HEIR
TO A FORTUNE
BY MISS PAT HOLBERT
Part I
Mr. Sivley’s Grand-daughter Elizabeth
Chapter I
(To Be Read with a Heavy, Southern Drawl)
Dedication
This story is dedicated to my only daughter Patty Hinton:
It’s been said that life is like a garden. Every small work of kindness and every
thoughtful gesture is like a tiny seed. And when you plant these seeds...Wonderful things
happen. Smiles appear,...dreams blossoms,...and love takes root and grow...
Before you know it...Happiness is all around you. It takes a lot of love,...care... and
effort...to tend to the garden of life. But, you’re one of those people who have a special
gift for it. Hold on to that gift from God...Because...people like you make the world a
beautiful place.
Love always...
MOMMY
It’s a long, long southern story...
However, Mr. Sivley’s granddaughter, Elizabeth hailed from Richmond, Virginia. Her
grandfather, Felix “Ted” Sivley II, was one of the most affluent white men of the old
south. Her father, Richmond Sivley, was one of the wealthiest colored plantation and land
owners in the old south in the late 1820’s.
Yes you read right. And as hard as it is to believe, they “The Sivley’s,” possessed over
5,000 acres of rich oil lands, salt mines, warehouses brimming with cotton, corn,
soybeans etc.. They were gently rolling farmlands. Yes indeed, they had thousands of
horses, and cattle. Picturesque wild flowers added brilliant splashes of color in the
springtime to the famous Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and the Sivley’s Estate.
Several rivers flowed from their Plantation western to the mountains into the Chesapeake
Bay. Virginia, with its mild climate, foggy rain, melted snow, formed artificial natural
lakes and dismal swamps.
This is an attempt to set the record straight because most people are only aware of the
destitute slave conditions of most African Americans brought to America in the old
south.
Indeed, Richmond, along with his father, Felix, his wife, Louisa, Richmond’s two older
brothers, Hamilton and Albert, and the eldest, their sister, Miranda, combined fortunes
was estimated to be in the billions. They “the Sivley’s, were indeed Heirs’ to a Fortune.”
Richmond, one forth Jamaican, one forth African, and half white was tall and tan and
very good looking, even as he grew older. His father, Felix, became 88 years of age on
September 3rd, his birthday in 1888. They were renowned oil men, with several
petroleum pumping riggs located on their property in Hotwell County, Virginia.
Virginia is perhaps the most historic of all the 50 states. Some of the most important
events in American history took place there. The first permanent English settlement in
America was made at Jamestown in 1607. Some of the greatest battles of the
Revolutionary War and Civil War were fought in Virginia. American independence from
Great Britain was assured when George Washington forced Lord Cornwallis to surrender
at Yorktown in 1781. The Civil War ended when the Confederate forces surrendered at
Appomattox, Virginia in 1865.
In fact, the state of Virginia was named for Queen Elizabeth I of England, the “Virgin”
Queen. Historians think Sir Walter Raleigh suggested the name about 1584. That year,
Queen Elizabeth gave Raleigh permission to colonize the Virginian region. King Charles
II gave the name “Old Dominion” to it because it remained loyal to the crown during the
English Civil War of the mid-1600’s. Virginia is one of four states officially called
commonwealths. The others are Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The
Skyline Drive along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains offers spectacular views of the
Shenandoah Valley. In this fertile valley, General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson won
victories over Union armies during the Civil War. Today, Richmond is the Capital,
Norfolk is the largest city in the great state of Virginia.
Richmond Sivley’s daughter Elizabeth’s grandfather, old man Felix Sivley was IrishItalian and the most generous Irishman in the Highland Springs Community in Hotwell
County, maybe even in the world. Louisa McIntire Sivley, his wife, was a typically Irish
American who possessed flaming red hair, a freckled face and she was endowed with a
red hot temper to match. Although she was sometimes impossible to live with, she was
really quite attractive.
Richmond, whose mother was one of Felix Sivley’s ex-slaves, was from Jamaica named
Cleamie T. She was named that by her first slave master who had her for one year in
Kentucky. But in actuality, she was Chief Jhama, of Jamaica, oldest daughter of his
twenty-five children named Caleesta and was heir apparent to his throne.
When the slave ship docked in Jamaica, Cleamie T. was thrown in with the rest of the
penniless slaves by a jealous female rival and not by accident. She was blind folded and
carted off to America where she too became a slave. She was dark chocolate brown
skinned, with perfect white teeth. Even though she was dark, her face was round and
shone bright like a star in the twilight. Cleamie T. had the smoothest skin and was the
sexiest, friendliest female of all the gals’ Mr. Sivley had purchased and brought back
from the Kentucky mountains slave auction block.
Way back then, in the 1800’s, seldom did you ever hear slave laughter in the slave
quarters or anywhere else where there were slaves. But on the Jessimine Plantation, the
whip silent, Cleamie T., the slave at 16 years old, laughed long and quite often. She was
well provided for by her captive, the honorable Felix “Ted” Sivley II, her white slave
master. She often attempted to reveal who she was, but with her thick Jamaican accent,
Caleesta became Cleamie T., because no one could understand her.
The fact that she’d come to him as a vassal made no difference to him, however black she
was. Way back then, or even as Mr. Sivley was getting older. Felix Sivley, at 88, like the
other Sivleys made his own world and he was a Tycoon in his own world, just like her
father, King Jhama. She was use to having her own way and the very best of everything.
Back home, men, women and children waited on her hand and foot. Banquets of the best
food was placed before her on a grand table and diamonds, rubbies emeralds, and pearls
thrown at her feet. But on the Jessimine Plantation, Cleamie T., the slave was a
housemaid and she loved Miss Louisa the best because she was kind to her. Cleamie T.
seemed to be the only person that could get along with her fiery temper. Miss Louisa was
like a mother to Cleamie T. Unfortunately, Miss Louisa had been ill for a long time from
a devastating fever and suffered long spells of silence after giving birth to her last son
Albert who was breached when he was born. Albert was 10 years old when Louisa
demanded that her husband bring extra help for her when she was suffering from her
illness. That is when Mr. Sivley traveled to Kentucky and returned with Cleamie T. and
twenty other captives, both men, women and children.
Before her forced voyage to America, Caleesta, back home in Jamaica was like a brand
new colt. Long sexy legs and just as wild as one. Being the Chief’s daughter, she showed
absolutely no inhibitions. In America, with her newly found freedom, although a slave, in
the home of a compassionate wealthy man, she was just as dangerous as a bolt of
lightning in a stormy sky when it touch the ground. And every one knew it. She was like
a tornato, in that when you met her, there seemed to be a wild wind blowing through her
long black hair. The wind seemed to blow through one’s mind when she greeted you.
Being very smart, she seem to read their thoughts and had a way of looking straight
through them with those mysterious eyes of hers. She appeared to have eyes in the back
of her head, for know one could surprise her anymore, especially after being kidnapped
back home in Jamaica. She was also very cunning and intelligent even though she could
not read or write one single word in English. Most things came to her as if by magic. She
seemed to cast a spell over everyone she met in America because no one had ever found a
slave to be so bewitching or so enticing.
However, she was born in Africa and later along with her father and mother, Queen
Justine, King Jhama’s primary wife, had sailed from there to Jamaica on one of their
many voyages. The fact that she’d survied the middle passage to America at the tender
age of 14 only seemed to make her will stronger, her character more intense and she was
endowed with steadfast determination.
Aboard the slave ship, “The Prelude,” the blindfold gone, she simply cast a spell on the
crew and they too befriended her and gave her exactly what she needed to survive. She
ate from the captains table and the rest of the slaves had plenty to eat and fresh water too.
Not one man was cast overboard or was ever treated crudely as long as Cleamie T., a
supernatural woman, was aboard the ship or around to stop them. This was unlike what
happened on other ships.
Of course, her hair was nappy and wild, but she cut quite a figure, even in her slave
clothes and proved to be something else to handle too, if annoyed. And no one wanted to
rile her, now or even back when she was aboard “The Prelude”.
In the beginning, not long after they had set sail, on the ship, moving across the Atlantic
ocean, she had proven her ability to control the situation after one of the slaves had
broken free and removed her blindfold. He, Jobol, was a man of war back home in
Jamaica, and a valiant soilder, had been one of her bodyguards. He knew well what she,
Princess Caleesta was capable of once her blind fold had been removed. After that, even
the crew, some of which were untamed, savage men, was frightened of her. When she
had broken free of her shackles, she came up the stairs on deck, she and Jobol and she
simply held her arms up high, looking toward the men, then quickly, upward toward the
sky. As clouds began to form, the wind began to blow fiercely all around the ship. Great
waves of water began to tumult the ship and the ship began to pitch and roll backward
and foreward against the sea. At the appearance of her, with their pistols drawn and
whips held high into the air on her and Jobol, they all seemed to be in a trance and could
not move one step toward her to stop her or her bodyguard in any way, or make a move
against her. Like an unbroken stallion, her eyes seem to blaze like the sun and the wind
began to blow through her long nappy hair. If they made a move toward her, the large
waves would began to rock and toss the ship so violently that everyone on deck could
move only to bow to her as they realized who she was, they became terrified. Princess
Caleesta, was not tossed not one little bit, but held steadfast to her pose.
Even though she did not like her situation, by the time the blind fold came off, “the
Prelude” was well underway. And she decided to see why the spirit of the wind had
allowed her to be kidnapped in such a way. She somehow realized and knew that where
she was headed, the spirit wanted her to be and that some major changes was to take
place for the betterment of mankind. She knew that she had a devine apointment to make
and where this journey would take her was very exciting to her.
Old man Felix use to say of Cleamie T, quite often, and with laughter.... “that damn
Cleamie T. ain’t scared of nothing either”. Like I said, she could cast a charm over most
people she met with her eyes and was well aware of her good looks that launch that spell.
She decided to hide her special powers after the ship reached port. At her command,
everyone forgot what they had gone through because of the spell of forgetfulness that she
placed on them. She did not want everyone to be aware of her raw ability because she had
a job to do. And she did not want to forewarn them. Which she thought would maybe
make her mission in America impossible to complete.
And so, after the slave auction block and after Mr. Sivley had purchased her, she went to
her new home at the Jessimine plantation in Richmond, Virginia. No one was the least
suspicious of the raven headed beauty with the bizarre eyes that rode along the old
country roads from Kentucky with the other slaves.
Sadly, and through it all, she was 26 years of age and still living on the exquisite
Jessimine Plantation in Hotwell County, Virginia when poor unfortunate Louisa died of
heart failure one dark, cold, and stormy January night. There was snow on the ground and
a blazing fire in the huge fireplace located in her unbelievable, massive bedroom. Miss
Louisa was gasping and panting for breath and crying out something about her poor boys
and unfortunate daughters all the while clutching and grabbing miserabally at Cleamie T.,
who for the first time, seemed overwrought by the whole affair. She, fully expecting this
to be just another episode of Miss Louisa’s illness; hoping she would pull through this
occurrence like the others who had pulled through with the help of her magic. But this
time it was not to be. With all her magic, Cleamie T. could not save her beloved Louisa
this time. The doctor was there and had warned them that soon the end would come for
her. But still, they were hopeful of her recovery to full health.
They, (every one on the Plantation) were all praying for her recovery and you could hear
the beautiful sound of the slave voices, the soft huming of the slave women in the
background outside the house, even though it was freezing outside. Yes, even though she
was sometimes impossible to live with, some slaves even stood outside below her
window, praying and singing exquisitely. Because they knew, when she was mean to
them, it was because of her illness.
Miss Louisa was clutching her own clothes when she sank back quietly upon her satin
sheets and took her last breath. Cleamie T. placed her gently down upon her pillows and
the crying and groaning of everyone on the whole plantation was enough to wake the
dead. After Mr. Sivley blew out the candle next to her bed stand, signaling her death, the
weeping and dreadful wailing began. It was an awful thing to witness and everyone there
was truly tramatized by it all. Especially her children. Cleamie T. felt as if she too was
one of them and the late Miss Louisa’s miserable husband was most grief stricken.
For years, Mr. Sivley seemed unable to rid himself of that ghastly image of his wife’s last
moments of life. His mourning lasted too long and everyone knew it. Finally, Cleamie T.
decided to at least try and bring him out of it. She started to fix her self up a little more
and soon they, Mr. Sivley and Cleamie T. began to take long walks together through the
flower gardens around the splendid plantation. After a long time, she tried to make him
smile at funny things that would happen to his children. Then she advanced to try and
make him lauph. Finally, one night he sobbed so hard into her arms that soon his great
sobs became tears of joy as they sank into each others arms and made wild abandon love
to each other. He kissed her so hard that Cleamie T. thought she would swollow it
tongue. This erotic feeling was new to her and she had never allowed her self to love
anyone in that manner before. Afterwards, they seemed inseperable. Although some
found their love and obvious need for each other hard to take in the beginning, they were
simply glad that life, and laughter had returned to the Jessimine Plantation once again.
Yes, somehow, he got through it with the help of “that damned Cleamie T.,” and her
enchanting laughter among other things she did for him.
For obvious reasons Cleamie T. remined him of his wife. Perhaps it was because she and
Miss Louisa spent so much time together at the end. All in all, Miss Louisa was missed
very much around the Jessimine Plantation. In fact, her huge portrait was never taken
down. And when Maranda, her daughter was 21, a portrait was painted of her and hung
right next to her mother.
After her death, for awhile it seemed that the wonderous wild flowers wouldn’t bloom
and the roses refused to bud. Before his wife’s death, the only laughter that seem to come
from Miss Louisa was because of Cleamie T. Three years after Louisa’s death and two
years after she began cooking all of the meals in the Big house, Cleamie T., the slave,
was no longer a slave but became a freed woman and had bore a son by the honorable
Felix “Ted Sivley II, the richest white man in America. We know all this to be true
because we found the old man’s Last Will and Testament in the archieve department at
the County Courthouse. In his Will, Mr. Sivley officially changed Richmond’s last name
from Richmond Davis, her previous slave master’s name to Richmond Sivley, his name,
and Richmond Sivley became heir to a fortune.
Although the world around them was prejudice and race intolerant, Felix Sivley, in the
1800’s raised his daughter and three sons together in Christian love and indeed spoiled
the youngest, Richmond the most. They all did. Even the town’s people had a special
relationship with him. The fact that every job to be had in that county or the surrounding
counties came from his wealthy father’s many farms and cattle ranches never entered the
picture, or showed on their faces, at least on the outside. Their contempt didn’t show,
especially if they wanted to eat and feed their families. Is it not extraordinary how hunger
pangs and cold winter nights could suppress the extremes of white bigots’ notions? They,
the wealthy Sivleys’ didn’t take any nonsense off of anyone of these people at all neither.
All in all, the Sivley’s were very attractive, courageous and sturdy God fearing men of
the old south.
Like I said, the Jessimine Plantation was located on one of the most beautiful, God
nourished rich, dark red colored soil you will ever get a chance to see or whiff while
alive. It’s gently rolling farmlands, picturesque wild flowers added brilliant splashes of
color. It was located next to a very large lake with several well stocked fishing ponds. It
was surrounded and sandwitched between two, snow covered mountains called the Blue
Ridge Mountains that on rainy days smoked like old man Sivley did, who sometimes
continually smoked like the mountain and sometimes kept an unlite savanna cigar
between his pearly white teeth and thick gray mustache.
As they became men, Richmond, along with his two older brothers, and with his sister
Miranda, while all dressed up in the finest clothes money could buy, while they too, (the
men) puffed on those long, fat, brown and expensive savanna cigars, while out sailing on
the Potomac, thought nothing of Richmond’s 50% African/Jamaican blood line.
To others, even to the field slaves, to see Richmond Sivley was to love him. He was
special. He was divinely handsome. He seemed to have a light coming from his face that
God himself had to have placed there. People use to joke, that when God made Richmond
Sivley, he looked in the heavenly nursery and did a double take and looked back at him
(Richmond) and exclaimed “Let there be Light!” But to the family, to them he was old
dad’s favorite son and the most attractive of them all. And by far, in three counties, the
most good looking attorney of all the wealthy Sivleys’.
Through the years, Cleamie T. learned to speak English. Finally, she told the horror of
her peril and with the help of her husband journed back to Jamaica with Jobol. With
relief, she found her father and mother still alive and heart broken from the thought of her
erroneous demise and very glad to see her returned. They were also very delighted to
meet her only son Richmond and their hero Felix “Ted” Sivley II who had brought their
adored daughter back to them where she took her place as Princess Caleesta. But that is
another story. One day, if you ask nicely, I will tell you that story as well. It is not so long
and not so southern. But it is the story of her journey back to Jamaica and subsequent
removal and overthrow of Queen Lete’, the woman who had her kidnapped and who had
seized the throne from her father and mother and held them in prison.
Back in America, the very religous and spiritual Richmond, at 49, turned out to be a tall,
kind man that loved to laugh often, long and loud too, just like his mother. His most
charming attribute, other than his flashing light brown eyes and thick black eyebrows and
lashes, was his thick black mustache and long shoulder length wavy black hair. His hair,
which for the most part was kept hidden under the most typically southern, hat.
Richmond also loved to tell jokes and make everyone lauph. They were jokes of good,
bad and tasteless religious caricatures that had hidden and obvious life lessons sewn into
them with an distinct motive to transform the listener into a better Christian. And better
yet, he wanted to instill into them the desire to want the character of being “Christ Like.”
Of course, that is when everyone started saying that Richmond, indeed had the calling
from the Lord. However, when Richmond was 49, everbody knew of his calling but him.
He would say that surely he would be the first to know if indeed God had called him to
the ministry. Although, he had read the whole Bible twice.
When he was young, he had interpreted the New Testament into Latin in his own
handwriting at 16 years of age in order to graduate from the University. Yet he still could
not perceive his own calling. It was his father, old man Felix, who reminded him to focus
his reading on I Samuel, that seemed to ignite his calling in later years.
By the time Mr. Sivley’s granddaughter Elizabeth was born, Richmond had married into
one of the wealthiest families of that time, and to one of the most aristocratic women of
that time and he was just 29 years old. She was six years older that him.
Of course, Elizabeth, at 20 was one of the most graceful and delightful black haired
young women of any race in Hotwell County. Her angelic face, also tan in color, was the
envy of every young or old woman in that area, except her mother, who it was said, was
also enchanting and could charm the hell out of any man, young or old without
witchcraft. She too had a sense of humor like her husband and could sing and sing very
well. She, who married Richmond, could do no wrong in the eyes of the wealthiest white
man for 5 states including Georgia, Kentucky or Tennesee. One only had to look into her
composed face, gaze into her coal black eyes, and smell that aromatic perfume that she
wore to know that she too, like her child, was both ravishing and fortunate.
Mr. Sivleys granddaughter Elizabeth in 1849, however rich, was brought up with the fear
of God in-bread in her and she, like her father embraced every word of what that meant.
After church service one day, Elizabeth was asked by her grandfather if she’d learned
anything from the message; and Elizabeth replied, “I learned, granddad, that I was born
to hear from God. And to not be stingy and keep what I heard him say to me to myself,
but to tell everyone what the Lord Jesus had said to her.” Because of her answer, he
encouraged her to study more and soon she became Superintendent of her Sunday
School, and by the time she was 14 years of age she later went on to study the Old and
New Testament, like her father, at the best private seminary that money could buy.
Elizabeth Sivley was very straightforward and later she was presented to society when
she was 16.
The Sivley’s were international travelers. They sailed together often to Europe, Africa,
Japan and other parts of the world. But in Paris, she became very renowned and in France
she was revered for three things, her beauty, her poems and later her gowns. In America,
her many rose gardens, orchards, flowers and vegetable gardens back home on the
Plantation was the pride of her family. She had excellent taste in many things and showed
compassion for the poor in spirit and finances. She led many a lost and downtrodden
individual to Christ to be saved.
Miss Elizabeth Guthrie Sivley authored many poems in 1849, and throughout her life.
The year she says she fell in love with the spirit of God was on her birthday, September
11. This poem, called the day I was born, September 11, 1853 6:00am on a Friday
morning is an excerpt from her book of published Poetry called:
“Poems in the Book of a Slave’s Life”.
A Day to Remember
It was a day to remember, a day they forgot.
Yes...In my mother’s womb, I cried a lot.
This beginning, this journey for sure,
Would take me to places to make me pure.
How can I say, on this day they forgot,
How can I say, How can I endure, even as a tot.
They say as I began to be born
I tell you that I heard the sound of another’s horn.
I heard of you long before I met you face to face.
I read of you in a book called The Bible, a book of grace.
Then, first you appeared to me in dreams,
Of our love, I could taste.
How sweet it was, the day I was born, a day they forgot,
Yes, in my mother’s womb, I cried a lot.
Then one day I saw you, and I screamed
then you screamed,
I could beam and lean to
Your powerful arms and sweet dreams I would get,
The day I realized that it, it was you that I had met.
Tell me, do you remember that day we met,
Or have you forgotten too,...like that day they forgot,
Yes, In my mother’s womb, I cried a lot.
I saw the moon
Comming nearer and then,
I screamed your name and wrote it all down in pen.
Was that day just another blue sky and white cloudy day
Or was it “The” day to remember, or a beautiful morning in
September.
And what was it
that you said to me, my love?
That you are
and always will
be forever
from above...
It was a day to remember, a day they forgot,...yes, in my mother’s womb
I-----------Miss Elizabeth Guthrie Sivley wrote, To God be the glory, Hallelujah to his name,
because I am Free.
All of her poems, she says, instead of being written for a man that she loved, Elizabeth
said was written for the spirit of God, whom she loved. To whom she says appeared to
her in night dreams and day visions and will remain “The Love” of her life. She also
wrote a poem called “A Dream Life”. It was a poem in which she found her love only
when she dreamed of him. These, she says, were not sexual dreams, but were love
dreams. And if you ask nicely, I will tell you this poem too.
No, she was not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus the Christ, the savor, no matter how rich
her parents were. She was taught this by her family, the Sivley’s of the old south.
There were some outlandish bigots from other states that did not know of the wealth of
the Sivley’s. But soon they too, after meeting them, or trying to get employment from
them, and finding out just how rich they were, they too were usually reduced to sniveling
fools and yes men. So, she grew up confident and didn’t have to take sassiness from
anyone rich, or poor, black or white, slave or freedman or woman, yet she was a humble
creature as one could be and be rich too.
Miss Elizabeth Guthrie Sivley was known in a certain circle. And if you did not come
from that certain circle, you probably did not get a chance to lay your eyes on her. You
did not get to know her at all. You probably would know of her, but you would not get a
chance to get within five feet of her. She was very well protected from vicious men and
the usual drunkard of the old south.
Chapter II
Freedom’s Garden Cultivators
The products of this soil, white flowers, gentlemen with chivalric manners, ladies of high
virtue. But to “Freedom Gardens Cultivators,” the harvest of the old south was but
noxious weeds, overseers lashes, a callous master class, scandals of slave trade and the
poverty and ignorance of blacks and the poor whites.
There was not a more beautiful place on God’s green Earth than the Jessimine Plantation
because of men like the Sivley’s. Not just because it was beautiful rich soil, but because
there you found rich, compassionate men and women who loved God.
By the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, slavery was excluded from the territory north of the
Ohio River; all states north of Maryland and Delaware had abolished it by 1804, and by
1833, the British West Indies. Some southerners thus remained the only English-speaking
Americans who held slaves.
If characteristic differences of the south could be attributed to slavery alone, both friend
and foe of the area might have said that out of the soil of human bondage sprang those
institutions peculiarly southern. This was the backdrop that Miss Elizabeth grew up in
and was educated in. Friends called the products of this soil, white flowers, gentlemen
with chivalric manners, and ladies of high virtue. But to “Freedom Gardens Cultivators,”
the harvest of the old south was but noxious weeds, overseers lashes, a callous master
class, scandals of slave trade and the poverty and ignorance of blacks and the poor
whites.
It was a wonderful spring day and walking along side Elizabeth Guthrie Sivley was her
mother, Mrs. Katherine Hammond Guthrie Sivley and their always present body guards,
Mr. Sam, Mr. Fox, and a rough looking young man named Dustry Red, all of which took
very seriously their responsibilities.
Katherine and Elizabeth’s father, are very distant cousins, but managed to fall madly in
love with one another somehow. No one said a thing when young Richmond began
courting her. It was as if their meeting and subsequent engagement was somehow
prearranged, predestined, preordained or providence. Perhaps it was because they did not
grow up together or attend the same schools or academies which made them vertual
strangers to one another. Perhaps it was because she was gorgeous and charming and he
was fine and very intelligent. Their wedding was, however, the social event of the year.
They both, of course came from the finest white and black families in Virginia, of both it
was whispered of well bred southern stock. It was also murmured at family gatherings,
that indeed, Katherine, Elizabeth’s mother also had royal blood surging through her
veins. She had the proudest look planted on her face.
Her parents were one of the profusely rich families of Hammond County, Virginia. When
you saw the two together, mother and daughter, you knew from whom Miss. Elizabeth
Guthrie Sivley inherited her classic good looks from. From her Father, Richmond, she
inherited her light skinned from. Katherine Hammond Guthrie Sivley, a malatto
(white/black), adorned with long and shiny black hair pinned regally upon her head, wore
it more like a tiara or crown than hair. Her head is always held high and erect, and the
expression on her face shouts Queen! Royalty!
Unlike her mother, Katherine, Elizabeth let her hair fall layer after layer of cascading
curls, down her back to her curvaceous waist. To other women, who longed to be as
fortunate, their lives seemed to be a dream come true. But to Katherine, who was not a
prude, even though she looked like one, it was all too much because she found most of
the women in town hating her because of her aristocratic looks and wished they too had
her father and her husband’s money. Most of the men desired her, which of course, made
most of the towns women resentful.
Politically, in 1661, the pioneering white Sivleys owned everbody and everthing for miles
around them. Black or white and militia included. The land on which they lived now had
been in their family for over 100 years. The Sivleys did not need to be prejudice; they
helped where they could especially on their own plantation, the Jessimine plantation.
They mostly traveled a lot and were much too rich and powerful to sink to the level of
ungratefulness to God for their fortunate position in life. They were very much above that
sort of thing. Hamilton and Albert were also married and had good families of their own.
As a family, they had traveled all over the world, met and lived in harmony with just
about everyone they met and did not buy into other Virginian rednecks who were
instrumental in introducing laws that developed into precise, cruel and elaborate slave
codes. The Sivleys and anyone that wanted to be around them did not buy into it either.
In other towns around the Sivley lands, slave crime was accorded special penalties
imposed by courts of representatives of the slaveholding class; property rights in humans
were concretely recognized by laws providing for the return of runaways, and for the
children of slaves to inherit the status of their mother.
Elizabeth writes in her diary that the Planters Bank of Hotwell County, Richmond,
Virginia, the largest bank in America was owned by her family. Back then, everyone
needed money. Before there were banks, all it took between two grown men for a
contract to exist was officated by a hardy handshake. Grandfather said that after he got
older, his memory got bad and he found himself loaning great sums of money to
neighbors and families, forgetting that they owed him. He loaned so much money in hard
times that he began writing the transactions down on paper with dates and filing the paper
work with the court. He usually had his lawyer there to witness and make it all legal. He
said that this was all done in order to remember how much interest he charged and how
much interest farmers had to pay back.
In the beginning, he said that most of the loans were between family members, but soon,
word got around that granddad was an easy touch and shortly thereafter, loaning money
became a family business. It changed from The Sivleys Bank of Hotwell County into
Planters Bank of Hotwell County. Then somebody, no body remembers which Sivley did
it, but some one built a building of substantial size and the rest is banking history.
In fact, unlike other large landowners of the southern colonies that found a satisfactory
solution to their labor problems in the use of Negro slaves, the Sivleys did not. In fact,
there were just as many whites working on the Jessimine plantation as there were slaves
or white indentured servants.
Old man Felix Sivley would complain about other slaves’ conditions on other plantations
to her. Especially when he heard the other white planters boasting of their cruelty. They
had the nerve to boast about the selective nature of immigration from Africa. They knew
it guaranteed slaves possessing physical hardihood, sufficient stamina to withstand the
shock of transfer to a new climate and society. These men were rich beyond belief and
yet boasting of oppressing men and women who were less fortunate than they, like they
were cows or steers or mules.
Some of them starved babies that froze in the winter. And then after having worked the
men and women half to death over their lifetime found no use for them when they were
old and feeble. Cruelty that assured them (slave masters) great profit from the
unfortunate’s (slaves) long, hard times and a certain trip for them (their slave master) to a
certain fiery hell. Her grandad would say, “none of the poeple at my places are ever
unhappy, no not a one, because I see to that, ...well maybe except the time when my wife
poor Louisa died”. And that was true. Great grandad understood what the long cultural
development did to the Africans, who were human beings too. How it made the Negro’s
relatively rapid acquisition in their habits of ordered labor necessary for mutual benefit
and usefulness in their so called civilized society.
The difference being, he and his family cared about the circumstances under which they,
the unfortunate slaves, who where forced brought to America, found themselves. The
great human kindness, found on the Jessimine plantation, made their own cultural
assimilation easier. They weren’t forced. They were not whipped. They were not starved.
They did not freeze the little children in the winter because they did not have a descent
coat to wear or shoes on their feet. They were simply cared for and kept for their safety
and benefit. They all had warm clothes in the winter and good shoes on their feet. They
all indeed became a family because they knew they were not just owned but loved. They
became an air tight, ...and tight nit unit.
Back in Africa, they had no choice in the matter. Arrows and spears against guns and
cannons. They did not come voluntarily, in groups, but were individually snatched from
tribal moorings and thrown into the company of strange Negroes of diverse languages
and customs.
In America, with a genius for imitation, they inevitably adopted the culture of their white
captors as a common basis of social intercourse. Men like old man Felix, and other
“kind” masters, having an intimate interest in their Negroes, so successfully introduced
them to anglo-Saxon customs that few African traits survived. This not only made the
Negroes good laborers, but it also cast such a spell over them that they were unable to
act, except, white men and women directed them.
In their new environment, on the Jessimine plantation, they were probably more loyal to
their master and contented than they would have been if they had remained as slaves in
the African homeland or if they were slaves from other plantations who had cruel slave
masters. “This is what most slave masters told themselves, I am sure” Richmond Sivley
use to say to Elizabeth on those frequent occasions of talking with his lovely daughter.
Miss Elizabeth wrote in her diary, “the contrast in color, I am sure, and appearance
between Negroes and the whites, I believe have led to the formation of a wall of color
barriers and prejudice between the two races. This contrast, some being as black they
appear blue/black, categorized Negroes as menials and inferiors, creatures who by
inheritance, it seems are condemned by the whites to lasting servitude”. Except on the
Jessimine Plantation. No where else, on no other plantation are slaves entreated with such
human care and compassion. Entreated not as slaves, but as men, women and children
who need opportuninty and jobs the most and a chance to feed and house themselves just
like other men and women need these things, not enslavement.
On the Jessimine plantation, they were paid decent wages for their labor. Other slaves
would work a week to receive one dollar. The Sivleys did not judge people by the color
of their skin. Perhaps that is why God saw fit to bless them so. In fact, they did not judge
people at all, especially the unfortunate’s who could not help themselves whether they
were blue/black, handicapped or the poor whites. They simply did not behave in such a
inhumane way. They were taught that true character of a person could always be
measured by how one entreates another who cannot help oneself.
At the Jessimine plantation, grandfather would take his “so called” slave Cleamie T.
ballooning across the Atlantic ocean, then back home again.
Miss Elizabeth wrote in her diary that the Dutch slave ship that visitied Jamestown in
1619 forebeared the message that thousands were to come on the same mission and
endure horrible hardships. With my own eyes, she writes...”I have witnessed such horrors
on my many voyages and traveles”.
Although the Royal African Company, an English concern was given the monopoly of
the African slave trade in 1672, before the end of the century individual traders were
permitted to enter the business. Thereby bringing physical harm to hundreds of thousand
of people.
Elizabeth Sivley saw first hand the many injustices as she traveled from continent to
continent in 1849 and thereafter. This is why she had to travel always with her three
bodyguards. No one could approach her without her wanting them to approach her. She
also traveled with two white men along with one mulatta of superhuman strength and
stature name Zeek. She also traveled with a hidden army of soldiers who always traveled
close around her. But no one knew who they were or where they were. This, of course,
had to be done. Not only because of the slave mentality of that time, but because of her
rare beauty and regal social status. She had to always be escorted wherever she went.
Heathens were immediately dealt with. In fact you could not get a sheriff or deputy to
interfer except to help where they could. It was reported by the captain of the guards, by
Ted Aaaron Sivly, Richmond Sivley’s cousin that indeed several white men had been
shot and one had actually been killed and many assaulted in defense of Miss Elizabeth’s
honor and safety. These highly trained detectives had been top agents in Her Royal
Highness secret police and top secret service agents. You could tell by their facial
expression that they took seriously the responsibility of protecting their meal ticket, the
wealthy Sivleys, who were heirs to a fortune.
Zeek, the bodyguard, was indeed handsome, and in fact as handsome as Richmond, her
father and he had a crush on Miss Elizabeth and was often in brutal scraps with white
men protecting her. Salaries really did not come into play, however, these men were well
paid but knew that they could very well pay with their lives if anything were to happen to
Richmond Sivley’s wife and Felix Sivley’s granddaughter, whether one of the Sivley’s
were one hundred percent white or one hundred percent black.
After one white man had ben killed harassing her, Elizabeth wrote in a letter to her father
while she was away in England, how while on her voyage that she’d spied slaves being
nearly killed and brutalized and dehumanized at every turn in the south and on many a
ship. The slave trade was a brutal business. Traders, who established themselves on the
African coast, were native slave-hunters exchanging their unfortunate captives for rum,
bright clothes and gewgews. Then came the horrors of the middle passage to America.
The hapless passengers where herded like cattle into unsanitary ships where many
perished because of inadequate ventilation, food, and water.
Back then, conquerors of the American South like other conquerors of history, were not
unaware of the devastation they had wroght on human lives. As the Cotton-Kingdom
expanded, the value and number of slaves increased. Able-bodied males betwen eighteen
and thirty years of age brought $500 in 1800, $900 in 1810, $1,000 in 1820, $1,300 in
1834. After a drop to $790 in 1837 the price reached $1,800 in 1860. Women usually
sold for three-fourths the price of men and boys of corresponding ages, and both males
and females declined in value after they had reach 30 years of age and at 65 they were
considered commercially valueless.
This is the lifestyle, I, Elizabeth Guthrie Sivley lived but was certainly not a part of. Back
at home in the south, back in Virginia , while consuming great quantities of lemonade;
many days of breath consuming hot as fire air and stymie weather prevented me from
going for long leisure walks along the lake as I usually did. Instead I stayed around the
big house reading and writing poetry on the cool savanna shady porch.
Chapter III
Home Sweet Mansion
Some called their house a mansion. But to Elizabeth, it was called home. It had large and
small grouped kitchens, offices, stables, a gin house, and the smokehouses were a short
distance away from the communal village of other Negroes, also known as the slave
quarters or “the street”.
Ownership of the better lands, just as the larger percentage of slaves, was concentrated in
the hands of a small group of slave magnates. Like northern millionaires of a later
generation, the Sivleys’ controlled a disproportionate share of the income and natural
resoures of their region and time. Here was sound economic basis for the legend of
glamourous blue bloods.
The southern planter, Richmond Sivley and his father, lived in feudal splendor. The “Big
house” or the plantation mansion stood on an elevation near the main road, flanked by
slave cabins, kitchens, offices, stables, smokehouses, and other outbuildings. It was a tall
white wooden structure of not less than fifteen rooms, but it was made imposing by a row
of white columns as tall as the house itself and by lavish gardens. There was a screen of
spreading trees, borders of the odorous boxwood, and a tangled mass of flowering and
sweet-smelling shrubs. Ample use was made of such semi-tropical plants as Cherokee
rose, live oak, crepe myrtle, magnolia, and the pride of India. The interior of the house
was dominated by huge halls with an impressive stairway. On the first floor were the
parlors, dinning room, and a library. On the second floor were bedrooms for family and
guests. High off white ceilings, heavily shaded porches, and drafty passageways gave
comfort in summer, but no protection in the sharp southern winters, although fireplaces
were large and wood was plentiful. Floors were rather sparsely covered by thin carpets,
and the furniture was of a plan but massive elegance. A tall clock in the hall was the
family’s pride, even though it’s signal concerning the passing of time failed to disturb the
lazy tempo of plantation life. On the walls were family portraits and steel engravings of
battle scenes or of George Washington. The dinning room was separated from the main
body of the house by a porch, and the kitchen was well apart so that its odors, heat, and
clutter might not contaminate the main house.
The plantation was primarily a business enterprise and secondarily a country seat given
over to gentlemanly indulgences. The Sivleys were, in part, self-made men who carved
fortunes for themselves from a new country. They ruled their slaves successfuly becase
they did so by a mixture of self-control, firmness, and passion. This kindly virtue won the
cooperation of a race of warm emotions and infinite loyalty.
On other plantations, Elizabeth writes that she noticed that the success of the larger
plantations depended upon the much-abused overseer who handled the routine
management of the field production line like a crazed maniac. He was assisted in their
management by the “slave-driver”, a brute of a man, an individual chosen from the slaves
for his resourcefulness.
Those plantations was worked as a unit by gangs who were assigned daily tasks of
plowing, hoeing, picking, or ginning; the slave driver was held responsible for the
execution of these duties. The workday lasted from sun to sun, with liberal midday rest
periods.
Certain crimes committed by whites were punished less severely than those committed by
slaves. The violation of slave women was without legal penalty. Assembly and travel
were rigidly controlled, and the possession of firearms and the formation of secret
societies were prohibited. Not only were no provisions made for the education of most
blacks, but so great was the fear that they would be contaminated by Abolitionist
propaganda that such instruction was positively prohibited except where money could
buy it. Therefore, prohibition of public schools for Negroes resulted in an iliteracy rate of
more than 90%. The average slave was by-word ignorant of even the rudiments of a
formal education. But he was not unlearned. I soon learned that slavery was in itself an
educational process which transformed these black men, women and children from a
primitive to a civilized person endowed with conceits, customs, industrial skills, Christian
beliefs, and ideals of the Anglo-Saxon of North America. His jungle lore was supplanted
by folklore and his sacred songs and beliefs of English and Hebraic origins were
modified by the Methodist and Baptist churches and the hot oppressed cotton fields and
the agony of the whip. With the exception of some few words in the Gullah dialect of the
South Carolina coast, his language became completely English.
The slave was accepted as an intimate part of Southern brotherhood. Snow-white children
were suckled by black mammies and played indiscriminately with “pickaninnies” (a word
like nigger), but meant for describing little black children. The two races attended the
same churches, and white girls of plantation households sometimes supervised the
weddings of their maids. Talented Negro men were subject to the whim of the white
owners who had no regard for abilities and considered them merely their possessions or
goods.
That is why her grandfather Felix, and her father Richmond was so special for men of
their generation. They were men way ahead of their race. They were indeed proud and
humble men and they became in their period, legends in their own time. Everyone knew
them or of them because the Sivley’s gave back what they gained from society. For their
time, these men lived in a world their fortunes created. However, on other plantations,
like I have stressed, Black slavery had another side, a mean and cruel side, but it did not
exist for this great family of the old south.
Many have heard of the savagery of killer plantation overseers. I am taking this
opportunity to set the record straight. There were some kind and considerate slave
masters, and their name were Sivleys and I am a descendant of them.
Abolitionist assertions that the bondsmen were frequently and inadequated clothed,
underfed, and driven to death were economically and inhumanely unreasonable to the
Sivleys.
“As I traveled around the country”, she writes,... “I observed that some planters were not
so charming. For these men, my father’s secret army, for the most part, put their evil
concerns of my color to rest”. She writes on that some plantation structures on close
inspection turned out to be cottages with ridiculous false fronts. Because upon inspection,
some were found to be log houses without structural integrity. I was often struck by the
lack of domestic conveniences, by the shabbiness resulting from the lackadaisical habits
of both master and slave, by a soil teeming in weeds, briers, and bushes. Saddles, whips,
guns, shoes, clothing, and farm tools were often awkwardly displayed on front porches
and in halls, and the most conspicuous piece of furniture that attracted the eye of the
casual visitor might be the washstand. Some Virginian gentlemen seem to drop their fulldress and constrained town-habits, and live a free, rustic life. This ideal of the old south
was as near the truth as was the ideal of medieval chivalry on which it was so largely
modeled. But, the exploitative attitude which both rich and poor whites developed toward
the slave created a solidarity of interests which was readily rationlized into a solidarity of
class. They had a contempt for the black man that made most all white men brothers in a
sense and elevated the common white man to membership in a superior social standing.
When criticisms of the master-and slave relationship arose from the outside, the common
white man joined the master class in hating “the nigger loving scoundrels” called
Abolitionists.
Never-the-less, almost as socially degraded as the slaves were the million or more
southerners who in 1850 composed the class known as the poor whites. As “crackers”
and “hill-billies”, “sand-hillers”, “rag-tag and bop tail”, “squatters” and “po’ white trash”
and “po’ buckra” to the Negroes, the descriptions of the ignorance, poverty, filthy, lack of
ambition, and misshapen forms could hardly be believed were the evidence not
confirmed by my own eyes and by reliable observers such as my faithful friends.
Although families were large, they cooked, ate, slept, and died in a miserable hut of one
room. The earth served as a floor; roofs were leaky and shutters took the place of window
panes. The principal articles of furniture were a home-made table, a few rickety stools, a
dirty bed or two, a spinning wheel, and an inherited frying pan. There was no china, no
knives and forks. Physicaly these people were characterized by “a striking leanness of
frame and slackness of muscle” in association with a shambling manner of walking, a
bonniest and miss-shapeliness of head and feature. A peculiar pale-skinned or
alternatively a not less bizarre and a not less shallow faded-out colorlessness of skin and
hair. The men, some of them, when not hunting, and fishing lolled away their time in the
company of hounds and jugs of moonshine whisky. Vegetable patches, a few acres of
corn were planted faithfully but were later abondoned to the weeds. For the most part,
they were merely the weakest elements of the frontier population who were driven into
the mountains, the red hills, the sand lands, the swamps, and the pine barrens by the
procession of planters and rich farmers. Their isolation contributed much to their general
ignorance. Their lack of ambition was promoted by their inability to obtain adequate
returns for labor on bad soils and by the circulation of insufferable diseases such as
hookworm and malaria. Nutritional deficiencies, rather than moral depravity which some
have aserted, at times forced them to eat clay and red dirt. They were genuine white
southerners, as blond and sharp-featured as other Anglo-Saxons. Some of them, indeed,
had been the least competent members of middle-or even upper-class families who
allowed themselves to be edged back to the poorer lands, wherein they joined the ranks of
the “crackers” and were forgotten by their more fortunate relatives. They were energetic,
at least when drunk. Neither exploited nor mistreated by the governing classes, they were
simply ignored because they were useless in the slave economy. They were free to share
the aristocratic contempt of other whites toward the Negroes. This made them loyal
southerners who were willing, when the tragic days arrived, to demonstrated dormant
character on many battlefields.
During each of the two decades following 1790, masters by deed or will freed so many
slaves that the number of free Negroes more than doubled. White fathers, particularly in
Louisiana, freed many mulatto or quadroon children and often endowed them with
money and property. The emancipated slaves who were established in Virginia as petty
landowners under Richard Randolph’s will proved advantageous for men like my father,
Richmond. However, the barriers of race and social distinction prevented most free
colored men from attaining widespread distinctions. After the Nat Turner scare of 1831,
southern legislatures had imposed severe restrictions upon them.
The slave could not testify in court in their own behalf or serve on juries; they were
deprived of the right to vote and to serve in the military. Some states would not permit
free Negroes within their borders, and others required them to register and to post bonds
for their good behavior. Often they were forced back into slavery by kidnapping or legal
tricks.
In Mississippi, the number of free Negroes declined from 1,366 in 1840 to half that
number in 1860, and in that state a slave could not be freed except by special act of the
legislature.
The basic weekly food allowance was standardized at a peck of meal, four pounds of
meat, and a quart of molasses, with something less for the children. Clothes were of the
coarsest quality. Adults received each year a new dress or a new suit of clothes, two pairs
of shoes, and a cheap hat, and at Christmas time small portions of whisky, a little
spending money, and some trinkets for the women. The children were provided with a
simple shirt that reached to the knees, and were required at all seasons to go without
shoes and hats. Each family was allowed a cabin built of logs with crevices effectively
daubed with clay. There was a broad and plentifully fueled fireplace at which the food
was cooked and the family gathered in cool weather. Variety in diet was accomplished by
gifts from the planter’s table, by the hunting of ‘possums by night and of squirrels and
rabbits by day, by the gathering of plums, blackberries, and persimmons from abandoned
fields, and of hickory nuts, walnuts, and muscadines from the forests. Variety in diet was
also accomplished by the cultivation of vegetable in garden plots allowed by the masters,
and by participation in the autumn festival of hog-killing. Hams, shoulders, sides, and
lard were saved for the plantation smokehouse, but other parts of the hog were distributed
among every mouth on the plantation for prompt consumption. They were the spareribs,
feet, souse, liver chitterlings, and “cracklings” taken from the boiling lard.
Despite legislative acts, the slaves managed to dress gaily on holidays. So travelers even
declared that for these occasions they often dressed better than the whites. One would
described their Sunday attire of slaves in Richmond in 1833: “The females wore white
muslin and light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets, ribbons and feathers; some are seen with
parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-hankerchief in the most
fashionable style. The young men among the slaves wore white trousers, black socks,
broad-brimmed hats, and carry walking sticks. There was the pursuit by torchlight of the
‘possum and the ‘coon to the music of the hounds, the assembling of the planters and
their guests on fox hunts, and rabbit hunting, fishing, and trapping during hours stolen
from the routine of field work. At the horse races the jockeys and many of the spectators
were Negroes. On many plantations, marriage festivals in the big house were echoed in
the slave quarters; and sometime the wedding of a favorite housemaid was held in the
hall of the mansion. The evening frolics in the slave quarters gave material for the
American instituion called a minstrel show. The fiddle and the banjo and the clapping of
hands and bones created lively rhythms, and there were jigs, clogs, and cakewalks,
intermingle with humorous reflections.
He, the slave, learned to escape from the fun-killing preachments of the puritanical
religion his master tried to impose upon him. One device was to turn the supposedly rigid
ceremonies of the Protestant church into occasions of joy. The esctasy of the revivals
frequently led to holy dances called “shouts”. At the camp meetings of the Methodists,
the Negro readily mixed the festive with the spiritual. Baptisms in the creeks and mill
ponds of the Baptists were occasions of lively display. Converted from sin by an
emotional experience on Sunday, the slave often fell back into sin on Monday.
Sometimes he put on the garments of piety of Sunday and conveniently took them off on
week-days. The Negroes doubtless were impressed with the injunctions of white
preachers concerning the wisdom of chastity and monogamous marriages. Yet the
communal nature of the slave quarters facilitated sexual familiarities offensive to the
family standards of free American white men and their women. The conception of each
slave as a separate piece of property prevented slave marriages from having the character
of legal contracts and often led to the disintegration of the marriage and often led to the
dissolution of the relationship by the consent of master. Divorces and re-marriages were
frequent, for the masters’ consent was easy to secure and the slaves themselves were
often eager to change wives. Negro men could afford to be polygamous because the
support of wives and children rotated upon the slave system, rather than upon the
individual husband or father. It was often said that “The men may have, for instance, as
many wives as they please, so long as they do not quarrel about such matters”. Children
were perhaps more welcome to slave mothers than to free mothers, for pregnancy and
motherhood brought a lightening of work and created no economic anxieties.
Not all slaves were engaged in the dull routine of field work. Stages in slave society were
almost as prounounced as those that developed after the race became free. There was the
distinction between common blacks and quadroons and mulattos, who enjoyed special
favors because they were descended from the master class. There was the distinction
between town slave and country slave, between the Negroes of old American stock and
those who had been recently brought from Africa, and above all between the house
servant and the plantation laborer. House servants were frequently well fed, well
mannered, and well dressed, and most conceited in their attitude toward the less
privileged slaves and “po’ white trash.” They adorned themselves in the castoff garments
of their masters and mistresses and imitated their behavior.
Social intimacy between some of the children of the two races was unimpaired by race
consciousness. They played together in woods, kitchens, and slave quarters; together they
listened to folklore in the slave quarters and to Bible and fairy tales in the big house.
White children scarcely knew the differnce between their mammies and “uncles: by
courtesy and their mothers and uncles by blood. With adulthood, race consciousness
became definite, but most of the genuine southerner felt no physical repulsion for colored
persons. His aversion to manual labor was indulged by surrounding himself and his
family with a group of servants. Negro women did the cooking and the cleaning, and
Negro boys and girls waited on the table. Fires were made, horses were harnessed, and
cows milked by black hands. Ideally, a servant would be available for every personal
service - to bring a glass of fresh water or brush the flies away.
Slavery stimulated the concubinage of slave women to planters, their sons, and overseers.
It promoted social intimacy, made Negro women subject to white men and prompted
them to offer bodily favors as a certain means of winning social and material advantages.
The taboo against mixing races did not overcome the lure of the uninhibited passions of
colored women, and more than one white man left his Victorian wife for the fellowship
of dusky women. In 1860, census reported 518,000 persons of mixed blood. This
represented one-seventh of the Negro population.
If defense of the actions were needed, southern white men might have justified the
liberties they took with colored women on the basis of the so-called stifling of the desires
to take such liberties with the ladies of their own white race. A vital part of the southern
legend was the cult of southern womanhood; the belief that it was the duty of the
gentlemen to cherish and protect the virtue of their white women. In fact, the strain of
violence that ran through southern life - the shooting altercations and duels - was largely
prompted by the extreme penchant which southern men felt toward the personal
mannerism of their women. To them, white women were the keepers of the standards of
the Christian homes and of the purity of the race. Certainly the white women never
shamed southern brotherhood by sexual intimacy with Negroes.
The hospitality of the master and the zeal of the mistress and the slave culminated in the
glory of the southern table. Everthing was plentiful and aromatic and inexpensive, and
willing devotees for the surplus waited in the kitchen and slave quarters. The gardens
provided lettuce, cucumbers, several varieties of greens, beans, squash, Irish potatoes,
turnips, okra, asparagus, artichokes, and beets. The field added green corn, pumpkins,
sweet potatoes, and rice. From the orchards came figs, apples, pears, plums, muscadines,
pecans and walnuts. ‘Possums, wild turkeys, deer, rabbits, doves, quail, ducks, and other
forms of edible game were to be had, but chicken and pork were the meats most widely
used. Beef and mutton were scarce because pastors were poor.
When the visitor entered the dining room, he found the table, according to Southern
“country style”, already crowded with several varieties of meats, vegetables, pickles,
preserves and jellies; to it were added relays of breads hot enough to melt butter. The
chicken was served fried, roasted, and in dumplings, and pork appeared as ham, bacon,
and sausage. From wheat flour were made the biscuits and the waffles; white corn
yielded grits, muffins, spoon bread, hoe cake, t-cakes and pone. Sweet potatoes were
served roasted, fried, and candied. The dessert was peach, blackberry, or sweet potato
pie, or apple dumpling. The plentitude of servants, food, and space characterizing the
southern rural establishment found expression in the cult of southern hospitality, the part
of the southern legend that was nearest reality. Uncles, aunts, old-maid cousins, friends
and even occupation-less gentlemen who drifted in from a distance were welcomed at the
plantation house. The genteel stranger was met at the plantation gate with an extended
hand and with a cordial invitation to partake of whatever beverage was being consumed
by those gathered on the porch; as a matter of course he was asked to
share any meal in prospect and to spend a night, which might easily be extended into
weeks, or even months. There were no charges for such services and some planters had
the roads patrolled by slaves to entice strangers within their gates.
Before the expansion of the railroads the carriage was a necessary means of travel; in the
sharp competitons of high society it was an obvious way of proclaiming wealth and social
position. The ante-bellum carriage was a large and cumbersome vehicle, hung high on
suspension springs, that rocked and rolled along the rough highways. Often it was
trimmed in brass and gold and adorned with the family coat of arms. The horses were
carefully groomed and well harnessed; and high above, uniformed and proud, sat the
coachman, the most privileged of the slaves.
THE CONCLUSION
Slave Masters, some even like my great-great grandfather Sivley, wished to preserve the
health and life of their slaves because a sick Negro was a liability and a dead Negro was
worth nothing.
Bad treatment often lead to runaways. Flights were prompted by various causes. Some
slaves undoubtedly ran away because they were talented or sensitive mulattos who
desired freedom. Others wished to escape from barbarous punishment peculiar to the
slave system. Many fled from slave-traders or new masters, not to escape bondage but to
return to their families and former homes. Some strayed away for reasons not especially
associated with slavery; they became tramps or vagabonds or even fugitives from
deserved and undeserved punishments for crimes.
Beauty is not skin deep. My great grandmother, Elizabeth Guthrie Sivley’s dark
eyebrows and long unreal lashes only mesmerized most people who knew her. But, she
had a good heart and a kind disposition. And in my opinion, most important of all, she
was a God fearing, Jesus loving woman. She was a sensitive gentlewoman of cultural
breeding. One day she wrote in her journal “the old south, like her grandfather, are dying
out like old dinosaurs”.
These were rare men and women dominated by a comparatively small group of southern
planters making way for the new generation. And in this case, making way for people
like me and my daughter and her daughter. In the Sivleys case, men and women like me
who because of their hard work, are heir to a fortune.
God’s Green Earth and Freedom for the Slaves?
By the proclamation of December 8, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offered pardons to
all Confederates, except designated classes of leaders, who took oaths to support “the
Constitution of the United States and the Union of States thereunder” and he promised
that if ten percent of the voting population of 1860 should qualify by taking such oaths
and establishing state governments with slavery abolished the Executive would
recognized these governments as legal. He required that new governments be established
because previously existing state organizations were deemed illegal since they had been
disloyal to the United States. Having concluded that slavery must be eliminated, Lincolin
raised no objection to the extensions of “right to vote” to Negroes who were “the very
intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.”
The Lincoln plan was tried in four states that had partly fallen under the control of federal
armies early in the war - Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennesse, and Virginia. Had the great war
President lived, he might have established a peace acceptable to the men of moderation of
both North and South. On the last day of his life he discussed with his cabinet a course of
action similar to that later announced by President Andrew Johnson.
The Sivleys of Richmond, Virginia lived in a time when Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi
were not admitted into the Union until 1870. They were renown and wealthy men and
women in a time period during which carpetbaggers and Negroes played a dominate role
in the government of the southern states and is called Black Reconstruction. And that too,
(Black Reconstruction) my friends, is another story.
In a very real sense the Civil War freed the common white man to a greater degree than
the Negro. While the blacks were on their industrial holiday, whites secured employment
from which they had been excluded by slave competition. They learned to grow the great
southern staple whose cultivation under slavery had been dominated by black slave labor.
By 1870 the less fertile earth of the southern uplands were producing with white labor
more cotton per acre than the richer lands of the black belt with black labor. It was
discovered that the hot southern sun did not harm the white man. As a result, the common
white man using the prestige of race and a greater social discipline could deprive the free
Negro of many types of employment. Never-the-less. poor whites conditions were not
improved by the changes of war and reconstruction. Their cabins, declared Elizabeth “are
dens of filth. The bed, if there be a bed, is a layer of something in the corner that defies
odor. If the bed is nasty, what of the floor? What of the whole enclosed space? And what
of the creatures themselves? Pough!”.
Water in use as a purifier is unknown. Their faces are smeared with the muddy amassing
of weeks”. There children defies description, but if one chooses they can be described as
“puny, unwholesome-looking creatures, tangled whitish hair and a complexion of a dingy
straw color”. By this time a few of these white women were led by poverty, ignorance or
love, to cohabit with Negro men.
In many towns, sanitary conditions were bad; typhoid was common and some outbreaks
of yellow fever occurred. Especially in the black belt, mansions that had been the chief
glory of ante-bellum society were now neglected and dilapidated. On week days, loafers
rescued the towns from the appearance of utter abandonment. They, poor whites and
confederates, perched on merchants’ counters and in front of the stores complaining of
the unwillingness of the Negro to work. Reluctant to put their hands to the ploy, they
expected to eke out a livelihood through Negro labor. Elizabeth overheard a Northern
traveler saying, “Any man is a dog-goned fool to work, when he can make a nigger work
for him”. The central cause of such behavior was the failure of many southerners to
recognize that the old regime had died with the war.
The fourth of July, which had once been nosily observed was ardently ignored since the
Negroes turned it into a second Emancipation Day. Whisky was passed around, and after
corn-shuckings or logrollings, dancing began to the rhythm of the fiddle and stamping of
feet.
Elizabeth noticed that although the southern churches retained their white members and
even gained congregations in the border states, they were unable to retain their black
members. The whites were naturally reluctant to surrender the rigid control of the
Negroes which they had brought to bear through the churches under the slave regime.
Negroes, on the other hand, reasonably felt that their inherited habit of religious
subordination to the master race was incompatible with their so-called status as free men.
They demanded the rudimentary American constitutional right of religious freedom,
including separate church organizations and congregations and ministers and church
officials of their own race and choosing. Whites also resorted to subterfuge and trickery
to eliminate black voters because no practical mean of securing repeal of the Fourteenth
and Fifeen Amendments offered itself and they were willing to resort to any means -
legal or illegal, orderly or disorderly - if necessary to regain their former supremacy.
Once more the South stood solid against the threat of Negro participation in politics. In
1890, Mississippi led the way with a new state constitution requiring long residence in
the state and precinct and payment, on a more or less voluntary basis, of a two-dollar poll
tax to be paid eight months preceding regular elections. Although these requirements
theoretically applied to both races alike, they were designed to discriminate against the
blacks. And to insure double protection, the Mississippi Constitution further provided
that in addition to the poll tax and residence requirements the prospective voter must be
able to read a section of the Constitution, or “be able to understand the same when read to
him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof” The legal disfranchisement of the blacks
was accompaiend by other discriminations against them, which became known as the
“Jim Crow Laws.” These acts of the southern legislature prohibited, as far as practical, all
contacts between the two races implying or establishing social equality. They were
prompted by the conviction that the Negro was inherently inferior to the white man, and
defined “a person of color” as one possessing a small fraction of Negro blood (usually
one-eight). Marriage between such persons and whites was forbidden. Other laws
required the separation of races in schools, penal and charitable institutions, factories,
restaurants, theaters, hotels, and most public places except the streets and stores.
Beginning in Tennesse in 1881, all southern states had separated the races on railroads
and other public conveyances by 1907. In 1946 the Supreme Court ruled that a Virginia
statute requiring the segregation of Negroes and whites on interstate buses unduly
burdened interstate commerce.
Taken from a speech delivered to slave owners in 1712 by slave owner Willie Lynch,
concerning how to keep their slaves divided. Reprinted here only to stop the division
between blacks and explain how the division started, and beloved, in an attempt to repair
the race back to unity.
It begins... Gentlemen: “...In my bag here, I have a fool-proof method for controlling
your Black slaves. I guarantee every one of you that if installed correctly it will control
the slaves for at least 300 years. My method is simple, any member of your family or any
overseer can use it.” “I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves, and I
take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust and envy for control
purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies, and it
will throughout the South. Take this simple little list of differences and think about them.
On the top of my list is “Age”, “but it is there only because it starts with an “A”, “the
second is “Color” or shade; there is intelligence, size of plantations, attitude of owners,
whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine or
course hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an
outline of action - but before that, I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust,
and envy is stronger than adulation, respect or admiration.” “The Black Slave, after
receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self refueling and selfgenerating for hundreds of years, maybe even thousands. “Don’t forget, you must pitch
the old Black vs. the young Black males, and the young Black male agains the old Black
male. You must use the dark slaves vs. the light skin slaves, and the light skin slave vs. the
dark skin slaves. You must use the female vs. the male, and the male vs. the female. You
must also have your servants and overseers distrust all Blacks, but it is necessary that
your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect and trust us only.”
“Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control,...use them. Have your wives and children
use them. Never miss (an) opportunity. My plan is guaranteed, and the good thing about
this plan is that if used intensely for one year, the slaves will remain perpetually
distrustful.” There’s more but space or time does not allow me the opportunity to print it
all here.
Almost all Portugese shipments went to satisfy the virtually insatiable Brazilian demand
for slaves. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade lasted for almost four centuries and involved
the brutalization and explotation of millions of human beings. Here is an excerpt from the
report in 1793 of a Portuguese doctor with experience on the Middle Passage between
Angola and Brazil:
This excerpt is taken from “A History of World Societies, 4th Edition,
McKay Hill Buckler: Africa, 1400-1800
When the slaves comming from many different parts of the interior reach the maritime
ports of Africa, they are there once more traded for goods and merchandise...Here takes
place the second round of hardships that these unlucky people are forced to suffer...They
are terribly handled and most scantily provided for...their human nature entirely
overlooked. The dwelling place of the slave is simply the dirt floor of the compound, and
he remains there exposed to harsh conditions and bad weather, and at night there are
only a lean-to and some sheds...which they are herded into like cattle. Their food
continues scarce as before...limited at times to badly cooked beans, at other times to
corn...They also add to the diet a small amount of salted fish.. They suffer in other ways.
When they are first traded, they are made to bear the hot brand mark of the back-lander
who enslaved them, so that they can be recognized in case they run away. And when they
reach a port...they are branded on the right breast with the coat of arms of the king and
nation, of whom they have become vassals...This mark is made with a hot silver
instrument in the act of paying the king’s duties, and this brand mark is called a carimbo.
They are made to bear one more brand mark. This one is ordered by their private master,
under whose name they are transported to Brazil... In this miserable and deprived
condition, the terrified slaves remain for weeks and months, and the great number of
them who die is unspeakable. With some ten or twelve thousand arriving at Luanda each
year, it often happens that only six or seven thousand are finally transported to
Brazil...Shackled in the holds of ships, the black slaves...are far more deprived than when
on land. First of all with two or three hundred slaves placed under the deck, there is
hardly room enough to draw a breath...The captains, aware of their own (financial)
interests, recognize the seriousness of the problem, and they try to remedy it to some
extent...Each day they order a certain number of slaves brought on deck in chains to get
some fresh air, not allowing more because of their fear of rebellion. Second, the slaves
are afflicted with a very short ration of water, of poor quality and lukewarm because of
the climate -hardly enough to water their mouths. The suffering that this causes is
extraordinary, and their dryness and thirst cause epidemics which, beginning with one
person, soon spread to many others. Thus, after only a few days at sea, they start to
throw the slave into the ocean. Third, they are kept in a state of constant hunger. Their
small ration of food, brought over from Brazil on the outward voyage, is spoiled and
damaged...They add to each ration a small portion of noxious fish from the Atlantic
Ocean, which decays during the voyage.
Friedrick Engels (1942) linked gender inequalities to capitalism, contending that
primitive, non-capitalistic hunting and gathering societies without private property were
equalitarian. As these societies developed, capitalistic institutions of private property,
gave these men power to subordinate women and men and to create political institutions
that maintained their power.
Many white ethinic imigrants entered the United States between 1830 and 1924. Irish
Catholics were among the first to arrive. Both Irish Americas and Italian Americans were
subjected to institutionalized discrimination. Individual discrimination applies to one
person and institutionalized discrimination discriminate to whole ethnic groups.
Individual discrimination is rooted in prejudice which is a negative attitude often based
on sterotypes, which are over generalizations about the appearance, behavior and other
characteristics of all members of a group. Overhall, discrimination involves actions or
practices of dominant members that have a harmful impact on members of a subordinate
group.
The extensive infusion of one nations culture into another nations society sometimes
contribute to the assumption that one’s own culture and way of life is superior to all
others.
AND FINALLY...
The Question of Reparations for and to African American Descendants
In American, the slavery system gave rise to poverty, landlessness, underdevelopment,
the crushing of culture and language, the loss of identify of Africans and their
descendants, and the indoctrination of whites into a racist mindset.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, the African American slaves were freed and each
family was to receive 40 acres, and sometimes, the loan of an army mule. This order was
later rescinded. The promise was never kept and the idea of reparations began to grow.
Reparations for African slavery in the U.S. have been discussed since the end of the Civil
War, when Andrew Johnson reneged on Union Army General William Sherman’s
promise “Special Field Order #15” in 1865 (with the War Department’s Approval),
which set aside land along the Georgia and south Carolina coasts for black settlement.
In 1963, in Martin Luther King Jr.’s book, “Why We Can’t Wait”, Dr. King writes that
while “no amount of gold could provide adequate compensation for the exploitation of
the Negro in America down through the centuries, a price could be placed on unpaid
wages”.
Today, the African American (black) experience has been one uniquely marked by
slavery, segregation, and persistent discrimination. Most blacks would probably agree
that the legacy of African slavery in the United States continues to saddle many blacks
with poor schools, hunger, poverty, a drug and crime plague, discrimination, high rates of
African american prison incarcerations, family deterioration and racially isolated
neighborhoods.
Randall Robinson in his book “The Debt: What America Owes Blacks” has an
impressive list of legal and moral reasons why blacks should be paid for slavery’s ills.
It is estimated that approximately six thousand lynchings occurred between 1892 and
1921 (Feagin and Feagin, 1999)
In 1865, Congress passed a bill establishing the Freeman’s Bureau to oversee the
transition of blacks from slavery to freedom. The bureau controlled 850,000 acres of
abandoned and confiscated land. In 1866 & 1867 Representative Thaddeus Stevens
introduces Reparation Bills. Both houses of Congress approved the bill for reparations,
but President, Andrew Johnson vetoes it.
Africa and Africans have made a substantial, though involuntary, contribution to the
building of the West’s industrial civilization. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Title VII
prohibits employment discrimination based on race, sex national origin, or religion. title
VI prohibits public access discrimination, leading to school desegregation. Title VIII is
the original “Federal Fair Housing Law”, later amended in 1988.
The search for a sea route to India led the Portuguese in the fifteenth century to explore
the West African coast. Having “discovered” Brazil in 1500, the Portuguese founded a
sugar colony at Bahia in 1551. Between 1551 and 1575, before the traffic to North
America had gotten under way, the Portuguese delivered more African slaves to Brazil
than would ever reach British North America.
Along the 2,000 mile west coast of Africa between Senegambia and the northeastern
shore of the Gulf of Guinea, a number of kingdoms flourished. As the demand for slaves
rose, slavers moved down the West African coast from Senegambia to the more densely
populated hinterlands of the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra. In the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries, the Senegambian coast and the area near the mouth of the
Congo River yielded the greatest numbers.
In America, in 1619, a Dutch slave trader, who needed food, exchanged his cargo of
Africans for edibles. Those Africans became indentured servants for cheap labor. And the
whites became slave holders and slave masters.
It is estimated that from 1450 and 1850, at least 12 million Africans were shipped from
Africa across the Atlantic ocean primarily to colonies in North America and the West
Indies.
On the African continent, flourishing civilizations were destroyed; systems of
government were disintegrated; millions of African citizens were forcibly removed and a
pattern of poverty and underdevelopment directly resulted.
Slavery laws dehumanized not only the people who were labeled as slaves but also the
slave owners and political leaders who created and maintained this culture of the society.
Although the inital status of person of African descent in this country may not have been
too different from that of the English indentured servants, all of that changed with the
passage of laws turning human beings into property and making slavery a status from
which neither individuals nor their children could escape (Franklin, 1980). While, the
U.S. government encoded slavery into the Constitution, protected and nourished it for a
century, it also waged the Civil War that cost thousands of white lives and ultimately
ended slavery.
Gaining freedom did not give African Americans equality with whites. African
Americans were subjected to many indignities because of race. Through informal
practices in the North and Jim Crow laws in the South, African Americans experienced
segregation in housing, employment, education, and all public accommodations. African
Americans who did not “stay in their place” frequently became the victims of violent
attacks and lynch mobs (Franklin, 1980). Lynchings were used by whites to intimidate.
In 1989, Congressman John Conyers first introduces a bill that would establish a
commission to examine slavery and its lingering effects on African Americans and
contemporary U.S. society. (He, Conyers, has introduced legislation to examine the
lingering effects of slavery and the case for reparations in every congressional session
since 1989. In every session, the bill has failed to win a hearing.)
In 1991, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 - adds provisions to Title VII protections, including
a right to a jury trial. In 1995, House of Representatives Bill 891, which calls for a
Reparations Study Commission, is introduced in the 104th Congress by John Conyers
and former representative, Norm Mineta. Many Americans willingly admit slavery was
wrong, and agree it is morally correct to pay victimized groups interned during World
War II for their suffering. Yet they are not willing to pay blacks for theirs.
In 1995, after being sued by descendants of African slaves for a number of kinds of
damages, the Ninth Circuit affirmed that the Federal Tort Claims Act (which waives the
government’s “sovereign immunity” in some situations, but retains it in others), bars such
class action suits.
June, 1997, President Clinton launches what he says will be a “great and unprecendented
conversation about race” that will “transform the problem of prejudice into the promise
of unity.” The “conversation” falls short of its expectations for many, and ends up
becoming a forum for black grievances.
In 1997, during a trip to Africa, President Clinton says, “Going back to the time before
we were even a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade and we
were wrong in that”. This is the closest the American government has come to an
apology. Also, in 1997, President Clinton apologizes and the U.S. government pays $10
million dollars to the black survivors and family members victimized by the syphilis
experiment conducted in the 1930’s by the U.S. Public Health Service and which ended
in 1972, in which 399 black men with syphilis were not treated in order to study the
progression of the desease. In 1974, the U. S. government paid the $10 million
settlement.
And on January 6, 1999, Representative John Conyers introduces the “Commission to
Study Repartion Proposals for African-American Act:
A California law enacted in late 2000 requires insurance companies to disclose insurance
policies they may have issued. The state also is requiring university officials to assemble
a team of scholars to research the history of slavery and current California busineses who
benefited from slavery.
In February, 2001, a state commission in Oklahoma appointed to study the Tulsa incident
that in 1921 which killed nearly 300 people, mostly blacks, urged the state to pay
restitution to survivors an victims’ descendants.
On March 26, 2002, three class actions suits seeking reparations for the profits of slavery
were filed on behalf of the descendants of slaves against FleetBoston Financial
Corporation, insurance company Aetna Inc., and railroad operator CSX. These became
the first of what may be a succession of such actions against various corporate and
governmental defendants. According to the actions, FleetBoston is the successor to
Providence Bank, which was Rhode Island businessman John Brown. Brown owned
ships that embarked on sea voyages and FleetBoston is said to have lent substantial sums
to Brown, thus alleging and profiting from Brown’s slave trade. FleetBoston also
collected customs fees during transporting slaves according to an article written in
ClassActionAmerica,com.
Since the slaves or their descendants have never been paid, Cornelius Jones, in 1915 sued
the U.S. government, arguing that it had profited from slave labor through a federal tax
on cotton.
In conclusion, as 1998 Nobel Prize Winner Amarttya Sen has written, “income does not
equate to freedom”. As he points out, for all the financial income that Blacks in America
have - more than those in developing countries and Blacks in other countries throughout
the world, they, African American descendants, have an absolutely lower life expectancy
than these other supposedly “poorer” nations and people. Certainly a reparations check
isn’t going to address that problem in the black community. And unjust enrichment
arguments ignores the real losses of slavery - identity, health and life. And further,
although some African Americans have made substantial occupational and education
gains, many more have not. The African American employment rate remains twice as
high as that of whites (Feagin and Feagin, 1999) and in the final analysis, more blacks
believe that the reparations agenda should be complimented by the advocacy of economic
growth policies that will sustain an environment were repair takes place and poverty is
eliminated. To that end we believe that America and it’s criminal justice system should
be reformed (A federal appeals court has ruled that African-Americans cannot sue the
government for damages resulting from slavery). The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
in a 3-0 ruling, said that the seven plaintiffs failed to point to specific government actions
that violated their rights.) Also, the courts should be reformed to end disparities in drug
sentencing and the wholsale incarceration of non-violent drug offenders; and the public
education system must either be fixed, or sufficeintly funded to enable students to be
equally educated.
Reparations, in whatever form, should only be utilized to the extent that payment to
African descendants in the form of reparation will contribute to the repair of the Black
community and the African American “Indiviaual” as a whole.
Reparations and restitution payments are spawned from generations of survival as
oppressed people in a hostile environment and rooted in the heritage of the African
culture, which partially survived the trip across the Atlantic Ocean and the institution of
slavery. For one of the great forced migration in world history and forced assimilation
into a foreign society, the horrors of the middle passage, the crushing of a culture,
preventing the life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness, and language, racial
discrimination and profiling by police and other institutions, shootings of blacks by
police and others, the disproportionate number of African-Americans who are
incarcerated, and African descendants are just some of the many reasons why African
Americans should discontinue to study the question of reparation and without further
delay demand restitution for and to today’s African American slave descendants.
The bottom line is that the American Dream initially brought many white ethnic groups
to the United States; now, in the twenty-first century many African American lives can
and will be changed for the better by the payment of restitution. That being so, we know
that nothing can be done by any government on this earth to restore the health, heart,
mind and souls of Blacks that were damaged and destroyed as the direct result of slavery.
Never-the-less, the question should not be whether reparations should be paid to African
American decendants, but when, how much and how soon can this reconcilliation oto a
nation be done? Because according to a psychologist from San Francisco State University
who says that “Slavery had damaged both blacks and whites” for the premediated,
systematic use of violence toward Africans in Africa and in America, has resulted in
untold physical and psychological damage that requires repair, requires reparations!
A PROPOSAL
African American Descendants Reparation Foundation A.A.D.R.F.
Mr. John Doe
222 Congress
Street
U.S.A
U.S. TAX W - 2 FORM
Weekly - Bi-Weekly or Monthly
Earnings and Deductions Pay Stub
Gross Pay
Federal
Reg. Overtime:
FICA
Local:
State:
SDI
Advance
Other Ded:
P/R Ded
Net Pay
Check No.
Check Date
Beginning 2004
Social Security :
555-44-0021
Ö A.A.D.R.F:
Voluntary: $1 10
Contribution:
Ö...Yes, I wish to contribute $1.00 or more per week per payroll deduction toward the
African Americian Descendants Reparation Foundation.
Two poems written by the Author, Pat Holbert, and dedicated to the African/American
Slave Decendants. And another poem writen and dedicated to God from his daughter Pat,
called My Dad.
SO MANY SHADES OF BLUE
There are so many shades of Blue
Like me and you...
There are so many shades of Blue.
Like two and who?...
There are so many shades of Blue...
Like Red, White and Blue.
There are so many shades of Blue.
Like the Twilight...Stars in Navy Blue...
There are so many shades of Blue.
Times are old and times get new.
There are so many shades of Blue.
From morning till night...
From Spring to fall...
From God to you...
There are so many shades of Blue.
From heaven’s basket...
Babes pink and -----There are so many shades of Blue.
Do you miss me..
like I miss you?
When you don’t call, it makes me -----Blue...Boo
Then I find that...
There are so many shades of Blue.
Like my three gold rings...there stones are light blue and dark blue too
There are so many shades of
Blue.
MY DAD
I never knew my Dad...
My father...Who art in Heaven is all I had.
My Real Dad Never Fed me...
Never Changed my Diapers...
He..Never Heard my first Words...
Never saw my First Step...
Never gave me any help.
So..,
Throughout the years,
My Dad...Who art in Heaven is all I had.
That Day...I learn to Read,
My Real Dad never heard me,
And..On that Day I learned to Survive
My Dad, Who art in Heaven had heard my Cry
He picked me up, and Held me tight..
And dried my tears from crying throughout the night.
And when the morning came..
Joy...replaced the Fears and Blame..
So To God...
My Dad...
My Father...who art in heaven is all I had
Thank you for Jesus, your son, and all his blessed ways.
I shall never forget him and be forever grateful all my days.
THE SEARCH
I sit back and daydream about this world of mine...
And...I sit up thinking about is my mother really Clementine?
So, I inhale the feelings of gladness
To Later on,
Then exhale the moment of sadness
You’ll count the tears roling down my face...
I’ll count the steps “On my heart” without a trace.
Searching for my father...Longer than I expected it to be.
But I soon had to search closer,
And I found the inner me.
To me, It seemed normal, But no one ever Believes us
To them it seems strange, But I really found my Jesus.
Even as time leaves you, Whatever...
Our God’s love stayes with you forever.
So,...
Don’t be scared and have no Fear!
Give your love and get closer and Near!
And don’t mistake me as the slave you want me to Be.
I’m only a child of God, and for that, I’m very H-A-P-P-Y!!
HEIR
TO A FORTUNE
BY MISS PAT HOLBERT
Part I
Mr. Sivley’s Grand-daughter Elizabeth
Chapter I
(To Be Read with a Heavy, Southern Drawl)
Dedication
This story is dedicated to my only daughter Patty Hinton:
It’s been said that life is like a garden. Every small work of kindness and every
thoughtful gesture is like a tiny seed. And when you plant these seeds...Wonderful things
happen. Smiles appear,...dreams blossoms,...and love takes root and grow...
Before you know it...Happiness is all around you. It takes a lot of love,...care... and
effort...to tend to the garden of life. But, you’re one of those people who have a special
gift for it. Hold on to that gift from God...Because...people like you make the world a
beautiful place.