ty for posting it

Hmmmm! Reparations, anyone?

How about the thousands of former employees to whom Trump owes back wages? I bet some of them have a story to tell.

I think someone found it to be false do to the language or something like that

Still ... I like it.

that very letter.

Original paper in Library of Congress-

Link: (Second news column on left--

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1865-08-22/ed-1/seq-7/

and--

The original source was the Cincinnati Commercial - the New York Daily Tribune reprinted it thereafter.

on its authenticity - which some seem to be challenging . Regardless of its original source, the letter stands as being published in the postbellum period by Anderson's freed slave.

sorry, couldn't resist.

Would be interested in reading more.

[link:http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html|

and

[link:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/free-mans-1865-letter-his-former-slave-owner-180957278/|

Last edited Thu Jan 11, 2018, 10:07 AM - Edit history (1)

Frederick Douglass' writings on the grounds that it was in their minds that "a son of Africa" as they put it on the rare occasion they were wontto be so polite could be smarter and more eloquent than they were themselves.

This is the same attitude of Mitch McConnell, who strongly resented that Barack Obama was smarter and more accomplished than he is or ever will be.

Last edited Thu Jan 11, 2018, 03:05 PM - Edit history (1)

even though this was the time of Frederick Douglass, a most eloquent writer and speaker.

As a child - an extremely intelligent child - Douglass understood the power of the written word and the reason that it was illegal for slaves to obtain that power.

Against great odds he managed to obtain it anyway.

This much is detailed in his remarkable autobiography, both the original and the updated version.

Three people defined the outcome of the Civil War, Lincoln in the political sphere, Grant in the military sphere, and equally important, Douglass in the moral sphere, with fortuitous overlaps among the three of them.

Remarkable human beings, all three.

by Jordan, who we can assume was illiterate as many slaves were, so the language was not his but the concepts and ideas were.

Last edited Thu Jan 11, 2018, 03:07 PM - Edit history (1)

Who most likely also collaborated in writing it.

I couldn't read that other one.. so glad to be able to read it!

Mr. Jordan Anderson was an amazing man.

In her best selling book, The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabell Wilkerson chronicles in great detail the lives of three people who were part of the Great Black Migration, when increasing numbers of black folks began fleeing the South in search of better opportunities elsewhere, the period started at the end of WWI and ended in the early 1970's, my family was part of that migration.

The book cites newspaper articles published in newspapers around the South where they signaled deep concerns about the shrinking of the black labor force, largely doing back-breaking, low waged agricultural field labor, not knowing any better it could be easy to think the articles were written during slavery ... where did all the darkies go, don't they know master can't sell his crops without them here working?

Farms with 20 acres and a house sometimes went for $500.

Brilliant letter. It made me think of Michelle Obama's comment that every day when she awakened in the White House, she thought about how it had been built by slaves, and then Bill O'Reilly commenting that those particular slaves were 'well fed.'

They were slaves. That's the point. They did not have their freedom, had to work in bondage under brutal conditions, and were not even considered human. There's nothing good about that, and any relationship a white slave owner might have thought they had with a slave cannot be thought of as a reciprocal relationship. The idea that this guy though his ex-slave should have felt any responsibility whatever for a plantation he was forced to work on in bondage shows a profound ignorance and moral blindness.

Thanks for sharing this. I'm going to forward to some friends in hope that more people might be able to see this letter.

Maybe there's some other explanation I dunno....

Love the letter either way but that struck me as odd

Good to see one of the 'superior' race put in his place by a member of the alleged 'inferior' race and by pen. Amazing. If through boy potus, his deplorables, Ryan, McConnell et al; have their way with Medicaid, Medicare, my social security and vet benefits gained from being poisoned in a very unpopular war, there will be many letters such as this when they come begging for help in needing bodies to sacrifice in a war started to save the administration of the turd-in-chief....I so love this response to that goddamn slave owner...I am glad their family ended up penniless.....

his relatives were STILL pissed at him almost 150 years later (almost 8 generations)?! Talk about a really evil stupid grudge.

Still the "slave" owe them....racism in their dna.

[link:https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/84366613|

Cool stuff.

era, though removed by law, has since been selectively codified for use on the vulnerable by present day political demagogues who find it expedient to pollute their nation in their quest for money, power and control of the levers that govern modern society. Make no mistake, the stigma of slavery is not far beneath the surface of today. Watch Fox for a few minutes, or tune into one of the 1500 GOP entitled stations if you can stomach it. They are a monumental megaphone besmirching the search for true social justice.