At Kansas No Kings rally, a call to resurrect shared history and civic virtues before they vanish

Hundreds marched across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the No Kings day rally in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

A variety of causes pulled people into the joyful throngs of the Oct. 18 No Kings demonstrations, despite masked federal agents ramming cars and snatching racially ambiguous people from American streets.

Joyous because songs, smiles and hugs, and inflatable costumes filled the atmosphere and pierced the loneliness and fear that escalating immigration raids and National Guard occupation threats have created. At the rallies, immigration advocates risked their safety to encourage those living in the shadows. LGBTQ+ advocates asserted their intention to live unapologetically. Organizers sounded a civic engagement call to action.

Cheers affirmed each perspective, a contrast to belched accusations of hating America from event detractors.

But my concern as a speaker at the Overland Park rally centered on a largely already dismantled cause, one worth fighting to restore.

I referenced a recent morning news appearance by Wright Thompson, the noted author of “The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi.” He said his readers believe that those in charge of government want a return to a pre-Civil Rights America. 

It seems that way.

Former MSNBC anchor Joy Reid said the MAGA movement now “has everything it wanted.”

She said MAGA has control of the White House, both chambers of Congress and an obedient Supreme Court that has imbued the executive branch with seemingly unlimited power. The court, she said, has allowed racial profiling. Masked ICE agents can stop Latino people based on their appearance and accents. MAGA has ended diversity, equity, and inclusion. It has ended affirmative action.

“You get all the best jobs even if you’re not qualified,” she said, referencing Pete Hegseth moving from Fox weekend news anchor to the head of the Department of War (Defense) and Kash Patel moving from podcasting to running the FBI.

MAGA has banned books, banned the 1619 Project, smothered Black history in museums and dared historians to tell the truth.

“You’ve canceled Black scholarships. You’re damned near getting rid of (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). The president has already said they’re not going to serve minority-serving institutions,” she said. “What more do you want? You said you wanted your country back. Now, you’ve got it.” 

It feels as though half the nation has backtracked on once foundational ideas such as freedom of and from religion, separation of church and state, and a common good. 

While this movement unfolds, the rest of us wonder how we’re going to live with people who spend every waking moment thinking of new ways to manage our lives. A dear friend said that because of these differences, he envisioned a future America organized like the European Union, with states or regions operating as nation states. We’d share economies and defense structures but live separately.

You can reasonably argue that we’ve never actually been “e pluribus unum,” out of many, one. Not with slavery, not with the destruction of Indigenous people, not with limited rights for women, not with inequality that always has existed. 

The No Kings participants don’t hate America. They hate how people can’t understand unfairness until it happens to them. They hate hollow religiosity. They hate how half the nation keeps reviving our racial caste system.

This tracks with my closing message.

Thompson told his interviewers that while standing on the bank of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi with one of Emmett Till’s relatives and staring into the water, the relative said, “I’m just so grateful,” when asked what she felt in that moment. 

“Grateful?” He didn’t understand. 

“Because he got out of the river,” she replied, and it clicked for Thompson.

He said the Tallahatchie is known as the “singing river” for all the lynched bodies tossed into it, bodies that yet today cry out for justice.

That’s important, Thompson said, because so many people in the country today want to put Emmett and all such history back into the Tallahatchie. To drown it. To forget it. Symbolically then, we must get out of the water, onto the banks and into a movement to ensure immigration advocates don’t have to risk their safety, where our LGBTQ+ loved ones can live freely, where civic engagement is our default.

So many of us are just trying to keep our heads above water, but we must drag ourselves and as many others as we can out of the river and into a movement that protects what we have and restores what we’ve lost.

We have to get out of that river, before our Democracy sinks to the bottom.

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.