Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
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against the massive, stony resistance of the Afrikan<br />
masses. This was the greatest single labor strike in the entire<br />
history of U.S. Empire. It was not done by any AFL-<br />
CIO-type official union for higher wages, but was the<br />
monumental act of an oppressed people striking out for<br />
Land and Liberation. Afrikans refused to leave the lands<br />
that were now theirs, refused to work for their former<br />
slavemasters.<br />
U.S. General Rufus Saxon, former head of the<br />
Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina, reported to a Congressional<br />
committee in 1866 that Afrikan field workers in<br />
that state were arming themselves and refusing to "submit<br />
quietly" to the return of settler rule. Even the pro-U.S.<br />
Afrikan petit-bourgeoisie there, according to Saxon, was<br />
afraid they were losing control of the masses: "I will tell<br />
you what the leader of the colored Union League ... said to<br />
me: they said that they feared they could not much longer<br />
control the freedmen if I left Charlesto wn.. . they feared the<br />
freedmen would attempt to take their cause in their own<br />
hands. "(44)<br />
citizenship as the answer to all problems. Instead of nationhood<br />
and liberation, the neo-colonial agents told the<br />
masses that their democratic demands coud be met by<br />
following the Northern settler capitalists (i.e. 'the<br />
Republican Party) and looking to the Federal Government<br />
as the ultimate protector of Afrikan interests.<br />
So all across the Afrikan Nation the occupying<br />
Union Army - supposedly the "saviors" and "emancipators"<br />
of Afrikans - invaded the most organized, most<br />
politically conscious Afrikan communities. In particular,<br />
all those communities where the Afrikan masses had seized<br />
land in a revolutionary way came under Union Army attack.<br />
In those areas the liberation of the land was a collective<br />
act, with the workers from many plantations holding<br />
meetings and electing leaders to guide the struggle. Armed<br />
resistance was the order of the day, and planter attempts to<br />
retake the land were rebuffed at rifle point. The U.S. Empire<br />
had to both crush and undermine this dangerous<br />
development that had come from the grass roots of their<br />
colony.<br />
The U.S. Empire's strategy for reenslaving their In August, 1865 around Hampton, Virginia, for<br />
Afrikan colony involved two parts: 1. The military repres- example, Union cavalry were sent to dislodge 5,000<br />
sion of the most organized and militant Afrikan com- Afrikans from liberated land. Twenty-one Afrikan leaders<br />
munities. 2. Pacifying the Afrikan Nati.on by neo- were captured, who had been "armed with revolvers,<br />
colonialism, using elements of the Afrikan petit- cutlasses, carbines, shotguns." In the Sea Islands off the<br />
bourgeoisie to lead their people into embracing U.S. 39 south Carolina coast some 40,000 Afrikans were forced