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Vol. 8 Issue 14…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…April
8, 2005
Venue
for an Artist
I’m the Son of Viet Nam
By James A. Stelly
When I came out of my high school
I did not feel I was a fool
I heard my country call and say
My Son, I must take you away
I wondered why some were deferred
Those who answered were preferred.
On foreign soil I found a place
No one judged me by my race
I saw my brothers fall and die
They said I had no time to cry
So all day long I had to fight
And, no one heard me cry at night.
In time, I could not understand
Why was I killing my fellow man?
So, I asked the dead please help me see
Why are you, too, killing me?
I killed the pain with booze and dope
And, I came home and saw no hope.
When I came home, they spit on me
They called me baby killer, you see.
Not one of you could fill my place
Why didn’t you see the hurt in my
face?
I didn’t come home to do you harm
No one thanked me and took me by the
arm.
To you I say you’ve got some
nerve
Why hate me ‘cause I chose to
serve
Far from home in a place I dread
Oftentimes, I wished I was dead
At least over there I knew who to
attack
But the enemy here always stabs in the
back.
I’m America’s child, but
she’s not my Mom
I’m the Son of Viet Nam.
About
Me: From slavery to the current condition of
blacks, Stelly poetically expresses his views on a variety of subjects in his
collection of writings “Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever.” Reflecting the pride of his people,
Stelly boldly proclaims his freedom and determination to allow no chains to
enslave his creativity.
VRA Re-Authorization Campaign
Recently,
representatives from more than a dozen national organizations, including Nation
of Islam, Progressive National Baptist Convention, American Civil Liberties
Union, etc., held a press conference in the nation's capital to announce a
campaign to press Congress to re-authorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The VRA,
which was extended during the Reagan Administration to 2007, was passed by
Congress to add enforcement powers to the Fifteenth Amendment.
Critical
enforcement provisions that include Justice Department clearance before
changing voting procedures and language and other assistance at polling places
expire in 2007. To prevent this from occurring, the coalition plans to launch a
nationwide campaign to educate the general public on the importance of the
Voting Rights Act. Plans include a petition drive with the goal of collecting 1
million signatures to encourage congressional re-authorization of VRA.
Other
events include two massive marches and rallies. Scheduled for August 6 in
Atlanta, Georgia to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the VRA and October 16
in Washington, DC, a 10th anniversary Million Man March, these events will
press Congress to reauthorize the VRA and highlight the state of black America;
participants will rally for jobs and health care.
Julien Stelly (?-1896)
Most
of what is known about Julien Stelly comes from his family's oral history and
newspaper accounts, including an interview with Dr. O.W. Martin, the man that
led the militia that killed Stelly in March 1896. Julien Stelly was a prominent
figure in Port Barre, Louisiana. Respected by his peers, he had many followers.
Stelly also owned a considerable amount of property. On the Negro vote, he had
taken a firm stand in favor of blacks exercising the franchise; he refused to
be swayed by threats made against him and his family. Even though some of his
relatives disowned and distanced themselves from him, Stelly held steadfast to
his beliefs and registered to vote.
Martin
and a contingent of armed men converged on Palmetto, Louisiana. Their stated
objectives were to prevent Negroes from registering to vote and to protect the
local registrar. On Friday, March 30, 1896, Martin's militia met an even larger
group of armed white men already assembled at the registrar's office.
When
no blacks tried to register to vote, Martin, according to his April 3, 1896
newspaper interview, "...Thought I would go around and talk in a friendly
way to some of the Negroes and explain to them the wish of the good thinking
people of this Parish who we were representing. I went to their houses and told
them we had no desire to harm them, but this was a white man's country and the
white men intended to control his political destiny in the future. All we ask
of them was to stay at home, attend to their work and let politics alone. I
told them that the men who were urging them to register and vote were not their
best friend and were only using them to get into office, not caring how much
trouble they got into afterward. I told them plainly that we looked upon them as
the inferior race and we were opposed to both political and social equality,
that the white republicans and populists were as much opposed to social
equality as we were and only advocated social equality because they needed
their vote to ride them into office. The Negroes took my advice in good spirit
and assured me that they recognized the force of my argument and were perfectly
willing to let the white people settle the election among themselves."
Days
later, the white men met and decided to confront Stelly. The white supremacist
league wanted to make an example of Stelly to discourage other blacks.
More
than one hundred strong, Martin's militia rode to Stelly's farm. According to
oral history, Stelly was a crack shot. And, though he was killed, Martin's militia
paid a price. At least two wagonloads of militia members were hauled off when
the shooting ended.
Julien
Stelly was buried, but on white supremacist league orders his body was moved
from the cemetery to an unmarked grave. Stelly's property holdings were sold to
whites there in Port Barre. (Source: The Opelousas Courier (April 4, 1896), now
called The Daily World, reprinted in "Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever" by
James A. Stelly (1996)).
Democracy Compromised
By Dot
The most basic right of citizens in a democracy is the right to vote. One man,
one vote is the highest standard. While considered the world's foremost
democracy, the USA does not come close to this standard. In establishing a
slave republic, its founders discarded the equality explicit in a democracy,
since these white men believed themselves superior to others.
Cleverly,
the word "slavery" does not appear in the US Constitution until the
Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished it. Yet, neither this nor subsequent
amendments specifically repealed sections of the constitution that made
economic and political slavery cornerstones of the republic. As testaments to
their longevity, there are the US Senate and Electoral College.
These
institutions are products of the Great or Three-Fifths Compromise of Article 1
Section 2. This unholy agreement between the constitutional convention
delegates from slave-free and small-large states classified persons and
established their relative value for representation and taxation purposes. Had the
Thirteenth Amendment truly abolished slavery, it would have specifically
repealed Article 1 Section 2. The Senate would be structured to provide
proportional representation and there would be no Electoral College.
As
currently structured, the vote of a Senator from a small state, primarily red
ones, carries the same weight as Senators representing populations far greater.
States with relatively small populations can effectively control the Senate.
Likewise, these small states can determine where tax dollars are spent and who
gets elected president via the Electoral College system. More than compromised
democracy, it is hypocrisy.
Missing the Point
By John Burl Smith
The
disparate treatment accorded Deadria Farmer-Paellmann and her husband, a white
German, reflects life in the US. This couple went shopping; each made credit
card purchases. She had to produce a picture ID and provide her address; his
purchases were rung up, no questions asked. Mrs. Farmer-Paellmann, 36, a
researcher and mother, spent five years archiving evidence that proves
Corporate America benefited from slavery. Her point is that the vestiges of
slavery and its impact on blacks did not disappear with the end of the Civil
War and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
Taking
her point further, since there was no adjustment period that allowed blacks to
reverse the mind-set that was beaten and bred into them during slavery,
psychological slavery continued. Moreover, since whites did not voluntarily end
slavery, they did not change their belief that blacks deserved less than
whites. Whites legalized this lesser status in laws, reinforced it economically
and socialized it with discrimination. Regardless of emancipation, the 13th,
14th and 15th Amendments, whites forced blacks to endure
a second-class status. Consequently, blacks never recovered from the more than
three hundred years of legal slavery nor the one hundred plus years of
psychological slavery.
Government
(federal and state), corporations and individual whites steadfastly refused to
accept any change that allowed blacks unfettered competition with whites. They
ignored the fact that free black labor generated wealth for whites, their heirs
and the government through taxation. After emancipation, blacks still were not
allowed to fully participate in free enterprise. Lawsuits have shown repeatedly
that blacks continued to live and work in a hostile US environment. It cannot
be shown discrimination, disparate treatment and inequality ended for blacks.
Farmer-Paellmann's
experiment and Dot M. Smith's research document that the 3/5 Compromise
prevents blacks from closing the wealth gap. Exposing Aetna in 2000,
Farmer-Paellmann showed it insured slaves and made slave owners beneficiaries.
She identified 60 companies that profited from slavery. Because they continue
to benefit today, whites refused to admit responsibility for the vestiges of
slavery. "Sins of their fathers," the wealth they enjoy was derived
through kidnapping, enslavement and murder.
This
point is missed because many US newspaper companies today own Antebellum-era
newspapers that profited from slavery. They ran ads that promised reward money
for capturing and returning runaway slaves, offered slaves for sale or sought
slaves for purchase. Most notably the Public Opinion which became The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, Cox media group, The Sun, today The Baltimore Sun, owned by
Tribune Co., The Georgia
Telegraph, today Knight Ridder's The
Macon Telegraph, The
Memphis Daily Appeal, forerunner of E.W. Scripps' The Commercial Appeal, The Daily Dispatch, Media
General's Richmond
Times-Dispatch; The
Daily Picayune, today The
Times-Picayune, Advance Publications. Even USA Today, Gannett, owns
newspapers that carried slave ads: The
Montgomery Daily Advertiser, now The
Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser;
and The Louisville Daily
Journal, today The
Courier-Journal of Louisville.
These
newspapers not only supported slavery but segregation and every law, social
custom and lynching that maintained the second-class status of blacks. They,
like individual whites, deny any responsibility for the heritage and privilege
they helped create and are beneficiaries of today.
Disgruntled says:
Johnnie Cochran, one of the most brilliant legal minds of our times, recently
died. He had a brain tumor. Rumor claims Cochran could have been murdered to
prevent him from using his legal prowess to successfully argue cases for
slavery reparations. Since the cause of his death was a brain tumor, there are
other possibilities besides some nefarious person or organization eliminating
him by somehow causing a tumor. At age 67, Cochran was a dapper dresser.
Cognizant of his appearance, there was not a single gray hair in his head, at
least none was apparent during his public appearances. In fact, his hair
appeared uncommonly black. A busy man, he probably used a cell phone
religiously. Looking with intelligent eyes on Cochran's lifestyle, one must
surely realize hair dyes and cell phones used excessively form a lethal brain
combination.
Disgruntled feels: Underprivileged! A white man, Professor Tim Wise, an
anti-racist activist whose work can be read online at www.timwise.org,
wrote the best essay I have ever read on white privilege. Once we acknowledge that there are
certain privileges tied to white skin, we can begin to see that non-whites are
relatively underprivileged. In the case of blacks that underprivileged or
deprived status extends back to slavery, and it created a gap in black
socioeconomic and political welfare relative to whites. That gap still exists
today, and no amount of denial will make it go away.
Disgruntled wants to know: With the sensational wall-to-wall coverage given each
non-story, evidence that big corporate advertisers control the news media
grows. Sure Terri Schiavo's slow
demise and the Pope's passage warranted some news coverage. But, 24-7 was
overkill. While the airtime and newsprint are devoted to these events, other
news receive no or insufficient coverage. Great examples are the pending
financial crisis and the recent school shooting. The young shooter was taking
the psycho-drug Prozac. You can bet big pharma did not want you to know that.
To protect its big money advertisers, the media will not ask, is there a
connection between these murderous rages and this class of mind-altering drugs?
By John
Burl Smith
Washington
Times reporter Walter Williams (6-14-2001) wrote, "Slavery was an
abomination. There's no argument, based on morality, that can justify slavery
and its attendant evils. Indeed, were it possible, slave traders and slave
owners should be forced to make reparations to those whom they enslaved."
Williams argues that "reparations" for the "vestiges of
slavery" is simply nonsense."
The
point of reparations for slave descendants is that the wealth that accrued to
whites by working blacks for free did not evaporate with slavery. Whites passed
those socioeconomic and political benefits on to their children to enjoy.
Slaves descendants inherited the lack of wealth of their parents and passed
that on to their children as a legacy. Reporter James Cox's research, which
examined modern US companies that built their wealth on slavery, proves my
point.
Brown
Bros, today Brown Bros. Harriman, served as a middleman brokering slave-grown
cotton by arranging shipment to mills in New England and Great Britain. New
York financiers, James and William Brown's merchant bank grew rich loaning
millions to planters, merchants and cotton brokers to buy and sell slaves. When
planters or their banks failed, Brown Bros. took possession of their assets. It
used its local agents to run repossessed plantations and manage their slaves.
Louisiana court records affirm Browns Bros. were slave owners. Claims during
the 1840s and '50s from three Concordia Parish cotton plantations with 346
slaves each named Brown Bros in court proceedings.
Shortly
after arriving in the US from Germany, Lehman Bros.' founder, Henry Lehman
along with his brothers, Mayer and Emanuel moved to Alabama. Middlemen, like
the Brown brothers, they stored, bought and sold cotton to brokers or banks in
New York and Liverpool, England. Mayer Lehman is listed as the owner of seven
slaves -- three males and four females, including a 14-year-old slave girl
named Martha. More than owning slaves, the Lehman brothers worked for the
Southern cause during the Civil War, according to family historians. Leaving
the South after the war, they became commodity traders in New York. Lehman
Bros. took a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1887.
North
America's four major rail networks -- Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and
Canadian National built their wealth on the backs of black slaves. Like
newspapers, nearly every rail line built east of the Mississippi River and
south of the Mason-Dixon line before the Civil War was constructed and/or
operated with slave labor. Ted Kornweibel, a professor of African studies at
San Diego State University, has documented 94 early rail lines that fall into
this category. By his count, 39 now belong to Norfolk Southern of Norfolk, VA;
36 are owned by CSX of Jacksonville, FL; 12 belong to Union Pacific, Omaha, NE
and seven belong to Canadian National of Montreal. Corporate records show these
railroads bought slaves or leased them from their owners. Enslaved workers
frequently appeared in annual reports as line-item expenses, referred to
variously as "hands," "colored hands," "Negro
hires," "Negro property" and "slaves."
There
is no doubt that families and stockholders of Brown Bros. Harriman, Lehman
Bros., Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National enjoy wealth
today built on the backs of slaves. Moreover, those slaves' descendants do not
enjoy the same wealth as they do today. Whites refuse get the point of
reparations because they are still benefiting from the vestiges slavery today.
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