The Fallacy of 40 Acres and a Mule

I find it appropriate to address this subject now, as it is near the end of Black history month. I don’t know how folk will take it, but I am without a doubt certain that Carter G. Woodson would approve and appreciate the thought processes engrained in what I am about to state.

At least twice this month (and I won’t go into the number of times over the years), I have heard several claims that Africans in America, or at least freed slaves were promised 40 acres and a mule upon emancipation. I have read references to such scantly; however, I have been unable and unsuccessful, even in light of my penchant for research and detail, to verify such.

What I can say accurately is that during the period of and after the civil war, the radical Republicans as they have been called throughout history really had only one interest, which was not slaves or black folk, but rather the goal of using the military might of the union (North) to destroy the plantation aristocracy of the south and bring in a new area of capitalist democracy by ensuring that blacks could both vote and own property. This is where the idea of forty acres and a mule originally started.  But Democrats, like then Editor of the New York Tribune like Horace Greeley were against this in mass. See, although they were upset with Southerners, they felt, to use Greeley’s words that: “because the wealthier class of southerners, being more enlightened and humane than the ignorant and vulgar are less inimicable to the blacks,” that former slaves should never be given land or property in any form especially from the confederate rich.

In fact when the republicans tried to force property confiscation in the initial acts of Reconstruction in 1867 (against the desires of moderate Republicans), when ThaddeusStevens brought the “40 acres” measure to the floor in the House, it receivedless than 40 votes.

Although history books tell us that folk in the north were on the side of slaves and against slavery, they fail to mention specifically how their views, votes and politics were never behind and would never tolerate giving black folk land – specifically the property of former confederate rich white folks. Even that democratic weekly THE NATION noted that by giving the land of rich men to poor ignorant Negroes would shock and destroy America’s entire political system and lead to the destruction of liberty for all Americans (In The Era of Reconstruction 1865-1877 by Kenneth Stampp, 120-130).

With this kind of NATIONAL sentiment, it is easy to see why 40 acres was never made law and really never promised to freed blacks.  Not to mention it should have been obvious seeing it is well know that the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) excluded freeing slaves in Union states and those stats in the South behind union lines.

What this means is that without any land redistribution or confiscation, slaves would still remain slaves just under a new system and made it even worse.  Now they would be sharecroppers, which gave land owners control over them from giving them advances on supplies, even food from stores they owned, way above market price and charging the to live on land that they would never own or ever be able to accumulate wealth. By the time Rutherford B. Hays became President in 1876, this new system was firmly entrenched and Northern democrats and republicans turned their back on what they initially considered their cause to protect the poor, landless and oppressed black working class of former slaves.

This is why industrial capitalism grew so fast during this period of American history – they still had an endless supply of cheap and uneducated workers.  Although some misread history and often say the civil war was America’s second revolutionary war, it wasn’t. I mean from my perspective, during revolutionary wars, the oppressed take up arms and start the war. And any person who can read, or considers themselves educated can tell you that since then, the 14^th amendment has done little if anything to protect black folk in America, and really only serves to protect corporations and advance industrial capitalism. Through the 14^th amendment, property got the ultimate political protection from state governments, not freed slaves and the US currency was put on an invincible footing via the resumption of specie (money in the form of coins rather than notes) payment.

So when folk banter around that we as black folk were promised 40 acres and a mule, or that the 14^th amendment was instituted to protect black folk, you should ignore them and accept their ignorance as an offering and reflection of what is wrong with we as black folk in America, which is 60% of the time we talking loud and ain’t saying nothing and 30% of the time we truly don’t know what we talking about.

Santorum’s Positions Reminiscent of Jim Crow

It is not farfetched for me to see Rick Santorum living in America some 160 years ago, comfortable in his conservatism appreciative and accepting of the status quo. Maybe this why he resonates so clearly with a large corpus of benighted lunatics that cherish his every word. No doubt, Santorum as his supports would be more comfortable and would prefer to live in a world in which African descendants were in bondage or subjugated by institutional laws and policies that kept us in our place. If not during the time of slavery, then certainly Jim Crow America would have suited him fine. Especially given what he said recently on the campaign rail in Mississippi and Alabama.

His persistent focus on social issues and so called “conservative” values is an attempt to show that he is connected with working class conservatives, especially those in the south, evangelicals and Tea baggers. This is why he always makes hidden remarks associated with the historic racist beliefs of his constituency. Santorum once said that America “was great before 1965″ . If you ask me, seeing that Jim Crow ended in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights act, it can be interpreted that America lost its greatness when Jim Crow ended.

I have written before that: “Historians tend to define Jim Crow and/or the period of Jim Crow as a systematic practice of discriminating against and segregating Black people in the America from the end of Reconstruction to the mid-20th century. More specifically, they tend to focus on the South when it was nationwide….Most or many historians like to start the period in the late 1890’s and like to over dramatize the importance of one man purchasing a single train ticket. In 1892, Homer Plessey bought a first-class railroad ticket. They say by doing such he broke the law since we were only allowed to ride only third class in his home state of Louisiana. You know, ye old separate railway accommodations for the races. To make a long story short, the Supreme Court heard, and rejected, Plessey’s challenge. This validated segregation in public facilities and engendered an atmosphere that promulgated even more restrictive Jim Crow laws.”

It is no wonder that many conservatives always desire to make the connect between themselves, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 associated the civil rights movement with increased lawlessness in America and advised for the nation to get tougher on crime. This was a code phrase basically saying get tough on black folks; after all we were the only one struggling to gain what was proffered by the constitution in particular the thirteenth amendment. A struggle that did not end until Jim Crow was obviated.

Another example of Santorum’s embedded reference to racist political positions are his regular carps pertaining to the role state and federal governments play in running schools. Santorum says he wants to retrench hysterically the power of states and the federal government in public education. In the republican debate in Arizona, he went on the record saying, “Not only do I believe the federal government should get out of the education business, I think the state government should start to get out of the education business and put it back with the local and into the community." For the former senator, US schools are "factories" that are merely "anachronistic" residuals of a past age in American history.

What Santorum has forgotten, or has intentionally overlooked was the need and role of public education in correcting what had manifested as a result of slaver, Jim Crow and the Black Codes. It was under the auspices of the Freedmen’s Bureau created by President Lincoln after the end of the Civil War that aid was provided to former slaves, inclusive of education.

Before the Civil War, no southern state had a system of public education. Former slaves wanted to become educated but whites opposed the idea. By 1866 eleven colleges in southern states had been established for the education of freedmen. More than $5 million to set up schools for blacks which led to more than 90,000 former slaves being enrolled as students in public schools by 1865. So purport that by 1870, there where more than 1,000 schools for freedmen in the South. After this period, when white Democrats regained control of the southern political machine, they reduced funds available to fund public education passed Jim Crow laws in the 1890s that mandated legal segregation of public places.

But this is the hypocrisy of Rick Santorum. On the one hand he states he is misunderstood and that he is for all the people yet his attacks through hidden “white speak” states otherwise. In January 2011, Santorum, addressing President Obama’s denial of personhood to the unborn, stated he was confused of all people, for a “black man to say no, we’re going to decide who people are and who not people are.” Even more strange is that a child has never endured the historical oppression and subjugation proffered either by slavery or Jim Crow? Santorum also conveniently disremembers that black people were considered less than human and subjected to dehumanization since being brought to America against our will.

Rick Santorum is what is wrong with America and not just its politics. It is an overt hypocrisy that focuses on divisive rhetoric of race yet does not have the fortitude to personally admit this is the goal and objective for such inflammatory speech. Thus, it is not unexpected that in Iowa Santorum would boldly assert. “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better” through government aid” and at the same time even with video and audio documentation — conveniently ignoring that only 9 percent of Iowans on food stamps and deny repeatedly he ever made such a statement. He has even stated on Fox News that for Africa Americans "wedlock marriage is an institution... (that is) not desirable for African American males".

These comments are akin to the antiquated statements of David Hume who wrote, “I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.” It is similar to the belief of Kant who once wrote that being black was “clear proof that” a man is “stupid.” Santorum ascribes to the belief of Abraham Lincoln who said “there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Yes indeed, Santorum along with Romney and Gingrich and many in the GOP long to take America Back to the days before the civil rights act and the times of Jim Crow. Otherwise his white speak would have been something other than saying America “was great before 1965." Santorum knows as Lee Atwater once stated, "you start out in 1954 by saying, nigger,nigger,nigger. By 1968 you can't say nigger -- that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like states rights."


Wake up America, we cannot depend on the media to point out such and make critical observations based on the record. As black folk it seem that we are only occupied with politics simply to protect President Obama. We must be more involved than this because limiting ourselves to responsive behaviors and attending to whether Rihanna is getting back with Chris Brown or How much money Whitney Houston’s daughter going to get.

The Two face Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

I have been writing and expounding on US foreign policy since the early 1980s. My first or one of my earliest essays was called “Israel’s fascist Penumbra” which was published in the Black Students Association Journal at Memphis State University in 1985.

It addressed the “do anything” for Israel mentality and our traditionally mistaken monolithic conviction of Arabs and Africans worldwide, that we often dissemble under the shadow of peace and agoraphobia. What is common regarding now and then and even times prior is the “do as I say and not as I do” legacy of colonialist and imperial belief orientations that place all European in origin at the summit of rational behavior and what is deemed to be acceptable.

On the one hand we vilify the Arab and African States for their desire for governments to run as theocracies, yet we do the same here. Promulgating policies based on religious beliefs and biblical guidance. Our own founding as a nation saw the assertion that Africans were less valuable and more akin to live stock than human beings. An edict that presented itself in policies from slavery to Jim Crow and segregation. In Oklahoma, a law was recently passed that bars courts from considering Shariah law when deciding cases was put on hold. And we are well aware of the tense debate facilitated via the discussion of abortion.

We condemn terrorist for their no holds barred attacks on America, yet we support going to Somalia and just killing everyone in sight as if their lives are less important than ours to avenge the deaths of four Christian Missionaries who were not asked to come to their country in the first place. We support invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and manufacture policy and war to remove leaders we label tyrants and dictators and autocrats yet give similar men billions in aid annually and historically and invite them to the Whitehouse for dinner pretending as if their blood is not on our hands from the tanks and fighter we give them.

We supported Chiang Kai-Shek’s ROC government from the 1930s to 1949 in a civil war that saw the murder of tens of thousands. In Chilie we funded General Augusto Pinochet who murdered and tortured thousands from 1973 to 1990. Then there was Suharto in Indonesia and Papa and baby Doc in Haiti.

But it is to only be expected for unfortunately we too are a nation of terrorist and celebrate such resonantly. In Mississippi, there is an attempt to venerate Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man whose image on horseback I road past almost daily in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. Yes, 150 years after the start of the Civil War people want to celebrate a murderer who founded a terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan. An organization from its inception main goal was to conduct inordinate acts of violence solely on African Americans in the South eventually including the bombing deaths of four girls attending Sunday school in a Church in 1963.

This man was also known for what he did on April 12, 1864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, when General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured the fort with his 1,500. In the process, according to eyewitness accounts like General Kilpatrick (USA), Forrest “nailed Negroes to the fences, set fire to the fences, and burned the Negroes to death.” More than 300 African American Union troops were massacred then.

But let me not digress, the point is that US foreign policy is the result of constructs that are two-faced. For if other did to us what we did to them we would be extremely upset and throwing hissy fits. We are so shallow, self-centered and heedless. Yes we are hypocrites and this hypocrisy may be what destroys us, just as it leads to behaviors that spoliated ancient Rome.

African- Sub-Saharan mercenary killed in Libya (extremely graphic)

Who'd a thunk?

I always wanted to know what would be the prospects of a civil war, on these shores, in my lifetime. I mean, I wasn't around then nor was there a media outlet that could broadcast the gory war details on the cathode ray tube each night at 6pm. But after reading Hell's leading daily, and a few more links including FiredogLake, I have gotten giddy over the prospects, and of all places, California. I won't write about it from the perspective the aforementioned did, but I would like to add my own twist.

Seems that if civil wars will ever happen again up in this camp, it will be on the state level where counties try to succeed and form their own state. Now don't laugh, I'm bneing objective. It seems as if farmers in California, mad at the passing of the animal rights initiative called Proposition 2. It passed mainly because voters in the high-population counties couldn't think of putting themselves in the shoes of farmers when compared to the shoes of pet owners. It is kind of backwards to me to let folks who don't own or run farms to vote on them. You don't ask folks who are not having surgery if the person who is having surgery should, especially if they are awake and competent. But what do I know, I'm a country boy who owns an 11 acre farm.

Yes farmers, the backbone of grocery stores, restaurants, and deli's feel that "if they can't appreciate agriculture they should live without it. They belive that there should be two states : the 45 interior counties come together as a separate state and 13 costal counties being another. In their words, the farmers that is, by letting "the mass numbers of farm uneducated city dwellers dictate farm policy is committing agricultural suicide."

I don't know about you, but regardless of it being political, or agricultural, this shows me that the economic times in our country are manifesting themselves in ways never imagined. I'd like to see a civil war, the civil war of California fought on TV – cool, huh. It may gone a long way to take some of the air out of the social revolt that may be in the edge of occurring with the state sending out IOU's instead of tax refunds. Who'd a thunk?

More like a Copperhead to me

Been hearing a lot of stuff comparing the current president to the 16^th president of these United States of America, Abraham Lincoln. So given this is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of the 16^th president, I would like to exercise the practice of wasting brain cells via self induced rumination.

Now the way I see it, outside of his two short terms in the Illinois senate and being from Illinois politically, and the flamboyantly elevated prose, and don’t forget taking his oath on the same bible Lincoln did, and the mole on the side of his nose, I don’t see it. In fact to me he is more reminiscent of a peace democrat – you know the folks who ran against Lincoln. For Obama after his election, at home and around the globe was lauded and given the accolades of greatness before he even took office. This is unlike Lincoln, who was considered vile, crude and described as “the most despicable tyrant of Modern times “by a major London news paper.

Another reason I say Obama is more like the peace democrats, or as they were called the, Copperheads, is based on there stance of an unpopular war at the time – the civil war. The name Copperheads, from what I recall historically, came from the media who compared the peace democrat’s actions as equal to the venomous snake. Just as the current conundrum in Iraq, as well as prior in Vietnam, the Civil War threatened to divide America based on an either or podium. Just as then, today, an American defeat, just like the implications of the defeat of Union forces were not a stern point for consideration. The Copperheads were basically the opponents of Lincoln.

Thus the strong similarities and unique differences that are prone for me to suggest that Obama is more of the latter than he is akin to Lincoln. Like the Copperheads, Obama has demanded an immediate cessation of hostilities in Iraq and vilified Bush for his position otherwise. And Just like George McClellan, the Democratic nominee in 1864, their main weapon was to attack Lincoln’s intelligence. I guess in this since, Obama would be a neo – Copperhead (LOL). Even the Attorney General of Lincoln’s time said that what the nation required was "a competent leader," just as Obama positioned. I could even say that the leadership of the current democratic party, just as the most popular of the Copperheads back in the day, Democratic Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, are similar, since like Pelosi, Vallandigham introduced a bill in Congress to imprison the President in 1862. Even the present Vice President, Joe Biden sounds like George H. Pendleton of Ohio, the Copperhead Vice-Presidential candidate in 1864, who said that the American public had “been deliberately deceived into” war.

Just like the Copperheads with respect to the civil war, Obama has not opined or articulated any plan for successful getting out the Iraq war, let alone removing all US troops from Iraq. The Copperheads worked against what they saw as Lincoln's war just as Obama contention that the Iraq war was Bush’s war.

All I am saying is that I guess some of the folks are presidential scholars but the majority of them aint. I don’t see in comparison to the two, like I said above, outside of the flamboyantly elevated prose, and don’t forget taking his oath on the same bible Lincoln did, and the mole on the side of his nose. So you tell me, why do folks say or compare him to Lincoln, since clearly back in Lincoln’s time, he would have been a slave, or if free, a copperhead or peace democrat.