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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind John L. Jackson Jr.

Callie House's Fight for Economic Justice

I’m in the throes of reading Mary Frances Berry’s biography of Callie House, a 19th century ex-slave and washerwoman from Nashville, Tennessee, who helped lead the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association.

I decided to pick the book up this week for two reasons: (1) My wife just finished going through it as part of a research project on contemporary Rastafarian calls for reparations vis-a-vis the Jamaican government. (2) The film I mentioned in my post last week, Traces of the Trade, ends with a pointed discussion of reparations in the United States.

Before Berry’s book, I had never heard of Callie House’s organized fight to procure “pensions” for newly-freed slaves, a fight predicated on an argument that asked for similar financial assistance to the kind that had already been provided to Union soldiers after the war.

House’s efforts were met with derision/dismissal by the Black middle class and concerted opposition (including concocted political witchhunts) by the United States government.

I don’t remember ever reading anything about House or the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association in any of my history classes. That isn’t because my teachers were purposefully trying to hide this historical tidbit from us. Many of them probably didn’t know anything about it, either.

How many of you all did?

Textbooked history often gets told in short, bold headlines, but the details of the actual stories sometimes get silenced in the process.

The point of bringing House’s story up shouldn’t be about fanning the flames of “white guilt” some 100 or so years later. It is about trying to figure out exactly where we have all come from as we embark on the 21st century iteration of where we are going.

Callie House’s story doesn’t corner the market on under-told tales of American history. Neither do African Americans.

If you have a second, share a little-known piece of American history with us right here. We’ll all be the better for it.

Posted at 08:27:33 AM on July 2, 2008 | All postings by John L. Jackson Jr.

Comments

  1. John, it’s great to see this post explore how the questions of economic justice (and their intersection with race, ethnicity, and gender) are profoundly obscured in official history.

    Have you seen James Loewen’s supremely teachable Lies My Teacher Told Me? It’s an analysis of official history as seen in high-school history textbooks. The first chapter’s discussion of Helen Keller, radical Socialist, is worth the price of purchase.

    All of this history from the economic below is being done—in the the great Who Built America? project, in Zinn’s People’s History, in Rediker’s work on the revolutionary culture of the Atlantic rim, by both Foners, in wonderful radical anthropology like Pem Buck’s astonishing Worked to the Bone, in the literary study of proletarian writing by Alan Wald, Barbara Foley, etc, etc.

    But it’s not becoming “official” history in the schools and is perpetually at risk in higher ed as both a research enterprise and as a matter of curriculum.

    Solidarity, M

    — Marc Bousquet · Jul 2, 09:53 AM · #

  2. Regarding your request that we share little known history, I don’t think it is well known that Sojourner Truth’s first language was Dutch. I also find it interesting that she filed a lawsuit and won! The lawsuit concerned the illegal sale of her son in NY to slave owners in the South.

    — Ve · Jul 2, 12:07 PM · #

  3. john,

    i thought you might find this latest link from the village voice interesting…it attempts to summarize the controversial events surrounding madonna constantine’s firing… i still would like to hear more from her and her supporters as to what happen before i draw any real conclusions. it all just seems too murky to me. let me know what you think.

    http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0827,columbia-s-knotty-noose-problem,499313,1.html/full

    — thinkingoutloud · Jul 2, 01:53 PM · #

  4. Marc B., I’m a real fan of our work, and that includes more than just your Brainstorm blogs, which I also enjoy. Thanks for the comments. Your point is exactly right. And I used to own a copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me. But now I realize that I haven’t seen it in a long time. I’ll have to order another copy. Your other leads are also fantastic. Thanks.

    Ve, thanks for your Sojo Truth factoid.

    thinkingoutloud, I’m still planning to blog a bit about the madonna constantine case. so thanks for the village voice piece.

    — John Jackson · Jul 2, 07:40 PM · #

  5. John, in one of your threads you invited me to email you with comments on your book. I tried to send an email to the address on the fly leaf but it came back unresolved. If you are still interested in my comments please let me have your email address. Thank you.

    — Job's Comforter · Jul 3, 09:33 AM · #

  6. Thanks for reading the book. I’m not sure why your email would have been returned to you. Sorry about that. You can email me at jackson5@asc.upenn.edu. Is that the address you used? Let me know if that doesn’t work, okay?

    — John Jackson · Jul 3, 01:52 PM · #

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