That's the name of The Austin American Statesman's report on America's Hidden History of Racial Expulsions. That history shaped American race attitudes, yet I guarantee not one in 1000 people are aware of it.
The report has deep detail on the expulsions at Commanche County, TX, Lawrence County, MO, Forsythe County, GA and Vermillion County, IN, and summaries of ten others. The introductory article is below the fold.
You have to register to see the whole thing. It is worth the trouble.
Driving out blacks left scars across America
Violent expulsions over six decades all but vanished from history, yet created a checkerboard of danger, intolerance that remains today.
By Elliot Jaspin
WASHINGTON BUREAU
These stories contain explicit racial slurs.
It is America's family secret.
Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions. They drove thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white.
In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census.
The expulsions were violent and swift, and they stretched beyond the South. But they remain largelyunacknowledged in standard histories of America. While it is impossible to say exactly how many expulsions took place, computer analysis and years of research conducted by the Washington Bureau of Cox Newspapers, which owns the American-Statesman, reveal that they occurred on a scale that has never been fully documented or understood.
[Remainder redacted-hopefully we're within fair use limits now. The important thing is they've done excellent work here...these opening statements are not only fully supported, they only scratch the surface of what Cox Newspapers and the Austin American Statesman has made available.]
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Phenomenal Link
Thank you.
I'm Still Working My Way Through
but i feel it's important to say that i don't like the word "expulsions." the association with the 'expelled' having broken some explicit and formal rule is too close. i don't believe expulsion taps into the illegal, terror tactics used by the average white band to attack black folk. moreover, it does not begin to expose the naked manner in which white folk fundamentally rejected democratic ideals.
You got a better word? We
You got a better word? We can use that...once I have the data I don't much care what we call it.
Thank you!These events have
Thank you!
These events have been covered up and largely forgotten but in substance they were not any different from the forceful expulsion of Native Americans from their ancestral lands. Political conservatives and their allies will argue that history is replete with incidents of this sort but what they continually overlook or, more likely, ignore is that it is only in this country that the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity have developed a near fetishistic belief that so-called democratic values on which this country was founded excluded the possibiity of these types of incidents. The mounting evidence reveals that they were of frequent occurrence and the authorities played a central role in them. In other words, these events were not incidental aspects fo American life but were deeply woven into the fabric of the nation. Â
Which Is Precisely Why
You gotta love the Ledbetter woman from Forskin County, Joe-Ja who knows, but dummies up if the question comes her way.
Can You Hear the Sense of
Vindication as we type. I hadn't known about the extent of this, but intuitively, I knew that without blazing saddles, American mediocrity couldn't have the uniformly white face it has come to embrace. Ritual violence became a predominant way for these folks to make due - and the consequences are all around for those with eyes to see.
Dead Coon County
A typical sign of the era:Â
Dead Coon County Arkansas
Blackest Dirt
Whitest People
Nigger Don't Let the Sun Set on You Here!
Those who naysay
Those who naysay "reparations" fail to recognize how much land and property was stolen from blacks by whites who often ran them off with only the clothes on their backs. Where's the compensation for such outrages?
Theft was also a major pretext for lynching. When they wanted someone's land, instead of coming with a check, they came with a rope.
I'm still learning
I didn't know important this vindication is.
Similar actions - violent
Similar actions - violent assaults, murders, theft of land and other property - were initiated against the Mexicanos who had long been settled in what is now Texas. Although many of them supported the so-called Texas Independence movement that led up to the Mexican-American War, they were not welcomed and treated as American citizens after the war. This was somewhat ironic because their political leaders had assisted whites like Stephen Austin in slipping a loophole in Mexico's laws prohibiting slavery. In other words, the political leaders of the Tejanos introduced slavery into Mexican territory. Â
Tony Horwitz in the NYT
Tony Horwitz in the NYT sheds some light on the Spanish exploration and settlement of North America.
It shows another manner in which historical amnesia operates on the national psyche.