A Bit of Truth Filled History
Word Origins & Meaning
Negro – This term is of medieval Italian origin, it was a classification of skin color not of race. It referred to indigenous populations of the Americans, in the Portuguese colony of Brazil, where Indians were referred to as “negros da
terra” meaning “black of the land”. According to assistant professor at the University of Delaware who is of African descent, the word Negro means “American Indian”.
Did you know?
Slave –This term comes from Byzantine Greece. The word, “sklabos” was the name of Slavic people. The Vikings used to capture slaves and sell them to the Roman’s as slaves. This term dates back as far as 580 AD.
Prior to that the Latin word “Servus” was used for all kinds of servants, enslaved or not.
Not until the 15th century was slavery associated primarily with people of African descent.
The Truth About Slavery
Slavery is virtually a universal institution and is older than the first human records. All races kept slaves all throughout history.
It was in classical Greece and Rome that the first true slave societies came into existence. From the 5th to the 3rd centuries b.c., perhaps a third to a half of Athens's population consisted of slaves. (7,000 - 5,000 years ago)
It is referred to in the Code of Hammurabi [1760 BC (3,775 years ago)] which is the earliest known law code – from Babylon.
The most ancient civilizations; ancient Mesopotamia, Old Kingdom Egypt, and the civilization that formed in the Indus and Yangtze river valleys, all had some form of slavery present.
Slavery is mentioned in the Bible which does not expressly condone or forbid slavery. The Old Testament reminds people to treat their slaves (servants) well. Jesus (2,000 years ago +-) heals a slave and commends his owner for his faith. He does not condemn the slave owner, nor at any point does he suggest that slavery is wrong.
Only question is "Are you treating them in the way you would want to be treated?"
And the ancient philosophers (including Aristotle; 384 – 322 BC) spoke of slavery.
Slavery was often the punishment for debt.
– “Debtor’s Prison” - Indentured Servitude -
Once the debt was repaid, the slave might be released.
As personal property of their masters, slaves were always subject to torture, sexual exploitation and arbitrary death.
White People Have Been Sold as Slaves for Centuries!
The ancient Greeks, despite their tradition of democracy, the enslavement of fellow whites, even fellow Greeks, was the order of the day. Aristotle considered White slaves as things. The Romans also had no compunctions against enslaving Whites who they too termed "a thing."
The early ancestors of the Scots, Alba and Pics were enslaved as early as the first century BC. Varro, a Roman philosopher stated in his agricultural manuscripts that white slaves were only things with a voice or instrumenti vocali. Julius Caesar enslaves as many as one million whites from Gaul. (William D Phillips, Jr. SLAVERY FROM ROMAN TIMES TO EARLY TRANSATLANTIC TRADE, p. 18).
Pope Gregory in the sixth century first witnessed blonde hair, blue eyed boys awaiting sale in a Roman slave market. The Romans enslaved thousands of white inhabitants of Great Britain, who were also known as Angles. Pope Gregory was very interested in the looks of these boys therefore asking their origin. He was told they were Angles from Briton. Gregory stated, “Non Angli, sed Angeli.” (Not Angles but Angels).
The eighth to the eleventh centuries proved to be very profitable for Rouen France. Rouen was the transfer point of Irish and Flemish slaves to the Arabian nations. The early centuries AD the Scottish were known as Irish. William Phillips states that the major component of slave trade in the eleventh century were the Vikings. They spirited many ‘Irish’ to Spain, Scandinavia and Russia. Legends have it; some ‘Irish’ may have been taken as far as Constantinople.
From 1609 until the early 1800s, between one‑half and two thirds of all the White colonists who came to the New World came as slaves. Of the passengers on the Mayflower, twelve were White Slaves.
The Indentured Servant
One-half to two-thirds of the immigrants who came to the American colonies arrived as indentured servants.
Prior to 1654 there were no legal slaves in the colonies, only indentured servants. All masters were required to free their servants after their time was up. Servants typically worked four to seven years in exchange for passage, room, board, lodging and freedom dues. While the life of an indentured servant was harsh and restrictive, it wasn't slavery. There were laws that protected some of their rights. But their life was not an easy one, and the punishments meted out to people who wronged were harsher than those for non-servants.
During the time of his/her indenture, a servant was considered his master's personal property and the servant's contract could be bartered, inherited or assigned. While a servant, a person could not marry or have children. A master's permission was needed to leave the plantation, to perform work for someone else, or to receive money for personal use. An "unruly" servant was punished by whipping for improper behavior. Runaway servants, of which there were many, were punished by increasing their time of service if they were captured, or in the case of female servants, becoming pregnant.
For those that survived the work and received their freedom package, they were often better off than those new immigrants who came freely to the country. Their contract may have included at least 25 acres of land, a year's worth of corn, arms, a cow and new clothes. Some servants did rise to become part of the colonial elite, but for the majority of indentured servants that survived the treacherous journey by sea and the harsh conditions of life in the New World, satisfaction was a modest life as a freeman in a burgeoning colonial economy.
In 1619 the first black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites. Upon their release Negros were granted 50 acres of land, this included any Negro purchased from slave traders.
Note that in 1619 & 1665 “The New World” belonged to England. 1619 was 157 years PRIOR to the founding of These united States of America and 1665 was 111 years prior to the founding of the country in 1776. The US didn’t come into being until sometime between 1861 -1865.
Human cargo carried on tall British ships bound for the Americas.
They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands; men, women, and even the youngest of children. We all know the horror stories of slave treatment during the late 1600s. Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
However these were NOT expensive black slaves that went for 50 Sterling, no these were the cheap white Irish slaves that went for 5 Sterling. Since the black slaves were expensive, to protect their investments, white aristocrats usually treated the black slaves well, providing for adequate food, clothing and medication,
but because the white slaves were cheap they were treated much worse!
Bridenbaugh wrote in his accounting on page 118, having paid a bigger price for the Negro, the planters treated the black better than they did their “Christian” white servant. Even the Negroes recognized this and did not hesitate to show their contempt for those white men who, they could see, were worse off than themselves.
The abuse of an Irish was so common and resulted in so many deaths that in 1662 the Virginia Assembly passed a law prohibiting the private burial of white slaves because such burial helped to conceal their murders and encouraged further atrocities against other white slaves. Thus current image of blacks as predominantly the ones who bore the scars of the whiplash is in error.
Many people prefer calling the Irish terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe them but the truth is the Irish were nothing more than human cattle.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit.
Unlike African slaves, the children of the white Irish slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
The settlers breed Irish girls some as young as 12 with African men to produce slaves with “a distinct complexion”. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding went on for several decades and it became so wide spread that in 1681, legislation was passed forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men because it interfered with the profits of a large African slave transport company.
Note;
Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President of These united States, his father was mulatto.
Andrew Jackson was the 7th President of These united States, His mother was from Ireland his father was a black man, and his brother was sold into slavery.
From 1641 to 1652, Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade due to the slave trade. That is WELL OVER HALF the small Island’s population!
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery in the 17th Century and they did so more than Africans did. White slaves were brought to the Americas at a rate of about 10 whites to 1 black. And the Irish were not the only whites to suffer in America.
According to the Egerton manuscript, British Museum, the enactment of 1652: it may be lawful for two or more justices of the peace within any county, city or town, corporate belonging to the commonwealth to from time to time by warrant cause to be apprehended, seized on and detained all and every person or persons that shall be found begging and vagrant.. in any town, parish or place to be conveyed into the Port of London, or unto any other port from where such person or persons may be shipped into a foreign colony or plantation.
The judges of Edinburgh Scotland during the years 1662-1665 ordered the enslavement and shipment to the colonies a large number of rogues and others who made life unpleasant for the British upper class. (Register for the Privy Council of Scotland, third series, vol. 1, p 181, vol. 2, p 101).
If anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
The Black Slave Trade
What you may not know about it.
Fact; Most of the American slave ships and American slave-markets were run by Jews.
Fact; When the Trans-Atlantic slave ships docked in African to buy slaves, the people that they bought were already slaves.
Fact; It was Arab Muslims and Black Africans themselves who captured members of rival tribes and took them to the coastal slave-markets to sell to the whites and Jews. No whites went into Africa and kidnap free black people, it was like buying McDonalds at a drive-through. The slaves were already at the slave-market in chains, ready to go.
Thus the great majority of slaves sold to Europeans were not slaves in Africa but they were enslaved by Africans in Africa; usually they were recent war captives or victims of banditry and judicial proceedings. But war was the most important source of enslavement.
Fact; The most comprehensive shipping records on the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. During the entire history of the slave trade to the New World only 388,000 black Africans landed in North America (USA). There is an estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in the United States after touching down in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to about 450,000 Africans in the North American over the course of the slave trade. All the others went to the Caribbean and South American, mostly Brazil.
Fact; Slaves arrived in Spanish Florida AT LEAST A CENTURY BEFORE 1619.
Fact; "Negro slavery was efficiently established in colonial America because black slaves were governed, organized and controlled by the structures and organization that were first used to enslave and control whites. Black slaves were 'late comers fitted into a system already developed.'" - Michael Hoffman, "They Were White and They Were Slaves and Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South".
Fact; In 1619 black Africans came to Virginia. With no slave laws in place, they were initially treated as indentured servants, and given the same opportunities for freedom dues as whites.
Fact; Half of all the New World slaves came from central Africa, not just West Africa.
Fact; During the Atlantic slave trade era, the majority of those enslaved were kept in Africa. Of those sent to the New World 14 percent were children under 14, 56 percent were male adults; and 30 percent were female adults. Thus two to three men for every woman was carried off, this created an unbalanced sex ratio which encourage polygyny in Africa.
Fact; Per capita, Jews were the biggest slave-owners in America owning both black and white slaves.
Blacks owned white, black and Native American slaves.
Native Americans also owned black and white slaves.
Whites owned white, black, Native American however, less than 2% of whites in America ever owned slaves.
Fact; Even under harsh chattel slavery, African manumission (the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves) was possible for a significant number of slaves and slaves usually had a right to keep any monetary earnings and buy their freedom.
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During the early years of enslavement, African slaves usually worked under supervision.
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Then many worked master’s land five or six days until about 2 p.m. then in the evenings and on their days off, worked their own plots; these were called "allotment slaves".
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Then “settled slaves” spent most of their time working their land in exchange for a fixed obligation, usually enough food to feed one adult male for a year, everything else they kept for themselves.
Fact; Blacks were toting guns or other weapons and going about armed in the service of wealthy landowners at the same time that tens of thousands of enslaved white men were forbidden arms. In 1678 one thousand Negroes were armed by the planters and formed into a fighting militia for protection against the French.
Fact; Blacks Were Free Men in Virginia, while whites languished in chains .
Fact; Some of the early colonial Blacks had White Slaves!
Fact; Negroes voted in Berkely and Craven counties, Carolina in 1706, "and their votes were taken."
Fact; In 1717, it was proposed that a qualification for election to the South Carolina Assembly was to be, "the ownership of one white man."
Fact; Prior to 1654 there were no legal slaves in the colonies, only indentured servants.
Yet both psychologically and materially Whites in modern times are called upon to bear burdens of guilt and monetary reparation for Negro slavery.
This Position Is Based Entirely on Enforced Ignorance and the Deliberate Suppression of the Record of White Slavery in North America.
Fact; Whites still could not legally hold a black servant as an indefinite slave for another 16 years, until 1670. In that year, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting free whites, blacks, and Indians the right to own blacks as slaves.
Facts; Black slave owners continued to thrive in the United States.
By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves.
By 1860 there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone.
Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South
by historian Ira Berlin
Initially published in 1974, and reissued by the New Press in 2007
http://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Without-Masters-Negro-Antebellum/dp/1565840283
"Black History" is full of surprises, contradictions and flat out lies.
Most of us know that before the American Civil War there were so-called slave states and free states. The Mason-Dixon Line drawn by “compromising” Congresses is where slaves must have resided below it and free black people above it, with every man, woman and child in chains trying to escape to the North just as soon as they could. Those already up there remained vigilant against being kidnapped back into slavery down in the South.
During the southern secession, there were a total of 488,070 free blacks living in the United States. there were 35,766 more free black people living in the slave-owning South than in the North. (226,152 lived in the North and 261,918 lived in the South)
At no time before the Civil War did free blacks in the North ever outnumber those in the South! Don’t believe it? Fact-check the numbers yourself on the U.S. Census Bureau website. How did more free blacks end up living in the South? Weren’t their lives a living hell?
Further more Southern Free Negroes fought FOR the Confederacy.
In Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South, Carolina and Texas, free blacks even owned slaves — among them were Andrew Durnford of Louisiana, who had “some seventy-five slaves” working on his sugar plantation.
Then Henry Louis Gates, Jr was even more astonished to learn he had two sets of his ancestors who were free by the time of the American Revolution (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), two of his ancestors were freed in the will of their master in 1823. (The Civil War 1861-1865) His family had been free men and women for a very long time.
Like to read more? http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/free-blacks-lived-in-the-north-right/
Majority of the Population
By 1699, the number of free blacks prompted fears of a “Negro insurrection.” Virginia Colonial ordered the repatriation of freed blacks back to Africa. Many blacks sold themselves to white masters so they would not have to go to Africa. This was the first effort to gently repatriate free blacks back to Africa.
Prior to 1820, the number of Africans surpassed the combined total of European immigrants by a ratio of as much as 5 to 1.
What does this mean? It means that if you are in American NOW, it is becaues your forefather's wanted to stay here.
Why?
They had it good here, and they knew it! They were catupred by their own, sent in the bottom of a ship here as war captives. They earned their freedome or were born free. Just as you were! They had lots of good oppertunity here and they sure didn't want to go back and risk getting re-inslaved or worse killed in another war. Think about that. Your forefather's helped build this nation, believe that or not.
In 1822, President James Monroe founded Liberia a small colony on the west coast of Africa. The modern nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia both originated as colonies of repatriated former black slaves.
In 1847 Liberia declared independence and the nation of was officially born. Liberia was founded as a colony for freed American slaves and the former American slaves had a tendency to look down on various native ethnic groups as uncivilized. Thus for its first 133 years, it had one-party the Americo-Liberians and only the Americo-Liberians and their children were allowed to vote. Currently it is the first and only African nation to have an elected woman at its head, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Liberian English is the official language of Liberia.
Fact; African slaves were the only remedy for the labor shortages that plagued Europe's New World. Slave labor made it profitable to mine for precious metal and to harvest sugar, indigo, and tobacco. It was slaves that taught whites how to raise such crops as rice and indigo. So slaves were able to draw upon their African cultural background and experiences and use them as a basis for life in the New World. African music, dance, decoration, design, cuisine, and religion exerted a profound and ongoing influence on American culture.
Sugar mills were the first true factories in the world; slaves were widely used in cities and in various kinds of manufacturing and crafts. Much of the labor performed by slaves required high skill levels and careful, painstaking effort. Masters relied on slaves for skilled craftsmanship.
One must ask what happened to the black people and thier attitude for so many to fall so far back?
The lies are not your turth. Live your truth.
Interesting Note
Africans were in the New World BEFORE The White Man arrived
Columbus found them there with the Natives.
Other interesting fact; Catholic missionary activities began in the central African Kongo half a century before Columbus's voyages of discovery in 1491. In Latin America, slaves were instructed by African Christians not by European clergy, who spread a African interpretation of Christianity.
In Kongo and in Latin America, the Church tolerated the mixture of Catholicism with African religions, allowing Africans to retain their old cosmology, understanding of the universe, and the place of gods and other divine beings in the universe. Whites could not prevent black preachers from turning Christianity into a source of self-respect and faith in deliverance.
- So what happened?
Fact; Madam C.J. Walker, born December 23, 1867, as Sarah Breedlove to two former slaves on a plantation in Delta, La was orphaned by age 7 became the first black millionairess in America by 1905 at 38.
Who says that you are not "smart enough" to be rich?
Other people's opinions are NOT your truth.
Why would you want to prove them right?
Apply yourself, study and learn.
You are an aspect of God, live like it!
In 1870, the senators in power after the Civil War had to settle a fundamental question when it came to seating Hiram R. Revels, the first black senator-elect:
Want to read more?
1961-3 The Kennedy Administration
Fact; In the first six months of the Kennedy Administration, some 50 black men (and women) were appointed to executive branch jobs. Wanna read more? http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-black-was-jfks-camelot/
Just look at how all the lies about you and your people that you believe that causes you to suffer.
Take back your power!
Believe in yourself again!
June 18, 1999
The president Kerekou of the West African nation of Benin has a message for African-Americans: His compatriots are sorry for their ancestors’ complicity in the slave trade.
An often-overlooked facet of slavery’s ugly historical stain is that black Africans sold other black Africans into slavery. When rival tribes made war, the victors took prisoners and made them indentured servants, often selling them to white slave merchants. Tribal animosity seethed. Intertribal hostility over the slave trade still exists. Many of his people have never seen descendants of their forebears who were shipped off to the Americas.
…
Brian Johnson, an African-American living in Virginia, heads a U.S. sponsoring group COMINAD (Cooperative Missions Network of the African Dispersion) and works with many black churches.
Johnson says President Kerekou’s mission has a spiritual flavor … the president and the pastors hope to effect reconciliation and to provide an example to help ease global racial tensions.
Johnson says the realization that blacks sold other blacks into slavery has been hard for many African-Americans to handle. “This made it difficult to just hold the white man responsible,” he notes. “This creates some problems in our own psyche. We have to deal with another angle to this and it makes it difficult. It’s not a black/white thing.”
He says the problem is in human hearts. ” ‘All have sinned,'” he claims, quoting the New Testament. “All of us need to confess our wrong and appeal to [God] for forgiveness.”
Former Senator George Aiken of Vermont once said that if we awoke one morning to find everyone were the same race, color and creed, we’d find a new cause for prejudice by noon.
Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy lamented that “Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself.” Perhaps Johnson’s and President Kerekou’s prescription is worth considering.
In case you want to read this …. It is here > https://www.probe.org/west-africans-to-african-americans-we-apologize-for-slavery/
Have I not said that the problem lies within YOU, not with outside others?
Telling it like it is - Divorce Court – Definition of Man hood
---- Do you still believe the lie?
President Barack Obama is planning a trip to Africa from June 26, 2013 through July 3, 2013. …
It is well known that our African ancestors, “due to White supremacy”, were forcibly brought to this country in the early 1500s and had to endure the pain and brutality of slavery and worked for free for over 300-plus years.
How sad, to perfer to live a lie.
With all due respect, Johnson was not the 1ST slave owner nor was his case a ground breaking decision that started slavery. It was simple contract dispute and Johnson won his case. Johnson was a slave who came to America and was force to be an indentured servant.
According to BRITANNICA ENCYCLOPEDIA, in 1641, Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop who owned slaves legalized slavery in 1641. The legal document is called "Massachusetts Body of Liberties". This was about 14 yrs before the Johnson Case.
"In 1641 Winthrop went against the recent trend of accepting Native Americans and Africans into the church (an outgrowth of the Great Awakening) and helped write THE MASSACHUSETTS BODY OF LIBERTIES, THE FIRST LEGAL SANCTIONING OF SLAVERY IN NORTH AMERICA. Indeed, Winthrop owned at least one Native American slave, taken during the Pequot War (1636–37). "
NOTE: My sources are derived from Britannica Encyclopedia, the number 1 RANKED Encyclopedia in the world since 1768. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Winthrop-American-colonial-governor
Unlike my counterparts, I'm not using blogs or memes as a source. Nor am I posting doctored fake pictures of Anthony Johnson. The pictures of Johnson are all fake or doctored pictures. I got off my ass and did the research MYSELF. This is why I don't need a blog.
- Craig Washington
Pardon me, I did do the research, however I didn't find this. In the 9 sets of encyclopedias I own this man was only a foot note in them. But my ego is not in this so I gladly take a look.
From what I read, it still stands until somone can prove it wrong.
Please take note Britannica Encyclopedia does NOT define what slavery is. So how any anyone say this man sanctioned slavery, when there is no definition of slavery to be had? Just look for yourself what it says (below).
However, also according to BRITANNICA ENCYCLOPEDIA, please note the definition of slavery is lacking, it could mean that an indentured servant was also a slave, I have already stated that is not one and the same thing.
