Posted on 05/22/2014 6:39:45 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Ross’s parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Ross’s mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for little, save that which all black families in the Deep South then desperately desired—the protection of the law.
In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. The majority of the people in the state were perpetually robbed of the vote—a hijacking engineered through the trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob. Between 1882 and 1968, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state. “You and I know what’s the best way to keep the nigger from voting,” blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman. “You do it the night before the election.”
The state’s regime partnered robbery of the franchise with robbery of the purse. Many of Mississippi’s black farmers lived in debt peonage, under the sway of cotton kings who were at once their landlords, their employers, and their primary merchants. Tools and necessities were advanced against the return on the crop, which was determined by the employer. When farmers were deemed to be in debt—and they often were—the negative balance was then carried over to the next season. A man or woman who protested this arrangement did so at the risk of grave injury or death.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
One of my distant ancestors was enslaved by the natives back in the early 1600s.
So far the Wampanoag haven’t offered up any cash.
They should go after the Africans who sold their captives to the Arabs.
Heres the deal I would make them. the USA will give you 25 grand and a plane ticket back to Africa. You take the cash, you renounce your citizenship forever.
Take it or leave it. The Idea of reparations is to return things to the way it was before.
My grandparents were still fleeing the pogroms in Russia half a century after Lincoln freed the slaves. How much do I owe?
Except we now already have several generations of blacks who have never known anything but living on reparations in the form of government handouts paid for by the sweat and hard work of real taxpayers.
Twenty-five grand and a one-way ticket to Africa is a generous offer to these ingrates.
If there is any current organization in America that is responsible for slavery and the misery of blacks that can be said to owe reparations, it is the Democratic Party. They should pay reparations for maintaining slavery, enacting Jim Crow laws, organizing the KKK, enforcing segregation and a million other things.
I am all in favor of reparations. Any living person who can present themselves to the United States Government proving they were held in bondage under a then valid and enforceable state and/or federal statute permitting them to be held in bondage deserves reparations.
Anyone else claiming a right to reparations should be told to go pound sand. They have been as free as any other American citizen and have had the opportunity their entire lives to avail themselves of the Constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Hundreds of Billions already poured into gov’t vote buying programs have proven that giving money away is not the path to freedom.
Only self sufficiency can provide true freedom.
I, first-generation American-born, will pay for as much of the suffering of their ancestors as I am responsible for.
Well, let’s see. When I was 7 years old, I was POW in the Philippines (SANTO TOMAS). Can I claim reparations from the Japs? Or maybe I can claim reparations from the US government, that knew an attack was coming and didn’t warn my father.
Exactly.
how many would take it? Not many because their Obama phones wont work and OE 40s would be hard to find.
And I don’t think too many African nations would take them because the people there work hard and wouldn’t stand for work shy types.
The reason the reparations argument holds no water is actually quite simple. Our constitution is based on the foundational concept of protecting individual rights. This means that repoarations can only be made on an individual basis.
That being said, I can imagine a class action lawsuit against the state of Mississippi or some of the redliners in Chicago, et al. But you can’t just take it from the federal government unless you win a lawsuit on behalf of specific people for specific grievances.
They’re doing this already....see the Great Society.
Bilbo was, at the same time, a fierce race baiter and an important ally of FDR and the New Deal. Quite the piece of crap.
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