New Books Network Presents: The Weeping Time

This week we thank New Books Network for the opportunity to share my work, The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Have a listen.

http://newbooksnetwork.com/anne-c-bailey-the-weeping-time-memory-and-the-largest-slave-auction-in-american-history-cambridge-up-2017/

From the publisher, here also is an abstract of the book:

In 1859, at the largest recorded slave auction in American history, over 400 men, women, and children were sold by the Butler Plantation estates. This book is one of the first to analyze the operation of this auction and trace the lives of slaves before, during, and after their sale. Immersing herself in the personal papers of the Butlers, accounts from journalists that witnessed the auction, genealogical records, and oral histories, Anne C. Bailey weaves together a narrative that brings the auction to life. Demonstrating the resilience of African American families, she includes interviews from the living descendants of slaves sold on the auction block, showing how the memories of slavery have shaped people's lives today. Using the auction as the focal point, The Weeping Time is a compelling and nuanced narrative of one of the most pivotal eras in American history, and how its legacy persists today.

Anne C. Bailey

                                                       

Rosa Parks and Finding Our Way Home

At a time when many in Texas, Florida and elsewhere in the Southeast as well as the Caribbean have lost their homes due to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, I have become even more aware of the importance of home.

The irony for me as a student of Black history is that one of my greatest heroes never owned a home.  Rosa Parks – who became known to the world through the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 – never owned her own home. She, with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., helped desegregate the buses of Atlanta but never signed her name to a deed. She and her husband never had the pleasure of turning the key to a place they could call their own. They never knew what it was to make home improvements and to see the value of their property increase. They never knew what it was to will their property to their loved ones – thereby leaving them with a physical and psychological legacy and leg up.

Parks, like many in the African Diaspora, was like a wanderer in a strange land.  After Rosa Parks took her fateful stand, as Dr. Jeanne Theoharis shows so beautifully in a recent article in The Root, she was not able to get stable work again in Montgomery. She was, in fact, forced to leave Montgomery and seek work in Detroit. She and her husband never again gained the same financial footing.  For her brave stand, she was labeled a troublemaker and other names—many of the things that activists are being called now for their stand against excessive force against people of African descent or their constructive critiques of the criminal justice system.  She was not hailed as a hero but rather a pariah.  Interestingly, even when all that changed and history books and the general public finally hailed her as a hero, her home, her rental property, that is, was still of no import as a historical site in the land she loved and fought for.

So what does this mean?  Does this mean that those who seek true and full equal rights for people of color and all people should not buy a home?  Should they continue to wander from place to place? Should they continue to sit on the outskirts of life watching it go by like proverbial window shoppers with their noses pressed against the glass?

No. I hope part of the legacy of Rosa Parks is that people of color will strive to settle, in spite of the personal and institutional challenges of such a feat.  We know that prior to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, discriminatory practices in housing and banking were allowed.  Things have changed, but we still live with that legacy, and as such, there are still many challenges to Black home ownership.  I hope, in spite of the challenges, those who can will honor Rosa Parks by continuing to fight the good fight for fair housing.  In a general sense, that is what she and others fought for.  That is in fact what they sacrificed their lives and livelihoods for.  They denied themselves so others would have better choices and greater access.  But what a sacrifice! 

Now there are those who by no fault of their own, due to the vagaries of the weather, also know what it means to be without a home. In the months and years ahead, I am pulling for them as they rebuild and resettle. It’s the American way.

And I am thankful for Rosa Parks who also represented another aspect of the American way--expanding the road for those who came after her to have a place called home.

Anne C. Bailey

New book:  The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History

Sources:

Jeanne, Theoharis. The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks.

Audrey McFarlane. “The New Inner City: Class Transformation, Concentrated Affluence and the Obligations of the Police Power.”

https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/conlaw/articles/volume8/issue1/McFarlane8U.Pa.J.Const.L.1(2006).pdf

What Non Violence Accomplished

The 1950’s and 1960’s were a turbulent time in America because the issues that led to the American Civil War had not been resolved.   Four million people of African descent who had been enslaved before the War were freed by their own efforts and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, but, in spite of Reconstruction, their new status was still not settled.

Families First
What would happen to them? How were they to be incorporated into the body politic?

As I have said before in this blog and in my book, The Weeping Time, from the perspective of former slaves, the most important thing was family—finding and reuniting with loved ones and building new lives in this new realm called freedom.

During the period of Reconstruction after the war, they were granted citizenship and the right to vote by means of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments, but because of the backlash and political reversals of 1877, many of those rights were to eroded in the subsequent years.   The advent of segregation and the birth of the KKK during this period underscored the fact that there was some unfinished business after the war.

Fruits of Non Violence

The Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s was essentially about finishing that business: restoring the rights of citizenship which had been fought for and granted all those years before.  The remarkable thing about this movement is that what took war to achieve in the first place and the violence of the KKK to reverse, now was accomplished by the principle of non violence.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists with their largely faith based roots marched, protested, desegregated buses, restaurants and other public spaces – without firing one bullet.

Here is a reminder of what they accomplished, some of which is under threat in the present moment:

1956   Desegregation of Transportation

Federal District Court rules that discrimination on public transportation is unconstitutional as a result of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1964 Civil  Rights Act

Federal law forbids discrimination based on race,  sex,  color, religion or national origin; guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law.

1965  Voting Rights Act

Federal legislation prohibits racial discrimination in voting.  Specifically, the law prohibits any state or local government from imposing any voting law such as literacy tests or other devices that historically resulted in discrimination against racial or language minorities.

1965 Immigration and Nationality Act

On the heels of the Civil Rights Act, immigration was also opened up by means of the Immigration Act of 1965.  This law did away with the use of national origin quotas (which up to this time largely went to Western and Northern Europeans) and for the first time, accepted immigrants of all nationalities.  Family reunification and those with special skills were given some preference.

These are some of the reasons that America has been repeatedly called “ the leader of the free world.”  These are some of the reasons that America has been greatly admired by peoples and governments around the world with respect to human rights.

All of this was accomplished by non violent means.

Is this not worth preserving?

Anne C.Bailey
Author of The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History
Picture Credit: President Lyndon Johnson and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr upon the signing of the Voting Rights Act; Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons