Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Monday, August 21, 2006
175 years ago: Nat Turner puts the South on notice
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and essay by Michael A Hoffman taken from his work They Were White And They Were Slaves http://tinyurl.com/bqlr2
“Up to one-half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were Whites slaves and they were America’s first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too.
Whites were auctioned on the block with children sold and separated from their parents and wives sold and separated from their husbands. Free Black property owners strutted the streets of northern and southern American cities while White slaves were worked to death in the sugar mills of Barbados and Jamaica and the plantations of Virginia.
The Establishment has created the misnomer of “indentured servitude” to explain away and minimize the fact of White slavery. But bound Whites in early America called themselves slaves. Nine-tenths of the White slavery in America was conducted without indentures of any kind but according to the so-called “custom of the country,” as it was known, which was lifetime slavery administered by the White slave merchants themselves.”
“In 1855, Frederic Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York’s Central Park, was in Alabama on a pleasure trip and saw bales of cotton being thrown from a considerable height into a cargo ship’s hold. The men tossing the bales somewhat recklessly into the hold were Negroes, the men in the hold were Irish.
Olmsted inquired about this to a shipworker. “Oh,” said the worker, “the niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything.”
Before British slavers traveled to Africa’s western coast to buy Black slaves from African chieftains, they sold their own White working class kindred ("the surplus poor” as they were known) from the streets and towns of England, into slavery. Tens of thousands of these White slaves were kidnapped children. In fact the very origin of the word kidnapped is kid-nabbed, the stealing of White children for enslavement.”
on another note, where´s Jeremy? i remember he was annoyed more people here didn´t care for Bono and that was the last I heard of him.
Posted by owen from nearly leaving v of fish odour on 08/21 at 07:19 AM -
Great article, Mickey. Thanks for the important history lesson. It got me thinking. There has been a lot of focus on the Civil War that the usa started in Iraq but I think that there is a civil war brewing closer to home. This country is so divided that it might reach the breaking point. Here is a link to a Buchanan article. I disagree with the thrust of it, but I do think that many in the world are at the point where they have had enough of usa bullying. As they say, “The chickens, and the squirrels, and the horses, and cows, and the dogs of war will come home to roost.” Some here will say, do they hate us. Some will say, I wonder why they hate us. And there will be a few who say, we told you so.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashpjb.htmPosted by RMJ from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts on 08/21 at 07:28 AM -
Never been totally sure what the lesson in Turner’s actions are-- no doubt it was an American Revolution, but man… murdering entire families in their sleep? Yikes. Well it’s off to the war machine for me now, where I’m blocked from commenting here. I think the Morgan firewall doesn’t like the captcha function or something.
Posted by James from Hell's Kitchen on 08/21 at 07:29 AM -
Good morning, Owen. We were symultyping. Thanks for your history lesson, too.
Posted by RMJ from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts on 08/21 at 07:32 AM -
Hi James...”...murdering entire families in their sleep...”. Sounds like Iraq, only there we rape the little girls first.
Posted by RMJ from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts on 08/21 at 07:34 AM -
I know, I know, was thinking same thing… sigh, wish had more time here during the day.
Posted by James from Hell's Kitchen on 08/21 at 07:37 AM -
Owen no doubt there were white Europeans exploited along with black Africans by the emergence of global capitalism. But you’re definitely going overboard with your source. I did a little investigating and found this from the same Idaho racist you’re quoting. There’s much more. The guy’s out of his gourd.
I am supposing that the point of Mickey’s post---aside from its historical significance this week---is to enter Nat Turner’s rebellion into the record here of applied ways to resist the horrors around us.
James I might share your unease about murdering families while they sleep...unless they considered me property, treated me and everyone I know like a slave, and who knows what else. With that in mind there’s the violence---which I don’t like---and the justification for it---which I understand. To Nat Turner and the people (not slaves, but people) rebelling along with him, their victims were not “little Eichmanns” just doing their jobs but oppressors in every sense.
Posted by Keir from The Hague (Jackowski election hdqts) on 08/21 at 08:51 AM -
Keir...I just read the Hoffman article. The last 3 paragraphs are a real problem. I believe the opposite is true. We SHOULD feel the pain of others and those NOT in our own families as much as we feel the pain of our own.
About poor whites being victimized by the industrial revolution...my grandmother worked in a factory when she was a child. Her hand was seriously injured there and she had the scars till she died many years later.
Maybe the conflict here is about the definition of the word “slavery”. My definition has always been very broad and today includes everyone who is not paid a livable wage. Most people would disagree with me. I do not mean to trivialize the plight of the real “slaves” who were forced to come here in the past.
Posted by RMJ from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts on 08/21 at 09:20 AM -
I read a National Geographic magazine article recently documenting the current plight of the---lemme see if I remember correctly---27 million people enslaved worldwide at the moment. Amazingly, not a drop of guilt is placed on the otherwise influential and omni-present developed world.
Posted by Keir from The Hague (Jackowski election hdqts) on 08/21 at 10:16 AM -
Keir...I, too, have been following the slavery-in-our-time news stories for a long time. Many of the slaves are children. A few years ago there was a child activist, maybe in India,(I forget) who tried to stop the children from being used in the carpet making industry. Somehow I remember that he was killed. I hope I am wrong about that. Every time I see a fancy, expensive rug (I don’t have any) I think of that young boy.
Keir...I agree with you that the silence of the world is very hard to understand.Posted by RMJ from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts on 08/21 at 11:42 AM -
Yes, he was murdered because he spoke out against child slavery. I remember seeing him interviewed.
http://tinyurl.com/p35hy
Posted by RMJ from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts on 08/21 at 11:57 AM -
Hello Expendables. Not a bad day here in NYC. Warm, but not humid.
Great comments here and, as is often the case, too much to reply to now. I’ll pick one topic: Nat Turner’s rampage is standard operating procedure for the U.S. and its proxies. Even as Turner led his revolt, Americans were slaughtering Indians from coast to coast.
Posted by Mickey Z. from Astoria on 08/21 at 02:14 PM -
“It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against White, or as purely American problem. Rather we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.”
“The only way we’ll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti… Cuba ...”
“The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia exists in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.”
Malcolm XRec’d in an e-mail. Not verified as a Malcolm X quote, but I think it is.
Posted by RMJ from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts on 08/21 at 05:40 PM -
Hi everyone!
I agree with Keir about that Hoffmann guy he is cuckoo but I don’t want to offend cuckoos (the birds of course) so I’ll just say he’s loopy plus I don’t like the titles of the other articles that site is peddling or the books either.
Great article on Nat Turner.
Amendment to Be http://tinyurl.com/l3utw
Posted by TM from on 08/21 at 06:17 PM -
Thanks, TM. The Nat Turner article is actually an excerpt from 50 American Revolutions.
Btw, did I miss it or has no one commented on the “shock and awe” photo?
Posted by Mickey Z. from Astoria on 08/21 at 08:06 PM
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