Or has your family ever owned any? What has it been now, 156 years since the practice was abolished? I say, give it a rest.

Sounds good to me.

No. Not even today.

Among my family's memorabilia is a bill of sale for a slave. My mom's side is from the South, i.e., Georgia and Virginia. Dad's side is from Italy, and only came here, via Ellis Island (settling in Little Italy, NYC), in the 1920s. Mom's people have been in Dixie since colonial days.

I used to, but then I retired from the public education system. At least the kids I was trying to teach how to work for a living considered me to be a slave driver!
Jerry

Nope, both sets of grandparents came over from Ireland and Scotland in the 1920's.

My grandmother had "mary the maid". But she was free to drive back to Tampa in the evenings.

Hell they even bought her a new T-Bird in 1978.

Mom was pissed.

LOL

The government owns them all now.

Does my child count? She's pretty good labor these days.

no we are the working slaves for the minorities that don`t want to work.

No but my dog owns one.

Both of my grandfathers we conscripted soldiers for Austrian Hungarian Empire. So they were slaves 50 years after slavery was ended here in the US. Do I get reparations?

In many recorded interviews with old former slaves, before they all passed away, it was not in the least uncommon for them to be nostalgic for slave days, when all their needs were taken care of. They'd sometimes get teary eyed about old massa, who loved them so. One of them said he hoped he meets his massa again in heaven, so he can be his slave again.

And us, besides.

If we go back 200 years or so, I would think a big percentage of Americans today could trace their family history back to some relative that owned slaves.

That was then, this is now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=8zM_MzkLKPY

fixing to get mine to start supper.

My ancestors owned slaves, and my wife's ancestors were in the business of selling them. Here's how I view that.......it was over a 150 years ago, and slavery was legal in this part the country, so I certainly am not going to pass judgment on something that was an accepted practice. It was their business, and they and they alone had to answer as to whether it was right or wrong.

By the way, slavery was prevalent during Biblical times, and God himself issued laws as to how slaves were to be treated, so it's hard to say God was wrong. I, today, have no desire to own another human being. The only exception would be if I could buy a 20 year old Swedish blonde, then I might feel different.

my dads family did before they came to texas in 1820s and 1840s.

Not my writing, but I wish it was. Written when Obama the Kenyan was in the White House.
__________________________________________________________________________
How many slaves did you own?


As you will recall, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Harvard professor who got arrested by Cambridge Police a couple weeks or so ago.

Fred Reed was a police reporter for one of the large Washington newspapers. He now writes a column which can be googled ~ "Fred on Everything."

Fred published a weekly online column in which he got to say the things his editors would never, ever have let him write in the paper. His stuff is iconoclastic and various articles have probably offended everyone..regardless of political orientation. So, with the warning that "This is definitely not politically correct," here comes Fred.....

The following is an essay regarding the failings of a system and a culture. Please note that he elegantly describes the mood of many Americans and he does so without prejudice.

Slavery Reparations .........by Fred Reed!

On the Web I find that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard, is demanding that whites pay reparations to blacks. It's because of slavery, see. He is joined in this endeavor by a gaggle of other professional blacks. I guess he'll send me a bill, huh?

I feel like saying, "Let me get this straight, Hank. I'm slow. Be patient.

You want free money because of slavery, right? I don't blame you." I'd like free money too. Tell you what. I believe in justice. I'll give you a million dollars for every slave I own, and another million for every year you were a slave. Fair enough? But tell me, how many slaves do you suppose I have? In round numbers, I mean...say to the nearest dozen. And how long were you a slave?

Oh. In other words, I owe you reparations for something that I didn't do and didn't happen to you. That makes sense. Like lug nuts on a birthday cake.

Personally, I think you owe me reparations for things you didn't do and never happened to me. I've never been coated in Dutch chocolate and thrown from the Eiffel Tower . I'll bet you've never done it to anyone. I want reparations. Kind of silly, isn't it?

But if we're going to talk about reparations, that's a street that runs in two directions. You want money from me for what some other whites did to some other blacks in another century?

How about you guys paying whites reparations for current expenses caused by blacks? Not long ago blacks burned down half of Los Angeles , a city in my country. Cities are expensive, Hank. Build one sometime and you'll see what I mean. Whites had to pay taxes to repair Los Angeles for you. You can send me a check.

Now, yes, I know you burned LA because you didn't like the verdict in the trial of those police officers. Well, I didn't like the verdict in the Simpson trial. But I didn't burn my house and loot Korean grocers, or burn down a city.

Over the years blacks have burned a lot of American cities: Newark , Detroit , Watts , on and on. Now add in the fantastic cost over the years of welfare in all its forms, the cost of all of those police calls people had to make, for cells and jails and security systems in department stores.

I can't live in the capital city of my own country because of crime committed by blacks. Toss in the cultural cost of lowering standards in everything for the benefit of blacks. See what I mean?

Now, I'd view things differently if you said to me, "Fred, blacks can't get anywhere in a modern country without education. We know that. We need better schools, smarter teachers, harder courses, books with smaller pictures and bigger words. Can you help us?"

I'd say, "Hallelujah! Hoo-ahh! Not just yes, but hell yes. Let's sell an aircraft carrier and get these folks some real schools and get them into the economic main-stream.' I'd say It partly because it would be the right thing to do, and partly because I'd like to add you guys to the tax base.

The current custodial state is expensive. I'd just love for blacks to study and learn to compete and stop burning places. But is it going to happen? You may not believe it, but I, and most whites, don't like seeing blacks as miserable and screwed up as they are...

I spend a fair amount of time in the projects. Those places are ugly. It's no fun watching perfectly good kids turn into semi-literate dope dealers who barely speak English. It just plain ain't right. But, Hank, what am I supposed to do about it? I can't do your children's homework. At some point, people have to do things for themselves, or they don't get done.. Maybe it's time.

I'll tell you what I see out in the world, Hank... I think blacks are too accustomed to getting anything they want by just demanding it. True, it has worked for over half a century. Get a few hundred people in the street, implicitly threaten to loot and burn, holler about slavery, and sadly the Great White Cash Spigot turns on...

Thing is, whites don't much buy it any longer. Most recognize that what once was a civil-rights movement has become a shakedown game. Few people still feel responsible for the failings and inadequacies of blacks. Political correctness keeps the lid on -- but everyone knows the score... Which scares me, Hank.

On one hand, blacks hate whites and incline toward looting and burning. (The whites you hate are the ones who marched in the civil-rights movement. Ever think about that?)

On the other hand, whites quietly grow wearier and wearier of it. Not good, Hank.

On the third hand (allow me three hands, for rhetorical convenience), blacks keep demanding things. As I write, you demand reparations for slavery. Blacks in Oklahoma (I think it was) want money for some ancient race riot.

Other blacks reject the Declaration of Independence . Blacks in New York hint broadly at burning and looting over a trial, yet more demand the elimination of the Confederate flag, and the federal equal opportunity apparatus, which means blacks want to sue Silicon Valley for not hiring nonexistent black engineers. That's a lot of demanding for one month, Hank.

What happens if whites ever say, "No"?

Now, how about you? You've got a cushy job up there at Harvard, and you can hoot and holler about what swine and bandits whites are. I guess it's lots of fun, and you get a salary for it to boot. But don't you think you might do blacks more good if you told them to complain less and study more?

For example, if you want blacks to work in Silicon Gulch, the best approach might be to find some really smart black guys, and get them to study digital design ~ not Black Studies (as you teach). That's how everybody else does it. It works. Then blacks wouldn't feel left out, and racial tensions would decline. Sound like a plan?

Just out of curiosity, how many hours a week do professors of Afro-American Studies spend in the projects, encouraging poor black kids to study real - life sho-nuf subjects?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=8zM_MzkLKPY

BOOM!!

And there it is............

My Dad's side of the family has been in South Carolina since before the Revolution and pretty extensive research has been done into the branches of it by family members. Some of them owned slaves bigly based on census info. One back in the 1700's signed some kind of document/petition requesting a raise in pay for people catching runaways. We don't know if he was doing it or just benefiting from their services.

Mom's side I don't know as much about. It has a Kentucky/Ohio branch and a Georgia branch. Lots of rebels in the Georgia branch so good chance they did. The Kentucky branch might have had some Injuns in it....so you know they owned some slaves.

I feel so horrible about it.........NOT!

+1

My mother went to high school in 1940 in Bristol VA.

They had a debate question, "Should they have freed the slaves?"

Many parents got involved.

The school made two public statements, "They should NOT have freed the slaves. We will never have another debate about anything."

I wish...if have so much more time to hunt

Yep. If I recall the tally book something like 33 men and women.
All treated well and like family

no slaves is a modern western world idea, slaves have been since before recorded history in some areas still exists and the world still goes round and round.

Everyone on these boards ancestry has a good chance of being one or owning slaves in the past.

This modern slavery crap we have to live with is just more propaganda to keep racism alive and healthy.

I have two sets of grandparents, four sets of great grandparents, eight sets of great-great grandparents, sixteen sets of great-great-great grandparents...see where this goes? If the fact that ANY of them may have committed some heinous act makes me liable for whatever it was, then the same applies to everyone. We are all screwed.

As an aside, I do remember my mother's mother's mother's mother, IOW my great-great grandmother. She had been born in 1878 and died in 1959.

If you go back far enough there isn't anyone on this planet that doesn't have ancestors who owned slaves. Likewise there isn't anyone who doesn't have ancestors that were slaves. It's a statistical impossibility for it to be any other way.

How far back do we go before we're not on the hook for the sins of our fathers?

Yes, at least one human farm implement that I know of. He lived in the same cabin as his owners, due to his high cost at purchase. It'll be a shock to some folks, but he wasn't whipped 24/7/365.

I find it hard to believe that in the bible when it says they slayed everyone in the cities they conquered. I think they would keep some girls for questioning.


In equatorial stone age people in remote areas, anthropologists have found that half the males were killed by spearing raids, or killed in spearing raids, trying to capture girls from the next village.

This thread is fugking hilarious.

Are you saying that the land your parents gave you was worked by slaves that your family owned?

Yes. My family did. My family never split families, they educated them to the best of their abilities and after the war, most stayed on the farm and worked. They are all buried in the family’s cemetery.

It must bother you that my family owned something to pass on, or maybe it bothers you that I had a family, such as in I knew my daddy? Evidently, you didn't.

I was going to get some until they got to lazy to work

It doesn't bother me.

I just think it's funny.

None of my ancestors owned any slaves. I had no ancestors at all in this country until 1881 when the first ones, my maternal grandmother's parents, arrived from Bavaria. My maternal grandfather's parents got here circa 1883 from the Alsace-Lorraine region of Germany. My dad's parents both came straight from Scotland, his dad 1914, his mom 1919. So by the time any of my ancestors got here slavery had been abolished. Does that give me a waiver to get out of reparations ?

My ancestors WERE slaves.

To the Russians , to the Nazis and to who knows who else over the centuries.

Maybe I should seek reparations ?


Mike

I’ve got colored people that live around me now with the same last name as my grand dad from his grandads slave owning days my great grand dad sold 100 acres to them around 1920 1930 worst mistake he ever made it’s like a Indian reservation up there now

i wish. fugg i could use some help around here.

Heck, my people were not much better off than slaves. They had the freedom to work like dogs or starve. The Appalachian Mountains were no cake walk in the 17 and 1800s.

You got that right...where my family farm is located.

Not yet, but when I do I would like mine to be white, black ones are alot of trouble.

A very popular bumper sticker in the southeast went something like this:

"If great-grandpappy had known how much trouble they'd cause, he would have picked his own cotton!"

None here, I come from a long line of poor crackers.

My wife on the other hand, is a direct descendant of a notorious English slave trader so let's call it a wash.

Nope, ancestors came over LEGALY through Ellis Island in the 1890s.

My grandparents were all immigrants from Europe or Scandanavia. Never owned slaves. Over here, anyway - who knows a few hundred years ago - it was a common practice for many people (including Native Americans, Middle Easteners, Arabs, jHebrews, Black Africans, various European tribes, etc. Doesn't the word Slavic come from the root "slave? Maybe not.... Dunno)).

If I have to pay reparations, I'm want a couple slaves in return.... and I get to pick them.

Pobably more bother than they are worth .....

Have a couple of adult sons who claim I did.

Wabigoon: Good luck with getting that "issue" to go to rest!
It will be thrown in the faces of traditional valued, non-negroid Americans long after I am dead and gone and long after YOU are dead and gone!
It seems that is all "they" got?
Your post heading brings to mind the bumper sticker I saw a while back here in Montana - the bumper sticker read simply - "WE SHOULD HAVE PICKED OUR OWN COTTON"!
Sad but true these things I post.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Our family has owned plenty of slaves, before and since the Civil War.

The family just have them pick cotton at night on the plantation...

fools the Yankees and Liberals...

They drive by at night and don't see anything, except some teeth occasionally...

its been working since 1865.......

Not so fast!

Big immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe right before and after WW I. Poles, Slaves, Greeks, Italians etc. If your last name ends in a vowel, good chance that side of the family is clean.

I think I'll file a civil suit for damages inflicted upon my family from Pennsylvania who died freeing some black asses. Where's the repairations for that?

If people think the above post is stupid...

just compare it with how stupid, every black person in America is the target of by the liberal democRATS,
to think that conservative white men all owe them a lot of money, just because some black people were slaves in the south
150 yrs ago.....

I really wonder how very few black people in this country are descendants of slaves anyway....

they should be charging the neighboring tribes who rounded them up and sold them to slave ships down on the beach...

fellow black Africans are the ones responsible for blacks slaves making it to our shores...

but being Africa, they don't have much money... so they think every conservative white guy owes them something...

not hardly.... they owe us for all the welfare their fellow Brothers have cost white America, so they can sit on their ass and complain about stuff... like Colon Krapperdick for instance.... or Camel La what's her face... you know, the woman who is really descended from people from India... and isn't black really.

No slaves owned on either side of my family as they came to the New World and stayed in Pennsylvania, however my great great great great grandfather came to this country (1678) as an indentured servant so in a sense he was a slave.

my dad did ...me and my brothers 74- 80

Ezekiel 18:20 New King James Version (NKJV)
20 The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

Write this down before it gets pulled from the internet.

Matthew 7:12

Not on the west coast.

No but my grandmother was indentured to a rich woman in Duluth circa 1900. Gramma was from the Mediterranean and swarthy in complexion. Does that count as "of color?" Where's my check!

This whole thing is beyond absurd. Thank God she got here else I might've been born a communist.

Both of my parents were just months away of being Italian immigrants. Conceived there and born here. So no slaves here... My maternal grandmother on the right lived to 102 working a cannery in Pittsburg California where I and my Father were born and raised. My dear Mother born and raised across the river in Collinsville. Noni is smiling on the right, maybe a slave...

My first known American ancestor got off a ship, swore allegiance to the King,
Then signed himself into indentured servitude to pay his passage.

My maternal grandfather was the son of Sweedish and English immigrant parents.
Born and raised in a coal mining company town, they were essentially slaves.

So, I am a descendant of slaves.

Honestly, I am a slave myself.
The government owns my home, I just paid for usage rights.
I still have to pay rent to the government annually.

I go to work, the government takes my pay, and allows me to keep a little of it.
They then give my money to the favored class (judged by skin color, or wealth, both rich and poor).

I've got slave ancestors. The story goes that the two young brothers (around ages 10 and 12) were Shanghaied in Ireland in the middle 1700s and forced to labor aboard a ship. When the ship ported in the southeast of colonial America (can't remember where, exactly, likely somewhere from Georgia to Virginia), they jumped ship and hid under someone's porch till the ship set sail again. So, for the length of the journey, they were indeed slaves.

Grandma told us that story several times.

Just Toby!

My father and his parents came from Italy when my father was 5years old in the early 1900's.They became slaves to the coal mine owners. Company housing, company store. My father started in the mines when he was 9 years old he mad 3 cents a day and my grand father made 9 cents a day

My ancestors on my Father's side were slave owners.They arrived to this country around 1700 to the Virginia,North Carolina area,then moved to the Mississippi Territory around 1800,which later became Copiah County Mississippi to farm the new land.My Great Grandfather's side of the family did not own slaves,but my Great Great Grandfather on my Great Grandmother's side of my family were slave owner's.They were of the Smith family there and apparently that family were large landowners in the area with a large number of slaves on the census records.

Yes! He got his ass worked 120 hours per week’ fed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sometimes on stale bread, did all the heavy maintenance, dealt with all the customers, and oft times only managed two hours sleep at night!

Never heard of any slave owners in my family line which is not surprising as most that I've heard of were mainly poor sharecroppers that barely got by at keeping themselves and family feed and a roof over their head.

My wife had a few ancestors that owned slaves according to old last wills and testaments her father found. As I recall none had more than five and the rest three or less. Based on the details in those few last wills it was expressly stated that the slave mother was NOT to be separated from her children -- wherever one went they all went together. And surprisingly, these few slave owner / ancestors of my wife lived and farmed north of the Ohio River, too, mainly in Indiana and Ohio.

My ancestors were also indentured servants. In a sense, I was enslaved by the government for a couple of years when I was drafted. I was paid (80 bucks a month to start) but it wasn't a request. There was an end in sight though so more of an indenture contract. Most of the men my age got to have the same experience. GD

My Dad had 2 slaves

DemocRAT Presidential Candidate Beto and his wife just reported that both their families owned slaves, and that they want to pay reparations. Well, bust out the checkbook and have at it dummass.

Nope. Mother's family didn't arrive from Europe until after the civil war. Father's family got here a bit earlier, in the late 1700's to early 1800's, where they settled in Pennsylvania.

Frankly, aside from the historical and educational aspects of it, it's a dead issue; has been for over 150 years. Safe to say, there are no living slaves or slave owners in this country. Yes, there was slavery here in the United States. At one time or another, slavery has taken place damn near everywhere. People sold people all over the world, and not just blacks. It was a different time, though strangely, it only seems to remain a current issue in this country.

The Democrats who keep bringing it up are just fishing for more votes.

Pathetic.

Personally, I think those who are so adamantly in favor of reparations for those who claim they have ancestors that were slaves should invite some to move in and live with them, all expenses paid, give them pocket money whenever they want it, and allow them to do and come and go as they please whenever they please.