FROM MAAFA TO JUBILEE
To know the Maafa we must study “The Dynamics of Domination” that Asa G. Hilliard identified. The physical enslavement of African people required an effort to enslave their minds. The tactics involved in the process of domination include:
1. Erase African Memory
2. Suppress the practice of African culture
3. Destroy group unity
4. Teach the belief in White Supremacy
5. Control the institutions of socialization (schools and media)
6. Control the wealth that labor produces
7. Physical segregation
By 1829 the fruition of this process in the United States that David Walker would write: “I met a coloured man in the street a short time since, with a string of boots on his shoulders; we fell into conversation, and in course of which, I said to him, what a miserable set of people we are! He asked, why?–Said I, we are so subjected under the whites, that we cannot obtain the comforts of life, but by cleaning their boots and shoes, old clothes, waiting on them, shaving them &c. Said he, (with the boots on his shoulders) “I am completely happy!!! I never want to live any better or happier than when I can get a plenty of boots and shoes to clean!!!”
In David Walker’s Appeal: To the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) the Boston, MA, revolutionary responded to the Maafa:
There is a great work for you to do, as trifling as some of you may think of it. You have to prove to the Americans and the world, that we are MEN, and not brutes, as we have been represented, and by millions treated. Remember, to let the aim of your labours among your brethren, and particularly the youths, be the dissemination of education and religion.*
Consider Walker’s assessment of the quality of the schooling African children generally received in the early 1800s:
I must close this article by relating the very heart-rending fact, that I have examined school-boys and young men of colour in different parts of the country, in the most simple parts of Murray’s English Grammar, and not more than one in thirty was able to give a correct answer to my interrogations. If any one contradicts me, let him step out of his door into the streets of Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, (no use to mention any other, for the Christians are too charitable further south or west!)–I say, let him who disputes me, step out of his door into the streets of either of those four cities, and promiscuously collect one hundred school-boys,or young men of colour, who have been to school, and who are considered by the coloured people to have received an excellent education, because, perhaps, some of them can write a good hand, but who, notwithstanding their neat writing, may be almost as ignorant, in comparison, as a horse.–And, I say it, he will hardly find (in this enlightened day, and in the midst of this charitable people) five in one hundred, who, are able to correct the false grammar of their language.–The cause of this almost universal ignorance among us, I appeal to our school-masters to declare. Here is a fact, which I this very minute take from the mouth of a young coloured man, who has been to school in this state (Massachusetts) nearly nine years, and who knows grammar this day, nearly as well as he did the day he first entered the school-house, under a white master. This young man says: “My master would never allow me to study grammar.” I asked him, why? “The school committee,” said he “forbid the coloured children learning grammar”–they would not allow any but the white children “to study grammar.” It is a notorious fact, that the major part of the white Americans, have, ever since we have been among them, tried to keep us ignorant, and make us believe that God made us and our children to be slaves to them and theirs. Oh! my God, have mercy on Christian Americans!!! —Page 39
There are several important assertions here that affirm Prof. Hilliard’s dynamics of domination. First, the teaching is physically segregated but under the control a school committee composed of white “Christian Americans.” The schoolhouse where the African child is taught has a white “master” or teacher. Also, the curriculum is academically inferior to that for whites (i.e., grammar is not taught to African children). Finally, the school miseducated black children to be-lie-ve in a lie: the supremacy of whites over blacks whereby the latter should be the slaves of the former.
* Why do the Slave-holders or Tyrants of America and their advocates fight so hard to keep my brethren from receiving and reading my Book of Appeal to them?–Is it because they treat us so well?–Is it because we are satisfied to rest in Slavery to them and their children?–Is is because they are treating us like men, by compensating us all over this free country!! for our labours?–But why are the Americans so very fearfully terrified respecting my Book?–Why do they search vessels, &c. when entering the harbours of tyrannical States, to see if any of my Books can be found, for fear that my brethren will get them to read. Why, I thought the Americans proclaimed to the world that they are a happy, enlightened, humane and Christian people, all the inhabitants of the country enjoy equal Rights!! America is the Asylum for the oppressed of all nations!!!
Now I ask the Americans to see the fearful terror they labor under for fear that my brethren will get my Book and read it–and tell me if their declaration is true–viz, if the United States of America is a Republican Government?–Is this not the most tyrannical, unmerciful, and cruel government under Heaven–not excepting the Algerines, Turks and Arabs?-
Ads from South Carolina Gazette for the sale of a “choice Cargo of Healthy Negroes” and a “very fine Cargo of able-bodied Gambia Negroes” in Charleston, June 1739
A little later we have the following:
William Bull, Governor of South Carolina, writes to the Royal Council, 5 October 1739.
I had the Hounour some time ago to lay before your Grace, some account of our affairs in regard to the desertion of our Negroes who are encouraged to it by a certain Proclamation published by the King of Spain’s Order at St. Augustine, declaring freedom to all Negroes who should Desert hither from the British Colonies; since which several parties have deserted and are there openly received and protected; many attempts of others have been discovered and prevented notwithstanding which on the Ninth of September last at night a Great number of Negroes arose in rebellion, broke open a store where they got arms killed twenty one White Persons and were marching in a daring manner out of the Province killing all they met and burning the Houses on the Road through which they passed
“An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Other Slaves in this Province” or Slave Code of South Carolina, May 1740
The specific article in this act we should study is:
XLV. And whereas, the having of slaves taught to write, or suffering them to be employed in writing, may be attended with great inconveniences; Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, That all and every person and persons whatsoever, who shall hereinafter teach or cause any slave or slaves to be taught, to write, or shall use or employ any slave as a scribe in any manner of writing whatsoever, hereafter taught to write, every such person and persons, shall, for every such offense, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds current money.
It is important to examine the North as much as the South. Hilary Moss in Schooling Citizens: The African American Struggle for Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), focuses on black education in New Haven, Baltimore, and Boston. In the latter city came the first challenge to go through a state court to racially segregated schooling. In Roberts vs. City of Boston, 5 Cushing. 206, the court determined the following:
It is urged, that this maintenance of separate schools tends to deepen and perpetuate the odious distinction of caste, founded in a deep-rooted prejudice in public opinion. This prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law, and probably cannot be changed by law. Whether this distinction and prejudice, existing in the opinion and feelings of the community, would not be as effectually fostered by compelling colored and white children, to associate together in the same schools, may well be doubted; at all events, it is a fair and proper question for the committee to consider and decide upon, having in view, the best interests of both classes, of children placed under their superintendence, and we cannot say, that their decision upon it is not founded on just grounds of reason and experience, and in the results of a discriminating and honest judgment.
The increased distance, to which the plaintiff was obliged to go to school from her father’s house, is not such, in our opinion, as to render the regulation in question unreasonable, still less illegal.
On the whole the court are of opinion, that upon the facts stated, the action cannot be maintained.
See page 4 of http://brownvboard.org/content/opinion-roberts
CHRONOLOGY
Colonial Times, 1492-1776
1492: Among the crew on the Santa Maria during Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas is Pedro Alonzo Niño, a black man. Africans also accompany Ponce de Leon, Hernando Cortes, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando de Soto, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in the early 16th century.
1623: William Tucker, the son of indentured servants living in Jamestown, is the first recorded black birth in America.
1641: Mathias De Sousa, a free black man, is elected to the Maryland General Assembly. He had come to the colony as an indentured servant.
1644: Lucas Santomee, a black physician and one of the major landowners in what is to become New York, is granted a tract by the Dutch that stretched from modern-day Greenwich Village to Brooklyn.
1712: Though other colonies had passed laws regulating the behavior of slaves, South Carolina passes a slave code that becomes the standard for slave-owning states. It proscribes escalating punishments for rebellious acts including death for escaping, authorizes whites to punish any slave found violating the law, and prohibits slaves from growing their own crops, working for money or learning to read and write.
1729: In an early precursor to lynchings, Maryland passes a law that mandates savage punishment for slaves accused of violent crimes: decapitation, hanging, or having a body’s remains publicly displayed after being drawn and quartered.
1731: Benjamin Banneker is born to free parents on Nov. 9 in Ellicott Mills, Md.
1760: A poem by Jupiter Hammon, a slave on Long Island, is the first ever published by a black person born in America. His first poem has a Christian theme; a later poem exhorts slaves in New York to serve their masters faithfully. http://www.lloydharborhistoricalsociety.org/jupiter.html
1770: Crispus Attucks, a slave who had escaped to Boston, is killed during the Boston Massacre. He is considered to be the first casualty of the American Revolution.
1775: An abolitionist group is founded by the Pennsylvania Quakers called the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race. A decade later, upon Benjamin Franklin‘s return from France, he became president of the Society.
1776: Five thousand black men serve in the Army and Navy during the American Revolution. But 20,000 fight for the British, who promise freedom to any slave who joined them. At the end of the war, 12,000 African Americans leave with the British. While some are freed in Europe and Africa, thousands more are sold back into slavery in the West Indies.
Slavery at Full Strength, 1780-1860
1783: The black population reaches 1 million; two-thirds of which was in Maryland and Virginia.
1786: A slave trader hunting for victims in Philadelphia attempts to kidnap the Rev. Richard Allen. The slave trader is jailed for perjury. He insists that Allen is an escaped slave. Allen founds the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794. Also this year, a group of runaway slaves who fought for the British and called themselves the “King of England’s soldiers” terrorize Savannah to try to foment a slave rebellion.
1793: Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, revitalizing agriculture in the South and creating an even greater need for slaves to harvest the cotton.
1800: Inspired by a slave revolt in Haiti that overthrows the government, Virginia slave Gabriel Prosser leads 1,100 set to lay siege to Richmond. Prosser is betrayed before the attack. He and his family are hanged with 10 other conspirators.
1810: D.C. native Tom Molineaux, a former slave who moved to London after he bought his freedom through boxing matches, challenges the British heavyweight boxing champion to a match in what is considered to be the first international title bout. Though Molineaux knocks out champion Tom Cribb before 10,000 spectators, the fight is allowed to continue and Cribb beats Molineaux in the 43rd round.
1822: Denmark Vesey, an abolition activist and former slave who had acquired wealth as a property owner in South Carolina, designs the largest slave revolt to date. He raises money and secures weapons for an uprising of 9,000 black people around Charleston, intending to strike when many plantations would be idle during the summer. The plan was exposed by a house slave before Vesey could strike and he and 35 co-conspirators are executed. South Carolina imposes even more laws restricting the activities of free blacks, and white religious leaders begin framing the revolt’s failure as divine intervention in support of slavery.
1823: Alexander Lucius Twilight is the first black person to graduate from college, earning an associate’s degree from Middlebury College in Vermont. The next year, two more men graduate with bachelor’s degrees from Amherst College in Massachusetts and Bowdoin College in Maine.
1826: Amherst College graduates its first African American student, Edward Jones. For more highlights of Africans in American higher education, see http://www.jbhe.com/features/53_blackhistory_timeline.html
1831: Nat Turner leads one of the deadliest slave revolts in history, orchestrating the killing of his master and 60 other white people between Aug. 21 and 23 in Southampton, Va. Though dozens of other slaves are lynched or executed after the rampage, Turner remains at large until Oct. 30. He is hanged 12 days after his capture. The following year, many slave states prohibit slaves from preaching (as Turner did before his revolt) and expand crimes for which slaves can be executed. Virginia banned free blacks from purchasing freedom for any slave who is not an immediate family member.
1835: Two years after its founding as the first co-educational college in the country, Oberlin College becomes the first in the nation to admit students regardless of race.
1837: The first medical degree awarded to an African American goes to James McCune Smith, who graduated from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and later returns to his native New York City to practice medicine.
1838: Frederick Douglass, 20, escapes from slavery in Baltimore and settles in New Bedford, Mass. In 1841 he is recruited as an abolitionist speaker for the Massachusetts chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society and often collaborates with the chapter’s white founder, William Lloyd Garrison. In one of his earliest speeches, Douglass speaks of the hypocrisy of whites who supported abolition but cannot bear to share the sacrament–or even the pew–with blacks at church. Though Garrison opposes slavery, he was an architect of the movement to send free blacks to Liberia to relieve them of the discrimination they faced and placate whites who feared them. But Douglass vehemently opposes the colonization movement, writing in an 1849 editorial: “We live here–have lived here–have a right to live here, and mean to live here.” Richard Purvis, the American Anti-Slavery Society’s co-founder, is dubbed “president of the Underground Railroad” for hosting many slaves who passed through Philadelphia on their journey North. Like Douglass and other progressive activists, Purvis was a strong opponent of the colonization plan and an early advocate for integration when blacks often gravitated toward racial-segregated schools and abolitionist societies and whites championed Liberia as a solution to racial discord. While abolitionists universally opposed slavery, they differed in their ideas of freedom.1845: Frederick Douglass publishes his memoir, “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” for which he risks arrest by revealing that he is an escaped slave and naming his former owner. He seeks refuge in England while supporters raise money to purchase his freedom.
1849: Earliest reported case concerning school segregation on racial lines – Roberts v. The City of Boston. It takes Statutes of Massachusetts, 1855. cap. 256; General Statutes of Massachusetts, cap. 41. sec. 9, to deny legal support for Jim Crow schooling in Boston.
1857: Dred Scott appeals to the Supreme Court for his freedom after his master moved him to the free states of Illinois and Minnesota. The Supreme Court rejects his petition and rules that no one of African heritage–slave or free–is a U.S. citizen and the federal government does not have the power to ban slavery in northern states.
Through the Civil War comes Jubilee and Juneteenth. With the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution a struggle ensues as to what education should mean for the freedpeople.