The roots of the movement

In order to understand the battle for Civil Rights, it is important that we learn about what brought our country to that point in history. Thankfully, several of the museums that we have visited (The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, in particular) gives a timeline that helps us to see how deep the roots of racism go in our country. I thought that I understood slavery, but I wasn’t even seeing the tip of the iceberg!
• Did you know that 12,000,000 people were brought over from Africa and 2,000,000 of them didn’t even make the crossing?
• I was disgusted to learn that when female slaves gave birth to a baby, it was automatically the slave owners property, so they would often rape and impregnate their slaves in order to grow their “workforce”.
• Did you know that while the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves, that they had no money and no property, so many of them had to become sharecroppers that held them at the poverty level and kept them indebted to the rich landowners?
• Or that whites would accuse blacks of petty crimes in order to have them jailed, and would then lawfully enslave them via “convict leasing”?
And there is SO much more! Over the last 6 days, my eyes have truly been opened to the horrific treatment of an entire population of our own citizens. What I do next, I’m not sure, but Now that I have seen it, it can’t be ignored. I want to take what I’ve learned to teach others and to love and serve those who have been disenfranchised by our country’s past (and current) treatment.

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