Charles J. Ogletree: Reparations

New York Times Article, "Litigating the Legacy of Slavery," by Charles J. Ogletree Jr, on 31 March 2002 -- Last Tuesday, a group of lawyers filed a federal class-action lawsuit in New York on behalf of all African-American descendants of slaves. The lawsuit seeks compensation from a number of defendants for profits earned through slave labor and the slave trade.

This lawsuit is limited to FleetBoston, Aetna, CSX and other to-be-named companies. The broader reparations movement seeks to explore the historical role that other private institutions and government played during slavery and the era of legal racial discrimination that followed. The goal of these historical investigations is to bring American society to a new reckoning with how our past affects the current conditions of African-Americans and to make America a better place by helping the truly disadvantaged.

The Reparations Coordinating Committee, of which I am a co-chairman, will proceed with its own plans to file wide-ranging reparations lawsuits late this autumn. The committee is a group of lawyers, academics, public officials and activists that has conducted extensive research and begun to identify parties to sue and claims to be raised.

The shape of a reparations strategy can already be seen. Among private defendants, corporations will be prominent, as last week's lawsuit shows. Other private institutions -- Brown University, Yale University and Harvard Law School -- have made headlines recently as the beneficiaries of grants and endowments traced back to slavery and are probable targets. Naming the government as a defendant is also central to any reparations strategy; public officials guaranteed the viability of slavery and the segregation that followed it.

A number of recent examples illustrate the possibilities for making reparations claims nationally and internationally. In South Africa, reparations have been part of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which seeks to compensate people with clear material needs who suffered under apartheid because of their race. It was also in South Africa that, in the final documents of a racism conference sponsored by the United Nations, slavery was defined as a ''crime against humanity,'' a legal determination that may enable the reparations movement to extend its reach to international forums.

In the United States, just three years ago the federal government reached a consent decree with a class of over 20,000 black farmers to compensate for years of discrimination by the Department of Agriculture. The case represents the largest civil-rights settlement by the government ever, with a likely payout of about $2 billion. Previously, the government also approved significant compensation for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II and paid reparations to black survivors of the Rosewood, Fla., race riots.

Although these precedents differ from a slavery-based reparations claim in that they involved classes of individuals who were both alive and easily identified, they nonetheless indicate government willingness to acknowledge past wrongs and remedy them. It is important that in each case the government waived its immunity from suit, thereby lifting the ordinary bar that prevents lawsuits against a sovereign.

Bring the government into litigation will also generate a public debate on slavery and the role its legacy continues to play in our society. The opportunity to use expert witnesses and conduct extensive discovery, to get facts and documentation, makes the courtroom an ideal venue for this debate.

A full and deep conversation on slavery and its legacy has never taken place in America; reparations litigation will show what slavery meant, how it was profitable and how it has continued to affect the opportunities of millions of black Americans.

A full and deep conversation on slavery and its legacy has never taken place in America; reparations litigation will show what slavery meant, how it was profitable and how it has continued to affect the opportunities of millions of black Americans.

Litigation is required to promote this discussion because political accountability has not been forthcoming. In each Congressional session since 1989, Representative John Conyers has introduced a bill to study slavery reparations and it has quickly died each time.

Though claims for slavery reparations have moved near the front of national and international policy discussions in the past few years, the movement has deep historical roots. Those roots go back at least as far as the unkept promise in 1864 of ''40 acres and a mule'' to freed slaves, which acknowledged our country's debt to the newly emancipated.

Indeed, the civil rights movement has long been organized, in part, around the notion that slavery and the century of legal discrimination that followed have had enduring and detrimental effects on American minorities.

The reparations movement should not, I believe, focus on payments to individuals. The damage has been done to a group -- African-American slaves and their descendants -- but it has not been done equally within the group. The reparations movement must aim at undoing the damage where that damage has been most severe and where the history of race in America has left its most telling evidence. The legacy of slavery and racial discrimination in America is seen in well-documented racial disparities in access to education, health care, housing, insurance, employment and other social goods. The reparations movement must therefore focus on the poorest of the poor -- it must finance social recovery for the bottom-stuck, providing an opportunity to address comprehensively the problems of those who have not substantially benefited from integration or affirmative action.

The root of ''reparations'' is ''to repair.'' This litigation strategy could give us an opportunity to fully address the legacy of slavery in a spirit of repair.  [source: New York Times; Copyright 2013 The New York Times]

A New Book, Solomon Northup: The Complete Story

From Union College, "Twelve years a slave: Union professor co-authors new book on Solomon Northup," by Phillip Wajda, on 7 October 2013 -- n 1998, Clifford Brown was introduced to the story of Solomon Northup through Rachel Seligman. A friend had given Seligman a copy of Northup’s powerful memoir, Twelve Years a Slave.

The simple yet moving narrative, first published in 1853, is a compelling account of Northup’s life as free black man in Upstate New York who was kidnapped into slavery in Louisiana, rescued and returned to his wife and three children a dozen years later.

Then director of Union’s Mandeville Gallery, Seligman believed the story contained enough material for an exhibit and quickly convinced Brown, chair of the gallery committee.

“I read the book and found it utterly fascinating,” said Brown, the Robert Porter Patterson Professor of Government. “I couldn’t put it down. It’s a glimpse into life at that time, not only slavery, but also life as a free black man in the north. And it has such a ring of authenticity. He is just telling us what happened, mostly without a lot of flowery this and flowery that.”

With the help of some students, Brown spent months researching Northup’s life for Seligman’s exhibit. He traveled to Louisiana, Washington, D.C., and other places, collecting artifacts, documents and photos that authenticated Northup’s harrowing tale. The exhibit, which opened in January 1999, attracted thousands of visitors and renewed interest in Northup’s life.

Joined by David Fiske, a former senior librarian at the New York State Library, Brown and Seligman (now an assistant curator with the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College) have teamed up again, for a new book, Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave.

The book coincides with an upcoming movie about Northup, “12 Years a Slave,” that has generated considerable buzz from film critics and audiences in pre-screenings. Written by John Ridley and directed by Steve McQueen, the film won the People’s Choice Award at last month’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Exhaustively researched, the book provides a fascinating look into Northup’s life, from his upbringing as the son of a former slave turned farmer, to his experiences after his rescue. Intended as a supplement to Northup’s memoir, which barely touched on his early life and what happened to him after the rescue, the biography delves deeper into all aspects, giving readers a wealth of new information.

“The book is a serious contribution because it’s the first,” said Brown, who continued to research and write about Northup for years after the exhibit.“There really is no other biography of Solomon Northup. Secondly, there is an enormous amount of archival research here culled from many different kinds of archives.”

One example is the reconstruction of the kidnapping. Using city directories, maps and other documents, the authors were able to provide a detailed account of how Northup, an accomplished violinist, was lured from near his home in Saratoga to New York by two men who promised him work as a performer for a few days. From there, he was persuaded to accompany the men to Washington, D.C, where his drink was drugged at a tavern frequented by slave traders. He was shuttled off to a notorious slave pen and subjected to beatings for two weeks. He was eventually shipped to Louisiana and sold to plantation owners, enduring harsh and brutal conditions for the next 11 years, eight months and 26 days.

Saratoga Springs, NY Map

A chapter in the book, “Survival,” is particularly poignant, detailing the daily whippings and psychological abuse Northup and the other slaves faced during this period. Focusing on the physical, intellectual and emotional resources that Northup summoned to cope with his seemingly hopeless situation, the chapter is the turning point of the book.

Physically fit and with a sharp mind, Northup survived, the authors write, “because he had a will to survive. He didn’t let the system overwhelm him. He didn’t lose his own identity, despite four changes in his name. He never forgot who he was and that he had a home in the north. His recurrent thoughts about home could come at moments of despair, but the existence of a home offered hope of rescue to counterbalance that despair.”

Northup’s rescue was an “extraordinary achievement,” Brown notes, and the book provides rich details of the sympathetic white man and others who worked to free Northup. After the rescue, which attracted national attention, Northup spent his time with speaking engagements, wrote his book (collaborating with a local writer and attorney, David Wilson, Union Class of 1840) and even produced two plays.

Red River Parish, Louisiana Map

Drawing primarily on court documents, another chapter deals with the two kidnappers and their trial, at which Northup was accused of conspiring with them in order to make money. The authors make a strong case for the kidnappers’ guilt and scuttle any claims that Northup was involved in his own abduction.

“Since the kidnappers were never convicted, we felt we had to nail this down,” Brown said. “I don’t think it’s much in dispute that they were the kidnappers.”

Eventually, Northup’s fame faded, his speaking engagements dried up and his theatrical ventures dwindled, leaving him financially distressed. After the mid-1860s, he virtually disappeared, leaving no known trace of “how long he lived, where he died, or where he is buried.”

The authors present strong evidence that he may have gone to work on the Underground Railroad, helping other fugitive slaves escape what he experienced. Others suggested he may have been kidnapped again or that he went to England or to live with any of his grown children. Despite valiant efforts to determine how Northup spent his final years, “the mystery of his fate remains unsolved.”

The book has drawn praise from noted historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard, a consultant to the movie and editor of a recent edition of Twelve Years a Slave, who called it an “indispensable source” and the “best current biography available. The facts they have uncovered are invaluable.”

Brown credited his co-authors, Seligman and Fiske, for their many contributions to the book, which came together in less than a year. He hopes readers develop a greater appreciation for Northup’s story.

“You should get a real sense of what a slave experience was and how difficult it was to rescue him,” Brown said.“But you also learn about his life before slavery and what he did after he returned to his life as a free man. It’s as intense an investigation of his life as is possible at this time. And yet, the story isn’t finished.”  (source: Union College; - See more at: http://union.edu/news/stories/2013/10/twelve-years-a-slave-union-professor-co-authors-new-book-on-solomon-northup.php#sthash.5bLacYMs.dpuf)

The Book, "Twelve Years A Slave," By Solomon Northup

Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 [Auburn (NY): Derby and Miller, 1853.

Summary by Patrick E. Horn: Twelve Years a Slave:Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853  --   Solomon Northup was born a free man in Minerva, New York, in 1808. Little is known about his mother, whom his narrative does not identify by name. His father, Mintus, was originally enslaved to the Northup family from Rhode Island, but he was freed after the family moved to New York. As a young man, Northup helped his father with farming chores and worked as a raftsman on the waterways of upstate New York. He married Anne Hampton, a woman of mixed (black, white, and Native American) ancestry, on Christmas Day, 1829. They had three children together. During the 1830s, Northup became locally renowned as an excellent fiddle-player. In 1841, two men offered Northup generous wages to join a traveling musical show, but soon after he accepted, they drugged him and sold him into slavery. He was subsequently sold at auction in New Orleans. Northup served a number of masters—some brutally cruel and others whose humanity he praised. After years of bondage, he came into contact with an outspoken abolitionist from Canada, who sent letters to notify Northup's family of his whereabouts. An official state agent was sent to Louisiana to reclaim Northup, and he was successful through a number of coincidences. After he was freed, Northup filed kidnapping charges against the men who had defrauded him, but the lengthy trial that followed was ultimately dropped because of legal technicalities, and he received no remuneration. Little is known about Northup's life after the trial, but he is believed to have died in 1863.

SCENE IN THE SLAVE PEN AT WASHINGTON. (44a)

Twelve Years a Slave was recorded by David Wilson, a white lawyer and legislator from New York who claimed to have presented "a faithful history of Solomon Northup's life, as [I] received it from his lips" (p. xv). Dedicated to Harriet Beecher Stowe and introduced as "another Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," Northup's book was published in 1853, less than a year after his liberation. It sold over thirty thousand copies. It is therefore not only one of the longest North American slave narratives, but also one of the best-selling.

The first two chapters of Twelve Years a Slave relate the Northup family history, Solomon's marriage to Anne, his employment as a raftsman, a farmer, and a fiddle-player, and his abduction. Promised "one dollar for each day's services" and three dollars for every show that he played, Northup travels willingly with the two con artists to New York City and then to Washington, D.C. (p. 30). Their ruse is thorough: the men perform a vaudeville show of sorts in Albany, and they convince Northup to obtain "free papers" before leaving New York. However, once in Washington, the men offer him a drink that causes him to become "insensible," and when Northup awakens, he is "alone, in utter darkness, and in chains" (p. 38). The narrative expresses his amazement at discovering "a slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!" (p. 43).

Northup is sold to the notorious Washington-based slave trader James H. Burch, who brutally whips him for protesting that he is a free man. While in the slave pen, he makes the acquaintance of several other slaves, including Eliza, whose sad history he relates in detail (pp. 50-54). The slaves are handcuffed and transported together via cars and steamboats to Richmond and then to New Orleans. Their experience aboard the steamboat is a miserable one: "sea-sickness rendered the place of our confinement loathsome and disgusting" (p. 68). Northup plans a mutiny with two of his fellow slaves, but the plan is foiled when one of them contracts smallpox and dies (pp. 69-72). Northup and the rest of "Burch's gang" are delivered to Theophilus Freeman, a New Orleans slave trader who informs Northup that his new name is "Platt" (p. 75).

CHAPIN RESCUES SOLOMON FROM HANGING. (114a)

After surviving a bout of smallpox, Northup and Eliza are purchased by a Baptist preacher named William Ford. Touched by Eliza's pleas, Ford attempts to purchase her young daughter Emily as well, but Freeman refuses to sell her. Ford proves to be a kind master; Northup writes that "there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man" (p. 90). Ford's plantation is located several hundred miles northwest of New Orleans, in the Great Pine Woods along Louisiana's Red River. Northup is put to work stacking and chopping logs at Ford's lumber mill, and he decides to reward his master's kindness. Realizing that Ford ships his lumber by land at great expense, Northup devises a set of rafts to deliver them by canal, greatly increasing Ford's profits. "I was the Fulton of Indian Creek," he recalls (p. 99). He also builds a loom for the plantation that "worked so well, I was continued in the employment of making looms" (p. 103).

Despite (or perhaps because of) his value as a laborer and de facto engineer, Northup is sold in the winter of 1842 to John Tibeats, a "quick-tempered" carpenter to whom Ford had become indebted (p. 103). Unlike Ford, Tibeats is "never satisfied," though he works his slaves "from earliest dawn until late at night" (p. 107). When Tibeats attempts to whip Northup for a dubious offense, Northup fights back, and with his foot on the master's neck, he whips Tibeats "until my right arm ached" (p. 111). When Tibeats and two associates attempt to lynch Northup, a kindly overseer (armed with pistols) intervenes and saves his life. Because he had not yet paid Ford the full amount for Northup, Tibeats is compelled to spare him for a time. Later, when he attacks Northup with a hatchet, the slave again bests the master, and this time he flees from the plantation, chased by hounds. Northup escapes by running and swimming through the "Great Pacoudrie Swamp," evading water moccasins and alligators (p. 139). He makes his way back to Ford's plantation, where he is protected from harm.

Persuaded by William Ford that killing Northup will only bring him the condemnation of his peers as well as financial loss, Tibeats hires Northup out to cut sugarcane in the "Big Cane Break" farther down the Red River. Around this time, Northup learns that Eliza has died of malnourishment and grief at the loss of her daughter (pp. 159-160). Soon afterwards, Tibeats sells Northup to Edwin Epps, a "repulsive and coarse" cotton planter whom Northup describes as being devoid of any redeeming qualities.(p. 162).

SCENE IN THE COTTON FIELD, SOLOMON DELIVERED UP (Facing page 304)

The second half of Northup's narrative is chiefly devoted to describing life on a cotton plantation. He provides detailed descriptions of the processes of planting, cultivating, and picking cotton (pp. 163-168), character sketches of his fellow slaves (pp. 185-190), and gradations of punishment for various offenses (pp. 179-180). As he was periodically hired out to sugar plantations as well, Northup describes the methods of planting, harvesting, and processing the cane in similar detail (pp. 208-213). Though his account reveals the misery and despair of field slaves, like many other slave narratives, it also reflects the wry humor with which Northup endured his situation. For example, in describing the meager rations allotted for each week's subsistence, he quips that "no slave of [Edwin Epps's] is ever likely to suffer from the gout, superinduced by excessive high living" (p. 169). Likewise, he begins his description of slave huts by stating that "the softest couches in the world are not to be found in the log mansion of the slave" (p. 170). Ironic metaphors and understatements such as these render Northup's account all the more compelling, leavening the extent of his degradation with a wry and persistent sense of humor.

Twelve Years a Slave occasionally ventures into nature writing and ethnography, as Northup describes southern flora, fauna, and culture from the perspective of a northern traveler. Narrating his relocation to work as a cane-clearer after his fights with Tibeats, Northup writes, "we were now in the midst of trees of enormous growth, whose wide-spreading branches almost shut out the light of the sun . . . The bay and the sycamore, the oak and the cypress, reach a growth unparalleled, in those fertile lowlands" (pp. 154-155). Northup seems to find the talk and behavior of Southerners equally interesting; he frequently quotes and explains colloquialisms, such as the verbs "allowed" (p. 153) and "toted" (p. 167). Remarkably, he compliments some aspects of (white) southern life: "whatever their faults may be, it is certain the inhabitants [of] the interior of Louisiana are not wanting in hospitality" (p. 159). He also repeatedly notes the abilities of female slaves in a manner that suggests a sort of proto-feminist sensibility. Northup praises the "lumberwomen" with whom he clears cane as "excellent choppers" who were "equal to any man" at piling logs (p. 156). On the cotton plantation, he observes that women plow the fields and tend their animals "precisely as do the ploughboys of the North" (p. 164). When it comes to picking cotton, Patsey is "queen of the field," for her fingers possess a "lightning-quick motion"—the very dexterity that Northup lacks (p. 188). Whether his subject is the Southern landscape or the Southerners themselves, Northup frequently writes with the bemused curiosity of an intellectual tourist.

ARRIVAL HOME, AND FIRST MEETING WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN (320)

Northup's first attempt to write a letter home—with a duck feather and ink that he produced from white maple bark—is thwarted when the white field-laborer in whom he confides exposes the plan to Edwin Epps. However, Northup had been savvy enough to request the favor without entrusting the letter, so he is able to deny the allegation and convince his master that it is spurious. Later, he meets a Canadian carpenter (and outspoken abolitionist) named Mr. Bass, who agrees to mail several letters for him. Both men realize the significance of the act: Northup notes that "my previous ill-fortune had taught me to be extremely cautious," and Bass advises him on "the great necessity of strict silence and secrecy" (p. 269, p. 271). Indeed, the letters that Bass writes for Northup inform the recipients that "he that is writing for me runs the risk of his life if detected" (p. 275). After a lengthy delay that causes Northup to despair of ever being rescued, he is found and liberated by Henry B. Northup, a member of the same white family that his father had served years before. Northup later learns the causes for the delay: first, his wife had to prove to the Governor of New York (Washington Hunt) that Solomon was a free man who had been abducted; next, Governor Hunt had appointed Henry Northup as an official state agent to rescue Solomon; Henry Northup had then negotiated with former Louisiana Senator Pierre Soulé, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Nelson, and Charles M. Conrad, U.S. Secretary of War, to provide federal support for his mission (pp. 290-292). Even after all of these careful arrangements, Henry Northup still struggled to locate Solomon, because no one in Louisiana knew him by his real name. It was only a chance encounter with the carpenter Bass that revealed Solomon's location—and that he was now called "Platt" (p. 298). With this knowledge and the help of a sympathetic sheriff, Henry Northup was able to rescue Solomon Northup. The final chapter outlines the legal proceedings that followed—in New Orleans, where the men received a legal pass to leave the state; in Charleston, South Carolina, where Henry was challenged by customs officials for not "registering" Solomon as a servant; and in Washington, where the two filed charges against Solomon's former captors (pp. 310-319). The narrative concludes with Solomon's reunion with Anne, his daughters, and a grandson whom he had never met. The child's name was Solomon Northup Staunton (p. 320). Patrick E. Horn[source: Documenting The American South]

CLICK HERE TO READ Electronic Edition of "Twelve Years a Slave:Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853," AT the Documenting The American South website.

TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE by Solomon Northup -- Audiobook

C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

This slim volume, referred to by Martin Luther King as "the historical bible of the Civil Rights movement," makes a compelling case that the Jim Crow system of racial legislation that dominated the South was not a natural outgrowth of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, or even Redemption, but rather a haphazard creation of Southern whites in the last decade of the nineteenth century.

Woodward begin his series of lectures by nothing that, although an early form of Jim Crow-type legislation could be found in the cities of the antebellum North ("One of the strangest things about the career of Jim Crow was that the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force"), race relations in the nineteenth-century South were more often than not characterized by intermingling and close contact. (17) "In most aspects of slavery as practiced in the ante-bellum South," he notes, "segregation would have been an inconvenience and an obstruction to the functioning of the system. The very nature of the institution made separation of the races for the most part impracticable." (12) Similarly, while some elements of Jim Crow showed up during Reconstruction (such as the separation of churches and segregation of public schools), "race relations during Reconstruction could not be said to have crystallized or stabilized nor to have become what they later became. There were too many cross currents and contradictions, revolutionary innovations and violent reactions...for a time old and new rubbed shoulders -- and so did black and white -- in a manner that differed significantly from Jim Crow of the future or slavery of the past." (25, 26)

C. Van Woodward

In fact, Woodward, argues, even Redemption didn't herald the onset of Jim Crow. While "it would certainly be preposterous to leave the impression that any evidence I have submitted indicates a golden age of race relations in the period between Redemption and complete segregation," Woodward argues, "the era of stiff conformity and fanatical rigidity that was to come had not yet closed in and shut off all contact between the races, driven the Negroes from all public forums, silenced all white dissenters, put a stop to all rational discussion and exchange of views, and precluded all variety and experiment in types of interracial association." (43, 44)

Indeed, Woodward relates three philosophies of race relations competing at the time - conservatism, radicalism, and liberalism. Suggesting that the latter never really "attracted a following in the South," Woodward explains the differences between the prior two. (47) Conservatism, as practiced by politicians such as Wade Hampton, was "an aristocratic philosophy of paternalism and noblesse oblige" that argued that African-Americans should be aided and educated as a bulwark against the lower classes of whites: Conservatives "believed that the Negro was inferior, but denied that it followed that inferiors must be segregated or publicly humiliated" -- Indeed, "an excessive squeamishness or fussiness about contact with Negroes was commonly identified as a lower-class whit attitude, while the opposite attitude was as popularly associated with the 'the quality.'" (48-50) Radicalism, on the other hand, was a product of the Populists that emphasized an "equalitarianism of want and poverty" between whites and blacks, "the kinship of a common grievance and a common oppressor." (61) Despite the racial antipathies of many working-class Southerners, Woodward argues, populists such as Tom Watson tried to forge an interracial alliance in the 1890's that may have "achieved a greater comity of mind and harmony of political purpose than ever before or since in the South." (64)

So, why did Jim Crow come about, then? "The South's adoption of extreme racism was due so much to a conversion as it was to a relaxation of opposition," writes Woodward. "All the elements of fear, jealousy, proscription, hatred, and fanaticism had long been present, as they are present in various degrees of intensity in any society. What enabled them to rise to dominance was not so much cleverness or ingenuity as it was a general weakening and discrediting of the numerous forces that had hitherto kept them in check. The restraining forces included not only Northern liberal opinion in the press, the courts, and the government, but also internal checks imposed by the prestige and influence of the Southern conservatives, as well as by the idealism and zeal of the Southern radicals. What happened toward the end of the century was an almost simultaneous -- and sometimes not unrelated -- decline in the effectiveness of restraint that had been exercised by all three forces: Northern liberalism, Southern conservatism, and Southern radicalism." (69)

To take each very briefly, northern liberalism waned in the wake of Supreme Court decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson and "White Man's Burden" imperialist ventures overseas, southern conservatism returned to its Redemptionist appeal to "negrophobia" to retain its power and to keep the South "in step with the conservative Northeastern wing of the party and with its views on economic policy," and Populists turned on their former African-American allies as scapegoats for the movement's failure. (77)

"Having served as the national scapegoat in the reconciliation and reunion of North and South," writes Woodward, "the Negro was now pressed into service as a sectional scapegoat in the reconciliation of estranged white classes and the reunion of the Solid South. The bitter violence and blood-letting recriminations of the campaigns between white conservatives and white radicals in the 'nineties had opened wounds that could not be healed by ordinary political nostrums and free-silver slogans. The only formula powerful enough to accomplish that was the magical formula of white supremacy, applied without stint and without any of the old conservative reservations of paternalism, without deference to any lingering resistance of Northern liberalism, or any fear of further check from a defunct Southern Populism." (82-83) In effect, African-Americans became a sacrifice to perpetuate the white man's peace.

And so African-Americans were disenfranchised in the name of Progressive reform, a flurry of laws were passed (and cultural conventions created) to separate the races, and former Populists like Tom Watson, who once stood in the path of this type of discrimination, instead became "one of the outstanding exploiters of endemic Negrophobia."(90) Very shortly thereafter, the Jim Crow system was deliberately given a patina of inevitability by many Southern writers, who proclaimed it an outgrowth of the South's natural "folkways." And thus "the Jim Crow laws...gave free rein and the majesty of the law to mass aggressions that might otherwise have been curbed, blunted, or deflected." (108)

The original version of The Strange Career of Jim Crow, published in 1955, ended with some glimmers of hope for change on the horizon - Unlike "the man on the cliff" (South Africa), the American South had recently witnessed significant cracks develop in the Jim Crow system. President Truman had desegregated the military, and the Supreme Court was doing the same for public education in Brown v. Board of Education. Later editions of the book cover the profound accomplishments of the civil rights movement and the later rise of black nationalism, which suggests for Woodward that African-Americans themselves must choose the extent and means of integration into white society. For "after the legal end of Jim Crow, the emancipated were expected to shed not only such distinctions as they abhorred but those distinctions they cherished as essential to their identity. They found that they were unable to rid themselves fully of the former and unable wholly to abandon the latter."(220) Thus, amid these competing desires for integration and separation that define modern race relations, argues Woodward in his now-pessimistic close, the strange career of Jim Crow looked to get somewhat stranger before it came to its final retirement.

(source: http://www.kevincmurphy.com/woodward.html)

George Washington Sells a Slave

To: Captain Josiah Thompson, of the schooner Swift)

From: George Washington

Date: July 2, 1766

Sir,

With this Letter comes a Negro (Tom) which I beg the favor of you to sell, in any of the Islands you may go to, for whatever he will fetch, & bring me in return for him.

One Hogshead of best Molasses

One Ditto of best Rum

One Barrel of Lymes – if good & Cheap

One Pot of Tamarinds – containing about 10 lbs.

Two small Ditto of mixed Sweetmeats – about 5 lb. Each

And the residue, much or little, in good old Spirits

That this Fellow is both a Rogue and a Runaway (although, he was by no means remarkable for the former, and never practised the latter till of late) I shall not pretend to deny – But that he is exceeding healthy, strong, and good at the Hoe, the whole neighborhood can testify and particularly Mr. Johnson and his Son, who have both had him under them as foreman of the gang, which gives me reason to hope he may, with your good management, sell well, if kept clean and trimmed up a little offered to Sale.

I shall very cheerfully allow you the customary Commissions on this affair, and must beg the favor of you (least he should attempt his escape) to keep him handcuffd till you get to Sea – or in the Bay – after which I doubt not but you may make him very useful to you.

I wish you a pleasant and prosperous Passage, and a safe and speedy return, being Sir.

Your Very Humble Servant,

George Washington

"AMONG THE INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE EMPLOYED"

Moses Roper, who was born into slavery in Caswell County, North Carolina, lived in North and South Carolina and in Georgia before he successfully fled to the North and then to England. In this selection from his autobiography, he describes the punishment he faced after he tried unsuccessfully to run away.

My master gave me a hearty dinner, the best he ever did give me; but it was to keep me from dying before he had given me all the flogging he intended. After dinner he took me up to the log- house, stripped me quite naked, fasted a rail up very high, tied my hands to the rail, fastened my feet together, put a rail between my feet, and stood on the end of it to hold me down; the two sons then gave me fifty lashes, the son- in- law another fifty, and Mr. Gooch himself fifty more.

While doing this his wife came out, and begged him not to kill me, the first act of sympathy I ever noticed in her. When I called for water, they brought a pail- full and threw it over my back ploughed up by the lashes. After this, they took me to the blacksmith's shop, got two large bars of iron, which they bent around my feet, each bar weighing twenty ponds, and put a heavy log- chain on my neck....

Among the instruments of torture employed, I here describe one:- - This is a machine used for packing and pressing cotton. By it he hung me up by the hands, a horse, and at times, a man moving round the screw and carrying it up and down, and pressing the block into a box into which the cotton is put. At this time he hung me up for a quarter of an hour. I was carried up ten feet from the ground....After this torture, I stayed with him several months, and did my work very well. It was about the beginning of 1832, when he took off my irons, and being in dread of him, he having threatened me with more punishment, I attempted again to escape from him. At this time I got into North Carolina: but a reward having been offered for me, a Mr. Robinson caught me, and chained me to a chair, upon which he sat up with me all night, and next day proceeded home with me. This was Saturday. Mr. Gooch had gone to church, several miles from his house. When he came back, the first thing he did was to pour some tar upon my head, then rubbed it all over my face, took a torch with pitch on, and set it on fire,; he put it out before it did me very great injury, but the pain which I endured was the most excruciating, nearly all my hair having been burnt off. On Monday, he puts irons on me again, weighing nearly fifty pounds. He threatened me again on the Sunday with another flogging; and on the Monday morning, before daybreak, I got away again, with my irons on, and was about three hours going a distance of two miles. I had gone a good distance, when I met with a coloured man, who got some wedges, and took my irons off. However, I was caught again, and put into prison in Charlotte, where Mr. Gooch came, and took me back to Chester. He asked me how I got my irons off. They having been got off by a slave, I would not answer his question, for fear of getting the man punished. Upon this he put the fingers of my hands into a vice, and squeezed all the nails off. Hen then had my feet put on an anvil, and ordered a man to beat my toes, till he smashed some of my nails off. The marks of this treatment still remain upon me, some of my nails never having grown perfect since.

Source: Moses Roper, Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper (London, 1837).

US Slave Philip Reid Cast The Statue of Freedom

Her name is Freedom, but she owes her existence to a slave.

The Kathy Keily of USA Today reported: For much of the summer, a small team of conservationists perched atop the U.S. Capitol has been working to protect a relic of American history with a little-known back story.

So as the preservation work continues on Freedom Triumphant Over War and Peace, as the allegorical statue is formally known, it's a good time to pay tribute to some of the unsung heroes of the Capitol: the slaves who helped build it. One of them was Philip Reid, without whom the 19½-foot, 15,000-pound bronze piece might never have occupied its place of honor above the nation's capital.

American sculptor Thomas Crawford created the plaster model for the statue at a studio in Rome during the mid-1800s and shipped it to Washington in five pieces. After it arrived, officials decided to assemble the model so passersby could admire it while the Capitol dome was under construction. According to a contemporary account, it was "put together so nicely by an adroit Italian employed about the Capitol that no crevices were perceptible."

That turned out to be a problem when the time came to transport the model to a nearby foundry where the bronze version was to be cast. It was too big to move in one piece, and the Italian workman who knew where the joints were refused to divulge the secret, holding out for a big raise.

Foundry owner Clark Mills assigned the task of solving the puzzle to Reid, one of his most skilled workmen — and one of Mills' slaves. Attaching a rope to Freedom's head, Reid used a block and tackle to tug gently upward until hairline cracks in the plaster began to reveal the statue's separate pieces.

Pay stubs unearthed later revealed that Reid also worked on the casting of the bronze. The government paid slaves' owners for most days they worked, but the slaves themselves were compensated if they pulled a Sunday shift. Reid earned $41.25 for working 33 Sundays in 1861 at $1.25 a day.

By the time Freedom was raised atop the Capitol dome in December 1862, Reid was a free man. The District of Columbia's 3,100 slaves were freed that year by an act of Congress. According to a document on file with the National Archives, Mills sought $1,500 in compensation when Reid was freed. Altogether, the federal government paid almost $1 million to D.C. slave owners.

Today, the plaster model of Freedom that Reid helped disassemble is on display in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building's rotunda. Inside the Capitol, there are dozens of displays about the artisans who helped create it. But the work of Reid and other slaves remains an all-but-untold story. The U.S. Capitol Historical Society mentions it in a traveling exhibit about the history of African-Americans in the Capitol, but no permanent memorial exists in the building itself.

After Ed Hotaling, a journalist who was working for a Washington TV station, uncovered documents in 2000 attesting to the work of the slaves, Congress promised to come up with a way to commemorate the contributions of slave laborers at the Capitol. A task force has yet to come up with a plan. Brenda Jones, a spokeswoman for Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who is a member of the task force, says the group is still "trying to determine what would be the best way to honor slave laborers."

Hotaling worries that the effort could lose momentum. "I think politicians are embarrassed and don't know how to deal with it," he says. Instead, he argues, America's leaders should be doing everything they can "to encourage further discussion and study of the role slaves played in creating America's temple of liberty. They made an enormous contribution to American life."

Philip Reid, a thirty-nine-year-old slave from South Carolina, cast and helped to save the model of the Statue of Freedom that sits atop the Capitol Dome.

source: USA Today, "Slave had a hand in statue of Freedom," by Kathy Kiely, 14 Aug. 2007

Statue of Freedom's history

Author Jesse J. Holland, speaking on PBS's News Hour stated: "The Statue of Freedom was created by an American art student named Thomas Crawford. He actually won the competition to decide which statue would crown the Capitol. He put together a statue of a woman. And, on top of the statue, he put a liberty cap, which is a small hat."

"The person in charge of the Capitol construction vetoed the whole project. The person in charge was Jefferson Davis. And, when he saw the picture of the Statue of Freedom, he noticed the cap that was on top of the statue. And, being a student of Roman history, Jefferson Davis knew that the only people in Roman history who wore liberty caps were freed slaves."

"Well, Jefferson Davis, who goes on to be the president of the Confederacy, says, there's no way he's going to allow them to put a statue of a freed slave on top of the Capitol. So, he tells Thomas Crawford that, you either change the statue, or we're going the commission to someone else."

"Now, like I said, Crawford was an art student. Art students always need money. So, instead of changing the statue, what Thomas Crawford did was, he took the liberty cap off, and he put an American eagle helmet on. So, most people look at the Statue of Freedom now and they think, this is the statue of an American Indian on top of the Capitol. No, it's not. It's actually a statue of a freed slave with an American eagle helmet on top." -- Jesse J. Holland

source: Transcript PBS News Hour, "Author, Jesse J. Holland, Offers Insights on Slavery, the Capitol, and Obama's Inauguration" 16 Jan. 2009

South Carolina: Everybody is a Slave

De Mulato y Mestisa produce Mulato, es Tornaatrás
(From Mulato man and Mestizo woman, Mulato boy)

South Carolina Slave Code: Provided that in any action or suit to be brought in pursuance of the direction of this act the burthen of the proof shall lay upon the plaintiff, and it shall be always presumed, that every negro, Indian, mulato, and mestizo, is a slave unless the contrary can be made appear (the Indians in amity with this government excepted) in which case the burden of the proof shall lie on the defendant.

Iron Chains and Collars on Slaves

In 1819, the Legislature of Louisiana recognized the lawfulness of putting iron chains and collars upon slaves, to prevent them from running away, as follows:

“If any person or persons, &c., shall cut or break any iron collar which any master of slaves shall have used in order to prevent the running away or escape of any such slave or slaves, such persons so offending shall, on conviction, be fined not less than two hundred dollars, nor exceeding one thousand dollars; and suffer imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, nor less than six months.” (Act of Assembly of March 6, 1819. Pamphlet, p. 64.)

Compare this penalty with that imposed by the Legislature of the same State for cruelties committed on slaves, viz: “not more than five hundred dollars nor less than two hundred,” (1 Martin’s Digest, 654,) and it will appear that the releasing of a slave from the “usual” punishment of the “iron chain or collar” is regarded a more aggravated crime than inflicting upon him the “unusual punishment,” whatever it may be, prohibited by law! For thle act of mercy, the offender may be fined $1000 and imprisoned two years; for the act of atrocious cruelty, he may be fined $500, but without imprisonment. Thus it is that the Legislature of Louisiana discountenances cruelty.

TORTURES, BY IRON COLLARS, CHAINS, FETTERS, HANDCUFFS

II. TORTURES, BY IRON COLLARS, CHAINS, FETTERS, HANDCUFFS, &c.

The slaves are often tortured by iron collars, with long prongs or “horns” and sometimes bells attached to them—they are made to wear chains, handcuffs, fetters, iron clogs, bars, rings, and bands of iron upon their limbs, iron marks upon their faces, iron gags in their mouths, &c.

In proof of this, we give the testimony of slaveholders themselves, under their own names; it will be mostly in the form of extracts from their own advertisements, in southern newspapers, in which, describing their runaway slaves, they specify the iron collars, handcuffs, chains, fetters, &c., which they wore upon their necks, wrists, ankles, and other parts of their bodies. (Beecher Stow, Harriet, Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, pg.73)

WITNESSES: H. Gridly, sheriff of Adams county, Mi., in the "Memphis (Tenn.) Times,'' September, 1834.

TESTIMONY: "Was committed to jail, a negro boy—had on a large neck iron with a huge pair of horns and a large bar or band of iron on his left leg.''

----

WITNESSES: Mr. Lambre, in the "Natchitoches (La.) Herald,'' March 29, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, the negro boy Teams—he had on his neck an iron collar.''

----
WITNESSES: Messrs. J. L. and W. H. Bolton, Shelby county, Tennessee, in the "Memphis Enquirer,'' June 7, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Absconded, a colored boy named Peter—had an iron round his neck when he went away.

WITNESS: William Toler, sheriff of Simpson county, Mississippi, in the "Southern Sun,'' Jackson, Mississippi, September 22, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Was committed to jail, a yellow boy named Jim—had on a large lock chain around his neck.''
----

WITNESS: Mr. James R. Green, in the "Beacon,'' Greensborough, Alabama, August 23, 1838.

TESTIMONY: Ranaway, a negro man named Squire—had on a chain locked with a house-lock, around his neck.''

----

WITNESS: Mr. Hazlet Loflano, in the "Spectator,'' Staunton, Virginia, Sept. 27, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, a negro named David—with some iron hobbles around each ankle.''

WITNESS: Mr. T. J. De Yampert, merchant, Mobile, Alabama, of the firm of De Yampert, King & Co., in the "Mobile Chronicle,'' June 15, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, a negro boy about twelve years old—had round his neck a chain dog-collar, with 'De Yampert engraved on it.''

----

WITNESS: J. H. Hand, jailor, St. Francisville, La., in the "Louisiana Chronicle,'' Jully 26, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Committed to jail, slave John—has several scars on his wrists, occasioned, as he says, by handcuffs.''

----

WITNESS: Mr. Charles Curener. New Orleans, in the "Bee,'' July 2, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, the negro, Hown—has a ring of iron on his left foot. Also, Grisee, his wife, having a ring and chain on the left leg.''

WITNESS: Mr. Owen Cooke, "Mary street, between Common and Jackson streets,'' New Orleans, in the N. O. "Bee,'' September 12, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, my slave Amos, had a chain attached to one of his legs.''
----

WITNESS: H. W. Rice, sheriff, Colleton district, South Carolina, in the "Charleston Mercury,'' September 1, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Committed to jail, a negro named Patrick, about forty-five years old, and is handcuffed.''

----

WITNESS: W. P. Reeves, jailor, Shelby county, Tennessee, in the "Memphis Enquirer, June 17, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Committed to jail, a negro—had on his right leg an iron band with one link of a chain.''

WITNESS: Mr. P. T. Manning, Huntsville, Alabama, in the "Huntsville Advocate,'' Oct. 23, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, a negro boy named James—said boy was ironed when he left me.''

----

WITNESS: Mr. William L. Lambeth, Lynchburg, Virginia, in the "Moulton [Ala.] Whig,'' January 30, 1836.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, Jim—had on when he escaped a pair of chain hand. cuffs.''
----WITNESS: Mr. D. F. Guex, Secretary of the Steam Cotton Press Company, New Orleans, in the "Commercial Bulletin,'' May 27, 1837.

TESTIMONY:"Ranaway, Edmund Coleman—it is supposed he must have iron shackles on his ankles.''


WITNESS: Mr. Francis Durett, Lexington, Alabama, in the "Huntsville Democrat,'' March 8, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway—, a mulatto—had on when he left, a pair of handcuffs and a pair of drawing chains.''

----

WITNESS: B. W. Hodges, jailor, Pike county, Alabama, in the "Montgomery Advertiser,'' Sept. 29, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Committed to jail, a man who calls his name John—he has a clog of iron on his right foot which will weigh four or five pounds.''


WITNESS: Mr. Charles Kernin, parish of Jefferson, Louisiana, in the N. O. "Bee,'' August 11, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, Betsey—when she left she had on her neck an iron collar.''

----

WITNESS: Mr. T. Enggy, New Orleans, Gallatin street, between Hospital and Barracks, N. O. "Bee,'' Oct. 27, 1837.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, negress Caroline—had on a collar with one prong turned down.''
----

WITNESS: Mr. John Henderson, Washington, county, Mi., in the "Grand Gulf Advertiser,'' August 29, 1838.

TESTIMONY: "Ranaway, a black woman, Betsey—had an iron bar on her right leg.''


(source: American Slavery As It Is, by Theodore Weld, New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839)

US Railways Were Built with Slave Labor

John Henry said to his captain:

"You are nothing but a common man,

Before that steam drill shall beat me down,

I'll die with my hammer in my hand."

***

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Historians say nearly every rail line built east of the Mississippi River and south of the Mason-Dixonline before the Civil War was constructed or run at least partly by slaves.

Ted Kornweibel, a professor of Africana studies at San Diego State University, has documented use of slaves by 94 early rail lines. By his count, 39 now belong to Norfolk Southern, based in Norfolk, Va.; 36 are owned by CSX of Jacksonville, Fla.; 12 are part of Omaha-based Union Pacific; seven belong to Canadian National, headquartered in Montreal.

Canadian National

Corporate records of the time show railroads bought slaves or leased them from their owners, usually for clearing, grading and laying tracks. Enslaved workers frequently appear in annual reports as line-item expenses, referred to variously as "hands," "colored hands," "Negro hires," "Negro property" and "slaves."

The president of Union Pacific's Memphis, El Paso & Pacific Railroad wrote to stockholders in 1858 that slaves were the "cheapest, and in the main most reliable, most easily governed" laborers.

Union Pacific

Railroad records contain thousands of lease agreements with slave owners. A single volume of records for the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, now owned by CSX, covering just two months in 1850 contains 47 agreements with slave owners.

Slaves "formed the backbone of the South's railway labor force of track repairmen, station helpers, brakemen, firemen and sometimes even enginemen," wrote University of Pennsylvania historian Walter Licht in the book Working for the Railroad.

Norfolk Southern declines to confirm ownership of individual rail lines from the 19th century but says it owns "80% or more" of the 39 identified by Kornweibel. It won't comment on whether the lines were built and run with slave labor or related questions.

Norfolk Southern

CSX says it can verify the names of only a handful of the 19th-century rail lines that make up its network. "As to the basic issue of reparations, we're not going to discuss that," spokeswoman Kathy Burns says.

CSX

In a statement, Canadian National said it "takes very seriously claims that slave labor" was used to build some of its early rail lines. "We are actively researching the issue. We invite any party to share with CN any relevant information or documentation."

Union Pacific says it owns nine of the 12 railroads Kornweibel identified as UP lines that owned or leased slaves. Ownership of the lines today has "no relevance" to how they were built, UP spokesman John Bromley says.

The Mobile and Girard Railroad, now owned by Norfolk Southern, advertised for slaves in 1856. Corporate records of the time show railroads bought or leased slaves.

"We have no way of knowing, and we have no intention of researching that issue," Bromley says.

source: USA Today, 20 Feb. 2002