How will you celebrate the 394th anniversary of slavery in America?
How will you break the chains of slavery
Â
By Chinta Strausberg
Today, Tuesday, August 20, 2013, is the 394th anniversary that slaves were brought to America. While it’s hard to wrap your mind around the year 1619 and what led to the capture of Africans, the ripple affects of slavery and racism still exist…broken homes and a wandering of cultureless people who today are killing each other.Â
So, how do we remember the beginning of slavery in America? Is it time to be the man in the mirror and take a long and piercing look to see just who we are for we all know from whence we come.
Since the first African slaves were brought to America’s Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 to work in the tobacco fields—land stolen from the Indians– can you honestly say that blacks have progressed in this country?
If you say yes, then where are the African American owned stores? Where is the pride we once had in our communities? Why are blacks killing each other every day mostly on the West and South Sides of Chicago? Why are there so many single- family homes in the black community? Why do many of our communities look like garbage dumps? When elections roll around even though blacks are the largest voting bloc, why do so many stay home?
Yes, blacks can now vote. Yes, they can ride in the front of the buses, trains and airplanes. They can even take cruises, but today the unemployment rate remains in the double digits for African Americans, and with some blaming integration, black businesses are becoming a dying breed.
And, in 2013, we still have white racists attacking integrated couples just out to celebrate a birthday. So, how much has changed or has it at all? Has racism become more subtle that we cannot readily detect it? Is that the new form of racism in America?
We see Republicans, with the help of the U.S. Supreme Court, continuing to take away the right to vote from poor and African Americans and doing it legislatively. It’s a page from our nation’s racist past, but it’s happening today.Â
So what are your thoughts on the 394th year your ancestors were forcibly brought to this country to work stolen land?
How will you remember this day and more important what can you do to help heal the many maladies that linger in and over our communities? How and what can you do to break the mental and physical chains that keep black people enslaved in 2013?
Even more important, why do we willingly become legal slaves today in the billion dollar prison complex system?
By Staff Blogger
On Tuesday, August 20, 2013, it will be exactly 394 years to the very day that slavery began in America in 1619. This slavery wasn’t just the loss of freedom; it was also the loss of family, culture, land, language, name, religion, human status, limb, and life for over two centuries.
Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. African slaves were a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants (who were mostly poorer Europeans). Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of this new nation.
Ironically the U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution (slavery), counting each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress and guaranteeing the right to repossess any “person held to service or labor†(slavery).
Between 1774 and 1804, all of the northern states had abolished slavery, but slavery remained prominent to the South. Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the slave population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.
It is impossible to give accurate figures, but some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all of the slaves in the rebellious states. Some of Lincoln’s greatest achievements were the Emancipation Proclamation and the argument for the passage of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment after his d$$$h in 1865).
Some 394 years later, the residue effects of slavery and racism still play a role in lives of many African Americans people.
Let us remember this day with pride, hard work and love.
Chinta Strausberg is a Journalist of more than 33-years, a former political reporter and a current PCC Network talk show host. You can e-mail Strausberg at: Chintabernie@aol.com.Â
