[Vision2020] Why We Need Black History Month

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Greetings:

When I heard 21-year-old Daniel Rasmussen being interviewed on Diane Rehm, I immediately got his book for my Kindle.  I thought it would be a perfect topic for Black History Month and the bicentennial of the largest slave revolt in American history. The full version is attached as a PDF file.

To paraphrase a well-worn but important warning from the late Harvard philosopher George Santayana: Those who forget history are doomed to repeat the worst parts of it.

Nearly finished with the first draft of a column "The Youth-Driven Revolution in the Middle East." I thought I did not have anything to contribute, but after reading a lot of material I finally came up with my take on the issue.

Take care,

Nick

WHY WE NEED BLACK HISTORY MONTH: The Bicentennial of the Largest Slave Revolt in American History

It is a truism that immigrant labor built this great country.  It was the Chinese, the Irish, the Poles, and the Hispanics who did and still do the most grueling wage and piece labor.  

The lives of the Chinese workers were especially grim. They were discriminated against and sometimes murdered with impunity, but when progress was slow on building the transcontinental railway from the west, Chinese—initially thought to be too frail—were hired at one third the wages of whites to do the blasting and digging. 

The project was two years behind schedule when the Chinese joined the labor force, but due to their hard work it was finished seven years early. On the last day before joining the two lines in Utah, Chinese and Irish crews laid a record 10 miles of track. 

We often forget that the largest number of immigrants did not choose to come to this country and they were never paid for their work.  

Daniel Rasmussen, author of "American Uprising," states: “Slavery built New Orleans, slavery built the south, slavery built much of the economic wealth that today we see in America.” He also reminds us that cotton was America’s largest export even in the 1930s. Just as slave labor transformed the fields of the South, so did Hispanic workers make possible the cornucopia of Pacific Northwest fruit and Southwest lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, and melons.

The sugar plantations of Louisiana were veritable death camps for African workers, who made up 75 percent of the population.  In his book Sugar is Made with Blood, historian Robert Paquette states that “it was cheaper to work field slaves to death in five years and replace them by purchase than to see to their long-term maintenance and reproduction.”  

Carolyn Moncel of New Orleans tells the sad story of her great grandmother Flora who drowned herself and four of her five children. Moncel writes that “in our family we don't see her desperate act as sad; we view it with respect. In her mind taking her own life seemed to be the only way to regain power. She made sure that her owner lost something of value with her absence.”

Given their brutal conditions it is no wonder that the African cane cutters around New Orleans rose up on January 8, 1811.  The rebels had planned well: their masters would be hung over from their all-night Carnival parties; the American army was in Baton Rouge fighting the Spaniards; and recent heavy rain and knee-deep mud would prevent the movement of artillery. 

Louisiana was not yet a state and French and Spanish culture dominated the scene. Documents from the French Revolution were found among the rebels’ possessions.  As Rasmussen explains: “These slaves were politically aware. They were sophisticated and they knew what they were doing.”

Upwards of 500 Africans, armed with cane knives and muskets captured from plantation armories, marched on New Orleans, now defended by only 68 troops. Had it not been for the lucky escape of planter Manuel Andry, the black rebels may well have succeeded. 

Andry’s farm was the first one attacked and he managed to flee across the Mississippi and was able raise a force of well-armed plantation owners. They attacked the rebels from the rear and routed them, leaving 40-60 dead on the field and suffering no casualties. In the end only two whites were killed, one of them Andry’s son.

A vicious campaign of retaliation then began. The rebel leader Charles Deslondes was Andry’s mulatto slave driver, and he was in charge of managing his master’s workers. The planter militia hunted him down in the swamps, and they, as Rasmussen describes it, “shot him in both thighs, chopped off his limbs, and then burned him alive.” 

About 100 rebel corpses were then decapitated and their heads were displayed on poles all along the River Road northwest of New Orleans.  Twenty-one American newspapers reprinted an editorial in the Louisiana Courier condemning the beheadings as excessive and barbaric: “Civilized man ought to remember well his standing, and never let himself sink down to the level of savage.” 

American officials, Louisiana planters, and their descendants made sure that most of us would not know anything about the largest slave uprising in American history. This historical amnesia continues today, as, for example, Mississippi Governor Haley Barber glosses over the racism in his own past. 

I categorically reject the proposal that Black History Month be phased out.  I personally would like to see much more focus on immigrant history and institute Asian, Irish, and Polish history months as well.  

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.  
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