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Ted Cruz Stop Whitesplaining Frederick Douglass to Colin Kaepernick

H. Michael Harvey, JD
7 min readJul 6, 2019

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A Mural on a building in Atlanta’s West End community, “Heroes don’t wear capes!!!” depicting Colin Kaepernick taking incoming arrows by Occasional SuperStar, photo by Harold Michael Harvey

The nerve of Ted Cruz, (R-Senator-Texas) taking to Twitter on the Fourth of July whitesplaining Frederick Douglass to humanist and former professional football player Colin Kaepernick. Cruz created a twitter storm among white conservatives after Kaepernick successfully convinced Nike, the giant tennis shoe manufacturer, not to roll out a Betsy Ross flag sneaker for Independence Day.

After Nike’s announcement they were pulling the sneaker, Kaepernick posted a one-minute video on his Twitter page. On the video, Kaepernick quotes the 19th-century freedom fighter’s 1852 address to the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society on July 5th.

As Douglass’ words roll on the video, pictures of the horrors of slavery interspersed with deadly images of 21st-century police violence against the African American community are poignantly displayed.

In this 1852 address, Douglass fired up a group of white society women. These women were impressed with what Douglass said that day. Susan F. Porter, President of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, wrote him and requested that Douglass, a newspaper publisher, provide her sewing society with 100 copies in pamphlet format. Porter wanted to distribute them as the sewing society pushed their husbands and others to get involved in the movement to…

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H. Michael Harvey, JD
H. Michael Harvey, JD

Written by H. Michael Harvey, JD

Harvey is Living Now Book Awards 2020 Bronze Medalist for his memoir Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. Available at haroldmichaelharvey.com

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