America: Imagine the World Without Her Page #5

He wanted to participate in America.

He wanted to make this

country his home.

Now, take the Constitution.

According to its plain reading,

I defy the presentation of a

single proslavery clause in it.

On the other hand, it will be found

to contain principles and purposes

entirely hostile to the

existence of slavery.

I do not despair at this country.

There are forces in operation

which must inevitably work

the downfall of slavery.

For the first time in history,

a great war was fought to end slavery.

300,000 Northern soldiers

died in that war.

They died to secure for the slaves

a freedom that the slaves were not in

the position to secure for themselves.

Even the Civil Rights Movement was not

a break with the American founding.

In a sense, we've come to our

nation's capital to cash a check.

When the architects of our republic

wrote the magnificent

words of the Constitution

and the Declaration of independence,

they were signing a promissory note

To which every American

was to fall heir.

Where did Martin Luther

King get his promissory note?

Not from the segregationists.

He got it from the

Declaration of independence.

It was the American founding

that established the principles

that made possible the success

of the Civil Rights Movement.

The topic of race, more than

any other, generates taboos.

And taboos are the enemy

of history and of truth.

In the early 17th century when

slavery started in America,

another group was brought

to this country by force.

They were white indentured servants.

Starting in 1618, children were

captured from the streets of London

and sold into colonial America.

But it didn't stop there.

Over the next century and a half,

another 150,000 Irish men,

women and children

were declared soldiers of war by Britain

and sold into colonial indentured servitude

with many landing in

Virginia and New England.

Indentured servitude was not slavery.

It didn't have the same ideology

of racial dehumanization.

And it was for a limited period,

typically seven years.

Yet, these people often

had their term extended

or died before they

got their freedom.

Indentured servants worked

side by side with slaves.

For many years, white indentured

servants outnumbered black slaves.

Our next story, one you

won't find in Howard Zinn,

is set in South Carolina,

where we encounter one of the most

feared plantation owners in the South.

Meet William Ellison.

Born himself into slavery,

Ellison was freed as a young man.

He became a blacksmith,

then a mechanic for cotton gins.

And then went into farming

where he eventually owned

1,000 acres and 60 slaves.

He was also known as a slave breeder,

a practice shunned even by

most white slave owners.

That's a fine young one for you.

When the Civil War broke out,

Ellison supported the Confederacy,

investing in Confederate bonds

and supplying food and provisions

for the Confederate army.

Ellison's story is told by

the African American scholar

Henry Louis Gates.

Gates and other scholars estimate that

in the period before the Civil War,

there were approximately 3,500 free blacks

who owned more than 10,000 black slaves.

In South Carolina and Louisiana,

Gates points out,

the percentage of free blacks

who owned slaves was

approximately the same

as the percentage of

whites who owned slaves.

These episodes illustrate the

universality of the conquest ethic

and the uniqueness of the

American response to it.

Slavery existed all over the world.

The Egyptians had slaves.

The Chinese had slaves.

The Africans did. American Indians

had slaves long before Columbus.

And tragically, slavery continues

today in many countries.

What's uniquely Western

is the abolition of slavery.

And what's uniquely American is the

fighting of a great war to end it.

Zinn wants a narrative

of American shame.

That's why he leaves

these stories out.

And that's why we have a moral

obligation to put them back in.

And here's someone else who

gets left out of Zinn's narrative.

Good afternoon. I'm Madam Walker

and this is my daughter Lelia.

Meet Sarah Breedlove, also

known as Madam C.J. Walker.

She started selling her own hair

care products door to door.

Madam C.J. Walker became the first

self-made female millionaire in America.

- They're ready for you.

- Thank you.

Good morning, madam.

Good morning, ladies.

Get back to work.

See, ladies, you don't

have to define yourself

by your current station in life.

But only by your vision

of who you can become.

Yes. Yes.

- Today you see a success.

- Yes.

And I hear many of you

say, "But, Madam Walker,

"I just don't have the

opportunities you had."

And I respond, "Really?"

I was the first

freeborn in my family.

Orphaned at age seven.

Married at 14 and widowed

with child by 20.

Mmm-hmm.

I'm a woman that came from

the cotton fields of the South.

Yes.

From there, I was

promoted to the washtub.

From there, I was promoted

to the cook kitchen.

Uh-huh.

From there, I promoted

myself to the business

of manufacturing hair

goods and preparations.

Yes!

I have built my own

factory on my own ground.

I got my start by

giving myself a start.

Ladies, there is no

flower-strewn path to success.

And if there is, I haven't found it.

If I've accomplished anything in my life,

it's because I was willing to work hard.

You can do something new today.

And don't be too haughty.

You can always go to

that washtub for a seat.

What a role model.

So why is she left out

of the history books?

Because she confounds

the shame narrative.

She's an African

American success story.

In a way, she sounds

like Martin Luther King.

King once said, "Every man

must write with his own hand

"the charter of his

Emancipation Proclamation.

"We are all in this

country a minority of one

"and how we succeed or fail

depends on our efforts."

Did America get rich by simply

stealing from other countries?

Starting with the Vietnam War,

another charge surfaced,

America the imperialist.

We will build a revolutionary

youth movement

capable of actively engaging in

the war against the imperialists.

We will escalate our attacks until

imperialism is defeated in Vietnam.

That was Bill Ayers, founder

of the Weather Underground.

He bombed the Pentagon

and says he wished he

could have done more.

He's now a college professor.

And who are his agents

of American imperialism?

Meet John Fer.

I always adored flying.

And I built and flew model airplanes

since I was five years old.

And so eventually become

a pilot in the Air Force.

But things didn't work out

so well for John Fer.

And they blew the

airplane out of the sky.

I landed on the ground

and then I was marched off

to the interrogation room.

I was absolutely shocked at the

threshold that I had to cry uncle.

I wanted to turn off the pain.

Why did you go to Vietnam?

I believed that we were

doing the right thing

of helping the South Vietnamese

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