History

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Ferguson Protests Erupt Near Grave of Ex-Slave Dred Scott, Whose Case Helped Fuel U.S. Civil War

 

AMY GOODMAN: Just miles down the road from the scene of protests in Ferguson, we’re hearing a lot about Florissant. Just down Florissant is the grave of Dred Scott, who’s buried in the Calvary Cemetery on West Florissant Avenue. Born a slave in Virginia, Dred Scott sued in a St. Louis court for his freedom. The case went to the Supreme Court, resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision that’s called the worst ever. In 1857, the court ruled African Americans were not citizens of the United States, and therefore had no rights to sue in federal courts. The court described blacks as, quote, “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” unquote. Again, the Dred Scott decision, considered the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court, in the slave state of Missouri, the seven-to-two decision. The chief justice was a slave owner himself. In fact, a number of the Supreme Court justices were slave owners themselves.

To talk more about the significance of this case today, we’re joined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University, founder of the African American Policy Forum.

Kimberlé, thank you for joining us. Professor Crenshaw, talk about the significance of Dred Scott’s body just lying down the road on Florissant, the road we’ve heard so much about, as these protests continue and escalate.


KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Well, really couldn’t be more symbolic. As you point out, Dred Scott is widely regarded as being one of the worst cases ever. And there are two ways in which we might see its relevance in this particular moment. One, when the Supreme Court was trying to decide whether African Americans could be citizens, what they considered was the way African Americans were treated. They weren’t necessarily looking at formal law. In a lot of ways, free blacks had more rights than white women did. But the overall idea was that they could be enslavable. The overall idea is that they weren’t seen as having the same social worth as white Americans and could be enslaved for their own good. So the very possibility of their enslavability meant that, at least as far as the founders were concerned, they were going to be forever and permanently a stateless people. And that would have likely been the case had the case not led to a civil war.

 

Source: www.democracynow.org

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VIDEO – A THUNDER-BEING NATION – The Oglala Lakota of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

 

The journey of the Oglala Lakota of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, from their origins through to their contemporary life. The most comprehensive look at an Indian Reservation in a documentary made over 13 years by international award winning film-maker Steven Lewis Simpson director of Rez Bomb.


Click through to Rent or Buy movie. 

Source: vimeo.com

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Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – Joy DeGruy

 

POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME
As a result of twelve years of quantitative and qualitative research Dr. DeGruy has developed her theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and published her findings in the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing”. The book addresses the residual impacts of generations of slavery and opens up the discussion of how the black community can use the strengths we have gained in the past to heal in the present.


WHAT IS P.T.S.S.?
P.T.S.S. is a theory that explains the etiology of many of the adaptive survival behaviors in African American communities throughout the United States and the Diaspora. It is a condition that exists as a consequence of multigenerational oppression of Africans and their descendants resulting from centuries of chattel slavery. A form of slavery which was predicated on the belief that African Americans were inherently/genetically inferior to whites. This was then followed by institutionalized racism which continues to perpetuate injury.

Thus, resulting in M.A.P.:

  • M: Multigenerational trauma together with continued oppression;
  • A: Absence of opportunity to heal or access the benefits available in the society; leads to
  • P: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.

Source: joydegruy.com

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The U.S. Roots of the Central American Immigrant Influx

Before dying of pneumonia at a Guatemala hospital in late May, the recently deported 21-year-old Gustavo Antonio Vásquez Chaj told his family that the U.S. Border Patrol had kept him, at some point, wet, stripped of a layer of clothing, and in a cold cell during several days in detention.
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The tragic journey of Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché is one story among many of how harmful U.S. political and economic policies in Latin America violently intersect with a hardening and brutal system of U.S. immigration control. In their case, the young men’s voyage was first and foremost one of necessity rather than of choice. Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché were economic migrants fleeing a country of wreck and ruin that decades of harmful U.S. foreign and economic policies have helped to bring about.

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It is indisputable that the United States shares significant responsibility for the genocide of tens of thousands of Guatemalans—mainly indigenous Mayans, including members of Gustavo and Maximiliano’s community, who comprised a majority of the (at least) 150,000 killed in the 1980s alone.
Click through for whole article.

Source: nacla.org

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U.S. History from a Reparations Perspective

 

Stubborn as a Mule 

This is a MUST SEE internationally award winning film that depicts and explores facts of history that are not whole known or taught in any educational system. It is an eye-open look at the concept that makes the case for why reparations should be open for discussion and the necessity for it to be addressed. -John Wills


AWESOME DOCUMENTARY!

 

Source: thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

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Malcolm X and James Baldwin debate on integration and Black rights

 

Click through for a great debate between Malcolm X and James Baldwin.

 

HT Harsha Walia

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Today in 2014 there is STILL massive segregation in the U.S. and there is STILL systemic racism and oppression. Any who are unsure about this can check Michele Alexander’s research on The New Jim Crow.

See on communityvillageus.blogspot.com

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Did You Know: US Gov’t Paid Reparations…To Slave Owners

 

Originally posted on News One:

 

Since writer and cultural critic Ta-Nehisi Coates made his compelling “Case For Reparations” in The Atlantic, it has been a hot-button topic and the questions have come fast and furious.
What is reparations? What should it look like? How has slavery and subsequent systems of oppression had a continuing impact on Black Americans?

Will the United States ever pay reparations for its role in what amounts to domestic terrorism against African Americans?


The truth is: The government has already paid reparations — to slave owners.

 
See on thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

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Settlement of Asians in the Deep South (1763 – 1882)

See on Scoop.it – Community Village World History

 

Governor Powell Clayton of Arkansas observed:

 

Undoubtedly the underlying motive for this effort to bring in Chinese laborers was to punish the negro for having abandoned the control of his old master, and to regulate the conditions of employment and the scale of wages to be paid him.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

U.S. business leaders always want the lowest cost labor.

 

When U.S. unions demanded a living wage with reasonable benefits, instead of complying, businesses moved their manufacturing out of the U.S.

 

Money and manufacturing easily cross borders. However, (im)migration laws make it difficult for people to cross borders.

See on abagond.wordpress.com