Why Black History Matters
We need an entirely new history of how America was formed. It was not all the rosy soft-peddled history told by some white historians and a few brainwashed Black ones. We need to tell our children that this nation inherited a horror, slavery and white supremacy, from a greedy and lazy class of plantation owners bent on maintaining the brutal system of slavery. American history needs to be rewritten to explain what really happened and how racism played a major role. The myths that all of us have been taught about these so-called great patriots is pure hogwash. Freedom from oppression remains a problem today. All of us have suffered under a system created with the idea of making history a white racist version of the truth.
The word slave and slavery are purposely removed from the Constitution in order to hide this ugly history. However, slavery is seen in the Constitution in a few key places. The first is in the Enumeration Clause, where representatives are apportioned. Each state is given a number of representatives based on population. It the hidden agenda, in the term population, slaves are called “other persons, “and are counted as three-fifths of a whole person. The 3/5th Compromise gave southern bigots more representation than they should have. This compromise was hard-fought, Northerners wishing that slaves, which were considered property, not be counted, while Southerners, aware of the high number of slaves in their states wanted them counted as whole persons despite them being powerless and held like animals by so-called southern white supremacist “gentlemen.”.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was used by Congress in legislation and was agreed upon with little debate. Hence, slavery is legally justified in an indirect manner and became the reason for the Civil War. Using ambiguity and hypocrisy, the framers of the Constitution, most of them slave owners, allowed slavery to exist, and in their bigoted thinking succeeded in killing more than 600,000 soldiers in a cruel war that was centrally about keeping slavery alive in the South and elsewhere. Many US presidents were slave owners and thus their pocket books was tied to their beliefs. John Locke, the famous American philosopher, was a hypocrite like no other. He gave high sounding speeches and wrote academic works while being an investor in the African slave trade with the Royal Africa Company. Patrick Henry was a slave catcher, while Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned hundreds of slaves over their lifetime.
All of this needs to be taught at every institution, and at home, because not to do so only enables white supremacists to carry on their fabricated invented history. They don’t want to hear about slaves having to go to church under the supervision of a white watcher. Most slaves could not read or write, and it was illegal for them to learn. Slave Codes were used to prevent Blacks from leaving their area without a pass, carry a weapon, gather in groups, own property, legally marry, defend themselves against a white person, or speak in court. When they would not obey these racist traditions, customs, and laws it often meant death by burning alive or lynching. This is why the modern-day bigots don’t want Black history to be taught. They don’t want the world to know of America’s ugly racial past. They hate it when students are talking about slavery and injustice in America and the slave revolts of courageous freedom fighters. Well, we will keep exposing the horrors of American history even if we have to teach it on street corners.
