In 2011, Bank of America agreed to pay $355 million to settle charges of discrimination against its Countrywide unit.
Banks were more willing to pay reparations for discrimination against blacks than the actual oppressors were, after decades have passed.
But the damage had been done.
Very sad how many years it took black people to receive any type of compensation for being mistreated all their lives.
“He was a gentle person,” Clyde Ross says of his brother. “You know, he was good to everybody. And he started having spells, and he couldn’t control himself. And they had him picked up, because they thought he was dangerous.”
Even in circumstances like this black people were treated like animals. They faced constant cruelty all because of the color of their skin. Being taken to a prison facility for a seizure speaks volumes. It doesn’t show signs of craziness it shows signs of poor health & lack of resources to fix that. Rather than helping his brother, they disregarded him like he was a threat.
“Negro poverty is not white poverty.”
Regardless of how poor a white man was, he was still at advantage because of the color of his skin. He could be as poor as a black man but society labeled poverty based off social status rather than financial status.
Some black people always will be twice as good. But they generally find white predation to be thrice as fast.
regardless of the circumstance a black person was in whether it was good or bad. Whether they grew up good or bad, black people were looked at based off the color of their skin. Not their status nor their achievements. Which is why many black peoples stories played out in a negative way.
The problem was the money,” Ross told me. “Without the money, you can’t move. You can’t educate your kids. You can’t give them the right kind of food. Can’t make the house look good.
They were born with the disadvantage, basically creating a domino effect since nothing was equal amongst blacks and whites.
A neighbor who opposed the family said that Bill Myers was “probably a nice guy, but every time I look at him I see $2,000 drop off the value of my house.”
ironic how white people saw black people as a threat when it came to losing the value of their houses, while black people saw white people as a threat when it came to their lives.
In 1951, thousands of whites in Cicero, 20 minutes or so west of downtown Chicago, attacked an apartment building that housed a single black family, throwing bricks and firebombs through the windows and setting the apartment on fire.
White people feared losing money more than anything. They resorted to violence to get blacks out of their neighborhoods. They knew the government would fail to protect black people in these circumstances which is probably why they resorted to violence so often.
The wealth accorded America by slavery was not just in what the slaves pulled from the land but in the slaves themselves. “In 1860, slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America’s manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together,” the Yale historian David W. Blight has noted. “Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy.”
Slaves were the biggest asset a white man could have during the 1800s. They became more expensive since people believed they were very profitable. Especially since cotton was popular and favorable at the time.
“Whoever says Industrial Revolution,” wrote the historian Eric J. Hobsbawm, “says cotton.”
Cotton was a big factor during the industrial revolution
John Randolph, a cousin of Jefferson’s, willed that all his slaves be emancipated upon his death, and that all those older than 40 be given 10 acres of land. “I give and bequeath to all my slaves their freedom,” Randolph wrote, “heartily regretting that I have been the owner of one.”
Morality did exist upon whites/slave owners. Slave owners views on black people was simply just made up of ignorance and abuse of power.
But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere. The income gap between black and white households is roughly the same today as it was in 1970.
Although segregation occurred centuries ago, black people are still being raised in poor neighborhoods & have less of an advantage at life due to the circumstances they grew up in
In 1968, Clyde Ross and the Contract Buyers League were no longer simply seeking the protection of the law. They were seeking reparations.
Ross no longer had hope for equality. After all efforts that were made it was hard for them to seek equity and protection since the amendments weren’t enforced.
There was very little support for educating black people in Mississippi. But Julius Rosenwald, a part owner of Sears, Roebuck, had begun an ambitious effort to build schools for black children throughout the South. Ross’s teacher believed he should attend the local Rosenwald school. It was too far for Ross to walk and get back in time to work in the fields. Local white children had a school bus. Clyde Ross did not, and thus lost the chance to better his education.
Everything was more convenient for white kids so when it came to losses black kids faced them the most
The elder Ross could not read. He did not have a lawyer. He did not know anyone at the local courthouse. He could not expect the police to be impartial. Effectively, the Ross family had no way to contest the claim and no protection under the law. The authorities seized the land. They seized the buggy. They took the cows, hogs, and mules. And so for the upkeep of separate but equal, the entire Ross family was reduced to sharecropping.
Ross was in no circumstance to fight for his land & animals, so police took advantage of that and took it all.
When farmers were deemed to be in debt—and they often were—the negative balance was then carried over to the next season. A man or woman who protested this arrangement did so at the risk of grave injury or death. Refusing to work meant arrest under vagrancy laws and forced labor under the state’s penal system.
If they could not get out of their debt it was passed on to the next season, if they complained about their debt they would be either injured or killed. Emphasizing the lack of liberty black people had to endure. Due to their debt, they were left forced to work if they refused they would face harsh consequences
You and I know what’s the best way to keep the nigger from voting,” blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman. “You do it the night before the election.”
The lynching of black people to keep them from voting is a representation of tyranny in the 1800s. Jim Crow laws were placed to take away the liberty black people were once born with. The lynching due to kleptocracy results in black people being continuously robbed of their freedom and lives.
kleptocracy.
A leader that abuses their political power in unprincipled ways for their own benefit.