Why they erase Black history
There is a reason why they want to erase Black history, and it’s not to hide it from Black people. We know our history because we continue to live it.
They’re hiding it from other white people. Why? It’s not because white children will feel bad, despite what some white adults say. It’s for another reason altogether, but before we get to that, there are a few historical things you should know.
The first of those historical things is that Lincoln didn’t “free the slaves.” In fact, just about a month before the Civil War began, during his first inaugural address, Lincoln said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
But then, during the Civil War, upwards of half a million enslaved Black people broke free all on their own and fled to Union-controlled territory. This forced Lincoln’s hand, but enslaved Black people freeing themselves was not new. Truly, they had been freeing themselves since they were forced onto boats in Africa. They never stopped freeing themselves. The website freedomonthemove.org has a database of over 50,000 “runaway slave” newspaper ads dating as far back as 1704 — the same year the first American police force, or “slave patrol,” was established in South Carolina.
Black people had been escaping slavery so frequently that in 1793, George Washington signed the Fugitive Slave Act allowing enslavers to cross state lines to re-enslave anyone who’d escaped. The federal law also demanded a $500 fine ($16,000 in today’s dollars) from anyone who in any way aided a person who’d escaped slavery. The slave patrol/bounty hunter industry was booming. Black people in every state were asked by strangers to present their “free” papers. Often, the papers didn’t actually matter, as even free Black people were regularly kidnapped and sold into slavery.
The second historical thing you should know is what Maine did in response to the Fugitive Slave Act: nothing, at first. We weren’t a state until 1820. But one of the first things Maine did upon becoming a state was pass a series of Personal Liberty laws restricting state agencies from aiding enslavers.
These laws also punished anyone who took it upon themselves to try us. For example, “An act against kidnapping or selling for a slave” was passed here in 1838 and ensured that, “every person, who shall sell, or in any manner transfer, for any term, the service or labor of any negro, mulatto, or other person of color, who shall have been unlawfully seized, taken, inveigled or kidnapped from this State to any other State, place or country, shall be punished by imprisonment in the State Prison not more than five years, or by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment in the county jail not more than one year.”
In 1857, after the Supreme Court decided, in the Dred Scott case, that enslaved Black people and their descendants were not U.S. citizens, Maine strengthened its Personal Liberty laws. If you were charged with being a “fugitive slave,” jailers weren’t allowed to hold you and county district attorneys would give you legal aid for free — which might not have mattered anyway, because judges weren’t allowed to hear such cases in the first place.
The third historical thing you should know is that the laws aren’t really the important part. It’s that those laws reflected Maine’s culture. According to historian Jerry Desmond, “A slave owner would find it impossible to recover a runaway in Maine. His only recourse was to employ the offices of the federal marshal in Maine. The slave owner or his agent would be lucky to escape the state unharmed, as the provisions of the statute seemed to imply that Maine would not punish ‘affrayers, rioters, or breakers of the peace’ in any cases related to a fugitive slave.”
This is why they hide our history. Because if they didn’t, white people might start to ask questions. They might wonder what else is being hidden from them. They might even start to think there’s an option other than sitting back and taking it. If they knew what they did the last time federal kidnappers came to Maine for the sake of wealth, bigotry and pride, just think what they might do now.
Frederick Douglass once said, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
How quietly submissive are you willing to be?
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” at samuelj.substack.com.
