I came across a two-year-old editorial written by Michael Coard from The Philadelphia Tribune a few days ago. It strikes me as being relevant and timely in today’s environment of white supremacy in the U.S. Donald Trump has cleared a wide path for those who believe that somehow having pale skin, having ancestors that hail from Europe, makes one better than those who are from other places and have darker skin. What our government is doing to immigrants along the US-Mexico border is abominable, is inhumane. Trump’s inane rants against four congresswomen can only be called cruel ignorance. But, this attitude has roots that go way back. At the founding of this nation, African-Americans were considered to be only 2/3 of a person. And then, there was this …
Trail of Tears: White America’s ‘Indian’ Holocaust
Michael Coard May 27, 2017
On May 28, 1830, the “Trail of Tears” began when President Andrew Jackson signed Senate Bill 102, i.e., the Indian Removal Act (IRA). That legislation forced primarily five Southeastern indigenous nations, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, as well as the Fox, Kickapoo, Lenape, Miami, Omaha, Ottawa, Potawatomie, Sauk, Shawnee, and Wyandot (along with a few other smaller ones), to trek up to 2,200 miles- on foot!- from as far as Florida to what’s now known as Oklahoma where the government’s newly created so-called Indian Territory was established.
These native people were brutally compelled to vacate their homeland on a continent where their ancestors had lived for approximately 14,000 years. That’s 12,508 years before Columbus and his murderous gang of white invaders arrived in 1492.
As renowned historian Dr. Howard Zinn declared in his seminal A People’s History of the United States 1492-Present, President Jackson was “the most aggressive enemy of the (so-called) Indians in early American history.” The learned Oxford Companion to United States History described the president’s actions following passage of the IRA as “the most complete genocide in U.S. history.”
And in his revealing Don’t Know Much About History, lecturer and New York Times best selling author Kenneth C. Davis proclaimed, “From the outset, superior weapons, force of numbers, and treachery had been the Euro-American strategy for dealing with the Indians in manufacturing ‘a genocidal tragedy that surely ranks as one of the cruelest episodes in man’s history.’” Davis went on to note, “The killing, enslavement, and land theft had begun with the arrival of the Europeans. But it may have reached its nadir when it became federal policy under President Jackson.”
The IRA led to what came to be called the “Trail of Tears,” which actually began six years before the 1836 date that most of this country’s history books erroneously cite as the year of its commencement. Although the actual numbers will never be known because, as Winston Churchill so accurately stated, “History is written by the victors,” it has been estimated that from May 1830 (when the IRA became law) until March 1839 (when the last Red person, actually a Cherokee, was savagely shoved into Oklahoma), approximately 100,000 of our Red brothers and sisters suffered the trail’s tortuous tribulations and possibly as many as 30 percent of them were killed on the way as a result of shootings, beatings, starvation, dysentery, whooping cough, cholera in the summer, pneumonia in the winter, and exposure to extreme weather conditions.
Also, this genocidal legislation robbed this land’s aborigines of more than 25 million acres of fertile farmland in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, and elsewhere.
As horrific as this hell on earth was, the “Trail of Tears” didn’t result in just physical genocide and land theft. It also resulted in cultural genocide. As a History.com documentary entitled Andrew Jackson’s Controversial Decisions, featuring such scholarly historians as museum director Thomas Y. Cartwright and author Professor Harry L. Watson, pointed out, and as did the aforementioned Oxford book, the so-called Indians were forced at gunpoint to convert to Christianity, to cut their hair, to speak only English, to send their children to distant brainwashing and self-hating boarding schools like the Richard Pratt Industrial School here in Pennsylvania, and also to adopt European-style economic practices including and especially private ownership of property- in other words, capitalism.
The documentary continued by pointing out that many had to endure the excruciatingly long haul while being “bound in chains, marching double-file.”
None of that mattered to President Jackson because he viewed these noble people as subhuman. That’s why, in 1833, he said “(T)hose tribes… have neither the intelligence… (nor) the moral habits… which are essential to any favorable change in their condition. Established in the midst of… a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority…, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and… long disappear.”
As an aside, I should explain that the Red people ain’t no damn Indians. Columbus called them that in 1492 because he was an incompetent sailor who thought he had traveled east to India when he actually had traveled west to the so-called Americas. The correct (albeit general) name of the indigenous people from the 500 nations here on this continent is Onkwehonwe. And this land wasn’t called America either. It was Turtle Island.
You might wonder why I previously referred to these First Nations people as our brothers and sisters. Here’s why: At least one of these aboriginal groups, e.g., the Seminoles (and others throughout the country), had many Black members who had escaped slavery. And as documented by the Princeton Public Library’s African-American and Native American History Department, as many as one-third of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw, just like the aforesaid Seminole, was Black. Moreover, the department’s researchers mentioned that the U.S. Army in 1802 listed 512 Blacks as living amongst the Choctaw.
By the way, President Jackson hated Blacks as much as he hated Reds. Even the Andrew Jackson Foundation had to concede that “Slavery was the source of… (his) wealth” and that he enslaved more than 150 Black folks, including children, on his 1,000 acre Hermitage cotton plantation in Nashville, Tennessee,
Many white (and sadly Black) Americans today might argue that as evil as the IRA and the “Trail of Tears” were, they at least ultimately brought “civilization” and progress to this technologically advanced country. However, Oglala Lakota Chief Luther Standing Bear wrote in his 1933 autobiography, From the Land of the Spirit Eagle, “True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly… inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim… (and) rob… then what is progress?” Good question, Brother Standing Bear. Very good question.
The white supremacy we are seeing today is a resurgence of the very attitude that led to slavery, that led to the Trail of Tears, that led to Jim Crow and more. Donald Trump says he will “make America great again”, but what he really means is he is attempting to make America a bigoted, narrow-minded, racist nation. He must be stopped, for if he succeeds, his success will be our ruination.
I was excited to think of a woman finally appearing on a bill, and especially excited to see that woman be Harriet Tubman. I used to teach a Black History class every February for Black History Month, and while there were many men and women who fought the fight against slavery, and then later to gain civil rights, Ms. Tubman was always one of my favourites. Her courage and dedication were exceeded by none. Not only did she devote her life to racial equality, she fought for women’s rights alongside the nation’s leading suffragists.
So, she was to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Let me tell you just a little bit about Andrew Jackson. He was a slaveowner, known for his cruel treatment of slaves. At one point, he owned as many as 161 slaves and was well-known for brutally whipping them in public and putting them in chains. He was also the man who was responsible for the forced removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands. Jackson’s Indian Removal Act resulted in the forced displacement of nearly 50,000 Native Americans and opened up 25 million acres of Native American land to white settlement. Tens of thousands died during forced removals like the Trail of Tears in what is now Oklahoma.
Altogether it is believed that she made some thirteen trips to guide a total of approximately 70 slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, and then came the Civil War. Harriet Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
Compare these two people. Andrew Jackson’s face is on the $20 bill, and Harriet Tubman’s was scheduled to be as of next year, but those plans have been nixed until 2028. Why??? Because Treasury Secretary and bootlicker Steve Mnuchin does not wish to upset Donald Trump, whose hero is the abhorrent Andrew Jackson, that’s why!
Granted, they probably don’t focus much on History at Wharton Business School, from which Donald Trump allegedly graduated in 1968, but surely he attended high school? Surely he has read … oh wait … I forgot … he doesn’t read. Well, folks, let me tell you a little secret. Donald Trump is illiterate about the history of the nation he purports to lead. The evidence has been mounting ever since before he even took office, but yesterday … yesterday he made himself look like the most ignorant person on the North American continent.
Trump was having a phone conversation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau regarding the ridiculous tariffs that Trump had implemented against Canada, Mexico and the EU last week. The conversation was not going well, from all indications, and Trudeau was trying to explain to Trump that the tariffs were not a good idea. Trump replied that it was “necessary for national security”. Well, Trudeau reminded Trump that Canada and the U.S. had a familial relationship and how did he figure that Canada was a threat to the national security of the U.S.?
And as I was drifting off to sleep last night, in the back of my mind I could almost hear him saying this one:
Perhaps, looking back, this circus that we are calling an election season has been coming to town for a long time now. In 1796, Alexander Hamilton, writing under the pen name “Phocion,” attacked Thomas Jefferson on the pages in Gazette of the United States, a federalist paper in Philadelphia, claiming that Jefferson was having an affair with one of his slaves (which, of course, turned out to be true). In the same election, Adams supporters also claimed that Jefferson’s election would result in a civil war, that he would free the slaves, and that he was an atheist. GASP!!! In response, Jefferson referred to Adams as “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” Tsk, tsk … such maturity.
In the 1828 election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, the mudslinging went to extremes. One of Adams’s supporters, a Philadelphia printer named John Binns, produced a variety of handbills, known as the Coffin Handbills. One of the handbills accused Jackson of being a cannibal, saying that after massacring over 500 Indians one evening, “the bloodthirsty Jackson began again to show his cannibal propensities, by ordering his Bowman to dress a dozen of these Indian bodies for his breakfast, which he devoured without leaving even a fragment.” Another of Adams’ supporters, Charles Hammond, claimed that “General Jackson’s mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British soldiers. She afterwards married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which General Jackson is one!!!” Jackson’s followers, meanwhile, accused Adams of providing an American girl for the “services” of the Russian czar when Adams was ambassador to Russia. They branded Adams “Pimp to the Coalition”.
Okay, so all the wallowing amongst the pigs is nothing new to election campaigns, but is it productive? If there is any benefit to this style of campaigning, I certainly cannot see what it is. In 2012, CNN referred to the mudslinging campaigns of both Romney and Obama as similar to the familiar acronym ‘MAD’ … mutually assured destruction. I think that pretty much sums it up. There is more harm than good to come from these types of campaigns. Who is to blame? Certainly the candidates themselves, as they must approve all advertisements for their campaign, and more to the point, they are the very ones slinging the slop. But there is plenty of blame to go around, and the media is deserving of their fair share. I include both mainstream media, particularly Fox News and CNN, but also social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I am very close to abandoning my Facebook account for this very reason. And lastly, We The People must bear our share, the lion’s portion, I believe, of the blame. The public is all too quick to jump on the bandwagon at the slightest hint of a scandal while at the same time appearing bored by talk of foreign policy, economics, environment, and other serious issues that we need to be discussing. There is a saying in the media, “If it bleeds, it leads”. It is our fascination with scandal and sensationalism that leads the media to focus on the irrelevant. And it is the media’s focus that drives the candidates in their quest for more airtime, more free advertising.
Detractors have been lobbying to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 for some time. It is funny how time can alter perceptions. Jackson, the 7th president of the United States, was once hailed as a hero. No man (or woman) is all hero or all villain. Jackson was known for a number of positive things, and is now denounced by some for the fact that he was a slave owner, and for being the president who signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 that forced a number of southern Indian tribes from their ancestral homelands, leading to the infamous Trail of Tears. I do not believe that the less glorious things should detract from the good he did. While I abhor slavery, one must remember that Jackson died nearly 20 years before the Emancipation Proclamation, so in being a slave owner, he was no better nor worse than most other men of his time. As a major-general in the War of 1812, he was hailed the greatest hero since George Washington. For a brief bio of Jackson, click 
Harriet Tubman is also a subject of some controversy, and there are those who are less than thrilled with seeing her on the $20. Ms. Tubman was arguably the most famous of the Underground Railroad conductors, having made 19 trips into the south during a ten-year period and rescued more than 300 slaves, escorting them safely to the north. By 1856, there was a $40,000 reward on her head, approximately the equivalent of $1.2 million today! The esteemed Frederick Douglass once said of her “Excepting John Brown — of sacred memory — I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman].” Tubman served in the U.S. Army during the war, and even led an armed raid that freed hundreds of slaves. For a brief bio of Ms. Tubman, click 
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