An Essay for Black History Month, February 2022:
Many hearts are hardened, yet to be liberated for ‘a more perfect union’ by the grace of God, which can only come from the wellbeing of man’s inner soul.
By Cornell Cox
Original-1619-Sin
Hope Beyond Moral and Ethical Failure
One hundred and fifty-three years after the first slaves were brought on the American Continent, John Newton – in contrition, while slowly moving toward atonement for his transgressions as an enslaver and captain of slave ships –authored Amazing Grace, in 1772. But not until 1788, 34-years after he left the slaving profession, did Newton, an Englishman, fully acknowledged his transgressions in a public statement: “It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.”
Slavery was outlawed in Great Britain in 1808. Slave trade there had been illegal since May 1, 1807 and here in the states not until January 1, 1808. However, slave trade continued, totaling some 12 million slaves being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, until 1865.
Slavery went against basics of the Declaration of Independence, the very soul of humanity, and for certain to be cause for civil strife.
Nikole Hannah-Jones writes: “In the 1860s, the “violent Fermentations” that [President] John Adams had predicted erupted into the Civil War, leading to emancipation and the resulting amendments that ended slavey and codified citizenship for African Americans. This was not freedom given; this was freedom earned. Some 179,000 Black men, 10 percent of the Union army, fought in the war. An additional 19,000 served in the navy. Black women participated too, most notably one well-armed conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman; a Union spy, she led as many as 300 Black soldiers in destroying a Confederate supply depot on the Combahee River on June 2, 1863. The legal status African Americans had fought hard for should have provided the standing to “protect one’s body and property” that had not been available to Black people before. But this is not what happened. Shortly after the war, President Andrew Johnson granted amnesty to many in the Confederate leadership. Free from the threat of the gallows for committing treason, these white men—such as General Benjamin Humphreys, who had fought against the Union at the Battle of Gettysburg and then became governor of Mississippi—assumed positions in the newly formed state governments and passed legislation known as the Black Codes. These laws were designed to reinstall something close to slavery. They required African Americans to sign a yearly labor contract to work for a white employer, blocked their ability to testify in court against a white person, and banned freedpeople’s access to and ownership of guns under the threat of a public whipping of thirty-nine lashes.
African Americans pushed back. Many had held on to their wartime firearms and resisted the neo-Confederate government’s demand to disarm. They fought back as white state militias and paramilitary organizations worked closely with local governments to seize their weapons. Black people asserted, in publications such as The Christian Recorder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and The Loyal Georgian, that they had Second Amendment rights and that stripping them of their guns was denying them the right to self-defense. The Loyal Georgian quoted a report by an officer of the Freedmen’s Bureau saying that disarming Black people would be “placing them at the mercy of others.”
As Black people defied disarmament, they scored some victories, but far too often they were outgunned, and they suffered brutal repercussions as they ran up against the unwillingness of federal officials and local Republican governments to enforce Black citizenship. The slaughter was facilitated by President Johnson’s removal from the South of Black troops, which had been a significant part of the occupying army and the line of defense between the freedpeople and white violence. In late 1865 to mid-1866, all the Black troops were removed from the South’s interior and sent to coastal fortifications, and by January 1867 they had been expelled altogether.[1]
Farther, in 1876 Reconstruction ended with the contested Presidential election, which put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in office in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
To this point and time, following the 250 years of slavery, beginning with emancipation, thus began 100 years of Jim Crow. During Reconstruction, and after, some educated Blacks made significant progress. Some 2,000 African Americans held public office, on all levels all the way up to U.S. Senate. Business and societal accomplishments were especially prominent in places such as Wilmington NC and Tulsa OK – only to end in property annihilation and hundreds of human deaths, as a result of White supremist Insurrections: Wilmington, 1898, the overthrow of a biracially (Fusion Party) elected government and destruction of a thriving Black business & Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black Wall Street, 1921, a destruction after which all insurance claims were denied.
With titular end of Jim Crow – the Civil Rights Act, 1964 and Voting Rights Act, 1965 – began a new era: as explained in The New Jim Crow book, wherein Michelle Alexander writes about slavery and ‘mass incarceration of Blacks’ being a part of this new epoch – now 57-years ongoing. (It is a book which has been reviewed and studied by echelons in the United Methodist Church.) Clearly slavery is the residual sin – the ongoing fissure in America’s society – that our community as-a-whole has not met face-to-face to deal with.
As John Newton waited and waited, to offer full atonement for his sin, what about us? We sing the song Amazing Grace – of which few know the story. None of us ran slave ships or participated in chattel slavery. But, can we, at the least, acknowledge the full history of slavery, a cover over, white washed in some ways, or completely left out of initial historical recordings? Can we confess the comprehensive truth; most importantly the failures of our ancestral past that continue to haunt us; our lack of empathy for immorality wrought on humanity and untold generational, psychological grief? No individual bears responsibility for our ancestral past; we are accountable for our actions and inaction – ‘sins of omission’ as we go forward – to make sure we’re not complicit in perpetuating certain misdeeds. We can’t go forward conscientiously until we have acknowledged our truthful historical past, if you will, a confession, a full acknowledgement of our inherited past.
Our past is inextricably intertwined with our current-day culture and politics, of which few can extract an unconscious bias, the original, latent sin – wherein our society lives religiously and politically, whether Democrat, Republican, Independent or nondescript. Religious leaders for most part have evaded the hard racial issues. Community as a whole has abstained from fostering important civil conversations for fear of incivility: always the ‘elephant’s in the room.’ Initiating important dialogue is made more difficult by conspiracies – leading masses ‘off reality’s cliff’ – promulgated by irresponsible media outlets, where profit trumps morals and ethics. So, how do we begin? How do we facilitate this critical conversation? We must! Otherwise, how long can we sustain a democracy without this important exchange: A conversation that must come from rational, ‘we the people.’ That’s because it takes more than just a few courageous men and women in leadership to believe in, maintain, be bound by a constitution, to secure a democracy. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in their book, How Democracies Die: “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture. America’s efforts to achieve racial equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.”[2] The shocking silence of craven politicians has proven a nonstarter; therefore, the initiative bears on ‘responsible constituents’ to initiate a ‘democracy saving dialogue’: A discourse that counters the vitriol rhetoric undermining our communal society and democratic republic.
America’s history is of biblical import, a chapter yet to be written – in which more than 400 years of immoral, craven, and heroic characters will be recorded. With introspection, we may ask, “In which ‘character’ will each of us want to be recorded?” America is predominantly a Christian nation, in which I often hear “God is in control.” Which brings me to ask: “Heretofore, what part has God played in our past history?” “What will God be doing about it in the future?” “Is or will God be speaking for the need of our collective redemption?” So far as I know – throughout history – God only speaks through man; that leaves man with a momentous responsibility. Indeed, with freewill comes accountability to a God with truth, morals, ethics, reconciliation, mercy, and grace.
Will our hearts now shutter? And yet, may we sing with validation, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.” Only, if we can clearly see and meet face-to-face, in approbation for all things honorable, moral, and ethical. If so, it will be the salvation for fellow Americans and our beloved country.
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