Responding to Representative Jasmine Crockett’s and Jamal Bowman’s Comments About 'Oppression'

Among the many recent examples of racism directed against both our nation and white people in particular, three examples prominently stand out. On November 20th Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (TX-D) retorted during a debate on DEI on the House floor, “You tell me which white man was dragged out of their homes! You tell me which one of them got dragged all the way across an ocean and told that you’re gunna go to work!  We’re gunna steal your wives—we’re gunna rape your wives. That didn’t happen—that is oppression!”  More recently, Rep. Jamal Bowman argued in his “Dear white people” letter that white supremacy led to a jury’s finding Daniel Perry innocent of criminal charges in the death of Jordan Neely. He additionally hurled other false charges against the “white people” of America. Finally, on December 13th Duke rape accuser Crystal Mangum finally admitted 18 years after ruining many lives that she fabricated the rape accusation she leveled at several white male students. Although she asked the young men to forgive her, she admitted, “I don’t have any regrets.”

All of these racially incendiary examples stem from the false historical narrative put forth in DEI and CRT initiatives. Despite the billions spent to create the false image of Western Civilization and the U.S. being unique in bearing the responsibility for slavery and for oppressing non-whites, a lingering historical reality contradicts this simplistic view. Such racist opinions, now thoroughly ingrained in higher education and the federal government, require a detailed response. Several historians have recently responded to the plight of an estimated 3 to 4 million white Christian slaves who were seized by non-Western people of color for over 1,200 years. Unfortunately, these responses have neglected a more complete societal comparison between Anglo-America and Africa. In response to Rep. Crockett’s charges, in particular, it’s important to remember that: 

– African kingdoms aided and abetted the enslavement of both Africans and Europeans for almost 1,200 years. Anglo-America enslaved Africans for less than 250 years—the United States for less than 100 years. Despite the international African slave trade being eventually stopped by Europeans, Africa today has the most slaves of any continent. 

– For 1200 years, European women were openly trafficked as sex slaves in Africa’s Muslim city-states on both its Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Contrary to DEI and CRT teaching, Biblical and societal norms in British North America worked to discourage such sexual relationships. For example, there is no African equivalent to our colonial anti-miscegenation laws. Moreover, African Muslim leaders openly kept large harems of Christian women for sexual purposes. Although at times there were so many Christian slaves in Algiers that one could be purchased for the cost of an onion, the ransom price established to free Christian women and men showed their actual value. When Edmund Cason was sent by England in 1646 to purchase the freedom of as many slaves as possible, he spent over £1,000 each for many of the freed English women vs only £38 for men.

– Although CRT argues that the conditions faced by African slaves in America were unprecedented, European slaves in Africa faced far worse. African slaves in America saw no equivalent to the conditions faced by tens of thousands of European galley slaves—chained to their oars for the duration of their short lives. 

-- The greatest threat to slavery in America was the written word. The Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and many legal ‘freedom suits’ all served to win freedom for countless slaves. Where are the African equivalents to our Abolitionist Societies and to our documents and lawsuits opposing the enslavement of Christians? There are none. There simply are no African equivalents to U.S. v Claiments of the Amistad (1841) or “Mum” Bett v Ashley (1791) and countless other freedom suits. Nor did any African city-state ever pass the equivalent of the ‘Personal Liberty Laws’ that many northern states enacted in opposition to the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

– Before the end of slavery in America, there were many white martyrs who willingly gave their lives, their fortunes, or who were severely punished for their efforts to abolish slavery. Elijah Lovejoy died for freedom of the press. Robert Carter III—the richest man in America at the time—gave away his entire fortune to free Africans from slavery in Virginia. (He died poor, and his grave is unknown today.)  Cassius M. Clay, Charles Sumner, and John Brown risked their lives or personal well-being in the struggle. Sherman Booth and John Hossack were among the many whites found guilty of harboring slaves in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Where is the list of African or Muslim martyrs who struggled to free any of the millions of white slaves held in Africa?

-- Whereas Islam has many different sects within the faith–similar to Christianity–not one single African or Islamic sect argued for an end to the enslavement of Europeans. Within Christianity, however, Quakers, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and other powerful Christian voices opposed African slavery. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of white American Christians signed petitions to Congress urging the abolition of African slavey.

– Americans so opposed slavery that they fought THREE wars against the institution–two to free white Americans enslaved in Africa and one to free Blacks enslaved in America. What African or Muslim nation can boast of such a record?

– Whereas there are many examples of prominent individuals of the “oppressive race” working to end slavery in America (John Brown, Theodore Weld, Lewis Tappan, William L. Garrison, etc.) it’s difficult to find a single African or Islamic leader who devoted his life to the betterment of European slaves. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century America produced many authors, poets, educators, clerics, editors, and politicians who worked diligently to develop an anti-slavery culture in our nation before the Civil War. There is simply no cultural equivalent to Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Garrison’s “The Liberator,” or Longfellow’s ”Poems on Slavery” in Africa over the 1,200 years of European enslavement.

– Often, American slaves could simply run away from their condition. In doing so, they were protected by northern antislavery citizens of both races. Unfortunately, the typical U.S. History textbook fails to mention that the same men who formed the Republican Party in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin, were part of a 5,000 strong band of white males who freed an escaped slave from jail only days earlier. European slaves in Africa had no such opportunities for freedom. They were trapped by deserts, the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean, and a population that mostly regarded them as ‘dogs’ and ‘beasts.’ There are no examples of thousands of African males organizing to free white Christian slaves such as what happened in Ripon, Boston, and elsewhere.

--Anglo-American society often celebrated the successful escapes of Africans from slavery within our nation. The Amistad freedom fighters became celebrities in New England where collections were taken up to pay for their education and legal costs. Frederick Douglass, Phyllis Wheatly, Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, Benjamin Banneker, William Wells Brown, and numerous other African American slaves became both successful and prominent within the white dominated culture of their time. The ‘white oppressive’ society permitted their establishing newspapers, operating successful businesses, petitioning authorities for redress, and allowed for their filing of lawsuits—often with results in their favor. African slave states tolerated no such activities on the part of their European slaves.

– It’s commonly agreed the worst experience for African slaves was the “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic. Slaves that died enroute from unsanitary, crowded conditions were simply thrown overboard. This, however, is not unlike the thousands of European slaves who died for centuries while being chained for life to an oar in an Islamic galley or who worked on building the massive breakwaters for African harbors. These unfortunates were beaten daily to get the very last ounce of work from them, then simply cast into the Mediterranean when they died. To replace them only required attacking any defenseless Christian coastal town or ship to obtain more.

– Many prominent Americans joined the American Colonial Society, an organization charged with purchasing the freedom of slaves and returning them to their homeland in Africa. Americans purchased land in Liberia, Africa, and supported missionary and educational efforts to improve the lives of Africans. No Africans ever bought land in Christendom for the sole purpose of returning Christian slaves to their homeland.

– Many states in both the North and South passed “manumission laws” to encourage freedom. No African or Islamic city-state ever passed laws to encourage non-white masters to free their white slaves. 

--Due to many of the reasons above, it’s no surprise that among all nations in the Western Hemisphere, the fewest number of African slaves were brought to what is now the United States. It’s also notable that only in the U.S. were slaves able to augment their numbers through natural childbirth—thanks to a longer life expectancy than in Latin America.

These are only some examples of how Rep. Crockett was  wrong in her interpretation of the past. There are additional historical examples to prove her wrong—the indentured servitude of countless Anglo emigrants to British North America, the enslavement of the Irish who were sent to the Caribbean during Cromwell’s reign, the plight of over 25,000 British convicts who arrived in American in chains, the impressment of tens of thousands of Englishmen and Americans into virtual slavery by British naval press gangs, and the breakup of families and the sale of countless German “Redemptioners” in the colonies before the Revolution. Nor does this include the contemporary example of Western women being the victims of countless rapes or sexual assaults by “people of color”—often from Africa—in Scandinavia and other parts of Western Europe. One British paper declared the 1400 young girls who were sexually abused and traded amongst the foreign-born men in the city of Rotherham in recent years were the equivalent of their being sex-slaves.

The above examples are given as a partial answer to Rep. Crockett. Can it be that she and Jamal Bowman represent the two best examples of what’s wrong with DEI and CRT?

The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa -- the National Social Studies Honor Society -- past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com. 

Disney's Diabolical Delusion DeliberatelyFuels Racism

Disney—the once-great corporation that was universally admired in the 1950s and 1960s is today deliberately working to help fuel racism amongst our most innocent citizens—young children.  A recent production of Disney’s “The Proud Family” put forth yet another false narrative about our nation’s history—that only Black slaves “built this nation” and that Blacks today deserve reparations “for every moment we spend submerged in this systemic prejudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.” To illustrate this last point, the cartoon showcases a picture of a young Black man with his palms turned up and the words “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” written on them. The film features predominately Black girls angrily denouncing the Founding Fathers and at one point shows the presidential images on Mount Rushmore being replaced with the likes of Harriett Tubman, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass—the “real” champions of freedom. Lincoln is deliberately snubbed as the girls proclaim “we can only free ourselves …. emancipation was not freedom.” No context, of course, is supplied for these outlandish charges—thus exposing the cartoon for the racist propaganda that it is. 

 Disney has certainly declined from the company that virtually every home was tuned in to watch in television’s formative years. In earlier times, Disney regularly featured wholesome, patriotic portrayals of America’s past that influenced generations of children. Recently, however, it has worked diligently to promote the Leftist goal to “fundamentally change America.” One executive producer has admitted she deliberately infused gay-lifestyle themes into as many productions as possible. Disney's Diversity and Inclusion Manager, Vivian Ware, led the effort to ditch the words ladies, gentlemen, boys, and girls in its theme parks in order to not alienate transgender children. The company has already pulled or posted warning labels to old movie favorites such as Dumbo, Peter Pan, Aristocats, Swiss Family Robinson, and Song of the South for their bing deemed offensive to minorities. It fired the conservative star of Mandalorian, Gina Carano, for posting to a social media site her criticism of attacks upon Republicans. Secretly recorded Critical Race Theory trainings for Disney staff have blamed all whites for systemic racism and instructed them to never “question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.” Disney’s white employees were also asked to complete a “white privilege checklist" with such qualifiers as “I am a man,” “I still identify as the gender I was born in,” and “I have never been raped.” Upon discovering this, Chris Rufo rightly argued that “the Magi Kingdom is a house of lies” because it has used slave and child labor, filmed “Mulan” near Uighur concentration camps, and censored its content for the Chinese Communist Party.  

But it's much worse than this. Disney's latest attempt to fundamentally change America illustrates the company's diabolical nature. The Proud Family episode deliberately distorts our nation's history. The fact that slavery was universal among cultures is ignored. There is no mention that North African and Ottoman Muslims enslaved millions of white Europeans for over 1,000 years. Children are intentionally left with the notion that only Black slaves "built this country." They are not informed that both Hinton Helper and Alexis de Tocqueville offered plenty of evidence that slavery--far from being responsible for all the nation's wealth--actually retarded the South's economic progress and development. There is no mention of the exploitation of Irish immigrants in the nation's coal mines and in the construction of our railroads and canals. Apparently the white farm girls who worked 13 hours daily in the Lowell Mills, the Chinese coolie laborers who built the Central Pacific Railroad, the immigrant miners who worked 364 days a year in our mines, the workers who were machine gunned during their labor strike at Ludlow, Colorado, and countless other examples of exploited non-Black victims who helped build this nation played no role in creating our nation's prosperity. Nor can we forgive Disney for helping to inflame the racial hatred and violence that currently engulfs America. The cartoon's attempt to reaffirm the lie surround the George Floyd case by promoting the phrase "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" in the cartoon is unpardonable. 

Far from succeeding in its goal of indoctrinating America’s children to the necessity of imposing racial reparations on the nation, Disney has only succeeded in showing how its militant cartoon characters are ignorant of real history. Disney intentionally promotes the falsehood that Black men are routinely shot down by police while trying to surrender with the cartoon’s ‘hands up’ scene. Meanwhile, the cartoon’s promotion of Nat Turner—a murderer who slew his master and his wife while they were sleeping in their bed at night and who ordered their infant child to be slaughtered in his crib—is a sad commentary of what passes today as acceptable viewing for children. Disney’s producers apparently didn’t know that Turner’s men decapitated the infant in its crib and threw its body into the fireplace. Nor that two other children were later beheaded. Nor that almost all of Turner’s victims were defenseless, unarmed women and children. And, according to Disney, this is the man who should be depicted on Mount Rushmore? 

 

Let’s not give Disney the benefit of the doubt here. The company has a litany of researchers and historians at its disposal who could give caution to its deliberate dissemination of racial bias and falsehood. These deliberate distortions of history and racial animus—far from bringing us closer together as a people— only serve to further divide us into ethnic and racial tribes. These falsehoods lead to the assassination of police officers, an increase in racially inspired hate crimes, and countless break-ins and robberies of businesses throughout the nation as “oppressed” individuals seek the ‘reparations’ they now think they deserve. 

 

Disney should apologize for its promotion of a murderer of children to an audience of children in the vague hope that we’ll somehow have better race relations in the future. 

 

__________   

Jack Bovee

Fort Myers, FL 
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.

 

Email:  JSBOVEE@aol.com      

Are Whites the only ‘imperialists’ and ‘supremacists’?

Another basic tenet of CRT exposed as false: examples of non-white imperialist, supremacist and genocidal aggression  

 

 

As much as today’s college-educated liberal elites and Black nationalists like to pin the charge of “supremacist” thinking upon only whites, recent past history and events provide ample examples of such discriminatory behavior perpetrated by people of color. Rather than admit that all cultures are basically guilty of such behavior, today’s Marxist-influenced intellectuals who dominate academia have simply replaced the once-reviled bourgeoisie with Caucasians. Their aim remains the same—the overthrow of today’s ‘existing social order’ in the West and the establishment of a supposedly utopian, classless society that rests upon authoritarian practices.  For those who admire the principles of an egalitarian society where opportunity is equally available to all, today’s new Marxists like Ibram Kendi now openly call for a return to the past where every decision is based upon race. In their world, the color-blindness of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan and Dr. Martin Luther King has no place.  

 

For centuries, cultures on every continent rose to positions of dominance by practicing the subjugation, enslavement, and sometimes even genocide against others who were different from themselves. Thus ancient Greeks considered all others ‘barbarians,’ non-Latin peoples all sought the advantages of Roman citizenship, and African and Native America tribes indulged in wars of conquest and demanded tribute from ‘inferior’ groups. Although African and Native America tribes are almost always portrayed as victims, the historical record includes the Iroquois obliterating the Eriez, the Sioux being driven onto the Great Plains by other Indian groups, Mayans and Aztecs requiring the human sacrifice of their captives, the African Nubian people conquering Egypt, and Mongol and Chinese armies establishing some of the world’s largest empires over other ethnic groups. Nor have such practices by non-whites been confined to the long-forgotten past. The modern era is replete with anti-CRT examples that have witnessed the following “supremacist” events by people of color:

 

The Mfecane, or ‘the crushing,’ was caused by the violent expansionistic wars of the Zulu empire in South Africa between 1820 and 1840. It caused an estimated 2 million deaths and displaced less powerful African tribes throughout the southern half of the continent. 

 

The Fulani War (1804-1808) which pitted the Fulani people against the Hausa and created the Sokoto Empire in West Central Africa—an Islamic state that became one of the largest states in Africa in the 19^th century.

 

During the course of World War I and in the years immediately following that conflict, the Turkish nation engaged in the systematic genocide of their non-Islamic Christian Greek and Armenian neighbors who were viewed as less than-equal members of that society. Millions were brutalized, raped, starved and tortured in one of the most massive ethnic and religious cleansings of the last couple hundred years.  

 

In 1947 when India and Pakistan both declared their independence from Britain, the ‘religiously’ and ethnically supremacist beliefs of both groups prevented their being able to co-exist with one another. Over hundreds of years, scores of millions of Hindus had been subjugated and oppressed by Muslim overlords who viewed them as less than equal infidels. The separation between the two groups after World War II displaced tens of millions of persons and the deaths of an estimated one to two million lives. Forgotten today in the charge that only whites and Westerners can harbor ‘supremacist’ tendencies is the fact that only through the efforts of whites had these two groups been prevented from committing acts of genocide against one another for two hundred years. Today, when white Christians are no longer around, murderous acts between the two groups continue to threaten the lives of millions. 

 

In 1972 the Burundi Genocide -- where the Tutsi dominated military and government slew an estimated 150,000 Hutu in order to subjugate them—took place in central Africa.

 

In 1967, the Igbos people of Biafra declared independence from the Hausa-Fulani dominated Nigeria resulting in the deaths of between one and two million innocents from genocide and starvation. The International Red Cross estimated 8,000 to 10,000 innocents starved to death each day during the blockade of basic food and medical supplies to the province by Nigeria. The leader of a Nigerian peace conference delegation said in 1968 that "starvation is a legitimate weapon of war and we have every intention of using it . . ." [1] 

Legal scholar Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe and other academics argued that the Biafran War was a true genocide, for which no perpetrators have been held accountable. Biafra made a formal complaint of genocide to the International Committee on the Investigation of Crimes of Genocide, which concluded that the actions undertaken by the Nigerian government against the Igbo amounted to a genocide. With special reference to the Asaba Massacre, jurist Emma Okocha described the killings as "the first black-on-black genocide." [2]   

From 1980 to 2003 Africa’s oldest republic saw devastation and numerous war crimes. It began in 1980 when Sergeant Samuel Doe ended 133 years of continuous rule by the descendants of American slaves repatriated back to Liberia, Africa. The descendants of American slaves had dominated the affairs of the nation since its inception and native Africans like Doe resented their supremacist policies. He tortured and murdered the previous president, William R. Tolbert, Jr.  Ten days after Tolbert’s murder, Doe had 13 other Tolbert supporters stripped naked to their underwear and brutally murdered on a beach outside Monrovia.  In 1990 he himself was captured by rebels, stripped to his underwear, interrogated on film, and had an ear sliced off before being murdered. His tormentor, Prince Johnson, calmly presided over the execution while drinking a can of beer and having the entire episode filmed.  Wikipedia states that Samuel Doe’s Krahn tribe persecuted the Gio and Mano tribes because “they were seen as inferior by the President’s own tribe, the Krahn.” (Found "here"; italics added)  

 

Charles Taylor, once a supporter of Doe, began an opposition group composed mostly of Gio and Mano tribesmen in nearby Cote d'Ivoire. When these forces invaded Liberia, Doe’s supporters retaliated in brutal fashion. “Thousands of civilians were massacred on both sides. Hundreds of thousands fled their homes.” A second rebel army under Prince Johnson broke off from Taylor’s force and both rebel groups sought control of the nation by attempting to seize its capital, Monrovia. In the worst massacre of the war, 30 Krahn soldiers murdered over 600 unarmed civilians who had sought sanctuary in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Monrovia in July 1990.  Fighting was so bad in 1994 that over 1.8 million civilians needed humanitarian assistance from the West. By 1996 most of Monrovia was destroyed. In 1997 under supervised elections, Charles Taylor took office as president and much of the fighting subsided. The war, which involved child soldiers on both sides, cost over 200,000 lives and forced over one million others into refugee camps. War broke out again in 1999 and only ended in 2003 with the capture and eventual arrest of Charles Taylor in neighboring Nigeria in 2006. Tried and convicted on charges of rape, acts of sexual violence, and the murderous use of child soldiers, he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.  It should be noted that hundreds of child soldier murderers were brought to the United States as refugees to remove them from the murderous environment of Liberia. 

 

In 1994, it was estimated a Hutu genocide of over 500,000 Tutsi in Rwanda with the systemic rape of over 250,000 women had taken place.

Nor are these African supremacist and genocidal actions relegated to the past. Today’s expansionistic Boko Harem (“westernization is sacrilege”) insurgency of Muslim backed militia against Nigerian Christians that has resulted in the kidnapping, rape, and murders of tens of thousands. Islamic Jihad has seized other African nations with mass murder events in Burkina-Faso, Mozambique, Uganda, and other nations.  In May 2021, Ghanian President Akufo-Addo stated Islamic Jihad was aimed at subjugating many West African countries.  We’ve seen the same happen to Christians in Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, China, and countless other nations.

 

Not surprisingly, CRT adherents remain silent about the fact that in the last three-quarters century, western governments have often rushed aid and used their influence to either end the brutality or ameliorate the suffering of brown and black innocent victims.  Today’s advocates of CRT often neglect to mention that it was the governments of white European nations that first ended slavery around the Third World—often in opposition to the protests of people of color. To mention this fact would, of course, run counter to their false claim that only whites and the West are guilty of imperialist and supremacist thoughts and acts. But such is the sad state of historical knowledge among most young adults in America today, that far too many fall victim to the deliberate falsehoods of Critical Race Theory advocates. The destructive social upheavals and rioting in over 200 cities across the United States in 2020 could only have occurred as a result of such historical ignorance.

 

-------  

Jack Bovee 

Fort Myers, FL 
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.

---

[1] Wikipedia, “Nigerian Civil War: Atrocities Against the Igbos”  (available HERE, accessed  May 30, 2022). 

[2] Ibid. 

 

1619 Brought Freedom, Not Slavery, to the Africans at Jamestown; at the Same Time Africans Enslaved Europeans with Impunity

 I wanted people to know the date 1619 and to contemplate what it means that slavery predates nearly every other institution in the United States.                                               -- Nikole Hannah Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

What else hadn't we been taught?                                                                                                 --  Nikole Hannah Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

The most common narrative in American schools and the popular culture today is that slavery began in America in 1619.  Unfortunately, there is about as much truth in that scenario as there was in the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” argument related to the death of Michael Brown of 2014.  Nikole Hannah-Jones and other advocates of Critical Race Theory prove beyond doubt the accuracy of Arthur Schlesinger’s maxim that "history is a weapon."  They distort the historical narrative by omitting key facts that, if told, would present an entirely different view of the past. 

     The events leading up to the arrival of Africans at Jamestown in 1619 seem to be well agreed upon today. They were captured in Angola, Africa and sold by Africans to Portuguese slavers based in Luanda. While being transported on the San Juan Batista to the Spanish port of Vera Cruz, Mexico, the ship was captured by two English corsairs, the White Lion—flying a Dutch flag-- and the Treasurer off the Mexican coast.  The English raiders removed some of the slaves who were then brought to Jamestown. Here, the White Lion exchanged “some twenty odd” Africans for "victualls" in August 1619.[1] That colony—in desperate need of laborers and resorting to indentured servitude—gladly accepted them.  Here the agreement stops.

     The status of these Africans will probably never be resolved. Nikole Hannah-Jones argues they were all reduced to slavery. Others argue that the Africans were given the same status as white indentured servants. The latter argue the word "servant" and not "slave" was used to describe them in Virginia’s first census of 1620. That accounting “recorded 32 Africans, 17 female and 15 male, all probably from the White Lion and Treasurer. None of the Africans are identified by name in this census . . . In 1620, there were 32 Africans in Virginia, making up about 3% of Virginia’s non-native population; by 1625, there were around 25 Africans, or about 2%.”[2]  The decline in the number of Africans in 1625 may be attributed to the high mortality rate of all settlers in the marshy area where Virginia’s earliest English settlements were located or as part of the 350 setters killed in the uprising of Native Americans there in 1622.  

     What complicates matters is that indentured servants sometimes referred to themselves as slaves. Certainly, not all white indentured servants came here willingly. Over 52,000 convicts were saved from the gallows in England by being sent as indentured servants to America. Hundreds of children were seized from England’s streets and shuffled off to the colonies by English authorities. Kidnapping children, or ‘spiriting’ as it was called, was another common fate that befell many youth from the British Isles. Of 100 children transferred to Jamestown in 1619 and others sent the next year, only 12 were still alive for the census taken in 1625. (3] Often, the line between slave and indentured servant was blurred.      

     The status of the Africans is also unclear because after the Virginia census of 1625 we lose sight of them after that date. In putting forth the claim that the Africans who arrived in 1619 were life-long slaves it becomes necessary to generalize events and omit key facts. For example, President Obama’s 2011 proclamation of their landing in Virginia states, "the first enslaved Africans in England's colonies in America were brought to this peninsula on a ship flying a Dutch flag in 1619, beginning a long ignoble period of slavery in the colonies, and later, this Nation."[3]

      Unfortunately, that's not the entire story. The words “probably,” “may,” and “likely,” are freely used to support the argument that the enslavement of Africans in British America began in 1619. The Africans were indeed slaves when they arrived in Virginia. And they undoubtedly would have continued to remain slaves had they reached their intended destination in Mexico. What the historical record in Virginia does  show is that the small group of Africans was repeatedly referred to as “servants” in the annual censuses of 1620, 1624 & 1625. Moreover, several of them later appear as free persons. For this to happen, they undoubtedly had to have been accorded the status of indentured servants. Anthony Johnson—one of the earliest Africans to arrive there—began his life in Virginia as an indentured servant who gained his freedom and eventually became the owner of 250 acres of land through the headright system. His African wife, Mary, arrived in Virginia on the Margarett and John in 1622 or 1623 and is reported as living with Anthony in 1625.  They were both free before 1645 and “became comparatively prosperous landowners” on Virginia’s eastern shore.  In February 1653, Johnson’s home and some outbuildings were consumed by fire and he received public assistance from the colony because of his “hard labor and known service.” There’s more.

Two years later, when he and his family had again attained a modicum of prosperity, he successfully sued a prominent planter who he accused of illegally confiscating some of his livestock. Then in 1654, an incident took place that proved that Johnson, a black man, not only owned another member of his race, but was able to keep him in bondage for the rest of his life. The man in question was a “Negro called John Casor,'' who convinced a white neighbor that he was an indentured servant who should have been freed at the expiration of his tenure. Believing Casor, the man took him home to work in his own tobacco fields . . . In the end, the justices decided that Casor ``shall forthwith be returned unto the service of his master Anthony Johnson.'[4]

   It’s ironic that the Anthony/Casor suit is cited as the first example of an African having to serve another for life—a free African enslaving another African—was something all too common in Anthony’s native Africa. The life of John Pedro provides another example of a free African man in early Virginia. In 1625 John is listed as living in the household of Francis West in the census of 1625 but he’s a free landowner in Lancaster, Virginia in the 1650s. We know of yet another free African man, John Phillip, because he testified in court in 1624. He is thought to have been“the only African to arrive in Virginia free.”[5]

     Unfortunately, the scant records do not tell us much about the individual lives of the few dozen Africans that lived in the Virginia colony in its early years, but they were not slaves.  Certainly, a person’s social class, religious affiliation, and gender accounted more than race for how he was treated in Virginia at the time.  Some Africans gained free status and were able to successfully sue—not just once, but twice—more prominent white colonists. It’s true that by the 1660s the status of Africans was increasingly moving toward what would become a system of life-long slavery, but when viewed from the context of global events, this shuld hardly seem surprising. 

     English civilians had long been at risk of enslavement themselves by Africans—as the white aristocrats in charge of the early Virginia colony were fully aware.  The coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland at this very time were targeted by Muslim slavers from North Africa.  Since the Berber invasion of Spain and France in the early 700s AD, large Islamic armies had launched massive slave raids against Christian Europe. Unlike Europe, which sought precious spices from the East in the late Middle Ages, Muslim armies sought “white gold” in the form of slaves. Men were prized as galley slaves, eunuchs, and laborers who were worked to death in the quarries of North Africa. European women were prized as concubines. Even worse, from the early 1400s to 1700 AD, hundreds of thousands of white Christian boys and girls were seized by the Ottoman Empire in a form of “child tax” called devshirma.  These children were separated from their families, forced to convert, subjected to life-long slavery, and often used to further subjugate Christian Europe.

     It should be remembered the early English explorer of Virginia, John Smith, was a soldier of fortune whose military experience fighting the Ottomans helped the colony to survive. In August 1625—the very year the Virginia census listed 25 Africans living there--Muslim slavers from Africa seized over 60 English residents who sought refuge in a church in Cornwall, England. On the 12^th of that month the mayor of Plymouth pleaded with the Privy Council in London that in just 10 days “27 ships had been taken and all the men on board, over 200 of them--had been made slaves.” African slave raiders seized 36 more ships from England, Scotland and Ireland in just the month of March 1636. In 1631 African slavers seized 109 prized captives—89 women and children and 20 men-- from Baltimore, Ireland, selling them into slavery in Algiers. From Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel of the Irish Sea, Muslim slavers established a permanent base and sailed 3,000 miles on two occasions to Iceland to capture almost 400 white slaves in June and July, 1627. Over 36 innocent people were killed, some being burned alive as the North Africans burned their homes and church. All of the captives were sold as slaves in North Africa.[6]

      African based slavers even attacked the Faroe Islands, far to the north of Scotland in 1629 as they continued to ravage helpless towns all over coastal Europe. One Icelandic historian writes: 

They [North African Muslims] ravaged other coasts, like the Faroe Islands in 1629, leaving 300 dead in their wake, and Ireland in 1631, as well as towns all over the Mediterranean and western coasts of Spain, England and France. By the 1650s, there were 30,000 prisoners from coastal lands all over Europe in Algiers alone.  …As one of the hapless 400 Guoriour [a Christian Icelandic woman] spent nine years in what’s now Algiers before the Danish government finally came up with ransom money for 35 Icelanders, eight Norwegians and seven Danes.  The other captives had either died, were made slaves on the galley ships or were sent to harems.   …She was ransomed in June 1636 but had to leave her son behind in Algiers. Children of captives were forced to convert to Islam, and by doing so, lost all right to return…during the three centuries or so that Barbary corsairs hunted the seas.[7]

 

     Ben Johnson, in “Barbary Pirates and English Slaves,” succinctly summarizes the English world of the early seventeenth century: “For over 300 years, the coastlines of the south west of England were at the mercy of Barbary pirates (corsairs) from the coast of North Africa.” In 1626 “It was feared that there were around 60 Barbary men-of-war prowling the Devon and Cornish coasts and attacks were now occurring almost daily.”[8] Things would not improve for white residents of England. "Between 1677 and 1680 the English [alone] were losing 3,000 people to Muslim slavers per year, highlighting a problem that had not abated for the entirety of the century."[9]

     Indeed, more white Englishmen and women were seized and taken as slaves to North Africa in the first half of the seventeenth century than Black West Africans were taken to America at the time.  This fact could not have escaped the consciousness of English authorities in that colony as it codified laws pertaining to racial slavery in 1662.

     Nor were the English unfamiliar with events in eastern Europe. While the coastline of western Europe lay bare to Islamic African slavers for three centuries, Ottoman slave raids from the Crimean Khanate enslaved an estimated 2 million people over several hundred years. These white Christian slaves were sold in Istanbul, in Egypt and in North African port cities. "Crimean Tartars invaded Slavic lands 38 times between 1654 and 1657; 52,000 people were seized by the Tartars in the spring of 1655 in the course of a raid into the territory of Ukraine and Southern Russia.[10] In a single massive raid in 1769, over 20,000 Slavs were seized and sold as slaves.[11] 

          To ignore these historical facts serves only to “weaponize” history. In taking the long view of slavery in America, it’s worth remembering that very few of the transatlantic slaves from Africa ever arrived in North America. African-American historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. states that—"of the 10.7 million who disembarked in the New World— only 450,000 African slaves were ever brought to North America."[12]  Africans from the Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, on the hand, are estimated to have enslaved 1.25 to 1.5 million white Europeans. These figures do not account for millions more Europeans captured and taken to Morocco, Istanbul, and Egypt over hundred of years. Just as the facts surrounding the exact nature of the status of those few dozen Africans who disembarked in Virginia from 1610 to 1650 remain unclear, so the total number of Europeans who suffered enslavement by people of color remains hazy.

           What is clear is that there has been a deliberate omission of the historical record in American schools regarding the subject of global slavery and how it influenced the thinking of early English colonists in North America.  Nor are many Americans aware that in its first 100 years as a nation, the U.S. fought three anti-slavery wars—two to free white slaves and one to free blacks. 

     What has been the result of this deliberate distortion of our nation’s past? National division. Increased racial tension and hate crimes, emanating from a false narrative.  A lack of patriotism in our younger generation that has not been told the truth. New forms of discrimination and racial segregation now aimed against those who supposedly enjoy the benefits of ‘white privilege.’ Increased social upheaval within our once grand major cities. A collapse of our educational system. A weakened military. Increased tribalism all across the nation.  

    This has been the toll of the false narrative. Literally, the survival of our nation is at stake.

    How do we correct the problem? Simple. 

    We begin by demanding a return to the honest teaching of American history. 

ENDNOTES

[1] Waxman, Olivia B. “The First Africans Landed in Virginia in 1619. It Was a Turning Point for Slavery in American History—But Not the Beginning,” Time, August 20, 2019. Accessed HERE on December 5, 2022.  

[2] Austin, Beth. “1619: Virginia’s First Africans,” Hampton History Institute (2019).  Accessed HERE on December 5, 2022.  (https://hampton.gov/DocumentCenter/View/24075/1619-Virginias-First-Africans?bidId=)  

[3] Waxman.  

[4] “Ambitious Slave-Turned-Slaveowner Enjoys Farm Success,” The Virginian Pilot (August 21, 1994). Accessed HERE on December 6, 2022.   [https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1994/vp940821/08190821.htm ]

[5] Waxman

[6] Webb, Simon. “The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slavery of Islam,”  (Pen & Sword Books, Philadelphia 2020), pages 70-73.

[7] Duin, Julia. “Iceland’s Best Selling Book on the Woman Who Escaped Pirates,” Religion Unpluggd, January 9, 2020. Accessed HERE, December 4, 2020.  [https://religionunplugged.com/news/2020/1/9/icelandic-author-searching-for-english-publisher-for-best-selling-book-on-muslim-pirate-abductions ]     

[8] Johnson, Ben. “Barbary Pirates and English Slaves,” Historic UK, Accessed HERE, December 2,

2022. [https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Barbary-Pirates-English-Slaves/ ]

[9] “The Surprising Tale of the Muslim Pirates that Raided from Rome to Reykjavik,” Exploring

History, Accessed HERE, on December 4, 2022. [https://medium.com/exploring-history/the-surprising-tale-of-themuslim-pirates-that-raided-from-rome-to-reykjav%C3%ADk-b63bd417c27 ]

[10] Kizilov, Mikhail. “Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea from the Perspective of Christian,

Muslim, and Jewish Sources,” Journal of Early Modern History (2007). (Available HERE).

[11] Wikipedia: "Slavic Slaves." Acessed HERE on December 5, 2022, 

[12] Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “How Many Africans Were Really Taken to the U.S. During the SlaveTrade?” America’s Black Holocaust Museum, (January 6, 2014). Accessed HERE on December 5, 2022.

             

To download a PDF version of this article click "HERE."

____________.   

Jack Bovee

Fort Myers, FL 
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.

The Forgotten White Slavery by People of Color

Recent emphasis on the Marxist historical ideology known as Critical Race Theory (CRT) in American schools from kindergarten through post-secondary classrooms has led to the mistaken belief that whites only enslaved persons of color and that other races never enslaved whites. Such historical errors are the result of contemporary western writers and historians concentrating primarily on the trans-Atlantic slave trade while ignoring the history of slavery as a global phenomenon. Overemphasis on the historical errors of CRT has led some researchers to now offer well-known accounts of slavery that differ from the CRT narrative. Leaving aside the many examples of Native American tribes enslaving white Americans during the colonial and Early National Periods of our history, these researchers have brought new attention to the vast numbers of white European slaves who were captured and sold as chattel property in Africa. In a work published in the United States in 2021, Simon Webb once again reminds us that slavery was an institution common to all civilizations and that white Europeans had been enslaved to Africans and Middle Easterners for many hundreds of years. From the dawn of Viking raids in the ninth century until white Christian slavery was finally brought to an end along the Barbary Coast of Africa in 1816, the sale of white Christian slaves to African and eastern “peoples of color” continued for almost one thousand years.  

     Two open and download a PDF file featuring the salient points of this article, go "HERE" . . .   

     For additional information related to the enslavement of white Europeans, readers are encouraged to read: “The Biggest Lie of Critical Race Theory”. There are seven key concepts related to to controversial topic of slavery that few textbooks acknowledge today. (go "HERE")

_______ 

Jack Bovee

Fort Myers, FL 
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa--the National Social Studies Honor Society--past president of the Florida Council for the Social Studies, and a former Elementary School Principal of the Year in Lee County, Florida. He may be reached at: jsbovee@aol.com.