Our problem is much bigger than what happened in Dadeville. But this tragedy and others have caused us to renew our curiosity in solving what writers of the mid 20th Century called “the Black problem.”

I graduated from Dadeville High School and have taught in the social sciences for over 30 years and I can say that slavery alone cannot be blamed for the self-defeating behavior that some Black teenagers display. I have never seen so-called Black-on-Black crime as an issue of mere senseless violence.

Instead, if we look at things critically, we can pinpoint some major social factors that, if corrected, could serve to assist in healing the not-so-long revealed syndrome of Black self-hate.

In 1913, W.E.B Dubois wrote these words: The people of America, especially the people of the southern states, have felt so keen an appreciation of the qualities of motherhood in the Negro that they have proposed erecting a statue in the National Capital to the Black mammy.

DuBois goes on to say that the monument was not proposed because of the Black mother’s ability to raise her own children, a duty to which the Congressmen agreed she was an utter failure.

Instead, the admiration for the Black mammy came because so many of the U.S Congressmen admitted that they were raised by Black women; which made them the benefactor of the pathology of Black life in America.

DuBois recalled the discussions in Congress as many lawmakers with tears in their eyes reminisced over the faithfulness, selflessness and tender care of their beloved Black mammies.

These were the same men, many whose statutes adorn the town squares, that reduced the Black mammy’s sons to ashes and their daughters to concubines under the system of Jim Crow. It is the children of this privileged class in which we wrestle with today over injustice.

The generation to which DuBois referred had also been only a half a century out of slavery.  Another half century from DuBois’ observation, we notice that the logistics of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1957) would not have been effective had white families not relied on Black women to keep their homes. This was testified to by white government officials who stated that the Black woman in the white home was critical to the southern way of life.

More than half a century after the boycott, are things any better when it comes to the Black family? Imagine erected in the nation’s capital, as large as the Statue of Liberty and imposing statue of a Black mammy with an apron and bonnet on and a mop in her hand?

DuBois goes on to say that it is not until the Black woman is out of the white man’s home that the Black family can rebuild itself. Yet how many politicians, Black or otherwise, begin with making better the condition of the Black woman?

Today’s Black family is in peril because the historic social patterns that disintegrated it have not been addressed. The schools are no more able to rebuild families than the prisons and it is the home that is the pipeline to prison for many Black males and not the schools.

Mass shootings, like those in Dadeville are not new in the Black community, which suffers from pathologies that lie outside the common view. The accused if convicted in the Dadeville affair, did not slip through a crack but fell into a chasm of neglect and irresponsibility and we are all to blame.

Our situation is unique and should be best addressed by those who have a knowledge of what was observed in our condition over a hundred years ago but to this day has gone unaddressed. Books that address such issues and opportunities to discuss these issues are being threatened by the progeny of those who saw fit to disgrace the Black woman by making her condition a spectacle.

We are working for a comprehensive model that addresses the needs of the nation’s Black families and by building upon the neglected pages of our history, it can be done.

Dr. Robert White is a faculty member at Alabama State University and pastor of Montgomery City of Refuge Church in Montgomery, Ala.