Joe Johns and Justine Redman, CNN, July 16, 2009
In many places across the South you can walk in the footsteps of slaves, and if you understand the history, it is not a happy journey. The same is true at Friendfield Plantation outside Georgetown, South Carolina.
It’s not exactly “Gone With the Wind,” but what makes this overgrown 3,300 acres of marsh and pine trees stand out is this: The family of first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields.
It makes Friendfield Plantation a symbol of something more than servitude. It’s the symbol of something that’s never happened before, one important segment of an American family’s journey from the humiliation of slavery to the very top of the nation’s ruling class.
{snip}
Friendfield’s most distinctive historical feature, perhaps, is the dirt road known as Slave Street.
Six white-washed little shacks are all that remain of the slave quarters, even though rows of these houses once stood on the property. About 350 slaves lived here during the 19th century.
The houses are nothing special—no plumbing, of course. The wooden walls are paper thin in places. It would have been hot and humid in summer, and most certainly cold in winter, although the shacks had fireplaces.
They would have been crowded: probably one or two families living in a space smaller than a modern-day garage.
The White House is some 472 miles from Georgetown, South Carolina. But long before Michelle Obama was born, her great-great grandfather, Jim Robinson, likely toiled in the fields here six days a week, from sunup to sundown.
The place he probably called home was a little white shack smaller than—by comparison—a Secret Service security shed on the grounds of the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
All told, hundreds of people lived like this, on this one plantation alone.
{snip}
All that’s known about Jim Robinson’s life comes from the few remaining records that mention him. Slaves weren’t documented as individuals in the census, nor in life and death certificates. They were property, not people.
But Michelle Obama’s great-great grandfather was a teenager when slavery was abolished, so as a free man, he started to leave a paper trail.
The 1880 census shows he was born about 1850, in South Carolina, and that his parents were born in South Carolina as well. He married a woman named Louiser, and in 1880 they already had three children, two boys and a girl, ages 1, 2, and 3.
The son that would become Michelle Obama’s great grandfather was not born yet. The census lists Jim’s occupation as a farmer, and Louiser’s as “keeping house.”
They are both recorded as unable to read or write. It’s good fortune to uncover even this much information; the original handwritten census got wet, the ink ran and it is nearly illegible. Proof of life, nearly washed away.
There are a lot of unknowns concerning Michelle Obama’s ancestry—how many generations of slaves there were, or what route they took to this hemisphere.
The Obama election campaign commissioned a study of Michelle’s genealogy by the research group Lowcountry Africana, but they couldn’t make the link back to Africa. As with so many African-Americans’ family histories, the paper trail runs dry.
{snip}
“There’s not a real Friendfield Plantation records set, or plantation journals that have been preserved . . . and there’s certainly not a shred of documentary evidence right now which would even suggest to us what the African origins would be,” Carrier [historian Tori Carrier, of Lowcountry Africana] said.
{snip}
Back in Georgetown, South Carolina, Margretta Knox remembers attending the Bethel AME church with the first lady’s grandparents—Jim Robinson’s grandson and his wife—when she was a girl. The couple spent many of their years in Chicago, but returned back South after they retired.
{snip}
But the family ties to the old plantation just got lost. “We let our parents die before we really thought about asking them questions,” Knox said.
{snip}
Original article
(Posted on July 17, 2009)
Comments
I like how CNN refers to the Obama’s as the ‘ruling class’. I always thought we were governed in this country. Rulers are for monarchys. Also, they ‘believe’ her great-great-grandfather was a slave. Proof of this is as elusive as Barack’s birth certificate.
“The family of first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields.”
But the people who slaved and toiled even harder and were treated MUCH MORE unjustly for one hundred and fifty years are whites who have had deductions from their paychecks confiscated by the federal government in order to give to blacks in the form of many social benefits.
Add to the confiscatory taxation for blacks the out-of-control black on white crime for all that time, and the injustices are so great they make any complaints by blacks tiny inconveniences by comparison.
Whites should be due reparations.
“The houses are nothing special—no plumbing, of course. The wooden walls are paper thin in places. It would have been hot and humid in summer, and most certainly cold in winter, although the shacks had fireplaces.”
As if white people had indoor plumbing, air conditioning and central heating in the 1800s.
“But long before Michelle Obama was born, her great-great grandfather, Jim Robinson, likely toiled in the fields here six days a week, from sunup to sundown.”
Like every white laborer in the south.
“The Obama election campaign commissioned a study of Michelle’s genealogy by the research group Lowcountry Africana, but they couldn’t make the link back to Africa. As with so many African-Americans’ family histories, the paper trail runs dry.”
Her ancestors were slaves of other African tribes. Ever notice that the “painful journey of slavery” never begins where it really started - as slaves in Africa.
How EXACTLY WOULD she have become “First Lady” if her ancestor had not been brought here but left in Africa where he was probably already a slave?
Maybe if they keep tracking they’ll find that Barack’s ancestors owned Michelle’s ancestors. Something tells me they’re not going to track quite that far back… They don’t even manage to get Barack’s ancestors into the article at all.
Bernie , you are so right! I am from the South and NO one could have lived poorer than my father back in the 1930s . They toiled in the cotton and peanut fields,lived in wooden houses where you could see the chickens run underneath, chopped firewood, plowed with mules, etc, etc… It makes me sick to hear these Blacks complain so much! Despite all this, my dad made a good life for himself and his family .
.
Now that CNN has demonstrated skill in research of Mrs. Obama’s birth records, finding Mister Obama’s birth certificate should be a piece of cake…
“first lady Michelle Obama believes her great-great grandfather was held as a slave here and labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields”
But no, it had to have been her great -great-great grandfather.
“But Michelle Obama’s great-great grandfather was a teenager when slavery was abolished, so as a free man, he started to leave a paper trail.”
So there’s no record of him being a slave and laboring in those “mosquito-infested rice fields”. That’s all mere conjecture.
Btw, didn’t mosquitos bite white people who worked in the fields too? Or were whites granted an exemption from mosquito bites? White skin priviledge, I suppose.
In fact, come to think of it, blacks, due to the sickle cell, would have been more resistant to malaria than whites who would just die left and right.
“They were property, not people.”
Then they were lucky! Slave-owners took pains to look after their valuable “property”. Slaves were an investment. They were better off than white workers, who had to look out for themselves.
Just another slanted, tear-jerker article!
#1 - We have had and still do have a “ruling class”. Elected leaders are no longer “public servants”, but our masters, especially at the federal level. I think it started with a guy named Lincoln, but I’m not sure.
He was born in 1850, so he would have been 14 years old with the Civil War ended. While he was “labored in the mosquito-infested rice fields,” boys his age from both North and South were fighting and dieing on battlefields throughout South.
“The houses are nothing special—no plumbing, of course. The wooden walls are paper thin in places. It would have been hot and humid in summer, and most certainly cold in winter, although the shacks had fireplaces.”
That’s right, there was nothing special about these homes. Many of the poor Whites and freed Blacks lived in in similar houses. Yes it was bad by our standards, but at that time it was the norm.
They would have been crowded: probably one or two families living in a space smaller than a modern-day garage.
Exactly like the white working class and day laborers in the cities. Heck - even European small farmers didn’t have much more space for their families at that time. And the bigger farmers have had about 2-3x more space, maybe (a big kitchen with an oven, a centre of the family life, and 2-3 very small chambers, often unheated in winter). Not much of a luxury… Am I expected to weep?
EW,
Obama’s forbears from Kenya went through almost the same thing—a kind of quasi-slavery—in the sense that the British colonisers virtually enslaved Kenyans in order to get them to buld roads, till the land to grow cash crops, build other kinds of infrastructure such as colonial office buildings etc. Anyone who was dragooned into that kind of situation and resisted was often flogged or murdered.
The Kenyans claimed that their fight for indepedence was based on the independence rallying cry: Uhuru, which means “freedom” in Swahili.
12 — OCCAM wrote at 10:46 AM on July 18:
As was the practice everywhere in Africa, especially Rhodesia and South Africa, blacks came from far and wide wherever the white man was with their hands out looking for freebies. Some of them elected to work, but they were infamous for being lazy and unreliable, so progress was pitifully slow and tedious. They sought after and obtained work from the white man for the same reasons they do the world over: They can’t create any kind of economic infrastructure on their own. There was no forced labor involved.
They were generously given the infrastructure, built by the white man, and it is in their lack of responsibility and/or inability to maintain it we see the real Africa and it’s population of ne’er do wells. It’s all slowly falling to ruin.
The great crime, I believe, was in introducing Africans to civilization far too early in their evolutionary progress for them to be able to care for themselves on a first world level.
They were happy in their villages as hunter/gatherers and should not have been disturbed.
Bernie’s points,#3 are right on. Almost every thing one can say about black conditions during the ante-bellum era, were also true everywhere else in the world with the masses of white people. In Europe, for example, the serfs lived little better than slaves. In the northern states of the U.S., during the Industrial Revolution, poor whites worked long tedious hours for the factory, worked in utterly toxic conditions worse than the slaves in the south, and this included women and children. Then at the end of the day, they went home to ramshackle houses rented out to them by the factories they worked for. The constant, non-stop, melodrama that leftists engage in with their slave stories of the old South are getting extremely boring.
“That’s right, there was nothing special about these homes. Many of the poor Whites and freed Blacks lived in in similar houses. Y”es it was bad by our standards,
No, they didn’t have electric lights, indoor toilets, running water, or air conditioning. Blacks AND whites alike! That was common for the day.
What’s this notion that only blacks had it hard? Tut, tut. That was just normal.
“Obama’s forbears from Kenya went through almost the same thing — a kind of quasi-slavery — in the sense that the British colonisers virtually enslaved Kenyans in order to get them to buld roads, till the land to grow cash crops, build other kinds of infrastructure such as colonial office buildings etc. Anyone who was dragooned into that kind of situation and resisted was often flogged or murdered.” — OCCAM
And without that, they wouldn’t have the infra-structure that they have today. It proved a blessing.
Before the British arrived, they certainly hadn’t built any of that for themselves. In fact, they had built NOTHING. The various tribes were too busy fighting and slaughtering one another.
The Pax Britannica put an end to that warfare and chaos. Better to have them constructing roads, schools, and colonial buildings than engaging in tribal raids and warfare.
And as for “virtually enslaving” Kenyans —- oh please! Most of those roads, railways and buildings were put up by laborers IMPORTED from India, as Africans were not even accustomed to doing such labor.
(Nor, to be technical, was there even such a thing as “Kenyans” — a concept itself invented by the British. Before that, there were just separate, totally distinct, tribes with no sense of common identity or interests at all. Thus, Britain even gave them their identify. Without that, they’d still be fighting each other. In fact, they still are!)
— OCCAM wrote:
“EW, You miss the point of the history of blacks in the U.S. Sure, the material conditions count a lot but what is more important is that condition that humans — and animals too — value: relative freedom, the ability to dispose of oneself as one sees fit, not to be bound to the whim and caprices of another human, etc.”
…………………….
The fact is that, until recently, this was the standard condition of much of humanity. Even until just several generations ago, it was the normal condition in most of Eastern and Southern Europe.
In Hungary, there is a national park, not far outside Budapest, where they feature examples of peasant homes typical of the various regions of the country. (Btw, It is very surprising to see the wide variety of architecture within such a small country.) I remember one home, which consisted of one large round room, with a fire pit located in the center and a hole in the roof —it which housed both humans and farm animals all together, sharing the warmth in that single room. There was no such thing as a toilet. I inquired of the guide which century this represented — thinking it must be about a thousand years ago. He replied that this was a typical peasant home right up into the early part of the 20th century!
Can you imagine the stench? The noise? Those blacks in South Carolina had it pretty good. At least they didn’t have to share their home with the pigs and goats and chickens.
As for the freedom to move about as they pleased, European serfs didn’t have that freedom. And other poor whites, having no money (even with the legal right), didn’t have such freedom either. For poor whites, their only real freedom was the freedom to starve on their own, without being the responsibility or care of anyone else. At least a slave was cared for.
And as for being bound by the whims and caprices of another human being —- Unfortunately, that’s the truth everywhere. But the fact is that, whatever economic system is in place in any time or country: slavery, feudalism, capitalism, even socialism or communism… we are ALL bound to some degree by the whims and caprices of other human beings. Unless we are independently wealthy or finally retired, only then are we entirely our own masters and able to do as we please.
given the shortness of black generations in the US (ca 16 years??), most blacks are 6-8 generations away from slavery.
My great grandfather fought in the civil war (Union), but the average black my age will have gr gr parents born around 1915 or so (i.e., NOT ca 1845-55).
There is a really good book called WHITE CARGO that talks about white conditions during the same period of time. My uber-liberal library in Baltimore County actually had it.
See if you can’t get it from Amazon or at your library…well worth having the information.
GHW,
Re Kenya and colonial labor—you are all wrong. Go to West Africa and you will see the same kinds of colonial buildings you see in Kenya. Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana are examples of such. Africans were the workers who put up those buildings—most of which are still standing.
The Asians who were trucked in were used mainly as a racial buffer group between the Africans and the European settlers. Such groups were also encouraged to engage in retail trading as a way at holding the business ambitions of Africans at bay.
Your point about serfdom and poverty in Europe is to be answered this way: the captivity of the African in the U.S. was accompanied with extreme cruelty and degradation. Dehumanisation and alienation were the deliberate goals.
Michele Obama is a woman who has benefitted immensely because of her blackness. Accepted to Princeton and Harvard Law thru affirmative action. Got a job out of law school with a top law firm due to her minority status. Then landed a job with the University of Chicago, again due to her minority status. If she were white, she be just another mediocre lawyer from a mediocre law school. She owes her life to her blackness.
I am curious as to how Ms Obama feels about being married to a decendant of the African,Moslem tribes who had slaves,and were in the slave trade busines,and the Mau Mau.I understand his mothers ancestory were slave owners…Just imagine the mental distress….
What part of Africa is she from? I wonder if Barack’s ancestors enslaved Michelle’s.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE! How many Whites know how they got here? Many arrived in dubious and difficult situations. I happen to know about my direct ancestors all the way back to 1630 in one case, but not the ancillary ones. But if you ask the average White person, they have no idea and they often feel that such things are unimportant. Along with this, so many Whites are sold on the inherent evil of Whites that they consciously wish to not know. A beautiful young White woman once told me this directly. I wonder who she married?
Perhaps I miss something whenever African American slavery is mentioned? Slavery is normal.
It existed for tens of thousands of years. The greatest civilizations, Greece and Rome, were based on slavery. China, a great civilization for thousands of years, had slavery as did India. Christianity did not abolish slavery but substituted a version called “serfdom”.
If I meet Michelle, which I hope never happens, I will ask her about her slave alleged forefathers, and then say in a calm voice, so..what? who cares? goodbye.
20 — OCCAM wrote at 2:47 PM on July 19:
That’s really humorous and intellectually shallow as well.
That’s like saying the donkey should get credit for building a huge, beautiful cathedral for carrying the bricks on his back for the architect and engineer.
20 — OCCAM wrote at 2:47 PM on July 19:
“Your point about serfdom and poverty in Europe is to be answered this way: the captivity of the African in the U.S. was accompanied with extreme cruelty and degradation. Dehumanisation and alienation were the deliberate goals.”
Where do you get this information!? I lived in Europe long enough to learn about the conditions of Serfs and the poor in several long term kingdoms such as France, UK, The Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburg Empire where life for the poor who were considered property with the land they worked on. The first slaves in the New World were European Whites. Political prisoners, including many Irish and Scots were sent into slavery in high numbers. The Holy Russian Empire kept the serf system until 1862, when Tzar Nicholas, sensing the need for more social progress ended the serf system. But the freed serfs were then required to buy the land they lived on and worked and this impoverished them even more and set the stage for revolutions to come.
As for the claims of cruelty, you are the victim of politically driven, historical exaggerations. Most African American slaves were treated well and considered part of the family, but more the way a favorite dog or horse was considered. Incidents of cruelty were rare and were condemned socially among Whites, just as sexual contact of any kind. There were even laws in Colonial times against sexual contact and fines for mixed births.
Black slaves were allowed to play, sing and dance and go to church and be any way they wanted to within those walls. This is where the African American culture was formed, not during Reconstruction or during the early 20th century. Terrible cruelty and oppression would have prevented this culture from evolving within the institution of slavery in America. In the mean time, North African pirates were kidnapping Whites from Spain to Iceland for hundreds of years from ancient times right up to the 19th century and selling them into slavery: women and girls into sexual slavery and men into slavery that soon resulted in death. This is why Europeans did not settle on the coasts in remote areas. Today, slavery, especially sex slavery has cleaned out an entire generation of Ukrainian women. The stories I have learned while living in the Balkans and still gather are of cruelty, repeated violent raping and even murder that would never support an aguarian slave labor system. This goes on today, yet you want us to cry for shame at your alleged and mythical cruelties toward one small group of people.
The present is so rife with historical fraud and myth that it is unlikely that any supportable argument will sway many. However, any with the courage to actually do some research and reading on their own will learn more of the complexity of the issues and the ridiculousness of American Blacks complaints and demands.
“Incidents of cruelty were rare and were condemned socially among Whites, as was sexual contact of any kind. There were even laws in Colonial times against sexual contact and fines for mixed births. Black slaves were allowed to play, sing and dance and go to church and be any way they wanted…..yet you want us to cry for shame at your alleged and mythical cruelties toward one small group of people.
“The present is so rife with historical fraud and myth that it’s unlikely any supportable argument will sway many. However, any with the courage to actually do some research and reading on their own will learn more of the complexity of the issues and the ridiculousness of American Blacks’ complaints and demands.”
Exactly. These issues are indeed complex, and in the popular mind have been grossly over-simplified. When you do some reading on the matter, it turns out to have been quite different from the popular misconceptions, despite all the propaganda generated by inflammatory novels like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Mandingo”.
When I was looking into this, I first discovered (what should have been obvious anyway,but never occurred to me) that the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese systems were all different. So there’s no way to speak of “Slavery” as one simple thing. The French system, as I remember reading — as it was practiced in Louisiana — was quite humane (for that time, at least), with slaves having their own quarters, allowed to have their own garden plots and generous free time to work them, as well as having holidays, etc. They could also, on their own time, earn and save money which was theirs to spend as they pleased. Some even purchased their own freedom.
They did not toil from sun-up to sun-down, under the whip, as Hollywood and some sensational novelists would like to have us to believe.
One could go on and on, but just consider this statistic. A much vaster number of slaves were imported into Brazil, compared with a relatively very tiny number that went to North America. Yet, a black population which numbered a mere three-quarters of a million at the time of American Independence has grown to number 41 million today — and this (unlike the white population) without any increase at all from immigration, but entirely generated from its own internal growth!
This hardly presents a picture of a people who were abused, overworked, beaten, starved, and harshly treated — people who had the absolute worst of everything. Such a population, with luck, would barely have survived, not flourished and multiplied as they have done.
In fact, it presents a picture of the most prosperous, successful, best-fed black population anywhere on earth today. This is the black population that should be the happiest. In fact, one of their number is presently the most powerful man in the world! But are they happy? No! Despite everything, all they do is incessantly complain; and no matter what they’re given, they whine and demand still more.
I remember one home, which consisted of one large round room, with a fire pit located in the center and a hole in the roof —it which housed both humans and farm animals all together, sharing the warmth in that single room. There was no such thing as a toilet. I inquired of the guide which century this represented — thinking it must be about a thousand years ago. He replied that this was a typical peasant home right up into the early part of the 20th century!
Can you imagine the stench? The noise? Those blacks in South Carolina had it pretty good. At least they didn’t have to share their home with the pigs and goats and chickens.
