This month many people in our country will celebrate and commemorate the Freedom Riders who set out in the summer of 1961 to change the face of our nation and in doing so left an indelible mark on not only the United States but the world.
Four-hundred young people from California to Massachusetts decided enough was enough and went about changing the rules in the Jim Crow infested south. They were black and white, Christians and Jews, rich and poor. But they had a singular mindset. They were going to challenge the intractable customs, individuals and yes, the way of life in the old Confederacy that seemed to think they could still pick and choose which of the laws of this land they had to abide by.
The protestors went about their work peacefully. They sat quietly on buses that eventually carried them into the lion’s den but they did not shrink from their convictions. As they entered the south they were ordered to the back of the bus but they refused to move. They were beaten but did not stop coming. They came in wave after wave. The violence was shocking to many Americans who could not, or would not comprehend the vile racism that had entrenched itself in the individuals and institutions throughout the south.
As Americans witnessed the barbaric behavior of genteel whites standing side-by-side with rednecks, our collective consciousness was overwhelmed. What was it about these folks that they would risk life and limb to merely sit anywhere they wanted like most others? What was it about the folks who would threaten, harm and deny the simple human rights of another human being simply because of the color of their skin or their political mindset?
We learned a lot about ourselves and our country during those heady times we refer to as the Civil Rights Movement. We learned that we are comfortable in our own skin, in our own existence, in our own little slice of reality until we are forced to see and feel what is really going on all around us.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
I hope that one of the things we've learned from history is to target real problems like civil rights rather than the lame talking points you bring up at the end of this article.
Dave
2 - zingzing
education, the sick and elderly, and "Business profits trumping human decency" are mere talking points, dave?
unless you're talking about something else, i'm flabbergasted. that's a great word. really useful.
[personal attacked deleted by comments editor]
3 - Ronald W Weathersby
Dave:
Those so-called "lame talking points" are the foundation of our "real problems." When we place profits ahead of human decency we diminish ourselves as we have done.
Profits were the motivation for slavery.
Profits were the motivation for the genocide of the American Indian.
Profits are the motivation for the redistribution of wealth that has been taking place for the past 30-years.
Profits are the motivation for our untenable illegal immigration problem.
Profits are at the heart of our inability to pass a national energy policy.
Profits are why we wound up in Iraq instead of holding the line in Afghanistan.
Need I go on?
4 - Baronius
Ronald, I may disagree with some of your politics, but this is a well-done article praising people who deserve it.
5 - Ronald W Weathersby
Baronius:
Thank you. I appreciate you reading my piece and your comment.
6 - Dave Nalle
Ronald your evil profits are the engine which drives all of the prosperity which this nation has enjoyed. Without them we would all be poor.
Dave
7 - Cannonshop
#3 Actually, Ron, the motive for Slavery was the retention of the Aristocratic Lifestyle in the Deep South-Slaves weren't economically viable as a production method BEFORE the civil war started, mostly due to technological changes including the development of farm machinery (yes, they had farm machinery in the early 19th century.) One of the ugliest portions of our collective history, was that the southern secession had little to nothing to do with real-world economics of the time, and everything to do with the arrogance of power tied to a system that degrades (morally) both the victim (slaves) and victimizer (Masters).
The pervasive culture of dependency created in that system ought to be unimaginable today-yet there were black men who fought (with distinction) on the side of the Confederacy and a system that kept people who looked like them in chains.
8 - Baronius
Cannon - There were a lot of motivations behind the South's desire to maintain the system of slavery.
When you're doing something that's morally questionable, it takes a little time to admit it to yourself. But when someone is calling you out on it, you'll never change your mind - you'll start to insist that your actions are not just defensible, but morally superior. You can see that as the 1800's rolled along, the South moved from talking about slavery as regrettable but necessary to describing it as a "positive good".
Another factor was the fear of a slave revolt. Ships carried news from Haiti, where the whites had been driven out of power, nearly all of whom were killed or forced to flee.
9 - Ronald W Weathersby
#7 Wow, what a rewrite of history. Slavery was NOT economically feasible in the north and therefore died out in that region of our country. However, the large plantations in the south demanded a huge amount of labor to stay afloat and that labor was free due to slavery. Fact is the advent of machines, especially Edison’s cotton gin actually increased the demand for manual labor as planters cultivated larger numbers of acreage in cotton.
Here are two short excerpts from the Economic History Association:
“In 1850 Samuel S. Rembert and Jedediah Prescott of Memphis, Tennessee, received the first patent for a cotton harvester from the U.S. Patent Office, but it was almost a century later that a mechanical picker was commercially produced. The late nineteenth century was an age of inventions, and many inventors sought to perfect a mechanical cotton harvester. Their lack of success reinforced the belief that cotton would always be picked by hand. For almost a hundred years, it seemed, a successful cotton picker had been just around the corner.”
“Until World War II, the Cotton South remained poor, backward, and un-mechanized. With minor exceptions, most tasks -- plowing, cultivating, and finally harvesting cotton -- were done by hand...The mechanical cotton picker played an indispensable role in the transition from the prewar [WWII] South of over-population, sharecropping, and hand labor to the capital-intensive agriculture of the postwar South.”
Here is one more tidbit of information from History.com:
“Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the slave population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.”
10 - Clavos
Um, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, receiving his patent for it on March 14, 1794.
Edison was born in 1847. He invented a number of things, but not the cotton gin.
Lessons from history, indeed.
11 - Ronald W Weathersby
Clavos,
My mistake I meant Whitney. So jump on that because the rest is FACT.
12 - Irene Athena
Ronald W. Weathersby, I did not learn history the way you OR Cannonshop is telling it. Perhaps, as Baronius suggested, those individual perspectives of history came down to the three of us from people who had lived through and observed the Civil War from three very different vantage points.
13 - zingzing
maybe i'm missing something here, but if slavery was no longer an integral part of southern livelihood well before the civil war, why was it that when slavery ended, many of those slaves became sharecroppers, doing basically the same work on the plantation/land, but free (to a certain degree)... they were still treated like shit, and usually got cheated out of their fair share (sometimes they'd OWE their boss/feudal lord money at year's end), but, as compared to the slavery days, profits went waaaaay down for the boss man. the owners weren't anything like the old plantation owning southern "gentlemen" of the past, at any rate.
it's possible that the plantation system was a mirage in those years just before the civil war, and many of those people were floundering in debt while projecting an image of wealth. it's also possible that with slavery gone and the plantation system gone, more land was parceled out to more (white) people, and the profits just weren't the same. (it's possible that the plantation system itself was a mirage, and when we think of the "old south," we've got dixie playing in our heads, but it never was quite that way. i'll probably have to at least lend credence to that one, just to save face.)
at any rate, the "royalty" of the south disappeared very quickly after slavery ended. or at least there were far less people getting far less rich from cotton. so there was certainly something about slavery and cotton (and the cotton gin) that went together like money and pocket.
14 - Irene Athena
You will note, Ronald W. Weathersby, that your citation describes the part of the south that was "poor, backward, and un-mechanized." The parts of the South to which Cannonshop referred might be described by the "with minor exceptions" section of your citation. The Southern aristocracy, living on the wealthiest plantations, would indeed a) fall into the "with minor exceptions" category b) be, unlike "the poor, backward, and mechanized" sections of the South, in possession of the material resources required to finance a war.
15 - Irene Athena
The Civil War--and its aftermath--was fraught with too many horrors to be considered an entirely good war, beneficial things like the resultant Emancipation notwithstanding: since "the love of money is the root of all evil" (in other words, for you secularists, "follow the money trail,") real world economics is likely to have played a significant role.
16 - Irene Athena
I think I'm left with the conclusion that some Southeners wanted to secede for noble reasons, and others, for ignoble ones.
17 - Irene Athena
The motivations for the north's participation ran the gamut from noble to ignoble as well.
18 - Ronald W Weathersby
The citations I employed referenced the reality that slavery was indeed an integral part of the south's economic survival well into the 19th century unlike what was being written in these comments previously.
Additionally I cited the fact that the slave population of the south tripled from 1808 until the begin of the war.
It seems there are some people who are attempting to use this space to rewrite history.
Slavery was a powerful economic incentive in our country for 300-years starting well before the American Revolution and lasted until after the Emancipation. After that the system of share cropping sprung up that was merely slavery-light.
Once again I say when we place profits ahead of human decency our society descends into a dark place and we as a country are worst off as a result.
19 - Irene Athena
I still think Robert E. Lee was a class act, is what I'm saying; not so Sherman, and the northern military men of his ilk that turned right around and slaughtered Indians after "fighting to free slaves."
20 - Irene Athena
None of us is rewriting history, Ronald W Weathersby. We're just trying to make sense of it.
21 - Irene Athena
You're right about profits ahead of decency being wrong, of course, and the earliest capitalist theorists would heartily agree with you, Ronald W Weathersby.
22 - Irene Athena
Dang, I've had this clay stuff on my face for an hour! See you guys later.
23 - Ronald W Weathersby
Irene,
There is indeed an attempt to rewrite history when someone write slavery was not at the heart of the south's economic viability: "Slaves weren't economically viable as a production method BEFORE the civil war started, mostly due to technological changes."
That statement is fundamentally false.
Lastly in response to comment #6, I believe there is a way to become rich and powerful as a nation without stealing and killing. Let's hope we have learned that lesson at least partially.
24 - Irene Athena
But Cannonshop WASN'T saying there weren't slaves, Ronald W Weathersby. He was saying that slaves were a luxury item, NOT needed for the economic viability of the region, but held against their will (in probably most, but certainly not all) cases. At least that's what I think C-shop was saying.
And he's probably partially right, again, in the case of the southern landowners who had the wherewithal to finance a war. To put it in today's terms, some of them were probably wealthy enough to retire, but wanted slaves around for domestic work--and lots of it, too, to allow them to live in the manner to which they'd become accustomed.
25 - zingzing
irene, "luxury items" didn't come in the millions in those days. do the math.