LAND: OUR UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Freedmen wanted land to farm and to live upon among themselves in peace in January 1865. An elected group of ministers in Savannah, Georgia, had related their particularly defined interests to an inquiry committee sent to inquire of them from Washington, D.C. , sent by President Abraham Lincoln to ask what they wanted as the war was winding down to victory.
This extraordinary inquiry committee was composed of War Secretary Edwin Stanton and Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had marched to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, and a court stenographer, among others. Their unique conversations are recorded for posterity. They are the clearest declarations, if not the earliest declarations by freely elected African American representatives to power.
http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/savmtg.htm
I had long sought to know where we, as black people had left off, stepped off, in our renegotiation for our new, now-freed living terms and conditions, going forward, as American people. Where and when had we first staked out our aims after Civil War, prior to entering into this bewildering maze of deceitful political options, I asked.
They wanted land to work; land and to be left alone to live, work it, in peace. This transcription makes that plain.
Before today, I had thought that we had left off our progression with the April 4, 1968, assassination, apotheosis, martyrdom of our great philosopher-king. But I was wrong.
Before Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , before Malcolm X, before the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, before Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, these twenty black preachers, whose spokesman was Rev. Garrison Frazier, said that we to be free from bondage, to keep beneficiaries of the fruit of our labor from our own land, and to do for ourselves, and to help the government perform its duties.
And land they/we got! Literally tens of thousands of acres that had been abandoned by fleeing planters on the coastal islands and lands of Georgia and South Carolina were ceded to the black people, and they set about their customary business of working the land they knew so well, now for their own account.
These twenty preachers had faith, had trusted that the government officers from Washington,DC, who were sent to them , would abide their word . And they did abide their word at first, until President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.
Then arose a new racist regime under Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's Vice President, a Tennessee native, who rescinded the land cessions to the slaves in favor of restoring the land title to its former rebel owners, and if none, to Northern land speculators.
That Congress never overrode this covenantal breach of faith by President Andrew Johnson respecting land is heresy ! Congressional failure and Johnson reneging on our formally expressed desire for land, and later retraction of the ceded lands, were the first acts of official government renunciation of "reconstruction" that Washington had made by conduct to freedmen. This shameful pattern of obloquy would be repeated again and again until the present day. So now knowing, let us now resume where we all left off our African American sojourn with the unfinished business of land!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fight-andrew-johnson-impeachment-fight-future-united-states-180967502/
Saturday, June 16, 2018
LAND: UNFINISHED BUSINESS
LAND: OUR UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Freedmen wanted land to farm and to live upon among themselves in peace in January 1865. An elected group of ministers in Savannah, Georgia, had related their particularly defined interests to an inquiry committee sent to inquire of them from Washington, D.C. , sent by President Abraham Lincoln to ask what they wanted as the war was winding down to victory.
This extraordinary inquiry committee was composed of War Secretary Edwin Stanton and Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had marched to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, and a court stenographer, among others. Their unique conversations are recorded for posterity. They are the clearest declarations, if not the earliest declarations by freely elected African American representatives to power.
http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/savmtg.htm
I had long sought to know where we, as black people had left off, stepped off, in our renegotiation for our new, now-freed living terms and conditions, going forward, as American people. Where and when had we first staked out our aims after Civil War, prior to entering into this bewildering maze of deceitful political options, I asked.
They wanted land to work; land and to be left alone to live, work it, in peace. This transcription makes that plain.
Before today, I had thought that we had left off our progression with the April 4, 1968, assassination, apotheosis, martyrdom of our great philosopher-king. But I was wrong.
Before Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , before Malcolm X, before the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, before Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, these twenty black preachers, whose spokesman was Rev. Garrison Frazier, said that we to be free from bondage, to keep beneficiaries of the fruit of our labor from our own land, and to do for ourselves, and to help the government perform its duties.
And land they/we got! Literally tens of thousands of acres that had been abandoned by fleeing planters on the coastal islands and lands of Georgia and South Carolina were ceded to the black people, and they set about their customary business of working the land they knew so well, now for their own account.
These twenty preachers had faith, had trusted that the government officers from Washington,DC, who were sent to them , would abide their word . And they did abide their word at first, until President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.
Then arose a new racist regime under Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's Vice President, a Tennessee native, who rescinded the land cessions to the slaves in favor of restoring the land title to its former rebel owners, and if none, to Northern land speculators.
That Congress never overrode this covenantal breach of faith by President Andrew Johnson respecting land is heresy ! Congressional failure and Johnson reneging on our formally expressed desire for land, and later retraction of the ceded lands, were the first acts of official government renunciation of "reconstruction" that Washington had made by conduct to freedmen. This shameful pattern of obloquy would be repeated again and again until the present day. So now knowing, let us now resume where we all left off our African American sojourn with the unfinished business of land!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fight-andrew-johnson-impeachment-fight-future-united-states-180967502/