An Open Letter to Reverend Ray Hammond
We've Talked Too Much About Slavery
by J. Edward Pawlick
Publisher, Massachusetts News
massnews.com
Dear Reverend Hammond:
Because of my profound respect for your abilities and your integrity, I am responding to the Boston Globe article in which you were quoted. I know that you are already familiar with most of what I write herein, but I am compelled to put these thoughts to paper.
It's my belief that we have talked much too much about slavery in the last thirty years, and this has damaged the black community beyond calculation. And we have talked too little about the slavery that continues among black people in Africa today.
Slavery Is As Old As The World
There has been slavery throughout the world for thousands of years. All of the ancient civilizations enslaved their own people, as well as their enemies. The Old Testament had laws for Jews telling how they were to treat their fellow Jews who were their slaves. St. Patrick was enslaved by the Irish as a youth.
Slavery has been common in Africa for centuries. The white, slave traders did not go pillaging through Africa capturing slaves as they went. Rather, the African chiefs were happy they had found another market for the slaves they were already selling to each other. The sale of slaves flourished in Africa as ships became bigger and better and all sorts of trade increased among the nations. The chiefs of Africa were eager to sell their slaves to anyone who would buy them. As the President of Uganda said in 1998 when President Clinton apologized for the slave trade:
"African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologize, it should be the African chiefs."
We must also realize that thousands of black people in the United States owned slaves before the Civil War. Many of them owned over a hundred slaves. If we apportion "guilt," we will have to ascertain the location of the many thousands of descendants of those slave owners in order to allocate the proper blame to them for their ancestors' misconduct.
It was white Christians who finally brought an end to slavery throughout most of the world. This was begun in England by the Quakers who presented the first anti-slavery petition to Parliament in 1783 (following the Quakers of Pennsylvania who had voiced opposition to slavery in 1688). The evangelical English Christian, William Wilberforce, is credited with outlawing slavery, beginning with the end of the slave trade in 1807 in the West Indies and the freedom of all those slaves in 1825.
In the United States, it was Christian abolitionists who brought an end to this practice. Among them were William Lloyd Garrison, clergymen Theodore D. Weld and Theodore Parker, authors John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and Lydia Marie Child. The list also included Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which turned so many people against slavery, and Julia Ward Howe, who composed the Battle Hymn of the Republic, stirring
the hearts and souls of thousands during the Civil War.
We must not forget the little-remembered Solomon Northrup, a free, black Christian who was tricked and kidnapped from his home in upper New York in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana before being rescued twelve years later. He wrote a best-selling book that sold 30,000 copies in 1853, telling about his experiences and about the atrocities of slavery. He was beaten, whipped and chased with dogs. He said of one master, "He could have stood unmoved and seen the tongues of his poor slaves torn out by the roots — he could have seen them burned to ashes over a slow fire, or gnawed to death by dogs, if it only brought him profit. Such a hard, cruel, unjust man ..." However, Northrup never gave way to hate or racism. He said of one master, "...in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid Christian man..." This black Christian man's book was very important in ending this terrible system in our country.
Still Exists in Africa
We must not overlook the fact that slavery still exists in Africa in 1999 in its most brutal form.
An escaped slave from Africa "stunned" the students at my local high school, according to a story in the Boston Globe (March 18, 1999). The organization which brought him here to tell of the terrible atrocities that are occurring every day in Africa is located right here in Somerville. It's been at our doorstep since 1993, and I wonder how many of us, black or white, have ever heard of it. It's The American Anti-Slavery Group.
We may not think much about the world of Africa today, but it is much closer to all of us in America, including every black person, than Louisiana was to a New York farmer in 1863.
And yet the friends of Solomon Northrup marched from their farms in New York to end slavery. They were not rich men, any more than Solomon. They were leaving their wives and children and intruding into a land far away where they were not welcome. They could have said, "This is none of our business."
Yet in 1999, we don't hear a lot about what the blacks of America are doing to help those poor blacks who are enslaved by other blacks right now in Africa. We know that the situation is critical in the Congo, Mauritania, Sudan and Ethiopia. There is a mention made now and then, but where is the outrage?
We are told that somehow we are responsible for what some white (and black) people did to slaves over a hundred years ago. Yet the vast majority of the families of white people in 1999 arrived in America long after slavery had been abolished. Even for those whose ancestors were around before the Civil War, very few of them owned slaves.
If we can blame the white people who never owned slaves for what happened 150 years ago, what will future historians say about the lack of concern by black Americans for the plight of African blacks in 1999?
We Are Lucky
All of us are very lucky to have been born in this land. Whether our ancestors arrived as slaves or in steerage on an immigrant boat, we are all blessed to be here in 1999.
The people of America spoke with great conviction back in 1964 that we must end racism when they favored, by an overwhelming 70% of the people, the immediate passage of the Civil Rights Act. It was probably the most popular law ever passed in America. But that Act has proven to be a bad omen for black America. Before it passed, the black people were saying, "I'm as good as you are. Just give me a chance to prove it." But after it passed, many in the black
community started to say, "You owe me." This has hurt the black community very much. No government program is ever going to help anyone. All it can do is to foster more dependence on politicians who cannot do much even if they do truly care. It takes every individual working for himself and taking responsibility for himself and his family to make a change in his life.
A new book about Justice Thurgood Marshall by Washington Post writer Juan Williams tells how disappointed that Supreme Court justice was in the change of the black culture after the Civil Rights Act was passed.
Another black American, Keith B. Richburg, who covered Africa for the Washington Post from 1991 to 1994, had always assumed that the troubles in Africa were the legacy of colonialism and the Cold War. But what he found instead was senseless cruelty and repressive dictators, which have not emerged from the sins of the West but are home-grown. The more he saw, the more disillusioned he became. He ended his book this way:
"I will also know that the problems are too intractable, that the outside world can do nothing, until Africa is ready to save itself. I'll also know that none of it affects me, because I feel no attachment to the place or the people.
"And why should I feel anything more? Because my skin is black? Because some ancestor of mine, four centuries ago, was wrenched from this place and sent to America, and because I now look like those others whose ancestors were left behind? Does that make me still a part of this place? Should their suffering now somehow still be mine?
"Maybe I would care more if I had never come here and never seen what Africa is today. But I have been here, and I have seen — and frankly, I want no part of it.
"So am I a cold-hearted cynic? An Africa hater? A racist, maybe or perhaps a lost and lonely self-hating black man who has forgotten his African roots? Maybe I am all that and more. But by an accident of birth, I am a black man born in America, and everything I am today — my culture and attitudes, my sensibilities, loves, and desire — derives from that one simple and irrefutable truth."
The Future
As Mr. Richburg says, we must teach our youth not to judge people by their race. There are good whites and bad whites; good blacks and bad blacks. This has always been true. For whatever reason and despite our many problems, the country in which we live is the one with the greatest opportunities for everyone.
We must get beyond talking about the past and talk about the future. Black Americans have shown time and time again that they can succeed in spite of many obstacles. We must talk a lot more about those successful people if we are to inspire black youth to greater success and thereby unify ourselves as a nation.
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