Sometimes we get so accustomed to appreciating the goodness of people that we overlook their shortcomings. Many of us worked hard and donated more than we could afford to support the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. We were appreciative of President Joe Biden when he dropped out of the presidential race to give our highly qualified sister Harris the opportunity to run for the office. We were disappointed when we didn’t see many people we had supported in the past. Some of us went beyond our means working to elect Vice President Harris. We were surprised when others we previously supported didn’t show up or hardly showed up for her.
As much as some of us loved and supported President Biden, we were grateful when he gave her the opportunity to run, but we were disappointed when many others we’d supported didn’t show up or hardly showed up for her when she worked so hard and ran circles around her opponent. She made us proud! As the campaign moved along, many seemed willing to go only so far. We began seeing that when Biden had the ability to step down with just a few days left in office to allow her to become president and we could call her Madam President for just a little while to show our appreciation for her accepting the challenge of the great work she did in the campaign, but he didn’t do that.
Then we began hearing the negative stories about how the Bidens really felt and we were hearing what sounded like regrets. One notable thing we were hearing was Biden saying he could have beaten Trump, implying that Harris didn’t conduct a good enough campaign. Then the rumor of what Mrs. Biden thought about Harris began. True or not, they never corrected the rumors. Many of us stuck with Biden even when he allowed Netanyahu to take advantage of him with our tax dollars.
We know, without a doubt, he was miles better than the man who took over on Jan. 20. He knew what would happen once he left without a pardon for Jesse Jackson Jr., who has paid his debt to society and has been doing great things to make up for his mistake, but Biden denied a pardon for Jackson knowing Trump has no plans to do so.
Another case he left on the table was that of attorney Marilyn Mosby, a brilliant former prosecutor who gave extensive service in her community and inspired nearly 100,000 supporters to sign a petition for a pardon. Most national Black leaders supported our efforts to pardon her. She was wrongly prosecuted for using her own retirement money during COVID-19.
Mayor Johnny Ford of Tuskegee, Alabama, made valiant efforts. Lt. Col. Tyrone Bost, Joy-Ann Reid, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, attorney Benjamin Crump, Derrick Johnson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Michael Steele and Gov. Wes Moore made public statements about the case against Mosby, but obviously their voices were not heard to get a pardon. He knew that on the day he left office, 1,500 people who assaulted and caused police officers to die while defiling our Capitol at the expense of people like you and me would go free. He only had time to take care of his son and members of his family in the last days of his presidency. No matter how much we supported him, he didn’t think about what his strongest supporters asked him to do for two very deserving people!
Are we expected to forgive this oversight and other oversights of so many otherwise good people like Biden? History often records people to be better than they actually were in life. Must we follow that trend?
Williams is president of The Dick Gregory Society (www.thedickgregorysociety.org).