Black Emancipation in America : A Long Way to Go

My Thoughts on Black Emancipation After Watching the Movie'Lincoln'

In the movie "Lincoln'there is much talk of the 13th amendment. This amendment related to slavery. Slavery was an accepted norm in the USA and the church which is supposed to represent truth acquiesced with it. It is inconceivable that good farmers who kept hundreds of blacks as slaves were allowed to do so by the church. Perhaps the parsons forget to lecture them on race and piety in the Sunday sermons which were attend by hordes of white slave owners.

I have just seen the movie Lincoln. It’s a terrific movie and all credit to Lincoln who abolished slavery and tried to emancipate the black slaves. I say ‘tried’ as his dream looks to me not fully realized, at least in some parts of the USA. If you watch the movie there is much talk of the 13th amendment. This amendment related to slavery.
Slavery was an accepted norm in the USA and the church which is supposed to represent truth acquiesced with it. It is inconceivable that good farmers who kept hundreds of blacks as slaves were allowed to do so by the church. Perhaps the parsons forget to lecture them on race and piety in the Sunday sermons which were attend by hordes of white slave owners.

Where is the black man in America today? Is he completely liberated? If so why are so large a number of blacks turning to Islam? Icons like Muhammad Ali among others all were Christians till they converted. Obviously this point has not been looked at and most whites just shrug it away.

Let’s look at Louisiana. It’s a state with a large black population, but to my mind the racial divide is very much evident there. After the civil war Louisiana was under martial law, yet the fact remains that white Democrats blocked black voters from registering. How frightening this was, can be seen that in 1900 there were just 739 black voters in a population of which they constituted 47%. I don’t think this is funny and points to a fact that the whites never reconciled to black emancipation. Mind you Lincoln had been dead for 35 years at that time.

To get an idea of these lynching’s which continued till the sixties of the last century, the Tuskegree institute has estimated and recorded 3446 blacks lynched from 1882-1968. How many know that these lynching’s were a spectacle and advertised. More like a Roman amphitheatre where the Lions or gladiators killed unarmed people.This was a state where the most abhorrent crimes against blacks were committed. Crimes like lynchings and hangings. The Law enforces? They shamed their uniform by siding with the lynchers. Sometimes they arrested suspects mostly black on flimsy grounds and handed them over to a mob of lynchers all whites. I wonder where sanity had gone and where was the church?

Lincolns dream in a way has turned sour. The blacks constitute 12% of the population, yet constitute 50% of all prisoners in state prisons. There is no reformist streak as advocated by Gandhi or Buddha. It is naked power play of racial supremacy. The church is silent as the parsons and the men in flowing robes all acquiesced with these abhorrent practices.

Louisiana is on an edge even now and the poverty rate is 19.2% and a quarter of children live in poverty. A look at the child birth rates of blacks and whites is revealing. It is 5.7 for whites per 1000 births while for blacks it is 13.6. What does this mean? The civil war was over in 1865 and Lincoln dead for long, but despite Obama being the President of the USA a lot needs to be done. America could also stop preaching about equality and other things, till it sets it own house in order.