AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE CREDITORS NOT DEBTORS
African Americans are creditors , not debtors, of the United States.
Blacks are owed trillions in goods, services , lands, specie . Not only did our ancestors' uncompensated slave labor build America, not only did our Freedom War soldiers save America from disunion in the Civil War; but, rather than receive spoils, their share of victorious spoils were three Constitutional amendments, all disrespected, disregarded and laws. No goods, no services, no lands, no specie (gold and silver), were paid to our forbears, except for the few that were supplied as charity to some fortunate ones by the "Freedmen's Bureau" more properly, and, officially, known as (The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands).
These thoughts have occurred to me incident to my having begun to read an essay by Wilford H. Smith titled "The Negro and the Law." It is in the excellent 1903 book, THE NEGRO PROBLEM which contains a series of essays by Booker T. Washington, William E. B. DuBois, Charles W. Chestnutt , Wilford H. Smith, H. T. Keeling , Paul Laurence Dunbar, and T. Thomas Fortune.
I was twice struck by the opening assertion by Wilford H. Smith:
"The colored people of the United States are *indebted to the beneficent provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution the United States, for the establishment of their freedom and citizenship, and it is to these *mainly *they must look for the maintenance of their liberty and the protection of their civil rights . These amendments followed close upon the Emancipation Proclamation issued January 1, 1863, by President Lincoln , and his call for volunteers, which was answered by more than *three hundred thousand negro soldiers, who, during three years of military service, helped the Union arms to victory at Appomattox . Standing in the shadow of the awful calamity and deep distress of the civil war, and grateful to God for peace and victory over the rebellion, the American people, who upheld the Union, rose to the sublime heights of doing justice to the former slaves, who had grown and multiplied with the early country from the early settlement at Jamestown . It looked like an effort to pay them back for their years of
Faithfulness and unrequited toil, by not only making them free but putting them on an equal footing with themselves in the fundamental law. Certainly, they intended at *least, that they should have as many rights under the constitution as are given to white naturalized citizens who come to this country from all the nations of Europe."
P.32
The * symbol as used above is to signal my especial or exceptional factual note of what was written.
For example "*indebted" is used by the writer. I suggest that we are creditors. Not debtors. We are owed for past services, yet unpaid . We owe the country nothing at all!
Attorney Wilford Smith uses the third person "*they" rather than we, when referring to the "*main" protection of our people being the laws that were mentioned. History has shown that we have had to defy the law, disobey the law, sue the law, boycott and demonstrate against the law since 1903, to get any measure of civil protection or respect from the lawmakers or their absolute-immunized law enforcers!
Wilford H. Smith also mentioned "*three hundred thousand negro soldiers." Nowhere have I seen the number of negro soldiers and sailors that exceeded 200,000. He may be right . I simply note its large 50% increase as a point of interest.
Last but not least, I was struck by his use of the phrase "*at least" in distinguishing white naturalized citizens from white non-naturalized citizens, relative to the new civil rights of black, formerly enslaved, people. We go back to Jamestown settlement and the foundations of American society, unlike European naturalized immigrants can claim !
Wilford Horace Smith was the first black lawyer to win a case at the United States Supreme Court in 1900, Carter v. Texas (1900), a criminal appeal . He was born in Mississippi in 1863 and died in New York, New York in 1926. He had attended Boston University Law School, class of 1883. Great man!

Monday, June 4, 2018
CREDITORS NOT DEBTORS
AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE CREDITORS NOT DEBTORS
African Americans are creditors , not debtors, of the United States.
Blacks are owed trillions in goods, services , lands, specie . Not only did our ancestors' uncompensated slave labor build America, not only did our Freedom War soldiers save America from disunion in the Civil War; but, rather than receive spoils, their share of victorious spoils were three Constitutional amendments, all disrespected, disregarded and laws. No goods, no services, no lands, no specie (gold and silver), were paid to our forbears, except for the few that were supplied as charity to some fortunate ones by the "Freedmen's Bureau" more properly, and, officially, known as (The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands).
These thoughts have occurred to me incident to my having begun to read an essay by Wilford H. Smith titled "The Negro and the Law." It is in the excellent 1903 book, THE NEGRO PROBLEM which contains a series of essays by Booker T. Washington, William E. B. DuBois, Charles W. Chestnutt , Wilford H. Smith, H. T. Keeling , Paul Laurence Dunbar, and T. Thomas Fortune.
I was twice struck by the opening assertion by Wilford H. Smith:
"The colored people of the United States are *indebted to the beneficent provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution the United States, for the establishment of their freedom and citizenship, and it is to these *mainly *they must look for the maintenance of their liberty and the protection of their civil rights . These amendments followed close upon the Emancipation Proclamation issued January 1, 1863, by President Lincoln , and his call for volunteers, which was answered by more than *three hundred thousand negro soldiers, who, during three years of military service, helped the Union arms to victory at Appomattox . Standing in the shadow of the awful calamity and deep distress of the civil war, and grateful to God for peace and victory over the rebellion, the American people, who upheld the Union, rose to the sublime heights of doing justice to the former slaves, who had grown and multiplied with the early country from the early settlement at Jamestown . It looked like an effort to pay them back for their years of
Faithfulness and unrequited toil, by not only making them free but putting them on an equal footing with themselves in the fundamental law. Certainly, they intended at *least, that they should have as many rights under the constitution as are given to white naturalized citizens who come to this country from all the nations of Europe."
P.32
The * symbol as used above is to signal my especial or exceptional factual note of what was written.
For example "*indebted" is used by the writer. I suggest that we are creditors. Not debtors. We are owed for past services, yet unpaid . We owe the country nothing at all!
Attorney Wilford Smith uses the third person "*they" rather than we, when referring to the "*main" protection of our people being the laws that were mentioned. History has shown that we have had to defy the law, disobey the law, sue the law, boycott and demonstrate against the law since 1903, to get any measure of civil protection or respect from the lawmakers or their absolute-immunized law enforcers!
Wilford H. Smith also mentioned "*three hundred thousand negro soldiers." Nowhere have I seen the number of negro soldiers and sailors that exceeded 200,000. He may be right . I simply note its large 50% increase as a point of interest.
Last but not least, I was struck by his use of the phrase "*at least" in distinguishing white naturalized citizens from white non-naturalized citizens, relative to the new civil rights of black, formerly enslaved, people. We go back to Jamestown settlement and the foundations of American society, unlike European naturalized immigrants can claim !
Wilford Horace Smith was the first black lawyer to win a case at the United States Supreme Court in 1900, Carter v. Texas (1900), a criminal appeal . He was born in Mississippi in 1863 and died in New York, New York in 1926. He had attended Boston University Law School, class of 1883. Great man!