#Slavery and Emancipation

[deadpresidents]

James K. Polk was rare among Presidents in that he didn't just inherit slaves. Polk, like [Andrew] Jackson, actively -- but secretly -- bought slaves while President. Unlike Jackson, however, Polk didn't buy them in Washington, D.C., but secretly back down south. Why the secrecy? Because during his career, Polk straddled the lines between slaveholders and abolitionists, never completely joining either side. Polk was already a major slave owner when he became President but was very cautious about letting people know about his ownership of other people. Perhaps he was afraid of the American people -- especially abolitionists -- finding out that he was buying children. "Of the nineteen slaves Polk bought during his Presidency, one was ten years old, two were eleven, two were twelve, two were thirteen, two were fifteen, two were sixteen, and two were seventeen," said William Dusinberre, author of the great Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk (BOOK | KINDLE). "Each of these children was bought apart from his or her parents and from every sibling. One or two of these children may possibly have been orphans, but it would strain credulity to suggest many of them were." So Polk, who needed more labor for his plantation, did what most rich politicians would do in his situation: he found a way to increase his personal wealth without his constituents finding out about it. He set up agents to buy the slaves in their names and then transferred them to his possession at home... ...He even made sure he had plausible deniability. Dusinberre noted that Polk -- living in a pre-Civil War America -- made sure that while he bought slaves in the White House, he never used his Presidential salary. "He used his savings from his salary to pay campaign debts, to buy and refurbish a mansion in Nashville, and to buy U.S. Treasury certificates, but never to buy slaves," Dusinberre said. "Evidently he distinguished (between) his private income -- from the plantation --(and) the public salary he received from government revenues. Thus, if the public had ever learned of his buying young slaves, he could always have truthfully denied that he had spent his Presidential salary for that purpose. Polk may have been careful about how he bought his slaves because he knew slavery was an evil institution. But Polk kept his slaves throughout his life and didn't even free them upon death, leaving that for his wife.

-- A closer look at the extent of President James K. Polk's record as a slave owner while he was in the White House, including a troubling tendency towards buying children and separating them from their families.

This excerpt is from Jesse J. Holland's excellent and very revealing book, The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO).

[jamaicahomescom]

Faith, Freedom, and Property: Christianity and the Role of Jesus Christ in Jamaica's Journey from Slavery to Empowerment

[whenweallvote]

Many of us are taught that slavery came to an end with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but for enslaved people in Texas, freedom didn’t come until June 19, 1865.

Swipe to learn about the history of Juneteenth, and why it’s a celebration of freedom, culture, and progress.

[baldwinheights]

—Did you know that Juneteenth is also celebrated in a part of Mexico? Nacimiento Mexico was once home to thousands who escaped slavery in the US. As many as 10,000 slaves followed a clandestine Southern Underground Railroad to Mexico. —To date, many Black Mexicans from the Texas area retrace a portion of the same route their African American ancestors followed in 1850 when they escaped slavery. —Descendants of slaves who escaped across the southern border observe Texas’s emancipation holiday with their own unique traditions in the village of Nacimiento. —Slave hunters would patrol the southern border for escapees, led by the Texas Rangers but the Mexican army would be there waiting for them (the slave hunters) to turn them away.

x

[readyforevolution]

Juneteenth (19 June), or Emancipation Day, commemorates the day US troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the government had abolished slavery, more than two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on 1 January 1863.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed at least 3.5 million enslaved people in Confederate states (states supporting slavery) during the US Civil War (1861-65). Although Lincoln initially freed enslaved Africans so they could join the US military, the goalpost moved when he decided saving the Union (non-slaveholding states) meant abolishing slavery.

Many enslavers took refuge in Texas with their enslaved people, seeing it as a haven for slavery. As Union states gained the upper hand, many Black people gained freedom, but not those in Texas.

While local Juneteenth celebrations saw a resurgence in the late 20th century, US President Joe Biden made it a federal holiday in 2021.

Unfortunately, freedom did not come with reparations and equality. To this day, descendants of enslaved Africans suffer physical and mental ailments—such as high blood pressure and kidney disease, to name a few—are nine times poorer than their white counterparts, and Black men are four times more likely to be imprisoned than white men.

Could the payment of reparations for US slavery complete the memory of Juneteenth? Let us know in the comments.

[scotianostra]

August 1st 1834 saw the abolition of slavery, an abhorrent thing, and something Scotland can't just wash its hands of.

Many of you will have walked through St Andrew's Square in Edinburgh, and some, myself included will have taken the obligatory pics, most of which will be dominated by a sort miniature Nelson's Column, but atop is the statue of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, the 'Uncrowned King of Scotland'. You can just see him in the pic. Your eyes will fall also on several buildings that would have been homes or business premises of Scots who made their fortunes in the transatlantic slave trade. Many of the houses in the New Town were owned by people with investments in the slave trade.

Back to Mr Dundas, with his immense power he held at the end of the eighteenth century, he was able to use his influence to almost single handedly delay the abolition of slave trade a further 15 years to 1807 and the subsequent abolition of British slavery in 1834. He was impeached in 1806 (then acquitted) for the misappropriation of funds, and he never held office again. Who knows how much more suffering was inflicted on African people in the Middle Passage during those 15 years?

There has been much controversy recently about his statue. What words on his plaque would be appropriate to reflect this unsavoury side of his legacy and give necessary context to his role in Scottish society?

The magnificent Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters, Dundas House, was the original home of Lawrence Dundas, cousin to Henry Dundas. His brother George Heneage Lawrence Dundas owned plantations in Grenada and Dominica.

The 4th Earl of Hopetoun, the nephew of Henry Dundas’ second wife, and the vice governor of the bank, is immortalised in the bronze statue outside the bank. He was second in command to fellow Scot, Ralph Abercromby, commander-in-chief of the British forces in the West Indies. Together, the men helped to end the two year slave revolution led by French-African Julien Fedon in Grenada in 1795-6 in the fight against the French for islands in the West Indies. Fedon was a highly skilled strategist, and his men executed 40 British, including Scottish governor Ninian Home at his home in Paraclete.

After 15 months of fighting the rebels were captured and executed in the Market Square. Yet Fedon was never found. Legend says he escaped to a neighbouring island on a canoe, aided by either the Amerindians or ‘Black Caribs’ in St.Vincent.

The suppression of this revolution resulted in slavery continuing for almost another 40 years in Grenada.

And when the eventual abolition came it was Dundas and his cronies who profited further with compensation deals running into what today would be billions of pounds.

I'm turning of commenting on this as it can attract some comments that I would end up having to delete, you can vent your opinions through emoticons

Read more on this despicable man and the trade helped lengthen here. https://historycompany.co.uk/.../henry-dundas-lofty-hero.../

[odinsblog]

Today in 1865, Union forces occupying Texas issue General Order No 3, officially informing all slaves in the former Confederate state that they are henceforth free in accordance with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The occasion would later be celebrated as Juneteenth, Freedom Day.

The general order was issued by Union General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, upon arriving at Galveston, Texas, at the end of the American Civil War and two and a half years after the original issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

A common misconception holds that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, or that the General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, marked the end of slavery in the United States. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified and proclaimed in December 1865, was the article that made slavery illegal in the United States nationwide, not the Emancipation Proclamation.

General Order No. 3 states:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” (source)

While the order was critical to expanding freedom to enslaved people, the racist language used in the last sentences foreshadowed that the fight for equal rights would continue.

[herawell]

In the summer of 1791, Robert Carter III filed his Deed of Gift, a legal document which would emancipate all 500 of his slaves. He was one of the only Founding Fathers to free his slaves in his lifetime, unlike his contemporaries Jefferson and Washington, and it was (one of?) the largest emancipations until the Civil War. His Deed made sure that the freed people had education, land, and an airtight legal defense for their freedom, despite his heirs fighting it in court for decades after his death.

In the summer of 1791, Alexander Hamilton had an affair with a married woman while his wife and children were away. This affair would eventually balloon into a scandal involving blackmail and accusations of speculation. Hamilton wrote a 95 page tell-all pamphlet exposing his own infidelity, which cleared his name, but the scandal damaged his career and his presidential candidacy prospects.

[todaysdocument]

Marguerite Thompson, a previously enslaved woman who had purchased her freedom in 1851, petitioned the U.S. Provisional Court to officially recognize her emancipation on June 30, 1863. 

The Court declared her “henceforth and forever free.” 

Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States Series: Case Files

Transcription: 

To the Honorable Chas A. Peabody, Judge of the US Provisional Court for the State of Louisiana.

The petition of Marguerite Thompson, a woman of color residing in this City respectfully showeth

That on or about the 26th of December 1851 she became entitled to her freedom by purchasing herself from her master H R W Hill for which she obtained a receipt as will appear by the notarial certificate hereto annexed and made part of this petition.

That her said master long since died and although up to the time of his death and since she has been in the financial enjoyment of her freedom, yet she has suffered much inconvenience and embarrassment in the management of her affairs and property for the want of a formal declaration of the freedom from some important authority.

Wherefore she prays that after due proceedings and satisfying the Court of the truth of her allegations and the justice of her claim, that a judgement be rendered recognizing and declaring her freedom and her status as a free person of color and she will ever pray &c

Alfred Shaw

Attorney for Petitioner

[page 2]

Marguerite Thompson herein duly sworn deposes and says that all the allegations of the foregoing petition are true.

Sworn to and Subscribed before

Me this 30th June, 1863

Her

Marguerite  +  Thompson

MarK

A.N. Murtagh

Assistant Deputy Clerk

Witness

Henry McIntire

[page 3]

The Court Considering the within petition of Marguerite Thompson and the document accompanying the same that she be declared to be henceforth and forever free and that as such she be entitled to see the rights and privileges and immunities of a free person under the laws of the United States

[sideways, as would show when the page is folded to be filed]

No. 189

U.S. Prov’l Court

Marguerite Thompson

Praying for her Emancipation

Petition &c

Filed June 30th 1863

A.N. Murtagh

J.Clerk. 

[fifty-cent Internal Revenue Conveyance stamp attached] 

[eelhound]

"'Republican' theorists — as in ancient Greek and Roman republics — emphasized freedom from domination, and argued that this was a more fundamental kind of freedom than freedom from interference.

Think about the most extreme form of nonfreedom, slavery. A slave who’s whipped every day is certainly less lucky than one whose master hardly ever strikes him. His body is interfered with less. But is he more free? Proponents of republicanism would say no, because in each case the slave is at the mercy of the master and the same underlying relationship of domination persists.

Of course, ancient republican philosophers had no objection to slavery. They just wanted a class of citizens to be free from the whims of any emperor or oligarch. But in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, abolitionists, labor organizers, and socialists advocated a society in which everyone would be robustly free from domination. Even the elimination of extreme unfreedom through the Union’s victory in the Civil War wasn’t enough to satisfy these radicals, who saw disturbing patterns of domination in Northern industrial capitalism:

Emancipation may have eliminated chattel slavery, but, as eight-hour campaigner Ira Steward once put it, the creation of this new form of economic dependence meant 'something of slavery still remains . . . something of freedom is yet to come.'

Under capitalism, the vast majority of people who are directly involved in the economy don’t own what Marxists call 'the means of production.' They don’t own factories, for example, or book-packaging warehouses or grocery stores, and they can’t afford to buy any of these things. So they have no realistic option except to rent themselves out for eight hours a day — and it’s only eight hours due to the efforts of people like Steward — to people who do own them.

There’s a profound power imbalance in this relationship. Many workplaces are run as petty dictatorships where the boss can tell workers when they have to smile, when they are or aren’t allowed to talk to each other, and when they can and can’t go to the bathroom. In the vast majority of cases — exceptions include workers with rare and highly valued skills, and periods of especially low unemployment — it’s much easier for a company to replace a worker than for the worker to replace her livelihood. She has to fret about her boss’s opinion of her in a way that he doesn’t. Even if he is a benevolent boss, she is still subject to his whims."

- Ben Burgis, from "Socialism Is All About Expanding Freedom." Jacobin, 10 March 2023.

[baldwinheights]

In 1865, enslaved people in Texas were notified by Union Civil War soldiers about the abolition of slavery. This was 2.5 years after the final Emancipation Proclamation which freed all enslaved Black Americans. But Slavery Continued… In 1866, a year after the amendment was ratified, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor. This made the business of arresting black people very lucrative, thus hundreds of white men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility being to search out and arrest black peoples who were in violation of ‘Black Codes’ Basically, black codes were a series of laws criminalizing legal activity for black people. Through the enforcement of these laws, they could be imprisoned. Once arrested, these men, women & children would be leased to plantations or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them; prison labor. It’s believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Black people were part of that system of re-enslavement through the prison system. The 13th Amendment declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing these crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment. The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish the Black Codes.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The Hidden Truth Behind The End Of Slavery - Thomas Sowell

Slavery was destroyed within the United States at staggering costs in blood and treasure, but the struggle was over within a few ghastly years of warfare. Nevertheless, the Civil War was the bloodiest war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, and more Americans were killed in that war than in any other war in the country’s history. But this was a highly atypical—indeed, unique—way to end slavery. In most of the rest of the world, unremitting efforts to destroy the institution of slavery went on for more than a century, on a thousand shifting fronts, and in the face of determined and ingenious efforts to continue the trade in human beings.

Within the British Empire, the abolition of slavery was accompanied by the payment of compensation to slave owners for what was legally the confiscation of their property. This cost the British government £20 million—a huge sum in the nineteenth century, about 5 percent of the nation’s annual output.38 A similar plan to have the federal government of the United States buy up the slaves and then set them free was proposed in Congress, but was never implemented. The costs of emancipating the millions of slaves in the United States would have been more than half the annual national output—but still less than the economic costs of the Civil War,39 quite aside from the cost in blood and lives, and a legacy of lasting bitterness in the South, growing out of its defeat and the widespread destruction it suffered during that conflict.

While the British could simply abolish slavery in their Western Hemisphere colonies, they faced a more daunting and longer-lasting task of patrolling the Atlantic off the coast of Africa, in order to prevent slave ships of various nationalities from continuing to supply slaves illegally. Even during the Napoleonic wars, Britain continued to keep some of its warships on patrol off West Africa. Moreover, such patrols likewise tried to interdict the shipments of slaves from East Africa through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Brazil capitulated to British demands that it end its slave trade, after being publicly humiliated by British warships that seized and destroyed slave ships within Brazil’s own waters. In 1873, two British cruisers appeared off the coast of Zanzibar and threatened to blockade the island unless the slave market there shut down. It was shut down.

It would be hard to think of any other crusade pursued so relentlessly for so long by any nation, at such mounting costs, without any economic or other tangible benefit to itself. These costs included bribes paid to Spain and Portugal to get their cooperation with the effort to stop the international slave trade and the costs of maintaining naval patrols and of resettling freed slaves, not to mention dangerous frictions with France and the United States, among other countries.40 Captains of British warships who detained vessels suspected of carrying slaves were legally liable if those vessels turned out to have no slaves on board. The human costs were also large.

[..]

None of this means that the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade should be ignored, downplayed, or excused. Nor have they been. A vast literature has detailed the vile conditions under which slaves from Africa lived—and died—during their voyages to the Western Hemisphere. But the much less publicized slave trade to the Islamic countries had even higher mortality rates en route, as well as involving larger numbers of people over the centuries, even though the Atlantic slave trade had higher peaks while it lasted. By a variety of accounts, most of the slaves who were marched across the Sahara toward the Mediterranean died on the way.53 While these were mostly women and girls, the males faced a special danger—castration to produce the eunuchs in demand as harem attendants in the Islamic world.

[..]

On the issue of slavery, it was essentially Western civilization against the world. At the time, Western civilization had the power to prevail against all other civilizations. That is how and why slavery was destroyed as an institution in almost the whole world. But it did not happen all at once or even within a few decades. When the British finally stamped out slavery in Tanganyika in 1922 it was more than half a century after the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States, and vestiges of slavery still survived in parts of Africa into the twenty-first century.

==

This video pairs visual elements with Sowell's audiobook reading of his own book, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa

The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron

The West Africa Squadron, also known as the Preventative Squadron, was a squadron of the British Royal Navy whose goal was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. Formed in 1808 after the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 and based out of Portsmouth, England, it remained an independent command until 1856 and then again from 1866 to 1867.

[soapdispensersalesman]

Happy Keti Koti everyone, Switi Manspasi🇸🇷💛

Today marks the 160th anniversary of the abolishment of slavery on Suriname and the Antilles, or actually the 150th as most enslaved worked until 1873 as they couldn't go anywhere.

[tani-b-art]

Black Americans have to escape falling into this next level of permanent underclass status.

I started drafting this post back in October right when California deliberately did not pass the 2 reparations bills (Gov. Newsom in conjunction with The Black Caucus who are made up of Black American, Black African and Black Caribbean members—all and especially the Black American members who are NOT on code is a real problem; speaking of, watch out for Newsom when he more than likely will be running for President--remember his decisions he's made w/ Black Americans) and it just made me think of this permanent underclass. The Tulsa Massacre Survivors’ recent denial too.

I hadn’t heard of this term until a couple years back from Dr. Anderson. Hadn’t realized it was even stated in the film “Lean On Me” until this year.

When our ancestors were forced to enslavement in America, they were a completely free labor class that drove this country’s wealth and solidified this country’s power status globally. Post the “ending of slavery”, the free labor class of Black Americans became financially and socially obsolete to white America’s economic society. With no real way to eradicate all the millions of now free Black Americans or to have a “reverse transatlantic” transport of sending them out to other parts of the world, they became a nuisance to white society. To the people who ran America, Black Americans were no longer able to be extracted for their free labor and there was no need for them any longer.

As soon as Black Americans were freed or the idea of freedom was on the table, they weren't offered compensation of any kind -- not a mule, not a single acre. Instead, they were offered to be sent out of the country. One main proponent of this was none other than Abraham Lincoln. He consistently had this proposition to “send them to Africa”. Lincoln, “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” (1854). Early in 1861, he secretly ordered an individual to investigate land in Chiriqui (now Panama) to support his plan. I’m just realizing, this “go back to Africa” diatribe has always been a thing for many white people, it’s not new by any stretch.

Mind you, those proposals were met with extreme disproval and rejection—our people absolutely was not with it. They built this country (some were already here way before colonization) and made it so that their survival under the most inhumane conditions was for themselves and later for us, their descendants, to reap all the benefits of their sacrifice—this was their native land, they were not leaving. They were not going to a continent they knew nothing about. In 1862, Lincoln was still on this resettlement and emigration tip, supporting Congressional bills to do so too: “…to be expended under the direction of the President of the United States, to aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent now residing in said District, including those to be liberated by this act, as may desire to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti or Liberia, or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine.” Unneeded and unwanted once “slavery ended”. Four days before his assassination, Lincoln also said, “I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes…I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country…” There was also simply a complete fear white people always held with Black Americans before slavery ended and then as newly freed and now, so removing our ancestors by any way was ideal for the dominant white society. Still is today.

The Chiriqui plan: “...the former slaves would work on a cotton plantation. Each family would receive homes and access to hospitals and schools. And after the end of their four-year work contracts, they would be given 16 acres of land and the wages they had earned over that period. Colonization was voluntary for former slaves but deeply encouraged by Lincoln, Kock and its many other proponents.” Another form of race-based slavery was Lincoln’s solution. Btw-none of these emigration proposals worked, all were total, catastrophic failures (particularly the Haiti proposition—around 450 Black Americans were sent and around 115 of them died under the harsh conditions there).

So once again, our people were the main source (the main producers) and only driving force of this country’s mass wealth and development otherwise there would not have been such huge efforts to force us out our own country we built once they no longer had the institutional backing of slavery.

Instead of retroactively compensating (endless hours of free & brutal labor, the use of their physical bodies for advancements of all kinds) the now free Black Americans, white America figured out a way to wipe them out. Instead of literal genocide (which lynchings are a form of genocide and lynchings only began to take place post the ending of slavery because enslavers didn’t murder their enslaved when slavery was law; you don’t kill your property that makes you money; the klu klux klan formed post the ending of slavery, not before it) and attempting to make due on reparative justice (reparations in the form of money and land that was stolen and promised), the idea to bring in other groups from outside of America came into play to undermine the newly freed Black Americans and what should’ve been reparative justice and progress and reconstruction and redress for the centuries of their free, brutal and deadly labor.

I feel that the 13th & 14th amendments essentially were also incorporated as a counter to the emancipated slaves — favorable amendments to further push Black Americans into irreparability and for immigration policies to expel Black Americans. Especially the 14th. (Initially, that amendment was for the newly freed Black Americans to finally and officially be recognized & classified as citizens [huge part to William Nesbit] but to me, it seems like it morphed into something else. The same way affirmative action did). All adopted into law post The Civil War, in 1868 which was 5 years after the Emancipation Proclamation (that document also didn’t exactly free all slaves). That amendment was a direct response to the new freedom of the formerly enslaved Black Americans as a way for the country to slowly displace our ancestors by creating a bigger immigrant, buffer class to remove who was once the largest demographic of the working class—Black Americans. It’s a pattern I’ve noticed with anything our ancestors have fought for and subsequently were victorious in…when we gain something, things are enacted following that victory to remind us that the minority-majority of society really doesn’t want to treat us as fellow humans. AND, Black Americans are always a permanent reminder of our country’s “original sin” and their ancestors’ involvement, participation and creation in that og sin. They don’t want to be reminded that slavery happened and that racism still exists, hence, why they prefer non-American Black and poc. Immigration policies have incentivized those immigrating to the country to directly further push Black Americans down the social hierarchy totem pole. So since they will never be able to expel us out by trying to banish us with non-incentives to emigrate elsewhere, they’ll use immigration to bring in immigrants to displace us.

“On August 14, 1862, Lincoln met at the White House delegation of Black leaders to make his case for the voluntary emigration of Black Americans to countries outside the U.S. “Your race suffer from living among us, while ours suffer from your presence… It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated,” Lincoln told the delegation.”

Here is where the conversation about "model minority" comes in (a notion many immigrants feed into as a token). When the white racists talking points about “Why do those who come from other countries do better than your people in so little of time” is injected into topics…this is why. When Black and non-white (and even white) immigrants regurgitate that same talking point about their vast and quick success by saying “My people had nothing when they came to America and are doing better than your people” while shaming us, this is why. Or peddling the “they/we work harder” or “they’re/we’re smarter” narrative. No. Working harder is what was abandoned when families fled their homelands to be able to work easier here. Working hard would’ve been to stay in your homeland and fight your own corrupt government and refusing to depart ways. All things Black Americans have done and do. Plus, there aren’t centuries of this history nor are there responses and reactive, harmful policy and ideas of this history that is tethered and affixed to your lineage. So yes, of course y’all better be doing exceptionally better in this country in comparison. Leaders, presidents, departments, mayors, senators, policies, laws, governments and governors have never viewed your ancestors as constant reminders of chattel slavery therefore wanting nothing to do with them, so much so that they were highly suggesting to them to leave their homeland.

“It is disingenuous to equate Black Americans’ conditions with any other ethnic, religious or so-called disadvantaged minority. Blacks have a unique history in this country in that their status was predetermined by the dominant society’s national public policy on the use of Black Americans”. - Dr. Claud Anderson

1864 was a year before Black Americans in Texas even got word that they were no longer enslaved as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation, yet the Chinese and Irish were incentivized to immigrate to the country and immediately get paid for the alleged labor shortage to continue building the railroads (done by Black Americans first—unpaid). In 1847, The US helped the Irish during their famine—Voyage of Mercy. When your ancestors get reparations for their shorter-lived oppression or depression they faced, yes, you’ll do better because the federal government aided you in that. Even in more current times: (July 2024 article). NYC to spend millions on new round of pre-paid debit cards for immigrants. The Adams administration says another round of debit cards is expected to be distributed to more than 7,300 immigrants over the next six months, costing the city about $2.6 million. The move represents a major expansion of a pilot program that began earlier this year that doled out cards to about 3,000 immigrants. 2006: U.S. Government To Pay $492 Million To 17 American Indian Tribes; The Marshall Plan, On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe.

“From 1862 to 1986, the United States government ran a homestead program that gave 2,992,058 white settlers and European immigrants (both documented and undocumented) a minimum of 160 acres of land from the Mississippi River to the West coast of America, including the Alaskan territory. Authorized by the Homestead Act of 1862, this land giveaway program ended for all participating states in 1976 and ended for land awards in Alaska in 1986. White recipients in the land giveaway program were recruited through a widespread, government-sponsored advertising campaign in newspapers in America and Europe. The land was awarded to applicants who promised to live on it and develop the land for five years. Title to the property vested at the end of this five-year period. Congress passed additional laws in 1873 that allowed the government to award larger tracts of land to these white settlers and immigrants. A lot of the land grants included property that had timber rights, mineral rights, and oil and gas reserves, all of which the government eventually released to the land owners through various legislative enactments. In all, more than 270 million acres of valuable land -- about ten percent of the land area of the United States -- was given to white settlers and immigrants. The Homestead Act of 1862 was a 124-year-long, government-sponsored, wealth transfer program for a particular class of people -- white settlers and immigrants. It was the longest running, race-based, affirmative action program in United States history. Ironically, some of the descendants of the beneficiaries of this affirmative action program for whites were the first ones to claim their status as the "victims" of "reverse discrimination" in the 1970s and 80s. An estimated $10 trillion dollars (when measured in today's present value) was transferred to white homesteaders, essentially for free. This land giveaway program made thousands of millionaires in the agriculture, timber, mining of natural resources, and oil and gas industries. In addition to the gift of free public land to these white program recipients, the government-built land grant colleges to teach these settlers how to farm. It provided them with county agents to further their expertise in farming and the commercialization of natural resources running with the land. It also gave them low-interest loans so that they could mechanize their farms. Then, it provided them billions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm certain crops. From the outset, blacks were not allowed to participate in the 1862 Homestead Act land giveaway program. The United States Supreme Court had already decided, on a 7-2 vote, in the 1857 Dred Scott case that blacks -- freed or slaves -- had no rights that white men were bound to respect. This holding included the right to own property. In contrast, the 400,000 acres was set aside for freed Black slaves. The land allotment was 40 acres. This land was never given to them. As a result, Blacks in the South and elsewhere languished in abject poverty for the next 100 years. This poverty was accompanied by widespread racial violence against Blacks nationwide, rigidly enforced racial segregation, ingrained racial discrimination, and massive resistance to equal rights for Blacks. The next time you hear people say, "the Black man ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps," please remind them of the white privilege embedded in these laws and historical events.”

Everybody who immigrated here got a leg-up, literally. “We’re all immigrants to America” is so disingenuous and inaccurate because if that was factual, there’d be no problem to treat Black Americans like an immigrant group as every immigrant group who gets monetarily compensated for their immigration status. We must not be immigrants then — and we aren’t. Millions of our ancestors who were transported here were forcefully and forcibly taken against their will during the transatlantic slave trade. That wasn’t voluntary. Absolutely NOT “we’re all immigrants”!

“The missing ingredient is wealth and wealth is power. We can’t continue to exist without reparations. We have nothing — we don’t own and control anything. Without owning and controlling anything, we can’t compete. Permanent underclass means those individuals, who by the nature of their circumstances, will be forced to live as either beggars or criminals.” (Claud Anderson). When the opportunities are already minimal and bleak and to now have to contend and compete with those very jobs that are now being spread even thinner, yes, unfortunately the last resort can be this. It’s criminality to survive. But even with no systems in place to repair, our people have always made due—made the best of what is given.

2015 is almost a decade ago—done came and gone. No federal reparations as of yet. And with predictions based off projections, of $0 median wealth by the year of 2053, the permanent underclass sadly is already actively suffocating. Just in 1860, the value assigned to our ancestors’ labor, human capital was over $3 billion dollars. “This was more money than was invested in factories and railroads combined. In 1861, the value placed on cotton produced by enslaved Blacks was $250 million.” All this monetary value less than 200 years ago and to say by 2060, the wealth of our households will be at $0. To say that reparations for race-based American chattel slavery is imperative is an understatement. “…in 2016, based on the Survey of Consumer Finances, white families had the highest median family wealth at $171,000, compared to Black and Hispanic families, which had $17,600 and $20,700, respectively.”

It’s been very noticeably and intentionally stated that without immigrant groups, the country will fall into despair — all to further support the notion that without immigration, the country will collapse. It has been another very calculated plan to keep pushing Black Americans out of particular employment markets that have been largely held by Black Americans. Black Americans are getting boxed out and locked out of the job sector we once held in significant numbers. It’s also important to keep in mind that those who immigrate here in large portions go directly to Black communities and then open businesses or become managers of an establishment within that community and avoid hiring the Black residents who make up majority of the community or they hire those who they share ethnicity with only. There’s also the language barriers that block out Black Americans when some jobs are specifically requiring bilingual candidates. In all his inability to express his point and coherently flesh out facts and his horrible inarticulate way and his very bad-faith and self interests motives, Trump talking about “Black jobs” is a real thing. It is well documented that Black Americans do (have made) make up most of the demographic in the hospitality, healthcare, construction and governmental industries. We know our people were (are) maintenance workers, cementing roads, laying down bricks building homes and buildings, nurses, nursing aids, laundress, landscapers, professional cleaners, housekeepers, DMV workers, bus drivers, postal service workers--there are whole generations of households that have this in their family line. Jobs once held by majority Black Americans in these industries have now shifted to employ those newly coming to America and we’re now becoming locked out of those means to provide to be able to sustainably live.

(Let’s also not forget just how racist STEM is when it comes to Black Americans)

And absolutely no, pointing this out isn't to say that we don't hold positions as doctors, lawyers, CEOS, accountants, architects, professors, engineers, executives and more. Or that these “Black jobs” are less significant or less impactful. Pointing out stats in comparison is just that. There are differences in the majority of what occupations of particular jobs are held. And degreed or not degreed sometimes holds very little weight for Black Americans. Dating back to when our higher education didn't really make a difference in what opportunities are supposed to be afforded with degrees because of discrimination or how Black American households headed by someone with a college degree still hold less wealth in comparison to white households headed by someone with a high school diploma or GED or when certain job sectors had full regulation to exclude us out and the only options were specific jobs--like this is how certain jobs became "Black jobs". [the whole response to the "Black jobs" was weird and too comical to me when the severity and seriousness of it all was missing. Also, we absolutely gave way too much credit to him over it as if he conceptualized it.]

But just as well, white America has been pushing for immigration heavily and now, they themselves are at risk of potentially having to compete for occupation too. So, they got flipped on by being super anti-Black American by elevating others (to spite us) who also feel the same way about us and look, now they’re imploding. Good. And while that happens, let not one Black American be a casualty.

The notion of agricultural work and other sects of manual labor being so dependent on the immigrant class is capitalism. Black Americans want to work these jobs and have always fought for better, livable wages from these employers and corporations would rather not increase it; hence, they will seek outside help in the form of cheaper labor and those immigrating to America will more than likely accept that low wage because anything is much better than what they have to leave from, therefore, stunting the pressures corporations face for not increasing the wages. So, this is why we hear narratives of, “We can’t find workers…”, “We had to hire immigrants because American citizens don’t want to work these jobs…”. Those are lies! No, business owners and businesses and corporations financially prefer cheap labor and to keep wages low. Outsourcing everything is capitalism and that’s what y’all been doing. Black Americans will raise hell about it all the time! And Black Americans being loudly vocal alone is what drives the low, minimum wage pushers to find ways to just remove Black Americans out altogether. [one ref: Black workers dismissed from job sites after Hurricane Katrina]

My family is from Louisiana and in the South, there is a huge population of Black Americans who have generationally worked in agriculture. They own their own farms and purchased acres of land or acquired the land that has been passed down to them from their ancestors. Yes, they want these jobs! That narrative of “we don’t want to work in the fields” or “we don’t want to go back to the fields” is not true and not true for all (and yes, I completely understand the historical context of why some Black Americans have an aversion because there’s so much trauma passed down from our history. Along with the decades upon decades of discriminatory lending practices and land theft against Black farmers, the history is not smooth at all.)

But it isn’t the case for all of us as Black Americans. We have grandparents and great grandparents (my grandparents were born right before the 1950s and my greats were born in the early 1900s) who were sharecroppers—just one and two generations ago—who were agricultural experts and their descendants are following in their agricultural steps! The agrarian nature is innate in us.

There are so many young Black American millennials who are continuing their family’s rich, agrarian legacy. I have a family friend who recently got married and he and his wife purchased acres of land to grow their own food and they have livestock too. He and his wife are millennials and they have children who they will inherit the land once their parents pass it down. The growth is happening and it’s great to see! (which I also find the conversation around agriculture and Black Americans amongst ourselves to dominantly be from a very non-Southern perspective, which can also play into classism).

Agriculture isn’t the only industry we’ve historically occupied but this is one that is used the most to justify and condone capitalism to export the work.

We have to recognize what’s happening and get on code with one another of how we have to build to survive and be able to simply thrive in our homeland as Black Americans. That also means delineating from any groups that undercut us. I see more of us are beginning to recognize that. Wish it didn’t take us this long (as well as not having such a cemented system to perpetuate the subjugation) and I hope we still have time to sustain our rightful place that our ancestors created for us. We don't belong in this permanent underclass and as we keep fighting for our human rights, pushing for reparations and receiving reparations in our country, we will keep ourselves out of that next permanent underclass level.

Reparations is the only way.

[jamaicahomescom]

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