A Speech and Book For The New Spiritual Economics (Part 2)

By Cedric Muhammad -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Jul 19, 2010 - 9:50:59 AM

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• A Speech and Book for The New Spiritual Economics Part I (FCN, 07-06-2010)

There are many members of the American Jewish community and even its political establishment whom I believe would be deeply moved by Volume Two of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” especially if they take the time to read its detailed footnotes, which cite eminent scholars, historians, and economists.

“From Los Angeles' early years, Jews dominated the merchant class. They came to the pueblo and immediately opened dry-goods stores, stationery stores, and blacksmith shops – anything that might flourish in a slow-moving frontier economy … Since Los Angeles was so isolated, most of these merchants had partners in either San Francisco or New York, men who could select and ship new merchandise for the stores. Frequently, these were family members, for early Jewish settlers relied on extended kinship networks to keep down their costs.” —“Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California “ by Frances Dinkelspiel

The member of the American Jewish Community with whom I have had the deepest and most respectful public dialogue regarding Black-Jewish relations is Mr. Steven Silbiger, author of “The Ten-Day MBA” (which sold over 250,000 copies) and “The Jewish Phenomenon.” Mr. Silbiger is a highly intelligent man and both of his books are very significant in my opinion.

In 2003, Mr. Silbiger and I met outside of Philadelphia where I conducted a several-hour long interview, which eventually was published at BlackElectorate.com. The reaction I received to the interview—by both Blacks and non-Blacks was phenomenal and Mr. Silbiger would later thank me for helping to popularize his book, “The Jewish Phenomenon.”

Shortly after the release of the revised edition of “The Jewish Phenomenon,” In December of 2009, we spoke again, in a wide-ranging interview on my radio program. In that discussion, Mr. Silbiger repeated something that we discussed previously—that the most enthusiastic reaction he has received, in a positive sense, to his book, has come from the Black community and that the most resistance to “The Jewish Phenomenon” came from within the Jewish community.

One of the things Mr. Silbiger told me in reference to this—in 2003—was that National Public Radio (NPR) canceled a scheduled show featuring Mr. Silbiger and Black conservative intellectual John McWhorter out of fear that a discussion involving “The Jewish Phenomenon” would alienate NPR's numerous Jewish benefactors.

Here is part of the exchange that Mr. Silbiger and I had regarding this topic back then:

“Cedric Muhammad: You were telling me some interesting anecdotes that we were discussing over lunch regarding how your book, really, for lack of a better description, hasn't gotten the best reception from journalists, media outlets and opinion leaders in the Jewish community. Could you elaborate more on the nature of this—the reasons for it as you were telling me earlier?

Steven Silbiger: Sure, the people who have read the book enjoy the book, it is very useful but within the media there has been an almost silence about the book because they would rather the book not create any discussion. A lot of the book reviewers and people in the main press don't want to cover the book because the subject of Jewish success in America is more controversial than anything else. Because the idea is that if you publicize Jewish success and the reasons for it, then it will bring additional anti-Semitism to the Jewish community. I have spoken to Jewish groups, B'nai B'rith, Haddasah—many Jewish groups, and the book has been universally well-received when presented, but book reviewers and other opinion leaders would rather not deal with the subject because their downside is much greater than the upside for covering the book. I wouldn't mind negative reviews. But they'd rather not review it at all because of how powerful the message is in this book ...”

This exchange implies much about the role that the media plays in determining the quality of the dialogue over Black-Jewish relations.

On the back cover of the revised version of the book one sees:

“Revealing Facts and Statistics behind The Jewish Phenomenon

• Jews make up only 2 percent of the total U.S. population, yet 45 percent of the top 40 of the Forbes 400 richest Americans are Jewish.

• One-third of American multimillionaires are Jewish.

• The percentage of Jewish households with income greater than $50,000 is double that of non-Jews.

• 20 percent of professors at leading universities are Jewish.

• 40 percent of partners in the leading New York and Washington, D.C., law firms are Jewish.

• 25 percent of all American Nobel Prize winners are Jewish.”

One of the very few things I disagree with contained within Mr. Silbiger's book is his description of the causes for what he calls a ‘rift' in Black-Jewish relations.

In a section headlined, ‘AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE JEWS,' he writes: “The relationship between the American Jews and the African-American community has been a close but strained one. At the beginning of the twentieth century the bonds were stronger, but the rise of Muslim religious leaders in the African-American community in the 1950s began to widen the rift between them. Some of these African-American Muslims have mistakenly used Jews as scapegoats for their own lack of progress. Although there were a few Jewish slave owners in the South, Jews were not large players in the slave trade.”

To support the last sentence of this statement, Mr. Silbiger has a footnote that directs one to the book, “Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade” by Eli Farber.

A few corrections and counter-arguments can be easily made in light of the just published and meticulously researched “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume Two: How Jews Gained Control Of The Black American Economy.”

First, the statement, “Jews were not large players in the slave trade,” is easily overcome by the avalanche of detailed history, from Jewish archives, regarding the settlement of Brazil, Surinam, Curacao, Jamaica and Barbados in the Caribbean; as well as the history of the slave holders and slave traders in American cities like Charleston, South Carolina and Newport, Rhode Island. In addition statements centered upon the ‘slave trade,' are potentially misleading as they ignore or redirect attention from the central role that members of the Jewish community played in supporting the plantation economy as merchants; and as cotton factors and crop lien holders in the sharecropping era.

Second, Volume Two provides overwhelming evidence that in the American South it was suffering Blacks who were used by certain members of the Jewish community as both ‘scapegoat' or ‘buffer' to facilitate their own assimilation or integration into White Gentile society.

As quoted in Volume Two, Irving Howe, author of the most popular book on American Jewish history, “World Of Our Fathers” writes, “For decades American blacks had served …as a kind of buffer for American Jews. So long as native hatreds were taken out primarily on blacks, they were less likely to be taken out on Jews.” Also from Volume Two we read the words of Rabbi Bertram W. Korn, “The Negroes acted as an escape-valve in Southern society. The Jews gained in status and security from the very presence of this large mass of defenseless victims who were compelled to absorb all of the prejudices which might otherwise have been expressed more frequently in anti-Jewish sentiment …”

Could it be that it is quotes like these—from respected Jewish opinion leaders and not Black ‘anti-Semitism'—which members of the Jewish Political Establishment truly fear?

Third, Mr. Silbiger's statement, “the rise of Muslim religious leaders in the African-American community in the 1950s began to widen the rift,” in an important sense cannot be proven true in light of certain statements from establishment Jewish leaders of that era. This excerpt from the Preface of Volume Two makes that clear. Related to an unsubstantiated claim in 1959 by Time Magazine that the Nation of Islam was anti-Semitic we read:

In response to the 1959 Time Magazine article, the head of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, Arnold Forster, admitted in a secret memo that “Time magazine notwithstanding, we have no documentable evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of the Temples of Islam movement or Elijah Muhammad.” He affirmed that they are “not anti-Jewish per se.” Yet Jewish organizations publicly continued to label the NOI as ‘anti-Semitic.' In 1960, the chairman of the American Jewish Congress, Nathan Edelstein, wrote that “We doubt whether the bulk of its followers are presently committed to anti-Semitism.”

In the footnotes of Volume Two's Preface the sources for the above information are given to substantiate what is written.

In Brother Jabril Muhammad's book “This Is The One” first published in the early 1970s we read:

“Back in 1959, the white press, as if on signal, launched a furious attack on Messenger Muhammad and The Nation of Islam, following the dishonest portrayal of us entitled: ‘The Hate that Hate Produced.' Through such publications as Time, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, The Reporter, Esquire, Confidential, True, Saga, and a host of other magazines and newspapers; white America spewed forth a flood of articles, both superficial, spurious and poisonous in nature. A few among them did a creditable job, as far as they went. But the bulk of what was written was insidious and rotten to the core. But it did not hurt us.

There is plenty evidence to show that much of the material was deliberately misleading. There are instances when reporters found interpolations in the text to their stories that were altered, here and there, by their ‘bosses' so as to misrepresent their findings of the Messenger and his followers.”

Part of the ‘plenty evidence' referred to in “This Is The One” was revealed in 1996 with the publication of “In The Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan And The Nation of Islam.” In it author Mattias Gardell writes:

In 1959, the FBI launched a large-scale media campaign. In this first phase, the FBI briefed selected journalists who willingly channeled the view of the bureau to the American public. The special agent in charge (SAC) in Chicago, wrote: “Originally the program was centered around espousing to the public, both white and black, on a nationwide basis the abhorrent aspects of the organization and its racist, hate type teachings. This was done in such leading magazines as Time, U.S. News and World Report, Saturday Evening Post etc. … as well as through newspapers.”

The ADL and the FBI have a very intimate relationship. Part of it involves the ADL both training and briefing the FBI on such topics as what it calls ‘radical Islam.' One such training session was conducted on May 18, 2010. How far back has such training gone, and is the ADL the fountain from which the lie that the Nation of Islam is ‘Anti-Semitic' (even though the ADL privately admits it is not true) comes?

There are many members of the American Jewish community and even its political establishment whom I believe would be deeply moved by Volume Two of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” especially if they take the time to read its detailed footnotes, which cite eminent scholars, historians, and economists.

I believe these individuals—after such a reading—would sense something very spiritually wrong in the reaction the ADL had to the powerful letter that was written to its President, Mr. Abraham Foxman, by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

The past and current efforts of some in the Jewish community to silence or distort discussions regarding the sources of its wealth are hurting, not helping Black-Jewish relations.

The sooner the ‘intelligent and sensible' dialogue which Minister Farrakhan describes begins, the sooner a greater appreciation and admiration for the beautiful side of Jewish kinship-based economics can emerge—enlightening and inspiring not only Black Americans, but an entire world.

In closing, Steven Silbiger has personally told me of his admiration for the leader of the UNIA, the Honorable Marcus Garvey.

While Steven Silbiger expresses high regard for Marcus Garvey, this great leader from Jamaica has also been labeled as ‘anti-Semitic.'

However, in “The Jewish Phenomenon” we read, “Garvey denounced discrimination against the Jews and ascribed it to others' jealousy of Jewish economic success. At the same time, emphasizing his self-empowerment theme, he cautioned against relying on Jews, stating that the very racial solidarity he admired made Jews loyal only to themselves.”

Think and read for yourself.

Order Volumes One and Two of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” today.

(Cedric Muhammad is a business consultant, political strategist, and monetary economist. He's a former GM of Wu-Tang Management and currently a Member of the African Union's First Congress of African Economists. Cedric's the Founder of the economic information service Africa PreBrief (http://africaprebrief.com/) and author of ‘The Entrepreneurial Secret' (http://theEsecret.com/). He can be contacted via e-mail at: cedric(at)cmcap.com.)

Reposted from THE FINAL CALL (finalcall.com)

The Proof: Lessons from Jewish Influence on World Affairs

By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jul 30, 2010 - 6:08:29 PM

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[Editor's note: The following article contains excerpts from an address the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered on July 11, 2010 titled “Who Are The Real Children of Israel? Part 2: The Proof.” Click here to order this message in its entirety on CD aor DVD.]

I want us to see how successful Jewish people are, and how we should study them, and learn how they have worked hard in a collective manner to become the powerful people that they are.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Photo: Michael Muhammad Jews make up two-tenths of one percent of the world, but look at where they've reached! Don't you want to study them? Don't you want to rise from the condition that you're in? You need to get the book, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 2,” and see how you were undone, and see how they were done!

Here is a quote from Jews about themselves: “As a group, Jews are the most successful in terms of income and wealth. And they have reached the echelons, the highest echelons of power in every field: Transportation, Distribution, Publication, Movies, Theatre, Art, Science, Medicine, Law, Architecture, Astronomy, Archaeology, Anthropology. But all of this was developed through their mastery of Trade and Commerce. It is their success in Trade that fueled all the other areas of Jewish life.”

And David Brooks of the New York Times, in a January 12, 2010 article, wrote: “Jews are a famously-accomplished group. They make up two-tenths of 1 percent of the world population, but they're 54 percent of the World Chess Champions; 27 percent of the Nobel Physics Laureates; and 31 percent of the Medicine Laureates. Jews make up 2 percent of the United States population, but 21 percent of the Ivey League Student Bodies; 26 percent of the Kennedy Center Honorees; 37 percent of the Academy Award winning directors; 38 percent of those on the recent Business Week list of “Leading Philanthropists”; and 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for non-fiction.”

Jews make up two-tenths of one percent of the world, but look at where they've reached! Don't you want to study them? Don't you want to rise from the condition that you're in? You need to get the book, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Vol. 2,” and see how you were undone, and see how they were done!

We have to do the same thing, but only for Righteousness, and not for Evil, because God is closing down their world. But if you study how they were successful, and use the great principles that they used, for Righteousness' sake, we as a people can rise.

The principal business people of the world

Did you know that when Howard University was being set up, in Congress they were arguing over what Howard was going to teach Blacks? White folks in Congress said, “Well, we don't know why we're setting up this college for Black people, because we're never gonna teach them the Science of Business, the Science of Warfare or the Science of Mating.”

Have you noticed that you can go into business, but that most of you who get a “MBA” (Masters in Business Administration): You're working for White people, but you can't make a business for yourself?

Even our successful Black business men like George Johnson (Ultra Sheen): He had 750 Black people working for him. But where's his business now? Gone. Look at Motown: A Black man started from the ground up, and got it to a certain point, but who owns Motown now? BET was started and developed by a Black man, but now it is owned by Jews.

What offer did they give you that you couldn't refuse? When you think about “business,” business in this world is warfare. And if you don't know the Science of Warfare, you'll make “business,” but you won't know how to protect what you build!

What is the Science of Mating? Now all of you know this takes place in the breeding of dogs and horses; and when they send some of these great champion horses out to “stud,” they pay thousands upon thousands of dollars just for the sperm!

Well, in the House of Rothschild, did you know how they married throughout Europe? “This family” married with “that family,” extending the House, and building their businesses, so that they're the richest House on Earth. We don't do that! You go out to the bar room; you meet somebody in the crack house or, you're partying. See, White folk—the big ones—are not like that. They arrange meetings where this one will mate with that one and extend the House's fortunes.

That's a Science we have to learn, to know how to match this one with that one, and extend the growth and the development of us as a people.

***

Simon Wolf, a president of the B'nai B'rith Jewish organization, wrote: “…We all know that the first bankers of the world—[the] Rothschilds—are Jews; we know they control not only the money market, but also the political destiny of the European world … Even our loans were taken, principally, by Jews; but mercantile enterprises owe a vast debt to the Jew. You need but look at the streets of the principal cities of the world on Jewish holidays, and you will at once see that trade is in mourning; the busy hum is hushed; everything is languid; the active brain, the quick nervous decision, the daring, yet cautious, speculator is absent. Look at Spain and Ireland, and then at England, France, Germany and the United States …”

And when it's a Jewish holiday, everything gets quiet. Why? Because they are the principal business people of the world. Isn't that something to admire?

What I am saying to you is not for you to “hate” Jewish people. That would be beneath you, because whatever they did, it was by Order of a Power bigger than they, and bigger than we.

God is The Author of our suffering, but He used these people to train us up; to burn us in the Fire of Affliction, the Furnace of Affliction, that we could come out as pure gold to be The Standard of Value of every nation on our Planet!

Jewish control in America and overseas

Today, Jews are 20 percent of the nation's doctors and lawyers. Book publishers Simon & Schuster, Knopf and Random House are Jewish. CBS and NBC are Jewish; half of New York's theatrical producers were Jews, and they exert complete control over the production of movies.

Half the opinion-making and taste-influential paraphernalia in America is in Jewish hands. Can you deny that?

How many members are there of the Supreme Court? Of the nine, two are Jewish: Steven G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. And if Elena Kagan is elected, then of the nine, 33 1/3 percent of the Supreme Court will be Jewish.

Pat Buchanan: The ADL called him a “recidivist anti-Semite,” but he's arguing: “Man! What is this? What about about the idea of ‘diversity'?” See, when Congress has to vote, Congress is so wrapped up in, and under the thumb of, Jewish control and power. You don't even have a congressman that will vote, hardly, against anything that deals with Israel in a negative way. That's just not going to happen!

***

Did you know that it would be no exaggeration to say that the greatest wealth and enterprise in South Africa are to be found in the German-Jewish-Hebrew community? This is according to a Jewish publication.

In South Africa, they run the show. Nelson Mandela, he's a good man, but he couldn't fulfill any promise that he made to his little brothers; that he was going to end the shanty towns, and build all these houses, put electricity there. This is because Black folk can't do anything without White help and support, so the White man doesn't mind making you a “politician” because he's going to control you.

Teaching ‘Black economics' brings ‘anti-Semite' charges

Every Black leader that spoke of economic development was charged with being an “Anti-Semite.” The following is a partial list of respected Blacks who have been victimized by being called “Black Anti-Semites,” and it spans the religious and political spectra!

We'll start with Elijah Muhammad: That man never said one negative word about Jewish people. You know what he did say? “We need to have an economic program”—and that made him “anti-Semitic,” because if you're going to have some “Black Economics” that means “someone is going out of business.”

When you have Black men and women teaching that we should “buy from our own” and “support our own” in the days when the Jews had businesses all in our community, you would be taking money from them. Nowadays, you would be taking it from Arabs, Koreans, and others! Everybody is getting fat off of us!

Other Black leaders called “anti-Semite”: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Julian Bond, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Andrew Young, Kweisi Mfume, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Joseph Lowery. And overseas: Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Black organizations: The Black Panthers, who were called “anti-Semitic” yesterday; and the New Black Panther Party is being called “anti-Semitic” today! Also, SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Brother Marcus Garvey's Movement), and the Nation of Islam. Black scholars: John Hope Franklin, J.A. Rogers, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Julius Lester and Alice Walker. Black entertainers: Michael Jackson, Spike Lee, Ice Cube, Arsenio Hall, Muhammad Ali, Public Enemy, and even Oprah!

Now, you see, whenever a Black person looks like they're going to “step out of line” a little bit, hit 'em with that “anti-Semitism,” and they get right back in line!

And now, they call our dear beloved brother Barack Obama an “anti-Semite.” Now what the hell does he have in common with me? I'm on the bottom rung of the “anti-Semite ladder; he's at the top. Well, who the hell else is in between? That's you!

My God, I mean, are all of us “anti-Semitic”? That's why we're ready to go before the world with the proof.

Modern-day slaves on sport plantations

Have you ever seen such a clamor in the news over our brothers who play sports? Did you hear how the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers talked about poor brother LeBron James, like he betrayed Cleveland by moving somewhere else?

We did the research, and Jews are also the owners and commissioners of sports. They own Basketball, Football, Baseball, Hockey and Soccer. Micky Arison is the owner of the Miami Heat—isn't that where LeBron, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh are?—and Dan Gilbert is the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

You're on a plantation, brother. You know, there are some plantations if you go to, they treat you better, but our brother LeBron went from one plantation owner who is Jewish, to another plantation owner who is Jewish. And the Jewish owner in Miami was jumping up and down, because these Negroes are sitting here like they are the “top stars.”

But in the background is the dude that's saying: “Boy! We're going to get $750 million coming in because of these three Negroes!” They are meat on a plantation. And when your days of playing are over, what's your condition? Broke. What is their condition? Rich.

***

Every Black man today that is rich, he has friendship with a Jewish person: Jay-Z, P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, Beyoncé, and Oprah—all our people have plenty of money, but they never learned how to network their money to produce real wealth for our people. All the friendship that they have, that makes them rich, was never good enough to make us rich as a people.

And so, beloved, in delivering this message, I know it may bring hurt to me, and to us. But I also know that we will have The Victory.

The Jewish people have the force to hurt; and they also have what it takes to help. I've asked them: “Since your people put ours in this condition, why don't you help me raise our people up from the degraded state that your people have put them in.”

Do you think I'm wrong to ask them for this? I'm not asking them for a “check” to give to silly people who are going to give it right back to them! I hope that you will get the books, and see how you are being exploited; how Hollywood has painted you in a stupid way, where we are the “clowns” and still the same “Stepn' Fetchits.”

Can we do better? Shouldn't we do better? Shouldn't we study how successful the Jewish people are, and then set out to become successful ourselves?

Don't you want to establish a little business for yourself? You don't know how to take six, or eight of you, with a common purpose, trusting one another and pooling your resources, and serving your people—but you can do it! And, you're going to be forced to do it!

Note: See related links:

Minister Louis Farrakhan's Open Letter to Black Leadership (07-19-2010)

Minister Louis Farrakhan's Letter To ADL's Abraham Foxman (06-24-2010)

Jewish leaders demand Farrakhan denounce "Secret Relationship" book (07-11-2010)

Neo-slavery in the American South

Neo-slavery in the American South

By Brian E. Muhammad and Richard B. Muhammad
Final Call Staff Writers | Last updated: Jul 27, 2010 - 11:45:58 PM

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Though called by other names, poor Blacks are kept in bondage today in the United States

Photo: Istockphoto

COLUMBIA, S.C. (FinalCall.com) - Nearly 150 years after Emancipation, trapped by extreme poverty, isolation, fear and shame, some Blacks remain victims of neo-slavery in rural areas of the South, locked into work in fields, factories and assorted industries.

While not bought and sold at auction block, these poor Blacks are forced to work, live in shacks, often have no indoor plumbing and are often trapped in peonage, tied to land where they owe owners debts that are never repaid, according to an activist and researcher. Some Blacks are even forced to pay rent to White landowners for dilapidated housing but are fearful of identifying landlords and owners.

“Slavery never ended and that's the point, it never ended. It just disguised itself in other forms,” says Antoinette Harrell, who is based in Louisiana and has documented the plight of people she describes as modern slaves in America.

Ms. Harrell has been tracking this problem for the past decade. She knows it is hard for many to accept abusive conditions that amount to slavery exist today. Blacks don't want to believe this is happening in 2010, she adds. But people are forced to stay on plantations in Glendora, Miss., Webb, Miss., Roseland, La., and other places where landowners use isolation and threats of violence to keep these Black workers under control, she says.

Antoinette Harrell in Attala County, Mississippi.

Though others would define the conditions as peonage, which was outlawed by the 13th Amendment in 1865, or as sharecropping, where agricultural workers live on and work on land owned by someone else for a share of the fruits of their labor, the researcher is adamant the bottom line is slavery inextricably tied to debilitating poverty.

It's slavery because people are forced to stay against their will, worked, controlled and dehumanized, she stresses. In some cases people have been murdered, charges Ms. Harrell, reciting accounts told to her over the years. In addition to extreme poverty and no opportunity, other essential elements make people vulnerable: There is no transportation, workers don't have cars, dogs are used to track people who try to run away and many feel there is nowhere else to go, says Ms. Harrell.

Dr. Ron Walters, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, explains that after Emancipation, new systems were instituted to exploit Blacks and to keep Blacks essentially enslaved. Over the years, whenever federal officials were asked to intervene, one problem was proving that Blacks were indeed suffering from slavery prohibited by the Constitution, he says.

Plantation owners, understanding the law, would argue that there was no slavery and the Justice Dept. was unable to declare what was happening illegal because of “vague” Constitutional language, he adds. Another problem was the lack of political will and a concern about confronting and exposing the continued problem of slavery and Blacks in America, Dr. Walters explains. From 1865 onward, the problem has cropped up at different times, but it has never been entirely resolved, he adds.

Ms. Harrell, a genealogist, became aware of modern manifestations of slavery while exploring the issue of reparations. Based on conversations with workers, Ms. Harrell says she found many did not know they could actually leave. Ms. Harrell is unsure of how many people may be in this condition inside the United States. She has been able to access these areas by networking, researching plantation histories and locations and through the story of Mae Miller.

Ms. Miller, whose life as a modern slave in Mississippi and Louisiana has been documented, escaped captivity in 1961. The problem exists today, she declares. Ms. Miller, who says she was raped by a slave master beginning at age five, told The Final Call her family and others who moved from one plantation to another where they worked and were kept in horrible conditions and weren't regularly fed. We were beaten and barely fed table scraps, she recalls.

Ms. Miller says she didn't realize she had been kept illegally as a slave until 2001. She recalls that her father, her mother, her siblings, her grandfather were with her. She says she didn't know anything about other family members or what was happening in the outside world.

Ms. Miller says she knows people that are still on these plantations—and who still live under the fear and conditions that she suffered from. Her story was told in 2007 in People magazine, as well on ABC Nightline and CNN. She declines to talk about her family's experience—it brings up painful memories loved ones would like to forget. Her family's plight was called peonage in the People article.

Slavery in all its forms

According to the Florida-based Coalition for Immokalee Workers the problem of real slavery exists today—in particular among tomato pickers and agriculture workers in the Sunshine State. “Slavery in Florida today is not separate from the past—indeed its roots extend deep within our state's history. Farm workers have always been, and remain today, the state's poorest, least powerful workers,” says Gerardo Reyes of the coalition. “If we are to abolish slavery once and for all in Florida agriculture, we must pull it up by the roots by addressing farm worker poverty and powerlessness.”

“There is real slavery in the fields of Florida. This is not about lousy jobs, but violent control, vicious exploitation, and the potential for serious harm and even death,” adds Dr. Kevin Bales, of Free the Slaves, an international organization.

Photo of a cabin where workers lived in Webb, Mississippi. Photos: Walter C. Black Sr.

The coalition is kicking off a July 25-Aug. 14 tour of its Modern-Day Slavery Museum, which will visit the northeast. The exhibit consists of a cargo truck designed as a replica of trucks involved in a 2008 slave operation in Florida. Dozens of farm workers from Mexico and Guatemala were kept in trucks and shacks, beaten, forced to pay for food and showers, and plied with alcohol. Some of victims suffered in bondage for years and were forced to work fields in Florida and other locations in North Carolina and South Carolina.

The Coalition for Immokalee Workers, a farm worker justice group, says the upcoming tour is also an attempt to raise awareness of conditions in the tomato supply chains for Ahod's USA supermarket brands, which it says includes Giant, Stop&Shop, and Martins.

Since 1997, the coalition says it has helped the Justice Dept. prosecute seven farm slavery operations and helped free over 1,000 people.

“I am not surprised with that because it's the same system and Florida was one of the 16 states that really heavy peonage cases came from there,” says Ms. Harrell. “The new slaves that they are focusing on in 2010 are the immigrants.”

The sixteen states that Ms. Harrell's research has shown were once involved in post-Emancipation slavery included Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arizona, New York, Illinois and Georgia. Today the problem exists in Louisiana and Mississippi, she says.

Calls to the U.S. Department of Justice about allegations of modern slavery in the South went unanswered at Final Call press time, however cases of slavery involving immigrant workers have been prosecuted by the federal agency. Attempts to reach state officials in Louisiana were unsuccessful, Mississippi officials, however, did respond. “No one has complained of this to our office. If you have specific allegations, we'd be happy to hear them and see what we can do or help refer to the appropriate agency,” says Jan Shaffer, a public information officer with the Mississippi state attorney general's office.

While the plight of immigrant workers, sexual bondage, holding women against their will and forcing them into prostitution; human trafficking, in which immigrants pay for passage to America and are forced to work in factories, prostitution or restaurants; or child labor, where children are exploited and abused to make products, are acknowledged and called forms of slavery, calling poor Blacks in the South “slaves” remains distasteful and is seen as almost impossible.

But Ms. Harrell traces the connections to slavery and post-slavery practices through the U.S. National Archives, Justice Department records, local court records and interviews victims living on plantations to understand and document its existence.

“The documents are there from the slave holders; companies that insured our family members, our ancestors and once you start to look into records, you find something a little bit deeper,” Ms. Harrell says.

She says she met people in St. Johns and St. Charles parish in Louisiana who were on sugar cane plantations well into the 1960s and 1970s.

According to Ms. Harrell, letters appealing for investigations into the claims, filed at the National Archives expose that no fewer than three U.S. presidents knew of post-Emancipation slavery during their terms—Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Digging through U.S. Department of Justice records in Washington, D.C., Dr. Walters, who is also director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, found the extent to which the federal government was aware of post-Emancipation slavery and its challenges with addressing the problem.

Glendora, Miss., Mayor Johnny Thomas agrees bogus debt schemes like peonage and sharecropping were used to exploit Black people well into the 20th century. This was his experience growing up as a sharecropper in the late 1950s.

“It's pre-meditated,” Mayor Thomas explains. “You were kept indebted to the point where you couldn't leave.” In these cases the plantation owner pays the debt, then the “debtor” and—in most instances—his entire family work the plantation to repay the money. Only the debt is never caught up.

Mayor Thomas says as far as he knows sharecropping is going on, albeit hurt by the economy, but not slavery.

Both Ms. Harrell and Dr. Walters told The Final Call that the deplorable conditions people are living under on the plantations is nothing short of slavery regardless of the label.

“They are in deep rural areas, miles off the main highways, back off into cotton fields where you got 2,000 acres; how can they get away?” asks Ms. Harrell.

“I was born into slavery, I guess because my father was in slavery. I don't know if it was generational or only us,” Mae Miller says. “As far as I can remember back when I was a little bitty girl it was happening to us.”

Talks with Ms. Miller expose the extent of isolation experienced with no exposure to the world outside of the plantations. She later learned to read and write and worked following her literal escape from a White landowner under, she says, a death threat.

According to Ms. Harrell, two things must happen as awareness of slavery in modern America grows: The language of what is understood as slavery in the history books must be expanded and there must be a legal injunction against the U.S. for allowing slavery to continue illegally.

Eradication of slavery in America is an issue for the World Court because the practice is a crime against humanity, argues Ms. Harrell. She also sees the atrocity as another example of why Blacks deserve reparations. “It is necessary for the attorneys to come and further the case for reparations, not only for the 19th century but the 20th and 21st century,” Ms. Harrell argues.

The Cotton Pickin' Truth: Still on the Plantation (FCN, 07-13-2010)

Reposted from THE FINAL CALL (finalcall.com)

The horror and neo-slavery of sharecropping

By Jehron Muhammad -Contributing Writer- | Last updated: Sep 8, 2010 - 9:42:23 AM

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Photo courtesy, The Library of Congress Archives

(FinalCall.com) - During a recent visit to see my 91-year-old grandmother, I inquired about her move from Abbevelle, S.C. to Philadelphia. After the death of her mother, my grandmother, Francis Ramsey, said her sharecropper father decided there was no reason to stay and moved the family to Philadelphia. She was six years old when the decision was made and till this very day she still doesn't understand why there was such an abrupt relocation.

The backbreaking workload precipitated by a post slavery sharecropping economy that left Black farmers always in debt to their White masters is probably the answer behind the decision to move North.

According to the new book The Secret Relationships Between Blacks & Jews: How Jews Gained Control Over The Black American Economy Volume Two, under this slavery-like system, Black farmers “renting on the worst possible terms … had to pay half to two-thirds of their yearly crop to the landlord for the privilege” of sharecropping. And since the sharecropper needed “mules, tools, and seed, along with necessities including food, clothing and shelter, for himself and his family in order to get started in farming,” his only collateral—since he had no money to pay the merchant—was his future crop.

Never able to generate enough money to pay off this debt owed to the merchant and landlord, the Black farmer was resigned to working in a system geared toward enslavement through debt, while his White “masters” waxed fat off of his labor.

Some larger plantations, with many sharecropper farms, printed their own paper money and minted their own coins. These were actually advanced to sharecroppers against the following year's harvest and to guarantee purchases from plantation stores. The trouble was the money was legal tender only when used at the plantation store, and the price, in most cases, far exceeded the prices at the neighboring town market.

Other more creative methods to exploit Blacks were used including selling government-issued free goods that were supposed to feed the freed slaves. In addition the Whites, and in more cases Jewish merchants, also fleeced this poor sharecropping class by “cooking the books,” or charging more than was actually owed.

In one of the many portraits chronicling the sharecropping system, an intelligent young Black girl schooled in “rudimentary math” discovers she is no match “for the figures at the company store.”In Jean Wheeler Smith's “Frankie Mae,” (1968) the 13-year-old questions the landowner's calculations. Barely able to restrain himself from shooting the young girl and her father, the landowner sends them away with these words: “Long as you live, b---h, I'm gonna be right and you gonna be wrong. Now get your black a-- outta here.”

The incentive to leave the sharecropper existence was apparent and was a main reason for Black migrations to the North.

Since the landlords and merchants profits depended on Black labor, they were determined to keep sharecroppers in their place. Threats of violence, intimidation and actual brute force to keep tenants from leaving became the order of the day. When Blacks were discovered on trains trying to leave their meager existence, they were often pulled off and returned to their plantations. But this didn't stop the exodus to the North. In fact between 1920 and 1930, Chicago, a favorite destination of Blacks fleeing the South, increased from a population of 109,458 to 233,903. The growth was attributable to Blacks fleeing the South for the dream of better living conditions in the North.

As a child the desire to leave a slave-like existence and the sentiments expressed in “Frankie Mae” were actually shared with the author by 66-year-old Sakinah Muhammad, formally known as Johnnie Bynum. During a phone interview from her home in Baton Rouge, La., she talked about her sharecropping experience.

Between the age of 8 and 16, Johnnie (Sakinah), her mom and 8 of her 10 siblings, worked on a 20-acre farm in Baton Rouge picking cotton. She said her weekly wage between age 8 and 10 (obviously this wasn't effected by child labor laws) was “in vanilla wafers, cookies, cheese and a soda.” She said between age 10 and 16 her weekly salary increased to .25 cents. Though the conditions “were very harsh” and led her to often be “very sick,” she was still able—between age 8 and 10 to pick three bales of cotton per day and nearly double that output between age 10 and 16. She worked seven days per week from “dawn until sunset.”

“You missed a lot of school because you had to work the field,” she said.

She later via email recollected one of the reasons for her constantly being sick: “There wasn't any bathrooms for Blacks. My first year in the field, I would soil my clothes and my mother was not able to stop work to take me out of sight to relieve myself.”

Also growing up sharecropping and working the cotton field was literary giant Alice Walker and former Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod. During a recent CNN interview she explained her“back breaking” experience picking cotton in Georgia. “You had a sack, you know, that you put on and the sack went over,” Sherrod explained, “a (particular) shoulder.” She then gestured about “the opening” of the sack being a certain place in relation to her shoulder. “So you are bending over picking cotton and putting it in the sack. And when it gets full, you got to take it over to a burlap sheet and pour it in there and you did that all day long,” she said.

Alice Walker didn't like the feeling of revisiting slavery. According to Alice Walker: A Critical Companion (2005) by Gerri Bates, Walker, whose parents were sharecroppers, felt this post-slavery system “was worst than slavery,” because this system“took exploitation to a new level.”

Under slavery people were never compensated; under sharecropping they “worked and were rarely paid and ended up in debt.” This system like what occurred in literally thousands of Black households across the South “robbed her of her early life, which to her was a lifetime,” wrote Bates.

This robbing of a lifetime is why Sakinah Muhammad says she “cries each time” she picks up and reads The Secret Relationship Vol. 2. This chronicling of the post-emancipation system that forced Blacks back into a slave-like existence and robbed them of a chance to achieve economic parity is not only what “I've read,” she said, “it's what I actually experienced.”

(We'd love to hear from you. Many Black parents and grandparents have experienced much of what was written above. There are literally thousands of similar stories. But the problem is our relatives are up in age and we stand to lose this history unless it's chronicled. What we propose is that you interview your relatives that have held on to this information and then send those stories to the email provided. A Web site will be created for posting these stories and allowing the world to read and begin to show appreciation for the holocaust that Black people have suffered. You can email Jehron Muhammad at Jehronn@msn.com.

Related news:

Neo-slavery in the American South (FCN, 07-27-2010)

The Cotton Pickin' Truth: Still on the Plantation (FCN, 07-13-2010)

The Cotton Pickin' Truth: Still on the Plantation

The Cotton Pickin' Truth: Still on the Plantation

By Brian E. Muhammad -Contributing Writer- | Last updated: Jul 13, 2010 - 10:38:51 AM

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A documentary on modern day slavery

(FinalCall.com) - Mae Louise Miller grew up in chattel slavery working from plantation to plantation for White owners in the South where her family picked cotton and she was beaten and raped repeatedly from the age of five. Her story is typical of the horrid accounts of slave life in America during the 19th century, only this saga is not from back then, it is a true story of the present.

Ms. Miller was enslaved until 1961 and there is evidence of slavery today in different parts of America's South.

Yes, slavery still exists in 2010 in Mississippi and Louisiana, says Timothy Arden Smith, who captured the story in a soon to be released documentary called “The Cotton Pickin' Truth … Still on the Plantation,” which will premiere Sept. 23 at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History in Detroit.

The film is a project of S & S Films International and produced by Mr. Smith and Tobias “Profit” Smith. The documentary was conceived after an appearance by Ms. Miller on the Warren Ballentine Radio Show and was created to bring exposure to the shocking and little talked about truth. Timothy Smith is executive producer for the nationally syndicated radio program.

“After the show I prayed a lot and my dad had been wanting to do a documentary and God told me this is the documentary he ought to do,” said Tobias Smith, who is also an independent hip hop recording artist.

The younger Smith said they reached out to Ms. Miller with their intentions, and decided doing the film was not economic-driven but was a “mission.”

In the process of interviewing Ms. Miller about her life as a 20th century slave in America, the Smiths learned from her that slavery was still being practiced in Mississippi and Louisiana today. Then the filmmakers were taken to Glendora, Miss., and Webb, Miss., where they said they saw and documented the existence of plantations.

The Smiths said the areas are isolated, deep inland from main roads and “far away from civilization,” where plantation owners do what they want.

According to the Smiths, there are many who know that slavery didn't end with the Emancipation Proclamation nearly 150 years ago. The elder Smith said talking about the documentary and pre-showings of the film revealed that a significant number of people know firsthand, based on having family members still on the plantations, or themselves growing up in slavery but choose to remain silent.

Others express disbelief and denial because of the perception of racial progress in America, such as having a Black president.

“The upper class Blacks look at it and they are shocked,” said Timothy Smith. “They feel ‘this is not going on we have a Black president.' ”

It is out of sight and out of mind for those who know slavery exists, he added.

Timothy Smith pointed out that the film gives meaning to the human experience and how most people are yet enslaved on one level or another. He cited his colleagues in the media industry who choose to focus on partying and frivolity, fearful of taking on a serious issue such as slavery in modern America.

“No matter if you are Black or White you will see yourself in the documentary,” said Mr. Smith. “You are still on the plantation.”

Along with Mae Louise Miller, the film also features commentary from activist/comedian Dick Gregory, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and others.

“We want to make people aware about what's going on so we can stop what's going on,” Tobias Smith said. A trailer for the film can be viewed at http://www.theprofitmusic.com.

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