I understand, but I lost a Great Great Uncle, in the Civil War, and his brothers my Great Great Grandfather and Great Great uncle both survived fighting in a few of the most deadly battles of the war. Unfortunately they fought for the losing side.
Now we can look at the Civil war however we want, I personally believe it was truly the 10th Amendment War, and all of us lost when the North won. That being said, my ancestors started fighting to succeed from the Union on states rights, but when I read the family journals, I learned that when Lincoln freed the slaves, they fought even harder to keep their slaves from being set free.
In My Great great grandfather was Jake Holt, also referred to as Uncle Jake by the family because he outlived all his siblings and many of his children and a few grandchildren to be 99. Well when I was doing the family genealogy, I read portions of a journal that has been handed down through the generations, and in it he explicitly wrote that the blacks are not even human, and they never should have been set free because he believed in time they would revert to the savages they were in Africa, and destroy our culture.
As I stated, my grandmother Bernadine Carpenter (maiden name Holt) harbored racist beliefs about blacks up until she died. She even disowned a grand daughter for marrying a black man. My own mother did not care for them because she was a bit racist. I on the other hand never held those feelings, maybe because I was raised in Duluth Minn and I was not privy to my grandmothers feelings towards them until I was an adult.
Read the journals of those who lived at the time, especially those who lived in the border states of the Mason Dixon line. It the Southerners who were constantly being harassed by the anti-slavery states just North of them who were the worse when it came to how they felt about blacks. The constant protests and newspaper editorials in border towns that just drove them to the extreme it seems.
Put yourself in those times, it was harsh, and even after the war it was almost worse for many blacks because then the KKK was created, and the whole of the South was supportive. Look, they even marched on Washington in the early 1900s and the politicians supported them. We have come a long long way, and that was what that one sentence was supposed to show, how Americans felt, not the government. Just to have the first black president be a racists against whites. Sad.
So to say that a good amount of whites did not hold the belief that blacks were sub human would be a contortion of the historical truth. I remember meeting adult men and women when I was stationed in Ga in the early 1970s that told me to my face that the black people came from Cain sleeping with a monkey. How much more of a subhuman inference can you get than that?
I was shocked at how they interpreted the Bible, and as it turned out a good many white churches taught that in the South. It was them who thought that was the reason black men were counted as 3/5. They had no clue as to what the Bible, or the constitution said.
So when I wrote what I did, I did so from my perspective of what I know to be fact. When I was in the service in 1973, there were still white and black drinking fountains, and white and black entrances to some doctor offices in may small towns down South.
I could go on and on about the things I learned when I was living down South. Heck, before I joined the service, I traveled the country with a carnival, and when we got to Tupelo Mississippi, I was told by a cop that if he so much as sees me spitting on a sidewalk he would arrest me and lock me up with the n*@^s, instead of the good white criminals.
Someday I will tell you what I witnessed four deputy’s do to a young black guy when I was sitting in an a jail in Abbeville Ga for running a red light. Well, they found a joint in the ashtray of my friends car. We were on our way back to Ft Benning after giving a friend, (black guy) a ride home for leave.
I am not blind to our past, and I am not ignorant about the truth, I wrote what I wrote because I know from which I speak about race relations in this country, and I will not sugar coat it for no body. I have been confronted by both white and black racists my whole life, and so I have had a unique educational experience to reflect upon when discussing race relations in America.
Because of the many stories I could tell, I could write a novel about my experiences in it. Well, speaking of a novel, it was not my intention of getting so carried away, but I do tend to go on and on when I get on a roll.
God bless you,
OV, Chuck
I know that there was definitely prejudice, especially in the south, and also in the unions. The unions used racial prejudice as an organizing tool, “Join our union, and fight to keep your jobs from going to the negroes.” Trade unions were some of the worst perpetrators and disseminators of racial prejudice, hate and violence.
I know because my grandfather fought against exclusionary hiring practices at RCA and when he was elected president of the union, the CIO had him run down by a hit and run driver, as he stood on the curb in front of his home.