Posted on 03/22/2008 3:58:29 PM PDT by Mr Rogers
Not to mention that Latinos are something like 35% of our population, now. They may well wind up the majority before too long.
I suggest everyone re-read US History. Every time I hear some pundit talking about segregation and whites only drinking fountains I am reminded of my father. He was born in 1923, graduated from high school, and never attended a segregated school. He also never encountered a whites only water fountain. People like to look at race relations in the south and assign that behavior to every state. It just was not that way everywhere.
Of course slavery was and is an abomination and still is today in Africa and other places. I detest it and did in no way mean to diminish it's sin.
The only way to end all this discussion is today March 22, 2008 free all slaves black, white whatever living in the Untied States and jail all slave owners whether they be black or white or whatever.
Then and only then will this be over.
There you go again with facts getting in the way of preconceived notions.
Whoa Nellie....slow down. Remember that Latinos just passed up blacks (last year, iirc) as the most populous minority, and blacks are only 13% of the population.
I assume you mean 1800’s instead of 1880’s (since the later is post-Civil War (to use the northern term)). Otherwise the sentence would make no sense.
That aside, I do agree with your sentiments.
Based on college classes taken and independent research I have done over the years, it is clear that nearly all of the rank and file soldiers (along with a smaller but still significant number of their officers) of the Confederate States were not slave owners. Whether or not they personally agreed with the institution of slavery was a moot point; at the time, the “peculiar institution” was legal and a part of the economy of the South. Rather, they were men who responded to a summons to colors issued by their elected state governments and they responded as good citizens are expected to do and usually do when the state calls them to service.
In discussing this subject, I often point out that if a reasonable person sat down and wrote out a list of the possible ways to bring slavery to an end in the South, fighting a devastating war that destroyed the economy of the South, killed hundreds of thousands of able bodied men on both sides, corrupted government processess in the North and the South, and created a century or more of spiteful bitterness in the South would surely have to rank toward the bottom (if not be at the very bottom) of such a list.
So how is it that the very worst choice is the one that happened?
(BTW, is it reasonable to assume that your male Georgia ancestors, if able, did serve in one of the Confederate armed Forces?)
I’m not sure that I understand what you’re saying. I attended a segregated public school in New Orleans in 1960. They still had “Whites only” drinking fountains and lunch counters. I got to see the desegregation of NO firsthand.
It became obvious to Cleburne that the Confederate States were losing the war because of the drain on manpower and resources they were facing.
In 1864, he dramatically called upon the leadership of the Army of Tennessee and put forth a proposal to emancipate slaves and enlist them in the Confederate Army to secure Southern independence.
This proposal was met with extreme hostility by many, and was officially suppressed on order of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Some have suggested that this was the reason that Cleburne would not receive further promotions, but the fact that he was not a West Point graduate and that he was Irish were also contributing factors.
Wouldn’t you just love to see Bill Cosby debate Wright!
While Wright raves & rants, BC would have the audience rolling in the aisles with logical, rational, & moral responses that make Wright look like a fool & a fraud.
Has anybody heard anything from Bill Cosby on this Wright thing?
It varied, but it was real. For example, my Mom told us about growing up in Indiana. In the county where she lived, it was illegal for a black man to remain in the county overnight. She said violators would either be jailed, or just beaten and hauled out of the county. She said this changed when she was in her early teens - so around ‘35.
I’ve never encountered a ‘whites-only’ water fountain, but we lived in Selma Alabama in ‘65-’66. My Dad was military, and anyone involved with the federal government was disliked in Selma. We gave up trying to shop or eat in Selma - no one would wait on us. We bought from Sears Roebuck, ate at home, and took trips to Ft Walton for a break.
I don’t mean to minimize what blacks encountered. If I had been a black teen growing up in the early 60s, I probably would have followed Malcolm X. However, that emphasizes the distance we’ve gone since 1965. In a poll taken in 1960, close to 95% of whites said they would move if a Negro moved next door. That is incomprehensible today.
And in any case, as my Mom used to say, “Hate is for losers.” - that, and, “The best revenge is success.” If someone despises you or hates you, you can return in kind - or you can refuse to play their game, focus on success, and let your progress be your revenge.
Would that Rev Wright would preach like that!
“...is it reasonable to assume that your male Georgia ancestors, if able, did serve in one of the Confederate armed Forces?...”
- - -
Yes, there were several, and other than their brief military service,
they were just plain old common folks trying to make a living.
Wow, those are some statistics.
OK white people we are not doing our share of the murders, PICK IT UP!
</sarcasm>
Yeah, I’d like to know when the ancestors of Egypt are going to offer reparations to my Jewish ancestors for the slavery and having to put those humongous freakin’ pyramids up??? That had to have been hundreds of years before any Africans got sent to North America so my claim must come FIRST!
True. At times, as many as 75% of the population of some colonies were under terms of indenture, during the early colonial period.
Last time I looked NO was still in the South. I am saying that while conditions for blacks were far from perfect in the other states, they were far better than in the former slave states.
There are all sorts of trivia bits about slavery that are under-researched, or at least not as well known as they should be. For example:
1) Before 1800, slavery was only in the province of the wealthy, and well over half the slaves in the US were domestic servants. It was polite and genteel compared to the near death camp conditions found in French Haiti, where troublesome slaves were sent. It was losing popularity and fading from fashion to own slaves. Owning a slave was a very expensive proposition, a thousand dollar slave being like a million dollar thoroughbred racehorse today.
2) After 1800, the invention of the cotton gin turned slavery into a profitable entrepreneurial enterprise. A single slave could double the size of someone’s cotton production, and the resulting crop would pay for the purchase of more slaves. This reanimated the slave trade. And these middle and lower-class people had none of the gentility towards their slaves as did the upper classes, so the lives of slaves considerably worsened. Soon the vast majority were field workers instead of domestic servants.
3) While the slave ships’ officers where white, a large percentage of the crews were black. This enabled negotiations with African tribal leaders who wished to sell slaves but would kill whites on sight.
4) In parts of the South, corporal punishment of slaves was frowned upon, and sometimes could only be legally administered by a Sheriff’s Deputy, most of whom were not thrilled with the idea, either. In South Carolina, an insane woman who owned slaves barely escaped lynching for torturing and murdering some of them. One of the worst threats that could be made against a slave was that they “would be sold down the river”, to the delta sugar cane farms, which was the hardest work around.
5) Plantation crops, like any crops, require seasonal labor only, for things like plowing, planting, weeding and harvesting. So what did slaves do the rest of the year? Plantations consumed a great deal of fresh water, chopped wood for energy, raised farm animals, and did lots of food processing and preparation. Typically, plantations also had building-height water towers that needed to be filled. Many of the things that plantations needed were hand made instead of purchased, so this suggests a very wide range of skills and activities.
6) In the cities, most slaves were domestic servants, for obvious reasons, but there were also substantial numbers of freedmen. To a great extent, there were two different city administrations, one white and one black, a model that survived into the 1940s in much of the US.
7) Wealthy white landowners, who were often in arranged marriages for economic reasons, institutionalized the keeping of octoroon (1/8th black) mistresses. Such relationships were formal, and wealthy young men would attend the New Orleans “Octoroon Ball”, hoping to select a lucky octoroon debutante, who would then live well in her own apartment in the city and be supported by him.
Any children of such relationships, while they couldn’t prosper in the South, were semi-adopted by the landowner’s family, and would be sent North to become an entrepreneur, where being 1/16th black would not matter. Some of these entrepreneurs became quite wealthy, to the mutual benefit of them and their adoptive family.
8) In 1821 the American Colonization Society founded and eventually sent some 30,000 freemen to Africa, to found the nation of Liberia. It is noteworthy that the organization was finally dissolved in 1964.
Also, it was conservative republican preachers that lobbied Lincoln and the same type that started the NAACP...
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