Another Week, Another Bigot Becky

One of the conversations my mother and I were having a few nights ago was about finding the silver linings in this Trump misadminstration.  One blessing that Mom pointed out is that it is revealing to us in real time who the racist peeps are.

Because the bigots feel so comfortable expressing themselves since his upset win happened back in November 2016, ,the bigot eruptions have been coming with regular frequency

The latest Bigot Becky to find out the hard way that the Internet is forever is Dr. Heather Wick of Burlington, VT.

She posted on her Twitter feed the comment asking if Trump was bringing back slavery because she could use a maid. 

Hmm wonder if she's part of the 53% of white women who voted for this incompetent sexual predator?.   It's also laughable that someone took the time to write this article trying to claim she was bipolar. 

Being bipolar, like white women's tears, doesn't give you a get out of jail free card when you say or post problematically racist crap online or try to pass it off as 'a joke'

Talking about slavery in that manner damned sure isn't  isn't 'funny to those of us who had enslaved ancestors less than 150 years ago .  It also isn't funny when you have white supremacists currently working in the White House like Stephen Miller, and a racist one as the POTUS.

'Django Unchained,' Quentin Tarantino's Broken Clock Moment

 

TransGriot: Note: Guest Post from Renee of Womanist Musings 

Long before Django Unchained was released on Christmas day, there was a lot of buzz about this movie. Spike Lee called Django Unchained an insult to his ancestors and swore that he would not see it. On just about every major Black blog and Facebook page, there has been a discussion about how this movie deals with slavery, whether or not Tarantino is a racist and what this film says about the media in general. 

Leonardo Di Caprio has publicly stated his difficulty with having to repeatedly use the word nigger in the film, Samuel Jackson has refused to answer any questions regarding the usage of the word unless the journalist actually says nigger instead of the "N word" and Kerry Washington has spoken about the difficulty of her role and the staged whipping.   This movie was difficult for the actors, for the viewers and the critics.  In terms of race, I cannot remember the last time we had a movie become so much a part of the social discussion.

I am going to preface this review with the fact that I am not in the least bit a fan of Quentin Tarantino. I think he is far too comfortable using the word nigger in his work and much of the time, it adds nothing to the plot or development of the character.  A White man can never understand how deeply casual usage of this slur hurts Blacks and Tarantino's treatment of the pain itself, has a history of being cavalier at best.

Without doubt, the usage of nigger was ubiquitous throughout Django Unchained but unlike other Tarantino movies, a setting of two years before the civil war absolutely justified its usage. It would have been ahistorical for White plantation owners to use any other word to refer to Blacks, let alone their slaves.  It is wrong to apply 21st century standards and moral sensibilities to this time and would have made slavery itself seem like a benign institution.  The problem is that given Tarantino's comfort with the slur, it makes acceptance of its inclusion in Django Unchained, feels like giving him permission to continue to litter his work with it. 

I find it interesting that there was so much fixation on the word nigger considering the context, but no one had anything to say about grown men being forced to fight to death, a slave being eaten alive by a dog, whippings and brandings.  The very idea that Quentin Tarantino reduced the barbarity of slavery by his usage of slurs, when these violent events were a part of the movie is ridiculous. As a viewer, I had no doubt that Black life was viewed as cheap and that slavery itself was beyond dehumanizing. In fact, the brutality of the violence itself, made the moments of brevity absolutely necessary to give the viewer a form of relief.

Django Unchained is like no other western I have ever seen because of it's theme and of course Black protagonist.  Watching it, I could not help but realise that no Black director could have made this film because it would have been difficult to get the financial backing.  Even George Lucas had to fund Red Tails himself because studios refuse to believe that movies about Black history, or which have a largely Black cast, can possibly be successful outside of the coonery produced by Tyler Perry.

Though Django Unchained is a western and therefore filled with violence, many have refused to consider the genre and instead have labeled this simply a revenge fantasy. Tavis (I will sell out my people for funding) Smiley had the following to say:

The suffering of black people is not reducible to revenge and retribution. The black tradition has taught the nation what it means to love. Put it another way: black people have learned to love America in spite of, not because of, so if the justification for the film in the end is, as Jamie Foxx’s Django says, “What, kill white people and get paid for it? What’s wrong with that?”­ well again, black suffering is not reducible to revenge and retribution.

It's true that the Black experience is not solely reducible to revenge; however, the turn the other cheek doctrine of Dr. King is also not the definition of the Black experience. Yes, Blacks have resisted oppression and we have done so both forcefully and violently.  Does Smiley believe that there was never a slave uprising or that Haitians peacefully asked the French for their freedom?  Does he think that Blacks always slept fearfully waiting for the Klan to ride, or can he understand that some stood on their porches with shotguns determined to meet a threat to their lives with one in kind?  Not all resistance was, or is, non-violent, nor should we necessarily demonize people who respond to the violence that Whiteness has perpetrated on Black people with violence. Anger, rage and a desire for retribution are a part of the Black experience; we have simply been taught not to validate it, or see it as a viable response.  Because one of the fears of Whiteness is a reckoning for the great evil of slavery and Jim Crow, revenge has solidly been discouraged.

Quentin Tarantino tapped into this emotion, which is why it has resonated so strongly. Black rage is a real phenomenon and it is justified, I am just not sure that Quentin Tarantino is the one to tell this story because it is so far outside of his lived experience. Take for instance the character of the house slave Stephen, played by Samuel L. Jackson.  Stephen was clearly painted as evil and was directly responsible for Django, Dr. Shultz and Broomhilda being unable to leave the plantation peacefully.  When Calvin Candie was shot dead by Shultz, it was Stephen who fell to the floor ravaged by grief.  There has long been a problematic binary of house slaves equal sell out/ field slaves pro black.  To be clear, both groups were slaves and there is no such thing as a benign form of slavery.  The relationship between house slaves and their White owners was far more complex than Django Unchained could even hope to portray.

Django Unchained is a movie worth seeing.  Far too many people are willing to form an opinion on the movie based on what they have read or their discomfort with Quentin Tarantino. It adds to the dialogue about race and slavery even if Quentin Tarantino is so high on himself that he now sees himself as the sole arbiter of Black history in film.  Despite his Whiteness and out of control arrogance, he has made a contribution worth watching and thinking about.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day and Django Unchained is most certainly Quentin Tarantino's moment.

150th Anniversary Of The Emancipation Proclamation

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

150 years ago today on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln and took effect.  


The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed all those enslaved in Confederate territory to be forever free, and ordered the Army and all of the Executive branch of the US government  to treat as free all those enslaved in the ten states that were still in rebellion.

At that moment, 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the US according to the 1860 census were freed, but it did not apply to the five slave states that remained in the union nor to most regions already controlled by the Union army.

Of course, the Confederates reacted with predictable outrage.  They pointed to the Emancipation Proclamation as proof they were justified in seceding and launching their armed rebellion against the federal government to preserve slavery because in their minds Lincoln would have abolished it anyway.

But conversely, Lincoln probably would have had a tougher time doing so had all the Confederate states not seceded and stayed in the union.  

The Emancipation Proclamation had been discussed in the Lincoln Administration as early as the summer of 1862 as a way to cripple the Confederacy, who was dependent upon slave labor to drive their engine of war and agreed to, but Lincoln felt he needed to do so after a Union battlefield victory.

The strategic Union victory at Antietam in September 1862 gave President Lincoln an opportunity to announce his plans to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and hinder the Confederacy's efforts to gain international recognition and aid from Great Britain and France.   Five days after Antietam, on September 22 1862 the preliminary proclamation was announced that ordered the emancipation of any slaves in the CSA states that didn't return to federal control by January 1, 1863.  When none did so, it took effect on that date.

There have been spirited arguments from 20th century African-American scholars such as W.E.B.Du Bois, James Baldwin, Julius Lester and Lerone Bennett over just how effective the Emancipation Proclamation was in terms of emancipating our ancestors.   Some called it a worthless piece of paper, while Bennett went even farther in his criticisms in this 2000 book Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.  Bennett asserted in the book that Lincoln was a white supremacist who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in lieu of the real racial reforms the radical abolitionists were pushing for.

In the short term it had several effects.  It converted the Civil War into not only a cause to reunify the country, but added the moral component of ending slavery.  

It put a permanent halt into Confederate efforts to get Great Britain and France, nations that had abolished slavery, into recognizing a treasonous group of American states trying to form a nation based on the principle of perpetuating slavery.

As Lincoln had hoped, as word of the Emancipation Proclamation spread throughout the South, slaves began to escape and headed to the Union lines in anticipation of freedom.  They enlisted in the US Colored Troops, providing a brand new source of manpower for the Union efforts while depleting the manpower of the slave labor dependent Confederacy. 

As the Union armies advanced into formerly CSA held territory, they were also freed.  Unfortunately in my home state of Texas, freedom didn't come for my ancestors until June 19, 1865, two months after the War To Perpetuate Slavery was over. 

The Emancipation Proclamation did not make slavery illegal in the United States.  It merely provided the legal framework for emancipation of slaves as the Union armies successfully advanced.  It also created the political conditions that led to the passage in Congress and ratification of the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in the United States.

President Johnson referenced this during the 100th anniversary commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation's issuance during a Memorial Day 1963 speech at Gettysburg, PA and connected it to the ongoing Civil Rights movement activity.

"One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. ...In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake--it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision....Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.
 
President Johnson also referenced the proclamation again during a March 15, 1965 congressional speech announcing the introduction of the 1965 Voting Rights Act one week after Bloody Sunday. 

It seems fitting that 150 years later, we have an African-American president who is also an Illinois resident  issuing a proclamation of his own commemorating what President Lincoln did back in 1863.


But the Emancipation Proclamation was the precursor for the 'new birth of freedom' as Lincoln called it in his Gettysburg Address, although it came for African-Americans at a bloody cost and a 'with all deliberate speed' pace.

Slavery WAS An Abomination

the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”         Jon Hubbard (R) Arkansas state rep

What is it with white male conservafools trying to justify slavery and their vanillacentric privileged bigotry of African Americans on a regular basis?   As a descendant of an ancestor who arrived in New Orleans in chains in 1810 I strenuously object to your vanilla scented assessment of America's original sin on multiple levels.

I sincerely doubt that my ancestor or others who has the misfortune of being captured and given that less than luxurious boat ride from the Mother Continent considered it a blessing in disguise.  

Lets see.  You get kidnapped away from your home, marched to a coastal slave castle, loaded onto a slave ship from there in chains, packed like a sardine for the horrific Middle Passage to these shores or elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere (in which an estimated 2-6 million people died during that Atlantic crossing) being sold on the auction block and then forced to work without pay under brutal conditions.

Heaven help you if that ancestor was female.  In addition to dealing with all of the above, you also had the added trauma of being raped at every stage of the process in addition to watching the children you gave birth to being sold off.

So in your jacked up line of conservathinking Jon Hubbard, we African descended Americans should be bowing down to you almighty conservative whiteys for making us the original undocumented workers, forcibly separating us from and erasing knowledge of our African heritage and culture, destroying our families, and bringing us here to do the work of building this 'greatest nation on earth' you so called God fearing Christians were too lazy to do.

Yeah, right.

And about that American citizenship you spoke of.  It took a civil war the traitorous Confederate states started and thankfully lost and the passage and ratification of the 13th,14th and 15th Amendment for us African descended people to get that citizenship that the Dred Scott v. Sandford case initially denied us.

It also took us fighting off white pointed hooded terrorists, a lot of bloodshed, a long progression of court cases, passage of federal laws and 100 plus years of agitation organized by visionary community leaders just to be recognized as second class US citizens.
Much of what ails this country in terms of race relations and what ails Black America has its roots in slavery.  Slavery along with colonialism had deleterious effects on the African continent that are still in evidence today.

So from where I and every thoughtful African-American sits, slavery was, is and always will be an abomination.  Slavery was also a monstrous crime against humanity that we definitely need to be compensated for seeing that we are still suffering the post-traumatic effects from it 150 years later.   

It's also regular history challenged bigot eruptions like this that not only piss off African-Americans and turn us off from conservatism and the Republican Party, but ensure that we'll continue to vote for Democratic politicians at all levels of government in this country.

Dear Massa, Thanks But No Thanks

One of the things that pisses me off at times is when I hear the southern history revisionists try to pimp their 'happy darkie' lie about slavery to absolve themselves of the fact their ancestors committed a monstrous human rights crime.

Slavery had and still does have deleterious effects on this nation, race relations, and their community and mine almost 150 years later and was nothing Gone With The Wind happy about it for my people.

Was delighted to see this 1865 letter that's been making the rounds in the Afrosphere, the Net from letters of note.com composed by freedman Jourdon Anderson in response to a letter from his former master Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee asking him to come back to the big house to work for him.

Here's Jourdon's response to that letter.

***

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.

   

August 20, 1619

On August 20, 1619, the first 20 Africans arrived at Old Point Comfort in what would become the the United States.on a Dutch ship named the 'White Lion' under the command of Captain Jope and an English pilot named Marmaduke.

Old Point Comfort is now Fort Monroe in Hampton, VA..

The Africans were originally loaded onto a Spanish ship named the Sao Joao Bautista that set sail for Vera Cruz, Mexico.  They encountered the 'White Lion' and an English ship called the 'Treasurer' which robbed the Spanish ship of its cargo and 60 Africans. 

The 'Treasurer' arrived 3-4 days later and attempted to trade their African captives for supplies, but weren't allowed to do so and set sail for Bermuda. 

The arrival of the 'White Lion' was a event that only garnered this line for the journal of colonist John Rolfe, who wrote, "......there came a Dutch man of warre that sold us (20) Negars."

The African arrivals bore Spanish names, such as Antonio, Isabella and Pedro.and were sold to work at plantations up and down the James River.  Only two of the original twenty Africans arrived at Jamestown according to Calvin Pearson, the president of Project 1619, Inc.

Capt. William Tucker, the commander of Point Comfort  purchased Antonio and Isabella, and in 1623 they became the parents of the first African-American child, William Tucker.  The descendants of this child and the Tucker family still live in the Hampton area, and William Tucker is buried there.

Jamestown myth event in Hampton: wavy.com

As part of African Arrival Commemoration Day,  residents of the city of Hampton will mark the occasion of the first Africans arriving in the New World with a candlelight ceremony at Fort Monroe and a free 3:30 PM EDT symposium at the American Theater in Hampton entitled 'Defying The Myth of Jamestown' .  

The Project 1619 group is also trying to raise funds for a permanent memorial so that they can have it erected in time for the 400th anniversary in 2019.

PTSS-Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome

Since 1865, the United States has been suffering from an unacknowledged malady, and nope, I'm not talking about racism, even though it's unfortunately still part of the American body politic. Racism predates 1865.

What I'm talking about is PTSS. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.

Even though it's been almost 150 years since my peeps emancipation from chattel slavery, whether people want to admit it or not, it has had debilitating effects on former slave and former slave owner alike.

A primary example of it happened in April with our different perceptions about the Confederacy. While whites with Southern heritage mourn the 'Lost Cause' and extol the virtues of brave Confederate soldiers, myself and other African descended Americans see them as traitorous racist oppressors who sought to keep us in permanent servitude.

It has had negative effects on our national politics and race relations. African Americans are still judged by racist myths that originated during slavery. Our negative economic status today vis a vis whites is rooted in the fact that the weatlth that whites built up was at the expense of my ancestors 246 years of uncompensated labor and then spending another 100 years locking us out of various occupations thanks to Jim Crow laws.

Some of the colorism issues we have within the African American community can be traced back to America's original sin as well.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing is a book by Portland State University professor Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary that tackles how the aftermath of slavery has negatively effected African-Americans to this day.

She argues that both overt and subtle forms of racism have damaged the collective African-American psyche—harm manifested through poor mental and physical health, family and relationship dysfunction, and self-destructive impulses.

Leary suggests that African Americans (and other people of color) can ill afford to wait for the dominant culture to realize the qualitative benefits of undoing racism. The real recovery from the ongoing trauma of slavery and racism has to start from within, she says, beginning with a true acknowledgment of the resilience of African-American culture.

Sounds like it's an intriguing book that I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to read.

The Civil War WAS About Slavery

If I hear another Southern based (or non-Southern based) history revisionist claim that the American Civil War wasn't about slavery, I'm gonna scream.

I've been thinking about it in the wake of the recent news that the Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African Americans for slavery and Jim Crow segregation, but of course made sure that reparations wasn't part of the deal.

So let's take a trip on the way back machine to Savannah, GA. The date is March 21, 1861 and we're at the Athenaeum listening to Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' infamous 'Cornerstone Speech'.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

There's been this constant drone from Confederate apologists pimping the 'it wasn't about slavery' meme. It salves their realizations (or ignoring) of the facts:

* their ancestors fought a war to perpetuate the brutal oppression of my ancestors through slavery.
*they were fighting against their own economic interests in favor of the economic interests of the planter class.

Perusing the Declarations of the Causes of Secession for each of the Southern states that seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy makes a mockery of that meme.

Mississippi

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world.

Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Georgia


The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.




Texas

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings.

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.


it's crystal clear that in perusing these declarations the issue that triggered the secession of Southern states from the Union and jumped off the Civil War was slavery.

So no, it wasn't the 'War of Northern Aggression' as you try to spin it, it was the 'War To Perpetuate Slavery'.

I thank God the South lost. It's past time the apologists get over it and the racist attitudes it still engenders almost 150 years later.

The Big Payback

How reparations activist Deadria Farmer-Paellmann turned a one-woman campaign into a triumphant national movement

by KEMBA J. DUNHAM
from ESSENCE.com

Growing up in Brooklyn, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann listened to her grandfather wax poetic about how African-Americans deserved their 40 acres and a mule to make up for centuries of enslavement. Now she’s fighting to see that we finally get paid in full. For the past seven years, the 41-year-old reparations advocate has taken on some of America’s biggest corporations by proving that they profited—and continue to reap rewards—off the back of slave labor. In her latest move to get restitution, Farmer-Paellmann is serving as the lead plaintiff in a case against companies that allegedly made money from slavery. The landmark proceeding, which names 17 businesses, including Aetna and Bank of America, is currently up for review on the United States Supreme Court’s docket.

"Her strategy of going after the private sector is absolutely imaginative and creative," says Mary Frances Berry, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "She is at the vanguard of the movement to try to get reparations taken seriously."

With a string of victories already under her belt, Farmer-Paellmann certainly has people sitting up and taking note. Along with other advocates, she has compelled businesses, such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wachovia, to apologize for their role in slavery and to shell out millions to organizations like the NAACP and Howard University. She’s also triggered the passage of slavery disclosure laws around the country, forcing companies to fess up to their links to the slave trade.

"It is unreasonable for companies to keep wealth they acquired by stealing people, torturing laborers to work without compensation, and brutalizing those who resisted," she argues. “They must atone by paying restitution." Her current lawsuit demands a humanitarian trust fund be set up to benefit the descendants of slaves instead of individual payouts. "We need this capital for economic development, affordable housing, educational opportunities and health care," she says. "As a community we suffer in all these areas as a direct result of slavery."

The toilsome reparations fight became a passion for Farmer- Paellmann during law school, when she chose the controversial topic as the focus of a project. It became her full-time mission during her pregnancy with daughter Sabina in 1999.

Prepping for her battle has been far from easy. Farmer-Paellmann went through the laborious process of getting a list of present-day companies that existed in some form before 1865 and calling them, one by one, to grill them about past practices. Her enterprise is largely self-funded, and she relies on donations from family and friends and personal savings to forge ahead, despite naysayers who argue that the reparations fight is futile.

But Farmer-Paellmann says her progress speaks for itself. "We’ve won historic victories, and we got companies to pay $20 million," she says, referencing payments made by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America and Wachovia to Howard University and the NAACP and several other organizations. "If detractors were aware of these things, they would be a bit more optimistic."

The Wreck Of The Henrietta Marie Exhibit

On a story summer day in 1700 a homeward bound British-based merchant ship was driven onto shoals 35 miles west of Key West, Florida. It broke apart and sank with the loss of all hands and its cargo. Prior to its demise in the Florida Keys, it had made a stop in Jamaica to sell some of its cargo it picked up in the initial leg of its vovage from London to the west coast of Africa.

Over 250 years later it was discovered in 1972 by Mel Fisher, who was looking for the sunken Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha. Dubbed the 'English Wreck', the site after some preliminary exploration lay undisturbed until 1983.

Upon further examination of the wreck site by archaeologists, they discovered a set of shackles. As they continued to comb the wreck site they found additional pairs until the count reached 80. After discovering the ship's bell, they have concrete evidence of the ship's name, and after checking surviving maritime records in Jamaica learned of the nature of the cargo it had sold there.

The cargo it had offloaded there was 190 captive Africans, and the wreck that Mel Fisher had discovered was the Henrietta Marie.

They had discovered not only one of the few slave ships to sink in North American waters, but had a name for it as well. In 1993 members of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers placed a memorial at the wreck site.

The memorial faces the African coast three thousand miles away and has a plaque that bears the ship's name.

The inscription on the plaque reads;

"In memory and recognition of the courage, pain and suffering of enslaved African people.

Speak her name and gently touch the souls of our ancestors."

Since then the Henrietta Marie has become a treasure trove of information in terms of the triangular slave trade. It is the focal point of a traveling exhibit called A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie.

I recently found out that the Frazier International History Museum here in Louisville has been hosting the traveling exhibit since January 26. Since we rarely get these caliber of exhibits here and it will only be in town until May 26, I made it a point to go to the Frazier yesterday and check it out.

If it does hit your city, I would highly recommend it. I along with a multicultural crowd spent a few hours Sunday afternoon wandering through the interactive and critically acclaimed exhibit. It transports you back to the world of 1700 and tells the story through spoken word, video, artifacts from the ship, maps, smells and song.

It drives home one point I've been making for several years now. Our culture and our nation today is still affected on multiple levels by the echoes of the slave trade. The only way that we can more forward from the current testy state of race relations in this country is to confront that history head-on.

Willie Lynch Must Die!

One of the lessons my father repeatedly drove home to me and my siblings was never accept anything that's written or broadcast in the media at first glance. My freshman year psychology professor reinforced that lesson with a memorable lecture entitled 'Be A Skeptic'.

As long as I have been on the Net, this Willie Lynch letter repeatedly finds its way into my e-mail inboxes, in general discourse with fellow African-Americans on and off the Net and in speeches like Minister Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March one. I just recently read a February 2008 Ebony magazine issue that refers to it in a Two Sides column debate on whether light-skinned Black people have an advantage.

When I first read it back in the late 90's. my skepticism antenna that has served me well over my lifetime was clanging loud alarm bells as I read this.

First let me post the full text of the alleged 1712 speech so y'all can read it for yourselves, if you haven't seen it yet.

The William Lynch Speech:

"Gentlemen, I greet you here on the bank of the James River in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve. First, I shall thank you, the gentlemen of the Colony of Virginia, for bringing me here. I am here to help you solve some of your problems with slaves. Your invitation reached me on my modest plantation in the West Indies where I have experimented with some of the newest and still the oldest methods of control of slaves.

Ancient Rome would envy us if my program were implemented. As our boat sailed south on the James River, named for our illustrious King, whose version of the Bible we cherish. I saw enough to know that your problem is not unique. While Rome used cords of woods as crosses for standing human bodies along its highways in great numbers you are here using the tree and the rope on occasion.

I caught the whiff of a dead slave hanging from a tree a couple of miles back. You are not only losing a valuable stock by hangings, you are having uprisings, slaves are running away, your crops are sometimes left in the fields too long for maximum profit, you suffer occasional fires, your animals are killed.

Gentlemen, you know what your problems are: I do not need to elaborate. I am not here to enumerate your problems, I am here to introduce you to a method of solving them. In my bag here, I have a fool proof method for controlling your Black slaves. I guarantee everyone of you that if installed correctly it will control the slaves for at least 300 hundred years [sic]. My method is simple. Any member of your family or your overseer can use it.

I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves: and I take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies and it will work throughout the South. Take this simple little list of differences, and think about them.


On top of my list is ‘Age’, but it is there only because it starts with an ‘A’: the second is ‘Color’ or shade, there is intelligence, size, sex, size of plantations, status on plantation, attitude of owners, whether the slave live in the valley, on hill, East, West, North, South, have fine hair, coarse hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences. I shall give you an outline of action-but before that I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust and envy is stronger than adulation, respect, or admiration.

The Black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self re-fueling and self generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Don't forget you must pitch the old Black male vs. the young Black male, and the young Black male against the old Black male. You must use the dark skin slaves vs. the light skin slaves and the light skin slaves vs. the dark skin slaves. You must use the female vs. the male, and the male vs. the female. You must also have your white servants and overseers distrust all Blacks, but it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect and trust only us.

Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control. Use them. Have your wives and children use them, never miss an opportunity. If used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful. Thank you, gentlemen."

***

Professor Mamu Ampin also shares my skepticism on this speech along with history professor Dr. W. Jelani Cobb of Spelman College.

Both gentlemen point out some interesting things about this letter. Willie Lynch was supposed to be from the West Indies, but it wasn't specified what part of the West Indies he was from.

If Lynch exists and he was West Indian, he would be writing and speaking BRITISH English. 'Color' in British English is spelled 'colour'. This was the eyebrow raiser for me.

The reference to seeing a 'dead slave hanging from a tree' is a giveaway as well. Lynching didn't become prevalent in the United States until the late 19th century. In addition, slaveowners at the time didn't refer to my ancestors as 'Black', they used the term 'Negroes' in their writings. 'Black' only gained widespread usage as a descriptive terms starting in the late 1960's.

There are references to 20th century travel terms such as 'refuelling' or words being used that didn't gain acceptance in modern English until well after the purported date of the speech. In addition, the South didn't become a distinct political region until well over a century after the alleged speech. All of the 13 colonies were slaveholding entities in 1712. The second largest concentration of slaves in the colonies at the time was in New York, where they suppressed multiple slave revolts, (are you reading this Kenneth Eng), including one at the time of the speech.

Neither the first hand writings about slave owner control tactics by people such as Olaudah Equiano, Mahommah Baquaqua, and Frederick Douglass or abolitionist ones either quote or mention a 'Willie Lynch Letter'.

So there's a mountain of evidence that points to this letter as a late 20th century forgery, circa 1990-1995. So the next time you see this 'Willie Lynch letter' in your e-mail box or being quoted, delete it or take that portion of the piece with a grain of salt.

While the overwhelming evidence leans to the fact that the Willie Lynch letter is a fake, what happened to my ancestors over the last 200 plus years definitely wasn't.