Slavery

Protesters Demand Wealthy MP Pays Up For Family’s Slave Trade Past

July 20, 2021 Paul Lashmar, The Guardian. Resist! Reparations, Slavery, United Kingdom (UK)

Protesters demanded yesterday that a Conservative MP should hand over his 621-acre sugar plantation to the people of Barbados as compensation for his family’s 200 years of slave owning and trading on the island. Richard Drax, the MP for Dorset South, has said the role of his ancestors was “deeply, deeply regrettable” but resists demands for reparations. As part of this year’s Tolpuddle Festival, a rally organised by Stand Up to Racism, Dorset, at the gates of the Drax family estate highlighted the family’s historic role in slavery. The festival celebrates the Tolpuddle Martyrs, poorly paid farm workers, who were transported in 1834 for organising trade union activities. This is the first time the festival has worked with reparation activists.

What Really Happened On Juneteenth

June 25, 2021 Robin Washington, Forward. Educate! Civil War, Juneteenth, Slavery, White Supremacy

If you saw my column about Juneteenth posted here over the last few days, or a previous version on the website of Be’chol Lashon several years ago, or a video version currently presented by Be’chol Lashon, you would know I had bittersweet feelings about the history of the day. I no longer do. I am outraged by it. My change in emotion comes after learning from historian friends that the oft-repeated tale of Union soldiers arriving in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865 to inform enslaved African Americans that they were free is pure fiction. Not because they weren’t legally freed 2-½ months earlier when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Or technically freed 2-1/2 years before when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slavery null and void in areas under rebellion, very much including Texas.

Boycott Juneteenth 2022

June 21, 2021 Trevor Baldwin, News One. Strategize! Black America, Congress, Juneteenth, Slavery

I believe the reason there’s more disdain than pride is because it feels like we’re honoring a crime – a day commemorating the end of a 2 ½ year hostage negotiation where the captors were not punished yet instead compensated for the inconvenience of slavery ending. Our collective cases of injustice and reparations have been made with overwhelming evidence. Unfortunately, our moral victories aren’t moving the needle enough to ensure that our lives matter. It might be time to reject these trophies of courage and resilience while perpetrators of violence against us get slapped with feathers. No more ceremonies acknowledging injustices if it’s not accompanied by legislation that prevents it. As we have these national “enlightenment” moments of events like Tulsa, where are the laws that protect Black people from the impulses of that white rage repeating?

How Not To Celebrate Juneteenth

June 18, 2021 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! American history, Black misleadership, Juneteenth, Slavery

Juneteenth was largely a regional holiday celebrated by Black people in Texas and other southern states. It commemorates the events of June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston and announced that slavery ended as per General Order Number 3. "The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” It is an important event that ought to be remembered, but its true significance has been lost. Juneteenth has become the latest iteration of liberal capture of Black politics, opportunistic virtue signaling, and the intentional misrepresentation of America’s history. Corrupt and avaricious corporations honor Juneteenth and cynical politicians give it great attention.

The Revolutionary Promise Of New Year’s Day

January 2, 2021 New Frame. Educate! Haiti, Liberation, Revolution, Slavery

The celebration of New Year’s Day as a moment to contemplate renewal, usually personal renewal, follows the calendar adopted by Julius Caesar in 46BC. Designed by Greek mathematicians and astrologers, its sole purpose was to attain greater mathematical accuracy in the alignment of dates to the solar year. In recent years, Antonio Gramsci’s column that was published on 1 January 1916 in the Turin issue of Avanti! has been circulated in progressive circles on New Year’s Day. In the column, Gramsci rejected the idea that New Year’s Day should be an annual day of renewal and insisted that “I want every morning to be a New Year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself.”

The Long Shadow Of Racial Fascism

November 6, 2020 Alberto Toscano, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Fascism, Racism, Slavery, United States

In the wake of the 2016 election, public intellectuals latched onto the new administration’s organic and ideological links with the alt- and far right. But a mass civic insurgency against racial terror—and the federal government’s authoritarian response —has pushed hitherto cloistered academic debates about fascism into the mainstream, with Peter E. Gordon , Samuel Moyn , and Sarah Churchwell taking to the pages of the New York Review of Books to hash out whether it is historically apt or politically useful to call Trump a fascist.

Sweet (And Sticky) Redemption

October 5, 2020 Maurice Bailey and Nik Heynen, Scalawag Magazine. Resist! Cultural heritage, Food and Agriculture, Gentrification, Slavery

There is no U.S. agricultural history without the expertise and labor of African people who were enslaved across the South, including the Gullah/Geechee people of the lower Atlantic Coast. But the violence of slavery and white supremacy is tied up with the crops that grew the global economy, embedding sugarcane, cotton, rice, and other historic commercial crops with a traumatic legacy. For the Sapelo Island community—which includes the largest and most intact population of Gullah/Geechee descendants left in the U.S.

On Contact: Origin Of White Supremacy

September 27, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Chris Hedges, Colonialism, Slavery, White Supremacy

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the origin of white supremacy and how it plays out in contemporary society with historian Gerald Horne. Horne is the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, Texas. Horne’s new book is ‘The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century’.

Enslaved People’s Health Was Ignored From The Country’s Beginning

August 2, 2020 Eric Kyere, The Conversation. Educate! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Health disparity, Slavery, Systemic Racism

Some critics of Black Lives Matter say the movement itself is racist. Their frequent counterargument: All lives matter. Lost in that view, however, is a historical perspective. Look back to the late 18th century, to the very beginnings of the U.S., and you will see Black lives in this country did not seem to matter at all. Foremost among the unrelenting cruelties heaped upon enslaved people was the lack of health care for them. Infants and children fared especially poorly. After childbirth, mothers were forced to return to the fields as soon as possible, often having to leave their infants without care or food.

Land Loss Has Plagued Black America Since Emancipation

July 20, 2020 Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone, The Conversation. Strategize! Inequality, Land Rights, Racism, Slavery

Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S. The “40 acres and a mule” promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor. June 19 is celebrated by black Americans as Juneteenth, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the “black commons” – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could act as one means of redress.

Asheville Approves Reparations For Black Residents

July 16, 2020 Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times. Create! North Carolina, Reparations, Slavery, Systemic Racism

Asheville, NC - In an extraordinary move, the City Council has apologized for the city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. "Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today," said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure's chief proponent. "It is simply not enough to remove statues. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature," Young said. The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments. Instead it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.

Toppling Statues As An Act Of Historical Redemption

July 15, 2020 Onur Acaroglu, ROAR Magazine. Educate! Racism, Rebellion2020, Slavery, Statues

The brutal murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police set off an unprecedented wave of protests. In a highly publicized, graphic execution, Floyd was killed in broad daylight for possession of an alleged counterfeit bill. The ensuing rebellion of global dimensions is undoubtedly fueled by the exposure to uncertainty, stress and anxiety that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated. In the United States and beyond, frustration and anger at unprepared and incompetent governments overlap with the pressures of systemic racism, seen in sheer wealth gaps and repressive state practices. Across the pond, protests have also erupted in Britain. In a context of recession and repression, it is common for widespread rebellions to flare up at instances of injustice.

Remembering The Greatest 4th Of July Speech Of All Time

July 5, 2020 Alan Gilbert, www.democratic-individuality.blogspot.com Educate! Frederick Douglas, indigenous, Racism, Slavery

Frederick Douglass' speech is one of the 5 or 10 greatest American public speeches (enslaved and escaped, Douglass was a brilliant writer and speaker). Here is one vivid paragraph: "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."

Would Slavery Have Ended Sooner If British Had Defeated Colonists’ Bid For Independence?

July 4, 2020 Keith Brooks, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Independence, Slavery

Historians have long grappled with the contradiction of a revolution under the banner of "all men are created equal" being largely led by slave owners. Once free of England, the U.S. grew over the next 89 years to be the largest slave-owning republic in history. But the July 4th 1776 Declaration of Independence (DI) was in itself a revolutionary document. Never before in history had people asserted the right of revolution -- not just to overthrow a specific government that no longer met the needs of the people, but as a general principle for the relationship between the rulers and the ruled: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

Rethinking 4th Of July With Historical Truths

July 3, 2020 Bill Bigelow , www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Democracy, Education, Frederick Douglas, indigenous, Native Indians, Racism, Revolution, Slavery

Ray Raphael offers some context for the Declaration of Independence: In 1997, Pauline Maier published American Scripture, where she uncovered 90 state and local "declarations of independence" that preceded the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The consequence of this historical tidbit is profound: Jefferson was not a lonely genius conjuring his notions from the ether; he was part of a nationwide political upheaval. Similarly, Raphael reports: [I]n 1774 common farmers and artisans from throughout Massachusetts rose up by the thousands and overthrew all British authority. In the small town of Worcester (only 300 voters), 4,622 militiamen from 37 surrounding communities lined both sides of Main Street and forced British-appointed officials to walk the gauntlet, hats in hand, reciting their recantations 30 times each so everyone could hear. There were no famous "leaders" for this event. The people elected representatives who served for one day only, the ultimate in term limits. "The body of the people" made decisions and the people decided that the old regime must fall.

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