Freedom sits,
Just beyond the periphery
Of American existence—I
n the shadows of liberty,
It waits to be given to all,
Freely.
-E. Bennett
Stony the road we trod
We’ve come so far,
Yet still find ourselves lost—
Stuck between a rock
And a hard place,
Unable to reach the other side
Of the lies
We told ourselves
About the past we regret.
Oh, how fast we forget…
—E. Bennett
Over the horizon lies the color line that Du Bois warned would be the problem of the twentieth century. It sits at the intersection of visibility—plainly in sight, yet still unseen; glossed over by the misled masses, ignored by those who wear rose-colored glasses, who would rather be entertained than educated.
“When Thomas Jefferson in 1776 proclaimed mankind's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, slavery was already an old institution in America. For well over a century, slaves tilled the tobacco fields in Virginia and Maryland; for nearly as long they labored on the rice plantations of coastal South Carolina.” (Foner & Mahoney, 1990)
By the time the sun began to set on the institution of slavery, it had already been a fortified system propping up American society for centuries. Untold generations of Africans were born and bred on American plantations by the time Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing millions of men, women, and children from bondage. That act created an existential crisis not only for the transplanted Black natives but also for the nation as a whole.
“In 1776, slaves composed forty percent of the population of the colonies from Maryland south to Georgia, but well below ten percent in colonies in the north. Taking the nation as a whole, one American in five was a Black slave when the war for independence began.” (Foner & Mahoney, 1990)
Navigating the terrain of an “immutable” landscape that abruptly became mutable was profoundly difficult. After centuries of slavery, the nation had grown accustomed to relegating the Black figure to the lowest rungs of the hegemony it had built through the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. Generations were spent constructing the system of slavery and the secular institutions that sustained it. The laws created were not neutral—they were designed to subjugate the mass of enslaved people in service to southern plantation masters.
“Given a free hand in shaping the transition from slavery to freedom, the new Southern governments adopted a series of laws known as the Black Codes, aimed, as a Louisiana Republican complained, at ‘getting things back as near to slavery as possible.’ Blacks were required to possess, each January, written evidence of employment; anyone who failed to sign a labor contract or left a job before the end of the year could be arrested for vagrancy and forced to labor for a white person who would pay the fine. No such laws applied to white citizens… These laws were enforced by a judicial system in which Blacks had no voice, since they could neither testify against whites nor serve on juries, and by all-white militias that often consisted of Confederate veterans still wearing their gray uniforms.” (Foner & Mahoney, 1990)
If the scars are invisible,
Can they also be real?
Do they exist,
Or is that just the way you feel?
Are you discovering
A pathway to the other side of fear?
Though these scars are invisible,
They feel real.
—E. Bennett
The color line, like the scars it created, was invisible. It demarcated opposing sides and legitimized the hate that reigned supreme in the hearts and minds of the body politic for centuries—the remnants of which we still feel today. How soon we forget the lynchings, bombings, and domestic terrorism that terrorized Black communities into submission to a racial hegemony designed to break them. The color line became a shield, protecting the hate that proliferated across history.
Jim Crow sounds like a man, but it was really a monster—haunting minds and hunting bodies, stalking Black people on the American plantation.
“From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S., according to records maintained by NAACP. Other accounts, including the Equal Justice Initiative’s extensive report on lynching, count slightly different numbers, but it’s impossible to know for certain how many lynchings occurred because there was no formal tracking. Many historians believe the true number is underreported.
The highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. Lynchings did not occur in every state. There are no recorded lynchings in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin.”—NAACP. (2022, February 11). History of lynching in America. https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who marched South and North in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the real cause of the conflict. Curious it was, too, how this deeper question ever forced itself to the surface despite effort and disclaimer. No sooner had Northern armies touched Southern soil than this old question, newly guised, sprang from the earth: What shall be done with Negroes?” (Du Bois, 1903)
The ethos of American ideology was built on the idea of progress. Yet this progress did not apply to all who lived on the American plantation. What was “done with the Negro” has shaped the lives of contemporary Black people—the descendants of chattel slaves. Their existence, and the crises they endure, are the remnants of a misremembered history born out of the pain of a system they still struggle to escape.
We rarely talk about the effects of living within such an institution as chattel slavery. We tiptoe around discussions of collective trauma, pathologies, and structural violence, too often blaming the victims for conditions they did not create. Slavery was not the slaves’ fault. The color line Du Bois described was not drawn by enslaved people. Our shared history does not spring from a lack of ability on their part, but from the inhumanity of the master and the power structures that permitted the master–slave dynamic to exist.
Freedom sits,
Just beyond the periphery
Of American existence—I
n the shadows of liberty,
It waits to be given to all,
Freely.
-E. Bennett
“Man invents for himself a program of life, a static form of being that gives a satisfactory answer to the difficulties posed for him by circumstances.” (Ortega)
Now, at the dawn of another shift in the landscape, we have the opportunity to acknowledge the history we once ignored—to our own detriment. We have the ability to see the past not as a burden but as a reminder, a framework for building coalitions of change and shaping a better tomorrow.
The color line is no longer solitary. Today, multiple lines converge, constructing barriers that people hide behind, suffering in isolation. Ortega’s “static form of existence” can symbolize either the bars of a prison we keep ourselves locked inside—or the fortress from which we marshal the strength to enact dynamic change.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903a). The souls of Black folk: Essays and Sketches.
Foner, E., & Mahoney, O. (1990). A house divided: America in the Age of Lincoln. W. W. Norton & Company.
NAANAACP. (2022, February 11). History of lynching in America. https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america.
NAACP. (KaKaufmann, W. A. (1957). Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre.
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