Don’t Fuss ... Let’s Discuss
The African-American Community Forum

(continued from last week)

United States Congressional Laws and Other Actions Affecting

Slavery in Wilkes County:

1. 1820, Missouri Compromise: this measure was passed by Congress to end the first of a series of crises concerning the extension of slavery throughout the whole United States. By 1818 the Missouri Territory had gained sufficient population to warrant its admission into the Union as a state. In January 1820, a bill to admit Maine as a state passed the House. The admission of Alabama as a slave state in 1819 brought the slave states and free states to equal representation in the Senate, and it was seen that by pairing Maine and Missouri, this equality would be maintained. In March 1820, Maine was admitted to the Union as a free state and Missouri was admitted as a slave state. Sectional balance was maintained; 12 free states and 12 slave states. This established a precedent that would be followed for the next 30 years. New states would be admitted in tandem – one slave, one free. This proviso held until 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise.

2. 1830, Indian Deportation from Georgia and Wilkes County. The State of Georgia was upset that the federal government had not removed the Cherokee Indians who lived within Georgia and took steps to remove the Cherokees on its own. The Cherokee nation sued the State of Georgia for violating an 1830 Georgia law the prohibited white from living on Indian Territory after March 31, 1831, without a license from the state. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee on the grounds that the Cherokee had the right to self-government, and declared Georgia’s extension of state law over them to be unconstitutional. The State of Georgia refused to abide by the Supreme Court decision and President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the Supreme Court decision, saying, “Mr. Marshall (Chief Justice John Marshall) has made his decision now let him enforce it.

3. 1835, The Removal of Southern Indians; white settlers, eager for land to raise more cotton, pressured the State of Georgia and the federal government to acquire more Indian territory. President Andrew Jackson, who opposed the Supreme Court ruling in Worcester vs. Georgia, ordered the Native Cherokee Indians removal by gunpoint to the designated Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Thousands of Cherokees died in transit. The event is known as the “Trail of Tears.”

4. 1850, The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, the balance between slave states and free states, had been maintained for 30 years, was now threatened with the admission of California into the Union as a free state. California was admitted as a free state. But to pacify slave-state politicians, who would have objected to the imbalance created by adding another free state, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. It required citizens to assist in the recovery of fugitive slaves. It denied a fugitive’s right to a jury trial to determine whether or not he or she was actually a runaway slave or a free person being pursued by a bounty hunter. Runaway slaves and free persons were completely defenseless. Passage of this law constituted the beginning of a reign of terror to the free colored population, in particular.

5. 1854, The Kansas-Nebraska Ct: organized the remaining territory within the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, for settlement before its admission to the Union. This Act was contrived by and passed by those legislators who favored the political standpoint of the use of popular sovereignty to decide if a territory would be open to slavery. The passage of this Act only exacerbated the rift between the Northern and Southern states over the issue of slavery and added to the fire that became the American Civil War.

6. 1856, Honorable Robert Toombs of Wilkes County and Georgia Senator Lecture in the Tremont Temple, Boston, Massachusetts: “Congress has no power to limit, restrain, or in any manner to impair slavery: But, on the contrary, it is bound to protect and maintain it in the states where it exists, and wherever its flag floats, and its jurisdiction is paramount.”

7. 1857, Supreme Court Dred Scott Decision. Dred Scott was an enslaved person whose master had taken him to a free state for a time. Upon returning to Missouri, Scott declared that, having lived in a territory that prohibited slavery, he was no longer a slave and took his master to court over the issue. The predominately pro-slavery Supreme Court decided that Scott was still a slave and therefore had no right to sue. The decision also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery in some territories, was illegal because Congress had no right to deprive private citizens of their property.

8. 1860, Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia: “Defend yourselves; the enemy is at your door,” thundered Toombs from the Senate floor on January 24, 1860. On January 7, 1861, Senator Toombs delivered his farewell speech to the U.S. Senate, and within weeks Georgia voted to secede from the Union.

9. 1861, The Civil War Begins. Confederates under General Pierre Beauregard open fire with 50 cannons upon Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.

10. 1863, Emancipation Proclamation. In the fall of 1862, after the Union army victory at Antietam in which Brigadier General Robert Toombs of the Confederate Army fought in the Seven Days Campaign through the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation, warning that on January 1, 1863, he would free all the slaves in those states still in rebellion. Intended as a propaganda measure, the Emancipation Proclamation had far more symbolic than real impact, because the federal government had no means to enforce it at that time. Eventually, as Union armies occupied more and more southern territory, the Proclamation turned into reality, as thousands of slaves were set free by the advancing federal troops.

11. 1865, The Civil War Ended. On April 9, 1865, after four years of Civil War, approximately 630,000 deaths and one million casualties, General Robert E. Lee surrenders his Confederate Army to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Village of Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

12. December 6, 1865, Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution Ratified. Was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865. Slavery was abolished in the United States of America. After 90 years of enslaved Africans in Wilkes County, the population was 7,958 living enslaved African descendants as compared to the original general of 7,268 enslaved Africans in 1790, were set free. How can generations of human minds that have been tortured to respond to commands as horses for 90 years be reverted back to self-esteem, confident thinking, and reasoning like human beings? And by what means?

How can enslaved human behavior be wiped out of 90 years of indoctrination into 90 cycles of born slave babies whose enslaved behavior from birth to adulthood was molded into their minds by slave parents and reinforced by slave masters?

How can African-Americans in Wilkes County confront slavery, remember slavery? If American Jews have learned not to forget the Holocaust and have recovered financially from their World War II era losses, have acknowledged that they were victims of Nazi brutality, and are actively working to heal their psychological wounds, in contrast, African Americans in Wilkes County, for the most part, still turn away from the history of slavery and still feel economically deprived after 137 years of being recognized as citizens of the United States by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868. How can we overcome very deep and in many cases unexamined psychological wounds that keep us from clearing out our minds to the learned behavioral practices which we continue to pass on to our present generation of children?

Slavery is not all there is to our history, but it is indeed a very important part of our history and of the experience that shaped us and above all distinguished us from all other people who now live in these United States. It is a painful part of our history, but one that we must teach and learn from to empower ourselves and our children for a better future.

The end of slavery did not bring economic empowerment to the African Americans of Wilkes County. There were no land grants provided, as was the case of some white settlers who paid 11 cents per acre for ceded lands from the Native Indians, to give us a new start and we controlled none of the economic resources that had been generated by our enslaved ancestors in Wilkes County. But we were hopeful that we could build better lives for ourselves and our children as we became the sharecroppers and hired hands of the landowners of Wilkes County, that too failed us.

Let us ask ourselves what lessons we can still learn from our past. How can we use the knowledge of our past to build better futures for our children on a still unequal playing field? Can we use education to build a better playing field? Can our educated minds take the place of the 40 acres and a mule that we never received?

The future of our world is no longer agriculture, manufacturing plants, and retail services in Wilkes County, but technology; a technological world that requires high level of educational skills. Our AfricanAmerican children with our undivided attention to their learning behavior must work to become what our ancestors knew that they could be. How can we in the spirit of God squander their human sacrifices and dreams?

Don’t fuss or cuss, let’s discuss. What is your contribution to the solutions?

Send your response to docdanner@nu-z.net or P.O. Box 1328, Washington, GA. 30673, or I have laptop Power Point, will travel to your town hall meetings. The opinion expressed by this columnist does not necessarily reflect the editorial position of this newspaper.