Tag: Slavery

The Search Continues for Victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre.

On By southwerkIn Capitalism, Government Failure, Opinion

(A picture from the work, “The Boys’ Book of Battle-Lyrics.)

While the current regime claims we focus too much on the history of slavery, in Oklahoma, the City of Tulsa is continuing its efforts to find the bodies of victims of racial violence.

https://www.kosu.org/local-news/2025-10-15/more-tulsa-race-massacre-victims-could-be-found-as-city-begins-fifth-grave-excavation

It’s an effort that could take weeks, Mayor Monroe Nichols said during a press conference at City Hall. Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield and archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck joined Nichols as he gave an update on the city’s progress.

“This groundbreaking work from our archaeological and genealogy teams is a great mark of success and it tells us where we are, certainly in the right place and on the right track,” Nichols said. “The latest report from the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey gave us very detailed information as to what we believe we have left at the Oaklawn Cemetery.”

The destruction of “Black Wall Street” and the deaths of so many of our black citizens deserve remembrance. That such horrors happened are matters of fact and history which we ignore at our peril.

A free and great people does not fear its history. It embraces its past with a willingness to change and improve.

Ethics and Morality demand that we remember the crimes and mistakes of the past in the hope that we are now a better people who have found a better moral compass and a greater responsibility toward our fellow human beings.

Let us pay attention to the great words of one of our greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentiment to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride; how consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us, and the intellectual and moral worlds within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

Lincoln didn’t just talk about having more money but assumed that social and political health were also of great importance. He could not have spoken truer words. While we live in an age of the most disgusting and degrading money grubbing and corruption, he calls us to be a great people with an unwavering committment to doing what is right.

James Alan Pilant

Sanitized History is Wrong

On By southwerkIn Editorial, ethics, Government Failure, International

We’ve been hearing a lot about our foolish leadership and his desire to limit the Smithsonian’s coverage of the history of slavery because he believes they talk too much about it.

They don’t talk to much about it. What has happened is that historians are really coming to grips with the history of slavery and its long term effects. At various points in my life I have attended college winding up with thirteen and a half years of full time attendance as well as another twelve years or so teaching. In that time, I have seen the teaching of Reconstruction and slavery changing dramatically.

After the Civil War, the defeated confederates did everything possible to make states rights the center of the war’s cause rather than slavery. However, a very casual examination of the issue and a quick look at the newspapers of the revolutionary South demonstrate conclusively that slavery was the principle factor in the rebellion.

After the war, superhuman efforts were made to write a new and highly fictionalized history of the war, the “lost cause” narrative was created and emblazoned across novel after novel and many motion pictures as well. The shock of my white students upon seeing “Judge Priest” with Will Rogers and its utter and complete embrace of the lost cause I found fascinating. My minority students were well aware of that narrative.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy labored for years to sanitize history books, build statues and monuments and to attack any attempt at an accurate depiction of the Civil War. Their statues of traitors and subversives who killed their fellow Americans in the pursuit of the right to enslave others are all over the United States but principally in the South.

Historians are no longer buying into the Confederate sympathizers historical revision. The horrors of slavery began to be discussed honestly in the classroom. I had some of those classes. Slaves were very often maimed to mark them as property. They were murdered for defiance. They were bred like cattle for muscles and size so they could work the land. They were denied education as well as virtually any human right recognized by American law. The idea that they were vital and cherished members of the family is pitiful nonsense.

But above all, the greatest and most significant failure of American history was the fact that the confederate traitors were not punished after the war. Their evil acts and continued defiance had dire results which continue to this day.

And among those dire effects are the desire to censor American history of everything that might detract from a heroic narrative. Nations should not be a subject of worship. A nation is something that a people develop and if they do right be proud of and if they do wrong own up to it.

The glory of America is that we learned from our mistakes. Not only did we abolish slavery, we became leaders in the struggle to end colonialism and many other worldwide evils. Until this year we were the most important nation on earth in the struggle to end hunger and fight disease all thought this has been ended by the pitiful and immoral current regime. In many ways we have learned from our history and become a better and greater people.

That we do right is our glory and our legacy not some nonsensical made up history where everything was good and great in spite of facts and knowledge.

The United States is a great nation because it learns from its mistakes not by denying them.

James Alan Pilant

Faithful Slaves?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

The American Civil War was fought over the evil that was slavery. The assassination of Lincoln prevented the necessary prosecution of the Confederate leadership and the old guard, the former slave owners, rose up in power to continue the oppression and pain inflicted on the poor Whites and Blacks. They tried to rewrite history with “The Lost Cause” nonsense and during the Jim Crow era put up statues as signposts that clearly indicating that minority rights did not exist in the South. More crudely put, these monuments were a direct threat of murder and pain to those who stepped across the color line.

Tyrell County has one of these “monuments.” Erected in 1902, its connection to the Civil War is barely arguable but its public demonstration of the power of the white aristocracy and their willingness to murder and punish is plain for all to see. It is dedicated to faithful slaves, a calculated insult.

History is important. But history shorn of its truth is an abomination. These monuments to Jim Crow are an attempt which for many years was successful to intimidate Blacks and rewrite history. It has failed. And these nonsensical pieces of stone should be consigned to the scrap heap. It doesn’t take a deep grasp of morality or ethics to see that preserving the Southern way of life, an idea the included the practice of slavery and many other discriminations, was not a worthy goal but in fact an abomination. Societies based on slavery had long passed in large part into the failed systems of history.

At the end of the Civil War, there were more Black soldiers in the Union Army than the entire strength of the Confederates. I don’t see any monuments to the fact that freed Black men were willing to risk their lives to end the barbarous practice of slavery. That would be real history.

Why don’t we build some real monuments to celebrate the heroism and sacrifice of Americans who fought for the right?

James Alan Pilant

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/us/nc-confederate-slaves-monument-lawsuit-reaj/index.html

This needs to go.

Bible College a Scam?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

01Bible College a Scam?

One of the chief problems is business ethics today is the seizure of public resources by private interests. Hospitals, schools, public parks, etc. are all considered fair game for private ownership. Here we also have a conversion, public trust into private profit. It is not unusual for a minister or other church authority to misuse their authority, their standing in the community for profit. The story is not new but this episode is particularly cruel. This was not a case of embezzlement or working the elderly for a place in their will, this was a form of slavery using the power of the federal government as an enforcement mechanism to avoid compliance with the law.

Students from foreign countries came to the United States in the belief that they would receive a Christian education, instead they were given hours and hours of work each week while being denied decent housing and an education.

It is the understanding in this country that both churches and religions are not for-profit organizations. This is not always the case but it is the expectation. This “Christian” organization appears to have been a money making bonanza utilizing foreign labor at a small fraction of the minimum wage under the threat of expulsion from the United States for non-compliance.

This is a business ethics problem pure and simple. A Christian College was used as a cover for a racket. Religion was used as a cover for crime. Public respect and status were converted into cash. This college, if the testimony of these students is accurate, was as much about religion as Bernie Madoff was about legitimate investments. The scam played it from two angles, a reliance on the cover provided by both American respect for religion and college education.

This does little for the American image overseas that we treat visitors to our country so brutally. It is embarrassing but I am even more worried about the outcome of the case. This has become increasingly a nation with two tiers of justice, one for the majority of us and another for the well placed and influential. Our villain here is in the influential group. What will it be, probation and community service? Will they stall the sentencing until the public outrage subsides and something appropriate for an upper class member of society can be worked out?

I am not hopeful. I have seen who gets prosecuted and what sentences are given for a good number of years now.

We only get a little justice.

James Pilant

South Carolina Bible College President Busted For Slavery, Forced Labor | Crooks and Liars

The president of a South Carolina Bible college was charged last week with essentially treating foreign students as slaves by forcing them to perform work for little or no pay.

According to The Sun News, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Cathedral Bible College President Reginald Wayne Miller, accusing him of forced labor.

An affidavit included with the complaint said that students “described a pervasive climate of fear in which their legal status as non-immigrant students was in constant jeopardy, at the sole discretion of Dr. Miller, who threatened expulsion and therefore termination of their legal presence in the United States for noncompliance with his demands.”

Students told investigators that classes at the school “were not real,” and that the real purpose of the school was to force them to work over the maximum of 20 hours per week that federal law allows for student visas. The students alleged that Miller often forced them to live in substandard conditions without hot water, heat or air-conditioning.

via South Carolina Bible College President Busted For Slavery, Forced Labor | Crooks and Liars.

Some Additional Information: The Raw Story.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/25/sc-pastor-accused-of-turning-bible-college-into-forced-labor-camp-for-foreign-students/

Miller was arrested in 2006 on charges of lewdness and prostitution after he exposed himself to an undercover officer in a bathhouse at Myrtle Beach State Park. Records indicated that Miller participated in a pre-trial intervention program, allowing his record to be expunged.

During a Friday appearance at Florence Federal Court House, a federal judge set bail at $250,000. He was also ordered to stay away from Cathedral Bible College, and its students. The former pastor could spend 20 years in jail if convicted.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, World.Time.Com.

http://world.time.com/2013/02/20/irish-prime-minister-apologizes-for-forced-labor-in-magdalene-laundries/

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny made a historic apology on Tuesday to the survivors of the notorious Magdalene Laundries and the families of more than 10,000 women who were forced into unpaid labor from 1922 to 1996. In an emotional speech to the Irish Parliament, Kenny told the surviving women and their families “this is a national shame for which I say again I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies.”

For more than seven decades in the 20th century, thousands of unmarried mothers, women who had been sexually abused and young girls who had grown up in the care of the state lived and worked in the Irish Magdalene Laundries operated by four orders of Catholic nuns. Ignored by Irish society, 26.5% of these “fallen women” were sent there by the Irish state to work without pay for an average of six months. The Irish government had previously denied playing a role in sending young women to work in laundries.

▶ Slavery in Brazil, A Tragic History

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

English: Slavery in Brazil, by Jean-Baptiste D...
English: Slavery in Brazil, by Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). Español: La esclavitud, de Jean-Baptiste Debret Deutsch: Sklaverei in Brasilien, Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). Português: Escravidão no Brasil, Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IZpAUEgKYc

I was surprised to find that slavery in Brazilian history was quite likely to have been more savage and more laden with death and torture than American slavery. Blacks couldn’t catch a break in either North America or South America.

James Pilant

From around the web.

From the web site, Latin American Musings.

http://latinamericanmusings.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/today-in-latin-america-brazil-abolishes-slavery/

Today in 1888 (121 years ago) Brazil officially abolished its slave trade – the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to do so.

Slavery and the slave trade dealt exclusively with Africa and
persisted for nearly 400 years. Brazil lasted longer than any other
Western Hemispheric nation, although the US South had the highest
concentration of slaves that the world has ever seen – 6 million on the
eve of the Civil War in 1860. Brazil never reached those heights, but it
used slaves in the same fashion as white southerners did. Not only was
slavery economically essential to parts of Brazil, but it also created
castes of human beings that persist today.

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