In the beginning…American Goodp*ssy
“Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.”
This simple quotation, by George Santayana, when applied to the black experience becomes absolute. Because the black man in America has never had any real control of the press, he naturally has little knowledge of his history, of his place in society, or of the contributions he has made to civilization. Young black men who have no heroes or role models are inventing their own by making heroes and role models of themselves. In child-like desperation they are making connections, linking with the only history they do know, that of the slave. Although they have traditionally had or read few books, they and their friends did watch and indeed identify with author Alex Haley’s historic accounts in “Roots”. From then until now they are filling in their own blanks. Lines in the hair, names (brands) on their clothes, and chains around their necks, they are going backwards when they should be moving forward. Rap music, drum beats and images of hearty Africans chanting as they worked tirelessly in the scorching fields, today’s black youth are trying to create their own language. Common clichés like “What’s happening?” or “He just don’t know how to act,” are compellingly revealing because many young black men really do not know what is happening or how to act, because no one has ever told them or shown them just “how to act.” Unlike others who try to tell us what a black man is or is not, I intend to help you understand who he is. To better understand today’s black man, I believe it is crucial that you first of all understand the undeniable significance of his beginnings.
In his native homeland, Africa, he lived in families with hundreds of common ancestors. Africans generally had wooly hair, thick lips, broad features, and were almost true black in color. The Nilotics averaged 5 feet in height and the Pygmies were less than 5 feet tall, all speaking distinct languages.
The coastal dwellers were predominantly fisherman and boat makers while those in the grasslands herded goats, sheep and cattle. Individuals owned crops and not land and they believed in plural marriages. If the groom could afford it, payment to the bride’s family was made in livestock.
The European slave trade began in 1441 when Prince Henry the Navigator sent men to the west coast of Africa for skins and oils, but instead found gold, elephant tusks, pepper and slaves. For their black brothers the chiefs received rum, brandy, trinkets, looking glasses, beads and bracelets.
The first landing was to establish the trading station. One of the first buildings erected was the barac00n, where the slaves were to be housed. The whites did not go into the interior but did business with chiefs whose tribes raided each other. Granny Judith, an African slave, said that she had never seen red cloth before. Following pieces of red flannel that had been dropped on the ground, she and others followed a trail leading right up to the slave ship.
After the slaves were taken they were examined or inspected, their eyes, chest, belly, teeth, genitals and butt, then sometimes branded like animals with red palm oil. Others might be branded later on with their master’s initials, like any other horse or cow that belonged to him.
Slave ships carried about 250 slaves and the trip to the Middle Passage or West Indies took about 50 days. And once the Africans were brought to the ship they did not immediately sail off into the sunset. Terrified, they waited and waited and waited until the ship was full. Wearing leg irons, slaves were placed in different compartments in “the slave galley,” according to sex, where they remained throughout the voyage. Weak and sickened, they lived among rats, in their own vomit, bowel movements and urine, developing diseases like scurvy, smallpox, and the flu. Some captains were “loose packers,” while others were “tight packers” who believed that a larger cargo would offset their losses. Slaves were wedged in and given only the amount of space needed to lie down, barely enough for a man in a coffin. With the intense heat and no air, many suffocated and were found dead the next day.
The meal, usually consisting of coarse bananas, yams and coconuts was thrown down among them. Both food and water sometimes ran out.
Refusing to remain captives, some of the slaves committed suicide. Others refused to eat. When this happened the captain gave the command that mouth openers or live coals be forced into their mouths. Sometimes small children were brought on board. In one especially cruel instance three babies too small to eat alone or walk were pulled from their mothers’ arms and thrown overboard. Two women drowned trying to save their young. The third, chained to another woman broke her arm struggling to get free and died several days later. Man-eating sharks often followed the ships.
As far back as a year before the Mayflower, a pirate ship dropped anchor off the coast of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, after robbing a Spanish ship of her cargo, including 20 Negroes who were exchanged for food. Those first twenty Negroes were not slaves but indentured servants and in 1623 or 1624 Antoney and Isabella gave birth to William, the first black child born in America. (Incidentally, Africans who were expert navigators and seamen, had already traveled to the Americas on trading expeditions centuries earlier, guided by the extraordinary genius of a black man called Imhotep.) By that time, 1619, the African slave trade (internationally) was already over 100 years old and less than a century later slavery had become a way of life in America. In less than 100 years the African had emerged from a man who was simply a different color with a different culture to a full fledged slave.
Many whites believed that if a Negro was not hanged he could live forever, and he seemed to have a greater resistance to diseases like measles, yellow fever and malaria. It was also believed that blacks adjusted better to the plantation system than did the Indian, whom they had tried to enslave. A Negro could do the work of four Indians, the Indians were hard to work with, and they did indeed die from the white man’s diseases. Often captured Indians who had friends nearby and who were not agricultural were shipped to the West Indies and traded for blacks who were shipped to the West Indies and traded for blacks who were ideally suited for slavery. It was also very dangerous to capture and hold Indians, plus they knew the country. Although both the Indian and the black man were savages different from the white man, the Indian proudly knew his place and was willing to fight to keep it. Blacks who were already under control were relatively helpless. And although the Indian was different, he still was not quite so different as the African.
From the moment the first white Europeans had come face-to-face with the first black Africans their differences were compelling. Negroes were immediately viewed as “strangers” or as the “others.” This perception in fact about the Negro being different became one of the key pro-slavery arguments for maintaining his enslavement. The African’s skin color and the way he lived automatically made him a savage heathen. Before the 16tth century the Oxford English Dictionary defined black as “deeply stained with dirt, soiled, foul…Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant, pertaining to or involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister…Foul, iniquitous, atrocious, horrible, wicked.” Black was dangerous and disgusting while white was just the opposite. White was directly related to innocence and God. Whiteness was desired while blackness was condemned, and the black man’s evil nature was undeniable and unmistakable because of his hideous color. Historically, even on English stages, as far back as the 1500’s, the souls of those who were damned had been represented by actors painted black or wearing black costumes. Christians were white while heathens were non-white, especially Negroes…Blackness was a curse. In Africa, however, the opposite was true. The devil was white.
Many believed also that the Negro was a “distinct order of being,” the connecting link between men and monkeys. There was supposedly some logical relationship between the lowest man and the highest animal. The African was that connection or missing link, with the only difference between him and the ape being that the African could speak. Ironically, both the black man and the anthropoid ape had been discovered at the same time and in the same place. The fact that men who resembled apes and apes without tails who resembled men existed hinted that there may have been a sexual connection as well. Negores were also considered to be just as wild and equally as lustful as the Orangutan. What they were really comparing them to was the chimpanzee. Apes and amen who had low, flat nostrils and comparably shaped skulls were too much alike for their similarities to be overlooked. Some, in fact, even argued that the ape was the offspring of the Negro and some unknown African beast. Still, others believed that the Negro and the ape were having intercourse, specifically that the apes were having sex in the jungle with hot, passionate Negro women.
Because the ape was beastly and lustful, the Negro was also considered beastly and lustful. An early English writer, Samuel Purchas, in a segment of his writings wrote, “they are very greedie eaters, and no less drinkers, and very lecherous, and thievish, and much addicted to uncleanness: one man hath as many wives as hee is able to keepe and maintiane.” During the early 1500’s Leo Africanus, a Spanish Moor, wrote of Negores that “there is no nation under heaven more prone to venery, principally addicted to Treason, Treacherie, Murther, Thaft and Robberie.” Africanus further stated that “the Negroes likewise lead a beastly kind of life being utterly destitute of the ue of reason, of dexterity of wit, and of all arts. Yea, they so behave themselves as if they had continually lived in a forest among wild beasts. They have great swarms of harlots among them; whereupon a man may easily conjure their manner of living.” One 17th century traveler reported that the Negores sported “large propagators” and another stated that Mandingo men were “furnish with such members as are after a sort Burdensome unto them.” The implications were clear. The Negro was a well endowed wild savage who was beastly and who had no control over his carnivorous sexual appetite.
Again, many of the first Negroes were not slaves however, but indentured servants, some sold by their captains. They voted, accumulated land and some owned other Negro servants. Realizing however that negroes were strong, inexpensive and couldn’t be protected by the law, they soon became indentured servants for life, and their supply was inexhaustible. Originally some slave merchants sold negroes and whites as well as liquor, clothing and other goods, with no racial implications. Poor whites, prisoners and debtors were sent to the colonies, and men, women and children were often kidnapped. Free blacks were kidnapped as well. But whites could run away and change their names while the African could not. He might run but he could not hide. Because of his conspicuous visibility, slavery and the black man seemed to be made for each other. Many whites believed that slavery was the black man’s salvation.
