I have some family history that sheds a light on the generational nature of Racism in the South....

[Boxerfan]

And as a preface let me add-this is the family that threw me & my brother & sister away. Almost 40 years ago and I hope to journal that story when I'm able.

I have a letter my Grandmother on my fathers side-outlining the family history. Because of the drama long ago it took me till just recently to read through it. Frankly I was kinda disgusted but it did shed some light on the South & Racism.


My fathers family was from Germany & they immigrated in the early 1800's. They used family wealth to start farms & purchase Negro slaves. The slaves were vital to them as workers. As the family farm grew they used more slaves to tend crops & livestock. The story details some of the purchases & the trips made to the slave market. Thousands of dollars were paid for some of the stronger men & frankly they were considered breeding stock for his farm. Slaves were property after all...

The Civil War ended this ownership & the slaves were set free. To my family this was a great outrage-they had been robbed of the property they had rightly purchased & now they had no way to tend the large farm they had built. They sold off most of the land & equipment/livestock.

To them the government destroyed their way of life & livelihood. It seems the notion of human rights & equality bounced off them without effect . The story held vehemence & anger of what the government had done to them as fresh as the day it was born.

I realized the story had been passed from generation to generation and each sibling drew its memory from that very old & deep well of resentment. And it is probably an unconscious source of the inability to let it go....

---------------

In one sense I'm lucky I was thrown away by that side of the family. But as a father myself now-I'm at a loss to see how anyone could be so damn cold...

[Jackpine Radical]

1. K&R. nt

[el_bryanto]

2. I think the South carefully trained itself to not see blacks as people

If they accepted the common humanity of blacks or native americans or the like, they'd have to accept that they were horribly cruel people. Instead they divided the world up into people (meaning white southern people) and others (blacks, indians and so on).

Common enough practice, although particularly virulent down there (well down here since I live in Florida, grew up in California though so still think of the south as a foreign part of the country).

Bryant

[MicaelS]

3. Money still trumps human life today.

Probably always will.

[Boxerfan]

4. And Money is why we were "thrown away"....Dis-inherited that is...

And its coming up on the 40th anniversary of my fathers death. He was the Hunt Master of a fox hunting club in Los Altos Hills, Ca.

My stepmother had him re-write his will-and he died on a fox hunting event in England 6 months later. And yes I view the timing as very suspicious. One of the few details of his death was revealed by his sister. I had come across the fact my father had a 2nd grave-actually an empty memorial I was assured-in a small Churchyard in England. That little tidbit it would have been nice to know earlier-it came up on a Google search of my fathers name. Luckily BBC had released its "Day Out" series & he read my Father name on the headstone I also recently went through a bankruptcy & in doing so had to review the will. My lawyer basically said you got screwed get over it. But I did ask my Aunt some pointed questions then & I'm glad she was honest with me.

She told me that he was left to die without medical care-for over 12 hours. I was told they felt his injuries to severe & he wouldn't want to live as a cripple. So they left him to die in agony.

At the reading of his will all 3 of us were under 18 yet had zero representation. One of the big WTF's of my life is why did no adult stand up for us back then.

Of course my stepmother has lived nicely off of his estate & still is a member of the Los Altos Hounds as it is called now. But of course she also made sure we lost what benefits we had as minors when we turned 18.

And for the most part-his sister being the exception- the rest of my Dad's family basically never talked to us again-we had no money so why bother?. That is the impression I got...



I hope to live long enough to pee on my stepmothers grave....I am not kidding...