| To get back to American slavery: the first record of | | | | suffering - and how much they wanted to lead freer, |
| enslavement of Africans by colonial Americans is from | | | | more productive lives. |
| Virginia, in 1619. A Dutch ship called "The White Lion" | | | | The ideal on the part of the white South was to keep |
| had captured 20 enslaved Africans in a battle with a | | | | "coloreds" subjugated indefinitely, by using "State's |
| Spanish ship that had been taking them to Mexico. This | | | | Rights" as a kind of tactic, where the southern states |
| Dutch ship, after being damaged in a storm, came to | | | | would each independently decide whether slavery |
| shore in Jamestown, Virginia. | | | | was legal. The Ku Klux Klan, the name of which may |
| The first English colony in America was in need of | | | | be founded on the Greek word for circle, "kuklos," was |
| able-bodied workers, as it had lost many to disease, | | | | formed in 1866 by a small group of wealthy white |
| malnutrition and the ongoing war with Native | | | | landowners. This was shortly after the South lost the |
| Americans - otherwise called "Indians." The Dutch ship | | | | Civil War. The ideal of the Klan was to keep blacks in |
| needed food, and the settlers needed workers, so the | | | | a morbid state of fear and terror for their lives, or in |
| human cargo was traded in for supplies. This | | | | other words to keep them rigidly oppressed. |
| established the beginning of black people's slavery in | | | | They fostered klaverns, or societies of individual |
| the United States. | | | | "ghouls," in order to subject their opposition to threats |
| But at first, the white citizens of Jamestown, who had | | | | of dismemberment, burning, lynching, whipping and |
| themselves fled oppression in Britain, treated the first | | | | other often spontaneous acts of violence. This is |
| African "immigrants" in Virginia as just indentured | | | | probably the primary reason why Dr. Martin Luther |
| servants. As with the white European indentured | | | | King, Jr. led the Civil Rights Movement as a continuing |
| servants, they were freed after a set period and given | | | | act of nonviolence, to oppose the lunacies of the Klan, |
| the use of land and supplies by their former owners. | | | | which used "supernatural threats" against their |
| One black man, Anthony Johnson, eventually became | | | | opponents. Being vengeance oriented, they dressed up |
| a landowner and a slave owner himself. But the | | | | as the ghosts of the southern Civil War dead, replete |
| problem with indentured servitude was that former | | | | with white satin sheets on themselves and their |
| such workers usually did not become as prosperous | | | | horses. Their cause was white supremacy, the belief |
| as Johnson. Very few black people were slave | | | | that white people are the superior race. |
| owners, along with some Native Americans and | | | | Secrecy, darkness and hiding their faces were also |
| others, as slave owners were predominantly white | | | | key components to this often violent group, which still |
| people. | | | | exists today, although they now claim they too are |
| The best lands in the tidewater regions were in the | | | | "nonviolent." They talk about forming all-white |
| hands of wealthy plantation families by 1650, and their | | | | communes, and picking up roadside litter. It looks like |
| former servants began to take on the aspects of a | | | | they lost "the battle" a long time ago. But they still |
| permanent underclass. Bacon's Rebellion, an act of | | | | advocate white supremacy, the belief that only white |
| hostility by poor laborers and farmers, proved that | | | | people are the "right people," and yearn for the |
| these people could pose a dangerous threat to | | | | establishment of an all-white society in America. But |
| wealthy landowners. So Americans decided that by | | | | their man specialty is the persecution of Black |
| switching to straight-out "chattel slavery," new white | | | | Americans. |
| laborers and small farmers would be mostly limited to | | | | On their side, whites in the South originally had to worry |
| people who could afford the immigration process and | | | | about reprisals from their very large slave population, |
| support themselves later, such as the white Irish | | | | and there were some sporadic battles, involving loss of |
| laborers of the 19th century. | | | | life by both white and black people. Also, the KKK was |
| Meanwhile, large plantation owners and some others | | | | involved in the "Indian Wars," being one long attempt to |
| could use the cheap labor brought by legal chattel | | | | hold American territory solely on behalf of its white |
| slavery, although this would subject black people to | | | | population. Also, many southern apologists have cited |
| obscenities galore. And the South has never forgotten | | | | northern lack of attention to their presumed problems |
| the productivity of "slavery times," mounting movement | | | | with the South's growing population of Negros as the |
| after movement to make "the South rise again" and | | | | primary cause of their white southern hostilities. As has |
| reestablish the practice, either by keeping black people | | | | been said before by the white southern proponents of |
| illiterate, or otherwise persecuting them. | | | | slavery themselves, the white South was fervently |
| Although many white southerners frown on racism | | | | trying to preserve a "lost cause": the reinstitution of |
| nowadays, such people are still ever-present, and they | | | | black people slavery in an all-white people owned |
| occasionally press for "State's Rights" above and | | | | America. |
| beyond the federal statutes. As northerners, this | | | | Read the next article in this series, "What Helped |
| attitude perplexed the Boys of Birmingham, although | | | | Cause the Death of Slavery?" and the other articles in |
| they couldn't at first fathom the Civil Rights Movement, | | | | this long article series about why racism was and is so |
| either. It took a long time for them to grow an | | | | prevalent in the American South. |
| appreciation of how badly "colored people" were | | | | |