Southern Secrets Society: The Grooming | #Suspense | RomePi™

͋ 6 ͋ A Tortured Soul (BWWM)

FEAR KEEPS US ALIVE

Thirteen-year-old Jolie listened to the artist as the woman laid bare the tribulations in her past. To do so was to expose decades of deeply rooted pain as the interviewer greedily brought sunlight to one darkness after another.

The light drew attention to the very reason Jolie's parents had always been so strict about her comings and goings. It never occurred to her that they had a legitimate reason for worrying about their children going outside to play or riding the bus back and forth to school.

Losing herself in the life and times of a woman she admired helped bring all the pieces of her parents' anxiety together for the teen as she sat glued to the television.

Jolie's role model explained that as a youngster, blacks didn't dare openly discuss the gripping social issues hanging around the necks of southern colored folks like a tightly tucked gasoline-soaked blanket. The Diva was able to shed some much-needed light on a subject few cared to discuss for fear of retaliation.

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THINGS THEY WON'T SAY

The artist explained that between white and black folks, there once existed a system meant to keep former slaves burdened by much of the same prevalent oppression.

MJDV went on to share some hidden real-life Southern facts.

Before the ink dried on the paper used for the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, many white folks decided they wouldn't allow some piece of paper to deny them what they believed were their rights.

These folks added to the pressures of Southern Living, hoping to smother out the dreams of people of color well before and after the state of Arkansas agreed to end slavery by ratifying the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on April 14, 1865. That law officially stated that slavery was abolished, and those enslaved were allowed to go free. But in truth, well after the state of Arkansas finally permitted slaves to enjoy the first promise of freedom, the neighboring state of Texas refused to acknowledge the federal law until June 19, 1865. 

Nearly three years after President Lincoln put an end to slavery, many states decided to follow the law, but they only did so on paper. Tens of thousands of newly freed slaves found that their lives were no better than the days when they were considered to be the property of their masters.

They had freedom but no work.

Freedom, but no food.

As free men and free women, they had hope. But that good free hope didn't keep a roof over their heads.

Because it was necessary to care for their families, the men, women, and children willingly entered into work agreements that were no better than slavery itself. The result was a whole lotta white families who got rich while their newly indentured workforce toiled for less than pennies. The same greed-driven despicable idealism that had formerly enslaved people once again leached itself back into the lives of those who once suffered as chattel. As a result of the most reprehensible treatment, the daily lives of so many freed slaves left them with barely enough hope, and little else.

When a handful of blacks began groaning here and there regarding the unfairness found in their situations, it wasn't long before a group of "god-fearing" white folks began to show their so-called love for their fellow man. many of them were still mad at losing what they believed to be theirs by right. They displayed their displeasure by giving birth to the most wicked of movements.

Fear was utilized as a destructive force to keep black folks in line.

Formerly enslaved people learned that to complain was to find themselves dangerously close to that same gasoline-soaked blanket of social inequality closing in tightly on them and their family members.