Tag: Slavery

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Tennessee Faith Leaders Voice Support For Proposed Constitutional Amendment 3

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Faith leaders from the state of Tennessee voiced support for Tennessee’s proposed Constitutional Amendment 3 during a Yes On 3 news conference Tuesday.

On the November 8th state and federal general election ballot, Tennessee voters will see four proposed amendments. These will be presented as yes or no questions, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Constitutional Amendment 3 would ​​change the part of the Tennessee Constitution, which says that “slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a person who has been duly convicted of crime, are forever prohibited in this State.” The amendment would delete this current language and replace it with: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.”

Many were shocked that this language still existed in the Tennessee Constitution. Rev. Kenneth Saunders of St. James Episcopal Church in Greeneville, Tennessee said he was not “knowledgeable of the language of the Constitution, and that it contained such an exception clause,” and that he was “struck” that this language even existed.

According to the Yes On 3 campaign, this amendment passed as a Senate joint resolution in 2019 and 2021. In 2019, SJR0159 was sponsored by state Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis), approved by the state Senate on March 25, 2019, and approved by the state House on April 22nd, 2019. The companion resolution, SJR0080, was approved by the state Senate on March 15th, 2021, and by the state House on May 4, 2021.

The Tennessee-Western Kentucky annual conference of the United Methodist Church also passed a resolution on Amendment 3 on June 16th, 2022, by a vote of 712-70.

The Yes On 3 campaign describes slavery as a “deep, moral wrong, and a violation of our best values, and a stain on our state and its history.” The campaign also states that “no person should ever be enslaved or treated as a slave for any reason.”

Rev. Jeannie Alexander of Earthfire Abbey in Old Hickory, Tennessee said that the Constitution serves as not only a legal document, but a moral document and that as clergy, the only moral response to slavery is the “abolition of slavery.”

“We’re not just going to make history on November 8th,” Alexander said. “We’re going to change lives.”

According to Alexander, this language still allows for slavery to be a “punishment for the commission of a crime.”

“While someone may be socially segregated, someone may be a prisoner, by God no one should be a slave,” said Alexander.

Rev. Daryll Henry Coleman of Lane Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church serves as a professor at Lane College, where he teaches a class on the history of the Black church. Coleman states he deals with issues in the Constitution, and slavery still being included represents a “dehumanization, a devaluation of personage and people.”

Coleman also represents the African American Clergy Collective of Tennessee which stands to be the “historical, prophetic voice of the African American church.”

While there is much debate about mixing politics and religion together, Saunders said that this is not a political issue, but rather a “moral issue.”

“We don’t check our Christian ethics at the door when we go to the polls,” said Saunders. “We take who we are as baptized persons, embodying a people of faith to the voting ballot. It’s a call to do right by saying that slavery no longer exists. People don’t have the right to own each other, and it’s a value statement on how we are as people of God.”

Bishop Brian Cole from the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee (Knoxville) said that this will give Tennessee the ability to “right a historical wrong.” By doing this, Cole said this will give Tennessee the opportunity to acknowledge its history of racism, while actively working towards efforts around racism and to “be more of who God has called us to be.”

“Whenever we baptize, we invite folks to see Christ in all persons, and to also respect the dignity of every living person and every human,” Cole said. “For us, this is an easy, but really important way to do so. We say it’s easy, but these documents matter.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

A Stained Heritage

Bolivar Bulletin, June 26th, 1891: “J.R. Cottingim, of Teague, discovered a negro section hand playing cards last week with his boys, aged twelve and fourteen years. He procured a shotgun and emptied the contents in the breast and shoulder of the negro. The negro is fattening. Cottingim has not been arrested.”

It’s difficult to say which is more appalling — that a man was murdered for such an innocent offense, that the perpetrator went unpunished, or that the local paper printed such a braggadocio account. This story smacks not only of a hate crime, not just part of a conspiracy of suppression, but of complete and utter indifference.

The favored son of a privileged family, enjoying the unlimited excesses of a limited sphere of reality, acting entirely as he pleased, with no regard to the consequences that did not exist.

J.R. Cottingim was a third great-uncle of mine. In surfing online digital newspapers for word of my third great-grandfather, Leonidas Cottingim, I found this quaint tale of my great-great-grandmother’s brother. In light of the recent insanity in South Carolina, I thought I might share some of what family research has revealed about the white-supremacist mindset. 

Nineteenth-century America was burdened with a rigid social caste system, which was nothing more than the festering carcass of the centuries-old feudal system imported by our founding fathers. Having roots that run the gamut of said system (Laura Bush is a sixth cousin; my maternal grandfather was a sharecropper’s son) has provided a rare opportunity to study the phenomenon from various perspectives.

The most difficult challenge anyone can face is a challenge to his or her belief system. 

A white supremacist was and is nothing more than a person conditioned to that particular mindset, lacking sufficient education or cultural perspective to realize they were spoon-fed an irrational premise. But for as long as they held to this belief, even the lowliest white man could more readily accept his station in life, as long as he had the black man to look down upon — casually overlooking the fact that he could never equal his betters, regardless.

My uncle was conditioned to think of himself as above the law and his victim to think of himself as unworthy. The newspaper editor was conditioned to stoke the flames, and apparently everyone in late-19th-century Hardeman County accepted it all as the normal course of events. 

Socially fabricated frailties such as economic division and racial separation, along with the mindset required for their acceptance and perpetuation, are also matters of conditioning. But when an entire social structure buys into a particular way of thinking, who among them has the wherewithal to know any better?

Thankfully, we have finally reached a point in our social evolution where we can break the bonds of ignorance. One more reason to be proud of Memphis is the fact that so far we have avoided the sorts of insanities that have recently troubled other parts of the country. 

But if we were to fall prey to such, I would be among the first to show up to defend 21st-century reason against 19th-century delusions — to protect those who only wish to live in peace from those who seek violence for the sake of violence.

So I say to those who still hold to my ancestor’s misguided and antiquated beliefs: It is time to accept that we are evolving away from discernible races. A hundred years from now people won’t even know black, white, yellow, or brown. We’ll all just be a smoother shade of caramel. Along the way, maybe we will achieve a little socioeconomic normalcy while we’re at it. A few may find the transition difficult, but that is one minority we can definitely live without. If you insist on racial purity, I would suggest you go live with the Inuit, although I doubt they would have you.

Education, perspective, and time are the enemies of the irrational mindset. What would be revealed about us by an objective review of what we have been conditioned to accept and perpetuate? What will history say about what we so loosely call society? It’s not about casting stones or lashing out, it’s about finding the strength within ourselves to see beyond. To know for ourselves what is right and to act on those beliefs.

Aaron James, a retired Memphis architect, has spent the past few years researching his family for a soon-to-be-published book titled America: A Family Perspective.

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Film Features Film/TV

Belle Review

London, 1769. The harbor of the slave-trading capital of the world is thick with cargo and commerce: in other words, people as chattel. Into this scene steps one who is by all appearances another piece of property: a brown-skinned girl walking beside a man of wealth.

From there, though, appearances fail the truth of the matter. The little girl is not a slave but rather a free daughter. The nobleman, Captain Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode), is her father, the offspring of a miscegenist relationship that wasn’t borne out of exploitation but of love. The beloved mother has died, though, and Lindsay has orders back to sea, so he is taking his daughter, Dido Elizabeth Belle, into the care of his family. “I am here to take you to a good life,” he promises.

His great-aunt, Lady Mansfield (Emily Watson), great-uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson), and Lady Mary Murray (Penelope Wilton), have a sharp disagreement over whether they will accept Belle into the family, but a word of approval from Lady Mansfield settles it. Lindsay bids adieu to his daughter, exits the stage, and promptly dies. That leaves Belle to grow up in the care of a group of aristocrats who are unsure how to handle presenting her to the rest of a disapproving society.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is the Belle of the ball.

For Belle (played nicely by Gugu Mbatha-Raw), that’s the bad news. The good news is that her father did right by her. He owned up to her paternity rather than owning her. He provided her a space he knew would accept her, despite the unique situation. And he left her with an inheritance of 21,000 pounds a year — a considerable sum that will make for an attractive dowry once she comes of age. The great fear is that she’ll become an old maid, like dear Lady Mary. Belle can hypothetically marry into a good family with that kind of coin. But will a family in good standing in society overcome the surface stigma from her skin color to embrace the surface legitimacy from her wealth? And that’s not to even broach the subject of love.

The careful, nuanced plot has a lot to offer. Instead of simply presenting a biopic about overcoming racism, it builds a case that it was but one of many levels of societal failure. Belle doesn’t just have to remember her race but has to navigate other waters that tide against her: She’s an illegitimate woman in a paternalistic place that values lineage and marriage.

Her cousin, Elizabeth Murray (Sarah Gadon), doesn’t fair much better. A case could be made that she has it worse. Even though she’s smart and comely and of noble birth, she doesn’t have the financial title to bring to a marriage. Belle and Elizabeth come of age being courted by Oliver and James Ashford (James Norton and Tom Felton — Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter films) and their madam of a mom (Miranda Richardson). James gropes Belle at a party. “How dare you?” she accuses. “With ease,” he says.

The film’s subplot involves Lord Mansfield, who so happens to be the Lord Chief Justice of England, embroiled involving insurance and slaves as property. How he rules could strike a blow to the heart of slavery in England — an economic death sentence for the nation, slavers argue — or could further entrench the institution.

Belle is based on a true story. It is a noble film — perhaps more generously good-hearted than it is actually good — though Amma Asante’s film is good. There are some lofty ideals well said and backed by musical swells. But, a noble film is often worth the while — and there’s something about a film like it released sometime other than during the year-end Oscar season that suggests more genuine than cloying intentions.

Belle
Opens Friday, May 23rd
Ridgeway Cinema Grill

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We Recommend We Recommend

Got To Be Free

Fourteen years ago, Glynn Reed started Memphis’ Juneteenth celebration — an event that commemorates June 19th, 1865, the day slaves in Texas learned that the Civil War was over and they were free. This year’s Crossroads Ford Juneteenth Freedom and Heritage Festival salutes African Americans in the military.

The festival will take place June 15th to the 17th in Douglass Park. Activities include horseback riding, picnicking, kiddie rides, moon walks, face-painting, storytelling, Little League softball, Afro-centric jewelry sales, health-testing opportunities, and more.

R&B artist J. Blackfoot (pictured) will be the music headliner, performing at 7 p.m. on Saturday, and the gospel group Kevin Davidson & the Voices will perform at 6:15 p.m. on Sunday. In addition, Juneteenth will feature lots of local musicians, including African drummer Ekpe, “because we’ve got so much talent right here,” Reed explains. And, as always, an abundance of food will be available, though families are welcome to bring their own.

Reed says that in just 14 years, Memphis’ Juneteenth has experienced extraordinary growth. “At first, there were less than 300 people, and now, there’s no way to tell how many people there are,” she says.

As for the reason behind the festival’s increased popularity: “We’ve been cooped up inside all winter,” Reed says, laughing. But, more importantly, “It’s a cultural event, and there are not a lot of opportunities for children and adults together to get history about their culture,” she says. “It’s a celebration of freedom.”

Juneteenth, Douglass Park, June 15th-17th, free. For more information, go to www.juneteenthmemphis.com.