Slavery Is Not Dead. It's Not Even Past By Bob Herbert NYTimes

[Demeter]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030107H.shtml

Slavery Is Not Dead. It's Not Even Past
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Thursday 01 March 2007

The Rev. Al Sharpton seemed subdued, quiet, reflective - which was unusual.

Just when we thought the news couldn't get any weirder, we learned this week, via The Daily News, that Mr. Sharpton's great-grandfather was a slave who was owned by relatives of Senator Strom Thurmond, the longtime archsegregationist who ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948.

"There's not enough troops in the Army," Mr. Thurmond told a screaming crowd during that campaign, "to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our schools and into our homes."

Mr. Sharpton seemed a little shaken by the revelation. "You're always kind of thinking that your ancestors were slaves," he said. "But this was my grandfather's father. I knew my grandfather. It's eerie when it becomes so personal."

The days of slavery are closer than we tend to think, and they were crueler than we tend to realize. Mr. Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was sent with his wife and two children from South Carolina to Florida so a woman named Julia Thurmond Sharpton could send them out as laborers to pay off debts left by her late husband.

Julia Sharpton was a first cousin, twice removed, of Strom Thurmond.

"They were sent there solely for that reason," Mr. Sharpton said. "To make money to pay her debt. It was just so clear that they were nothing but property. The complete dehumanization - I don't think I fully understood it until this hit home."

[BayCityProgressive]

1. pretty disgusting

I say Sharpton should get reparations from the family. His relatives worked for nothing to keep the Thurmonds rich.

[BayCityProgressive]

2. if

generations of white slave owners got an inheritance from their relatives when they died, I don't see why African Americans shouldn't be getting a piece of the pie. There forefathers who labored in the hot sun never got to keep any of the wealth they created to pass down to future generations. I realize this position is political suicide.

[PLF]

4. I agree

[Igel]

3. Well, close.

An ancestor worked for nothing to get Strom's cousin's husband out of debt.

I wonder if that branch of the Sharptons has any living descendants.

[lyonn]

5. I saw Sharpton speak on this and he appeared truly saddened

and not his usual upbeat, smart person we usually see. Ugh, Strom Thurmon owned his relatives!!!! That would bother anyone. Sharpton is probably worried that he could be related....

[Karenina]

6. He's made noises about a DNA test...

Now a "positive" would be.... :rofl::rofl::rofl:

[Lisa]

7. just imagining thousands and thousands of casual "transactions" like that ...

How corrosive, and how sickening. I keep having a disturbing image of vile ol' Strom, gloating away in the background ... it wouldn't surprise me if he were not ashamed, in fact proud, of that "family relationship", and if he were still alive he might even have seized the opportunity to needle the Rev. Sharpton about it.

[qwlauren35]

8. Why is he so surprised?

Maybe its just the irony of WHO it was.

But I think to most black people who already know who owned their ancestors, it's just not that big of a deal. I know that I'm somehow related to John Wilkes Booth. When I was a kid, it felt a little weird. But it was actually funny when some white kid in my class stood up and said he was related, and I pointed out that that would make us distant cousins. I think he nearly barfed.

I know that my great-grandmother was the daughter of the overseer. A lot of us with some legacy of money in our family history owe it so some white slavemaster who decided to give his black offspring some money to start a decent life somewhere. SOME of the earliest black millionaires were half-white.(And some were not!)

On another forum, a lot of people have been talking about Black History Month and how we've gotten so far away from taking any time during that month to reflect on our history as SLAVES. It's as if it's become a taboo word, something no one wants to remember. Because when you look at the incredible diversity of skin colors among African-Americans, one has to acknowledge that there were sexual relationships, and not necessarily consensual relationships that caused this diversity.

I think this is one of the things that angers a lot of us... that the exploitation of African-Americans included rape, but there is still a tendency to down-play this part of American history.

Then again, I don't have any idea what it's like to be a native American, but I can imagine that that's another group of people with the right to be seriously pissed off about the fact that there is no real way to rectify how completely they got shafted by American greed.

[acmavm]

9. Why is it that so many people labor under the illusion that every sin of the

past will go away, will be rectified, if you throw money at it?