PATRON + Amazing true account by a child who lived on a plantation during Civil War Days

History is never offensive….get over it…..it’s the truth….a person’s perception is a judgmental call on a personal level…duh

An insight into a time long ago. It is wonderful to gain such views from another time but always with caution since it can be misleading in it’s truth. I can understand the incongruity of trying to make the slaves seem as happy folk loving to serve and never bemoaning their dire existence. I can even accept that perhaps on this little plantation property they were as well treated as they could be treated. But, it remains they were owned body and soul and it was not legal for them to go about the county unescorted and had not the freedom to travel at all. We Southerners love to think on those days as halcyon and carefree but that is not the true history and we must never forget that or allow others to portray it as anything other than the merciless life that it was then. Slave owners were by and large very wealthy for their day and gained all of that wealth from the unpaid labor these slaves were forced to perform. Slavery is an abomination and it must always be noted.
Of course this woman that was a young child at the time of these memories could not have changed any of that but when she wrote the piece later in life she should have made a point of noting that they were owned whether her father bought them or inherited them they were property plain and simple.
I dare say if this article were of white Christian folk made slaves to Boko Haram today it would not be looked upon so benevolently. And rightly so.

Having read Mrs. Parker’s story, I would like to share a little of the childhood story of another child of that time..
The story I tell begins with a slave woman, the cook for her master’s family. She was forbidden to give even the smallest bit of the delicious dishes she prepared to her very young daughter who played in the kitchen while her mother worked.
After being warned, the slave woman was discovered giving a little of her master’s plentiful food to her child. Her punishment was a horrible, bloody beating (it is not known if she survived the bludgeoning). But that was not all. Her little girl was sold so far away that the two never saw each other again. The child was so young she only knew her mother’s name as Mama.
During the years of her enslavement, until the war ended in 1865, the girl was sold five times, always to cruel masters. She learned to fear the white faces of the men who beat and raped her. The beatings left deep, painful scars in her thighs that brought her misery all of her life.. She cried “Mama!” but her mother never came. She forgot how to smile. Her face remained solumn even when freedom came at the end of the war.
I am the great granddaughter of that little girl sold from her mother so many years ago. I marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963. Because America has grown since its beginnings, I am educated, able to vote, free in body and mind. For many years, I have been a motivational speaker promoting racial harmony in various parts of the country..
I am now 82 years old, and no Pollyanna. I am aware that recent headlines have been discoraging, Setbacks happen, and prejudice, like a living thing, struggles to remain, capable of warping the understanding of souls of any color. But I have seen the glory of the Lord in this nation, and I continue to believe.
My grandmother used to say, “God moves in mysterious ways.” This nation has been destined by God to live up to its ideal words, many of which were originally addressed only to white males with property, but now speak to all of us.
I believed in America when I marched in Washington, D. C., in 1963, as one of 250,000 black Americans (there were also some whites in the march). Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the objective of the march was “jobs and freedom.” indiscriminately. If I had not believed that change was possible, I would not have marched. I still believe in America.
The story of Clemmie and the story of my great grandmother’s childhood are the benchmarks against which I measure the progress of the nation to date. The child, Clemmie, thought her slaves, whom she loved, were happy in their condition, and could not understand Marshal’s leading a protest after he was free. He was protesting the wretchedness of discrimination. Nor did Clemmie understand the haggard faces of the former slaves when they were free. She thought it was evidence that they were better off as slaves.
Freedom is life’s most precious of human conditions. No free person would exchange that freedom, however difficult, for the chains of slavery. Slaves, no matter how well their masters believed they were treated, still longed to be free to seek their own destinies, even in hardship. These are the stories that came down to me from my ancesters — the same desire for freedom that made the nations founders pull up roots and cross an ocean. This I know from the verbal histories I heard as a child from the descendants of slaves such as my grandmother, experiences they would not share with white people. But at last, our tongues are loosed and we speak, because America has progressed from those days.
Slavery was very damaging to black people, reducing their self-esteem. It also damaged white people, giving them a false sense of superiority that Clemmie expresses when she compliments Marshal’s intelligence and talent not as a person but as a Negro. Clemmie the child could not be expected to know that human intelligence and human stupidity are not affected by or limited to any skin color or our arbitrary designations of race. Marshal’s enslavement prevented her from knowing him simply as another human. The core of who he was remained hidden, as it had to be under the institution of bondage. I hopw my great grandmother’s story helps to remove residual separatist attitudes that may remain as barriers to understanding.
According to the Holy Bible, sins of the fathers are visited to the fourth generation. We have been generations healing from the sin of slavery, both those of us who are black and those of us who are white. But we have been healing, and I for one will work for the continuing healing of our nation in every way I can.
One person commented that God had been taken from our schools. I disagree. Within our pledge of allegiance are the inspiring words, “one nation under God,” and “liberty and justice for all.” These are righteous words, for they guide us toward what is right. .
In some nations, children are not allowed to worship in any way except that decided by the state. We American parents are free to teach our children of God with no government interference.
When I was a highschool girl, I took the Bible to school every day and read it in my free time. No one opposed me.
The freedom worship however I individually choose, and even not to worship if I so choose, is the most precious freedom afforded to all Americans.