Black folks did NOT benefit from American slavery

Get the Point!

When I was growing up in the 1970's and 80's, it seemed as if the general public had a much stronger grasp on the notions of “right” vs. “wrong,” and “good” vs. “evil” when it came to most historical and current events. 

Back then, democracy was deemed "good" while fascism and communism were both deemed "evil."

In June of 1987, former Republican President Ronald Reagan flew to Berlin, Germany and 42 years after Nazi Fascism was defeated, demanded that the Soviet Union's communist Dictator Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down” the Berlin Wall. Today's Republicans quite likely would praise Gorbachev and the wall for “maintaining order”…

Legal integration, which was still being implemented (and opposed) in the 1970's, was largely deemed "right" while segregation, the law of the land throughout most of the late 19th and 20th, Centuries, was deemed "wrong."

A Black toddler picking cotton in the Jim Crow South…

Pertinent to today's blog, American slavery, at least as it was taught by my parents and in the schools that I attended, was considered both "evil" and "wrong," while the fight to abolish the so-called "Peculiar Institution" through various forms of civil disobedience—and during the bloody Civil War—was considered a righteous cause.

But times have changed—and changed drastically—as I have lived long enough to see conservative politicians across America embrace fascism and communism while developing man crushes on totalitarian dictators like Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Former President Donald Trump with his “friend,” Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, circa 2017…

I've watched in mild amazement as conservative politicians across America embrace monuments to slavery supporting Confederate leaders while pushing back against the Biden administration's recent decision to remove the names of Confederate generals, like Henry Benning and Braxton Bragg, from military forts in the South—forts that were so named in the 1940's to spite emerging civil rights efforts all across Dixie land. 

While these conservative Republican Neo-Confederates and Neo-Fascists can be found in every region of our nation, the "cause" to revise history is clearly most pronounced in the South, where governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida have elevated fake history to an art form that's being codified into state law. 

Lest we forget that during the deadly 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, then President Donald Trump stated that there were “many good people” on “both sides,” which included the Neo-Confederate and KKK side that caused murder and mayhem that day…

As a fourth generation Floridian on my mother's Williams/Hill side of the family, clans that lived for six generations before that just across the border in South Georgia, I find the solipsistic revisionism efforts of Ron DeSantis, the self proclaimed "anti-Woke" holder of a bachelor's degree in history (Yale) and a juris doctorate (Harvard), perverse and misleading!

Earlier this year, DeSantis's Florida Department of Education issued a series of new standards for the teaching of Black history, a subject that since the early 1990's, back when Florida was still under Democratic control, was mandated to be taught in each of the state's 67 school districts. A six person panel that was filled by DeSantis boot lickers issued a manifesto that is benign in some respects, but totally malignant and untethered to reality in others, such as the paragraph below about the job skills that Blacks "acquired" due to their enslavement (one that's juxtaposed to a similar paragraph from the College Board's Advanced Placement standards that drew DeSantis' derision):

Old AP standards: “In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, [African] Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”

New Florida standards: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The first major difference is the AP's proper use of "enslaved" while Florida has chosen to use "slaves." This is no minor semantical difference, mind you, as historians know that the former, enslaved, provides a measure of humanity because it refers to the condition that Black human beings were forced to endure, while the latter,"slaves," is a pejorative that was used on auction blocks across the South as Black were sold alongside livestock and farming equipment at auctions. 

The second major difference is that the old AP standard notes the all important phrase, "once they became FREE," while the new Florida standard very well could mislead students into believing that Black men, women, and children were receiving benefits while in bondage!

I've watched and listened to Mr. DeSantis for over five years now and while he may not be a compelling orator or skilled debater, he is NOT dumb! I have no doubts that DeSantis knows better, but I also have no doubts that DeSantis knows that the average Republican Primary voter, particularly those in the Deep South, do NOT know any better and will go along with whatever their leaders say is the truth about American history and current events. 

Like many of my Black peers, I didn't have to read books to learn about the evils of American slavery, as I was able to hear stories passed down through my great grandfather Charlie Williams, a man born near Camilla, Georgia in 1884 who died in Tallahassee, Florida in 1982 when I was just 10 years old. In that same respect, I didn't have to read books to learn about the evils of Jim Crow because my great grandparents, grandparents, parents, and teachers grew up in the Jim Crow South and drilled into me and my classmates what it was like living as second class citizens by law on a regular basis!

Now, having majored in history (Morehouse/Florida A&M) and law (University of Florida) the same as Mr. DeSantis, I surely have devoured my share of books and articles through the years that further help form my conclusion that slavery in America was a wicked institution promulgated by wicked people who only cared about deriving profits from the misery of my ancestors. Those miseries continued through the Jim Crow era, mind you, and in many ways continue to this very day in the systemic inequality that generations of Blacks are still seeking to overcome with respect to education, jobs, health care, and equal justice under the law. 

But don't just rely upon my words about the not so distant past; below is a short excerpt from a first hand narrative taken from a formerly enslaved Black man during the 1930’s, back when the Works Progress Administration (WPA) that employed writers and researchers during the Great Depression chronicled the first hand accounts of Black folks who endured being enslaved in the South. This particular excerpt was sent to me a few years back by my second cousin, Dr. Lee Williams, a tenured history professor at Tennessee State University:

DeSantis, the historian, knows about the above mentioned miseries of American slavery and Jim Crow, too, but he doubles down on his ignorant mendacities even when Black conservatives like Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) push back, all because he is too timid to admit fault.

Worse yet, DeSantis is too consumed with impressing the dim-witted MAGA crowd to admit that in the end analysis, there was nothing beneficial at all about Blacks being enslaved as chattel in the American colonies and the subsequent United and Confederate States.

Lest we forget…