Did you Know?

History can teach us so much if we simply step back and listen. Many of the horrific events in our past seemed at the time needed, possibly a necessity for progress or even to secure our nation’s security. We later look back to find our noble and logical ideas were flawed and influenced by greed and fear.

President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830 signed into law The Indian Removal Act which authorized the president to negotiate with Indian tribes in the southern United States for their ancestral homelands which fell within state lines. In return the United States would grant them land rights west of the Mississippi. Many tribes relocated peaceably but other refused. Those that refused were later forcibly relocated by the United States government and later became known as the “Trail of Tears”, where thousands died from exposure, exhaustion and mal-nutrition.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 authorized the incarceration and relocation of American citizens with an Executive Order. During World War II approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans (62% were US Citizens) were incarcerated and forced to relocate to internment camps. It was later determined in 1980 by an investigation opened by President Jimmy Carter that the Japanese American’s incarcerated showed little if any disloyalty to the United States and that the major motivator was racism and free.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on February 3, 2014 responded to a room full of law students and faculty “but you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again” in response to a question about the Japanese American internment camps during World War II. He continued “That’s what happens, it was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It’s no justification, but it is reality.”

Patriots Rising