by Helen Richardson

Created on: April 13, 2007   Last Updated: May 15, 2007

Forty acres and a mule. That's what our government promised every freed slave after the abolition of slavery. Lincoln knew that the people who had been forced to work for free to make this country rich deserved to be paid something for their trouble, and to get them started on the right foot.

During Reconstruction, which is the period of time directly after the Civil War, it looked like former slaves and the already free black people would have a chance at being "equal". People started their own businesses, ran for public office and won, bought land and started their own farms.

But no one ever got their forty acres and a mule. And once former slave owners and poor white people realized that the hated black people were going to be as successful or even more successful than they were, they started to kill them. Blame game indeed. Of course former slaves were to blame for the collapse of the Southern economy after the Civil War. Of course they were to blame for some white plantation owners losing everything. It couldn't be that building your fortune on the enslavement of a group of human beings was inherently disgusting and immoral, could it?

And so a campaign of death and destruction began that didn't end until well into the twentieth century. For those white people who want to say "oh it's all in the past," we had a Senator who participated in lynchings and who was a member of racist violent groups, who ran for president under the flag of segregation. The only reason he isn't one of the leaders of our country anymore is because he died. Strom Thurmond is a prime of example of how hate-mongering and violence have influenced politics and the cultural climate of this country to this day.

Black people who tried to break color barriers were killed. The first black man to gain acceptance to a law school, Lloyd Gaines(he had to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court) disappeared mysteriously one day shortly after his enrollment. His body was found in a lake in the late twentieth century.

Black men were hung by mobs of angry black people well into the 1950's. Black people tried to start their own settlements, independent of white society. These communities were often raided and burned to the ground.

White people who are so proud of their heritage, who show off their family trees so proudly and say things about how their ancestors made them who they are today have so much trouble understanding that the same thing is true of other races. Yes it is possible for people to rise up out of a family history of tragedy and violence. But let's not pretend that we are all on an even playing field. Let's not pretend that there still isn't institutional and individual racism in this country that keeps people from advancing.

The blame game isn't a game. It's deadly serious and tragic, and we as a nation should take responsibility for the deaths we've built our fortune on.

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