Partners to History: Martin Luther King JR., Ralph David Abernathy, and the Civil Rights Movement

Book by Abernathy Donzaleigh

1619

Stolen from Native Shores

We can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it. . . . The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.—Abraham Lincoln

The Gettysburg Address, 1863

In August of the year 1619, the first ship carrying African slaves arrived in the port of the Jamestown colony at the mouth of the James River in Virginia. The slaves were to be the free labor force for harvesting the profitable tobacco crop. The African slave was not permitted to assimilate into the white culture, making the color of his skin a "badge of servitude." It was nearly impossible for the African slave to escape back to Africa. Until the further development of America and Canada, the African slave had nowhere to go or hide from the slave owners.

Slave laborers were able to survive and make considerable financial profits for the plantation owners, whereas white indentured servants perished, causing a financial loss. At the end of the Colonial period in American history, the Negro numbered between 400,000 to 500,000 slaves in the colonies. Three-fourths of the African slave population resided in the Southern colonies, where they made up two-fifths of the entire population. It was recorded in South Carolina that African slaves outnumbered the whites two to one. The plantation region consisted of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and the remaining Southern colonies. These lands were flat, wide coastal plains with spacious bays, and harbors and widely navigable rivers. The fertile soil near the banks of the rivers created rich agriculture. Because the tidewater swept up the river, the coast regions came to be known as the tidewater area. Tobacco was the staple crop of the tidewater region. In the Carolinas, rice and indigo were the crops and in the Deep South, or "the black belt" as it would come to be called, cottons would become king.

In the Deep South, where the crop was cotton, the demand for slave labor was insatiable. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin turned the South into the "Cotton Kingdom." Before the Civil War, one-half of the American goods shipped abroad was cotton. It has been recorded that between 1820 and 1860 the number of slaves grew from 1 million to almost 4 million. The price of a slave who worked the fields simultaneously increased from between $300 and $400 to $1,000 and up. The average Southern white family held one to four slaves and at the time of the Civil War an estimated 400,000 Southern white families had slaves. In some cases, if the land holdings were in the tens of thousands of acres, then the slave holdings were in the thousands as well. An average number of slaves on a large plantation ranged from six to seven thousand. With the growing demand for slaves, the great danger for freed slaves was the possibility of being kidnapped and sold back into slavery. Poor white men looked forward to becoming slave owners and the owners of a few slaves longed to become owners of many, while the wealthy landowner's rank in Southern society was determined by the number of human slaves he owned. Slavery of black people was justified by some because black people were not Christians and therefore considered savage. The U.S. Constitution in deciding the appropriations of congressional seats from the South decided in the "Great Compromise" to regard a black person as three-fifths of a human being.

Within the boundaries of the plantation consisted a little village. The owner, his wife, and their family usually lived lavishly in a manor house, with servants. There were small bunkhouses with dirt floors for the slaves, where many people were forced to inhabit a small space. Only the "privileged" slaves had private dwellings or lived in the big house with the plantation owner's family. Practically all of the fieldwork was done by slaves. It was usually at the hand of the overseer that slaves suffered their greatest abuse.

During the Civil War, as the great cotton and tobacco plantations burned, Southerners taught their children that this war was being fought because of Northern greed to dominate the prosperous South economically, and not to free the black slave from bondage or to maintain a united union. At the opulent, 1,700-acre former South Carolina Cotton Plantation, Boone Hall, it was written that "this was an unjust war being fought for a docile people who were simply content to have a hot meal, a fire and a warm place to sleep." Southerners believed that the slaves got "much positive enjoyment out of life." Their written sentiments were that "the slaves were extremely gregarious and delighted in plantation life. Slaves were permitted to have picnics on occasions and their love for singing, music, and dance contributed to the community." Misinformed Southerners thought that the life of a physically abused, overworked slave, sold into bondage from family and friends, offered more advantages for food, clothing, and shelter than the free, "savage" life that slaves left behind in Africa.

The typical Southerner arguing the merits of the Confederacy felt, and still feels, no deep compassion or empathy for the men and women that they held captive and physically abused in slavery. Instead it was their tragic illusion of a glorious past life of "Southern gentility" to which their passions clung. They could not understand why Northerners, who had also previously owned slaves, cared about the well-being of a race of people the Southerners called "Darkies." This lack of understanding and utterly blatant disregard for the atrocious conditions of race relations for black people further widened the gap between the North and the South, ensuring the inevitability of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement to come. What the Southerner did not anticipate was the unrelenting need of the Negro to be freed from slavery and racial oppression. Black slaves eagerly assisted Northerners in liberating millions of slaves in the South, dismantling the racist regime of the Confederacy and in some cases leaving the Avenue of Oaks, the tree-lined drive to those once-opulent plantations, as the only memory left standing of these dreadful slave farms.

The Negro came to the United States of America in 1619. Read any history book you want to read and you won't find it stated any better than that. We didn't come here on our own. But we were brought here from the jungles of Africa. We were happy, we were pleased, we were satisfied, and we were content in Africa.

"But we were snatched from the bosom of our native soil, packed into ships and chained down against our will. Mr. Bennett says in his book that I am reading, Before the Mayflower, that hundreds of Negroes were thrown overboard and were caused to perish in the middle of the sea, simply because the mean and cruel task master, the white man, would walk down the aisle and stumble over Negroes chained to the ship and say, 'We have too many on board. Dump them over into the sea.'

"We were brought here against our will, and when we got here we found no freedom.

"And ever since sixteen hundred and nineteen, we have been misunderstood. We were forced to work in the fields from sunup to sundown. Who was it that cleared the new ground? There once was a time when where the city of Birmingham rests, there was nothing but a wilderness. Who was it that cut down the trees? Who was it that built the skyscrapers? Who was it that cut the streets and the avenues, cared for the sick, fed the hungry, and carried the garbage away? NOBODY BUT THE NEGRO. NOBODY BUT THE NEGRO. And he has remained faithful to this land. He fought in every war. Call them off. Name the wars he fought in.

"All the way from Boston Commons, when Crispus Attucks, a black man, was the first one to give his red blood in an effort to bring this nation into being.

"For it was on the sad Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor, the beach at Normandy, black boys and black fathers gave their red blood alongside their white brothers to preserve this nation.

"Ever since then, Negroes have been rising and falling, blundering and stumbling, mistreated, neglected, and dejected. But still saying, from the bottom of their hearts, 'God bless America, God bless America, my home sweet home.'

"Now this is our home. We want you to know that this is our home. We do not agree with those who want certain states. We don't want any particular state, as some advocate. We don't want any particular territory. We don't want to take over either. We just want to live as brothers. The Negroes of Birmingham are not going back to Africa. Our ancestors came from Africa. We didn't come from there. But until the Englishman goes back to England, until the Italian goes back to Italy, until the German goes back to Germany, the Mexican back to Mexico, the Frenchman goes back to France, the Spaniard goes back to Spain, and the white man gives back this country to the Indian, the black man will live in America."—Ralph David Abernathy

Birmingham, 1963

"Throughout slavery, the Negro was treated in a very inhumane fashion. He was considered a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. He was merely a depersonalized cog in a vast plantation machine. The famous Dred Scott decision of 1857 clearly expressed...