Slavery and Jim Crow, Were There Benefits for African Americans in Those Era?

By Norman Franklin

Norman Franklin

There is a peculiar trend emerging. State legislatures are aggressively restricting the study of African American history. And Black American scholars, a Supreme Court Justice, and opportunistic politicians are guilty of aiding and abetting.

The affectless assessment of the Jim Crow era by Byron Donalds, R.Fla., discredits our efforts to ensure accurate sharing of history; it betrays the unity of our struggle.

We are free to form our own thoughts, our own perspectives. African Americans are by no means mono lithic thinkers, we are not clones, it’s not a cardinal sin for an African American to not walk lockstep with the rest of Black America.

But when it comes to the horrors of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and the desegregation of public schools there ought to be a common awareness of the intensity of the struggles, shared anguish over the merciless injustices, and the inhumanity of the system.

Two African American scholars, Dr. William Allen, and Dr. Frances Presley Rice were leaders on the Florida workgroup charged with crafting a palatable version of Black History.

Uncomfortable events were skirted, Blacks were complicit in the erasure of the Greenwood community in Tulsa, and some Blacks benefited from slavery. They learned useful skills.

“The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited. This is factual and well documented,” the workgroup stated.

They analyzed the chattel slavey system through intellectualization; they completely disassociated them selves of the horrors, the brutalities, the tapestry of keloid backs, and the excruciating emotions the slaves experienced.

Justice Clarence Thomas believes that the Court over reached its authority in the landmark Brown v Board of Education decision. The Court took a “boundless view of equitable remedies.”

Thomas wrote that the decision was not backed up by the Constitution or the nation’s “history and tradition.” The Constitution, the nation’s history, and tradition? Chattel slavery was the tradition when the Constitution was written; codified oppression of Jim Crow from 1868 to 1954, that was the history and tradition.

The Justice disassociated himself with the history and tradition of systemic racism, the unequal conditions of the education system for Whites and African Americans. Thomas attacked the Brown decision in a concurrence opinion that allowed South Carolina to keep using a congressional map that eliminated 40,000 Black voters in the gerrymandered district.

Byron Donalds, the 45-year-old congressman from Florida, disrespected Black American who lived in and lived through the atrocities of Jim Crow. Black families were stronger, fathers were in the homes during that oppressive era, he posits. Perhaps he is showcasing. He is on the list as possible a VP for presidential candidate Donald Trump. This controversial statement, and disrespect for African American history and heritage should play out well for him.

More than 4,000 men, women, and children of African descent were lynched during that era that made for strong families. They were murdered at will and without cause. There was the erasure of the Rosewood community in 1923. It’s Florida history.

I fell to identify any benefits from chattel slavey, or from Black families huddled together in fear, and I’m thankful for men like Justice Thurgood Marshall for bringing an end to separate but unequal system of public education. But I’m just an African American opinion writer.