My Life In Transition

Much has been said about the lack of progress of the so called African Americans, I have listened to the arguments presented by different schools of thinking.

“African Americans are not progressive, they lack motivation, they do not capitalize on opportunities available to them”.

“African Americans are content to stay in the ghettos and take drugs, they are the worst oppressors of their women”

“African Americans need to get educated and compete with the whites and stop talking about reparations for being the descendants of slaves”

“Goddamn those worthless good for nothing N Word, no ambition”

It goes on and on but how many of those who express such opinions, ever take an honest and detailed look into the turbulent history of the so called African American? how many are they who have ever examined in detail the list of Jim Crow Laws designed to trammel the spiritual, social, economic and academic development of the the “African American” who were granted their so called freedom.

Anyone who is willing to have an open and unbiased mind and look at the journey of the “African American’s” emergence form slavery into what was miscalled freedom, they will discover some frightening realities, which perpetuates even into the 21st century.

Imagine a people born in and lived in slavery for generations are suddenly told that they are free, they have no money, very little land holdings, shacks for homes, no prospect of getting a job, they are mostly uneducated because under slavery, slaves were forbidden to learn to read.

The flagicious Jim Crow laws were designed to control them and make them feel inferior, these so called free people were not allowed to walk on the same side of the street as a white person.
It was illegal for a black-man to raise his voice in the presence of a white woman, yet a white woman could call him the Nword and revile him in the most disgraceful way.

Black people were not allowed to sell their wares after dark, then there was the insidious Vagrancy Law which gave the police the authority to arrest black people for almost no reason at all and then rent them out to the plantation owners under the guise of “working off their fines” because they could not pay them.

Emancipation for the African American for many years was in some ways worse than slavery.

As a so called free people, they could only ride at the back of the bus and had to vacate their seat if a white person desired it.

The doors of many schools were closed to black children.

The racial discrimination was everywhere, blacks were targeted in every aspects of their lives.

The Klu Klux Klan was free to terrorize them, lynch them, burn their homes, shoot them down like dogs and the law enforcement authorities would turn a blind eye.
These people with their newly acquired freedom were treated by the white society worse than animals, even a stray dog would get more respect than a black person during those years, the number of examples that I could cite about the horrors meted out to these freed salves, would take me more time than I want to spend writing this article.

How many people today remember the Dred Scott Decision by the Supreme Court of The United States?

Dred Scott decision
Last Updated: 3-28-2018 See Article History
Alternative Titles: Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott decision, formally Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.

Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. It has been cited in particular as the most egregious example in the court’s history of wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem. A later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, famously characterized the decision as the court’s great “self-inflicted wound.”

Such a decision by the highest court in the land is indisputable evidence of the mentality of the people in that period of American history.
No people can emerge from situations like those faced by the African Americans, emotionally and psychologically un-scarred.
The persecution continues today in a more controlled way.

Though this article focuses on African Americans, I am not an African American, I have never been faced with the type of relentless discrimination and racial persecution they have endured.
I am not trying to defend or condemn African Americans, my sole purpose is to bring to the forefront the baneful nature of racism and the pernicious effects it can be bring to bear upon the people it is targeted against.
Racism is recrudescing all over the world, we need to rise up and condemn it in whatever form it raises its gruesome head.

I am sure there are those who will say that I am trying to stir up the past, maybe I am because when the racist actions of some people today are blatantly mirroring those actions of the past we would like to have sink beyond our active recollection like a heavy stone, it is very necessary to show where we are coming from, where we are now and what we need to do to get to where we should have been a very long time ago.

No, I am not a racist, my list of friends encompasses people from all races, I am just a regular guy who is very intolerant of racism of any kind, I will fight against racism with every breath of life remaining in me and if it means that I have to sacrifice my life fighting against racism, I am willing do so.

1863 The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect:

On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signs the final Emancipation Proclamation, which ends slavery in the rebelling states. A preliminary proclamation was issued in September 1862, following the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. The act signaled an important shift in the Union’s Civil War aims,expanding the goal of the war from reunification to include the eradication of slavery.

The proclamation freed all slaves in states that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. Lincoln used vacated Congressional seats to determine the areas still in rebellion, as some parts of the South had already been recaptured and representatives returned to Congress under Union supervision.Asthe proclamationfreed slaves only in rebellious areas it actually freed no one, since these were areas not yet under Union control.

The measure was still one of the most important acts in American history, however, as it meant slavery would end when those areas were recaptured. Most crucially, this measure effectively sabotaged Confederate attempts to secure recognition by foreign governments, especially Great Britain.

When reunification was the sole goal of the North, the Confederates could be viewed by foreigners as freedom fighters being held against their will by the Union. But after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Southern cause was now the defense of slavery. The proclamation was a shrewd maneuver by Lincoln to brand the Confederate States as a slave nation and render foreign aid impossible.

The measure was met by a good deal of opposition, as many Northerners were unwilling to fight for the freedom of blacks; however, the proclamation signalled the death knell for slavery and had the effect on British opinion that Lincoln desired. Britain, which was ideologically opposed to slavery, could no longer recognize the Confederacy, and goodwill towards the Union forces swelled in Britain. With this measure, Lincoln effectively isolated the Confederacy and killed the institution that was at the root of sectional differences.

On New Year’s Day 1863, the president greeted a large group of diplomats at a White House reception. Shortly after noon, he slipped upstairs to his office and signed the proclamation. “I never felt more certain,” he commented, “that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.”

Unfortunately Lincoln did not live long enough to see what happened during the post emancipation years.