Black Codes, vagrancy, false liberation, convict leasing, and a cop's knee for choking

“One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And the notion, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free”. John F. Kennedy, 1963, Civil Rights Address

  There has always been a collective attitude among White folks that they do not have to respect African Americans because they are not their equals. The day slaves were freed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, there was no official legislation recognizing the edit. The 13^th Amendment was passed April 8, 1864, by Congress, by the House on January 31, 1865. Right away White folks commenced creating ways to sabotage that freedom, further pushing their knees deeper into necks of emancipated men and women and children. White folks did not care about the Emancipation Proclamation or Abe Lincoln’s largess, which was not absolutely sincere. 

Whites believed that no amendment in the Constitution of the United States applied to the free Black Africans. To concede that certain amendments were applicable to Blacks meant cutting in half the elephant in the room: White Privilege. The elephant covers a lot of White Privilege territory: affirmative action, equal pay, judicial fairness, police protection, quality educations, freedom to be free, employment opportunities.

White males in power did not want former slaves to breathe a whiff of fresh air without their permission. Ex-slaves were mobile black bodies without souls and emotions. Like children, they needed guidance. They had to be closely monitored, corralled and beat when they were unruly and disobedient. White women and children did not have full-fledged rights either, but they had a modicum more freedom than former slaves.

After emancipation the Black Africans had nowhere to go. No new life awaited them. They were money-broke, and destitute. They had nowhere to live. No food. No clothing. No job prospects. They were vulnerable and susceptible to the cruelest forms of revictimization administered by White folks. Because thousands of them had no choice list to check off, they stayed with their former owners, working as sharecroppers. Plantation owners provided the land and seed for a share of the profits. However, some ex-slaves decided to try and make it on their own in a country completely controlled by White males.

They did not get the 40 acres and mule as promised by Union General William T. Sherman, January 16, 1866, that was filed order No.15. The 40 acres consisted of land on the costal islands and costal region of Georgia. The Union promised to donate mules it was not using. However, the mules were not packaged with the 40 Acres. The promise was broken. President Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln’s successor, annulled the deal.

On April 16, 1861, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act made it possible for the government to pay former slave owners $300,00 for each slave they once owned. Around $1 million was put aside to pay the former slaveholders. An estimated 979 plantation and farm owners had around 2,989 slaves. The payees were compensated to stay loyal to the Union. Reparations for loss of “property”? Or reparations for loyalty? Manumitted slave got nothing for their years of hard labor.

Black men and women deciding to make it on their own ran into more brick walls than opportunities. But some were successful. White folks, poor and rich, did not allow Blacks the privilege of becoming viable citizens, earning their own way, earning money to buy land and start a new life. These skilled Blacks were threats to White males, who feared the competition for jobs and land purchases, which would diminish their economic status and power. Enslavement was not you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours handshake deal between liberated Africans and privileged Caucasians.

In the book “I Was Born in Slavery” edited by Andrew Waters, ex-slaves remember their bondage. Wash Ingram recalled his owner and the treatment they received. He said his mother and father were sold frequently. Whoever owned them at any given time was the name they took. Ingram’s father ran away. His mother died. He was left alone. He was sold to a new owner named Jim Ingram.

“Master Ingram had a big plantation down near Carthage and lots of niggers. He also buyed land, cleared it, and sold it. I plowed with oxen. We had a overseer and sev’ral taskmasters. They whip niggers for not workin’ right, or for riunnin’ ‘way, or *pilferin’ ‘round Master’s house. We woke up at four o’clock and worked from sunup to sundown. They give us an hour for dinner. Them that work ‘round the house had tables with plates. Them that work in the field was drove in from work and fed just like hosses at a big, long wooden trough. They had to eat with wooden spoons. The trough and food was clean and always plenty of it, and we stood up to eat. *(stealing in small amounts)

“I ‘member the war, and I sees them cannons and hears’em. I toted water for the soldiers what fought at the Battle of Mansfield. Master Ingram had 350 slaves when the war was over. But he didn’t turn us loose ‘til a year after Surrender. He telled us that the gov’ment goin’ to give us forty acres of land, and a pair of mules. But we didn’t git nothin’”.

Ingram eventually turned his slaves loose. Wash Ingram found his father years later, who had been purchased “a place” in DeBerry, Texas. Ingram lived with him “’til after I was grown”. He got married and moved to Louisiana, returned to Texas and lived with friends. His wife died. He said he had a hard time. He had no more living relatives. He couldn’t find work, so he “managed to git someone to let me work for somethin’ to eat. A few clothes, and a place to sleep”.

Black boy is tired to pole as punishment

Freed Africans moved North, increasing their numbers in various states. White folks were not happy. “. . . many Whites became resentful. White hostility towards Black residents grew. Wealthy Whites feared vagrancy and crime, and poor Whites resented the competition over jobs. . . most White northerners were not interested in fighting to free slaves, or in giving rights to Black people”. PBS TV

White terrorist groups sprang up to keep the Black Africans in place. Desperate plantation owners, farmers and businesses needed the continuance and security of free labor. Without Africans the South’s economy would dwindle. Virginia had the largest population of freed slaves. A year after Black Africans were emancipated, Virginia’s General Assembly passed the "Vagrancy Act of 1866", January 15. Unemployment and homelessness were punishable crimes.

The law’s preamble states: “[t]here hath lately been a great increase of idle and disorderly persons in some parts of this commonwealth’, which displaced much of the state’s large population of Africans’”.

If a "vagrant" attempted to escape, and later recaptured, he was sent to prison, or returned to his previous owner, who could work him an extra month for free. The imprisoned vagrants were forced to wear balls and chains. If no former employers took them back, they worked on public projects, surviving only on bread and water. Many of them died from diseases, maltreatment and poor health.

Black Codes were legislated in southern states (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina). These states were an economic mess. They lost access to free laborers. The Black Codes allowed Whites to regain control of the free Blacks and continued free labor. Former slaves could not own land. They could not own themselves, given they had no right to their own bodies unless a White man gave them permission to be responsible human beings. 

Freed Africans had to get permission to travel out of state; they could not own guns. In other words, they still had no rights that White folks had to acknowledge. In 1904 a new law replaced the Vagrancy Act. Vagrancy became a misdemeanor. The guilty had to pay a bond and exhibit good behavior for one year.

BETTER OFF CONFINED TO PRISONS

In “Slavery by Another Name” by Douglas H, Blackmon, the author retraced the imprisonment of a young man named Green Cottenham, who was arrested, charged with vagrancy March 30, 1908, in Shelby County, Alabama.

“After three days behind bars, twenty-two-year-old Cottenham was found guilty in a swift appearance before the county judge, and immediately sentenced to a thirty-day term of hard labor. Unable to pay the array of fees accessed on every prisoner—fees to the sheriff, the deputy, the court judge, the witness—Cottenham’s sentence was extended to nearly a year of hard labor. The next day, Cottenham, the youngest of nine children, born to former slaves in an adjoining county, was sold”.

Blackmon writes that Cottenham was turned over to the U.S. Steel Corporation by the sheriff. “What the company’s managers did with Cottenham and thousands of other Black men they purchased from sheriffs across Alabama, was entirely up to them”.

Thousands of Black men were at the mercy of White men who held their lives and futures in their

Despite being free Black men and boys were forced to work as convict laborers after getting arrested for homelessness, vagrancy, and being unemployed.

hands.  The odds of regaining their freedom was against Black men and boys. They were locked in another form of slavery not even President Abe Lincoln could have freed them from. The corporate White males of privilege refused to take their knees off the necks of these ex-slaves, all solidly trapped by false charges, White power, open racism.

White officials summarily concluded that “Black convicts” would be better off if they were confined to prisons, where they could learn discipline, a trade, and disabuse themselves of bad habits. It was decided they were better off in servitude rather than freedom.  After the enactment of Black Codes, a “program” called Convict Leasing came into play. This “program” was designed to keep Black men in bondage. Convict leasing was finally outlawed in 1928, 63 years after slavery was abolished. Louisiana was the last state to step away from the money-making hustle. 

Whoever sought convict labor were responsible for feeding and clothing them; providing them a place to stay. Black males made up the majority of the rented labor force. They worked coal mines, picked cotton, worked quarries, lumber yards, railroads, plantations, farming, construction. Black men built the Capitol of Texas in Austin, Texas, and the White House in Washington, DC. They have never gotten credit for their contributions in these projects.

“Instead of evidence showing Black crime waves, the original records of county jails indicated thousands arrested for inconsequential charges, or for violations of laws specifically written to intimidate Blacks, changing employees without permission, vagrancy, riding freight cars without a ticket, engaging in sexual activity, or loud talk with a White woman”. Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name.

Evacuation of former slave's graves

In 2018 in Sugarland, Texas, 95 African American graves were discovered on a construction site. Workers uncovered 85 graves of freed slaves. They were estimated to range in ages from 14 to 70. All were boys and men, except for one woman. The skeletal remains revealed that they “were malnourished, their bones misshapen from back-breaking, repetitive labor. They were buried in plain pine boxes, somewhere between 1878 and 1911”.

BLACK FOLKS ARE "THINGS", NOT HUMANS

“I can’t breathe”. Repeat until your mind has traveled all the way back to the first day Africans were enslaved in America. The knees of White slave masters were on their necks. The lives of unshackled slaves were on lease from day one, like that of Black women, men and boys today. The end date of the lease was/is determined by White cops with badges, gun and a pair of working knees for choking.

If White citizens decided a Black person is “dangerous and scary”, they could shot him to death. Whites claimed they were scared, hoping the law and juries would believe their stories. Before the public killing of George Floyd, cops and White always walked free.

Historian, author, editor and activist W. E. B. DuBois said: “The slave went free, stood for a brief moment in the sun, and then moved back again toward slavery”.

Convict leasing was the brutal enforcement of Step Two to the slavery saga. The reimprisonment of Black men and boys proved to be a bigger enemy than their previous enslavement. Once again, they lost control of their own lives, which did not matter to White males who paid other White males to lease them.

The New York Times Magazine: “Some American slavery matured into perverse regimes that denied the humanity of Black people, while still criminalizing their actions. As the Supreme Court of Alabama explained in 1861, enslaved Black people were ‘capable of committing crimes,’ and in that capacity, were ‘regarded a person’, but in most every other sense they were ‘incapable of performing civil acts’ and considered ‘things, not persons.’”

The 13^th Amendment is credited with legally abolishing slavery. Section 1 states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”. Therein lies the words that trapped emancipated bondsmen, leaving them up a creek without a paddle. Vagrant? Homeless? Unemployed? They could be charged with these crimes that only applied to Blacks.

Neither the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution mentioned slavery, despite forefathers owning and violating enslaved men and women. Although they were full human beings, they were referred to as “three-fifths of all other persons” in the U.S. Constitution.

When cops employ their knees to put Black men in death holds, they do not see human beings. A Black man, boy or woman lying belly-down on grass or pavement have no power to renew his or her lease on life. Cops that willfully kill them, the majority unarmed-- are reliving the oppression of 1865 vagrant laws. The cops see three-fifths Black bodies, likened to animals that are treated more mercifully.

SANDBAGS WITH ARMS, HANDS AND FEET  

“In Greenville, (LeRoy) Percy helped organize a flood fight and held his front against the river. But just above Washington Country, The New York Times reported, an engineer who ran out of sandbags ‘ordered . . . several hundred negroes . . . to lie down on top of the levee and as close together as possible. The Black men obeyed, and although spray frequently dashed over them, they prevented the overflow that might have developed into an ugly crevasse. For an hour and a half this hatred lasted, until the additional sandbags arrived. The men were convicts, and the Times called the idea ‘brilliant’. But Percy did not approve. To him men were economic units competing with other men, not sandbags’”, writes John M. Barry in Rising Tide.

Democratic Governor of Mississippi, James K. Vardaman, a devout racist who “fed on, and fed the hatred”, did not like the notion of Black citizens getting an education. He said education “renders him unfit for the work which the White man has prescribed and which he will be forced to perform”. He recommended repealing the 14^th and 15^th Amendments.

Vardaman declared that Blacks were “lazy, lying, lustful animals which no amount of training can transform into a tolerable citizen. . . “[I]f it is necessary every negro in the State will be lynched, it will be done to maintain supremacy”. Rising Tide

African Americans have been referred to as “animals” by Whites throughout history, expressing exactly the same attitude as Vardaman. Former President Barack Obama and his family were referred to as monkeys, gorillas, orangutans. Cops, whose Facebook and other social media ramblings have been exposed and caught calling Black folks all these names and more.

On lynching Blacks, Vardaman said he did not care if they were innocent or guilty, because “[t]he good [negroes] are few, the bad are many, and it is impossible to tell what ones are . . . dangerous to the honor of the dormant race until the damage is done”. Vardaman held office 116 years ago.

A DILEMMA: COPS CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD BLACKS AND BAD BLACKS

After shooting a Black person, no matter the age or gender, White cops assert they feared for their lives. They do not have the same fear when confronting a White person pointing a weapon at them. They suddenly feel the need to be reasonable as they try negotiating with the White individual. Unfortunately, being Black is a crime punishable by physical abuse or death.

Louie White (deceased) became a cop in Austin, Texas in 1959. At the time a Black cop could arrest a White person, even if they were caught committing a crime. If a Black cop was assigned a downtown beat, that was limited to a couple of blocks. They had to call for a White cop to arrest a White person. Black cops could not control, handcuff or touch any person perceived as White. On the other hand, White cops could go on the East Side to arrest, beat, kill or harass any Black person they wanted to. Black cops could only deal with Blacks.

In Psychology Today, Allision Abrams writing about “The Psychology Behind Racism”, says, “Attitudes of extreme hatred are usually based in fear. They come from primitive survival mechanisms or instincts to avoid danger—to fear anything that appears to be different, which leads to fear of the other.

“When one race of persons unconsciously feels fear in response to a different race group—fears that their own level of security, important or control of being threatened—they will develop these defensive thoughts and behaviors. They will create exaggerated and negative beliefs about the other race to justify their actions in [an] attempt to secure their own safety and survival”.

MSNBC News “Think” (Opinion, Analysis, Essays), Damien Jones, writes about his fear of the police, who sees his height as dangerous. “As a 6-foot-3 Black man, I’ve been trained my whole life to protect my safety by trying to make myself seem less threatening—dressing in professional clothing, smiling extra hard, not wearing my do-rag in public. But it shouldn’t be my duty to undo hundreds of years of stereotyping of Black men. It should be the responsibility of officers to unlearn their biases, and to be trained to distinguish real threats from nonthreats”.

Rather than sounding like he is chairman of Urban Justice and Equality, PAC, Jones sounds like a manumitted slave having to watch his behavior, appearing nonthreatening around White folks, especially cops. In the year 2020 he is still scared not smile “extra hard” for fear he won’t appear friendly. This professional Black man’s life is very much akin to the rules set by the 1866 Vagrancy Act, created to keep a White man’s knee on his Black neck if he is identified as someone he is not.

“American culture is imbued with fears that African Americans will someday repay the violence and oppression that has marred their history in this country”, said Noam Chomsky, linguist and cultural critic. He emphasized the ongoing impact of Black enslavement and subjugation in the U.S., saying, ‘fears that the victims might rise up and take revenge are deeply rooted in American culture, with reverberations to the present’”. Alternet.org

Knowing they could do whatever they wanted with run-away slaves or liberated slaves without freedom papers signed by their former owners—organized, armed paddy rollers took advantage of their power over their helpless captives. If they severely beat, tortured or killed their prisoners, they did not claim they “feared for their lives.” They did not fear the sizes of their prisoners. Their bloody deeds were executed without consequences.

During a traffic stop in Virginia in 2019, one cop on the scene proved the “I feared for my life” is a lie; a myth. The episode began with the cop letting the young Black male know that he was in charge. The Black man, stopped for an expired inspection sticker and suspended driver’s license, immediately began taping the interaction. He made sure his hands were raised and visible. 

"He said to the cop standing at the window, “Sir my hands are up. I’m in no threat to officers”. The cop, opening the car door, said: “You are going to get your ass whupped”. His bodycam was not on. The Black man was pulled out of his car. His cell camera stopped but not the audio. After pulling the driver out of his car, throwing him to the ground, the cop said, “How do you like that, motherfucker? How do you like that”?

The driver reminded the cop he was not resisting. He asked the cop to get “off my neck”. The cop did not exhibit fear of the Black man. He retained his supremacy. The young black man, who sustained several injuries, was the Constitution’s three-fifths of a human, his dignity pinned to the street like his body.

Norm Stamper, former police chief of the Seattle Police Department, wrote: “Simply put, White cops are afraid of Black men. We don’t talk about it, we pretend it doesn’t exist, we claim ‘color blindness’, we say White officer treat Black men the same way they treat White men. But that’s a lie. In fact, the bigger, the darker the Black man the greater the fear. The African American community knows this. Hell, most Whites know it. Yet, even though it’s central, if not the defining ingredient in the makeup of police racism, White cops won’t admit it to themselves or to others.

“I’ve studied fear for years. I’ve learned how it affects our bodies, out perception, judgment, and actions. [R]ecently I’ve tried to dig up empirical evidence to support my particular theory that White cops are afraid of Black men. [T]here are studies showing that Whites, in general, are likely to view Blacks as more violent than Whites.

“So, why am I so certain that White cops are afraid of Black men? Because I was a White cop. In a world of White cops. For thirty-four years. From the earlies days of academy training, it was made clear that Black men and White cops don’t mix, that of all the people we’d encounter on the streets, those most dangerous to our safety, to our survival, were Black men”. A Top Cop’s Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing, by Norm Stamper

Whereas Stamper said White cops are afraid of big African American men, during slavery the bigger, the blacker a slave, the more favor he received from his White owner.  A big, black buck was perceived as valuable. He was perceived as a good worker and breeder, worthy of living not killing. For decades White cops have been shooting Black men, women and children without regard to their 

size, despite of Stamper’s assessment.

“In Amite, Louisiana, fifty miles north of New Orleans, several farmers were indicted on charges of kidnapping a family of Negroes for a twenty dollar bill; the Negroes were forced to work without pay for weeks under armed guards”.  Rising Tide

George Floyd

May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 6 feet, 7 inches, George Floyd, 46, was murdered on a Minnesota street as people watched in horror and disbelief. His murder was videoed in real time by a person on the scene. While in police custody, Floyd was eventually wrestled to the pavement, held down by Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng. He asked not to be put in the back of police car because he was claustrophobic and had recovered from COVID-19. He was eventually wrestled to the ground. He had volunteered to lay on the ground rather be locked in the closed police vehicle. 

Derek Chauvin was the nonchalant cops that held his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Floyd begged and pleaded for Chauvin to get his knee off his neck. He could not breathe. The cop refused, Floyd died, handcuffed, held down by three other cops, lying face down on the street, begging to let him breathe, calling for his deceased mother. He predicted the cops were going to kill him.

His crime, other than being Black? The owner of a grocery store called the police, telling the 911 dispatcher that a customer was trying to pay for a purchase with a counterfeit $20 bill.

In 1928 a Black family sold for a $20 bill. The White farmers who snatched the family, taking them to Mississippi, were indicted for kidnapping. A Black was man murdered by four cops, because he was accused of trying to pay for a purchase with a phony $20 bill. The four cops will stand trial for George Floyd’s murder. His life and the lives of a Black family was worth less than $25.00