Black History Nobody Wants to Talk About

It's Black history month let’s get the filth out

America was built on the preferential treatment of white people.

White privilege was injected in its amniotic fluid at the time of the nation’s birth. White was superior — Black inferior.

Violence against Black people wasn’t just racially instigated.

A deeper more sinister motive was at play.

“One aim of racial violence was to deny Black people the tools to build wealth,” wrote John Hope Franklin. As the Chairman of President Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race, he knew what he was talking about.

Duke University historian, Paula J. Giddings, couldn’t state it more succinctly “by the 1880s and 1890s, a significant number of blacks began to do very well in terms of entrepreneurship and land ownership, and it simply couldn’t be tolerated.”

And if you think we are making this stuff up here is what happened to three Black men determined to have a share of the American pie.

The year was 1885, three Black men — Thomas Moss, Henry Stewart, and Calvin McDowell saw a business opportunity.

They opened a grocery store in a Memphis black neighborhood called ‘the Curve’. The problem was — you can always sense, there has to be a problem….

The problem was, across the street stood another grocery store, owned by a White man.

The White man, Mr. W.H. Barret, wasn’t welcome to competition, not from three Black upstarts.

Business boomed.

For the Black-owned grocery, in a Black neighborhood.

Mr. Barret seethed, silently.

A game of marbles between two boys one Black the other White was a good reason to start a fight.

On Saturday, March 5, 1892, Mr. Barret’s son was playing a game of marbles with one of the Black boys. They squabbled and as boys do, they fought.

Mr. Barret came out fuming. The Black boy’s father didn’t think boyish squabbles deserved adult attention.

He was wrong.

Mr. Barret wasn’t backing down. He wanted a good fight.

A war of words that would turn bloody ensued.

Barret went to the police. ‘The F*** N****s were causing trouble’ he reported.

Rumors of the Klan descending on the three Black store owners circulated. It was nothing to joke about. The Klan’s legendary brutality was unrivaled.

That evening Thomas Moss, Henry Stewart, and Calvin McDowell closed and barricaded their store. They waited.

Nine White Deputy sheriffs in civilian clothing came. After dark.

They said they had come to serve an arrest warrant. The three men didn’t trust them. They refused to open the doors.

The deputies tried to break down the grocery door.

The three Black men, suspecting them for Klan members opened fire. Three of the Deputies were injured.

The next day, the police swooped on the store, the three store owners were arrested.

They should have been taken to court. But, that’s not how the justice system worked in the deep south.

Wednesday Morning, a white mob, descended on the black-owned store, they looted to their heart's content. What couldn’t be looted was vandalized –

Violence spread out, black-owned businesses were looted or vandalized.

In the Police cells, the three Black men hoped to face American justice. They met a different kind of justice. Seventy-Five white law-abiding citizens yanked them from their cells.

Early Wednesday morning, a mob of about 75 white men yanked the three black men from their cells. Another enraged white mob looted their grocery.

The bullet-riddled bodies of the three store owners turned up a ravine near the Wolf River.

Moss’s hands were clenched, filled with grass and the brown Tennessee clay, The Memphis Appeal-Avalanche reported

In the aftermath, more than 2,000 Black families fled Memphis. They left land, homes, and businesses.

Deputy sheriff John C. Reilly took over the Black store.

Over the years, the property was sold and resold many times.

Today it’s the site of a small business, the Panama Grocery.

Over the past 20 years, Black families have sued to regain their ancestral lands.

State courts, however, dismiss their cases on grounds that statutes of limitations have expired.

It’s not all dark and murky though, a glimpse of hope is on the horizon for descendants of Black families who lost their land.

A group of attorneys led by Harvard University law professor Charles J. Ogletree started inquiries about Black land takings.

The group has announced its intention to file a national class-action lawsuit in pursuit

of reparations for slavery and racial discrimination.

Some legal experts say redress for many land takings may not be possible unless laws are changed.

“To ignore the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white supremacy, to pretend that the problems of a dual society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism, is to cover the sin of national plunder with the sin of national lying.

The lie ignores the fact that reducing American poverty and ending white supremacy are not the same. The lie ignores the fact that closing the “achievement gap” will do nothing to close the “injury gap,” in which black college graduates still suffer higher unemployment rates than white college graduates, and black job applicants without criminal records enjoy roughly the same chance of getting hired as white applicants with criminal records.”

Writes Ta Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic. He states truth we must face as we remember Black History.