Posted on 01/26/2016 12:58:31 PM PST by Citizen Zed
Next month is Black History Month. We will hear stories about black Americans and their successes in this country against the barriers (slavery, Jim Crow, poll tax just to name a few) thrown in their paths. Yet for every success story, there is still the nagging fact that the median net wealth of white households is 12.2 times greater than that of black households.
Because of well-documented gaps in unemployment rates, earnings, poverty and wealth, black working people are sometimes falsely seen as “bystanders†to America’s economy. Unbelievably, there is a tendency to observe the gaps in economic success and blame African Americans for being disengaged and not trying to respond to clear economic realities; a lack of investment in education, skills, training and personal saving. This is patently absurd.
African Americans are fully aware of the barriers they face to success, and have been steadfast to struggle to remove them. Indeed, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated during a campaign by black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., to exercise their right to organize, strike and demand fair wages; a key theme of American worker advancement during the first 80 years of the last century and one repeated this past Dr. King Holiday by airport workers demanding a living wage.
The difference in wealth does not grow smaller when comparing white and black households headed by college graduates, or when controlling for differences in income. Because the easy answers like education and income differences don’t explain the wealth gap—which measures accumulated savings over multiple generations—the fall back is often to blame the savings’ behavior of blacks. And, here, old stereotypes of African Americans being profligate can easily substitute for documentation. But taking a closer look at history tells us the real story.
Those early years after emancipation are key in addressing the deep history of African Americans as their own agents. During the Civil War, African American leaders, most famously, Frederick Douglass, campaigned hard to have black soldiers officially sworn into the fight to end slavery. With issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln also finally signed on that in 1863 not only would slaves in the rebellious states be free, but African American men would join the United States Army and Navy in quelling the Southern revolt. Close to 180,000 black men signed-up as official members of America’s Armed Forces to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. They became the largest paid workforce of African American men to that point in America’s history.
The issue quickly arose as to where could they deposit their paychecks? A few fledgling efforts were made to start banks. And, that effort culminated with the establishment of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust by Congressional act in March 1865; the Freedmen’s Bureau bank. Recently the U.S. Department of Treasury and Secretary Jack Lew dedicated an annex to honor the Freedmen’s Bureau Bank.
By 1870, the bank operated 37 branches throughout the South, with African Americans trained as branch managers. In all, almost 70,000 African Americans made deposits in the bank, reaching savings of about $57 million. Those facts stand to clearly demonstrate the efforts of a people, subject to slavery, freed with nothing from their previous labors to start anew having built wealth for others for free.
But, fate would intervene. The accumulation of those savings came during a period when the federal government still stood in the way of restoring the South’s old hegemony of white southern planters. And, it came when the nation’s banks were still conservative following the uncertainties of the Civil War. Southern banking laid prostrate, devastated by the collapse of the Confederacy and the meaningless holdings of Confederate dollars, and the long mystery of the disappearance of the gold reserves that backed that currency on its desperate journey south from Richmond, Virginia in April 1865 as Robert E. Lee surrendered the fighting cause at Appomattox Court House under the vigilant eyes of 2,000 black men in seven units of the United States Colored Troops.
By the start of the 1870’s, the expansion west made possible by the Homestead Act and transcontinental railroad—both enacted during the Civil War—restored the nation’s prosperity and financial zeal. The result was over speculation in railroading. In Europe, financial pressures mounted from the Franco-Prussian War. Germany refused to continue issuing silver coins. This resulted in plummeting silver prices, and the eventual move by the United States to go from backing its currency in silver and gold, to use only the gold standard. This led to the collapse of investments in silver mines in the western United States. The result was a global financial collapse that swept Europe and the United States in 1873. With it came the collapse of the U.S. banking system.
Sound familiar? And, that collapse decimated the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust as well. At a time of general financial collapse and no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—a creation learned from the Great Depression—many depositors lost their savings. The millions in savings of the newly free went away, too. Not too different than the 240,000 homes that disappeared from the African American community after the financial collapse of 2007.
In 1876, a compromise to resolve the Presidential election resulted in the removal of federal protection of African Americans in the South. The end of reconstruction meant the restoration of southern white hegemony and the evisceration of voting rights for African Americans, the protection of the access to many occupations and the limiting of their equal access to education. This too sounds familiar.
To accurately measure history, it takes measuring all the hills and valleys right. Dedicating a building to the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust allows us to properly assess the toil and efforts of African Americans. It shows the hard work and industrious nature of a determined people. It reminds us of the mountains of betrayal as well.
Are they equating then and now?
Have they checked their Bell Curve?
I dont understand how my grandparents and father got here as late as 1920s and managed to build a life here.
They came from Italy/Sicily with nothing.
Probably not much in the way of SNAP, Welfare and Section 8 at the time and they had weak to no English.
Probably not liked much better than blacks at first. so what.
Amazing how only a few generations later 41 out of 42 first cousins have college degrees...lawyers, doctors, engineers, advertising, accounting...
The other one is a bodyguard for the likes of Will Smith and Sylvester Stallone.
Doesn’t make sense because the black men look so hard for jobs.
Like when i drove a cab and would see maybe 25 or 30 outside of each bodega holding a 40 ounce.
EVERYBODY knows that’s where the prospective employers are during the day.
Oh boy,Black History Month.
PBS must be ecstatic.
.
More excuses and limp apologism. How about looking at some of the factors that have defined black failure over the most recent 100 years???
Read the first sentence...quit reading. Racist tripe not needed.
I’m a bit peeved about the racial wealth gap as well.....Ben Carson, Oprah and Lebron all have more than me......
What about the African American athletes, actors, singers, musicians, artists, models and so on that make huge amounts of money? I’m thinking they are doing quite well and not suffering in the depths of poverty. So tired of being told to “appreciate” everyone else’s culture and ethnicity at the expense of mine and having to apologize for being white, reasonably successful, educated, and an American (southerner) by birth and ancestry. Smh...
It should also be remembered the Compromise of 1876 that the author is referring to was a deal brokered by both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans got what they wanted: the Presidency, and Democrats got what they wanted: the end of Congressional Reconstruction enforced by Federal troops in the South.
Blacks were, to use a pre-Civil War phrase, “sold down the river” by both parties.
Others should note how, just 11 years after the end of the Civil War, US politicians on both sides easily dismissed the underlying reason for the war and the deaths of 600K soldiers (and a million more wounded) when it stood in the way of their grasping, greedy hands.
Good point.
Your background sounds like my husband’s. The men got to America in the 20s, working in mines in West Virginia. I have a wonderful photo of my husband’s handsome grandfather sitting in front of his mine, strumming a guitar while the other workers hold up plates of spaghetti! His grandmother never learned proper English but she raised 4 good children who went on to become strong women as well as a pharmacist and an engineer. They lived in close quarters in the Bronx and then moved on to NJ. They often pooled resources to help one or another of their siblings’ offspring. An American success story.
There is a very weak strain among African-American men. They are easily hurt and can turn easily to depression, anger and violence. Followed by alcohol and drug problems. In other words, they are often a real mess.
What was the underlying reason for the war? I have been contemplating this question for some years, and I am interested in hearing any insight on the subject that others may have.
The first paragraph is such a heart warming and endearing story.
The second one is, unfortunately, all too true,
I once worked with seven black women in a graphics department. All nice ladies. All had kids. One was married.
One had two kids and was single but hit the jackpot and was engaged to a great guy, an engineer and as conservative as anybody. boy was she lazy lol.
The others were All hard workers. They told me they couldn’t find a good man and that their sons were in trouble with the law. it broke my heart.
I am sure that you know that the left purports that the only reason for CW1 was to free the slaves. There is some truth to that but only in a very minor way. Several other reasons exist for CW1 all can be found on the internet. In 1865 Slavery was already on it’s way out as it costs far too much to feed and house human beings. Advances in technology were already having an impact on the farms and plantations, reducing the cost effectiveness of slavery. The cotton gin had been around for about 50 years and mechanical cotton pickers were beginning to be developed. I have seen estimates that if CW1 did not happen, slavery would have all but disappeared by 1900 or so due to market forces.
But CW1 did happen so I fly the Stars and Bars during February in remembrance ... and for other reasons.
That is what the apologists are constantly asserting, but it doesn't take much in the way of research to realize immediately that this is not true at all.
No effort was made to stop slavery in the Union States of Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri, or Maryland. Not till near the end of the war anyways.
I have pointed out to people before, that if their reason for fighting was to abolish slavery, they could have started in Maryland. The supply lines would have been much shorter.
The wreck of the American family is all to blame for America’s problems. Easy divorce was the start. I wonder if any of us really realized what the result of 50 years of no-fault divorce would cost??
To answer briefly, the underlying cause of the US Civil War was answering the question: “Is perpetual slavery the proper status of American-born blacks?” In saying “proper status,” I recognize that unfree American-born blacks already had a legal status at the time as slaves, However, the anti-slavery/abolitionist movement in the North increasingly questioned the “Great Compromise” embedded in the Constitution, first on economic grounds then, with increasing vitrol, on moral grounds; ultimately calling into question the Christianity of Southerners who supported slavery.
For really masterful in-depth treatment of the question and convolutions of pre-Civil War US politics, I recommend:
The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, by David M. Potter
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061319295?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00
“David M. Potter (1910-1971) was a professor of history at Yale and Stanford universities. He was posthumously awarded the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Impending Crisis, which his Stanford colleague Don Fehrenbacher completed and edited.”
This book is well written, very heavily footnoted (almost annoyingly so in places), inexpensive (in paperback) and LONG (650+ pages). It has also the virtue of being concentrated on the years running up to the war and stopping when the war begins. In fact, the author’s entire account of the actual war is limited to the last two pages of the book.
My 2 cents.
A switch of European trade into southern ports would have caused massive economic damage to New England.
The Federal Government made it clear that they were willing to put up with slavery... they just weren't willing to put up with an independent South.
The imbalance in the chart shows that the switch to the South you refer to wasn’t happening (or about to happen). The inflow of trade generating all those tariffs in the Northern states was being driven by the imbalance in population and industrial development. The South was not investing in the industry, infrastructure, or immigration policies that would make a southward shift happen.
This imbalance would become agonizingly apparent during the Civil War. The mismatch between the two sides in terms of manpower, industry, and money of the North eventually overwhelmed the dogged courage and generally superior generalship (at least in the early war years) of the South. Barring some truly catastrophic battlefield disaster, the North, bungling as it was, was going to win the war...eventually. It was just a matter of how many men, how much time, how much material, and how much money would be required.
This imbalance in population and industrial development was not unknown to the South pre-war. However, the economic and political structure of the South was heavily invested in slavery. Diluting their grip on the South was not in their class’ interest. In the increasingly bitter run up to the war during the 1850s, even Southerners sounding a clarion call about what the fell hand of slavery was doing to their economy and society could not get a hearing.
Another book, also titled (in part) “The Impending Crisis,” was written in the 1850s by the Southern writer, Hinton Rowan Helper. In his forward, Helper complains about the closed mindedness of Southern publishers and his ultimate inability to get the book published in the South. Of course, this censorship was being driven by the same vested interests that stood atop Southern society.
Helper’s book is available for free on Kindle:
As for the Federal governments toleration of slavery, that was a given as slavery was still legal and, more importantly, the national government was controlled by a Congress dominated by the South and pre-war administrations headed by a string of southern presidents and salted with southerners in key positions. For example, as the last pre-war Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis’ diligent work in ensuring that Federal magazines and arsenals tbroughout the South were very well stocked has not gone unnoted, either then or now.
That dominance, of course, ended with the increasing imbalance in the voting populations of the North and South. In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President without any Southern states electoral votes.
However, let me meet you halfway. In the antebellum South, agriculture + slavery = money and power. And the pre-war upper classes of Southern society were not going to tolerate any challenges to that formulation. By contrast, in the North, the formulation was immigrant labor + industry = money and power. With the cutoff of slave importation and the frustration of the expansion of slavery beyond the South, the South was never going to be able to match the economic output of a system that directly imported its workforce as adults and that was not heavily dependent on putting undeveloped land into cash crop production. (This is not to say there was no industry in the South or agriculture in the North.)
That is what you would ordinarily think, but that is not in fact true. What was happening is that the US laws were rejiggered to promote trade with New York. It was illegal for foreign ships to carry cargo from one US port to another, so foreign ships would only bother to make one stop. New York was the easiest, it had great harbor facilities, and it could ship material to/from deep into the great lakes region.
US flagged packet shipping would carry cargo to and from other US ports. Those packet ships were also operated out of New England.
New York had a great location, great geographic features for shipping, and a virtual monopoly on shipping backed up by law.
The Bulk of that money you see in that chart coming into New York was the consequence of Southern Agriculture products being shipped to Europe. New York was making a fortune off of slavery by being the middleman in the trade Industry. The bulk of the trade coming into New York was to offset the monetary imbalance caused by mostly Southern Exports.
The South was not investing in the industry, infrastructure, or immigration policies that would make a southward shift happen.
Not so much while the system was rigged against them anyway.
This imbalance would become agonizingly apparent during the Civil War. The mismatch between the two sides in terms of manpower, industry, and money of the North eventually overwhelmed the dogged courage and generally superior generalship (at least in the early war years) of the South. Barring some truly catastrophic battlefield disaster, the North, bungling as it was, was going to win the war...eventually. It was just a matter of how many men, how much time, how much material, and how much money would be required.
Or how badly someone insisted on winning. George the III lost something like 15,000 men trying to take the Colonies back. Who would have believed that anyone would go so far as to kill 620,000 men to subjugate another population? A rational man would have stopped it long before it got so bloody.
Yes, the contest was lopsided from the very beginning. 20 Northern states against 11 Southern states. A population ration of four to 1. The vast bulk of the industrialization in the north.
Sure. Anyone with a lick of sense could see that the logistics supported the North, but I don't think anyone believed at that time that they would be willing to waste so many men's lives in an effort to do it.
But the real question is why did they do it? Why did they decide to invade a group of people who just wanted to be free of control from Washington D.C. ?
The Boston Transcript wrote,(3/18/1861) "It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union."Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports.
"The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade.
"If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby."
The New York Evening Post wrote,
"Allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railways would be supplied from the Southern ports."
The Philadelphia Press said,
"Blockade Southern Ports. If not a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries, and make British mils prosper. Finally,, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls."
I will conclude by saying this is a relatively new angle for me to look at the conflict. I had grown up believing the common wisdom about it, and never really paid much attention to the things about the civil war that never really made much sense to me. (Such as the blockade of all Southern ports.)
Realizing what a potential loss of revenue threatened the monied men of that era puts a very different spin on the conflict, and it neatly ties up bits and pieces that never made any sense before. (Such as Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley. Let the south keep their slaves? How does that fit with what we've been told?)
Not that it will matter because it's all in the past, but if you have evidence which counters this "money" motive for the war, I would be interested in hearing it.
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