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Family members as property
Shackles which were used to tether slaves on display at the International Slavery Museum on February 9, 2012 in Liverpool, England.
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Like most of us, I've got a car. It's a blue Saturn SL2 that cost me about $12,000 when I bought it. A lot of times, I look at it and wonder: Should I keep it or unload for whatever I can get? It is after all my personal property. I've got the papers to prove it, and I can do whatever I want to.
I'm thinking about personal property, like my car, because I've been thinking about my great-great-grandfather. You see, he wasn't legally a person. He was personal property.
His name was Dick. He belonged to Edward Scruggs, a plantation owner who died in 1850 without a will. His probate filing listed his belongings: 11 plows, five bushels of wheat, 200 barrels of corn, 4,000 pounds of bacon. And several families of "negroes." There, at the bottom of the estate inventory, I found my great-great-grandfather with his mother and siblings.
The court created a trust fund for Edward Scruggs' youngest children. My great-great-grandfather was placed in that trust; he was valued at $550.
Today, he'd be worth about $12,000 -- the price I paid for my car.
Sometimes I wonder: did Edward Scruggs treat my great-great-grandfather the way I treat my car? Did he cut back food rations to save money -- the way I only buy a half-tank of gas? Did he put off fixing slave cabins -- the way I put off buying new tires? Did he figure how long he could keep his slaves in the fields -- the way I figure whether I can get another 10,000 miles from a 10-year-old car?
In the end, though, it doesn't matter. The Scruggs slaves could have slept on featherbeds, eaten their fill and dressed in silk. Their lives still would have been abhorrent.
The shame in slavery was not how folks like my great-great-grandfather were treated, it was in what they were.
They were commodities to be bought and sold, taxed and assessed. They walked and talked, lived and loved, but they were property nevertheless. Personal property.
Like my car.
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I just read an article about the value of a human life that says at the end "every person should be treated the same" unfortunately that wasn't the treatment in the past nor the present. I believe that If we want to change people, we have to change first, and maybe some day, we all can talk about equality :D
I rise
“Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”
― Maya Angelou
Qualifiers: I'm a middle-class white male. I had a black girlfriend - we shared a place for about a year. My brother-in-law is black.
I find this subject fascinating. In my anecdotal experience, it is an issue that some/many black people can't let go of. As far as I know, there have been no slaves in the USA since 1865, yet this subject infuses their (and your?) daily existence. Why do you let something from almost 150 years ago run (ruin?) your lives?
Agent86, in answer to your questions: Perhaps because I'm talking about my great-great-grandfather? Or perhaps because I think about the great-great-grandmother and her twin who, as infants, were "given" to a white infant?
Or perhaps for the same reason my Irish friends have not forgotten that their ancestors were left to starve during the potato famine. The subject doesn't infuse my daily existence and it hasn't ruined my life. But I can't get over the fact that my ancestors were personal property. Like my (your?) car.
Throughout history, there have been evil things. It is human nature. Just read the bible or pretty much any other religious text for that matter. Religion is mainly just a way to help us cope with these things. (Of course, religion was the cause of much of it as well. LOL!) I really find it fascinating that some groups of people seem to think that they were the only ones to ever be persecuted, and they hold that persecution up as a red badge of courage. Does that make them more honorable or more deserving of special treatment?
Even today there are reprehensible things. My mother treated my father poorly and contributed to his decision to commit suicide. My ex-wife's dad sexually abused her for ten years before she joined the Air Force to escape. If you are truly honest with yourself, you can understand what might have motivated these people to act the way they did. I'm not saying to forgive and forget, but I am suggesting that you might be happier and feel more connected with the rest of the world if you do indeed "get over" it. The world is a better place now than it was, and if we put down our animosity towards the things we can't change (in Zen we say "let go of our attachments") and realize that there is a vastly larger set of common experiences that we share than differences that separate us, we can connect with each other and share the joys of the human experience, regardless of ancestry, color, creed, religion, gender, hair, or clothes.
Regards,
Doug
I'm not angry, and I don't have animosity toward the White Scruggs descendants. In fact, I've talked to several of them since I researched my family. We trade information regularly. I'm not in Zen, quite frankly because it's a bit too detached for me.
My commentary was a basically a meditation on finances: this is, after all Marketplace. And it accomplished my desired purpose: to make people stop and think, really think, about the horror of American slavery.
Fantastic commentary! Slavery was defended by politicians, by clergy, and by businessmen. It was justified by the Bible, by natural law, by civil law, by tradition, and by power politics. Its defenders could never imagine they were wrong, and even after abolition, their racists beliefs continue to affect our nation to this day. Imagine how many other beliefs are still justified by the Bible, by natural law, civil law, tradition and power politics, with their defenders convinced they are right. The fight against gay marriage proves that the enemies of human progress with always be with us.
I thought your piece was insightful and touching.
Those that would quibble with the inflation rate or that the topic is "nothing new" totally missed the point that these human beings were treated as property to be passed on in a will. Not as an indentured servant (that is my white heritage) where they could eventually work their way up from "downstairs". Thanks to Marketplace for airing every perspective.
Lee, thank you for posting. I think you've hit on the difference between indentured servitude - where a servant was still legally human - and slavery as practiced in America. The more I learn about slavery, the more I'd like to learn about indentured servitude. My history books glossed over that topic just as they glossed over slavery. I wonder, for example, how many people actually worked their way out of the debt, or whether their servitude was extended by treachery and cheating.
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