When I began this research project poring through old newspapers  dating  from the 1700's and digging through the digital collections from the Library of Congress, I thought I knew how atrocious slavery was in the United States.  But the level of horror took me to new depths of understanding.  I'll give you an example. Consider the laws making it illegal for a slave to learn reading and writing. A slave caught violating what were called anti-literacy laws could legally be beaten; even a child could be whipped mercilessly. 

​In Louisiana, a slave could have been put to death for this crime if it were his/her second offense. Visualize it. A white person had the authority to walk through your home without permission and take away a family member if he or she were found with a writing instrument in hand to practice to drawing a letter of the alphabet. Or if one was caught simply holding  a book, the person could be taken away never to be seen again. Of course,  children of slaves could be taken by their masters and sold at any given time, as well as any family member. Slaves couldn't marry because they weren't recognized as humans.  But to stay on point, the act of learning was against the law and punishable by beating or death. This was happening in the 1800's in America.

A slave had no rights as a "thinking and religious being" and was considered no more than a thing.  Slaves were not considered sentient beings. The reason that concept is so hideous is that it meant we had a society where one human being was concluding that another human being was incapable of feeling. They could physically call out in pain, but were  not deemed as having the capacity to mentally process that pain.  It's the present day argument humans use when wanting to defend hurting an animal. Most animals are not considered sentient, therefore many humans claim they are incapable of understanding suffering. 

Americans are not taught historical truth in school. For centuries there has been despicable white washing revisionist history in the public schools, and it has largely left out women and almost entirely left out people of all color. I believe learning America's factual history is more important now than any other time in our lives because we're seeing old mistakes repeated and ignorance is breeding more and more hatred. 

 We all must work to change that. But until such time as schools teach the truth, and the whole truth, this information has to come from self initiative. I hope you join in.  I intend to do my part learning and sharing what I find, and keeping Black History going all year long, in addition to history about Native Americans and Indigenous people around the world. For instance, did you know that in 1900 there were estimated to be 10,000,000 Chinese slaves? But those are for future blogs.

What needs to be underscored here is this is not ancient history. These horrors were a blink of the eye ago in time. My grandmother, with whom I shared a bedroom growing up, was born in the 1800's.  My dad was a year old when the Tulsa  Oklahoma Riots destroyed entire neighborhoods and the large death toll is still uncertain. Blacks were fighting for access to a good education the year I was born. And today, in 2021, we are seeing black males murdered for looking like a suspect or looking like they had a gun and sometimes just because they aren't white. 

There were times when I was reading through blurry eyes choking back tears as I envisioned the unimaginable. This stuff hits me in the gut. It's unconscionable that people today still wave the Confederate flag with a sense of pride and defend keeping statues of Confederate monuments knowing that they stand as none other than symbols that endorse kidnapping, rape, torture, humiliation, murder, and all that is immoral and unethical. These egregious acts perpetrated in the name of American slavery, nothing short of crimes against humanity, are inextricably connected to the present day racial divide and linked to the racial injustice that is alive and well in 2021.

Aristotle, born 384 BC, was a Greek philosopher and scientist  considered the "Father of Western Philosophy." Aristotle’s defense of slavery was based on the theory that some peoples were “congenitally incapable of reasoning” and so were intended by nature to be slaves.  He provided the conceptual basis for much of the nineteenth-century Southern pro-slavery ideology with these theories of racial inferiority. ​

by William Goodell , Abolitionist and Reformer
​born in Coventry, New York on October 3, 1792.

The American Slave Code is a book detailing the legal relationship of master and slave.  It's like a slave owner's bible. You can download the entire book from this blog or read through the book (below) in a Kindle-type format without needing to download. 

Below is Chapter 22 of the Slave Code. 

I urge you to flip through this book. It's broken down into clearly labeled chapters on every single aspect of slavery and explains the slave-owner relationship with details that are utterly appalling. Christian churches and clergy strongly supported slavery and defended it.

Consider the effects pro-slavery people had on their families and on the entire society. Pro-slavery people taught generations of others to look at people of color as nothing more than things. How utterly ludicrous that one group of humans choose to use the amount of melanin another group of humans have as a measure of their worth. To put it another way, pigment determines a human's place in the world. Only the smallest of minds could possibly miss the sheer absurdity of that.

Scroll down to find a link to download your own copy.

Advertisements in the For Sale section of the paper for real estate with slaves.

Betts & Gregory Auctioneers actual receipt for the purchase of men and children.

DOWNLOAD A FREE COPY

Examples in the Table of Contents of the topics covered:

I had finished this blog and posted it when I came across this article from 1918, titled a Study of American Negro Slavery.  (It's in its entirety below.) I decided to update and add it here. There will always be those who argue that in slavery there is a good side. It's a similar argument to the present day justification  when companies defend paying slave labor wages around the world to import goods into America. "I'll pay them a dime where they might otherwise only get a nickel." In other words, in taking a little less advantage of them, makes it right.

​Here's are three excerpts from the article:

There is much in the history to refute the idea that slaves were often kept in good health.  There was a theory of good business practice to "use up" a gang of slaves .  See below:

Portrait of General Lee was hung in the mess hall at West Point in 1931
as a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

As I began to research when Confederate monuments were first erected in the United States, I discovered that it had a lot to do with the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  The organization was founded in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 10, 1894, by Mrs. Caroline Meriwether Goodlett and Mrs. Lucian H. (Anna Davenport) Raines. 

From their website there's a section about why someone becomes a member: 

Here is what I would like to know.  Of what cause do you refer when you write that your ancestor soldier "held so dear"  that you do not want "lost or forgotten?" It's my understanding of the confederate soldier that he fought to NOT remain part of the United States of America. Is that the part you honor?  You write that your heritage had the "greatest and bravest men which any such cause ever produced." Again, specifically to what cause are your referring? My understanding is that the south fought to retain the institution of slavery -- a crime against humanity -- and because the north did not support humans being owned by other humans in the United States of America, a war ensued. Is it the institution of slavery, for which your ancestor fought to keep, that you honor and want to maintain fresh memories in the minds and hearts of future generations? 

My heritage includes a congressional medal of honor recipient from the Civil War. He was Charles A. Reeder, my great-great grandfather on my mother's side. I am proud that he fought against the institution of slavery. His father owned slaves, yet he chose to go against his family to fight in favor of freedom for all people regardless of skin color.  I do not understand how generations of southerners want to continue honoring the ideology of their pro-slavery family members.  I see little difference between their southern slavery pride and that of Germans feeling pride in an ancestor who rounded up Jewish people for death marches or worked them to death in prison camps. 

On the UDC website, it is clearly stated as an organization it does not support racism. I would like to understand how honoring slavery ideology and wanting to keep alive the memories of ancestors who fought for the right to own people of color as chattel-- is worthy and noble. You denounce racism and yet you do not see the racist heritage? How do members reconcile that? And how do you talk of patriotism when your southern ancestors wanted to recede from the United States of America to be their own slave owning country? What is patriotic about that? These questions might sound cynical, but I sincerely ask them. I truly do not understand your organization.  And when you continue to honor symbols like the confederate flag that the right-wing, racist, white supremacists proudly wave with one hand while carrying bibles in the other, you seem shocked.  Do you honestly not see that the flag under which slavery was fought,  and under which states vowed to die for the right to retain slavery to the point that tearing apart the nation was what your ancestors did, would continue to be a  symbol of white supremacy? 

 The answers to a lot of my questions can be found in understanding what's called The Lost Cause.  The more articles I read from the post Civil War era, the more I began to understand  what I was suspecting.  Confederate statues were  propaganda put up years, and often decades, after the Union was preserved.  There were decades of "white-washing" the facts where history was essentially rewritten to portray a fiction.  It included even changing the word slavery to servant. There was an intentional campaign to rewrite the reality of the south and to fictionalize the lives of slaves so that they appeared well taken care of. The emphasis shifted to creating a (non-existent) good relationship between slave and slave holder, that would only have been the very rare exception, and certainly not an accurate depiction of American slavery.

​"The Legislature voted in 2016 to replace General Edmond Kirby Smith’s statue. In 2017 it was relocated to the Lake County Historical Museum from its location at Statutory Hall. (Pictured left is a copy of it from a 1914 newspaper.)  It was replaced by civil-rights leader and educator, Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of what became  Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach.

“The decision to remove the statue of General Kirby is not an impulsive response to Charlottesville, but rather because it is the right thing to do,” State Rep. Patrick Henry, a Bethune-Cookman University graduate said. “Long before the heinous display of bigotry and violence in Virginia, the Legislature initiated a process to remove General Kirby’s statue and as a Legislature it is incumbent upon us to complete this unfinished business.” (paragraph source) 

by George W. Gray ~ 1931

“A Billion Wild Horses ” That Have Gotten Out of Hand in the Modern Age—But If Machines Were Eliminated the World “Would Need Five Thousand Million Slaves to Keep Up Production ”

The Paradox of Overproduction

Since Samuel Butlers “Erewhon"- and even before—the idea of mechanical invention as a Frankenstein monster that will some day turn and destroy--or at least, enslave—human kind has been a frequent subject for the imagination. Today the chorus affirming this onrushing doom is loud and repetitious. The outcome la so graphically pictured by able analysts of graphs and trends and cycles that one wonders if Thoreau's retreat on Walden Pond is not in danger of being overcrowded with these refugees from mechanization. (Parking apace there, it should be noted, is limited.) The machine, we are told, is “a billion wild horses" that have somehow got out of hand and have themselves turned slave driver, and are riding Western civilization with a ruthless hand The “wild horses" have already chased some millions of us out of our jobs; the? have piled up surpluses of food and textiles so huge that millions of us are near starvation and contemplate the coming Winter with acute apprehension; they have made life so noisy and hurried that machine-less Mexico is recommended as a paradise where one may loaf and invite the soul without fear of food shortage, blizzards or the vagrancy law.

MOST of these criticisms have come from economists, historians and others of the so called humanities, but recently a representative of the natural sciences added his voice to the  hue and cry. Dr. C E. K. Mees, research director for the Eastman Kodak Co., expressed his doubt that engineering progress has been a blessing to mankind. "Will any student of history agree," asks Dr. Mees, “that the inhabitants of an American city are. on the whole, happier than those of a Greek or a Babylonian city of the past? This is a thing difficult to assess, but for myself if I could exchange the life that I lead In a modern city for a life in Athens of the Periclean Age or in Thebes under the eighteenth dynasty, I should undoubtedly accept it.

“In those days there was more leisure, less pressure, more opportunity for the exchange of ideas, less emphasis on material things. There is little that a man can get today which he could not have had In Athens.” 

I asked Dr. Karl T. Compton about this. Dr. Compton is president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a school which probably is responsible for more Industrial explorers, more inventors and engineers than any other Incubator of mechanization on this continent. And yet, Dr. Compton himself is not an engineer nor an industrialist, but a pure scientist whose original work in atomic physics gives him leave to speak representatively for the good fellowship of research.

“My first thought,” answered President Compton. “is that a man’s enjoyment of Periclean Greece or eighteenth dynasty Egypt would be dependent on his political status—on whether he was a member of the small aristocratic class that had the leisure, the freedom from pressure, the sufficiency of material things which allowed them opportunity to exchange ideas and to live the cultural life of intellectuals, or a member of the many times large group of slaves. “Without the slaves there could have been no leisure for the aristocrats, and every patrician of intellectual detachment and philosophical discourse demanded grinding hour of brutish labor on the part of human slaves. 

“It is said that 100,000 men in slavery worked 3O years to build the great Pyramids of Egypt  driven by the lash and dying by the thousand from overwork and disease. The Panama Canal, a work of equal magnitude, was built i third of the time by free men, comfortably housed, well fed, well paid and safeguarded bf|sanitary measures, which are as truly a product of the machine age as the giant shovels and dredges and engines with which they worked. “The glory of the machine,” added the scientist, “lies In this: That it has taken from the overloaded muscles of men and women its numerable burdens and agonies and transferred them to the steel muscles of machinery. “If we had to abolish the machine, to put back into muscles of men all the labor not performed by hydraulic, steam, electric and gasoline power, we should need, as Dr. Wickenden of the Case School of Applied Science recently put it, at least five thousand million human slaves in America—more than double the population of the whole earth!

It was legal in the United States for law enforcement to beat a black child who had been taught to read or write because laws prohibited educating any person of color in most southern states.

State anti-literacy laws

"With the exception of Maryland and Kentucky, every Southern state absolutely prohibited the education of slaves," Angela Davis wrote. Between 1829 and 1834 Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina and Virginia all passed anti-literacy laws. South Carolina prohibited teaching slaves to read and write, punishable by a fine of 100 pounds and six months in prison, via an amendment to its 1739 Negro Act.

​There were several schools in the 1830's for "colored children" secretly operating in Augusta and Savannah, in Georgia. Poor, white women could eke out, "... a miserable living by clandestinely teaching free Negroes and slaves." Described as peculiar, these schools were referred to as 'old chip schools' and 'old tailor shop schools'.  "When some aged, impecunious white lady would agree to teach the children of free colored people and the children of such slaves as had hired their time, the children were said to go to her house to "pick up chips." They were busily engaged in this work when an officer was likely to be around."

"​In early 1874, however, overwhelmed by the effects of a 1870 amendment to its charter that changed its loan and investment policy, the Panic of 1873, problems of over expansion, mismanagement, abuse, and outright fraud, the Freedman's Bank was on the brink of collapse. In March 1874, in an effort to maintain the confidence of its depositors, who had made "runs" on several of the branch offices, bank officials elected Frederick Douglass as president. Unaware of the true state of the bank's affairs, Douglass invested ten thousand dollars of his own money to demonstrate his faith in its future. After a few months of assessing the condition of the company, however, Douglass realized that he was "married to a corpse" and recommended to Congress that the bank be closed." (source)

Realizing that there was no equivalent for the Pulitzer Prize in radio, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee in 1938 to establish a prestigious award for excellence in radio broadcasting. Over the years, it grew to include television and online media "to honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories." Programs are recognized in seven categories: news, entertainment, documentaries, children's programming, education, interactive programming, and public service. Peabody Award winners come from around the world. The award was named after  George Foster Peabody, who donated the funds that made the awards possible. 

​
by Dara Kalima

"I am currently reading this book after seeing the New Yorker article about it a few weeks ago. And it is having a profound impact on me though the book is for a white audience written by a white author.

I live in NY and I only read on the train and I much prefer printed books. So this means in all my brownness sit on the train reading this provocative book. As anticipated, just like when I read White Rage by Carol Anderson last year, I can't help but notice how people look at me when they see the book cover. No one has said anything this time, but if they read the title, their body language immediately shifts. WP grimace and stiffen up, disgust seems to be on their face and POC seem to look more intrigued. I feel both empowered and terrified. I worry about the reaction people will have whether it's to be angry or to complain to my job if they see my work ID. Holding this/these book/s are dangerous for me. In fact this post is dangerous for me.

But it also just makes me sad as I read it. In part because of the 9 day long conversation that happened on my wall when I shared the article saying I'd soon be reading it. People, my friends, some I've know for more than a decade, were so quick to dismiss it, feeling it didn't apply to them, judged them, or that it wasn't helpful enough, creating a huge amount of emotional labor for others and for myself.

It also makes me sad because it validates much of my experience as a black person, as the person made to speak and sound in socially acceptable ways. (Do you know how much it hurts to be told thank you for being eloquent and not angry, as if I'm an acceptable bw? If I expressed my anger will my status be diminished? The well-intentioned tone policing is still tone policing.) It makes me sad to see all the ways in which I am isolated, indoctrinated, and trained to be black in a society hostile to me. It also makes me sad as I read statements my friends have said in my presence listed. They think because we are friends they aren't perpetuating supremacy, but they are, I know they are but they still don't get it. And can't really hear me when I try to say it. I'm sad because though not intended for me, it's written in a way that hits home and is too personal and still challenges me to do better in my use of codes used to my and many POC's detriment.

What makes me saddest still is that though I have tons of friends who are not POC so very few take my suggestions to read these books to learn American history and to learn how deeply engrained racism and it's impact is on all of us. I want to just hand out copies of these two books and beg people to really consider them, because my life, my sanity, the sanity and existence of my loved ones are at stake. I shouldn't have to spend my nights counseling a friend or mentees who are POC on how to exist in this world without losing their mind.

This book gives me hope that some will engage in this conversation but it also makes me incredibly sad to see my life on paper and to know how many people are not going to read it.

Please help. Do the work, keep doing the unlearning. Please.

​​A study that was published in 2018, but recently revised is making news in February 2019 and warns that insect populations are drastically declining around the earth due to pesticide use and other factors.

​I'm trying to access the actual study, but the cost was over $50, so I've written to see if I can access it for education purposes to post here. Meanwhile, other news outlets all over are discussing the study.

This is how the Saturday Evening Post allowed a person
​of color to be included in a Rockwell painting.

In an interview later in his life, Rockwell recalled having been directed to paint out a black person from of a group picture for the Saturday Evening Post because of their strict policy prohibiting every day family depictions of  minorities. While the Post seemed to relax their rules a bit by the 1960s, publishing Rockwell’s multi-ethnic “Do Unto Others” cover in 1961, their pace of change was not quick enough. In 1963, Rockwell left the Post for one at Look magazine, a publication that was more comfortable discussing and illustrating the racial realities of the time.  source

​Color Study for "New Kids in the Neighborhood (... (1967)
by Norman Rockwell (1894-197

Evolving view of the world

"On July 14, 1964, "The New York Times" ran a story titled, “A 2nd Body is Found in the Mississippi.” Norman Rockwell tore this page from his newspaper and saved it. The story of a racial killing in southwest Mississippi and the arson of two Negro churches mentioned another unsolved case, that of three civil rights workers missing since June 21st. The brief reference caught Rockwell’s attention and laid the foundation for one of his most stirring works. A few months earlier, "Look" ran Rockwell’s powerful message on school desegregation, "The Problem We All Live With." Rockwell received many letters criticizing his choice of subject, but irate opinions didn’t silence him.  President Obama requested it for the White House in 2011.

​In March 1965, Rockwell began "Murder in Mississippi," illustrating the June 21st slaying of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, in Philadelphia, Mississippi. " Here for all of Rockwell's images and this story in full.