Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Monday, August 8, 2016
AMERICA'S COLORED CASH CROP
AMERICAN COLORED CASH CROP
Colored folks are a cash crop. They became such with the evolution of chattel slavery. They were legally classified as such by the United States Supreme Court in cases from Dred Scott v. Sanford through Plessy v. Ferguson and beyond . They continued as such during the "nadir," the era of "peonage" in the rural and urban South, after Reconstruction through the great migrations. They yet remain such in the country at large as demonstrated in the mass incarceration described in Michelle Alexander 's book, THE NEW JIM CROW. Cash crops enrich others, but never the embittered crop itself.