“By May 8, 2025, 106,000 Black women lost their jobs, including me,” a somber and visibly shaken @sunshineharpy shared on her social media page. “And those of us that’s been out here trying to find work again, it’s basically just been non-existent, and I’m starting to feel like it’s by design. Because there are over 100,00 women (black women like me) who have the same story,” she claimed in a 10-minute-long emotional video. 

“The [Trump] Administration is basically setting up these policies, and stuff, to where these companies are laying us off,” she said as her eyes swelled with tears. 

By this time, I could feel my own eyes burn with anger as I felt the pain coming through the phone screen—when one of us hurt, we all hurt, and I was hurting for this sister I didn’t even know. And I’m not sure why her video appeared on my For You Page (fate I imagine), but it struck a nerve; facilitating a Déjà vu (I’ve heard this before!) moment.

As I listened to her plight, my mind flashed back to Gordon J. Davis’s Op-ed describing his grandfather’s demise due to the race-based policy changes of President Woodrow Wilson. And as Juneteenth approaches, unbeknownst to many, people of color (and other marginalized groups) have cyclically gone through periods of “racism, misogyny, harmful public policy, and destruction of lives” when people in power perceive people of color’s progression an issue or threat.  

As represented in the infographic, Black Americans (since the end of slavery), have endured positive “Reconstruction” and negative “Deconstruction” periods.

2025 continues a new era of “Deconstruction” (in which we’ve been unknowingly living within) after sixty-two years (1954 – 2016) of progressive reconstruction where we saw the desegregation of state sponsored schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954); laws and policies put in place to protect people of color and other marginalized groups (Civil Rights Act, 1964); the appointment of the first Black Supreme Court Justice (Thurgood Marshall, 1967); the first Black Miss America (Vanessa Williams, 1984); the second Black governor of a U.S. state since the first Reconstruction period in 1872 (L. Douglas Wilder (Virginia), 1989); and the election of the first Black president (Barack Obama, 2008) just to name a few of the thousands of milestones and breakthroughs achieved in this span of time. 

Today, the U.S. government’s executive branch is undoing, if not attacking, those milestones and breakthroughs as civil rights, civil liberties, and long-standing diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and practices are being dismantled after a period of progressive Reconstruction protections and gains.

In the last “Deconstruction Era” (1877 through 1954), Gordon Davis wrote in his 2015 New York Times Op-ed article, “But only months after Woodrow Wilson was sworn in as president in 1913, my grandfather was demoted. By April 1914, the family farm was auctioned off. [My Grandfather], John Davis, a self-made black man of achievement and stature in his community at the turn of the 20th century, was, by the end of Wilson’s first term, a broken man.”

The impact of Wilson’s Federal policy—workplace segregation leading to the reassignment, demotion, and forcing Black Federal workers out of Federal jobs—is what came to mind after hearing @sunshinehapry’s TikTok message. 

And ironically, just like with Wilson’s presidency, today’s destruction of lives began only months after the Trump administration took office; laying off Federal employees, shuttering federal agencies that assisted U.S. citizens with their lives, and effectively dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, policies, and practices in the public and private sectors. 

June 19, 2025, marks 160-years since Union Army officials arrived in Galveston, Texas and announced, two years after-the-fact, that enslaved people of the state were free. And although people of color have made significant strides in equality and civil rights from once being the property of another human being; after 62-years of positive gains, once again, people of color have entered a new era of gains being wiped away with race and sex based public policy and initiatives. 

As with the harmful, racially based policies enacted by President Woodrow Wilson that was a detriment to Black lives like the grandfather of Gordon J. Davis, we are now witnessing the repercussions (and resurgence) of racism, misogyny, harmful public policy, and the destruction of lives in a new Deconstruction era. How long will it last, and how many lives it will impact, is now the question. 

R.L. Byrd is an author known for his two novels, “Looking For Sweet Love” and “Black Coffee.” He’s preparing his third and fourth novels, “6%” (a personal memoir) and “The Art of Scandal” (a story inspired by true events. To find out more about R.L. Byrd, his novels, and his social justice initiatives, visit his website at www.richardleonbyrd.com.