The Truth About Tuskegee

After visiting Selma, I figured I would drive over to Tuskegee to see if anything has changed there. I last visited Tuskegee in 2012 after the release of the movie Red Tails.

Tuskegee is another fairy tale that was created by leftwing historians, the mainstream media and Hollywood. It is known throughout the world as the home of Booker T. Washington and Tuskegee University, the great black scientist George Washington Carver who invented peanut butter and the Tuskegee Airmen who singlehandedly defeated the Nazis in World War 2. Every American child who has had to sit through Black History Month has heard about this place.

If you have ever been exposed to the myth about Tuskegee, you’re likely to imagine it as being a small Southern university town filled with heroic black pilots, brilliant scientists and hard working entrepreneurs. Nothing could be further from the truth in the 21st century.

Click on the images below to access the Flickr galleries:

Tuskegee 2012

Tuskegee 2018

Tuskegee is still mouldering away like Selma. Nothing has changed in the past six years. Moton Air Field is deserted. Washington Plaza where the Tuskegee Walmart went out of business decades ago is now anchored by a Dollar Tree. Blighted homes are slowly rotting away and being overtaken by trees. Downtown is still full of boarded up businesses. The liquor store, car wash, payday lending stores, Church’s Chicken and beauty supply stores have all survived though.

Tuskegee is now the most violent city in Alabama. When I last visited in 2012, Johnny Ford was the mayor of Tuskegee. He hung on until 2016. He was first elected mayor in 1972. With the exception of 1996 to 2004 and 2008 to 2012, Tuskegee had been reelecting the same mayor for nearly half a century who had presided over the disappearance of hospitals, grocery stores (Tuskegee is a food desert), a movie theater, car dealerships, downtown shopping and public swimming pools.

I chuckle when I hear bien-pensants blame all the problems of Selma and Tuskegee which played such a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement on “racism” and “white supremacy.” The Voting Rights Act accomplished its objective of empowering the black majority. White Alabamians abandoned these cities decades ago to move to nearby cities like Prattville and Auburn.

Tuskegee and Selma are a microcosm of a worldwide phenomenon. The result of black empowerment all over the world isn’t Wakanda. It is White flight followed by rapidly sinking into a violent ghetto. It is true of Northern cities like Detroit. It is true of Haiti and Jamaica in the Caribbean. It is true of Ghana, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. In the United States, the federal government and the various state governments (aka “white supremacy”) have established a floor under cities like Selma and Tuskegee. If it wasn’t for that floor, these places would have fallen even further.