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Old Postcard entitled "Ploughing Cotton,
Colombus GA" captures the image of Black
Children and adults working in the cotton fields. |
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In search of
new lands for growing cotton tobacco, indigo, rice and
sugar, many colonists pushed farther and farther inland
away from the coast to the Mississippi, then across
it. With the colonists went their Negro slaves! The
wilderness first had to be cleared -- the trees
and brush cut away, the swamps drained, the roots and
rocks removed -- before the plowshares could be sunk
into virgin earth. For this heavy preliminary labor,
black hands were most useful, indeed necessary.
Upon the backs of strong black
men, women and children -- This is how America made
her wealth -- through the blood, sweat, tears and toil
of my people, YHWH's chosen, the true jews! |
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"The
South's Conception of the
ideal Colored Worker." - Strong
but headless, therefore brainless.
A New York World Cartoon. |
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With Eli Whitney's
invention of the cotton gin, cotton had soon become the number
one export from America and by 1850 more than 3,000,000 bales
(three-fourths of the world's cotton) was being supplied by
the Gulf States. As a result more and more slaves were needed
to work the fields as Southern planters instituted large-scale
methods of cultivation.
Judah (Jews - so called Negro) did it all! The sowing and
the reaping, the building up and the cutting down. The digging
and turning of the soil, the grinding -- we pulled up potatoes,
planted fruit trees, plowed the land, and cared for the livestock.
We killed and salted the unclean swine, built their huge plantation
homes, cared for the white man and their children, made their
clothes, their food and their furniture -- only to face more
work day after day from sun-up to sundown! We did it all,
yet received no benefit from our labors just as the scriptures
had said!
"And you shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth
in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways; and you
shall be only oppressed and spoiled ever more, and no man
shall save you. You shall betroth a wife, and another man
shall lie with her; you shall build an house, and you shall
not dwell therein; you shall plant a vineyard and shall not
gather the grapes thereof...The fruit of your land, and all
your labors shall a nation which you know not eat up; and
you shall be only oppressed and crushed always...
You shall carry much seed out into the field, and shall gather
but little in... You shall plant vineyards and dress them,
but shall neither drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes...The
stranger that is within you shall get up above you very high;
and you shall come down very low...Therefore shall you serve
your enemies which YHWH shall send against you, in hunger
and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things;
and he shall put a yoke of iron upon your neck until he have
destroyed you." (Deut. 28:29-30, 33, 38-39,43, 48)
A Field hand Speaks
Solomon Northrup told of his ritual of working in the fields:
"The hands are required to be in the cotton fields as
soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception
of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to
swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted
to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see, and when
the moon is full, they often times labor till the middle of
the night. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor
return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order
to halt is given by the driver." ("Lest We Forget,"
Velma Thomas, Crown Pub., New York, NY, 1997, p. 13)
(End)
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