Posted on 03/31/2002 3:59:06 AM PST by Captain Shady
Modern corporations and individuals arent responsible for injuries from 140 years ago
A New York woman has filed a lawsuit on behalf of "all African-American slave descendents" against three companies accused of benefiting from slavery.
This is the first of the slavery reparation lawsuits. Other attorneys and civil rights activists, including Johnnie Cochran, also are working on lawsuits. Like tobacco and gun control activists, they have not gotten what they want through the democratic process, so they are taking their cause to the courts.
Of course, this case is even more flawed than the others. Not only are there no surviving former slaves who could reasonably file a lawsuit, there are no surviving perpetrators of slavery to sue.
The truth is that slavery in this country was ended almost 140 years ago. It is a shameful part of our past, but it is a part of our collective history. It is not wise nor feasible to apportion blame and compensation more than a century later.
But reason will not deter these activists from their quest for money and power.
The lawsuit filed last week by the great-great-granddaughter of a South Carolina slave names three companies. It claims that the predecessor firms of FleetBoston Financial Corp., Aetna Inc. and the CSX Corp. knowingly benefited from slavery.
Specifically, the suit claims that FleetBoston at one time acquired a bank that had been owned by a man who also owned ships used in the slave trade. It claims that Aetnas predecessor firm insured slaves for slaveholders. And it claims that CSX acquired railroads built or run by slave labor.
You can see the direction in which this effort is heading. If corporations can be held financially responsible for what their predecessors did, surely individuals can be held responsible for what their predecessors did. And the span of six generations between the injury and the lawsuit means nothing to slavery reparation advocates.
To bolster their case, advocates of slavery reparations point to the Holocaust-related lawsuits. But the comparison is ridiculous. Actual Holocaust survivors sued the actual companies that used Nazi slave labor. A century from now, the Holocaust suits would have been just as pointless as the slavery reparation litigation.
These lawsuits are unlikely to succeed in court. But they may intimidate companies into settlement. No corporation wants to see its name constantly linked to slavery. Such settlements would be nothing more than blackmail payoffs.
The truth is that its too late to place responsibility for slavery. Its perpetrators, both corporate and individual, are dead. There is no reason to persecute and sue their descendants.
for a FREE dixie REPUBLIC,sw
The 1850 census showed that there were about 2.25 million southerners in slave owning families -- out of 6 million. That of course is about 1/3. In SC and MS slave ownership devolved on 50% of whites. The taker of the 1850 census, J.E.B. DeBow proudly pointed out that there were more slave holders by percentage in the south than there were owners of real property in the north.
Walt
Have you got a source for this?
I saw earlier this very day that this promise came from General Sherman to blacks following his army. Of course any such promise by Sherman was hardly binding on the guvment.
Walt
While others will sit and argue till the cows come home, these are documented facts. You'll notice that one of the largest slaveowners in SC was black, and that there were not many large plantations holding all the slaves. Also consider that Indians held slaves as well. Within New Orleans 28 percent of blacks held slaves an interesting fact considering that nationwide less than 2 percent of whites held slaves
Gee, where to start.
The Old South was definitely wrong not to embrace more modern ways of thinking and they clung to slavery to the degree they were willing to rend the Union to protect it.
But I think the society is a lot more homogenized now than you would credit. The south -has- largely risen. There is a good deal of heavy industry in the south. In my home town of Chattanooga, they used to make nuclear power plant containment vessels. They'd barge 'em out on the river. There are BMW plants in South Carolina and Nissan plants in Tennessee. There is even a new plant building in LINCOLN, Alabama!
There is a lot of tolerance in the south. A 12 year old vietnamese girl from Chattanooga won the national spelling bee a few years ago.
There are some old fashioned things about the south I like quite a bit. If a perp comes in your house and you shoot him, you don't have to much worry about being prosecuted in the south, because they can't empanel a jury to convict you, even if the DA wanted to charge you, which they don't.
There is a great stereotype that I think has a lot of currency here. If you slide off the road in one of the very infrequent snow storms we have down here, don't worry. Before too long, a 4-wheel drive vehicle with four good ol' boys will appear with a chain and pull/push you out of the ditch. They will even offer you a beer before they go off looking for someone else to help. It's that kind of spirit that made southern soldiers so feared in the late unpleasantness.
The south is a great place to live, and there are only fringe element vestiges of its benighted past.
Plus, we have Southeastern Conference Football!
Walt
Actually, I just read yesterday that Sherman later even denied ever being told there were any rapes by his army in the march to the sea, although it was clear he was informed of at least two.
So he seemed pretty much in denial.
--See "Sherman's march" by Burke Davis.
What is your source for Sherman saying he was a war criminal?
Walt
I just have a problem with the Old South ancestor-worshippers who assert that the war was fought for any reasons other than freeing the slaves from the bondage in which the forebears of today's Southern apologists held them. They prattle on about 'economic' causes for the war, not realizing or caring that economic strain was caused by the stagnant, unsustainable system of chattel slavery itself. Hard-working, well-paid Yankee freemen will outwork sullen, resentful, whipped slaves every time.
Furthermore, I object to reparations for slavery on the grounds that the blood and toil of my non-slave-owning Northern forebears has paid them in full. You guys who idolize the Old South just play into the hands of the Ogletrees and Jacksons and Sharptons, and make reparations more likely. Maybe we should stick sons of the Confederacy for the reparations bill.
So- if your great-grandfather had his plantation burned and was horsewhipped by Sherman's men, I say GOOD! because he was an evil slave-owner and deserved no better, in fact all slave-owners and overseers should have been rooted out and shot dead after the war.
Apologists for the Old South have NOTHING of which they can be proud, except for mint juleps and some old Stephen Foster songs.
-ccm
Your comments are laughable and devoid of reason. Perhaps you should put down your goverment school, liberal history books, and find some other history sources. Yanks imported slaves by the thousands, ran slave ships, and established successful businesses in the slave trade. Don't blame the South for your own ancestor's shortfalls - she's not a scapegoat for your lies.
I strongly disagree. We also have the Allman Brothers.
Walt
Is that right? Did you know that individual voters in South Carolina didn't vote either for governor or presidential electors until 1868?
That's not true any way as blacks could vote in at least 5 states prior to 1860.
Walt
I wrote three more paragraphs before it occurred to me that you really don't want to talk, just rant, so I deleted them. Have a nice day, and know that I do not worship the old South, I worship none save God.
No, I lived there a while ago, in the shadow of the Alamo no less, where men became 'heroes' fighting for their 'right' to keep slaves despite Mexican law to the contrary. I lived on Johnny Reb Drive, in fact. Too good for this damn Yankee, eh? But my son is a native Texan.
I think this guy showed more courage than the Alamo defenders...
You, obviously, have never read the first Former Slave Narrative,
Should I have? I am a well read person but I never heard of any such thing.
can't explain how Slaves bought their freedom or resold themselves back into bondage,
Oh? I guess that means you think slavery is OK if men can buy themselves out of it by the sweat of their brows.
can't explain the Confederate Pension Rolls containing many Blacks that claimed Soldier status but had that status changed by Yankee administrators to body servant, teamster or cook in an attempt to belittle the Blackman's valued contribution to the South.
Hmm, you sure there were no ex-Confederates who had any motive to belittle the black man's contribution to the war, such as cheating them out of pensions they had earned? It would be in keeping with the way blacks were treated by the noble sons of the South before and after the war...
You can also not explain the many pictures of Black men attending Confederate Veteran reunions and being photographed with their comrades in arms.
I don't doubt that many black men served in the Confederate military. But I bet most of them were press-ganged, or sent in place of their cowardly white masters, or simply figured three meals and pay and no whippings beat life on the plantation. I doubt many of them were fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. And it doesn't change the fact that chattel slavery was a great evil and that the Old South deserved to be destroyed by force of arms in order to end it.
If this proves anything it is that it's hard to feel racism for someone who took enemy fire with you, much less presume that you could own him. Maybe this is why slavery was peacefully abolished in the North after the Revolution. Too bad the Southerners didn't learn the same lesson sooner.
Just remember, it was your imperial governments ensconced in the South that gave us the Jim Crow laws fashioned on those in force throught the North.
This is the biggest load of horse apples. While Union occupation and Reconstruction lasted, Southern blacks had civil rights for the first time ever. Some were even elected to Congress. As soon as the carpetbaggers and Union Army left, the noble sons of the South instituted Jim Crow and drove the black man back into oppression.
-ccm
Last night during the annual running of The Ten Commandments, I decided that I want reparations for the Egyptian enslavement of Jews thousands of years ago.
By the current definition, my claim is valid. Egypt "conspired with slave traders, with each other and other entities and institutions ... to commit and/or knowingly facilitate crimes against humanity, and to further illicitly profit from slave labor." Jews today are still suffering from their enslavement by the Arab world. Egypt is still profiting from the slavery of ages ago -- their tourist industry is based on people coming to see the ancient monuments to the Pharoahs that were built by generation after generation of Hebrew slaves -- therefore the statute of limitations hasn't expired yet as the profiteering is still ongoing.
It's time for Egypt to apologize. All Arabs should have to pay all Jews a reparation for the damage that Jewish slavery has wreaked on society.
-PJ
Well, to be blunt, because they didn't want millions of free blacks voting, competing for jobs, living where they wanted, things like that. They were fighting to keep blacks as slaves and to maintain their own place in society.
You didn't read my reply very well. I lived in Texas years ago, I don't live there now, and I feel no great liking or dislike for the place. It's pleasant enough, but certainly not the paradise some Texans seem to think it is.
BTW you are quite wrong to label me a socialist, unless you have socialism confused with abolitionism. I am very much in favor of capitalism and limited government and liberty. I disagree that you can trace all our current problems with overbearing Federal government to the Civil War. It goes back at least as far as the Whiskey Rebellion.
-ccm
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