I was born and raised in the United States of America. I am a black woman who grew up in poverty in Jim Crow’s racist south. My father served in the Army during WWII. After he was discharged, he was not able to obtain meaningful employment. As a result, we lived in poverty. Two of my three brothers served in the Air Force. The other one served in the Army. I served in the Army Reserve for over twenty years. My niece served in the Air Force and my nephew served in the Army. We are a military family and love our country. Patriots fight for the rights granted to us by the U.S. Constitution. As patriots who love our country, we must continue to challenge our country to be better for all people.
It has been over 52 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. We are Americans yet black people, other people of color and some white people are still fighting for justice and equality. When we protest or speak out, the response from a few is usually “If you don’t like it here, leave” or “Go back to where you came from.” True patriots would know these responses are not the right responses. They would be change agents in the fight for equal justice. We live in a diverse country that will always be diverse.
I studied the history of the pilgrimage of black people from Africa to America. According to the book, The Negro Pilgrimage In America, the author C.L. Lincoln, wrote “The history of black people is part of America’s history. Crispus Attucks, a black sailor, shed his blood at the beginning of the American Revolution so white Americans could be free from the British while black Americans remained in slavery. During the Civil War, Southern slaves protected the families of their slave masters while the slave masters were fighting to keep them enslaved.”
Booker T. Washington wrote in his book Up From Slavery, “When you have gotten the full story of heroic conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American war, have heard it from the lips of Northern soldier and Southern soldier, from ex-abolitionist and ex-masters, then decide within yourselves whether a race that is thus willing to die for its country should not be given the highest opportunity to live in its country.”
Slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 but training of black soldiers began after promulgation of a provisional Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. An all-black unit, The First Regiment Louisiana Heavy Artillery was organized. The War Department authorized organization of the first all-black regular army combat units.
Even though President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation two and a half years earlier, it was not until June 19, 1865 that the slaves in Texas were free. Major General Gordon Granger led Union soldiers to Galveston, Texas with the news that the war had ended and the enslaved people were now free. An annual celebration called Juneteenth honors the end of slavery in the United States.
According to C.L. Lincoln, black people became citizens of the United States on July 28, 1868 with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In previous years, black men fought during the American Revolution, the Civil War, were slaughtered at Fort Pillow but were not even citizens.
When Confederate troops captured black Union soldiers, they were rarely treated as prisoners of war. If they were not killed on the spot, they were taken as slaves. On April 12, 1864, General Nathan Forrest and his Confederate troops captured the Union stronghold at Fort Pillow, approximately forty miles north of my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Half the garrison consisted of black troops and the rebels ruthlessly killed every black soldier they saw. At the end of the war, approximately 200,000 black men had served in the Union Army and more than 38,000 had given their lives. The civil war ended on April 9, 1865. By the end of the civil war, there were approximately one hundred and fifty all black regiments in the Union Army.
After black people became citizens, the South moved to re-shackle black people with a series of “Black Codes.” The Codes established a system of social, economic and political controls aimed at placing black people in a position below that of any white person. The codes dealt with labor contracts, migration, vagrancy, civil and legal rights. People without lawful employment were declared vagrants. The Black Codes implied that black people were to be a supporting caste, both economically and psychologically.
Black people had difficulty earning a living. The Freedman’s Bureau Act, was created in 1865 by President Lincoln, to aid former slaves with food, housing, education, healthcare and employment. It also provided for the assignment of confiscated Southern land to black people. After President Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson vetoed this act in 1866 and restored the land to white ex-Confederates. He believed that the Freedman act encroached on state’s rights and would prevent freed slaves from becoming independent by offering too much assistance. It didn’t matter that black people had been enslaved for two hundred and forty six years.
White people were left with land but no money or labor to develop it. Northern bankers had investment capital and Southern landowners had black labor. Sharecropping was the South’s answer to the problem of land, money and labor in an economically profitable enterprise. The bankers lent the landowners money and sharecropping bound black people to the land and white landowners.
This was a new type of slavery. The landowner took a lien against the tenant farmer’s share of the crop. When accounts were settled after harvest the sharecropper was supposed to share the profits. Most black people during those times had low literacy or were illiterate. White landowners told them their accounts were overdrawn. As a result, black people remained in debt to the white landowner. To wipe out of the debt, the tenant was required to make a crop for the same landowner year after year. If a tenant tried to leave the farm without paying off his debt, he and his family were jailed and fined. The vicious cycle repeated itself.
Lincoln wrote that much of today’s present race problems have roots in the Reconstruction period. Segregation was developed by white America as a means of insuring social, political, and economic distance between the races. At the same time, the labor of black people was necessary for the restoration of the South’s economy. It didn’t matter that black men fought in wars prior to becoming citizens.
During the Great Depression black people were veterans of poverty. Jobs that were traditionally performed by black people were taken by white people. Black people have appealed to the conscience of white people for years. Most of the cries and appeals have fallen on deaf ears. We live in a society that still praise all that is associated with white people and ridicules whatever is associated with black people. Even now, it is difficult to escape from oppression to opportunity in our own country.
In 1492, Pedro Alonzo Nino, a black navigator of the Nina, reached the New World with Christopher Columbus. Black explorers also assisted in the expeditions led by Balboa and others that explored Canada and the upper portions of the Mississippi River. In 1770, Crispus Attucks, a black man, was the first martyr of the American Revolution.
My ancestors shed their blood for this country before they were citizens and were mistreated and killed. My ancestors fought for civil rights for everyone and were beaten or killed. When I was a child, my family and others lived in poverty, lived on the lands of white landowners, and labored long hours in their cotton fields for less than minimum wage. We lived in a country that showed its dark side for dark skin people. Every school morning, we rode a bus long distances to a segregated school and placed our hands over our hearts and pledged allegiance to a flag that promised liberty and justice for all. At the end of the school day, we returned to our shack that didn’t have electricity, running water or enough food to eat.
We had to fight for the liberty and justice for all. During the Civil Rights Movement, activists protested peacefully and marched for equal rights and justice. When I was a teenager, I joined them in this powerful fight. As a result of people taking action, some progress was made. Members of my family and I raised our right hands to defend the Constitution of the United States. Like our ancestors, we served in the military for a country that treated us unjustly based on our skin color.
This is our country. Black people helped this country to be what it is. It is not yet what it could be because of long term racist ideologies. We were promised liberty and justice for all. These words must be put into action. As Americans, we have power and should continue to challenge our fellow citizens and politicians to do what’s right for everyone. When this happen, as Booker T. Washington said, we will all have the highest opportunity to live and thrive in our own country!
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References
C.Eric Lincoln. November 1967. The Negro Pilgrimage In America. Bantam Pathfinder Books.
Booker T. Washington. Up From Slavery. Bantham Pathfinder Edition.
Juneteenth. Wikipedia. Website. Accessed June 19, 2020.