Exposing the shallow roots of "White Supremacy"

By Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Nov 29, 2011 - 9:46:37 AM

We must do more research and analysis of this critical point in our history, so as not to be fooled by those who may claim to be our friends.

(FinalCall.com) - On June 26, 2010 the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan described and exposed to us the “architect of White supremacy.” A structure built by nature needs no man as an architect. We will show you why such an evil “architect” had to design an artificial system to keep a superior human force encaged.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us, “History is above all our studies the most attractive and best qualified to reward our research.” Today, social scientists and psychologists alike postulate that the lack of progress of Black people in America can be attributed to some type of “post-slavery syndrome.” In other words, Black people were damaged so much during slavery that we just cannot “get over it.” Whites, Blacks and maybe the whole world are saying that “we just need to get over it.” However, suppose that the condition of Black people in America is not due entirely to something that happened over 150 years ago during slavery, but is the result of a planned, continued, active presence of an enemy that throws stumbling blocks in the path of every road that Black people take towards freedom, justice and economic equality? Therefore, the proper solution or remedy depends on the correct diagnosis.

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad in his monumental book Message to the Blackman quoted a Mr. Henry Berry, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832 as saying: “We have as far as possible, closed every avenue by which light may enter the slaves’ mind. If we could extinguish the capacity to see the light, our work would be complete; they would then be on a level with the beast of the field and we should be safe.” Slavery, as brutal as it was, was not able to bring Black people down to such a subhuman state; nor did it break their will to be free, independent, productive members of society.

In fact, in Jews Selling Blacks, we learned that many slaves were not just field hands. In an 1857 estate auction, slaves for sale included “Valuable CARPENTERS, Millwrights, Engineers, Coopers, Mill Hands, Blacksmiths, Boat Hands and House Servants.” What is a “cooper”? What is a “millwright”?

A cooper is someone who makes wooden barrels used for shipping commodities. A millwright is a craftsman engaged in the construction and maintenance of machinery. And where did the Black slaves learn engineering?

Just these three words—millwright, cooper and engineer—led us to research the educational system of America before 1862 and the beginning of the Civil War. We found that the Black slaves could not have learned engineering from their Southern White slave owners, because there were no colleges in the South and only one in the whole country that taught engineering and that was the military academy West Point, located in New York. So the Blacks must have brought these skills with them when they were snatched away from their high level of civilization and shipped to America in chains to build a heaven for the White man. This same White European had used the knowledge and wisdom of the Black man to raise himself from what the Europeans called their “Dark Ages” into their “Renaissance.” Please read Stolen Legacy by George G. M. James and discover what the Europeans stole from our Black civilizations before they physically stole us.

If Black people were in fact inferior, then after slavery, all the White man should have to do was to wait until their ex-slaves starved to death. They could have died in the wilderness or gone running back begging him or at least reverted back to their savage state that the White man claims they were in when taken from Africa. The period between 1865 and 1877 is referred to as “Reconstruction,” where Northern troops were kept in the Southern states to protect Blacks and their newfound freedom. We must do more research and analysis of this critical point in our history, so as not to be fooled by those who may claim to be our friends.

Have we ever asked the question as to why the “Underground Railroad” went all the way to Canada instead of ending in Philadelphia, New York or Chicago? There are a number of tourist spots in Philadelphia and Chester, Pa., commemorating Underground Railroad stops, but Blacks were not welcome to stay. In fact, one of the main reasons for keeping the Northern troops in the South was to make it safe enough for Blacks to stay Down South after the war, because the Northern Whites did not want Blacks living next to them. Hundreds of so-called sundown towns—many of them in the North—barred Blacks from entry or allowed them entry only at designated times with a pass stipulating specific activities. During and after the Civil War Northern states enacted their own set of harsh “black codes” to fulfill their “containment policy,” which effectively condemned Blacks to the cotton fields of the South. Some of the newer territories in the Northwest made it illegal for Blacks to even enter their borders. The Oregon constitution of 1857 contained a Negro exclusion clause, where no Negro, slave or free, could enter its sacred White borders. And the White citizens of Oregon did not remove that exclusion clause from their constitution until 1923.

In 1860 there were four million Blacks in America, but by 1900 the Black population had more than doubled to 8.8 million. We don’t die, we multiply. Not only did they multiply in numbers but they used their engineering skills to patent 357 inventions and mechanical innovations from 1865 to 1899, including the baby buggy, bicycle frame, chamber commode, clothes dryer, door knob, egg beater, electric lamp bulb, elevator, fire extinguisher, fountain pen, golf tee, guitar, horse shoe, ironing board, lawn mower, lawn sprinkler, mail box, mop, peanut butter, pencil sharpener, phone transmitter, refrigerator, stove, street sweeper, tricycle, and typewriter. If they were allowed to manufacture and distribute these inventions and innovations, the whole course of Black economic development would have been drastically changed for the better.

In 1866 Atlanta University received its charter, beginning two decades of rapid growth for the creation of dozens of Black schools that would become the historically Black colleges and universities of the South. African Americans became the majority of the teachers in the South’s Black primary schools.

When given the opportunity to vote in eleven Southern states, Blacks put in office between 1870 and 1876, 633 state legislators, 15 U.S. Congressmen and two U.S. Senators. These Black politicians and White Republicans joined to build education at the state level by writing laws in the Southern state constitutions that for the first time established as a right the free public primary schooling of their children—both Black and White. These Reconstruction governments were also the first to establish public health departments to promote public health and sanitation and to combat the spread of epidemic diseases.

And when in 1877 the Whites seized power, ran the Blacks out of government, and re-wrote these states’ constitutions to reestablish “race law” and the Jim-Crow system, they did not touch the education and public health and welfare laws and constitutional principles that the Reconstruction governments had established. Of course, these laws and principles could now only benefit Whites at the exclusion of Blacks.

In the 45 years from 1865 to 1910, Blacks were never given their promised 40 acres and a mule but they bought over 16 million acres of farmland. In fact, when the ex-slaves came out of slavery with farming, building and engineering skills, they started educating themselves, voting themselves into office, patenting inventions and buying farmland. These Black people set up independent towns such as Mound Bayou in Mississippi and Rosewood in Florida. They built schools, hospitals, banks, insurance companies and churches. They built roads, railroads, and water and sewer systems.

The Freedman’s Savings Bank was set up in 1865 and had 16 branches by 1866 and 34 branches at its height. It closed in 1874 after a national economic panic precipitated by the so-called “crime of 1873,” when silver was removed as legal tender by an act of Congress.

So Down South, where Blacks were basically forced to stay, from 1865 to 1877 they worked their way to economic freedom and independent equality, in spite of the cruel suffering of slavery and the abject poverty they were left in after slavery. They had a proven ability to gain and operate lots of land, they used the right to vote and voted in blocks, and they were used to hard work and were the most skilled laborers at that time. But instead of being helped or just left alone, they were betrayed over and over again by an old enemy in America, who sometimes posed as a friend. It took evil “architects of White supremacy” to use politics, tricks, brute force and fabricated historical lies to stop the rise of the descendents of the builders of the pyramids and force them back onto the cotton plantations.

(Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad, Agricultural Economist, National Student Minister of Agriculture, Manager of Muhammad Farms. He can be reached at [email protected])

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