AMERICAN SLAVERY: THE COMPLETE STORY

Gerald A. Foster, Ph.D.*

You May Attempt to Enslave My Body but My Mind Will Forever Be Free

I. EMERGING FROM THE CAVE OF IGNORANCE

In answering the question posed in his 1998 Harper's Weekly maga-zine article "Why Americans are not taught History?" ChristopherHitchens quotes noted historian David McCullough, "History shows ushow to behave. History teaches us and reinforces what we believe in,what we stand for, what we ought to be willing to stand up for."'

The challenge for all progressive thinking Americans of all colors,ethnicities and social classes is to begin the tedious task of revitalizing aninterest in American history. History, after all, is one of the four coresubjects included in standardized testing that starts with the third grade.We must believe that racism, discrimination and prejudice can be oblit-erated in the beginning decades of the twenty-first century. This pro-cess may start in our public schools but it cannot be limited to ourpublic schools. Eric Foner writes in his most recent book about his deepappreciation to Wintrop Jordan for a comment made at a 1966 confer-ence, "To understand peoples' attitudes about race, you have to under-stand their attitudes about everything." 2

Ultimately the most valid measure of a quality education is its ca-pacity to reveal the degree of one's ignorance and thus focus one's acqui-sition of new knowledge. Americans have become masters at ignoringwhat seems so obvious to the astute observer. For example, we ignorethe poverty, illiteracy and destitution among our lower social classes yetwe attack and criticize so called Third World nations for the sameproblems. Furthermore, we piously criticize other nations for humanrights violations while in this country we continue to violate the human

* Scholar-in-Residence at United States National Slavery Museum.

Christopher Hitchens, Goodbye to all that: Why Americans are not Taught History?,HARPER'S MAGAZINE Nov. 1998, at 37.

2 ERic FONER, WHO OwNs HISTORY? RETHINKING THE PAST IN A CHANGING WORLD

10 (2002).

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rights of Native Americans, the poor, the uninsured, the incarcerated,and the handicapped. We ignore the woeful deficiencies of the averageAmerican student in basic math, language, science, and history, but weclaim to possess a world class public education system wherein "no childis left behind." Finally, we turn a blind eye to the fact that the majorityof teachers in urban school systems do not have a degree in their pri-mary area of teaching and spend more time on discipline than on stu-dent Iearning.

Therefore, the ability to transform the teaching of American his-tory in a more accurate and inclusive fashion becomes a political prob-lem and challenge as much as an educational challenge. Yet we must,because at the core of our collective historical deficiency lies the issue ofrace and as we have shown, the path to race flows from slavery.

Revising any element of American history in a meaningful manneris a daunting task particularly when the subject is racially oriented. Yet,it is for this exact reason that such an undertaking must occur. Sincethe advent of public education in the latter part of the nineteenth cen-tury, curriculum content on slavery and race in America has been nar-rowly focused, factually inaccurate and intentionally misleading. JamesLoewen states, "In 1959 my high school textbook presented slavery asnot such a bad thing. If bondage was a problem for African Americans,well, slaves were a burden on Ole Massa and Ole Miss, too. Besidesslaves were reasonably happy and well fed.'" 3 What should be clearlyshown in the revamping of American history within the context of slav-ery is that the invented concept of race was and remains the conduitthrough which racism has been allowed to flourish and fester: slaverywas an economic necessity that provided free labor for over two hundredyears. To justify the inhuman and brutal treatment of this human laborpool, the concept of race was invented and it scientifically and relig-iously ranked whites as superior and blacks as inferior, thus, totally justi-fying the manner in which slaves were treated. Following the officialend of slavery in 1865, the racial protocol of the nation, particularly inthe South, had become firmly entrenched in daily patterns of behaviorand socio-political interactions. Accordingly, the end result was institu-tionalized and individualized racism manifested in every major social,economic and political institution in the nation. Our schools, hospitals,employers and neighborhoods all were tainted by the poison of racism

3 JAMEs W. LOEWEN, LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME: EVERYTHING YOUR AMERICAN His-TORY TEXTBOOK GOT WRONG 133 (1995).

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that had been spawned by slavery. Even in the beginning years of thetwenty-first century, racism remains an ever-present cloud looming overthe nation like an intractable albatross.

The monumental challenge for the educators and progressiveminded citizens of America as well as for our elected and appointedrepresentatives is to correct our history starting with our elementaryschools and extending through higher education. For this to be done,the African presence in America does not begin in 1619 but hundreds ofyears earlier, perhaps as early as 1200 B.C. There is also a documentedpresence in 1250 A.D., roughly two and a half centuries before Colum-bus was born.

Gayanese anthropologist Ivan van Sertima has spent practically allof his professional life devoted to the theory, which is now a docu-mented fact, that Africans did sail to the Americas and settled in Olmec,Mexico in 1250 B.C. Although as expected, his theories and researchhave come under relentless, and for the most part baseless, attacks bywhite anthropologists, Van Sertima's research findings remain soundand valid. Therefore, as we embark on this maiden voyage of revisionistdiscovery, all that has been advanced in the name of American Historyfor four hundred years must be reexamined. Africans did not come tothese shores in chains in 1619, but they came as bold explorers between1200 B.C. and 1250 A.D. Henceforth, public school curricular mustdevelop an African chronology that spans four distinct periods; explora-tion (1250 A.D. to 1500 A. D.), indentured servitude (1500 A.D. to1670 A.D.), involuntary slavery (1670-1865), and post emancipationservitude (1865-1900), thus departing from the "happy slave" character-izations that have permeated our written and oral history for hundredsof years. Nevertheless, we must confront and correct "the lies our teach-ers told us." We must not allow another generation of elementaryschool children to be infected with the virus of historical inaccuracies,and therein lay the ultimate ethical and civil challenge. Speaking truthto power has never been easy but is always the right thing to do.

An example of the formidable socio-political reactionary cabal isseen in the international best selling work of Charles Murray and Rich-ard Herrnstein published in 1995, The Bell Curve.4 Building on all ofthe pseudo-scientific racist themes of the past hundred years, these au-thors advanced the notion that blacks are genetically inferior to whites

4 RICHARD J. HERRNSTEIN & CHARLES MURRAY, THE BELL CURVE: INTELLIGENCE AND

CLASS STRUCTURE IN AMERICAN LIFE (1995).

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and therefore should be treated as social misfits and outcasts. Althoughthere were immediate and very effective scientific refutations of thisbook, the mere fact that it enjoyed such widespread positive acceptancetells us that we are still a nation easily led to believe in the inherentinferiority of blacks as well as the inherent superiority of whites. If thereis a positive side of this scenario, it is the diverse and pointed counter-attack mounted by nineteen of the nation's foremost and renowned so-cial scientists in the rejoinder to Murray and Herrnstein, entitled TheBell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence and the Future of America.5 The re-sounding unified theme in this work is that pseudo-scientific racism hasno place in modern American education or social policy. Although weare now a decade beyond the Bell Curve Wars, there remains a gapingchasm between the rhetoric and the reality of racial progress in thenation.

Therefore, in the future, discussions of slavery in America mustinclude: the presence of Africans in the Americas for centuries beforethe Columbus-arrival myth; the presence of a distinct society of activistfree blacks during the two hundred years of institutionalized slavery inAmerica; the strong coalition and common interests shared by NativeAmericans (particularly the Seminoles) and blacks; the contributions tosociety made by slave and free blacks; the persistent resistance to slaverymounted by blacks and their white counterparts; the critical roles playedby science and religion in supporting, justifying and advancing slaveryand racism; and lastly the incorporation of these historical revisions notonly in our textbooks but also into the policies and institutions of ournation. After all, racism not only injures and debilitates the target pop-ulation but the perpetrators as well.

II. SLAVERY AND RACE

Abraham Lincoln is hailed as the "great emancipator" because hesupposedly risked his political future as well as the fragile foundation ofthe relatively new republic, to end slavery. This is indeed a noble ver-sion of American history and one that has inflamed and incited par-tisans for nearly 140 years. However, the truth, which is always relativeand not absolute, is that Lincoln's one and only priority was to preservea fragile Union that was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution andintense sectional antagonism, not to free the slaves. The political

5 THE BELL CURVE WARs: RACE, INTELLIGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA (Steven

Fraser ed., 1995).

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agenda was integrally intertwined with an economic agenda, both ofwhich had far reaching international implications well beyond the pur-view of slavery. Unfortunately, the issue of slavery still remains the su-preme bogey of American black-white race relations.

Two of the most unnecessarily divisive issues today have their gene-sis in slavery--reparations and the confederate flag. In an August 2,1862 letter to Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln made his position onslavery crystal clear, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save theUnion, and not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save theUnion without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it byfreeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing someand leave others alone, I would also do it."' 6 He was true to his wordswhen, in September 1862, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclama-tion freeing only those slaves who were in states which were "in rebellionagainst the United States."'7 Journalist Brent Staples states, "Historiansworking on business records are showing that the good, rich citizens ofthe Northeast were vigorously seeking business with Southern slaversand trafficking in slaves even after abolitionists had seized the day andNortheastern states had outlawed the slave trade."' 8 We now are begin-ning to see a much clearer picture of slavery and its most vital role in theemergence of 19th century America as a world economic colonialpower.

In the 139 years since slavery officially ended, it has continued toexcite, incite and polarize America primarily because the term is inextri-cably attached to the issue of race. However, the ultimate irony is thatin most if not all arenas of socio-political discourse, race is rapidly be-coming a non-entity. In the 2000 United States Census there weresixty-eight different and distinct self-reported racial categories, showingthat race has already become demographically extinct.9 Yet, we musthasten to add that racism is just as virulent and divisive as it has everbeen. The institution of racism is the omnipresent progeny of the nine-teenth and twentieth century manifestations of slavery and its bedfellow,race.

6 STEPHEN B. OATS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTHS 106 (1994).

7 The Emancipation Proclamation, Proclamation No. 17, 12 Stat. 1268 (1863).8 Brent Staples, Slaves in the Family: One Generation's Shame is Another's Revelation, N.Y.

TIMES, June 15, 2003, at 12.9 ELIZABETH M. GRIECO & RACHEL C. CASSIDY, Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin

Census 2000 Brief (2001), at http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-1.pdf (October26, 2004).

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406 CARDOZO PUB. LAW, POLICY & ETHICS J.

How did slavery and race become so patently intertwined as dis-tinctly American phenomena? Slavery in America was different fromany other corner of the world primarily because in America it wasviewed early on as the primary foundation upon which an emergingrepublic could solidify its economic primacy in the global commerce ofthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Two hundred and twenty-eight years of free labor will assure business success anywhere in thecosmos. However, the social and political dilemma for a new republicwas how to justify public professions of equality, individual rights anddemocracy while at the same time holding fast to African captives whohad been systematically and mentally dehumanized and designated aspersonal property. Therein lay the challenge for the founding fathersand the signers of the Declaration of Independence (1776) as well as theUnited States Constitution (1787). This marked the beginning of con-tentious race relations in America that persist to this day. False sciencesand religious zealotry were the primary fervent justifications for howblack slaves were treated and for the terror and brutality that flourishedwell into the twentieth century, decades after slavery was legally ended.

Social and political illusionists who purveyed racial inferiority, ge-netic deficiencies, primal instinct and infantile proclivities successfullyconvinced a nation that it was in fact acceptable to treat blacks as prop-erty because it was scientifically and religiously sanctioned and pre-ordained. In reality, it was a perverted extension of manifest destiny.

On this issue, we as a nation have miles to go before we sleep

President Clinton upon leaving office in 1999 empanelled a blueribbon committee on race; similarly in 1999, the New York Times un-dertook what was considered the most controversial and ambitious jour-nalistic project in its history, How Race is Lived in America."l One ofthe most widely anticipated Supreme Court decisions in 25 years washanded down in June 2003 concerning the propriety of race as a keyconsideration in college admissions policies and procedures.11

If we are to progress in the global and diverse political economy ofthe twenty-first century, we must expand our discussions on slavery toheal our wounds of race and the malignancy of racism. In spite of itslongstanding racial foibles, America is still a land of unlimited opportu-nity for those who are willing to be intellectually courageous enough to

10 Kevin Sack, How Race is Lived in America, N.Y. TIMES, June 4, 2000, at 1.11 Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).

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discount the rhetoric of the race mongers and purveyors of hate whopersist in advancing agendas that alienate and polarize rather than healand conciliate.

A more balanced discussion of slavery is a critical first step in thisheretofore road not taken.

III. WHAT WAS SLAVERY AND WHY HAS IT BEEN SUCH A

DIVISIvE ISSUE SINCE 1865?

The greatest threat to racism in the twenty-first century is accurate

and comprehensive revisionist history. History, that should begin witha documented accuracy of past events, personalities, decisions and con-sequences for too long has been intentionally packaged and presented sothat young people will be bored and old people relieved. Two of themost important books that address this issue are Lies my Teachers ToldMe: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W.Loewen 12 and Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need toKnow About History but Never Learned, by Kenneth C. Davis.' 3 Thoughwritten almost 10 years apart both begin with the same premise. Briefexcerpts from each book provide the theme that surely should under-gird our revisionist History.

Davis writes:

I1 he overwhelming response of far too many Americans to history isa single word-'Boring!' For years, we have sent students to schooland burdened them with the most tedious textbook imaginable-deadly dull books written by one set of professors to be read by an-other set of professors-which completely sucks the life out of thismost human of subjects) 4

In school books of an earlier era, the warts on our Founding Fathers'noses were neatly retouched. Slavery also got the glossy makeover-itwas merely the misguided practice of the rebellious folks down southuntil the "progressives" of the north showed them the light.1"

Davis continues:

12 JAMES W. LOEWEN, LIES MY TEACHERS TOLD ME: EVERYTHING YOUR AMERICAN His-

TORY TEXTBOOK GOT WRONG (1996).13 KENNETH C. DAVIS, DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: EVERYTHING You NEED

TO KNOW ABOUT HISTORY BUT NEVER LEARNED (2003).14 Id. at xxiv.15 Id. at xvii.

408 CARDOZO PUB. LAW, POLICY & ETHICS J V

There has always been a tendency to hide the less savory momentsfrom our past .... The history of this country is not necessarily a

smooth continuum moving toward a perfectly realizable republic....America remains shockingly divided along racial and economic lines. 16

Loewen writes:

High school students hate history. Students consider history the mostirrelevant of twenty-one subjects commonly taught in high school.

Textbooks stifle meaning by suppressing causation. Students exit his-tory textbooks without having developed the ability to think coher-ently about social life.

Our teachers and our textbooks still leave out most of what we need toknow about the American past. Some of the factoids they present areflatly wrong or unverifiable. In sum, startling errors of omission anddistortion mar American histories.

Perhaps the most pervasive theme in our history is the domination ofblack America by white America. Race is the sharpest and deepestdivision in American life.

Textbooks have trouble acknowledging that anything might be wrongwith white Americans, or with the United States as a whole.

Slavery's twin relatives to the present are the social and economic in-feriority it conferred upon blacks and the cultural racism it instilled inwhites.

Racism in the western world stems primarily from two related histori-cal processes: taking land from and destroying indigenous people andenslaving Africans to work the land. 17

Slavery in its simplest form is involuntary servitude. Yet mostAmericans do not fully understand the importance of slavery as the piv-

otal variable in early economic and political survival of the new republicfollowing the American Revolution.

Elected officials and particularly presidents are the ultimate illu-sionists. For what other reason would they clamor to kiss babies, eat

poorly cooked chicken with their fingers, take smiling pictures with to-tal strangers, trot out the wife and kids conveniently to fake family val-ues and attend black churches the Sunday before the November

16 Id. at xvii, xxv.

17 Loewen, supra note 12, at 78.

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elections but to create an illusion of familiarity, compassion, trust, in-credible slogans aimed at minorities? They strongly imply "just vote forme and I'll set you free." Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower,Kennedy, Johnson and even Nixon all cajoled black Americans into be-lieving that their votes would indeed make for a better America. Some

achieved more than others and we do not demean Truman's executiveorder 9981 to desegregate the armed forces18 or Eisenhower sending introops to quell racial tension surrounding school desegregation 19 orKennedy's affirmative action order or Johnson's support of the 1964and 1965 Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. However, we should notbe naive enough to believe that, just as Lincoln carefully contemplatedthe correct political decision in 1862, so did Kennedy in 1960 when heplaced the now much celebrated telephone call to the wife of MartinLuther King offering his assistance in getting him released from theReidsville, Georgia jail. Kennedy knew all too well that he desperatelyneeded the black southern vote. He also knew that King's father wasone of the most influential black preachers in the south; ergo the calland Daddy King's endorsement from the pulpit and the presidentialvictory just weeks later by a slim margin.

Arthur Kenneth O'Reillly has written a definitive work on the ra-cial attitudes of America's first forty-two presidents and in each instancehe reveals that political expediency always superceded moral and ethicalgovernance. He states,

To write of the forty-two chief executives and their deeds and dreamson matters of late yields few profiles in courage and a great manyprofiles of men who acquired and analyzed only in search of moreperfect ways to protect slavery or Jim Crow .... The story of thepresidency and the politics of race is thus largely a story of choicesmade to acquiesce in, preserve, and adapt the original intent of 1789to modern times.2"

American slavery was an economic and political necessity withoutwhich the new republic would have certainly failed. Interestinglyenough one of the most vociferous opponents of American slavery,

18 Exec. Order No. 9981, 13 Fed Reg. 4313 (July 26, 1948).

19 Exec. Order No. 10730 (1957), available at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/

doctranscripts/document_89_transcript.htm (October 26, 2004).20 KENNETH O'REILLY, NIXON'S PIANO: PRESIDENTS AND RACIAL POLITICS FROM WASH-

INGTON TO CLINTON 12 (1995).

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410 CARDOZO PUB. LAW, POLICY & ETHICS J.

David Walker, was one of the few abolitionists to articulate the eco-nomic necessity of free slave labor in seventeenth and eighteenth centuryAmerica. Walker says, "The fact is, the labour of slaves comes so cheapto the avaricious usurpers, and is (as they think) of such great utility tothe country where it exists, that those who are actuated by sordid avariceonly, overlook the evils, which will as sure as the Lord lives, follow afterthe good."'"

The modern theorist who perhaps captures best the complex es-sence of slavery is Maulana Karanga. He postulates that American slav-ery was predicated on three major factors: its profitability, its practicalityand its justifiability; without slavery, America could not have evolvedand sustained itself as a free independent player in the growing globalcapitalist system of trade and politics. The profitability of 220 years offree labor is self-evident. African enslavement was clearly more practicalthan that originally attempted with white indentured servants and in-digenous natives. Thus, the massive importation of Africans became thenext best option. The first two factors could only be achieved and sus-tained if in fact an ideology could be developed to justify slavery.

Finally the basis of the American system of enslavement was itsjustifiability in European racist thought. Although the enslavement ofAfricans was based on economic reasons, it also rested in racism as anideology. Racism as an ideology became a justification and encourage-ment for enslavement. It expressed itself in religious' absurdities, bio-logical absurdities and cultural absurdities. Thus, religiously it wasargued God ordained whites to conquer, then civilize and Christianizethe African "heathen." The biological absurdities included redefinitioi.of Africans out of the human race, denying their history and humanityand giving them animal characteristics to suit their bestial treatment.22

Culturally we see this maddening scheme solidified in the culturalthemes advanced by Darwin, Galton, Blumenabach, Freud, and manyother white theorists of the era.

Historical timelines lend considerable credence to the importanceof "scientific" theory and the institutionalization of slavery in Americaimmediately before the America Revolution, the Declaration of Inde-

21 DAVID WALKER, DAVID WALKER'S APPEAL 3 (1995). See VINCENT HARDING, THERE IS

A RrvE. TI-IE BLACK STRUGGLE 1 R FREEDOM IN AmERICA 86 (1991) ("Walker was perhapsthe first writer to combine an attack on white racism and white economic exploitation in adeliberate and critical way.").

22 MAULANA KARANGA, INTRODUCTION TO BLACK STUDIES 122 (1993).

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pendence and the U.S. Constitution. Stephen Jay Gould raised serious

questions about what could be curiously labeled "historical coinci-dences." Noting that Johann Blumenbach established the most influen-tial of all racial classification systems in 1775 in his doctoral dissertation,Gould argues:

As the minutemen of Lexington and Concord began the AmericanRevolution . . . [Blumenbach] then republished the text for generaldistribution in 1776. The coincidence of three great documents in1776-Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (on the politics of lib-erty), Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (on the economics of individ-ualism) and Blumenbach's treatise on racial classification (on thescience of human diversity)-records the social ferment of these de-cades and sets the wider context that makes Blumenbach's taxonomy,and his subsequent decision to call the European race Caucasian, soimportant for our history and current concerns.23

An important and most relevant feature of Blumenbach's theory isthat he identified the Caucasian race as superior in beauty, subtly chang-ing the racial ordering in the world to a hierarchy of worth. This is theprimary reason that Blumenbach rather than his mentor Carolus Lin-naeus, who created the first racial taxonomy in 1759, is important in thebeginning phase of American race theory and racism.

Following Linnaeus and Blumenbach were Charles Darwin's the-

ory of natural selection, Sir Francis Galton's theory of eugenics (1883),both predicated on selective breeding and extermination of weaker races,and Sigmund Freud's theory of psycho-analysis, which laid the founda-tion for psychiatric studies. Thus, "When Africans were torn from their

families and homes and sold into slavery in the United States, sciencestood ready to define any disobedience or insubordination as a 'mentalillness.' "24

The article further states that in 1851 a noted Louisiana physician

Samuel Cartwright "discovered" two so-called mental diseases found ex-clusively among blacks that justified their enslavement. The first was"Drapetomania," which Cartwright professed to be a disease that causedblack slaves to have an uncontrollable urge to run away from their mas-ters. The prescribed treatment was prolonged whippings to exorcise thedemons. The second disease, "Dysaesthesia Aethiopis," supposedly af-

23 Stephen Gould, The Geometer of Race, DISCOVER MAGAZINE, Nov. 1994.24 JAN EASTGATE, CREATING RACISM: PSYCHIATRY'S BETRAYAL 8 (1955).

412 CARDOZO PUB. LAW, POLICY & ETHICSJ.

flicted the mind and the body. The diagnostic symptoms included diso-bedience, answering disrespectfully to a master or overseer and refusingto work. The purported cure was to inflict extreme hard labor thatwould send vitalized blood to the brain to liberate the demented slavemind. The article concludes that "much scientific" and statistical rheto-ric was used to justify slavery. One 1840 census "proved" that blacksliving under "unnatural conditions of freedom" in the north were moreprone to insanity. Dr. Edward Jarvis, a specialist in mental disorders,used this to conclude that slavery shielded blacks from some liabilitiesand dangers of active self-direction. 25 Pseudo-sciences and skewed relig-ious ideologies accomplished their purpose in convincing white Americain the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that blacks could in fact bemistreated, brutalized and discarded as troublesome property because

they were not human and, by virtue of this depersonalization, they werenot entitled to humane treatment and civil or moral consideration.

Many slavery apologists took delight in expressing that the 1787U.S. Constitution banned the importation of slaves 20 years hence, in1808.26 However, "The federal law of 1808 was so weak and the en-forcement of it so lax that a repeal was unnecessary to reopen thetrade." 27 According to John Hope Franklin, in 1790 there were fewerthan 700,000 slaves in America. By 1830 the number rose to over twomillion and by 1850 the number of slaves was just under four million.

Although there are well document incidences of slave resistanceand slave insurrections, the majority of slaves lived daily lives of whatCornel West calls nihilism. In describing the condition of AfricanAmericans in the ending years of the twentieth century he states,

Nihilism is not new in black America. The first African encounterwith the New World was an encounter with a distinctive form of theabsurd. The initial black struggle against degradation and devaluationin the enslaved circumstances of the New World was, in part, a strug-gle against nihilism. In fact, the major enemy of black survival inAmerica has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but ratherthe nihilistic threat-that is loss of hope and absence of meaning. For

25 Id.

26 U.S. CONST. art. V.27 JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN, FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM: A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERI-

CANS 137 (8th ed. 2002).

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as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility ofovercoming oppression stays alive.28

If meaninglessness, hopelessness and lovelessness are the founda-tions of nihilism and the plight of slaves two hundred years ago, it is alsothe daily plight of far too many blacks today even among those in theso-called black middle class. Without hope the homeless will remaindefeated in their own minds, as will the illiterate, the medically unservedand underserved, the terminally ill, the wrongfully incarcerated, the un-employed and even the working poor. Without hope, a person's tomor-rows will be no better than their todays. So what's the use in trying toimprove?

For many black reparationists, this pervasive sense of nihilism is atwenty-first-century vestige of eighteenth-century slavery and thereforeAmerica, particularly its corporate entities, owe 35 million black Ameri-cans a debt. Randall Robinson, one of the prominent supporters ofreparations writes, "There is no linear solution to our problems for ourproblems are not merely technical in nature. By now after nearly 380years of unrelenting psychological abuse, the biggest problem is inside

US"29

us.)2Robinson continues, "What slavery had firmly established in the

way of debilitating psychic pain and a lopsidedly unequal economic rela-tionship of blacks to whites, formal organs of state and federal govern-ment would cement in law for the century that followed. '" 3

1

One of the more vexing questions inherent in the reparationsmovement is who among the 35 million blacks today would be the ben-eficiaries of the money and services associated with this trillion-dollardebt to black America? More basically, how would anyone determinewho is black? Most blacks can only trace their genealogy back three andat best four generations, which places them at the door of the twentiethcentury and thirty-five years after the civil war ended slavery. Do weapply the infamous "one drop rule" or the one-eighth rule? Do weeliminate blacks with white ancestors? Would black billionaires Robert

Johnson and Oprah Winfrey receive the same reparations as the blackMississippi sharecropper or the homeless families in urban centersthroughout the nation?

28 CORNEL WEST, RACE MATrERS 15 (1993).29 RANDALL ROBINSON, THE DEPT: WHAT AMERICA OWES TO BLACKS 205 (2000).

30 Id. at 226.

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Reparations may be one modern solution to slavery but as a nationwe need to transcend symbolism and racial tomfoolery and confront thetotality of slavery with courage, conviction and an honest need for abso-lution of a nation's collective conscience. We all know that for truehealing to occur, the root causes, rather than the symptoms, need to bediagnosed and then treated. If we return to our historic illusionisttheme we will see that political history is replete with intentional distor-tions of reality to advance and maintain a public perception that beliesthe truth. Some examples of this historical magic would be Jefferson'sliaison of twenty-eight years with his slave Sally Hemming, and the re-sulting seven offspring, Franklin Roosevelt's polio affliction, John Ken-nedy's chronic back ailment and resultant dependence on narcotic painkillers, Reagan's trickle down economics, Johnson's Vietnam War,Nixon's Watergate cover-up, Washington's cherry tree, and George W.Bush's fabricated reasons for going to war with Iraq in 2003.

On the matter of American slavery and a legitimate historical pres-entation of African culture and civilization before the seventeenth cen-tury, there appears to have been a solid conspiracy of white chroniclersof history who were doggedly committed to inventing and "scientifi-cally" supporting the most extreme and damning stereotypical character-izations of black Americans. It is important to note that there wereblack intellectuals of that period who meticulously refuted these lies butthey had no legitimate standing in the mainstream social science com-munity and therefore their views were non-existent. However, therewere a few liberal minded white philanthropists and social scientists whoseemingly felt morally compelled to legitimize the existence of a distinctAfrican culture, which went a long way in debunking the typicaldemeaning stereotypes, that had prevailed for almost 200 years. Fore-most among these persons was Columbia University anthropologistMelville J. Herskovits who in 1940 published "The Myth of the NegroPast." This book was the result of seventeen years of research on theNegro in Africa, South America, the West Indies and in the UnitedStates.

Herskovits was one of only ten scholars asked to participate in themost comprehensive scientific study ever conducted on the AmericanNegro. The complete study, "The American Dilemma," that was di-rected by Swedish social scientist Karl Gunnar Myrdal, was released overa year after Herskovits' study. The scientific conclusion of Herskovitswas that the American Negro, contrary to the prevailing ideology of the

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past three centuries, has a rich and highly developed African culture andhistory. He stated, "This book when first published, discussed and doc-umented, a position that at the time was less than congenial to the con-siderable number of intellectuals who accommodated their thinking tothe position of an important and established group of social scientistsand students."

3 1

The prevailing ideology then concerning the American Negro wascaptured by Lewis C. Copeland who wrote, "The South's dependenceon the Negro is further obscured by the belief in the complete depen-dence of the black race upon the white race for moral as well as foreconomic support. The Negro is thought of as a child race, the ward ofthe civilized white man. We are told, "The savage and uncivilized blackman lacks the ability to organize his social life on the level of the whitecommunity. He is unrestrained and requires the constant control ofwhite people to keep him in check. ' 32

In addition to refuting this venal propaganda, Herskovits also rec-ognized and legitimized the scholarship of his black intellectual contem-poraries who also had through rigorous scientific scholarship challengedthe widespread racism expressed by these white prophets of hate. Fore-most among the black scholars were W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Wood-son and Charles Johnson all of whom had written extensively on therich and valuable cultural heritage of blacks in America. Yet, they wereunanimously ignored and discredited by their white counterparts.Then, for the first time ever, Herskovits stated and reaffirmed what Du-

Bois, Woodson and Johnson had been saying for over forty years:

DuBois held fast to his beliefs and fought valiantly for his race, saying,I do not for a moment doubt that my Negro descent and narrowgroup culture have in my cases predisposed me to interpret my factstoo favorably for my race; but there is little danger of misleading herefor the champions of white folk are legion. The Negro has long beenthe clown of history; the football of anthropology and the slave ofindustry. I am trying to show here why these attitudes can no longerbe maintained. I realize that the truth of history lies not in the mouthof the partisans but in the calm science that sits between her cause Iseek to save, and wherever I fail, I am at least paying truth the respectof earnest effort.33

31 MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS, THE MYTH OF THE NEGRO PAST xxviii (1958).32 LEWIS C. COPELAND, THE NEGRO AS A CONTRAST CONCEPTION 174 (1939).33 BLACK TITAN: W.E.B. DuBoiS 91 (John Henrik Clarke, et al., eds., 1970) (1915).

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Discouraged and frustrated, DuBois renounced his American citi-zenship and moved to Ghana in 1961. Two years later on the eve of the1963 March on Washington, he died peacefully at the age of ninety-six.There is great significance in the travails of persons such as Herskovitsand DuBois. First, their protracted life long struggles point out the vir-ulent entrenched malignancy of institutionalized racism in America. Inspite of the renowned work of the legions of truth seeking social scien-tists who labored on behalf of justice and equality for the African Ameri-can, today we still see clear vestiges of this evil social millstone that hadits genesis in seventeenth century slavery. Herskorvits died on February25, 1963 a mere six months before his friend and colleague DuBois. Hewas only sixty-eight years old and never relented in his commitment tohis life long struggle for enlightened Negro history.

In his most recent work "Who Owns History: Rethinking the Pastin a Changing World," Eric Foner states:

A second set of debates centered on the legacy of slavery and the CivilWar. In an essay on historical consciousness, Friedrich Nietzschespoke of "creative forgetfulness"-how the memory of some aspects ofthe past is predicated on amnesia among others. Slavery is a case inpoint. Nowhere is the gap between scholarly inquiry and public per-ceptions of history more stark. It is probably safe to say that the finestbody of American historical writing to appear during the past thirtyyears has been produced by scholars of slavery and emancipation.This literature has not only established beyond question the centralityof slavery to the history of the United States but has refashioned ourunderstanding of subjects ranging from colonial settlement to theAmerican Revolution and the origins and consequences of the CivilWar. 34

Americans must not be blinded or deluded by the purported no-blesse oblige of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth, Four-teenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, the 1948Truman executive order, the Brown v. Board of Education35 decision northe 2003 pro-affirmative action Supreme Court decision.3 6 Racial dis-crimination should have begun to moderate after the Constitution out-lawed the importation of slaves in 1808. Yet it did not, primarily

34 FONER, supra note 2, at xii.35 344 U.S. 1 (1954).36 Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).

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because the inhumane treatment of blacks had already become an inte-gral part of our social, economic, and political order. A prime exampleis the three-fifths compromise that was also in the 1787 U. S. Constitu-tion.7 In 1968, Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton politely de-fined racism as "the predication of decisions and policies onconsiderations of race for the purpose of subordinating a racial groupand maintaining control over it." 38

I submit a more pointed definition of racism. Racism is, "theeverlasting legacy of American slavery that with ruthless intentionalityoppresses, represses and commits cultural genocide against people ofcolor but particularly black Americans. It is manifested in all of theprimary social, economic, educational and political institutions inAmerica. Oppression puts a people down, repression keeps them downand cultural genocide infests their lives with pervasive nihilism. It killstheir spirit and strips them of hope." Evidence of racism is seen daily insubstandard housing, haphazard healthcare, mis-education, discrimina-tory criminal sentencing and symbolic political patronizing. To createthe illusion of progress, some blacks are selectively included in the main-stream of American life, most are marginalized and those at the bottomwho make up the permanent underclass engage in daily suicidal ritualsthat mirror suicide among slaves, starting with throwing themselvesoverboard during the Middle Passage.

Is this critical American problem that Mrydal referred to in 1944as the American Dilemma solvable?

CONCLUSION

How incredibly ironic it is that the most popularly advanced topicsin social anthropology today are prima facie evidence that the earliestbipedal humanoids physiologically were Negroid in nature and fully ca-pable of intelligent decision making. Intelligence in its most rudimen-tary form is the ability to solve problems. Many of the daily problemsconfronted by this seven million year old humanoid were resolved bythe invention of fire. Initially warmth against the climatic elements andcooking and preservation of food were key features of the utilizing offire. However, centuries later the use of fire in the smelting of ironrevolutionized tool making, weaponry and early industrialization.

37 U.S. CONST. art. I, § 2, c. 3.38 STOKELY CARMICHAEL & CHARLES V. HAMILTON, BLACK POWER: THE POLITICS OF

LIBERATION IN AMERICA 3 (1967).

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Here and elsewhere, particularly in the Great Congo Valley, the use ofiron characterized Africa. As Franz Boas says: It seems likely that at atime when the European was still satisfied with rude stone tools, theAfrican had invented or adopted the art of smelting iron. Considerfor a moment what this invention has meant for the advance of thehuman race. As long as the hammer, knife, saw, drill, the spade andthe hoe had to be chipped out of stone, or had to be made of shell orwood, effective industrial work was not impossible but difficult. Agreat progress was made when copper found in large nuggets was ham-mered out into tools and later on shaped by melting, and when bronzewas introduced; but the true advancement of industrial life did notbegin until the hard iron was discovered. It seems not unlikely thatthe people who made the marvelous discovery of reducing iron ores bysmelting were African Negroes. 39

If we return to the original illusionist theme of this discussion onecan only be amazed by the degree of deception that American historyhas heaped upon an unsuspecting public. Adding yet more incredulityto the equation is the fact that one of the original scientific racist,Charles Darwin acknowledged in his second publication after the Originof Species (1859), Descent of Men (1871), that Africa was the cradle ofmodern civilization. John Jackson writes, "In 1871 Darwin's Descent ofMan was issued, and in this book the father of Natural Selection pro-duced impressive evidence that man and the anthropoid apes could betraced to a common ancestor. Most of Darwin's contemporaries fa-vored the continent of Asia as the birth place of the human race, butDarwin suggested that Africa was most likely to have been the Cradle ofMankind."40 Viewing these two early works of Darwin independentlysuggests the scholarly progression of the leading evolutionist of the era.However, if we examine these works within the context of Americanslavery, then we see a whole different paradigm emerging.

Earlier in this paper we cited the suspicion raised by Stephen JayGould regarding the historical coincidence of emerging race theory ad-vanced by Darwin, Galton, Blumenbach, et.al and the virulence of insti-tutional racism between 1787 and 1877 (end of Reconstruction). Eventhough slavery may have officially ended with the civil war, racism per-petuated the slave-master mentality for another one hundred years. Thescientific and religious conclusion then centered around portraying

39 W.E.B. DuBois, AFRICA, ITS GEOGRAPHY, PEOPLE AND PRODUCTS 13 (1930).40 JOHN G. JACKSON, INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN CIVILIZATION 40 (1970).

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American blacks and Africans as void of a culture, civilization, civilityand intelligence. Accordingly, the scientific conclusion is natural selec-tion, a master white race and manifest destiny were more valuable forthe 19th century power brokers than would have been acknowledgingAfrican legitimacy as well as African Americans' achievements such as:Oberlin College in Ohio being integrated in 1833 and Blacks constitut-ing one third of the student body at the start of the civil war (1861); orthat in 1823 Alexander Twilight became the first black to graduate froman American college (Middleburg); or that in 1850, Lucy Session be-came the first Black woman to graduate from an American college(Oberlin) or that in 1849, John D. and Thomas T. White became thefirst Black doctors to graduate from a U.S. Medical school (Bowdoin).Similarly after the civil war in 1874, Edward Bouchette was the firstblack to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa and in 1876 became the firstblack to receive a Ph.D. in Physics (Yale). It is easy to see why it was ofthe utmost importance to continue the lie of black inferiority, infantal-ism and ignorance. American historians have for well over 150 yearsdeceived a nation by keeping its citizens in Plato's cave wherein theywere only able to view reality filtered through the shadows of scientificracism and religious propaganda. It is only now in the year 2004 thatwe see two of the most highly respected scientific journals not only ac-knowledging but celebrating Africa as the cradle of civilization and Afri-cans as major contributors to the seven million year existence ofmankind on planet earth.41

Perhaps Americans should be guardedly optimistic about these newrevelations that have been intentionally obscured for far too many gen-erations. We should be able to see why this issue of slavery, 139 yearsafter its official demise, still is fodder for the diehard racists but at thesame time fertile ground for life after the illusionists. Little did Jeffer-son, Adams, Franklin and the other founders know that in spite of theirgross constitutional injustice to African American in 1787, these wrongswould at long last be corrected in the twenty-first century.

On July 9, 2003, the 43rd President of the United States ofAmerica, George W. Bush stood on Goree Island in Senegal West Africaand declared slavery to be "history's worst crime" and admonished the

41 See African Origins: Ethiopian Fossils are the Earliest Homosapians, NATURE, June 12,

2003; New Look at Human Evolution, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, June 2003.

419

420 CARDOZO PUB. LAW, POLICY & ETHICS J.

founding fathers for heaping hypocrisy upon injustice by the manner inwhich they dealt with slavery.42

Eleven years earlier, one of America's most distinguished historicfigures, Lawrence Douglas Wilder, the first elected African Americangovernor of a state (Virginia), visited this same tract of land on GoreeIsland. Wilder, the grandson of slaves, announced in 1993 that aUnited States National Slavery Museum would be created so thatAmerica, and particularty her children, could be educated about the ex-treme importance slavery played in not only the creation of America but

also its centrality to the social, economic, political and psychologicalcharacter of the nation.43

Socially, the institution of slavery established rules both writtenand unwritten for black/white relations in America. Economically, slav-ery was the foundation upon which America's international power wasdeveloped. Politically, slavery was the bait that helped spark the Ameri-can Revolutionary War in 1776 as the colonials excoriated King GeorgeIII for supporting the slave trade worldwide. Yet, in 1788, when theU.S. Constitution was ratified, America permanently rendered AfricanAmericans chattel, relegated to a non-entity status with a legal value ofthree fifths of a white man.44 Psychologically, due to the human andcultural degradation of blacks, the nation began to institute laws, poli-cies, norms, and daily practices that engendered the deep self hate inblacks that persists to this day. Similarly, the black-white inferiority-superiority dichotomy evolved in the white community. Wilder'sdream of an American slavery museum is about to become a reality onthe banks of the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It ishere that the full story of American slavery will be told.

EXPLORATION - INDENTURE - ENSLAVEMENT -

EMANCIPATION

42 Don Melvin, Bush Condemns Slavery's Horrors: Search for Justice 'is not over, THE AT-

LtV&t 3ouVtNM.-CoNSTrrfsfo, 31tly 9, 2003, at &t .43 See Keith B. Richburg, African Island Tells 'Unknown Story' of Slavery's Birth, WASH.

POST, June 30, 1992, at A16.44 U.S. CONST. art. V.

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