Critical Race Theory, 1619 Project and Beloved Explained

Today we will learn and reflect on Critical Race Theory and how this is
reflected in two books associated with this controversy, the 1619 Project
book, and also the controversial book by the African American author,
Toni Morrison, Beloved.
Both concerned parents and activists who have no children have been
flooding school board meetings across the country yelling and
threatening each other over critical race theory. The question is, should
we be teaching our children American History starting with our Founding
Fathers and the American Revolution when we won our liberty from the
British in 1776, or should we teach our children that our country was
originally built on the unpaid labor and bones of slaves since the first
slaves were shipped over in 1619 with the first colonists?

One of my projects for this channel is to educate my fellow white Christians on
why a proper understanding of civil rights is so critical to truly loving our black
neighbors, that black lives really do matter, and how black lives matter is more of a
concept and not some powerful shadowy communist movement.
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for this video, and my blogs
that also cover this topic. Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!

Critical Race Theory,
1619 Project and Beloved
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Many white protestors at School Board meetings really have a poor sense
of American History in general and Civil Rights history in particular, simply
because this history has only started to emphasize the civil rights long
after the civil rights sruggles in the Sixties.
This is a continuation of another video on suggestions on how teachers
can teach both sides of critical race theory. We spit the topic into two
videos.

Topics discussed:
Critical Race Theory: Definitions
Lost Cause and Dunning School Interpretation
Racist tropes in the Birth of a Nation
Slavery in ancient and modern worlds
Civil War History and Black Reconstruction
Jim Crow, KKK, and Redemptionist Era
Booker T Washington v WEB Dubois
American Evangelicals and Civil Rights

How did slavery start in 1619? With pirates, and pirates play a big part in
the history of slavery back to ancient times, pirates often raided coastal
areas to enslave their victims. These pirates stole several dozen slaves
from a slaver ship and resold them to the colonists in Jamestown.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-african-slave-ship-arrives-jamestown-colony

At this point let us step back and get a broad-brush review of American
History, as many historians view the 1830’s, not 1619, and not 1776, as
the key period in American history that truly started the long drive
towards civil rights for blacks, starting with the abolition of slavery, then
the emancipation of slaves at the end of the Civil War, and the granting
and restoration of civil rights in America.

1619 – 1776: Colonization: Indentured servants
replaced by slaves on large Southern plantations.
1787: Compromises of Constitutional Convention:
International slave trade abolished in 1808, slaves
3/5’s of a person, fugitive slave laws, Founding
Fathers thought slavery would soon wither away.
1793: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, this
helped rejuvenate the slave economy.
Declaration of
Independence
(1819), by John
Trumbull.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Declaration_of_Independence_(1819),_by_John_Trumbull.jpg

Battle of Spottsylvania, Kurz & Allison Art Publishers, 1888
1830’s: Abolitionists agitate for end of slavery in England/US.
1850’s: Free Labor movement sought to abolish the unfair
competition between free white yeomen and slaves in the territories.
1861-1865: Black runaway slaves were a key factor in the Northern
victory in the Civil War.
1865-1877: Presidential and Radical Reconstruction.
1877-1960’s: Redemptionist or Jim Crow era of discrimination.
1900’s: Invention of mechanical harvesters, less need for slave labor.
1965: Passage of Civil Rights Act, Second Civil Rights Movement.

REVIEWING BELOVED, BY TONI MORRISON
During our discussion group I pointed out my opinion that Beloved would likely
turn off old white Christian men like me, that it was not helpful, and the black
ladies in the group mentioned that Toni Morrison was mainly speaking to other
black women, helping them deal with the psychological struggles in understanding
their past and coping with trying to thrive and survive in a country where many
whites were not sympathetic with the Black Lives Matter movement, and again
notice, this is much more a movement than an organization, and BLM is not
synonymous with communism, that assertion is slanderous and is a bald-faced lie.
Toni Morrison was born in 1931, the math states that in her twenties she lived in
the Jim Crow era, a dark time for blacks to live, her negative personal experiences
living under Jim Crow affected the message she would tell.

“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The
women in the hour knew it and so did the
children. For years each put up with the spite in
his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her
daughter Denver were its only victims. The
grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the
sons, Howards and Buglar, had run away by the
time they were thirteen years old – as soon as
merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that
was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny
hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it
for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more;
another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a
heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and
strewn in a line next to the doorway.”
Now let us read the opening sentences of Beloved:
Keep in mind, the intended audience is other black women
struggling to come to terms with both past and present:

These traumatic ramblings go on for much of the book. After the first chapter I was
able to pick up on some clues on what was happening, but after a few dozen
pages, I was forced to ask Dr Wikipedia for a synopsis.
IMHO, books should really be written so you can read them without asking for help
from Dr Wikipedia or an English teachers looking over your shoulder telling you
what you should think about the book. Beloved is a book for woke English
teachers. WOKE is here defined as any English teacher who forces her students to
read Lord of the Flies every year so she doesn’t have to read any new books
herself.
And Dr Wikipedia also says there are other people who do not like this book. The
other books in this trilogy read much the same way, says Dr Wikipedia.
So we will allow Dr Wikipedia to summarize the plot:

Beloved is inspired by an event that
actually happened: a slave escaped and
fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856.
She was subject to capture in
accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850; when U.S. marshals burst into
the cabin where Garner and her
husband had barricaded themselves,
she was attempting to kill her children,
and had already killed her two-year-old
daughter, to spare them from being
returned to slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved_(novel)

Now we know the reason for these traumatic ramblings, her life experiences are so
devastating that this ex-slave mother exists in a state of perpetual mental
breakdown, like she is psychotic.
By the way, there is precedent for this action. Soon after the time of Christ the
Jews revolted against the Romans, their last redoubt was the fortress Herod built
in the desert, Masada. The Romans built massive siegeworks that exist up to the
present day to storm the citadel, it was common practice in the ancient world,
when you captured a hostile enemy city, to massacre the men and enslave the
women and children, and they could select concubines from among the women
and girls. To save their family from slavery under pagan masters, the Jewish
defenders at Masada first slew their women and children, then the men all
committed suicide.

Dr Wikipedia
took these
pictures of
the ruins of
the Masada
fortress.

PLOT SUMMARY
Beloved begins in 1873 with Sethe, a formerly
enslaved woman, and her 18-year-old daughter
Denver, who live at 124 Bluestone Road. The site
has been haunted for years by what they believe
is the ghost of Sethe's eldest daughter. Sethe's
sons, Howard and Buglar, ran away from home by
the age of 13, due to the ghost.
One day, Paul D, one of the enslaved men from
Sweet Home, the plantation where Sethe, Halle,
Baby Suggs, and several others were once
enslaved, arrives at Sethe's home. He forces out
the spirit, and persuades them to leave the house
together for the first time in years for a carnival.
Upon returning home, they find a young woman
sitting in front of the house who calls herself
Beloved. Beloved appears to be a ghost of the
baby who was killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved_(novel)

Another personal criticism of Beloved is that it actually understates the brutality of slavery.
Beloved is also an extreme example of the Kramer problem. If you remember, Kramer lived in the
same apartment as Jerry Seinfeld, and Kramer never worked, evidently was not living off an
inheritance, and his only life skill was his dramatic entrances into Jerry’s apartment, like how could
he afford to pay the rent on a New York City apartment?
After the Civil War, our ex-slave mother Sethe and her large family lived in this apparently large
house in Ohio, she doesn’t have a job, how did she make rent? She somehow is living in this same
haunted house, she is too traumatized to make rent, but her family is left alone, how can that be?
Reality would be even more cruel than the book. Her baby was not her baby, her baby belonged
to her master, her baby was her master’s property, and when she killed her baby, she was
destroying her master’s property. When she was returned to her master, she would have been
severely beaten, probably beaten to death. In general, when people are down, they are not left
alone, they are continuously hounded until they are utterly and completely ruined.

PLOT SUMMARY, continued
Paul D begins to feel increasingly
uncomfortable in the house and
that he is being driven out. One
night, Paul D is cornered by
Beloved, who demands sex. While
they have sex, his mind is filled with
horrific memories from his past.
Paul D tries to tell Sethe about it,
but cannot. Instead, he says that he
wants her pregnant. Etc.

Now I totally get why the sex is so casual, slavery robbed women of their agency, their privacy,
their free will, if the master wanted to force himself on his slave, she was his property, he could do
with her as he wished.
I would like to point out that sexual assault and concubines is a problem in all systems of slavery in
both the ancient and modern worlds, and we have a video that explores this concept, how the
Iliad itself was about the trading of concubines between men where the women could never just
say NO, and how the Old Testament laws exhorted the Jewish soldiers to treat their concubines
with kindness, as they are truly their Jewish wives.
The author is expressing how the morals of slaves who are treated like breeding livestock can be
debased, but many white Christians trying to read this book who are not black, who are not in
tune with the ugly history of slavery, they are just going to be offended by the casual sex, and this
detracts from the main message.
Finally, we have the odd plot line of casting this as a ghost story, where the soul of the murdered
infant slave girl is resurrected in a mysterious character in the book. This is also not a Christian
theme, and also detracts from the main message.

Beloved is a despairing novel, though the characters in the story do reconcile
themselves somewhat to their fate. Much more inspiring are the slave biographies
we have reviewed, and you may object that these are the small minority of ex-
slaves who were able to rise above their condition. Beloved, in contrast, is about
the bottom tenth of slaves who were eternally traumatized by the years they spent
in slavery. However, inspiring stories inspire all of us to improve our lives, but
despairing stories are just plain depressing.
Should Beloved be banned from school libraries? Absolutely not, children watch
movies that are worse than this, and if you ban this book, the right wing-nuts will
want to ban every other book that conflicts with the Lost Cause narrative.
However, I just do not see how this book Beloved will influence any white readers
to greater compassion for their black neighbors. IMHO, the slave autobiography of
Frederick Douglass would compel greater compassion, these are some slides from
this video:

Frederick Douglass tells us, “my father was a
white man. . . The opinion was whispered that
my master was my father, but of the
correctness of this opinion I know nothing. . .
My mother and I were separated when I was
but an infant, before I knew her as my
mother. It is a common custom in Maryland
to part children from their mothers at an early
age.” Often these involuntary orphans would
be raised by “an old slave woman, too old for
field labor.” These slaveowners would be as
quick to separate slave children from their
parents as people give away puppies from
their pet dog’s litter.
Last Time he saw his Mother

Many masters bred slaves just like they bred cows or horses, they
paired their slaves up, often forcing them to breed. Young slaves
from coastal plantations were often sold to the more prosperous
black belt plantations in the Deep South, AL GA MS, breaking up
many slave families.

Plantation, Beaufort, Port
Royal Island, SC, 1862
Frederick notes that when
the master caters to his
“own lusts, this makes
gratification of their
wicked desires profitable
as well as pleasurable; for
by this cunning
engagement, the
slaveholder, in cases not a
few, sustains to his slaves
the double relation of
master and father.” These
slave concubines were
often a “constant offense
to their mistress,” she likes
to see them suffer under
the lash, and often sells
them off to be rid of them.

Frederick Douglass remembers,
“I have said my master found
religious sanction for his cruelty.
As an example, I will state one
of many facts going to prove the
charge. I have seen him tie up
this lame young woman and
whip her with a heavy cowskin
upon her naked shoulders,
causing the warm red blood to
drip; and, in justification of the
bloody deed, he would quote
this passage of Scripture: ‘He
that knoweth his master’s will,
and doeth it not, shall be
beaten with many stripes.’
Whipping Old Barney

We have another interesting video of a former illiterate slave,
Father Tolton, who was the first former slave to be ordained a
priest. He was illiterate when his family escaped to freedom
during the Civil War, but he became literate not only in English
but also German, Latin, and Greek, and attended seminary in
Rome.

Unlike Beloved, the 1619 Project Book should increase the
compassion of any white person who reads it with an open mind.
The subtitle of the book should be, Ordinary Lives of Black
People in America for the last hundred years.
We will review the chapter in the 1619 Project titled Inheritance with
some remarkable stories about the persecutions and assassinations of
ordinary blacks who tried to be successful, too uppity, in the Deep South
not so long ago, in the post-World War II era of prosperity. Unlike
Beloved, it shows how blacks were kicked when they were down with
ever greater cruelty. If you are white, the next time you are tempted to
accuse blacks of being shiftless, lazy, or unenterprising, these stories
should give you pause, as they reveal what happened to blacks who
were too successful and too uppity in the Deep South.

This is a story of Elmore Bolling in Lowndesboro, Alabama.
Elmore had a large family, seven children who helped in the
family business, “a large house, a general store, a delivery
service, a catering company, and a gas station.” “At his
peak, Elmore employed as many as forty people, all black
like him.” He likely had forty thousand in savings, his total
assets in today’s dollars may have been half a million
dollars, mostly money that he earned.
Grant-Valkaria, Florida: Jorgensen's General Store

Elmore only rented his property, he never owned it. His father
and grandfather had owned a farm on which they ran cattle.
After they became successful, a white neighbor claimed the
land was his, and just stole it from them, for blacks had no
access to the legal system whatsoever in the state of Alabama.

“But it was the expansion of his little general store
that changed his fortunes. Elmore and his wife Bertha
Mae started doing Friday night fish fries, serving
Sunday dinners, and selling ice-cream to the after-
church crowd, a delicacy where most folks didn’t have
electricity.” “They grew their business by adding a one-
pump gas station out front. Elmore got the idea to sell
gas after a white-owned station nearby refused to
serve him. At the Bolling’s pump, black drivers would
have a safe, reliable place to fill up.”

“Not long after, the Bollings
and every black man,
woman, and child in the
county would learn the
cost of daring to be too
successful, too free. On a
mild December day in 1947
a deputy sheriff came to
Elmore’s store while his
twelve-year son, Willie D,
was working and asked
where his father was.” His
father was running errands,
and when he returned to
the store, some cars were
following him.

“As Elmore got out of
his truck, two white
men confronted him.
It seemed that in
buying a pump and
selling gas, Elmore
had stepped over
some invisible line.
Gun fire rang out. The
white men shot
Elmore seven times.
His wife and three of
his children heard the
terrifying sounds and
rushed from the store
to find him lying dead
in a ditch.”

Why would these white men be so brazen that they would murder a black man in
broad daylight making no effort to conceal their identities in front of his wife and
children? The deputy sheriff was involved, there was no justice for blacks in Jim
Crow Alabama. When blacks called in crimes, often they, the victim, were arrested,
for causing trouble. Plus, in the Deep South during slavery, blacks were seen as
subhuman, like talking livestock. You would think nothing of butchering a cow in
sight of its calf, many white people would reason, why would this matter for blacks?
This is not a unique story. The first lynching documented by the incredibly brave
black journalist, Ida B Wells, was a lynching of a black storeowner who dared to
compete with a white storeowner. The accusation was that he molested some white
woman, that was usually the accusation, when there was an accusation, but success
in competing against white people was the reason why he was seen as being way
too uppity and in need of lynching. We want to do a video on Ida B Wells in 2022.

Unlike the blacks in Beloved, now the
whites persecuted the members of the
black family even more intensely after the
murder of Elmore. The youngest daughter
Josephine remembers, “Within a year of
Elmore Bolling’s murder, nearly all of the
family’s wealth was gone. White creditors
and whites posing as creditors took the
money the family made from the sale of
their trucks and cattle. Other whites simply
claimed they were owed money. Bertha
Mae feared what would happen if she didn’t
pay them.” The family lost everything. They
lost their inheritance. They lost their home;
they were later forced to flee the county in
the dark of night to save their own skins.

A cotton plantation on the Mississippi, 1884
The youngest daughter Josephine remembers, “My father’s murder actually
killed aspirations for black people. Everyone had to go back working for
plantation owners. No one wanted to take over the business.” Not his
brothers, one brother said of the business, “No, that is what got Elmore killed.”

Young Josephine was the least traumatized because she was so young,
she was the only child who attended college, and she became a teacher,
one of the few safe occupations open to blacks in those days. Even
though Elmore had encouraged all his children to get an education, all
the other children eventually dropped out of school, taking safe,
unsuccessful, menial jobs to eke out a living. Josephine tells the sad tale
of how this traumatic afternoon ruined the lives of several generations
by telling their sad tale of woes faced by many black families: money
problems, marital problems, drinking problems, mental problems which
landed Willie D, the son who helped his father and watched him die in
the ditch, in a psychiatric facility.

History class at
Tuskegee, 1902

The suppressed memories
Willie D locked up in his soul
bubbled up when talking to
his sister Josephine one day.
He remembered “the white
men who came to the store
looking for his father. The
terror he felt. The sounds of
gunfire. His father’s dead
body. He had even tried to
peel the boots off his father’s
feet because he would not be
able to get to heaven with his
boots on.”
A group of white men pose for a 1919 photograph as they stand over
the black victim Will Brown who had been lynched and his body
mutilated and burned during the Omaha race riot of 1919

There is an even worse story in this chapter about a
prosperous black farmer was “was getting too damned
prosperous and biggity for a nigger.”
This is the story of how the problem of black prosperity
was dealt with. A black man had the temerity to
become a successful farmer on a 140 acre farm. “Days
later, when the black man and four of his children went
into town, a marshal served him a warrant for
trespassing. The marshal then attacked the black man,
pistol-whipping him to the ground. A group of white
men jumped in and began to choke and beat him. As
his daughters rushed to help their father, a man kicked
one of them in the gut. The family was overpowered
by the mob and dragged to jail. Three of the man’s
daughters were charged with resisting arrest, and his
son was falsely accused of carrying a pistol.”

The mob that night shot
up his house, waking his
wife and other children.
In the next few days
their stolen crops were
sold underneath them.
The family fled. “They
never returned, they
had been warned if they
returned, they would be
lynched. The father was
sentenced to twelve
months on a chain gang
and fined $250. The
daughters were fined
$50 each, the son was
fined $100.”

Since many of my family and friends live in Florida, I just want to mention
there was a riot where whites burned down the negro homes and
businesses in Rosewood, Florida in 1923, and all the town blacks fled
with the clothes on their backs, with no justice served, with no financial
rewards for the homes and property lost.

Remains of Sarah Carrier's house in Rosewood, Florida, Levy County, 1923, and another burning cabin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre

SOURCES: One primary source is this newly published edition of the
1619 project. You can tell from the chapter titles that each chapter
covers a different topic, it reminds me of the Ordinary Lives in
the Ancient World books I have read before.

Futher discussing Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and I might add that part of
my dislike for the book is the same reason that I could not watch Clint
Eastwood’s movie on the lady prize fighter, Million Dollar Baby, reading
a book that is primarily about personal trauma is just not something I
enjoy.

Emanuel
Leutze's
1851
depiction of
Washington
Crossing the
Delaware

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footnote.
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