re: #57 EmmmieG

I read a great book back in college that talked about the folklore/myths about slavery. Basically, there were those in the South who claimed that blacks were fine under slavery and weren’t looking to be freed.

Of course, their sources for this information were the slaves, who were, de facto, not free to tell them the truth.

So you had the house servant who would tell his masters with a sad face that he was really sad about the Emancipation Proclamation, and then go down in the slave quarters and lead the dancing.

I wish I could remember the name of the book.

Yes, I know, the plural of anecdote is not data. Made for interesting reading, though.

People always write the history that serves their guilt.

My other Great-Grandfather was a wealthy land speculator who had a dozen or so slaves. He fathered 5 children with his house slave, a woman name Caroline Spring, naming the oldest John Lafayette. Following the end of the Civil War and emancipation, Ms. Spring and her children settled in the Oregonia, Ohio area and named their farm the same as my Great-Grandfathers farm. 10 years later, my Great-Grandfather, his estate reduced to about 500 acres from 10,000 following Reconstruction, married a white woman and named his first born white son, my grandfather, John Lafayette.

As my black cousin from Detroit remarked to me when I asked her about her thoughts on the motivation for our great-grandfather to name both sons - one black, one white, one born a slave, one born free man - John Lafayette and her Great-Grandmother to name their farm after her former enslaver ….Life is complicated.

Fucking right.