Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on this day in 1431. The proximate cause of her sentence was refusal to wear women’s clothes, though the underlying reason was that she was deemed a threat to reigning political and religious authority. Most of what is known about her comes from the record of her interrogation for the crime of heresy, but this post is meant to be less about her and more about the human, or inhuman, nature of people who would kill for little to no reason, as with her. Joan of Arc’s accusers conspired against her, perhaps because they felt threatened by her popularity, resented her zeal or just because she was different – which certainly was true. For that they took her life.
Tomorrow marks one hundred years since the Tulsa riots that killed hundreds of African-Americans and burned their area of town known as Black Wall Street. Much has finally been said about this inexplicably evil mass murder of people with darker skin whose only crime was finding a way to succeed in a world dominated by others, but no one seems able to explain how people could sink to such baseness.
But then if we think ourselves now above such things, we need only look back to January 6th and the riot that sought to put aside an election and overturn the Constitution. Tulsa was purposefully forgotten for generations, as we now recognize. January 6 was shown on live television and filmed by countless phones, and yet a minority in Congress just this past week forestalled an official investigation into the insurrection out of fear that it would implicate its own members and weaken them politically.
I’ve tried to find something uplifting, or at least hopeful, to say about the confluence of these dates, but the best that comes to mind is that a few do remember and regret. Perhaps that candle in the darkness serves to mark and to recognize that we can be better.
And, of course, tomorrow is Memorial Day, a deserving day of remembrance.
