Shaking the Cherry Tree: Reckoning with America’s Soul in Liberty’s Cracks

We’re sitting here with heavy hearts this morning. On Sunday, February 1^st – the first day of Black History Month – officials acting under the orders of DJT47 dismantled the George Washington exhibit in Independence National Historical Park.  Let’s be clear about who George Washington was – not the sanctified version, the little boy who was so pure and virtuous that he couldn’t lie about chopping down the cherry tree.  Our hearts are heavy because the white nationalists in this country – personified and emboldened by DJT hang onto this cherry tree lie. The dismantled exhibit depicted the lives of enslaved persons – women and men held in bondage in the Washington household.  According to POTUS 47, the removal was in service of proclaiming the greatness of America as we approach the sesquicentennial. So, what’s the deal here? He (and those who are emboldened by his cruelty) believe that America’s greatness depends on erasing the lives of real people: people whose bodies were trafficked, abused, and dehumanized, people whose labor was stolen, whose families were decimated to support the “greatness” of George Washington. I typically don’t care when people lie to themselves. But this is a lie that has kept all of us mired in historical muck. 

The exhibit confronted the cardboard “Cherry Tree” version of Washington. For sure, there are some people who have never been fans of the exhibit. As one academic put it:  it’s an “over correction” and puts forth another cardboard image of a complex man. The exhibit confronted the cardboard “Cherry Tree” version of Washington. Some critics called it an “over-correction,” another cardboard image of a complex man. Fine—he was complex. Aren’t we all? But it’s not clear how one over-corrects the truth. The truth is that Washington rotated enslaved people the way some rotate crops—to maximize yield and protect profit. The truth is that he was enraged when a human being, classified in his moral universe as property, dared to self-emancipate. Those who cry “over-correction” are operating from the same abstraction as those who defend the lie. They insist on centering the Great White Father. The exhibit did something different. It centered the lives that were sacrificed so he could be called great. Without the context of these men and women, Washington will always remain a decontextualized abstraction. One could say that we need an abstract, sanitized Washington out of context in order to live in the abstract monoculture that is defined by white body supremacy.

Make America Great Again assumes that we were once great and have fallen. That’s how an abstraction turns into a lie. We have an abstract understanding of America’s origin as freedom-loving, chosen people, builders of a glorious future, a manifest destiny led by a Great White Father. The real lives of enslaved families on that exhibit confront that decontextualized “greatness” myth. A person who has seen the dismantled exhibit said that the wall now looks like vandalism. From beautiful people to vandalism. And isn’t that exactly what was happening in the “great man’s” house and now in the lives of real people in real time today? 

 I was helping my neighbor, and you shot me in the back – ten times in five seconds.

I was hungry, and you burned the food in warehouses rather than feed me.

I was orphaned, because you took my family and put me in a cage.

 I was sick, and you denied me life giving medicine because I was poor.

 I was a stranger,  and you brutalized and deported me.

In order to understand the soul of America and define greatness, we need to go to what Bayo Akomalafe calls the School of the Cracks. The dismantled exhibit was across from the Liberty Bell exhibit. One could see the exhibit while walking to and from the Liberty Bell. (Remember that the Liberty Bell has a crack.) We can’t look at the Liberty Bell and deny the crack. So, the exhibit has been dismantled and now looks like vandalism. We need to look at the vandalism and feel the loss, feel the grief, and see what emerges from the cracks. This is how we navigate and cultivate soul in America. This is how we become great, by facing the “vandalized wall”. We become great when we can be still enough – silent enough to hear the voices of our ancestors. The voices of our brothers and sisters won’t be heard and can’t be heard in the flash of a so-called “freedom tower”.  But they can be heard coming through the cracks of this vandalized wall.

So maybe today, thank God for this vandalized wall. Maybe today the vandalized wall compels us to slow the fuck down and listen to the voices in the wall. Maybe we can listen to all the vandalism that’s going on right now. Can you imagine a Liberty Bell without the cracks? Without the cracks, we have the cardboard George Washington. And who can truly believe that cardboard is sustaining and sustainable? It can go up in flames at any moment. The truth is that the cardboard is going up in flames right now in our country. We have been trying to sustain ourselves with the cardboard George Washington, a cardboard history. History without cracks. History without looking at the vandalism this country has perpetrated towards people and lands. What happened in Philadelphia was not new; it was ongoing – systemic and systematic –  vandalism.

We get it; it is easy to comfort ourselves with cardboard history.  It is hard to face the past and ongoing vandalism. We want to wipe it out, not see it. When we do see it and name it, there are  people who call it “overcorrecting.” There are people who demean the seeing and naming as “woke”. Just because the memorial was ripped off and turned into a vandalized wall does not mean the truths of our origins can be silenced. They removed one exhibit, and that removal gave birth to another exhibit – a vandalized wall that we need to behold.

Thank God for the crack in the Liberty Bell. The crack in the Liberty Bill has silenced it. And just maybe the silence is what we need to really hear our stories, the voices of the real women and men who were shuffled back and forth like inconsequential property. We’re sitting here with heavy hearts this morning. Maybe you are too.  If so, that’s a good place to begin.  Let the lives of these women and men speak.