I promised a few people that I would write my definitive rant on why I feel what happened immediately post-Hurricane Katrina was so foul. I was attempting to wait until my anger over the television images had subsided. They haven't yet and most likely never will. Katrina should be a wake-up call for every Black person who lives in this country. Kanye West was right, but he could have gone even further in his statement: America has never cared about Black people. Students of American history should not be surprised because history shows Blacks in America have always been treated like second class citizens. As I start to gather my thoughts about Katrina, it becomes clear that I am forced to give a (brief) historical analysis of the never ending struggle for Black survival in this country called America. So-let us begin.
There is a sadness and a hole in my heart that I haven't felt in a long time.
Unfortunately, I have felt it before. I felt it when as just a child I read about what they did to Addie, Carole, Denise, and Cynthia. I also felt it when Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were murdered. When I thought nothing else could possibly happen in this civilized country we call the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA they murdered Martin, Medgar, and Malcolm. I grew up watching Black men, women and children beaten like dogs and run down with horses and dogs and called all kinds of vile names on the nightly TV news. And for what? Because they wanted their piece of the American dream.
But just a short review of the real American history has taught us that there has always been an "us" and "them" strategy. Even though Blacks came over with Chris Columbus, we were never treated as equals. Because we were sailors, we were of course a part of all the major Spanish expeditions. We helped to explore the Southeast region of what is now North America with Estaban. And when the first groups of folks came over in masse, we came over just as many of them did-as indentured servants. After a certain period of servitude they could legally be considered free. For almost fifty years there was little or no racial implications to this process. As a matter of fact, once Africans served their time, they bought land and even owned their own indentured servants. It started getting ugly about the time the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower and founded Plymouth Colony. Laws began to be enacted in "the New World" which contradicted each other left and right.
For instance, in Massachusetts in 1630 a law was enacted which protected slaves who ran away from abusive owners, but at almost the same time [1629] slavery was being introduced in Connecticut.
And in 1634 Maryland was importing Black slaves.
By 1640 the English colonies began enacting laws not only to discourage slaves and indentured servants from running away but also sympathetic people from sheltering them.
By 1641 Massachusetts had legalized the slavery of lawful captives. In 1642 Virginia enacted a law fining a person 20 lbs of tobacco for each night a runaway slave was given refuge.
Also in Virginia, in 1661 the Fugitive Slave Law was given legal recognition.
In 1663 Maryland passed a law which said that all Blacks brought into the colony were automatically slaves. And if a free white woman married a Black she would be considered a slave as long as her Black husband was alive. And even though there were laws which said if you were baptized and became a Christian you could not be enslaved, this did not change the status of a Black slave.
Prior to 1670 freed slaved and indentured servants could vote in Virginia. That was repealed in 1676. Virginia also passed a law which said if you arrived by sea and were not a Christian you could be held a slave for life.
When the Salem witch trials began in Massachusetts, one of the first three accused was a slave from Barbados.
There were protests against slavery here and there. Judge Samuel Seawall of Massachusetts in 1700 wrote a pamphlet titled "The Selling of Joseph" arguing against slavery and advocating emancipation and education of Black Slaves. Five years later in Massachusetts marriage between Blacks and whites was declared illegal and ministers who performed them were fined.
By 1755 all of the 13 colonies recognized slavery. Here is the timeline:
Massachusetts-1641
Connecticut-1650
Virginia-1661
Maryland-1663
New York-1665
So Carolina-1682
Pennsylvania-1700
New Jersey-1702
Rhode Island-1703
New Hampshire-1714
North Carolina-1715
Delaware-1721
Georgia-1755
And the importation of slaves continued. By 1710 there were almost 45,000 slaves in the British colonies. By 1715 that number had increased to almost 59,000. By 1725, the number was 75,000. By 1730, the number had grown to 91,000. And by 1740, the number was 150,000.
There seemed to be a lot of laws passed regarding interracial mixing, even in the early days. By 1722, for instance, the Pennsylvania Assembly attacked the practice of Blacks and whites living together as wicked and scandalous.
And the slave population kept growing: by 1750 the Black population was almost 236,000-which was 20% of the total colonial population.
By 1764, a Massachusetts legislator named James Otis argued that slaves have a right to be free, and by 1766 slaves in Massachusetts began a court action against their masters challenging the legality of slavery.
Three years later Thomas Jefferson's first legislative proposal as a member of the Virginia Hose was a bill (which of course was rejected) to provide for the emancipation of slaves. So there were some protests against slavery from both sides. Inspired by the whole revolutionary fervor, petitions for freedom continued to be filed. And sometimes the slaves won in Court! Caesar Hendricks, a slave in Massachusetts, sued his master for detaining him in slavery. He won, was freed, and was awarded damages by an all white jury. These victories, however, were few and far between.
While Thomas Jefferson was still arguing in 1774 for an end to slavery (in "A Summary of The Rights of British America"), George Washington [in 1775] was endorsing the recommendation of the Continental congress to bar African Americans from service in the army. Slaves then became pawns, because then the British Governor of Virginia offered freedom to any slave who joined the British Army.
By 1775 there were over 500,000 slaves in North America. Much too many to be ignored and the fervor for freedom was growing daily. Just as the colonists in 1776 signed The Declaration of Independence, slaves also desired to be free of their oppressors. Blacks made use of the same revolutionary propaganda that the colonists used. They pointed out the hypocrisy of whites talking on the one hand about liberty or death while holding hundreds of thousands of Blacks in bondage. And baby steps were being taken.
In 1777 Virginia became the first state to abolish slavery in its state constitution.
By 1783 the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared slavery illegal-same year as the Revolutionary War ended.
In 1784 all Blacks who served in the Revolutionary War were freed. Gradual Abolition Acts were passed in both Rhode Island and Connecticut. And the Methodist church ordered its members to free slaves within the year because slavery was contrary to the will of God. The Order was unfortunately suspended because of objections from the Southern States.
The new nation was still not prepared as a whole to grant full and complete freedom across the board. The Constitutional Convention in 1787 saw no problem in declaring that every 5 slaves would be counted as equivalent to 3 white men [purely for taxation and representation purposes].
As Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin came on board the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in these territories.
But punitive laws were still being passed. In 1793 the nation's first Fugitive Slave Law was passed. This law made it a Federal crime to harbor a runaway slave. Slate Law in Virginia forbade free Blacks from entering the State. The laws became more brutal as the slave population got larger. By 1800 there were 1,000,000 African Americans living in the United States.
And as the laws got harsher rebellions increased. Gabriel Prosser planned a revolt in Richmond, Virginia in 1800. It was unsuccessful and he and his followers were hanged. Nat Turner led an unsuccessful rebellion in 1831.
While Ohio in 1802 forbade slavery and allowed free Blacks to vote, it also passed a series of Black Codes in 1804 that restricted the rights and movement of free Blacks.
And even though in 1807 Congress passed a law to abolish the importation of slaves from Africa, illegal cargoes of slaves continued to arrive.
And New Orleans had it's own slave revolt in 1811. Federal and State troops had to step in. Louisiana became a state that same year.
There was a fear that free Blacks would corrupt the minds of slaves. So Delaware's solution was to pass a law that said any free Black entering that state had 10 days to leave. If he didn't leave , he would be fined 10 dollars a week. And if he did leave and was gone for 6 months, he would no longer be considered a resident and could not return.
In 1822, the year before the Monroe Doctrine closed America to European colonization, Denmark Vesey, a free Black, planned a major insurrection. It was unsuccessful and he and 34 others were hanged.
And even though in 1823 the U.S. Circuit court upheld the principle that a slave who was removed to a free state became a free man, the Dred Scott decision [named after a free Black who had an incident on a train in New Orleans] overturned this in 1857.
Another glimmer of hope: New York on July 4, 1827 abolished slavery and freed 10,000.
And another step back: In 1836 the U.S. Congress passed a "gag rule", which essentially prohibited any anti-slavery bill from being introduced, read, or discussed. All anti slavery petitions were tabled-unread. This gag rule was not repealed until 1845.
On the plus side: Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Maryland and began writing and talking about the horrors of slavery. A year later, in 1839, Cinque and 53 other African slaves seized the Spanish slave ship L'Amistad off the cost of Cuba and sailed to Long Island. They petitioned the court and won their freedom. Their attorney: John Quincy Adams. As Cinque and the 53 others were being freed, Blacks and whites in Atlanta, Georgia were required to swear on different Bibles in court.
Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in 1849 [also in Maryland] and led 300 others to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
As California became a state in 1850, the 1850 Compromise provided for one of the strongest Federal Fugitive Slave Laws. By this time the Black population was over 3 and a half million.
Georgia passed a law in 1859 prohibiting slave owners from freeing slaves through wills and other means. Louisiana instituted a lawmaking it easier to re-enslave free Blacks. In this same year Arkansas enacted a law requiring free Blacks to leave the state by the end of the year or find masters who would not allow them to act as free.
One of the last insurrections before the beginning of the Civil War was John Brown's Raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. If successful he and his followers would have done some damage.
And President Lincoln was the consummate politician: the Emancipation of 1862 would abolish slavery in the seceded States of the Confederacy-where his authority was not recognized!
And even after slavery had ended the new State Constitutions were written by all-white legislators, most of them former slave masters. Black Codes were written in that regulated and controlled Blacks so severely that virtual slavery was re-established. Not surprisingly, this was the same year [1865]that the KKK was formerly established in Tennessee. The first grand wizard was the ex-Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Even though over 100,000 Blacks were skilled artisans in the South, they eventually disappeared because all skilled crafts were reserved for whites.
Dred Scott was finally over ruled in 1866 when the 14th Amendment was passed. It "guaranteed" Blacks citizenship.
While in 1867 the Reconstruction Acts were passed and they gave Blacks some long hoped for rights and the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865 was established within the War Department to provide help to former slaves as well as the many white refugees in the South, by 1872 the Freedmen's Bureau was allowed to go out of existence for lack of funding. And the Amnesty Act allowed former Confederate officials to hold office.
And the final nail in the coffin came in 1877 with the Tilden-Hayes dispute. The Democrats traded the Presidency for an assurance that they would be able to control Southern State governments without Federal interference. This pretty much ended Reconstruction and Federal troops withdrew from the South. State governments were tuned back over to the same Southern, racist Democrats who ran the plantations. The results are obvious.
And President Chester Arthur's (who became President after James Garfied was assassinated) first message to Congress was one in which he expressed the opinion that Blacks could be excluded from voting if they were not "literate".
The hundred years following the Emancipation Proclamation clearly outlined the us and them mindset of the United States. Riots where Blacks were the targets broke out all over the country-usually in places where Blacks had begun to show some economic clout.
1866-Memphis, Tenn.
1870-Meridan, Mississippi
1874-Vicksburg, Mississippi
1898-Wilmington, North Carolina;Lake City, North Carolina
1900-New York City, New York
1904-Springfield, Ohio
1906-Atlanta, Georgia;Brownsville, Texas
1908-Springfield, Illinois
1917-Houston, Texas;East St. Louis, Illinois;Philadelphia, Penn.
1919-Chester, Penn.;Washington, D.C.;Chicago, Illinois;Omaha, Nebraska,Longview, TX.
1921-Tulsa, Oklahoma
1923-Chicago, Illinois;Rosewood, Florida
1943-Detroit, Michigan;New York City (Harlem), New York;Columbia, Tenn.
1951-Cicero, Illinois
And last but not least-New Orleans. They had 4 major riots during this hundred year period: In 1866, 1868, 1874, and 1900.
There of course were riots/rebellions in the 1960's, but that is not the story I am telling, so I will just mention them in passing. That is an analysis for another day.
So,after being lulled into a false sense of "consideration and nationhood" for almost half a century I again see pictures of African-American men, women, and children laying in the streets of a major metropolitan city. In 2005, however, they are joined by poor white and brown people. And this time many of them died because our national leaders and the federal agencies who had oversight to protect them failed because they could not figure out how to enter a major American metropolitan city. Mind you, news reporters and civilians were getting into the city every day and sending out accounts of the death and destruction but our federal government [to whom we pay taxes] could not get in and denied even knowing about or understanding the magnitude of the situation. What an outrage!
Because I want to believe there has to be a higher purpose for the death and humiliation and fear that has been thrust on New Orleans and the rest of us in this country, three things have become crystal clear in my mind:
1. The emperor has no clothes.
2. The UNITED States of America does not now nor has it ever cared about its Black citizens. It has also added poor people to the list of those it does not care about.
3. If No. 2 is in fact true, it is time for all disenfranchised people of any color to come together and help themselves because there is no benevolent leader looking out for their interest and well being.
The whole world was and is watching the American government's response to the plight of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and it ain't looking good.
The second class treatment of Black people in America should come as no surprise, of course, to those who speak and write the truth. W. E. B. DuBois said years ago that "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line". And since this concept was not addressed in the 20th century, it's staring us in the face in the 21st century. Read Sam Yette's THE CHOICE. He theorized that what little progress was made related to race relations ended in the 1960's in favor of focusing on the Vietnam War. Sound familiar? Where were the majority of the Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana National Guard on August 29th, 2005? Um huh. You got it-Irag.
So. A new direction must be forged. It is MIDNIGHT. The old leaders must be willing to step aside and give way to the New Turks. The good news is that many are positioned to assume leadership roles. This is not to say they will never make some missteps, but that is part of the learning process. My short list would include some non-traditional names for a wide variety of reasons.
Derrick Boazman
Elizabeth Omalami and her husband (daughter and son-in-law of the late Civil Rights icon Hosea Williams, who was unbought and unbossed until the day he died.)
Magic Johnson
Warrick Dunn
Maxine Waters forever and always
Jabbor Gibson who I consider a leader in training. This is the young man in New Orleans who saw help was not coming from the leaders and "liberated" a bus in New Orleans and therefore saved at least 100 people.
Ludacris -Yes I said it. He has great potential.
Elaine Brown
FINIS
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