We honor 150 years since the abolition of slavery in the United States. These portraits of black American men and women who had been slaves were taken in the late 1930s. [via]
I WOULD PAY TEN TIMES AS MUCH FOR CHOCOLATE IF IT MEANT REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF SLAVES IN THE WORLD? HOW IS THIS ANY KIND OF PROBLEM.
good news, you can! the company’s called Tony’s Chocolonely and their entire purpose is to make slave-free chocolate and reform the chocolate industry.
Whole Foods carries it. If you don’t want to support an Amazon-owned company, World Market carries it. You can also buy it directly from the company.
It’s the best chocolate I’ve ever had and it’s 100% slave free. Tony’s Chocolonely works really hard to push for transparency within the chocolate industry and actually has and is following an action plan to eliminate slavery within cocoa production. They’re good people who make good chocolate.
As California is being ravaged by deadly fires, let’s remember that over a third of California’s firefighters are incarcerated.
They’re out there now risking their lives, making 1% or less of nonincarcerated firefighters’ salaries, and then they can’t even serve as firefighters when they get out because of their past convictions.
Friendly reminder that firefighting positions for inmates are entirely voluntary, often the best paid jobs available to them, and often coveted because it comes with a higher level of freedom.
Also, it’s a lie that they’re unable to become firefighters. There is no federal or state rule anywhere in the US that prohibits felons from becoming firefighters. It’s up to each individual jurisdiction, and the most common statues dictate only certain related crimes (like arson) being barred from firefighting or a certain amount of time that has passed since the last crime on record (like 10 years).
That’s not exactly right – in California, for example, the state requires that firefighters be certified as emergency medical technicians (EMTs). But because occupational licensing laws bar people with felony convictions from EMT licenses, they can’t serve as firefighters when they get out because of their past convictions, like I said.
Also, sure, firefighting positions are often the best paid jobs available, but that’s not saying much: it’s only one dollar per hour, plus two dollars per day.
It’s also worth noting that incarcerated people themselves describe these jobs as slavery. Deirdre Wilson (a formerly incarcerated volunteer firefighter) for example described her experience as a “cruel joke” and said “You’re not really volunteering. …The system evolved out of a system of slavery where we commodify human bodies and function off their labor.” There was recently a nationwide strike about this: people in prisons are demanding, among other things, an immediate end to prison slavery.
I just thought about this today and dug through my pictures to find it: a letter from a black soldier in the Civil War to the person who owns his daughter. “The longer you keep my child from me the longer you will have to burn in Hell and the quicker you will get there.“
photo text (with corrected spelling and broken into sentences, paragraphs):
Letter from a Black Soldier to the Owner of His Daughter
Spotswood Ric, a former slave, writes to Kittey Diggs, 1864:
I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal, to plunder, my child away from you. Not I want you to understand that Mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own.
And you may hold on to her as long as you can. But I want you to remember this one thing, that the longer you keep my Child from me the longer you will have to burn in hell and the quicker you’ll get there.
For we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up thorough, and want to come through, Glasgow. And when we come woe be to Copperhood rebels and to the Slaveholding rebels. For we don’t expect to leave them there. Root nor branch. But we think however that we (that have children in the hands of you devils), we will try your the day that we enter Glasgow.
I want you to understand Kittey Diggs that where ever you and I meet we are enemies to each other. I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it. Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you.
You never in you life before I came down hear did you give children anything, not anything whatever, not even a dollars worth of expenses. Now you call my children your property. Not so with me.
My children is my own and I expect to get them. And when I get ready to come after Mary I will have both a power and authority to bring her away and to exact vengeances on them that holds my Child.
You will then know how to talk to me. I will assure that. And you will know how to talk right too. I want you now to just hold on; to hear if you want to. If your conscience tells that’s the road, go that road and what it will bring you to Kittey Diggs.
I have no fears about getting Mary out of your hands. This whole Government gives cheer to me and you cannot help yourself.
Source: Ira Berlin, ed. Freedom, A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982, 690.
I wanted to find out what happened (DID HE GET HIS DAUGHTER BACK?) and the answer is that not only was he reunited with his family, but went on to be a successful minister and his daughter was interviewed in the 30s for the Slave Narratives Project.
I didn’t add explicitly in that little history infodump earlier, but yes that helps illustrate the moral backdrop leading to the gradual development of racialized chattel slavery in British Virginia. Whose system a number of later colonies drew from.
(In short: Divide and conquer tactics to avoid larger scale revolt against the whole abusive setup. And it unfortunately mostly worked.
At the turn of the eighteenth century, Virginia’s rulers faced a problem that no other New World colony had ever faced before, nor ever would again. They had about 15,000 adult colonists. Of these, roughly 9,000 were involuntary laborers. About 7,000 of the 9,000 Virginians held in bondage were of European descent and 2,000 were of Native American and/or African ancestry.17 In order to suppress rebellion, Virginia had to create a free yeoman class virtually overnight. They did not have enough time to grow one. They did not even have time to train one. Somehow, they had to split about 5,000 instantly recognizable yeomen from the total forced-labor population, so as to wind up with just as many Virginians with a stake in suppressing servile insurrection as there were in fomenting it. Again, what was unique was that 7,000 of the 9,000 Virginians held in bondage were Europeans.)
That site has some other interesting essays, BTW.
More history which kinda helps explain why things are how they are now.
[ETA: This also helps illustrate why I have absolutely no patience with the folks who want to bring up the existence of indentured servants they usually have no connection to as some sort of bizarre racist gotcha. That was not a good situation in any way, but things just kept getting so much uglier from that baseline of exploitation.]
I just thought about this today and dug through my pictures to find it: a letter from a black soldier in the Civil War to the person who owns his daughter. “The longer you keep my child from me the longer you will have to burn in Hell and the quicker you will get there.“
photo text (with corrected spelling and broken into sentences, paragraphs):
Letter from a Black Soldier to the Owner of His Daughter
Spotswood Ric, a former slave, writes to Kittey Diggs, 1864:
I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal, to plunder, my child away from you. Not I want you to understand that Mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own.
And you may hold on to her as long as you can. But I want you to remember this one thing, that the longer you keep my Child from me the longer you will have to burn in hell and the quicker you’ll get there.
For we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up thorough, and want to come through, Glasgow. And when we come woe be to Copperhood rebels and to the Slaveholding rebels. For we don’t expect to leave them there. Root nor branch. But we think however that we (that have children in the hands of you devils), we will try your the day that we enter Glasgow.
I want you to understand Kittey Diggs that where ever you and I meet we are enemies to each other. I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it. Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you.
You never in you life before I came down hear did you give children anything, not anything whatever, not even a dollars worth of expenses. Now you call my children your property. Not so with me.
My children is my own and I expect to get them. And when I get ready to come after Mary I will have both a power and authority to bring her away and to exact vengeances on them that holds my Child.
You will then know how to talk to me. I will assure that. And you will know how to talk right too. I want you now to just hold on; to hear if you want to. If your conscience tells that’s the road, go that road and what it will bring you to Kittey Diggs.
I have no fears about getting Mary out of your hands. This whole Government gives cheer to me and you cannot help yourself.
Source: Ira Berlin, ed. Freedom, A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982, 690.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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