WHERE WE STAND: 72 YEARS POST-SLAVERY

I saw the last 30 minutes or so of an interesting documentary on WUGA-TV that was a summarization of Douglas A. Blackmon’s book Slavery by Another Name. (1) Since I first heard about Mr. Blackmon’s book I have always been impressed by his thoughtful and meticulous research. He documents an ugly part of American history which tells the story of Americans [mostly “free” Blacks] who were-in the early years of the 20th century-victims of involuntary servitude, exploitative labor arrangements, and peonage. They were picked up on minor charges and their labor was then sold to corporations, steel plants, and coal mines. Loitering was a common means for Black men (and others) to be imprisoned. By 1908 ‘convicts’ were not only rented to private industries and private farmers, but States began to use prisoners in their own endeavors. This was the beginning of chain gangs. This forced labor could be for any offense from sharecropping debt to general debt peonage.


Public schools in America are notorious for teaching HIStory, and not OUR story. For instance, there is no school system in America that teaches the real story of slavery in America. It was ruthless, heartless, demeaning, physically and mentally abusive, and calculatingly horrible in a Marquis de Sade kind of way. Slaves who arrived in America were immediately separated from their brothers and sisters who spoke the same dialect. Slaves were not taught the language of their slave owners and subsequently just picked up the language. Slaves were considered property-thus the three fifths rule. White plantation owners raped slave women repeatedly, fathered their children, and then raped their own daughters-and sons. While most slaves were forbidden to marry, those Black men and women still considered themselves family and struggled to stay together. They were often sold to different plantations-many times deliberately and diabolically so. Slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write, and the penalties for clandestinely doing so were either to be blinded or sold to another plantation - or death. The horrors of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe are more honestly taught than the horrors of American slavery.

What is commonly taught in American schools is that the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in America. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Blackmon does a very good job of documenting why this is not true. Post-1863/1865 slave owners found another way to obtain free labor to do the same tasks that slaves had done. The prison system was an ideal way to acquire free labor, and the combination of the 13th Amendment and the Black Codes which were enacted in many Southern states provided the mechanism.

Because many, many black men and women began to just disappear in the South at this time and ended up on chain gangs, it should be no surprise that this period was also the beginning of the mass migration of Black people from the South to the North. Living in the South was not safe for any Black man or woman, and those Blacks who remained in the South were courageous. The North was a temporary refuge, because over time it has been shown that it had it’s own landmines of danger for Blacks. Racism, hatred, and prejudice have no borders.

Two cases mentioned in the TV documentary and Douglas Blackmon’s book stand out for me-perhaps because I have some familiarity with the two states involved. The first is a 1921 case where a plantation owner/landowner in Jasper County Georgia and his Black farm boss were charged with murder in the death of a Black man who was forced by the owner to work against his will. There was also much evidence that at least 10 more Black men had been killed in the most gruesome ways possible by these same two men. Both were found guilty of murder and were given a life sentence by the jury. (The jury, by the way, asked for mercy for the plantation owner/landowner-after finding him guilty). Both the farm boss and the plantation owner/landowner died within ten years of their sentence. This case was important because the plantation owner/landowner was the first Southern white man since 1877 to be indicted for first degree murder of a Black man. It would not happen again until 1966. (2) (3)


On December 12, 1941 (almost eighty years after the ratification of the 13th Amendment),President Roosevelt, through his Attorney General, issued Circular No. 3591, which stated that the United States of America would aggressively prosecute any case of involuntary servitude or slavery. Within months of Circular 3591 a Texas man and his daughter were convicted of holding (and working) a man against his will for years. The father was sentenced to 4 years and his daughter was sentenced to 2 years by a Federal jury. They both served their time in Federal prison. Douglas Blackmon says-and I agree- that only then did slavery end. (4)


This blog entry is therefore a good news/bad news story. The good news is that men and women such as Douglas Blackmon continue to lift the shroud of secrecy off a very ugly chapter in American HIStory. The bad news is that even after the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, and Circular 3591,on February 26,2012 a 17 year old Back teen [who did not have any arrests for any criminal activity] named Trayvon Martin was in a place he had every right to be and had money in his pocket. He went on a 7-11 run for snacks, and was killed by a 28 year old man named George Zimmerman [with a documented record of a violent past]. The reason: Trayvon Martin “looked suspicious and was up to no good.”

The more things change the more they remain the same.



NOTES:


(1) http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/

(2) http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60E1EFA3B5B1B7A93C5A9178FD85F458285F9

(3) http://law.jrank.org/pages/2820/John-S-Williams-Clyde-Manning-Trials-1921.html

(4) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120674498432473091.html



Revised 2.03.2013