Marian Douglas-Ungaro's List: Slavery, Post-Slavery & Reparation

"In 1650, Sweden established trading stations along the West African coast, with bases in an area called the Swedish Gold Coast [The Swedish Gold Coast was a Swedish colony founded in 1650 on the Gulf of Guinea in present-day Ghana in West Africa. It lasted to April 1663 when the whole Swedish Gold Coast was seized by the Danes, and integrated in the Danish Gold Coast [which was later a part of the West African Gold Coast, and which is today part of Ghana. Sweden and Denmark were competing for positions as regional powers during this period, and the Danes followed the Swedes to Africa, setting up stations a couple of years later. In 1663, the Swedish Gold Coast was taken over by the Danish colonial power and become part of the Danish Gold Coast.] There is no historical documentation that shows that slaves were ever traded in the trading stations during their 13-year Swedish possession, rather it is assumed to be the case."

"1662- The General Assembly declared that children of enslaved women were slaves. The General Assembly declared that the children of enslaved women were legally slaves even if the father was a free man of African or English descent, part of the incremental legislative definition of slavery."

"Half of all men in Britain who have Caribbean heritage and are in a relationship already have partners of a different race. The same is true of one in five black African men, one in 10 Indian men and women and two out of five Chinese women. One in five children belongs to an ethnic minority - a far higher proportion than among the adult population."

"Petit, Maxime, Les colonies françaises; petite encyclopédie coloniale publiée sous la direction de M. Maxime Petit; avec la collaboration de MM.: J. Alix, A. Baudrillart, Augustin Bernard, Fr. Bernard, E. Blochet, C. Bruno. > Les colonies françai, Paris, Librairie Larousse [1902?]

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture / General Research and Reference Division

ID# 1267228"

"In the West African country of Liberia, you’ll find a town named Clay-Ashland in an area known as “Kentucky in Africa.” This special edition of Kentucky Life explores the history behind those names and traces family ties that bind Liberia and Kentucky."

"I take this opportunity to acknowledge the receipt of Anthony Benezet’s book against the slave trade. I thank you for it. It is not a little surprising that the professors of Christianity, whose chief excellence consists in softening the human heart, and in cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong.

What adds to the wonder is that this abominable practice has been introduced in the most enlightened ages. Times that seem to have pretensions to boast of high improvements in the arts and sciences, and refined morality have brought into general use, and guarded by many laws, a species of violence and tyranny, which our more rude and barbarous, but more honest ancestors detested.

Is it not amazing that at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision in a country, above all others, fond of liberty, that in such an age and in such a country, we find men professing a religion the most humane, mild, gentle and generous, adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity, as it is inconsistent with the bible, and destructive to liberty? Every thinking, honest person rejects slavery in theory, yet how few in reject it in real life from conscientious motives!1"

Though very few even noted it, Jan 1, 2010 was 147th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. It "was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war."

I do not assume that this website - though interesting & informative - respects the priority of Black American ethnicity over all the types of "race mixture" that Black Americans personify. We are not "mixed race people" (individuals) because we are Black Americans. We are the Black American ethnic People, in part, because we are racially mixed. And the Black American/U.S. (& former European colonial North American) process of MISCEGENATION - race mixture - has occurred under a specific set of conditions for 400 years, under the most horrific, virtually irreplacable, conditions. I'm not sure this site is concerned about "getting" these facts.

"O'Brien explores the circumstances surrounding an aborted lynching in Columbia, Tennessee, at the end of World War II to illustrate transitions that were occurring in race relations during that period. Seething racial tensions boiled over into an attempted lynching, triggered by a relatively minor incident--a black man's attempt to get a radio repaired. Black veterans returning from the war resisted what had been typical practice of venting racial animosity by lynching, triggering a movement in the larger black community from passivity to resistance. O'Brien relates the broader sociological implications of that resistance and focuses on individuals and their actions. For example, the sheriff who, in an effort to protect the intended victim, allowed him to escape. O'Brien also explores the interplay between the criminal-justice system of the old South and the broader political context that included increasing civil rights activism, the progressive labor movement, and the increasing outmigration of both whites and blacks. Vernon Ford "

"to crown it all, what do you think he chose for a wife?—Why, one of the blackest wenches that you ever saw. But perhaps you will think stranger, that he has been faithful to her for more than twenty years. He has a grown mulatto son by her, and two mulatto daughters, and they all live together in concord as blissful as the best. The son superintends the plantation, and the girls are accomplished candidates for the Hymeneal altar. Tutors have attended them from infancy, and the girls have been taught music and dancing, the modern languages and polite literature: How much they know of these branches I cannot tell, as they are very modest, and always avoid white strangers. The old man likes very much to have civil white persons call upon him, and he will be very polite; but you will laugh, I know, to hear him descant upon the superior charms of the African beauties."

"Africans Helped Establish America's Oldest City

When the Spanish conquistador Pedro Menendez founded St. Augustine in 1565, not only were there black members of his crew, but he noted that his arrival had been preceded by free Africans in the French settlement at Fort Caroline, just a few miles north.

Our oldest written records, the Cathedral Parish Archives, list the first birth of a black child here in 1606--thirteen years before many textbooks say that the first blacks on these shores arrived at Jamestown in 1619."

VIRGINIA SLAVE LAWS - December 1662

"Whereas some doubts have arisen whether CHILDREN got by any Englishman upon a NEGRO WOMAN should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the MOTHER;

"..African and Native peoples came together in the Americas. Over centuries, African Americans and Native Americans created shared histories, communities, families, and ways of life. Prejudice, laws, and twists of history have often divided them from others, yet African-Native American people were united in the struggle against slavery and dispossession, and then for self-determination and freedom..."

TULSA, OKLAHOMA USA - 1921 - "One town destroyed. 300 killed. 78 years fighting for justice.

On May 31 and June 1, 1921, white mobs, with the assistance of the police and National Guard, laid siege to the segregated Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, known as the “Black Wall Street” of America (see slideshow). After 18 hours of attack, by land and air, there were an estimated 300 dead and 10,000 homeless – and over 1,000 homes and virtually all other buildings were left in ashes. In 2004, 151 elderly survivors sought to have their day in court – only to be told that the statue of limitations for any claims had expired.

After the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal in 2005, in 2009, Congress introduced a bill to extend the statute of limitations so that the survivors could, at last, seek and achieve justice.

Only 52 survivors are still with us today. The documentary Before They Die! chronicles their ongoing road to reparations. This is their journey…and our call to action."