Amid the barbecue, beach parties, and political proclamations on this LABOR DAY, September 1, 2014, it is meet and altogether fitting that we also pause to recognize and to acknowledge that enslaved "free labor" which predates the establishment of the United States of America, and that post-dates it as well.
Starting off as indentured servants, in Virginia, Maryland, and in Massachusetts, indentured servitude for a definite term of years, involving Indians, Africans and Europeans, evolved as a matter of law, custom, and commercial convenience, from 1619 to 1670, in the British colonies, into mandated lifetime servitude for Africans only; whence "free labor."
The famous James Somerset judicial decision in 1772 in Great Britain, which outlawed slavery on British soil, so threatened its slaveholding colonists, that America issued its acclaimed "Declaration of Independence," lest its slave-based, economic infrastructure should be destroyed, as well, thereby, in time .
So, on July 4, 1776, America unilaterally declared its national independence from Great Britain.
After winning its "War of Independence," in which Africans materially participated in aid of its revolutionary jargon, this new nation later, shamelessly and hypocritically, enshrined African chattel slavery in its new Constitution, which was ratified in 1789 and which was amended in 1791, to include the "Bill of Rights," that was reserved for white people only.
These facts, among others, are set forth with unabashed white pride by Chief Justice Roger Taney of the United States Supreme Court in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decision of 1857, which ratified the prevailing notion that Africans had " no rights that the white man was bound to respect." This decision also produced the Civil War, wherein, the status of the black man, slave or free, as a matter of constitutional law would be ultimately determined.
A series of post-war, constitutional Amendments, 13-15, were added to the Constitution thereafter, to accord de facto legal status to the free blacks and to the slaves. These Amendments were further aided by a variety of statutes.
But, later judicial decisions gutting these "rights," and political compromises abandoning these "rights," resulted in malignant and benign neglect of their enforcement, at the state and federal levels, which further undermined these ephemeral "rights," which promised so much and which delivered so little.
As a consequence, many African Americans were left in a status of economic peonage, and political disenthrallment. This denizen status did not appear to end until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and until 2008's epochal election of President Barack Obama.
So, whither the celebration for America's abundant African "free labor," which precedes trade unions and organized labor by centuries; which unions also engaged in the suppression of African American economic rights, by racist exclusionary employment practices, themselves?
Whither then "Free Labor Day ?"
Monday, September 1, 2014
WHITHER 'FREE LABOR' DAY?
WHITHER 'FREE LABOR' DAY?
Amid the barbecue, beach parties, and political proclamations on this LABOR DAY, September 1, 2014, it is meet and altogether fitting that we also pause to recognize and to acknowledge that enslaved "free labor" which predates the establishment of the United States of America, and that post-dates it as well.
Starting off as indentured servants, in Virginia, Maryland, and in Massachusetts, indentured servitude for a definite term of years, involving Indians, Africans and Europeans, evolved as a matter of law, custom, and commercial convenience, from 1619 to 1670, in the British colonies, into mandated lifetime servitude for Africans only; whence "free labor."
The famous James Somerset judicial decision in 1772 in Great Britain, which outlawed slavery on British soil, so threatened its slaveholding colonists, that America issued its acclaimed "Declaration of Independence," lest its slave-based, economic infrastructure should be destroyed, as well, thereby, in time .
So, on July 4, 1776, America unilaterally declared its national independence from Great Britain.
After winning its "War of Independence," in which Africans materially participated in aid of its revolutionary jargon, this new nation later, shamelessly and hypocritically, enshrined African chattel slavery in its new Constitution, which was ratified in 1789 and which was amended in 1791, to include the "Bill of Rights," that was reserved for white people only.
These facts, among others, are set forth with unabashed white pride by Chief Justice Roger Taney of the United States Supreme Court in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decision of 1857, which ratified the prevailing notion that Africans had " no rights that the white man was bound to respect." This decision also produced the Civil War, wherein, the status of the black man, slave or free, as a matter of constitutional law would be ultimately determined.
A series of post-war, constitutional Amendments, 13-15, were added to the Constitution thereafter, to accord de facto legal status to the free blacks and to the slaves. These Amendments were further aided by a variety of statutes.
But, later judicial decisions gutting these "rights," and political compromises abandoning these "rights," resulted in malignant and benign neglect of their enforcement, at the state and federal levels, which further undermined these ephemeral "rights," which promised so much and which delivered so little.
As a consequence, many African Americans were left in a status of economic peonage, and political disenthrallment. This denizen status did not appear to end until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and until 2008's epochal election of President Barack Obama.
So, whither the celebration for America's abundant African "free labor," which precedes trade unions and organized labor by centuries; which unions also engaged in the suppression of African American economic rights, by racist exclusionary employment practices, themselves?
Whither then "Free Labor Day ?"
Amid the barbecue, beach parties, and political proclamations on this LABOR DAY, September 1, 2014, it is meet and altogether fitting that we also pause to recognize and to acknowledge that enslaved "free labor" which predates the establishment of the United States of America, and that post-dates it as well.
Starting off as indentured servants, in Virginia, Maryland, and in Massachusetts, indentured servitude for a definite term of years, involving Indians, Africans and Europeans, evolved as a matter of law, custom, and commercial convenience, from 1619 to 1670, in the British colonies, into mandated lifetime servitude for Africans only; whence "free labor."
The famous James Somerset judicial decision in 1772 in Great Britain, which outlawed slavery on British soil, so threatened its slaveholding colonists, that America issued its acclaimed "Declaration of Independence," lest its slave-based, economic infrastructure should be destroyed, as well, thereby, in time .
So, on July 4, 1776, America unilaterally declared its national independence from Great Britain.
After winning its "War of Independence," in which Africans materially participated in aid of its revolutionary jargon, this new nation later, shamelessly and hypocritically, enshrined African chattel slavery in its new Constitution, which was ratified in 1789 and which was amended in 1791, to include the "Bill of Rights," that was reserved for white people only.
These facts, among others, are set forth with unabashed white pride by Chief Justice Roger Taney of the United States Supreme Court in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford decision of 1857, which ratified the prevailing notion that Africans had " no rights that the white man was bound to respect." This decision also produced the Civil War, wherein, the status of the black man, slave or free, as a matter of constitutional law would be ultimately determined.
A series of post-war, constitutional Amendments, 13-15, were added to the Constitution thereafter, to accord de facto legal status to the free blacks and to the slaves. These Amendments were further aided by a variety of statutes.
But, later judicial decisions gutting these "rights," and political compromises abandoning these "rights," resulted in malignant and benign neglect of their enforcement, at the state and federal levels, which further undermined these ephemeral "rights," which promised so much and which delivered so little.
As a consequence, many African Americans were left in a status of economic peonage, and political disenthrallment. This denizen status did not appear to end until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and until 2008's epochal election of President Barack Obama.
So, whither the celebration for America's abundant African "free labor," which precedes trade unions and organized labor by centuries; which unions also engaged in the suppression of African American economic rights, by racist exclusionary employment practices, themselves?
Whither then "Free Labor Day ?"