from Gearld A Foster, American Slavery:
the Complete Story, 2 Cardozo Public Law, Policy and Ethics Journal 401-
420 (May, 2004) (420 Footnotes Omitted)
Conclusion
How incredibly ironic it is that the most popularly advanced topics in
social anthropology today are prima facie evidence that the earliest
bipedal humanoids physiologically were Negroid in nature and fully
capable of intelligent decision making. Intelligence in its most
rudimentary form is the ability to solve problems. Many of the daily
problems confronted by this seven million year old humanoid were
resolved by the invention of fire. Initially warmth against the climatic
elements and cooking and preservation of food were key features of the
utilizing of fire. However, centuries later the use of fire in the
smelting of iron revolutionized tool making, weaponry and early
industrialization.
Here and elsewhere, particularly in the Great Congo Valley, the use
of iron characterized Africa. As Franz Boas says: It seems likely that
at a time when the European was still satisfied with rude stone tools,
the African had invented or adopted the art of smelting iron. Consider
for a moment what this invention has meant for the advance of the human
race. As long as the hammer, knife, saw, drill, the spade and the hoe
had to be chipped out of stone, or had to be made of shell or wood,
effective industrial work was not impossible but difficult. A great
progress was made when copper found in large nuggets was hammered out
into tools and later on shaped by melting, and when bronze was
introduced; but the true advancement of industrial life did not begin
until the hard iron was discovered. It seems not unlikely that the
people who made the marvelous discovery of reducing iron ores by
smelting were African Negroes.
If we return to the original illusionist theme of this discussion one
can only be amazed by the degree of deception that American history has
heaped upon an unsuspecting public. Adding yet more incredulity to the
equation is the fact that one of the original scientific racist, Charles
Darwin acknowledged in his second publication after the Origin of
Species (1859), Descent of Men (1871), that Africa was the cradle of
modern civilization. John Jackson writes, "In 1871 Darwin's Descent
of Man was issued, and in this book the father of Natural Selection
produced impressive evidence that man and the anthropoid apes could be
traced to a common ancestor. Most of Darwin's contemporaries favored the
continent of Asia as the birth place of the human race, but Darwin
suggested that Africa was most likely to have been the Cradle of
Mankind." Viewing these two early works of Darwin independently
suggests the scholarly progression of the leading evolutionist of the
era. However, if we examine these works within the context of American
slavery, then we see a whole different paradigm emerging.
Earlier in this paper we cited the suspicion raised by Stephen Jay Gould
regarding the historical coincidence of emerging race theory advanced by
Darwin, Galton, Blumenbach, et.al and the virulence of institutional
racism between 1787 and 1877 (end of Reconstruction). Even though
slavery may have officially ended with the civil war, racism perpetuated
the slave-master mentality for another one hundred years. The scientific
and religious conclusion then centered around portraying American blacks
and Africans as void of a culture, civilization, civility and
intelligence. Accordingly, the scientific conclusion is natural
selection, a master white race and manifest destiny were more valuable
for the 19th century power brokers than would have been acknowledging
African legitimacy as well as African Americans' achievements such as:
Oberlin College in Ohio being integrated in 1833 and Blacks constituting
one third of the student body at the start of the civil war (1861); or
that in 1823 Alexander Twilight became the first black to graduate from
an American college (Middleburg); or that in 1850, Lucy Session became
the first Black woman to graduate from an American college (Oberlin) or
that in 1849, John D. and Thomas T. White became the first Black doctors
to graduate from a U.S. Medical school (Bowdoin). Similarly after the
civil war in 1874, Edward Bouchette was the first black to be elected to
Phi Beta Kappa and in 1876 became the first black to receive a Ph.D. in
Physics (Yale). It is easy to see why it was of the utmost importance to
continue the lie of black inferiority, infantalism and ignorance.
American historians have for well over 150 years deceived a nation by
keeping its citizens in Plato's cave wherein they were only able to view
reality filtered through the shadows of scientific racism and religious
propaganda. It is only now in the year 2004 that we see two of the most
highly respected scientific journals not only acknowledging but
celebrating Africa as the cradle of civilization and Africans as major
contributors to the seven million year existence of mankind on planet
earth.
Perhaps Americans should be guardedly optimistic about these new
revelations that have been intentionally obscured for far too many
generations. We should be able to see why this issue of slavery, 139
years after its official demise, still is fodder for the diehard racists
but at the same time fertile ground for life after the illusionists.
Little did Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the other founders know that
in spite of their gross constitutional injustice to African American in
1787, these wrongs would at long last be corrected in the twenty-first
century.
On July 9, 2003, the 43rd President of the United States of America,
George W. Bush stood on Goree Island in Senegal West Africa and declared
slavery to be "history's worst crime" and admonished the
founding fathers for heaping hypocrisy upon injustice by the manner in
which they dealt with slavery.
Eleven years earlier, one of America's most distinguished historic
figures, Lawrence Douglas Wilder, the first elected African American
governor of a state (Virginia), visited this same tract of land on Goree
Island. Wilder, the grandson of slaves, announced in 1993 that a United
States National Slavery Museum would be created so that America, and
particularly her children, could be educated about the extreme
importance slavery played in not only the creation of America but also
its centrality to the social, economic, political and psychological
character of the nation.
Socially, the institution of slavery established rules both written and
unwritten for black/white relations in America. Economically, slavery
was the foundation upon which America's international power was
developed. Politically, slavery was the bait that helped spark the
American Revolutionary War in 1776 as the colonials excoriated King
George III for supporting the slave trade worldwide. Yet, in 1788, when
the U.S. Constitution was ratified, America permanently rendered African
Americans chattel, relegated to a non-entity status with a legal value
of three fifths of a white man. Psychologically, due to the human and
cultural degradation of blacks, the nation began to institute laws,
policies, norms, and daily practices that engendered the deep self hate
in blacks that persists to this day. Similarly, the black-white
inferiority-superiority dichotomy evolved in the white community.
Wilder's dream of an American slavery museum is about to become a
reality on the banks of the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg,
Virginia. It is here that the full story of American slavery will be
told.
EXPLORATION - INDENTURE - ENSLAVEMENT - EMANCIPATION
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