth-telling. And as Bryan Stevenson often says: truth and reconciliation are sequential. Today in the United States, it is not an accident that an authoritarian administration has made an assault on the truth about racial injustice a centerpiece of its agenda.
These MAGA attacks are the latest chapter in a long and brutal history of backlash to the participation of Black Americans in our democracy. The purpose? The same as it has always been: A rollback of progress toward civil rights and equal justice.
This is no war on “woke”—it is a war on democracy.
Amid so many efforts to sow confusion and fear, this community is crystal clear. Today and every day, the fight for racial justice is the fight for democracy. This is our fight.
Next month, our community will come together to stand in the truth of history. Amid so many attempts to erase Black history, we are gathering in Alabama to reground ourselves in the struggle for racial justice and civil rights. We are so grateful to partner with two incredible co-conveners, the Alabama Alliance and Black Voters Matter. As we mark the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, we will find strength in the leaders whose courage got us here—and get focused on our role in supporting incredible current day organizers leading the most consequential fights for our democracy right now.
Those who erase history are doomed to repeat it. In the march toward justice, there have always been forces who want to turn us back and wear us down. When reflecting on the leadership of Rev. and Mrs. Johnson, one Greensboro resident said: “They gave me the strength to continue when I was ready to give up. They’ll walk with you the extra mile, through the toughest time.” In today’s tough times, our community will always speak the truth: racial justice is fundamental to a just, thriving, multiracial democracy. And together, we will never stop marching forward.