Oberlin College

• Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory.
• As he promised in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress.
• Back then, the word was used as a warning to be aware of racial injustices in general and Southern white folks in particular.

The early days of wokeness

• Examples of its use – in various forms of the word “awake” – date back to before the Civil War in Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first Black-owned newspaper.
• Because education and literacy were “of the highest importance,” the editors wrote, it was “surely time that we should awake from this lethargy of years” during enslavement.
• In a 1904 editorial in the Baltimore Afro-American, for instance, the editors urged Black people to “Wake up, wake up!” and demand full-citizenship rights.
• Wake up Africa!” At around the same time, blues singers were using the word to hide protest messages in the language of love songs.

A miscarriage of justice

On March 25, 1931, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, falsely accused a group of
several Black young men of rape.
Based on their words, the nine Black men – ages 12 to 19 years old – were immediately arrested and in less than two weeks, all were tried, convicted, and with one exception, sentenced to death.

• All the cases were appealed and eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
• In its 1932 Powell v. Alabama decision, the court overturned the verdicts in part because prosecutors excluded potential Black jurors from serving during the trial.
• But instead of freedom, the cases were retried – and each of the “Scottsboro Boys” was found guilty again.

How woke became a four-letter word

• Over the years, the memory of the Scottsboro Boys has remained a part of Black consciousness and of staying woke.
• Two years later, a documentary on the group was called “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.”

• When asked to define the term in June 2023, DeSantis explained: “It’s a form of cultural Marxism.
• Civic literacy requires an understanding of the social causes and consequences of human behavior – the very essence of being woke.

Ronald E. Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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