Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

by Michael Harriot

When I was a child, my mother chose to homeschool my sisters and me. As an adult, she informed me that my early homeschooled education was an experiment due to her belief that “a Black child cannot fully realize their humanity in the presence of whiteness.”

This centrist sentiment resulted in the election of President Abraham Lincoln, who admitted that his “paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.”4

Lincoln calmed fears of disunion by insisting that he had no plans to elevate Black Americans, free or enslaved, to the status of white men. “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races,” he said in an 1858 speech. “I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”5

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,” Lincoln explained to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, “and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”18 Lincoln quickly rescinded Hunter’s order, but it was too late. The Confederate States were officially recognized as a separate entity.

In 1863, Hunter would ruffle even more feathers, writing Confederate president Jefferson Davis directly: You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;—liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;—liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;—liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;—liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood. This is the kind of liberty—the liberty to do wrong—which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell.19

The Union army never intended to free the slaves. Lincoln didn’t want to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation couldn’t free the slaves. Black people freed themselves. And in doing so, they defeated the Confederacy and freed America from its most undemocratic institution. They were less concerned with flags, taxation, or saving the Union than they were with saving their people. Still, the result of their actions was a victory for America. The freed slaves would come to literally define what it means to be an American.

We are the ones who continually push this country toward its goal of becoming more perfect. We are the reason it is still a union.

As this bill languished, the Radical Republicans’ plan to require abolition as a term of readmission was rendered moot on January 31, 1865, when Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The new amendment declared, “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.” This, not Lincoln’s magical Emancipation Proclamation, is what, legally, finally outlawed slavery in the United States.* And with that came freedom, but also great ambiguity about the status of these newly freed men and women.

The whites stomped, kicked, and clubbed the black marchers mercilessly. Policemen smashed the institute’s windows and fired into it indiscriminately until the floor grew slick with blood. They emptied their revolvers on the convention delegates, who desperately sought to escape. Some leaped from windows and were shot dead when they landed. Those lying wounded on the ground were stabbed repeatedly, their skulls bashed in with brickbats. The sadism was so wanton that men who kneeled and prayed for mercy were killed instantly, while dead bodies were stabbed and mutilated.23 “The floor grew slick with blood.” I have never been able to rinse that phrase from my mind. The carnivorous reaction to Black people existing is a theme that runs throughout American history.

When Hose was captured on April 23, a lynch mob of at least five hundred white people kidnapped him from deputies and took him to a field. People from across the state boarded trains to view the spectacle, but they did not lynch Hose immediately. First, the crowd took turns cutting off pieces of Hose’s nose, ears, fingers, and genitals. Others used their knives to stab him repeatedly as onlookers cheered. Then they skinned him alive and doused him with kerosene while young children collected wood to build a pyre, before burning him alive, watching as his veins ruptured and his eyes withered. After the fire subsided, the crowd diced Hose’s dead body into pieces and sold the remnants of their handiwork as souvenirs for those not fortunate enough to have attended the “barbecue.” The festivities concluded with a prayer, and a sign marking the occasion, reading: “We Must Protect Our Southern Women.”9

Did you think we were clawing and scratching for the right to hang out in train cars and movie theaters with white people? Hold up, gimme a few minutes to stop laughing. Have you met white people? Think about it. If someone kidnapped you, made your family work for free, and murdered, raped, and brutalized your kin, who would want to kick it with them on the train? The fight against segregation had less to do with the proximity to whiteness and more about the social, political, and economic subjugation of Black people. Resisting Jim Crow was about our humanity. Plus, we had a sneaky suspicion that white people would soon forget about the “equal” part of “separate but equal.” After all, white folks invented skiing, roller coasters, and bobsledding. They love a slippery slope.

You know they had something up their sleeves, and it wasn’t no popsicle! In 1971, President Nixon fixed the profit problem by declaring a “war on drugs.” In 1970, almost 200,000 Americans were in prison. By 1985, there were almost 482,000.9 By the end of 2019, there were 1.4 million people locked up in U.S. prisons, and Black Americans were incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of whites. Private prisons aren’t the only ones profiting from this stolen labor. It’s the $1.3 billion earned by telecom companies that have exclusive contracts with prison systems. It’s the food companies that make $1.6 billion from prison commissaries. It’s the insurance industry that makes $1.4 billion in bail fees. And it’s not just the federal government. California uses prison labor to fight wildfires. Your favorite fast-food restaurant uses prison labor to process meat. Your furniture, license plate, and many of your clothes are made by prison labor.