Margaret Mitchell (1900-49), an American writer, is the author of “Gone With the Wind” (1936), which was a huge hit as a book and an even huger hit as a 1939 film of the same name. Mitchell died on August 16th, 1949, five days after being struck down by an automobile. She was 48.
In 1900 she was born a white daughter of the South. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia hearing stories about the Civil War (1861-65) and Reconstruction (1865-77) by people who had lived through it, both black and white. She heard about Atlanta burning and General Sherman’s march to the sea. She did not know the Confederates lost till she was ten.
She went to Smith College in New England but dropped out after a year when her mother died. She went to work for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, writing as Peggy Mitchell, but quit after four years because she injured her ankle. Stuck at home and with all the stories of civil war times swimming in her head, she began to write “Gone With the Wind”.
In 1935, after nine years of writing her book, a man from Macmillan Company asked her if she knew of any new writers. She did not tell him about her book, but her friend did. It needed work – and a suitcase to hold it! – but Macmillan loved it and it came out the following year. Somehow they got it down to “just” 1,037 pages.
She was hoping to sell 5,000 copies. But in just one day that first summer it sold 50,000! It quickly sold 500,000 copies, then a million, then a million and a half. By her death it had sold 8 million copies. It made her rich but her life as a private person was over. She was so instantly famous that she never got a chance to write another book.
In 1939, on the opening night of the film, Mitchell said it had:
“been a great thing for Georgia and the South to see the Confederates come back”
It was one of the first films in colour. By 1947 it had been shown in theatres four different times. As of 2013 more people had paid to see it than any other film in the world.
I saw it in the eighties. For more than three hours I was expected to put myself in the shoes of a spoiled rich white woman, a slave-owner, played by Vivian Leigh (pictured above). When she was ruined by the war half-way through I was glad. It saw black people in a good light from a white point of view: as loyal servants. Hattie McDaniel, who played such a servant, received the highest White American honour for acting: an Oscar.
Stereotypes: “Gone With the Wind” pushes the Southern Belle and the Mammy stereotypes, myths cooked up by the South to put a good face on slavery (Mammy) and hanging black men from trees (Southern belle). The film also paints a war to defend slavery as a noble cause.
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: mainly the New York Times (1949) and my post “at least a 100 million”.
See also:
- my 1949 media diet
- Words not in H.G. Wells:
- Go Set a Watchman – another tale by a white daughter of the South
- The Birth of a Nation (1915) – another rewriting of American history that is even worse
- Confederate flag
- What they do not tell you at school about anti-racism
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@abagond I read Gone With The Wind shortly after it was published and was given a free ticket to see the first showing of the film in Oberlin, Ohio.
I did not see the same picture you saw or read the same book you read. (same but different perception) While it glorified the south it pointed out the lifestyle of few plantation owners and the variation of people. The period of 1865 to 70 was the end of the “Plantation Period and the beginning of the Jim Crow period.
The description of the poor white was excellent and when you realize that the majority of deaths during the war were poor people who could not purchase their way out of the military and the description of the carpetbaggers with the black leaders also was close to factual. The poor and “less fortunate” have always been victimized by those who wish to take advantage of the situation.
The rise of the KKK as a group to protect the south coincided with President Andrew Johnson (1865 -1869) returning the power to the south and the end of the period of reconstruction. Regardless of the justification, the northern carpetbaggers mishandled the situation and were just as responsible for the next 70 or more years of Jim Crow (1870 – 1940) as the southern people. We made similar errors in Iraq by putting the Shia religious group in charge. The Abolitionist abandon the project and left the nation in the hands of the south.
You cannot look at a books and documents written in the 30s and 40s with an eye of this period. In 100 years everything you have written will look childish, while you are as careful as any in presenting your facts. World War II changed everything in this nation.
I recommend you study the lives of blacks in the south during the Jim Crow period. That is the period of total disaster for the blacks.
Slavery was not nearly as horrible as the period when blacks were no longer owned by the white power structure. It is much easier to describe the horrors of slavery then Jim Crow.
No one living today or that will live in the future can change the past. If we do not learn from the past we will repeat it.
Please make certain that the education that the children are receiving today is not usurped by the current move to have charter schools (special schools for various individuals).
If charter schools continue we will end up with the same mass of uneducated individuals that have existed in the past. Added to the white power structure will be the black elite. The poor, no matter what race, color, ethnic, religion, creed or any other means of separation, will always be at the bottom and stepped on!
The goal of the rich and powerful is to convince the poor that the other poor are the enemy. (Charlottesville, Va under educated poor whites)
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It is amazing how Hollywood glamorizes slave-owning criminals in the South. Nearly every movie made in the US paints the Confederacy as noble victims of Northern aggression. Absent from those movies are the contexts of:
✦ the horrors of slavery
✦ the conflicts along the border of Missouri and Kansas from 1854 to 1861
known as “Bleeding Kansas”
✦ the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War
✦ Southern White resisters in the Confederacy like the Free State of Jones
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-free-state-jones- 180958111/
Documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, did a decent job of countering pro-Confederate propaganda like Gone With The Wind with the multi-part series, “The Civil War”. Burn’s evenhanded approach to that war wove in the stories of Black, White, North, South and West.
Unlike Margaret Mitchell, Burns treats all of the participants of the Civil War with respect. Newsweek editorialist, Matthew Cooper highlights that treatment in his article, “Ken Burns’s Merciful Portrayal of the South in ‘The Civil War’ Is a Good Lesson for 2015”:
http://www.newsweek.com/pbs-film-celebrates-its-25th-anniversary-ken-burns-civil-war-371366
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To me, one of the few redeeming features of Gone With The Wind is its portrayal of the Convict Lease Program as a continuation of slavery. The story’s heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, rebuilds her family’s fortune and estate on the the sweat of Black convicts.
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http://www.history.com/topics/bleeding-kansas/
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“Slavery was not nearly as horrible as the period when blacks were no longer owned by the white power structure. It is much easier to describe the horrors of slavery then Jim Crow. – REVISIONIST Allen Shaw
Really Allen, well just to give you a mere glimpse of the brutality and horrors of slavery, take a look at the pictures below. After perusal of these images of reality, you may then return to your deep state of slumbering just as most whites do regarding the issue of slavery.
Nonetheless, this includes that pathetic, “Gone with the Wind,” crappy movie written by Margaret Mitchell as well.
“What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.” Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, July 1852
Deuteronomy 28:48 Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. (“He”, is indicative of or in the alternative connote that the white man being the perpetual enemy of the Black man. Didn’t the white man or people of your ilk place a yoke of iron around our ancestor’s neck?)
https://civilwartalk.com/attachments/slave-2b88-jpg.128631/
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HBO the same show runners that created Game Of Thrones wants to create a show about the flip side of the Civil War and black people being slaves in the modern world. I hope that show never sees the light of day. All this nostalgia for a time when black people were subjected to a life of oppression is quite telling about the psyches of a large segment of white Americans in this country. Given the current administration that is operating on an agenda of white supremacy. This country is in retrograde and this is what the current president meant when he said he wanted to make America great again. I hate Gone With The Wind and all it’s ugly stereotypes of black people. I am glad that icons of hate are going to be torn down. The South lost and that’s the true history and white people need to get over that.
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Free State Of Jones about a Mississippi man Newt Knight who staged a rebellion against the Confederacy is an enlightening film.
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@Afrofem: Thanks for that link something new to learn.
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I hate this love for Civil War monuments and I hate this symbolism and this effing movie is because it wants to remind to say to black people they are N-words. So to all these Confederacy loves they can go screw yourselves.
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Confederacy lovers ^^^ typo
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I just can’t believe Allen Shaw and his denial views. WTF man.
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@blakksage Yes that is one good picture. Can you produce more than one. Did you know that sailors were beat the same way. Are you aware that today in Saudi Arabia people are sentenced to 100 lashes.
When I was serving in the all black military I have documented the beating of men who swore they fell down 5 flights of stairs in a two story building.. You do not even have any pictures of Jim Crow (see reenactment) Please read about the many lynchings between 1877 and 1946. (Jim Crow). Study the prison system today as well as the Chain gangs of yesterday.
You are trying to justify a period you look at in books to a person who lived during the Jim Crow period. You want to make me wrong instead of trying to understand what I am saying.
Blacks who were owned were not treated nearly as bad as blacks who were not owned. There has been no change in the number of women raped and men beaten; however, there was the new practice of lynching which did not occur during slavery.
The picture of the many blacks hanging was probably taken after the civil war. Please document it. The only time blacks were killed in mass during slavery is after a revolt.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/02/a-lynching-in-georgia-the-living-memorial-to-americas-history-of-racist-violence?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=The+Long+Read+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=240063&subid=19799392&CMP=longread_collection
Frederick Douglass, July 1852 Did not have to live under Jim Crow when he wrote what he wrote in 1852.
When Gone With The Wind was written it was not written for blacks to read, it was written during the Jim Crow period. It was written by an inexperienced person and later made into a book. You cannot compare the writing with the work of producers of the “Ken Burns Civil War”. 1938 1990 52 years separation between writings. Ken Burns, highly qualified historian : Margaret Mitchell an inexperienced housewife.
1938 still in the Jim Crow Period. 1990 Jim Crow has been over for almost 45 years, many advancements have been made by blacks. Most blacks do not even know what the Jim Crow period is.
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@ Allen Shaw
Saying that slavery wasn’t that bad compared to Jim Crow is doing a disservice to those who lived through it, Lord rest their weary souls.
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@Allen Shaw: There is a name for people like you.
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On flogging:
“In addition to imposing a web of hierarchy on the Continental Army, Washington crushed liberty within by replacing individual responsibility by iron despotism and coercion. Severe and brutal punishments were imposed upon those soldiers whose sense of altruism failed to override their instinct for self-preservation. Furloughs were curtailed and girlfriends of soldiers were expelled from camp; above all, lengthy floggings were introduced for all practices that Washington considered esthetically or morally offensive. He even had the temerity to urge Congress to raise the maximum number of strikes of the lash from 39 to the enormous number of 500; fortunately, Congress refused.”
I bring this up not to deflect aaway from the flogging of blacks but to point out that if white people were willing to do this to their own then imagine the torture inflicted upon Blacks..
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“I saw it in the eighties. For more than three hours I was expected to put myself in the shoes of a spoiled rich white woman, a slave-owner, played by Vivian Leigh (pictured above).”
I thought Clark Gable did a pretty good job of Rhett Butler. What about that weak kneed Ashley. Did you see the carpetbaggers. Were you impressed with the burning of Atlanta? How about that scene when it showed all of those service personnel lying wounded. The Civil War was a total wasted effort. If it would not been for the efforts of Grant, Sherman and Sheridan Southern Blacks woulds be living in another nation today. As it is the southern states and also the central western states continue to deny the blacks many opportunities. The south too many blacks and the central west not enough blacks.
Which states refused to accept medicaid money?
My son-in-law loves movies and he tells me I should not be so critical when I am watching a movie with him. “It is just a movie dad!”.
No one expected you to put yourself in the shoes of a spoiled rich white woman any more than you think you are the Saint or Butch Cassidy or Tom Mix. The movie was not a historical presentation, just entertainment. It was 1939 and one of the first movies in color. I read a book called the Virginian in 1938, the movie series was nothing like the book. Zane Gray was an outstanding writer! The series not so hot. There was a black movie producer at that time.
Do you realize that 77 years have passed since that movie was presented to the public. When I saw it I was impressed with the color and the story. The depression was still on and people did without many things that today are taken for granted. I lived in a small community and did not know much about the local world except what I read. I collected stamps so I had a lot of knowledge about the world.
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@ Mary Burrell
I’m glad you enjoyed reading about the Free State of Jones. Life is full of complexity and unexpected heroes.
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@Mary Burrell Yes there is. I am a retired MSgt (USAF) and you would not have the knowledge to invent in your mind the names that I have been called. I “worked hard” an expression you hate and I retired from two separated jobs in my life. Both of them I “worked hard” (urp). I believe in working hard!
Some have called me whatever you are thinking but did they “work hard” or wait for someone to give them a hand out. How many blacks that “worked hard” are successful today and are not setting around complaining about someone not liking them.
You perhaps did not live long enough to be where people actually were mistreated in the manner that I have witnessed. You read books and think and speak about what you “wouda done”.
So remember that old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones; but, names will never hurt me”.
“Work hard” Mary Burrell!
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@Mack Lyons (@DDSSBlog) You have not actually studied Jim Crow; therefore I understand your lack of ability to make the comparison.
There are many different stories about slavery. Most blacks choose the worse ones and ignore others. I have a story of a plantation owned by a northern white which did not allow any whites on the property. When I find it I will present it. It is loss in my collection of stories about the period that I have read and attempted to save. I do not have time to reread all of that history again and still keep up with current events.
Study Jim Crow! Study the living conditions of the southern blacks from 1865 to 1963.
How many picture can you present that match the picture of the man with the scarred back. Every slave had a dollar value and the cost was bankrupting the slave holders. During Jim Crow labor was nearly free and was a much better bargain for the whites property owners and business people then the blacks who were no longer a responsibility of the “use to be owners” and no longer were fed and clothed, no matter how meager they had been taken care of when they were slaves.
After slavery, during Jim Crow the white male continue to use the black female as they chose, because it was an “economic thing”. And no doubt the male blacks were used to satisfy whatever “needs” that might occur.
How many lynchings occurred between 1867 and 1940 (Jim Crow) and how many occurred during slavery.
By the way, I have never attempted to justify slavery. Although some forms of slavery are practiced in Africa today.
Tribalism with selected leaders and others subject to total poverty is a form of slavery. Idi Amin for example. Have you studied the history of Liberia, Africa. Have you studied many other African nations. What happened to the people when they ran the whites out. How many “Presidents for Life” are there in Africa.
Study, study, study. Do not allow emotions to control your knowledge. See to it that your children are properly educated and motivated. When an opportunity presents itself, make sure your children are ready to take it.
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@Allen Shaw: There is nothing I can do about you and your skewed interpretations of history and social justice in America in respect to black people. You as a black man need to do better and work harder and learn history. You are a the kind of black person that I have visceral disdain for. And shame on you. If this the hill you choose to die on that’s not my problem. You need to do better and work harder at not being an Uncle Tom.
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@ Allen Shaw
Yes, you lived through Jim Crow, but you didn’t live through slavery. So your own argument could be turned on you. How can you make such a judgment if you didn’t actually experience the slave times?
You say people here who didn’t live during Jim Crow can’t understand. But no one here has lived through both slavery and Jim Crow, so how can any of us determine that one or the other was worse?
I don’t even see the point in trying to quantify which was worse. They were both bad. Neither should have ever happened.
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“Study, study, study. Do not allow emotions to control your knowledge. See to it that your children are properly educated and motivated. When an opportunity presents itself, make sure your children are ready to take it. – REVISIONIST Allen Shaw
Speaking vicariously through Goethe and H.L. Mencken, I’ll just say this in regards to your anglophilic; paternalistic; shibboleth tone of voice:
“The whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.” – H.L. Mencken
“There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.” — Goethe
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@Allen Shaw: In your case you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. You are an old man so there’s not much to do about your distorted views and interpretations of history and the culture in regards to black people.
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Allen Shaw said:
“Slavery was not nearly as horrible as the period when blacks were no longer owned by the white power structure. It is much easier to describe the horrors of slavery then Jim Crow.”
What a load of garbage. Yes, reconstruction was indeed a mistake. But for different reasons. The Union should have executed all of the Confederate soldiers for treason. But Lincoln had mercy on them. Big mistake. Another mistake was for the Union to stop reconstruction as early as it did. The former confederacy should not have been allowed to govern itself until at least 1900 when most of the people who fought in the civil war were dead and could no longer contaminate public opinion.
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Allen Shaw said:
“Tribalism with selected leaders and others subject to total poverty is a form of slavery. Idi Amin for example. Have you studied the history of Liberia, Africa. Have you studied many other African nations. What happened to the people when they ran the whites out. How many “Presidents for Life” are there in Africa.”
It’s a good thing that the dictators and “Presidents for Life” that existed in South America, Europe, Asia and Eastern Europe are never used a proof that those people should be enslaved. Because that would be a stupid argument. I also wouldn’t want to reference people like Hitler, Pinochet, Stalin or Pol Pot. Because that would mean that the problem of murderous dictators is not unique to the continent of Africa.
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Here’s a thought for all those who like to romanticize the era of the civil war, stop telling black people to get over slavery when you need to get over the loss of the Confederacy.
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Earlier, I had the good fortune to run across a few recorded interviews of former slaves, made back in the 1930s and 1940s. One of the rarest opportunities to hear about slavery from those who experienced it firsthand.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IfIDrQxI0o)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYWF5lz2HuM)
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As I have said you cannot do anything about a system that died 152 years ago. No one has ever told anyone to forget slavery.
Millions of people died in the period 1860 1865 only to have the Abolitionist turn the government over to Andrew Johnson, allow the end of reconstruction, turn their back on the problems of the south and ignore for 63 years any problems including the Jim Crow.
Today many blacks continue to ignore the Jim Crow period, while seeking some kind of resolution to slavery.
The comments that follow and condemn my comments show that they do not understand the Jim Crow period and they would rather put me down then to study my comments and the Jim Crow period.
In 1933 the Roosevelt administration as a part of the National Recovery Act assigned college students to record slaves. The youngest slave would have been born in 1860 and have no knowledge of slavery. If you hear them they normally are referring to the Jim Crow period. How old would a person have to be to have a recollection of slavery in 1941. 76 years after slavery ended.
See some of the following for voices of the past. My grandfathers were free born in 1856 and 1863
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/…/The-voices-of-slavery.html
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/vfssp.html
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VTFkyDrH3M)
http://www.washingtonpost.com
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Fk9pqybCA)
See also https://civilwartalk.com/threads/a-post-civil-war-legacy-lynching-warning-graphic-accounts-and-pictures.118468/
@ Mary Burrell “You are a the kind of black person that I have visceral disdain for.”
So you have been appointed the Queen who decides who is an Uncle Tom. I was not aware of your great power. From now on I will bow down when I respond to you. I just do not know how I have lived all of these years without your judgement. I again would respectfully request you study the Jim Crow period.
For those who say I do not know anything about the slavery period, I will say, other then reading many articles on slavery and other social issues I do not have any way to experience southern United States slavery; however I have lived during the pre Civil Right period (1963). I have lived in North Carolina (45), Louisiana (55), Alabama (61 – 63) and Texas (49) and I spent 4 years in the segregated military (1945 -1949); therefore, I have experienced southern Jim Crow in addition to northern Jim Crow.
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Hey Allen,
“Slavery was not nearly as horrible as the period when blacks were no longer owned by the white power structure. It is much easier to describe the horrors of slavery then Jim Crow.”
It seems most of the responses to your post are due to this quote above and it’s readily apparent why that is the case. At face value this comparison reflects a degree of false equivalence mixed in with subjectivity. One could ask horrible in what ways, to what degree and to what impact? Context in the case means a lot.
Considering that you lived with and through the immediate aftereffects of the Jim Crow era, it’s understandable that you wish to highlight its horrible and long lasting impact on America and African-Americans specifically; within society, individual-identity, economically and politically.
Yet this shouldn’t be done at the expense of diminishing the impact of slavery to raise the impact of Jim Crow. If only because Jim Crow was built upon the legacy of slavery and the white power structure. Jim Crow is a classic example of progress and retrenchment.
Are people easily seduced by the horrors slavery at the expense of other historical issues, yes, hence the ease you mention of describing its horrors. Jim Crow, lynching aside, was oppressive in a different way, dare I say in a more subtle manner which currently still manifests itself in our modern era.
“World War II changed everything in this nation.”
Can you elaborate more on this in context of the conversation at hand?
“The goal of the rich and powerful is to convince the poor that the other poor are the enemy.”
This aspect of division is greatly underappreciated and not focused upon in our modern time and historically speaking. It is touched upon by Howard Zinn in A People’s History, with respects to colonial Virginia.
Freed slaves got the same treatment vs. poor whites and a modern representation would be poor city dwellers vs. poor rural dwellers vs. immigrants (specifically Hispanics).
Though I too would caution the poor white narrative regarding the Charlottesville or this white supremacy idea as a whole. These groups are a diverse lot.
BTW I agree that educating our kids is imperative and how we educate them as equally important.
PF-T
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@PF Thought: Incisive post.
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Thanks.
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@PF ThoughtAre ” people easily seduced by the horrors slavery at the expense of other historical issues, yes, hence the ease you mention of describing its horrors. Jim Crow, lynching aside, was oppressive in a different way, dare I say in a more subtle manner which currently still manifests itself in our modern era.”
Slavery is the name that was given to the blacks in the southern parts of the United States. It was vicious and nothing that I have ever written has in any way tried to make it otherwise. Slaver is the same that has been described in all parts of the world and in the bible and it seems all different people have been enslaved.
Somehow I believe that most blacks today believe that their was a fundamental difference between blacks being enslaved then others.
Even one of the ex slaves made mention of the fact that Jim Crow was worse.
Since not one person living today has experienced US slavery all of us are imagining what it was like. Sailors were drug under ships having their bodies scrubbed raw and were often whipped. That is where the cat o nine tails came from. Peasant and serfs live horrible lives and were subjected to all sort of mistreatment. Like blacks they had to have permission to move from their home to some other place.
This is fruitless argument because it is based on the actual lack of knowledge of most individuals living today. The intent is to make black slavery absolutely the most horrible crime ever. Yet the facts to those who have actually read and studies the mistreatment of those who we refer to as poor and helpless US slavery probably can not even be proven to be the worse, only the latest publicized.
I believe that there were more Native Americans (North, Central and South) slaughtered then slaves brought to this nation.
Now about that statement “dare I say in a more subtle manner” You obviously have not actually studied “Jim Crow”! I will not go on because if you have not spent any time studying the period from 1870 to 1945 in the south you cannot even make a comment in good faith.
There was nothing subtle about Jim Crow!
I am the same Allen Shaw only a different email
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Allen,
To some degree, it seems my main point was missed in that comparing the horrors of the two periods is futile in that there’s a sense of false equivalence, the diversity of slave plantations and treatment, and the more pertinent point; of what benefit is the comparison?
If Jim Crow emerged out of slavery, then at best it is a continuance of a form of slavery. Comparing the two under the guise of some form of enlightenment regarding the horrors of Jim Crow is misplaced; even if the attempt is to educate the modern masses on how Jim Crow connects more directly to our current racial/American experience.
“Slavery is the name that was given to the blacks in the southern parts of the United States… Slaver is the same that has been described in all parts of the world and in the bible and it seems all different people have been enslaved.”
I think you are looking for another Main name and a long list of other names used to describe blacks under slavery and in America in general. Slavery was a description of their condition, the name became synonymous with blacks in American because….(see your quote/my reply below).
“Somehow I believe that most blacks today believe that their was a fundamental difference between blacks being enslaved then others.”
In America there was a contextual difference which highlights what grew into foundational differences in comparison to enslavement in general…(1)
Though before I elaborate I need to diverge because this comment connects to your other quotes:
“Sailors were drug under ships having their bodies scrubbed raw and were often whipped… Peasant and serfs live horrible lives… Like blacks they had to have permission to move from their home to some other place….”
The “slavery & mistreatment” happened throughout history argument has always been a curious one to use; especially for someone attempting to highlight the horrors of Jim Crow being worse than American slavery. In this context that argument undermines your point and just seems morbid.
I could take different perspectives to show how weak of an argument it is to take that position, but I will go with one that is more relevant to our discussion; your argument minimizes the impact of all horrors described, because if everyone enslaves, if everyone mistreats, then I could ask why should I care about any of it? What does it matter if Jim Crow was worse? Let’s just all move on with our lives trying not to enslave and mistreat, but if you do, don’t worry history is on your side. Sounds dismissive and fatalistic huh?
(1)…(now continuing from where I left off earlier), Yes slavery is found in antiquity, and people have been enslaved around the world, throughout many cultures. So was black slavery unique, in some ways no. Barbaric treatment of slaves, slaves from war and the impoverished being enslaved is consistent (though these too could vary). I think it can also be agreed that no sane person wanted/chose to be enslaved.
So what made the context in America different which evolved into foundational differences? The combination of laws against manumission, lifetime slavery of families, miscegenation laws, no upward mobility in society, slavery used to literally build the nation/economic dependency on it; which all are directly linked to a specific group of people (Africans) and their descendants (African-Americans), which benefitted and aided in the growth of a specific group of people (Europeans) and their descendants (Euro-Americans); hence race-based slavery.
Now recognize that the key here is the COMBINATION of these features coalescing into a race-based trade/new paradigm. I’m sure you could show me each of these features throughout slavery’s history, but could you present them all together in other forms of slavery? If so, please expand my awareness (not being flippant).
“The intent is to make black slavery absolutely the most horrible crime ever.”
I can understand the exasperation with those using black slavery for nefarious purposes through indignant means; yet as I continue to mention, at some point arguing who had it worse under slavery is pointless and divisive. Though we should be respectful and accurate when it is stated that there was uniqueness to American Slavery and that uniqueness directly influences/impacts Jim Crow.
“Even one of the ex slaves made mention of the fact that Jim Crow was worse.”
Who am I to debate a former slave? No one.
Though I will point out, considering African-Americans were born into slavery, there may have been a sense of “a way of life” during slavery, versus the prospect and hopes of what freedom could bring and the experiential realization of Jim Crow and what it actually wrought.
In that context I could imagine/surmise Jim Crow being worse in some ways because they made it through American Slavery, freedom was at hand, and Jim Crow stripped it away. That is a combination of psychological/emotional/physical pains I could not imagine.
I would have liked to have asked the former slave in what ways and what contexts, but as you mention I did not live during that time so I can’t debate said experience. (BTW, I appreciated the links you provided).
“Now about that statement “dare I say in a more subtle manner” You obviously have not actually studied “Jim Crow”! I will not go on because if you have not spent any time studying the period from 1870 to 1945 in the south you cannot even make a comment in good faith.”
“There was nothing subtle about Jim Crow!”
I have studied Jim Crow, though I will say my word choice belies the meaning here, yet also imparts knowledge connecting Jim Crow to our modern time hence the subtlety. Allow me to explain.
Jim Crow was not subtle in the sense of laws and physical threat. Though it was also subtle, as in it provided a means for racism’s transmission into our modern times through society and its supposed white superiority/supremacy, supposed black inferiority, the euphemism of state’s rights, coded racism…. need I continue? Generally, it allowed white people the psychological comfort of sitting above the color line and black people the psychological burden of sitting below it, with both vacillating between wondering/accepting if this setup was “normal.” (I could elaborate much deeper here…).
When you seek to compare the two, (in the non subtle manner) understand that you are comparing Chains and Whips with Lynching’s. You are comparing Slave Auctions with KKK.
When considering the subtle manner, it was your experiences in the army (not subtle for you of course), but for the majority of Americans, accepting said experience as a way of life. The legacy of Jim Crow is the ghost of our modern times in ways that people only want to ascribe to slavery, when it should first pass through Jim Crow on its way back to American Slavery. Jim Crow weaved itself into our social fabric and as you can see in Charlottesville, we are struggling trying to unravel its strands.
This is why I say there was a subtleness to it, many people don’t know about it, many forget about it, you are compelled to argue its “superior horrors” versus slavery, when in reality American Slavery was the backdrop to it.
PF-T
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@ PF Thought
“So what made the context in America different which evolved into foundational differences? The combination of laws against manumission, lifetime slavery of families, miscegenation laws, no upward mobility in society, slavery used to literally build the nation/economic dependency on it; which all are directly linked to a specific group of people (Africans) and their descendants (African-Americans), which benefitted and aided in the growth of a specific group of people (Europeans) and their descendants (Euro-Americans); hence race-based slavery.”
Well said.
You did a great job of gutting the flimsy argument of “slavery has existed historically, therefore American slavery was no worse than other types of bondage”.
To me, the primary difference was that American slavery was intergenerational. A child born to a slave mother in the USA would likely die a slave, even if the child’s father was freeborn or the slave owner. That child’s offspring would also be held captive for life.
Another major difference is how slaves and their descendants were viewed in the USA. Abagond wrote a 2015 post in which he compared the institution of slavery in various cultures over different time periods. In that post, Abagond refers to the “paradox of slavery” and how that paradox played out in the USA. He notes:
The Romans, Turks, [West] Africans and Portuguese all had cultural identities independent of the people they enslaved. Those identities preceded their experiences as slave owners. They still had a sense of self that had nothing to do with the enslaved after periods of major slave owning ceased.
Americans who describe themselves as “White” are dependent on the status derived from who they are not. This has been true from the colonial period to the present day. It is one reason they cling so tightly to notions of White supremacy. It is also one reason perennial theories about Black inferiority are woven into American popular culture——-no matter how often they are debunked.
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@ Allen Shaw
The WPA interviews with former slaves are an invaluable source, but they also are problematic for a number of reasons, as explained here:
https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/articles-and-essays/introduction-to-the-wpa-slave-narratives/limitations-of-the-slave-narrative-collection/
For example:
Years ago, I did a fair amount of research into the Reconstruction Era, concentrating on 1865 through 1885 but overall up to 1900, much of it in primary sources or anthologies thereof.
I don’t have the sources at hand, and it’s been a long time, but I do remember there are some accounts of both slavery and reconstruction by people who had just recently been freed and were right then living through reconstruction and the beginnings of Jim Crow. Those accounts are not as systemized as the WPA interviews, but they did provide a sense of how people felt. The opinions were varied and depended a lot on the discrepancies of individual experience.
One harrowing account I have never forgotten and was able to find just now online was the testimony of Elias Hill about being whipped and threatened by the KKK:
https://books.google.com/books?id=FlXejwprPXYC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=elias+hill+testimony&source=bl&ots=–cPEUJCHx&sig=pXK5q2vRG9LFeAOVA6X_spe_hpo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG68-K-v3VAhUC1mMKHQV-CdI4ChDoAQgxMAk#v=onepage&q=elias%20hill%20testimony&f=false
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Afrofem,
You make a good point in reference to the intergenerational aspects of it. Especially considering the hereditary aspects of slavery wasn’t so absolute in the early stages of American Slavery.
Early on, some slaves could have gained freedom through purchase, religious conversion to Christianity; or if the child of the slave woman was born to a free man, the child could gain freedom. By the mid 1650’s through early 1700’s, in combination with a more direct focus on race, hereditary slavery took hold.
PF-T
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Solitaire,
I had read a bit about the issues with the slave narratives but I avoided debating that point, partly because that was not my focus, partly because they are still insightful and though I have known about them, I have not taken the time to thoroughly listen to them to form my own opinion.
But your point does have some merit.
PF-T
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