From The Ramparts
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Charleston South Carolina in Historical Perspective
“There's a long history to the Emanuel African Methodist Espiscopal Church in Charleston, S.C., — affectionately known as ‘Mother Emanuel’ where nine churchgoers were allegedly shot and killed by 21-year-old Dylann Roof on Wednesday night in what authorities are calling a hate crime. In fact, this church has become a revered symbol of black resistance to slavery and racism.” Denmark Vesey and The History of Charleston’s “Mother Emanuel” Church, Kat Chow http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/18/415465656/denmark-vesey-and-the-history-of-charleston-s-mother-emanuel-church
The nation is reeling from the church shooting that killed nine Black folks in a Charleston South Carolina Church on June 17th during a Bible study session. Some of the details seem fishy to me, nevertheless I suggest we look at this incident within a much larger context, that of the United States as a violent European settler nation. Within this context and the broader view of slavery, racial animus and oppression it’s not unusual that an incident like this happened.
Charles Town South Carolina was settled in 1670 (later renamed Charleston in 1783) by English immigrants mostly from Barbados. The Trans Atlantic Slave trade was already well established in Barbados in 1670 and the English settlers depended on African labor to reap huge profits in the Caribbean and North America especially when Europeans proved too weak to survive the grueling heat and pace especially on the Caribbean sugar plantations and North American rice fields. Africans were imported to enrich the colonial trading companies and their administrators. Charles Town (Charleston) became the hub of the slave trade in the North American British colonies especially for rice cultivation. “The first English-speaking settlement in South Carolina was established on the coast in 1670. For the first thirty years the colonists had little success, but by about 1700 they discovered that rice, imported from Asia, grew well in the inland valley swamps of the Low Country. Throughout the 1700s the economy of South Carolina was based overwhelmingly on the cultivation of rice. This product brought consistently high prices in England, and the colony prospered and expanded. Rice agriculture has been called ‘the best opportunity for industrial profit which 18th century America afforded.’ South Carolina became one of the richest of the North American Colonies; and Charlestown (now Charleston), its capital and principal port, one of the wealthiest and most fashionable cities in early America. Later, because of the extraordinary success in South Carolina, the rice plantation system was extended farther south into coastal Georgia, where it also prospered.” The Gullah, Rice, Slavery and the Sierra Leone-American Connection Joseph A. Opala http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/02.htm
Charleston was a slave center and bustling seaport town that became rich and prosperous off the free labor of African people. Almost half of all the Africans brought to the North American British colonies prior to the Revolutionary War came through the port of Charleston! Charleston also had a large free Black population. “Although Charleston before 1864 is sometimes characterized by the dichotomy between black and white – free and slave – there were from very early times ‘free persons of color’ or free blacks. The first census, in 1790, found 8,089 white persons, 7,684 slaves, and 586 free blacks in Charleston. This tells us that very early in Charleston's history free blacks constituted nearly 3.6% of the city's population. By 1861 free blacks comprised 7.8% of Charleston's population. Although these 3,441 persons formed a small community by Northern standards, of the ten largest Southern cities, only Baltimore, New Orleans, and Washington contained larger free black communities prior to the Civil War. Although there were free blacks in the countryside, the economic and social opportunities were slim in comparison to those presented by the cities. That's why in 1850, about 40% of all free persons of color in South Carolina lived in Charleston and 89% of all free blacks in Charleston County lived in the city”. http://www.sciway.net/hist/chicora/freepersons.html
It’s interesting the shooting took place at the Emanuel AME Church one of the oldest Black churches in the South which was cofounded in 1816 by Denmark Vesey and other free Blacks. Vesey was the property of Captain Joseph Vesey a slave trader. Denmark Vesey was able to purchase his freedom for $600 when he won the Charleston lottery prize of $1,500 in 1799. As a free man Vesey worked as a carpenter and was able to roam about hiring his services out. But Vesey wanted all his people to be free. He secretly organized a slave revolt in 1821 to overcome the brutal oppression many Africans endured during that era. By all accounts Vesey was a charismatic firebrand who openly chastised Blacks for bowing to whites. He began organizing and setting his plans in motion in 1821. Vesey planned to lead a massive slave revolt by securing arms, taking the guardhouse, attacking whites burning the city and escaping to Haiti which was a free Black republic in the Caribbean.
Vesey’s plans were thwarted when details were told to the mayor and city officials by a Black man recruited by Vesey’s crew. The news sent shock waves of fear and revulsion within the white communities throughout the South. Vesey and thirty-five of his top cohorts were arrested and hanged. Thirty seven were shipped outside the United States. Even though most of the church leaders were not part of the plot the ravaging whites burned Emanuel AME Church to the ground!
Of course white’s view men like Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner as insane for wanting to be free and daring to plot killing whites to obtain their freedom. Over the years there have been battles to recognize and honor Vesey, in Charleston. Finally a marker and statue were erected in Charleston. It’s ironic the corporate mind control apparatus even mentions Vesey and the church following the June 17th shooting.
The fact whites view Prosser, Vesey and Turner as crazy shows how psychotic they are because these men planned their revolts to escape the vicious brutality and dehumanization they experienced under the European slave system. Following each of these failed revolts, the whites went berserk killing, burning and attacking Blacks out of fear and revenge.
A major component of the slave experience was the constant violence meted out to break their spirits, to mentally and physically control them; every means was used to demean Africans in an effort to turn them into beasts of burden. Whites wanted docile, dispirited, compliant slaves who were convinced of their own inferiority and impotence and the superiority of Europeans. Any challenge to this mental colonization was met with swift and severe retaliation by whites! Laws were passed that demeaned and subjugated Blacks, institutions like the white church reinforced these attitudes and customs. The media of the day and all future media constantly demonized and dehumanized Africa and African people, we were taught, brainwashed and conditioned to despise and loath ourselves and to worship whites.
Denmark Vesey and men like him were considered crazy and dangerous; their actions resulted in violent retaliation by whites to maintain the status quo especially in South Carolina where Africans outnumbered whites. Whites always feared slave uprisings and Blacks doing to them what they had done to the Blacks! Today the Confederate flag waves over the state capital building. To most South Carolina whites the flag is a proud symbol of their heritage and traditions. Part of the unstated tradition is violent oppression of Blacks and the long history of violence within America itself. Violence is real and it is an omnipresent theme in most US media whether television, motion pictures, video games or comic books. We cannot overlook this history and how it impacts all of us.
“A 2002 report by the US Secret Service and the US Department of Education, which examined 37 incidents of targeted school shootings and school attacks from 1974 to 2000 in this country, found that ‘over half of the attackers demonstrated some interest in violence through movies, video games, books, and other media.’ In a 2009 Policy Statement on Media Violence, the American Academy of Pediatrics said, ‘Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed.’ This year, the Media Violence Commission of the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) in its report on media violence said, ‘Over the past 50 years, a large number of studies conducted around the world have shown that watching violent television, watching violent films, or playing violent video games increases the likelihood for aggressive behavior.’ According to the commission, more than 15 meta-analyses have been published examining the links between media violence and aggression. Anderson and colleagues, for instance, published a comprehensive meta-analysis of violent video game effects and concluded that the ‘evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior.’” Violence In The Media: What Effects On Behavior http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-psychiatry/violence-media-what-effects-behavior
This is the social milieu that we all live in. It produced Dylann Storm Roof a twenty-one year old with a conflicting profile. Many of those who knew him said he “appeared normal”. Other accounts show he was stopped by police for acting strange and having drugs in his possession in a shopping mall. Now a “manifesto” has been found that taints Roof as a white supremacist determined to take action on his “new awakening” as a racist.
No one can say for sure this manifesto or the Website allegedly belonging to him are his or that they are authentic. Is Roof being set up? It wouldn’t be the first time. Think Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing or the nineteen highjackers whose identities were stolen by the real perpetrators of 9-11.
Forgive me for being cynical but there are things about this incident that don’t make sense. If Roof told the people in the church he had to shoot them to avenge Blacks “raping our women” why did he shoot six Black women? Where is there any evidence Black women rape white women?! He sat with them for an hour, he got a chance to see and hear them, and there were six women in the Bible study group, why didn’t he just shoot the men? The church Pastor Rev. Clementa Pinckney was an activist pastor and a member of the South Carolina legislature. Pinckney was characterized as “passionate about human rights”. If Roof was going to do something about Blacks “taking over the country”, as he allegedly said, why didn’t he just shoot Pinckney and run?
Rev. Pinckney pressed for legislation to require police officers to wear body cameras, and was vocal at a rally following the death of Walter Scott who was shot in the back by a white North Charleston police officer. A video shot from a citizen’s cellphone showed the officer, Michael Slager, planted a taser near Scott’s body after he shot him, walked over to the body and handcuffed him without attempting to see if he needed medical attention. Pinkney was vocal about this case in the media and legislature. Slager has since been charged with murder and is awaiting trial in the Charleston County jail, the same Charleston County jail is where Roof is now being held on murder charges.
The Slager case is a seminal case because as we have repeatedly seen in the US, police are not charged with murdering unarmed Black men even when there is video evidence.
Did Slager’s arrest affect Roof? Was Roof really a lone killer? Was he a doped up, confused young man who was out of his mind on drugs? Is he a “Manchurian Candidate” patsy, part of a white supremacist cell being used to instigate racial conflict? Was he brainwashed via mind control entrainment techniques to kill an activist preacher who was on the rise as a political figure? It’s said Roof reloaded five times! Why didn’t people bum rush him or do something while he was reloading?!! Is this a sensationalized incident that will be used by the corporate mind control apparatus to turn public opinion in one direction or another, probably towards gun control?
I have no idea, all I know is the facts being presented in the corporate media don’t make sense. What I do suspect is Rev Pinckney was the target of a deliberate “hit”. Historically there is an ongoing thread of racial animus and violence in Charleston South Carolina that goes back hundreds of years and it’s raising its ugly head one more time.
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https://theblacklist.net/
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