On "Tuesday morning November 11, 1980," thirty-six years ago tomorrow, Margaret Walker remarked in her personal journals that "A week ago today the presidential election gave Ronald Reagan the victory and he is president-elect to become the 40th president of the U.S.A. The so-called landslide left many Americans and almost all Black Americans stunned by the conservative reactionary rhetoric. It does not appear to have been a free election, and one wonders if there will ever again be free elections in this country. It seems more like a coup d'etat–a juggernaut steamrolling over everything and everybody much in the manner of the Nixon elections in 1968 and 1972. All kinds of irregularities are slowly developing. There are many questions about what really happened. Most of these are merely conjectures. We really do not know, but we suspect that a tremendous organized effort by a combination or mixture of Republican Party people, the moral majority, extremists and such fringes as the Ku Klux Klan plus the powerful California Mafia, an organization of Big Money and Business in California with both underworld and syndicated tactics, contacts and finances….
"Black people are probably in the most untenable position. It is generally well known that the masses of Black people have voted twice for Carter, once he won, and once he lost….
"Of course, we know God is still in charge. This is my Father's world and nothing can change His love and care for all His children.
"Tomorrow marks two weeks since my husband's funeral. This trip is an effort to pick up the broken pieces of my heart and my life and try with God's help to go on and in my beloved Alex's word, 'try to live.'"
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