Racism - the Door is Now WIDE Open

"My own Southern mother recently called me a 'full-fledged Democrat,' but the flying spit and venom made it feel like 'Damn Yankee!'.. a phrase I have heard come from her lips on many an occasion! Earlier, she called me a 'died-in-the-wool Democrat' which has a specifically Confederate meaning.. Rebel wool uniforms were grey because they couldn't afford the blue die that the Union could, thus... a died wool uniform was worn by a Yankee."

Key point for Trump's Confederate fans: Democrat = Yankee

This is what Trump has brought to full fruition! This is also what Civil War did to us the first time... not surprisingly over the same damned White Supremacist issues!

My mother and her family are from an area of North Carolina which I have researched for many years.. the Lower Cape Fear - an area that retained more of a South Carolina flavor than the rest of the state.

As I grew up, I had witnessed many clues to the white-supremacy of this region and have often felt the hatred and resentment of the old war had never died.

Understand that the Old South had never truly relinquished any significant amount of sovereign supremacy to the Union - the United States of America after 1865. You may have heard, as I have many times, that "The South Will Rise Again!" This is the cultural stubbornness that I witnessed on those many trips from my home in Fayetteville (a large city) to the rural Lower Cape Fear (LCF) to see my grandmother - we all have seen it in the plethora of Confederate statues at courthouses across the United States! Understand that this is virtual worship of a defeated traitorous nation.. on our current government soil! It would be merely uncomfortable anywhere else, but outrageous on government property!

Why did we allow this? I'll never quite understand that... 

Illustrating Southern intransigence, there comes another personal tale. I once lived about two years with my cousin in the LCF, and my cousin had an aunt on the paternal side - descended from the aristocratic Hollingsworths in the Duplin-Pender County area. She was visiting with us one day when a guy I worked with in Wilmington (a large city in the LCF) had stopped by to tell me something. This fellow - I'll call him "John" - had always seemed like anyone else, regardless of his color (he was of African American descent). He, too, was from the Pender County area where we then lived.

As soon as John walked through the front door and saw the aristocratic iconic Southern woman - like Scarlett O'Hara - in all her glorified Southern majesty -minus the mint julep - in the center of the room, he immediately began to behave differently. They had obviously known each other.

Remember, I worked with John for months and he behaved like everyone else, so his mutation into... this something truly archaic was unbelievable!

I looked at him like he was a different person... had John lost his mind??! He was genuflecting strongly, his voice had altered to something resembling that of a child, or at least something quite subservient, and he was repeating the phrase "Yes, Miss Pearl, why it's good to see you Miss Pearl." The oddest part.. he sounded like a 19th century slave on the plantation!!! My cousin (from Fort Lauderdale, Florida) and I were both shocked that his demeanor would have changed so drastically.

After John left, the aristocratic Pender County socialite woman announced to us all - in a surprisingly tender way - that John had "always been such a nice young nigger boy!"

My citified mind went: Wham!!! John was 60 years old!!! The LCF was a virtual time capsule! But, it wasn't just in the LCF...

This was the paternal sense of white supremacy that has always pervaded the South - ever since Carolina was founded in 1671 by crude slaving Barbadians. Southerners of that ideology absolutely cannot see any other way to be! For them, whites are designated by God himself to rule over Blacks, Hispanics, Indians, and anyone else of color - until the end of time - which they would gladly welcome over "Negro Rule!"

 

My mother and her family have marinated in this hateful ideology all their lives. And, the election of Barack Obama to two terms as president of the United States simply confirmed to them how USA has defied God and his divine order! It is no surprise that these vengeful white supremacists elected Donald Trump - a man more like their biblical version of the "Anti-Christ" or "Deceiver," or "Man of Sin" in Revelations. Compare this "White Jesus" or Satan with the Socialist Jesus of Matthew 14, who fed the hungry, housed the homeless, and healed the sick... all non-grate, for no pay whatsoever!

After caging brown children for fear's sake, Trump just identified as "un-American" (read: "anti-Trump") four Congresswomen (two of whom are of Islamic origin) - as if they were enemies!! He was quite un-presidential and un-American when he pointed these women out to his violent followers. He, the South's "Anti-Christ" has just - after a whole 2.5 years of semantic shell-game - finally revealed the racist violent truth of his presidency - and their Confederacy!

Trump and his followers also see that their minority of racist voters will always stay in the minority and that American democracy - or rule by majority - will always disfavor them, so they need democracy to end! To equally-violent-minded "Lost Cause" adherents of the Old South, it was high time for another Civil War or perhaps the End of the World! So, bring on the Anti-Christ Donald Trump, no matter he chooses to collude with!

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A reflection on my grandfather's life experience with racism at the turn of the 20th century is quite instructive: https://bcbrooks.blogspot.com/2019/05/my-grandpa-progressive-liberal-minister.html
#Racism #WhiteSupremacy

America: Savage Shackles of Trump's South!

Donald Trump's support comes primarily from the traditional and conservative ex-slaving South and rural agricultural states founded since the Civil War. Why is this support primarily Evangelical Christian? Indeed, how can a pro-slavery culture also call themselves "Christian?" These questions are not simple and they go far back in the history of our democracy itself... assuming that America can claim to be wholly democratic in the first place! We may still suffer from a cultural "mental illness!"

English adventurers who wanted to gain profitable advantage from the New World came to the West Indies, as Spain had before them. They had lived a century in the shadow of the more powerful Spain and planned to take what they could from their rival, especially after Elizabeth I's defeat of the mighty Spanish Armada in 1588. John Hawkins, Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Francis Drake and others were the famed pirates of Queen Elizabeth! Pirating became their blood, their raison d'etre. They stole gold, silver, land, and slaves from their long-time rivals. These pirates began a tradition of savagery and brutality, officially supported by their monarch in England. English America began "beyond the lines of amity" as a wild place where even the most civilized of men became unwelcome to their friends and relatives back home in European. Furthermore, these pirates said that every act they committed was endorsed by God, but they truly used "God" as rhetoric and established their dominion in the New World based on this "Evilly-Christian" ideology:

Despite defying his Queen, subjugating peoples around the world, bullying, threatening, and then lavishing gifts upon his victims, Sir Francis Drake epitomized the English hero of the age as a “Sea Hawk.”  Of Drake, historian Wade Dudley remarked that he used God as a fear-invoking device, personally conducted religious services on his ship, despite the presence of clergy on board.  After the execution of one of Drake’s own crew in the Straits of Magellan, Dudley remarked “Though Drake certainly used God’s words to bend his crew to his will, he may well have been salving his own troubled soul.”

Later, these merchant-pirates (with troubled souls) came to mainland America from Barbados, a colony that found it more expedient and profitable to work slaves to death and replace them, rather than preserve their lives - still, God supported this crime against humanity. They founded a colony in 1671 called Carolina - still with this same cruel conservative ideology. That colony became the womb of the South, spreading slavery and their brutal brand of Christianity across the lower half of North America. It would later follow the path of rural agricultural states formed after the Civil War, roughly the same region as shown in this map of Trump's support at the time of his inauguration:

Founding Carolina was not the gilded venture found in most early history textbooks, but an oft-ignored and religiously-justified immoral and bloody affair. To begin this new approach, to understand Barbadian ideology as it contributed to the Lower Cape Fear, necessitates a study of the commencement of America in the Caribbean. The sugar islands and the capital that they created contributed significantly to Carolina and the Lower Cape Fear’s development.  Tied in a great portion to West Indian sugar production, laissez-faire capitalism also developed “with the convergence of agricultural improvements, global explorations, and scientific advances.”

"Laissez-faire" or "to let be" these brutal institutionalized practices could never be truly justified by any benevolent God, but they still became recognizably American. These brutal merchant-kings, accurately styled "pirates" by the rest of the world, intended to create their own mini-monarchies away from England - independent of, and far from the control of the English civility, after 1713, led by a German foreigner who didn't even speak English. This racist American culture produced buccaneers like Sir Henry Morgan, a brutal governor who sacked Panama and abused the Spanish citizenry - also, pirates like Blackbeard, Henry Jennings, Charles Vane, and the brutal Edward Low.

These men were not only racist, but also greedy profiteers, desiring to be independent kings in the New World, with huge tracts of land (a rare commodity in England) worked by massive numbers of slaves that they had grown so dependent upon for their sugar plantations in Barbados. They did not shy away from theft as a means of supplying their needs. Independent authoritarian land-owners, with visions of great avarice, they would establish their immense profitable fiefdoms all across the South.The society that they created was strongly feudal in ideology - with haves and have-nots, each class decided by God primarily upon the color of their skin. African slaves, treated no better than animals, were the serfs that would work the plantations of the new American nobility, authoritarian and unquestioned - literally dictators of the New World.

In 1776, at the time the American colonies decided to make their break from Britain, these new Nobles of the South saw their opportunity to have their own domains to themselves once and for all. They would reaffirm their new American feudal society, without a king to tax them and free of British abolitionists - those who annoyingly told them that slavery was immoral. When the colonies proposed a unanimous "Declaration" against a king “whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” Thomas Jefferson realized that a "free nation" could not also enjoy slavery. Jefferson included an anti-slavery clause in that document to avoid hypocrisy and to form a true democracy that any benevolent "creator" would endorse. This did not sit well with Southern colonies. South Carolina and North Carolina held the rest of the colonies hostage... holding their vote until Thomas Jefferson's anti-slavery clause was removed from the "unanimous" Declaration. True "democracy" would have to wait. Even afterward, the South strangled the nascent "democracy" again in 1789, demonstrating, like Sir Francis Drake on the deck of his ship, that their "Godly" support was merely a political device. He exposed the true desire of these early brutal capitalists - profit:

Upon the Constitutional debate following the American Revolution, John Routledge of South Carolina argued that “Religion and morality have nothing to do with this… interest [profit] alone is the governing principle with Nations.” Routledge, with an eye toward protecting their lucrative institution of slavery, represented the Deep South as Woodard described.  Morality, or lack thereof, most certainly influenced his argument.  He used the South’s great plantation wealth, derived from slave labor, as leverage at the Constitutional Convention, leverage to force its legitimization.  “The true question,” he said, “is whether the Southn. States shall or shall not be parties to the Union.”   Routledge held the Union hostage to officially accept slavery and Deep South whims.

In only 70 years, the South eventually fought a Civil War against their old ideological enemy- the slavery-damaged democracy of the United States - over protecting slavery, firing the first shot in that bloody war that killed 600,000 Americans.  

The political device invoked by Drake reappeared once again: their more monarchical Constitution invoked "the favor and guidance of Almighty God," contrary to the United States' "separation of church and state" and the doctrine of "religious freedom." The Confederacy was to be a "Godly" nation that also protected their "peculiar" brutal and profitable institution of slavery by making it the law of the land. The conservative capitalists would even protect their profits from non-slave states: "Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy."

Wikipedia's article on the CSA Constitution explains "Whereas the original U.S. Constitution did not use the word 'slavery' or the term 'Negro Slaves,' but used instead 'Person[s] held to Service or Labor' which included whites in indentured servitude, the Confederate Constitution addresses the legality of slavery directly and by name." The Confederacy also sided with our old enemies England and France (much like Trump does with Russia today) against us. 

Thomas Jefferson's old thoughts come back, reflecting the old split-personality of a damaged democracy... how can any democracy, a desired humane and "free" society, be filled with slavers who own an entire population of people who are certainly not free? How can these slavers claim to be "Christian"?

This is cultural and not easily changed. American award winning journalist and writer Colin Woodard, best known for American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2011) writes that artificial boundaries “mask the cultural lines along which attitudes toward violence fall.”  Social violence today, he thinks, has distinct ideological origins. Woodard’s view politically divides our nation into several parts, examples of which are “Yankeedom,” “Tidewater,” and “Deep South.” He ignores traditional state boundaries in an effort to analyze ideological variation in North America to understand its predilection for conflict. He affirms that the Deep South received their ideology almost directly from Barbados, a West-Indian style slave society, “where democracy was the privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of the many.” By great contrast, Yankeedom in the north put “great emphasis on perfecting earthly civilization through social engineering, denial of self for the common good, and assimilation of outsiders.” By far, the dominant ideological divisions were "Deep South" and "Yankeedom." These ideologies would never work well together - most notably, because the South was feudal and not democratic! Their original plantation/serfdom brutality was passed down through the generations, threatening our democracy at every turn.

Many profited from slavery, but only the South politically maneuvered to maintain this profit, insincerely citing God as an investor and promoter. At no time than the present is this ideological division more strenuous than in the political disunion we now experience.

Plainly put, a conservative culture which made profits on the whipped backs and deaths of other human beings could not truly be expected to rise to the level of humanitarian - especially not when they used the Bible to justify these acts. Southern Evangelist support for Donald Trump demonstrates the split-personality problem still infecting America today.

Trump's adopted ideology is the most conservative and the most inhumane that America has faced since 1861! 

Yes, this ideology is conservative. It is also the living embodiment of Barbadian or West-Indian Slave Society... it still exists - even if the original slavery has been forbidden, replaced by a searing desire to profit on the backs of the less fortunate - even still. The minds of these ex-slavers would take much more time to change - especially after their "property" had been forcefully taken from them - and especially if they, even insincerely, saw their culture as just - decreed as right and proper, even holy, by God himself! The uneducated of their society see nothing of the nuance between God and profit, only support the wealthy protectors of their time-honored feudal ideology.

In traditional Southern Evangelism, these pirate-descendants reinforce a violent, destructive, and vindictive God in great contrast to the “emphasis on perfecting earthly civilization," of Yankeedom or the North, "through social engineering [education], denial of self for the common good, and assimilation of outsiders, [or immigrants].” Deep South culture denies the fact that increased education provides better citizens -  ignorance makes for more obedient slaves or later, low-paid workers. Furthermore, Deep South culture fears outsiders. Southerners traditionally do not welcome other cultures to increase their variety - rather, they prefer to preserve their own possessions and purity of blood - an old desire descending from the days of their animosity toward Spain. In every respect, this ideology is definitely not democratic! But, the South still belongs to an American democracy? America attempts to progress and move forward, but is continuously held back by conservatives. 

Time have changed today, but little has changed to subdue the South's ideology or predilection for anti-democracy. When Pres. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in June 1964, he told his aide Bill Moyers that Northern Democrats just "gave the South to the Republicans." And, he was right, dwindling Republican numbers encouraged Republican president Richard Nixon in 1968, to offer extremely conservative Southern Democrats, who were once the original slave owners of the South, to join the GOP, or the Republican Party.

This party has ignored all precedent in American History to support an authoritarian Donald Trump and many of his most fervent supporters come from traditional Southern states: Texas, Louisiana, and particularly Alabama, with alleged sexual abuser Roy Moore and his Attorney-General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

Donald Trump drew his support from these Barbadian descendants and their extreme brutal conservative ideology. Look again, consider geographically the maps of slavery in the United States before the Civil War and those of his supporters, expanding to include rural states formed since 1860 - states with similar ideology. Combine maps of the slave states in the Civil War to Trump's support in January 2017:

The conclusion is clear. Trump's support comes from brutal, inhumane, undemocratic ,and crude, but "Godly," West Indian Pirate-Slaver ideology. The recent Trump policy (authored by Alabamian Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III) of separating children from their families at our Southern border with Mexico (a nation traditionally founded by the old English enemy of Spain) only illustrates the persistent cultural trends of racism and fear of outsiders brought to our shores by pirates! Trump and his supporters' reaction to our first African-American president is all too obvious. Many still believe that their brutal God endorsed this, too.

Recent Facebook meme.. about some Alabama Christian conservative ideology.

Note that this was written by a Southerner who understands his savage culture and wants it to be better! This has infected our democracy for far too long! Let's make new strides toward a true democracy! #BlueWave2018

Why do Poor White Voters Vote Against Themselves?

1898 caption from the Raleigh News & Observer - annotated by the author

Why do poor, rural, usually uneducated Southern white voters always vote against their own interests? Why did they choose a deplorable human being and alleged traitor like Trump to be their champion? This had to be an emotional reaction and it had to be because they hate Democrats. That is the ONLY reason. Otherwise, they'd vote against repealing healthcare that they desperately need. They'd vote against corporate control of our entire economy that's oppressing them. They'd vote against inequality. They'd be pro-labor (usually them). They'd be for raising the minimum wage, which is usually all they get. If they did not fervently hate Democrats as much as they do, they would vote for the things that Democrats usually represent and have won for them since FDR in the 1930s - things that Republicans now despise with a passion.

Would you be surprised to find that the most conservative party ever in America were Southern Democrats? But, they no longer exist. When did that change? What did the Democratic Party do that made these Southern conservatives want to cast their party away forever? What eats at these poor white voters? 

Two things: the first happened in July 1964 when a Democratic president from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act. Even LBJ knew that this act would change forever the political make-up of America. He told Bill Moyers immediately afterward, "We just gave the South to the Republicans," because he knew that the then Southern Democrats would not abide this betrayal of white-supremacy. Just ask your Southern neighbors how they feel about Johnson. Do they even know why they hate him?

Southern Democrats immediately switched to Republican after 1964 (see maps below). Matched with this first reason, LBJ also understood the mindset of the defeated Southern voter (defeated because of the old Civil War) - he said that "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." 

The solution for the seemingly unsolvable race problem since 1896 was segregation (an avoidance of the problem) and resulted from a fear of "Negro Rule" (see the cartoon from 1898)  - the separation of white and black in ALL areas - even drinking fountains, bathrooms (what is it with these people and bathrooms!?), and sidewalks! But the Civil Rights Act changed everything. Everyone now had to learn to exist together. This was extremely difficult and resulted in the destruction of a whole political party - the conservatively-rabid Southern Democrat. 

The second reason destroyed the allusion of LBJ's last quote: it was the untenable and unconscionable election of the Democrat Barack Obama as president - the dreaded NEGRO RULE, the straw that broke the camel's back - the greatest fear of the Southerner was realized. Even worse - from an abomination of white blood perverted with African. As to this subtle nuance, Toni Morrison wrote:

"William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In “Absalom, Absalom,” incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its “whiteness” (once again), the family chooses murder." 

All white men were forced to look UP to a black president that they could NOT ignore - they couldn't pick Obama's pockets! Making matters worse, this abomination was eloquent and intelligent - a slap in the face to their delusions, deified by their Confederate ancestors who spilled their blood to prevent the Negro from rising! 

Yes... both are racist reasons. It is, has been, and for many decades still to come - racism, pure and simple - a deeply-rooted cultural pattern of "white privilege" now in danger of being eradicated - both demographically and culturally. As Toni Morrison explains:

And it is for these reasons — the imminent “collapse of white privilege,” as Morrison calls it — “that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.”

This, alone, trumped patriotism (to the United States at any rate) and explains why former Southern Democrats and their poor rural brethren across the states vote against their own best interests. They would take arms if they have to, as they did in 1861, when the Confederacy sided with the British to destroy the United States. They would rather die than see Democrats ever rule again - especially after Barack Obama! Russia would make an excellent partner in that endeavor... as the British did for the Confederacy...

Trump's  voters will never admit to us or anyone that THIS is the reason why most of them voted for him. But, it is. 

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Interestingly enough, in my book, Quest for Blackbeard, I explain the meaning of Charles Johnson's quote about a faraway America and how radical it had become, treating "wickedness" as "Gallantry," resembling Toni Morrison's quote above and the reaction of white male dominance of which she spoke. Johnson's book, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, was about America's infestations with pirates, a rather conservative phenomenon, as I explain. You can see where these pirates went after the 18th century, can't you?

Reviews:

 "... a masterpiece about the history of the South... While researching the origins of Blackbeard, Brooks has delved deep into the politics, family connections, worldly influences, sources of slavery, the connection between the Caribbean Sea and Virginia and North Carolina, and much more ... I am learning much about my own ancestry and origins and how the South came to be."  ~ V. Sumner

"This is an excellent history of piracy in general, as well as of Blackbeard the Pirate. The best part of it is that the author does not make copious use of Charles Johnson's questionable book, A General History. He relies instead on primary sources and he cites each one meticulously. The general theme of the book follows the world in which piracy began, but specifically, Edward Thache in that world. The author has discovered quite a bit about Blackbeard and that information dispels many myths that have survived the centuries. There is also a definite comparison of the politics in the West Indies with that of its ideological descendant, the United States. The book ends quickly, however, with the death of Blackbeard - but, it also ended the period of piracy that the author alludes to as having been the era of the gentlemen pirates from Jamaica and Bermuda. Thache was one of these pirates from Jamaica and his family history is explored in depth. Other pirates are also covered in detail. This book is remarkable in its different approach and refreshing writing style. Still, it's history and can be complicated at times. Still, I very much enjoyed reading it!" ~ J. Grandl

A Proud North Carolina Tradition!

New York Herald; Date: 01-11-1870; Volume: XXXV; Issue: 11; Page: 5

This is one of the worst headlines you could have read in 1870.  It's details explained quite horrifically, it was designed to provoke an emotional response.  33-year-old Martin VanBuren Blalock operated a grocery in Hillsborough.  He was one of many brothers and sisters born to Hartwell G. and Patsy Herndon Blalock of Orange County.  They lived on the "south side of the North Carolina railroad."  Martin entered the Confederate Army as a corporal in the 6th regiment from Hillsborough.  Before his discharge, he was bucked down to private and seldom received another mention.

Martin was found brutally murdered in his grocery in December 1869, a "ghastly and inhuman spectacle" claimed the article.  There was a rope around his neck, which had been slashed and a pillowcase shoved in his mouth.  It all appeared rather uncoordinated, perhaps multiple attempts to kill him... or added "evidence" to increase the "ghastliness" of the crime and confuse the identity of the actual murderer.  Three black men were arrested.  Assuredly, there was evidence, money from Blalock's business and two confessions of the three black men.  The article read, "An inquest was held, before which a large number of witnesses were summoned, though unable to fasten guilt upon anybody suspicion fell at once upon a negro named Bob Gunn, and two others, called respectively Young and Lutterloh."

There were many similar incidents and all of the "legal" attributes remained uncertain, the actual provenance of the overwhelming evidence unknown because of the excitement of the community. The article continues, "Their guilt is now established, though arrested only on suspicion created by a strong chain of circumstances." Obviously, these men were tried and executed for the crime. 

By chance, perhaps, though not likely, another article two months later tells of an ominous presence in Orange County and elsewhere, but centered upon Orange and Alamance Counties.  A group of organized vigilantes that preyed on the "United States and the Negroes" and their allies.  These vigilantes killed even men of distinction, prominent liberal politicians of the state.  They were organized, intelligent, and composed of ex-Confederates. They were known as the "White Brotherhood" or "Ku Klux Klan."

Oft-used tactics of white supremacists since the Civil War tended to reduce the "traitorous Negro" population.  These included framing blacks for crimes that they didn't commit and publicly hanging them. This may or not have happened with Martin Blalock, but his death late in 1869 coincides with the rise of the North Carolina KKK activity and the "open and shut" case against the three black men was probably too good to be true.

New York Herald; Date: 03-14-1870; Volume: XXXV; Issue: 73; Page: 10

Please note the opposition to the "United States government" or "anti-government" part of the article, a common conservative talking point today, just as it was yesterday... with these southern conservatives.

They were organized by one ex-Confederate, wounded in the face and who could speak but little and could not exercise his former career at the bar.  His latter days as the Secretary of State for North Carolina were effected from a wheelchair.  His name was William Laurence Saunders.

From the Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History:

"In 1922, the [University of North Carolina] named its new history department building for William L. Saunders to recognize his work as a compiler of historical documents. Saunders graduated from UNC in 1854 and then practiced law in Salisbury, North Carolina. During the Civil War, he served as a colonel and was wounded in two battles. In 1869-1870, he became known as the chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina and Chapel Hill. When [conservative Southern] Democrats regained power in North Carolina, Saunders became Secretary of State and arranged for the publication of North Carolina’s colonial records in a series on which historians still rely. He served as a university trustee from 1874 until 1891."

It's surprising, yes,  that this man would continue to be revered as much as he was after his known association with a group responsible for untold murders.  

"Two Members of the Ku-Klux Klan in Their Disguises"

Times-Picayune; Date: 07-07-1870; Page: 6

         Kirk-Holden War ---->

Acts of violence were blamed on blacks, but everyone knew that they were actually the work of the Ku Klux Klan... including the federal government.

Capt. Samuel A'Court Ashe, a fellow Confederate officer and North Carolina lawyer-turned-historian, wrote the following about William L. Saunders:

• During the exciting period of Reconstruction from 1867 to 1870, Colonel Saunders was deeply interested in public affairs.  In 1870, he contributed to the Wilmington Journal, of which Major Engelhard, his brother-in-law was editor, an article on the Kirk-Holden War that attracted wide attention.  It was regarded as the strongest and most perfect article published in the State, and although unsigned, it established for him an enviable reputation.
• The Conservatives were successful at the election held in August, 1870, and obtained control of both houses of the Assembly. 

Understand that these are direct quotes of Ashe's... The KKK and their supporters were "conservatives" as opposed to liberals who tried to force blacks into North Carolina's all-white government.  Many in North Carolina have never forgotten this...

1870 was the first and only time that conservatives had control of both houses until 2012.  That's right... they are in total control of the state once again.  Their anti-government agenda was wide open and North Carolina elections for nearly 100 years involved two candidates from the same party... both conservative Southern Democrat, but one only somewhat more progressive... still, both firmly under conservative white control... until just before the election of 2012, that is.  Any notion of the then liberal Republican party of Lincoln (not today's version, surely) was put aside. To North Carolina and most of the unrepentant South, state governments were dominant over federal.

The federal government tried to fight back.  In 1870 and 1871, the federal government instituted the Force Acts  and used them to prosecute Klan crimes.  They were criminal codes which protected blacks’ right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection under the laws. The laws also allowed the federal government to intervene when states did not act. Prosecution of Klan crimes and enforcement of the Force Acts suppressed Klan activity. Afterwards, however, newly organized and openly active paramilitary organizations, such as the White League and the Red Shirts (see Wilmington Race Riot of 1898), started a fresh round of violence aimed at suppressing blacks' voting and running the early liberal version of Lincoln Republicans out of office. These contributed to segregationist white Democrats regaining political power in all the Southern states by 1877 when a backroom deal released the unremorseful South from federal Reconstruction policies.

It can be argued that the South never paid their dues for the insurrection against the government of the United States, an insurrection that cost over 600,000 human lives.  Afterwards, KKK activity was designed as retribution against blacks and their supporters for their betrayal of white southerners' "generosity."  The Civil War began simply to preserve slavery, despite what others may argue about "states' rights."  The only state right that interested Ashe and others like him was the right to keep slaves.  After that, it was pure vengeance against the federal government.

"Holden's Impeachment. Trial of the Governor of North Carolina-He is Found Guilty and Removed," Houston Daily Union; Date: 03-31-1871; Volume: III; Issue: 175; Page: [2]

William Holden, the governor who tried to end the violence was impeached by the KKK-supported North Carolina government and the acts continued.

On the 23rd of September 1872, the soon-to-be Secretary of State for North Carolina, William Laurence Saunders was summoned to appear before a Congressional Joint Select Committee of both houses inquiring of his involvement in these white-supremacist organizations. This became the first use of the 5th amendment to avoid incrimination of oneself - he refuse to testify to Congress!

A partial transcription of this hearing follows:

In pursuance of said order, the said sub-committee met on the 23rd day of September, 1871 and one W. L. Saunders of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who had been duly subpoenaed as a witness to appear before the Joint Select Committee of the two houses of Congress, then appeared, and submitted to be examined as a witness, and was duly sworn by the chairman of the Joint Select Committee. In the examination of said witness, the following questions by the chairman, and answers by the witness, were elicited:

Question: The purpose of this committee is to inquire in relation to the execution of the laws, and the security of life, person, and property in the late insurrectionary states.  As bearing upon that question, we have been examining in regard to the existence of secret organizations in the State of North Carolina, particularly those which are alleged to have committed acts of violence.  Have you been at any time, or are you now, a member of any secret political organization of that character in the State of North Carolina?

• Answer: Well, sir, I decline to say whether or not I have been a member of any of the so-called Ku-Klux organizations, on the ground that I am not obliged to testify in a case wherein I may incriminate myself...

Question: Do you decline to answer the question of the ground that you cannot do so without [in]criminating yourself?  

• Answer:  I decline to answer the question on the ground that if I testify in this case, it will furnish evidence which will make me amenable to the Laws of North Carolina, as declared by the judges of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Question:  Have you been at any time, or are you now, a member of an organization known as the White Brotherhood?

• Answer: Well, sir, I conceive that that question comes in the same category.  

Question:  Do you decline to answer that question?

• Answer:  I decline to answer that question...

Question: Have you been at any time, or are you now, a member of an organization known as the Constitutional Union Guards?

• Answer: To that I give the same answer.

Question: Have you been at any time, or are you now, a member of an organization known as the Invisible Empire?

• Answer: I make the same answer as before.

Question: Have you been at any time, or are you now, a member of any of the organizations which are popularly known as the Ku-Klux organizations?

• Answer: I make the same answer to all of these questions.

...

Question: Have you had any communication with persons who have stated to you their knowledge of such murders or such whippings in the County of Orange, in the State of North Carolina, or in any other part of the State of North Carolina?

• Answer:  I have only one such conversation.

Question:  With whom?

• Answer:  That I decline to answer.  

Question:  Where did he live...?

• Answer: I decline...

Question: What position... did he occupy... ?

• Answer: I decline...

Question: Was he a member of the legislature... ?

• Answer: I decline... 

Question: Was he a member of the bar?

• Answer: I decline...

Question:  Was he a leading man?

• Answer: I decline... 

Question: Do you decline to give any information may lead to the identity of that person?

• Answer: Yes, sir; That is the sum and substance of it.

Question: What was the offense... ?  Was it murder?

• Answer: I decline...

Question: Was it whipping?

• Answer: I decline... 

...

Question: Do you know Henry Ivy?

• Answer: No, sir...

Question: Do you know Abraham or Abe Hedgepeth?

• Answer: Yes, sir.  I know him.

Question: Do you know whether he is or is not, or has he at any time told you whether he is or is not, a member of any Ku-Klux organization?

• Answer: I decline to answer.

This line of questioning continued, asking Saunders to identify Ivy, Hedgepeth, James Copeland, William Andrews, Jesse Morrow, the wheelwright Nat. Williams, Fletcher Freeland of Durham at a station of the North Carolina railroad, Samuel Johnson, William Minor, John Durham, F. N. Strudwick, John McCauley, A. P. Cates, J. Cooley, J. Carmichael, Dr. E. M. Holt, and a host of others... he refused every question.  He boldly refused, defying the federal government... eliciting great pride in his fellow North Carolinians... a pride that has lingered through the decades...

Edwin Michael Holt of Orange County mentioned above is of particular interest.  He was born 1807, married three times, lived variously in Orange and Alamance Counties and died in 1884.  The abstract for the Alamance Cotton Mill Records, 1839-1926 in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC states:

• The Alamance Cotton Mill was established by Edwin Michael Holt and his brother-in-law, William A. Carrigan, in 1837, signalling the start of industrial development in Alamance County, N.C. The Alamance factory was located on Great Alamance Creek, site of Holt's father's grist mill. The plant was under Holt management for 89 years, during which time the Holt family controlled most of the county's cotton manufacture.

Edwin's son by his first marriage, Lawrence Shackleford Holt married in Alamance County and had a son named Erwin Allen Holt, who also has a collection available at the same archive.  This son carried on the proud North Carolina tradition of his grandfather.  

Erwin Allen Holt, textile executive from Burlington, was a member of an organization named the North Carolina Defender of States' Rights, a well-known white-supremacist and anti-government group.  His papers involve his "concerns about racial segregation, Jewish control of the federal government, strict interpretation of the Constitution, the Status of Forces Agreement, communism in the U.S., and Hawaiian statehood," among others. Included is correspondence about preventing racial integration, and broadsides, leaflets, and circulars issued by various right-wing organizations of which Holt was a member."  Much of the NC Defenders material consists of copies of letters from Sterling Rawlinson Booth, Jr., of Raleigh, and Earle Le Baron, faculty member of East Carolina College, to public officials, Holt, and the membership. Common topics are "liberals" at ECC and UNC, segregation, and Communism, common topics often heard today.

From letter of March 25, 1959 in Collection Number: 03551  - Erwin Allen Holt Papers, 1953-1961

 Defenders of States Rights, 1959 (Folder 20)

This organization was formed in reaction to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board decision that desegregated all aspects of society.  But, nothing could have been more defining an influence as the Civil Rights decision in 1964, which caused a huge migration of North Carolina conservatives over to the growing conservative Republican party that year.  The election maps show this metamorphosis:  

 1954 pushed some southern conservatives to go "undecided," but they all voted Republican in 1964.  Still, North Carolina was something special.  As the maps show, it mostly went Democratic in 1960, whether out of tradition or otherwise, is difficult to determine.  Still, of the eleven battleground states during the 2012 election, North Carolina is the only one that remained in support of the Republican candidate: Mitt Romney.  

Illustrating similar behavior is their response to the secession crisis in 1860, they resisted it at first, and then poured more men into it than any other state once the Civil War was on!  North Carolinians apparently like to pause and think first, which may be the quality that eventually saves us.  Still, once the decision is finally made, watch out!  Certainly, this last election provided Rob Christensen, reporter for the Raleigh News & Observer and author of A Paradox of Tarheel Politics more fuel for his writing!  As the tagline for his book reads "How can a state be represented by Jesse Helms and John Edwards at the same time?"  Indeed!
 
One thing about North Carolina that will not change until the demographics force it... is this white-supremacism.  Many residents have fervently supported this since colonial days until the present day.  And recently, I've seen an increase in the open expression of it... namely in the use of that word that we can't even bring ourselves to say completely in print... "N------"!  It used to be avoided in public, but not so much lately.  And, I, a white guy, was asked by a conservative "Why don't I move to Chapel Hill with the rest of my kind," after he discovered that I was progressive.  lol  Bullying is back in force, but not as much as it was in 1870.  This, too will subside... the bluster will pass more quickly than when William L. Saunders created the White Brotherhood.  Progress will happen despite this.  The old racist guard is dying off.  Still, the General Assembly since 2012 has been trying very hard, as one writer put it in North Carolina Just Gave Millionaires a Tax Cut, Raised Taxes on the Poorest 900,000 Working Families, "The combined effects of those tax changes give poor North Carolinians some incentive to move out of the state, a population shift Gov. Pat McCrory (R) hopes to encourage."  Again, North Carolina conservatives are attempting to run off the "undesirables."  It's not so bad, though... today's open internet discussions, instant exposure to criticism, make it more difficult to get away with murder or simply "plead the 5th!"  :)

---
 
Still, back in 1871, when more of the state supported him and criticism was largely confined to official channels, William L. Saunders was told that the 5th Amendment did not apply in Congressional hearings and he stubbornly still refused to answer, safe in his clique. 

Then, Saunders was arrested for contempt and asked another round of questions intimating that he was "held in high repute" as the leader of the White Brotherhood.  The federal committee knew this man's involvement... they simply wanted him to openly admit it.  Saunders declined to answer any of these questions, making it quite clear that he was the leader and was involved, however directly or indirectly in the murders of prominent politicians in the state.  He "declined to answer" the government's attempts to seek justice for the murdered men.  

 

New York Herald; Date: 09-24-1871; Page: 7

From H. G. Jones, 1994:

• Whether or not he was, as J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton asserted, the head of the Invisible Empire in North Carolina, his complicity was indicated by his being summoned in 1871 before the congressional Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of the Late Insurrectionary State. Face-to-face with his antagonists, he repeatedly declined to answer questions concerning his relationship with the organizations. In the same year a letter from "the brotheren" warned that "bill sanders will swing."

At the end of his life, the inscription on his tombstone expressed the general feelings of the people of North Carolina about his anti-government views:  "Distinguished for wisdom, purity and courage -  For 20 years he exerted more Power in North Carolina than any other man - 'I decline to answer'."  Yep!  Between Saunders, Holt, Helms, and today's North Carolina General Assembly, the old Confederacy is still around... just goes by a different name these days.  In essence, conservatives never left nor relinquished control of their state since before the United States began!  As I said, a source of great pride for them. I still can't help but wonder if Martin Blalock refused to join the brotherhood... if that was the true nature of his "crime." 

William Lawrence Saunders SOLDIER-EDITOR-HISTORIAN-STATESMAN PATRIOT Col. 46 Regiment N. C. Troops Distinguished for wisdom, purity and courage For 20 years he exerted more Power in North Carolina than any other man "I decline to answer"

See also:  Colin Woodard's "Up in Arms" about Deep South conservative anti-government ideology and it's inherent violence.


See also:  Historical Execution of Gov. George Burrington of North Carolina for how North Carolinians in the Lower Cape Fear abused North Carolina's history by writing the true founder of Wilmington out of it. 


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"Quest for Blackbeard" has finally been approved for Global Distribution which means that it is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Alibris, and other online booksellers very soon.

It is already previewable on Google Books.

Lulu site at: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/bcbrooks

North Carolina: The Subtle Politics of Slavery Before and After the Civil War

Charlotte Story Perkinson

Charlotte Louise Story Perkinson (picture at left from biography provided by granddaughter Helen Poole Fontsere'), a celebrated prohibitionist and political writer, born 1884 in New Hampshire married her husband, native of Wise, North Carolina, Richard Terrell Perkinson, and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1907.  There she began writing newspaper articles and became involved in state politics.  By 1933, she was the state editor for the new and short-lived Durham, North Carolina's State's Progress newspaper and served on various committees concerning women's rights.  She was also the campaign manager for Furnifold M. Simmons in his failed 1930 run to keep his Congressional seat against the challenger, Josiah W. Bailey. 

Upon her arrival in Raleigh, Perkinson encountered the peculiar lifestyle of the post-Civil War South.  Freed slaves were still alive and able to tell their story about slavery before and after the war, about re-invented slavery under "Jim Crow," and its eerie dichotomy of racial paternalism mixed with, at times, the violent underpinnings of resistance to change.  

This resistance has become a North Carolina tradition, never more obvious than in today's controversial battle over education, voting laws, teacher's rights and so many other issues that should not really be issues.  North Carolina has always been the quintessential "stick in the mud," refusing to change, especially when it comes to race.  Furthermore, North Carolinian conservatives react strongly and defiantly when pressed into a corner.  Whether as Southern Democrats or, now, as Republicans, conservatism in North Carolina has always been about maintaining the "peculiar institution," or at least keeping it's memory... its "heritage" alive.  

My grandfather, an elderly Baptist minister from Union County, even in 1933, must have read State's Progress, not one of the most popular newspapers in North Carolina, I'm sure... it ran for just over one year.  Grandpa was a well-read gentleman.  He also read the liberal Charlotte Observer.  He collected newspaper clippings and various historical and fascinating tidbits in a scrapbook that I still have in my possession.  In it, he placed this article "'Black Mammy' Tells Graphic Story of Slavery," from the 19 March 1933 issue of the Charlotte Observer.  The title does not do it justice... it's not simply about the old slavery days, but also about the story of a woman who saw horrors all about her, happening to others in her position, and a woman still capable of pride about her life as a slave and ex-slave.  It's a bittersweet and eerie story about herrenvolk mentality, psychology, and denial.  It instantly caught my attention.  

Article written by Charlotte Story Perkinson titled "Black Mammy' Tells Graphic Story of Slavery," Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), 19 March 1933

Rev. Edgar Marcellus Brooks, as a man of truly progressive thought, was much intrigued by this article.  As a  historian (a love that he passed to his grandson) and as a member of a former slave-owning family... and as man who experienced the Civil War, even though he was a child (born February 5, 1861), this article carried great meaning for him... and for me.  I never knew him, but I find great pride in being his grandson and in being able to share his experiences in articles like this one.  

Ironically, my grandfather passively held more in common with Josiah W. Bailey than his opponent, Furnifold M. Simmons, even though Bailey was the more conservative candidate in 1930.   He probably voted for Simmons, however.  Fifty-seven years of age in 1930, Bailey graduated from Wake Forest College in 1893 and immediately afterward had become editor of the Biblical Recorder, the weekly newspaper of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, a paper that my grandfather wrote for on occasion.

Charlotte S. Perkinson served as Simmons' campaign manager.  She supported the man responsible for the disenfranchisement of North Carolina's black citizens during the 1898 radical conservative takeover (then, calling themselves "Democrats") of the state that, with few exceptions, still maintains power today (now, calling themselves "Republicans").  That Perkinson was a liberal and wrote this article is a strange contradiction and tells us about the overall conservative nature of the state, not unlike today's far-right trends.  

Then again, many things about North Carolina have been a strange contradiction.  Race relations are foremost on the list.  The Biblical Recorder's current editor, Tony W. Cartledge stated that "Bailey was sometimes hard to figure out. In North Carolina, he was considered to be a progressive Democrat, but in Washington, he opposed Roosevelt's New Deal and helped compose what became known as the 'Conservative Manifesto.'" "Progressives" in the South of this time, especially in North Carolina, were the conservatives of the nation, due almost exclusively to issues of race and bitterness over the old conflict in the 1860s.   

When she came to North Carolina, Charlotte Perkinson had bumped into this "Solid South," a term that described the former member states of the Confederacy and their political ideology since the Civil war.  This state might have been thought the champion of that "Solid South," what with the number of troops that it supplied to the Confederacy in that age-old conflict that is politically still raging today.  Southerners of this breed draw together to resist almost any change, especially involving race relations.  They resisted Northern legislators long after losing that war.  Perkinson had arrived after Simmon's anti-African-American activities of 1898 and, perhaps did not join with him in those sentiments.  Also, she was staunchly prohibitionist and the more conservative Bailey supported a "wet" (anti-prohibitionist) Catholic for president.  Simmons would have been her obvious choice, but also obviously not for racial reasons.

Initially, at the beginning of the ironically-named "Progressive Era," (lots of irony in politics) there was great violence, which North Carolina characteristically experienced in the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, the only coup d'etat to ever occur in the United States.  Nothing half-done here!  Hundreds of African-Americans died in that grave injustice when conservatives took over the city government at gunpoint.  Furthermore, lynchings occurred all across the United States after Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.  "Separate but equal" was the law of the land and that repressive scoundrel "Jim Crow" moved into the neighborhood and would repress the African-American for more than half a century by 1930 (legally, it continued until 1954).  This was the political climate that encouraged and in which flourished the Ku Klux Klan.  For North Carolina, to name one state, these were the white-supremacist champions and redeemers of conservative Southern Democratic government who rebelled again after their abrupt release from justice, Reconstruction... a federal policy which had forced observance of civil rights on the South for twelve years following the war. They're still very much an active entity today, ever growing in response to the election of the first African-American president.

Lynchings and racially motivated murders in each decade from 1865 to 1965 -  The Great Migration drained off most of the rural black population of the South, and indeed for a time froze African-American population growth in parts of the region. A number of states experienced decades of black population decline, especially across the Deep South "black belt" where cotton had been king. In 1910, African Americans constituted more than half the population of South Carolina and Mississippi, and more than 40 percent in Georgia, Alabama, Texas and Louisiana; by 1970, only in Mississippi did African-American representation remain above 30 percent. “The disappearance of the ‘black belt’ was one of the striking effects” of the Great Migration, James Gregory wrote.  Still, it was only a change of 37%, leaving a slight majority in the South aat 53%.  Note from this chart that the violence in the South was strongest right after the Civil War, picked up strongly in the decade of Plessy v. Ferguson, and faded drastically after the Great Migration ended by 1930, with that 53% still in the South.

The violence ended, to be replaced with stringent paternalism... but only after a certain event that occurred in the first two decades of Perkinson's time in Raleigh.

Perkinson came to North Carolina at an ominous period in its history.  She arrived before Congress's many years of failed attempts to pass the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1917 and  before a Southern bloc of conservative Senators filibustered and killed the Anti-Lynching bill during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (Northern) Democratic administration.  None of these attempts (begun in 1909) during the period known as the "nadir of American race relations" ever passed.  None of them ever became law.  To this date, no federal anti-lynching legislation has ever been passed. Only a Congressional "apology" for slavery in 2005!  Not exactly the "penitent" bunch, I assure you.

For North Carolina specifically, it's reigning conservative Southern Democrats had become kings with virtually no opposition at the polls for more than a century.  Until Brown v. Board in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act in 1964, finding a Republican in the South was nearly impossible.  Afterwards, Republicans slowly took over the already quite conservative South, as Lyndon B. Johnson predicted after the Civil Rights Act.  By 1980, but especially after 2008, the Southern Democrat had suddenly and almost completely disappeared, to be replaced with... solid Republicans in the "solid" South!  By 2012, North Carolina was at the top of that conservative Republican list and the only battleground state of eleven to vote for Mitt Romney (Republican) over the first African-American president Barack Obama (Democrat).

Filibuster against anti-lynching bill. Washington, D.C., Jan. 27. Members of the bloc of Southern Senators who have been filibusting against the anti-lynching bill for the last 20 days and are still going strong, left to right: Senator Tom Connaly, of Texas, Sen. Walter F. George, of Ga.; Sen. Richard Russell of Ga.; and Sen. Claude Pepper of Florida, 1/27/38

  [from: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

In 1900, 90% of African-Americans lived in the South.  Moving away from oppression seemed reasonable.  Not surprisingly, 1.6 million blacks left from the fourteen traditional states of the South to northern cities in the "Great Migration"(1910–1930), resulting in a 37-point drop... their reaction to a "progressive" South.  Historian James Gregory Bennett calls this the first phase of the Southern Diaspora, similar to the massive Biblical exodus from bondage as Egypt slaves.  Only after this migration did the violence fade away... did Pharoah relent on the whip.  Still, lynchings were not the only type of violence that they had experienced.  There were subtle forms that neither made the news nor affect the statistics.  

Still, 53% of African-Americans surprisingly remained in the South after migration and, nevertheless, the lynchings nearly stopped (as the graph clearly shows)... the obvious violence had still faded.  This enigma must have intrigued the veteran political activist Perkinson, who interviewed many ex-slaves around Raleigh whenever possible.  Always the investigator, Perkinson was determined to arrive at the truth of their existence and learn the reasons why they remained in such a repressive atmosphere yet, somehow, got along.  

North Carolinians of varying hues in the 1930s didn't exactly "get along" equally, but not as would appear from the apparent lack of resistance.  The herrenvolk, or "master race" finally won the Civil War in the "progressive" North Carolina of the 1930s.  Such irony in these politics!

Perkinson certainly met with resistance from her subjects during the search.  She found that many ex-slaves would lie to her for fear of being punished for blabbering to an "outsider." 

The atmosphere was adversarial, yes, still wrapped in the ideological enigma of a conservative "Solid South" that permeated the state after the war, after the immense resentment of Reconstruction, and before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The South was still immersed in "Jim Crow," Plessy v. Ferguson, the segregationist laws and practices that kept ex-slaves poor, submissive, and "in their place," especially after Bennett's "Great Migration." Predominantly, Perkinson found a passively aggressive environment, one in which she said "there is still a great tendency among these old darkies [a typical reference of the day] to say only those things pleasant to the ears of former slave owners." 


Was this a detente reached at gunpoint or was it more subtle?  What exactly must these ex-slaves fear?   

She interviewed many elderly ex-slaves whose memory of events were "blurred," she wondered whether by age or fear, suspecting that it was intentional, to avoid retribution.  Their fearful resolve was difficult to overcome.  She gave up on hearing "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" and tried to read between the lines... that is, until she met Sally Parham.  

Sally surprised her.  Perkinson believed her to be the most candid ex-slave that she had yet interviewed in North Carolina.  Sally was the former property of one Asa Parham from a large plantation five miles from the small town of Oxford on the Oxford-Henderson road in Granville County.  It was in the small farming community of "Tabb's Creek."  

Also surprising and contrary to other interviewees, Sally proudly preferred the honorary title of "Black Mammy."  Thus, the title of Perkinson's newspaper article, "'Black Mammy' Tells Graphic Story of Slavery."  The title, however, was too simple... it did not represent the content at all!  It only expressed the mechanics, not the fruit of her discovery. 

The first county seat was called Granville Court House. Other records indicate that the town of Harrisburgh served as the county seat from 1746 to 1764, when at that time the location became unsatisfactory. Therefore, it was ordered that the courthouse be located on a branch of the Tar River called Tabb's Creek. Oxford was made the county seat in 1811, and it was incorporated in 1816.  Photo from "Find-a-grave" website.

Perkinson interviewed Sally, or "Black Mammy," at the extraordinary age of 102, blind and being cared for by a great-grandaughter of her former master, Mrs. Elizabeth Dorsey Walters, daughter of Asa's grandaughter Cynthia, from his younger son Gaston.  Sally's memory, even at 102, was still sharp and she was direct, apparently unafraid of the truth.  Perkinson rejoiced at finally finding the object of her search!  In Perkinson's words, Sally, without fear, told her "the more or less familiar story of having a good master, how and when she got religion, her memories of the Civil War, and the part she played during that period."  She got details!

As the interview wore on, however, Perkinson must have begun to realize that Sally's answers and joyful affirmations betrayed a deep sense of denial, a disassociation from reality, made possible, perhaps, by the comparably comfortable circumstances in which she found herself throughout her long life, even before the Great Migration.  

Asa Parham, by Sally's description, of course, was one of the "good masters." He was born in 1792, in Granville County upon the very plantation where Sally was also born.  He married Delia Hawkins Reavis on 22 March 1824 and had four boys and one daughter between 1829 and 1841.  According to 1860 slave census records, Asa owned twenty-four of them, ranging in age from 1 to 78.  The female slave listed as 27 years old was Sally, born in 1833.   

Sally, since her birth, had always lived on Asa's plantation, even for sixty years after his death in 1870.  She cared for five generations of his family and was proud of it.  It was on this plantation that Charlotte Perkinson interviewed the proud old "Black Mammy," still living there so long after emancipation. 

Sally's exuberant tale exposed that the life of a slave was far from ideal, even wretched.  Fortunately for her, perhaps, she merely witnessed the horrors and, therefore, did not mind telling the stories.  She seemed unaffected by a life in which she apparently did not belong.  Sally openly exposed to Perkinson a "most revealing description of the slave 'speculator,' of how crime was punished, of the 'pattyrollers,' and of many other subjects not often touched upon."  Perkinson listened intently to Sally's story. 

Reflected in the interview, Sally's earliest memories were of as a little girl in the "big house" being trained as a house servant.  She remembered trying to resist returning to the slave quarters when her mother came to fetch her and was dragged down the front steps.  "My head counted those steps," as she jokingly told Perkinson, "and I'll never forget them!"  This kind of treatment from Sally's own mother may have shocked Perkinson.  She may have thought it only a joke, an exaggeration.  The remaining details perhaps gave her a different perspective.

Nevertheless, Sally felt special.  She reflected on how she would sometimes accompany her master's children to school, with a "pass" from him, and could sometimes bring home books, like the "Blue Back Speller."  From this book, Sally learned to spell and pronounce some words.  She was quite proud of knowing the alphabet, which she repeated in its entirety for her interviewer.  Most slave owners preferred not to educate their slaves for fear of them gaining confidence and independence, eventually revolting. 

Sally was more than happy to relate all the details of a slave's life.  A "pass," she said, was vital to prevent a slave from being caught off the plantation by a "pattyroller," slang for "patrol," a gang of five to six white men designated by the local government to prevent slaves from gathering at night and possibly organize a revolt. "If a slave went courting or to a candy stew or a prayer meeting," they had to have a note or pass saying where they were going and why, otherwise they were beaten and sent back to the plantation.  Perkinson was told by her informant that slaves "feared and hated 'pattyrollers' intensely." 

Always in intimate identification with her former owner's family, Sally told Perkinson that slave owners seldom had respect for the patrol as well.  Giddily, she related how the slave and white children alike would play pranks on these "pattyrollers."  She related how "one night they stretched ropes across the lane leading to the negro quarters and then hid and waited for the gallop, gallop of the night patrol."  She heard each horse fall with a "heavy thud" as the ropes tripped them.  Needless to say, she remarked smiling, "there were no boys of either color visible when once the riders and horses set out again upon their spying errand."

About her own family, Sally was perhaps more reticent.  She only married once, having "higher ideals" in that regard, as she told it, "patterned after the white folks."  Her husband's name was Harry, a slave of Asa's younger brother, Albert Parham, who lived on the neighboring plantation.  Being perhaps less candid for the only time during the interview, she turned her words away from her husband.  Perhaps aware of Sally's subtle deflection from an emotional subject, Perkinson informed her reader that "marriage in slavery days was hardly more than an agreement to live together."  Of course, in this case, they were barely allowed even that.  The capitalistic requirements of the peculiar institution was conducive to polygamy, "inasmuch as the more children a slave woman had, the more value she was to her master." It was just a business, still, one aspect that she may have deeply regretted. Some emotion peeked through Sally's glittering facade.

This aspect of slave breeding explains the thirteen babes and adolescent slaves (54% of the total) living on Asa Parham's plantation in 1860.  The master needed his female slaves to produce babies... more slaves to continue working the plantation, for sale, or trade.  That was the business, like breeding cattle.  The idea of the "marriage" itself was incidental.  If this bothered Sally, it was isolated and personal, less candid.  She merely showed a glimpse of her discomfort as she talked around the subject of her husband, Harry.

Sally did, however, relate the details of a dark incident that affected her brother-in-law's family, a "particularly pathetic scene that had fixed itself upon" her memory, as Perkinson perhaps encouraged, thirsty for detail.  This involved an aspect that Perkinson called the "most despicable aspect of slavery, the thing which aroused the abolitionist the most," the slave trader, the slave driver, or the "speculator."  

Surely, this affected Sally.  It had to.

Continuing from a detached aspect, however, Sally casually informed her interviewer, this middle-aged white Yankee reporter, that the "speculator" was the "most abominable species of humanity."  As though giving a scholarly presentation, she told that they "trafficked in black flesh."  They "sold and bought men and women and children for profit."  Slaves hated to see the "speculator's" wagon pull up, she said, "covered with canvas and drawn by several mules."  "Into it were herded," as Sally calmly related, "much as sheep or dogs might be, often as many as 17 unwashed and half-clad negroes."  Such an event strongly affected Harry's brother, Tom and his family.  

Sally, however, spoke of it as normal, matter-of-fact... 

One day, she told, a speculator arrived at Albert Parham's farm.  Tom watched in horror as his wife and children were loaded into the "speculator's" wagon.  He begged his reluctant master to sell him, too, so as not to split them up.  His master replied that Tom was a good worker and he would not let him go.  This incident might have emotionally defeated Tom, had it not been for the "speculator's" insistence upon buying Tom as well.  Albert Parham finally gave in... for the right price. 

When Perkinson inquired as to why Tom's wife and kids were sold in the first place, Sally replied that they had "Injun" blood, which was thought undesirable.  As in the business of animal husbandry, breeding was essential to profit and Indians were considered poor or problematic workers.  "The blackest skin brought the best price," Sally said. 

At this point in the interview, the proud old slave woman, "Black Mammy," might have reached her core sense of inhumanity and injustice.  If so, Perkinson saw no sign of it.  

The most chilling tale was yet to come.  How were slaves punished for severe crimes?  

Sally then spoke of two slaves, Joe and Martha, who hated their master intensely and decided to murder him by pouring scalding hot coffee down his throat, which killed him almost instantly.  Sally verbally reprimanded them for their actions, which was "in no way" justified, she said.

Sally told that the local community decided to make examples of Joe and Martha by holding a public execution in the old courthouse square at Harrisburg Creek and every slave from far and wide was forced to watch.  Sally was piled into a wagon crowded with slaves and she and her mother became afraid and started screaming.  Her mother finally calmed down, but not young Sally.  Sally said her master told her mother to "let the little fool out" and she did not attend the hanging.

Her mother, however, did and told Sally about it.  So, she knew that when they arrived at the courthouse, her mother saw Martha, "sitting on her coffin with a rope around her neck," suckling a newborn baby that she had while in jail awaiting her execution.  A large gathering of the community of Tabb's Creek turned out.  As her death approached, Martha began to sing:

"I'se travellin to the grave, my Lawd,
To lay this body down."

"Sister, you'd better watch and pray,
I'm huntin for Jesus night and day..."

At that point, someone in the crowd hollered out "You ought to a thought a that 'fore you scalded your moster."  

Then, Martha handed her baby to a nearby slave woman and kept singing until the "suddenly taughtened rope" choked off her voice.  The image of a recently alive woman hanging from a rope with a broken neck and her crying newborn nearby is strikingly horrible and difficult to bear.  Still, Sally went on with her casual recollection...

Sally informed Perkinson that when "a slave killed a white man, he was dealt with in short order."  Sally almost made the horrifying seem civilized by saying that the state was required to pay the slave's owner for the financial loss, "the same way that a corporation nowadays has to pay damages for injury to property, perhaps for running over a horse or cow."  

Sally understood business and the place of a worker in the master's business.  After all, slaves were nothing more than expensive farm implements. They had been considered such since 1671 in Carolina... almost 200 years before the war.  The business model went back a few decades further.  There was a long tradition of chattel slavery used for the lucrative sugar production reaching back to the 1640s in Barbados, founders of Carolina.

As horrible as the story already read, there was yet more to come.  Sally told about another slave who had been branded on each palm for his crimes.  The painful branding was done as he was forced to slowly recite  "The Lord save the State - the Lord save the State - the Lord save the State" three times while the hot branding iron seared deep wounds into his palm flesh.  If he said it too quickly, they made him stop and begin again.  Unable to use his hands for a full year after this brutal treatment, his owner had little use for him and sold him. Few farmers had ever broken a plow on purpose, or maimed a horse out of spite.  Why destroy this slave's usefulness?  This type of "conditioning" never made the papers or official records.  The hidden fears were revealed in Perkinson's interview.

Sally disassociated herself from the horror that she witnessed every day.  She saw herself as not "white," but not a slave, either.  She lived like Cinderella in a castle.  Clearly, her master treated her with uncommon compassion.  Sally saw herself as somehow different from other slaves and, therefore, exempt from the punishment and the horrid treatment that they usually received.  She cared for and protected her master's family and their belongings during the war, proud of the way she fooled the Yankees by placing molasses jars in front of the whiskey and buried his money all around the yard until he and his boys came home from the war.  

After the war was over, emancipated slaves in the South had to deal with Southern revenge, the KKK, hatred, mobs, and lynchings.  So, the horrors of which Sally spoke had not included those later events, the assuredly more intense violence.  The events that she described involved slavery before and during the war... they occurred before emancipation... before the real dangers began! 

Sally's subtle deception tainted the historical value of her testimony.  The images they invoked contrasted strongly with the words themselves, the terrifying life of a typical slave as she saw it... as she felt it... from afar.  Did Sally realize that she regaled a life that, for others, was a literal hell on Earth?  She may not have seen herself as a slave at all, but a part of Asa's natural family, always a child... though with limited rights.  Sally would never have left the South like the 37% that fled from 1910-1930! After all, she had a home in the "castle."

Charlotte Perkinson perhaps had achieved that for which she had searched; she understood Sally Parham much better by the end of the interview.  The ex-slaves who remained in the South, perhaps, were not as confident or independent as the people who fled in the Southern Diaspora.  Many found it easier to accept the terrible life that they had known so well rather than the life in the unknown... and they mentally compensated.  As Perkinson listened to Sally, she began to glimpse the reason that "Black Mammy" spoke so freely of slave mistreatment, all the while living into a ripe old age in the very house in which she was born a slave, was freed, and yet remained until her death. 

Perkinson interpreted the experience from a standpoint of a front-line war reporter, buried within a highly-reactive culture, but also from the restrictions of 1928.  These horrors were perhaps too vivid for print.  After all, the KKK was at the height of their power then.  "They are those of old slavery time," Perkinson justified, "when the finest points of etiquette were observed by the white people, and whose manners were imitated by the house servants, generally."  

Perkinson commented further, "Even now, the old woman feels it within her province and a part of her duty to the old family, to admonish and advise her young mistress, when occasion demands, and most of all to tell her 'bout the way her family did and lived befor' de war.'" Such devotion... to please the white establishment who certainly would be reading the paper.

Sally became a member of the white church, "Tabb's Creek Baptist Church," constituted just before the Revolution.  She was baptised in Cheatham's Pond with whites and slaves, only praying in private, "no one dar' but me and Gawd!"  Living together was normal to her, but keeping their distance was only right, she also believed.  Sally witnessed the "not unusual" practice of mulatto children born of the masters and their slave mistresses and felt it was the greatest cause of "unhappiness and misery for both races."  

Unabashedly, she repeated the mantra of the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist, abhorring miscegenation of the races, or "race-mixing," as it was called.  "Gawd" never intended that! Sally might say.

Modern Tabb's Creek Baptist Church.  Photo taken by Pat Garrett, Brittany & Ross Cifers. From "Find-a-grave" website.

Ex-slaves in the South were cultural captives of the South for decades after the war.  Modern psychologists define "Stockholm Syndrome," or "capture-bonding" as "a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them."  This certainly explains Sally's interview.  It explains Sally's strong defense of the white Southerner's way of life during the era of "Jim Crow," of her joyful preference for the nominally derogative term "Black Mammy,"now considered to be an ethnic slur. 

Any group of people politically consist of about 20-60-20%; 20% are those who will go one way that will be good for them, the other 20% are those who will never advocate for themselves... the 60% in the middle are those that must be "convinced."  It's simple human nature.  In this case, it worked out about half and half after the "convincing."  53% stuck around.

Sally was one of those who, like Patty Hearst in the 1970s, identified with her captors and began working with them, supporting them, even defending them.  In a way, she was strong-willed, but used that strength to re-enslave herself.  

For Sally, it was an easy pattern for her to fall into, Asa Parham being such a relatively nice guy.  Still, when you belong to the dominant demographic and have never suffered the centuries-long dehumanization of being a slave, you can afford to be a little nicer. 

In her defense, Asa was, indeed, one of the "good" ones, again, relatively speaking, and times have changed since Sally's days, especially after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  

Again, it's a slow process and it's not nearly over.  With each successive generation, a little more of the fervent belief passes into the ether of historical memory.  The fact that African-Americans remained in the South is actually facilitating that change.  Peaceful movements like Martin Luther King Jr.'s in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, etc. are changing American society for the better... never more apparent than today.  One day, skin color, or relative melanin pigment production, will not matter.  Phenotypical differences may actually become respectable and not debilitating. 

Still, the realities of "separate but equal" kept the status quo for nearly 100 years in North Carolina and it certainly will not end overnight... especially when the strongest opposition initially fled north.  The ghost of "Jim Crow" haunts us still.  Changing that for good will yet require many more years, decades, or even a century!  Yes, social progress is a slow process.  

Richard and Charlotte Perkinson left Wake County for Mecklenburg in 1940.  At least Perkinson lived long enough to see the Civil Rights Act passed, hear Luthur's "I have a dream..." speech at the Lincoln Memorial, passing away in 1970.  She witnessed a future that she helped to create.  Nice legacy!

Perkinson's cultural examination revealed the barriers and the horrors that Sally witnessed during her life that should have made any former slave reject that kind of life.  Being a slave was obviously no badge of honor.  Then again, Sally had not met Martin Luthur King, Jr., nor W.E.B. Dubois.  She had no examples in that regard.  Might she have changed her opinion if she had?  Well... probably not this proud ex-slave, indoctrinated since birth to believe that it was her God-given rightful place.  She had only her delusion to support her.  That was the reality in the South of Sally's post-migration day... the day that the South finally recovered their lost territory... the day the violence stopped, the battle had ended... until 1964, and again in 2008. 

As Grandpa knew, Charlotte Story Perkinson certainly got a story from 102-year-old Sally Parham, even if not the one she had expected.  As Sally would say, it was "the Gawd's truth!"  Well, almost.

Thanks Grandpa!

------------------------------ Afterward about Charlotte's son Richard Terrell Perkinson Jr.:

Richard was born September 23, 1908, a year after his parents' marriage in 1907 and while they still lived in Plymouth, New Hampshire.  On the 9th of April 1934, at the age of 25, the young farmer was shot by 63-year-old William Lonnie Collins of Raleigh with a shotgun before Collins turned the gun on himself:

The Robesonian (Lumberton) 12 Apr 1934

 Charlotte's granddaughter, Helen Poole Fontsere' tells "the whole story was much more horrific, as is shown in the many N.C. newspaper reports of his murder by a madman who then killed himself.  I'm sorry that the man took his own life, because I know my grandmother would have taken that opportunity to back up her sincere opposition to the Death Penalty.  This murderer would surely have been convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to death.  But my grandmother would have opposed his execution."

Quite the lady, indeed! 

Richard T. Perkinson and his daughters, ca 1930