I can’t remember when I met Olivia Hooker, a Tulsa Massacre survivor and the first African American woman to serve in the Coast Guard. She wanted to serve as a Navy WAVE – or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services – but they weren’t accepting African Americans. I remember aspects of our first meeting vividly. We were both slated to speak at Syracuse University, and a mutual friend introduced us and invited me to Hooker’s suite. I bopped down, dressed cutely in a workout outfit, but miffed that I had forgotten my workout shoes.

She got my ire immediately and asked what was wrong. I told her I didn’t have workout shoes and needed a long walk to get the stress out of me. I might have told her I’d be a nasty piece of work (and not in those words) if I didn’t get a walk. She told me to go into her room and find a pair of walking shoes because she didn’t deal with nasty pieces of work.

We became close. I wrote about her, interviewed her and spoke at her memorial service. Hooker loved our country, but from time to time, she mused that our country, these United States of America, does not love us. She was 6 when the Tulsa Massacre occurred in 1921, and she remembered it vividly. One of the things that stuck with me was her remembrance of the United States militia protecting the white people who attacked Black Wall Street, not the African Americans who lived there.

Looking out of her window, she asked her mother, “Why is our government attacking us?” Throughout our presence in this country, that has been a lament from Black people whose relatives have been lynched, unfairly jailed, attacked and even, in their attempt to walk softly through ordinary life, treated badly. The lynching of veterans after both World Wars I and II is an example of our government attacking our heroes.

Why is our government attacking us? Why are they issuing edicts against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion)? Why are they attempting to erase history?

The answer to that one is simple. This government would erase history because aspects of it are shameful, and because they are doing it again.

During this African American History Month, one of the federal workers who must be uplifted is Daniel Murray, who was an assistant librarian of Congress until Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912. Wilson, a Democrat (they were the bad guys then – because Abraham Lincoln was Republican, so were many African Americans), assiduously courted the African American community, winning the support of notables like W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington and Monroe Trotter. Imagine their surprise, then, when just months after his election, Wilson instituted a segregation order for federal employees and refused to accept a delegation of Black leaders.

Hundreds of Black employees were demoted and were forced to take salary cuts. According to some studies, Black federal employees earned about 35% less than their white counterparts doing the same jobs.

Murray was demoted (and likely lost salary) from assistant librarian of Congress to superintendent of the library’s Division of the Negro Collection. He intended to write an encyclopedia of “Negro” writing but was unable to find support for it. Still, the Murray legacy is indelible and is a permanent part of the Library of Congress collections.

Like the current president, Woodrow Wilson was a prevaricator who shamelessly courted Black leaders only to ruthlessly turn on them. He screened the racist film “Birth of A Nation” at the House That Enslaved People Built and unabashedly spurned any engagement with the people he once cultivated. He turned the government against its citizens.

Here we go again.

The writer is a D.C.-based economist and author.