“Leave now, or die!” Those words–or ones just as ominous–have echoed through the past hundred years of American history, heralding a very unnatural disaster–a wave of racial cleansing that wiped out or drove away black populations from counties across the nation. While we have long known about horrific episodes of lynching in the South, this story of racial cleansing has remained almost entirely unknown. These expulsions, always swift and often violent, were ex… More >>
Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
I wish to commend Mr. Jaspin, the author of this work for his intelligence, his tenacity, moral integrity. I thank him for the sacrifices that he made to bring this powerful work to us.
This is a chapter in American History that I had not known before. I learned of Forsyth County for the first time when I read the accounts of the protest and its racist past in the New York Times. And I was born and raised in Atlanta during the time when segregation was the order of the day. Having read this work, I believe it is possible that my own family may have felt the terror of a racial cleansing and banishment. My father, now deceased, told me that my grandfather packed up his family and belongings, left Monticello and came to Atlanta in fear of the Klan in 1902.
This book makes one of the strongest cases for reparations. The problems of racism and inequity in economic relations in America will never be solved as long as the problems are denied. While there was an apology given by congress for its inaction at the height of the lynching era of blacks in America for the first time in June 2005, the apology is meaningless without an atonement with a compensation for the real and personal property that was lost and stolen under the threat of death in the early part of the 20th century. And finally, unless justice is rendered and actions are taken to protect the property rights of all Americans, then the perpertrators will be encouraged to continue their brutality and theft of the property of the citizens who are least able to protect their rights; the Hurricane Katrinas will continue and the entire American economic fabric will be destroyed as is occurring in the subprime mortgage crisis, though the fraud in these transactions initially targeted to African Americans, the victims now envelop the global economic community.
Rating: 5 / 5
I take issue with Kevin Boyle’s criticism in the Washington Post of Buried in the Bitter Waters. First of all, Boyle claims that Elliot “Jaspin’s choice of case studies leaves the wrong impression of American ethnic cleansing”–i.e., an impression that racial cleansings were primarily rural, Southern, and antiblack. But Boyle is wrong. As Jaspin states in his introduction, the cleansings he discusses in the rest of the book are the worst of the worst: Cleansings that wiped out the black populations of entire counties that remain lily-white to this day. These most extreme of cleansings were indeed, the evidence shows, primarily rural, Southern, and antiblack.
Boyle also says that, “[b]ecause the purges tended to follow a predictable pattern, [Jaspin's] stories start to feel depressingly familiar, then frustratingly repetitious.” This is other than the truth. While the cleansings Jaspin recounts certainly have some things in common, they are hardly identical, and I think one would have to be quite a jaded character to become comfortable or bored reading about them. Not to mention, Jaspin is an excellent storyteller who knows how to keep a reader engaged with even the most brutal material.
Last, Boyle blasts Jaspin for supposedly “compound[ing] the problem by devoting most of his conclusion to detailing a nasty fight he had with his editors at Cox newspapers in 2005, when he presented them with the multi-part series upon which the book is based,” thereby allegedly “deaden[ing] what should have been the book’s dramatic climax.” For one thing, the book is not based on the series; it was a separate project developed contemporaneously with that series. For another, Jaspin’s account of how the powers at Cox censored and soft-pedaled his work in contravention of editorial consensus and journalistic ethics is not only part and parcel of his larger story of why and how the history of racial cleansings in America has been hidden, but the “dramatic”–and dismaying–”climax” thereto.
In short, don’t let Boyle’s off-the-ball carping stop you from picking up Jaspin’s book. (That’s not to say that Boyle’s review doesn’t have value, as it does raise issues outside of Jaspin’s stated purview, and recommend another volume on racial cleansings.) Buried in the Bitter Waters is a thoroughly researched, expertly organized, lucidly written, and deeply insightful read. It should haunt you.
Rating: 5 / 5
A book by Mr Jaspin, of Maryland of Cox News Service Washington DC, based
on facts found in county court house,s from Courts records, media reports
of the time from local news papers. A mountain of research went into this
porject with many good people involved through out 12 areas of this
USA, a record of whites taking the law into their hand and control
using young men of time to do dirty work aginst the local black citizens
that showed gaines in the community,s involved. Fourcing them to leave
of fear in future. This took place many years ago, yet today some the
place involved has not recovered fully from this white actions.
If you like history it worth reading and later your reviews yourself.
on this Book, Buried in the Bitter Waters, The Hidden History of Racial
Cleansing in America. The subject is disturbing, yet it was part of our
fore Fathers history.
Claude
Rating: 5 / 5
Oppression of the black population after Reconstruction was pervasive. Lynching, progroms and localised ethnic cleansing were instruments of mobs, preceding or accompanying Jim Crow. Elliot Jaspin focuses on localised instances of ethnic cleasing. The evidence is horrifying, though in the end somewhat repetitive and even numbing. As document the book is excellent.
After 100 years – what should the communities where these horrors took place do of all this? That racism would still exist there is not surprising – separation breeds contempt. In what sense should a community acknowledge its past, even more, atone for it? In Asia people who die outside the family become ‘hungry ghosts’. Offers of incense and paper money acknowledge them. Going beyond such symbolic gestures creates problems. Is there collective guilt? For what crimes? How far back? It all gets so arbitrary and whimsically emotional.
After 100 years – what should an individual do of all this?
In the final chapter Jaspin tells the tale of Debbie, whose ancestors were at the heart of one such cleansing. For Debbie acknowledging her family’s past seems to have been a overwhelmingly wrenching experience. Why? She was not even party to the conspiracy of silence – she was never told.
Jaspin raises many such ethical issues, but never addresses them critically. He is so taken in by his discovery that he forgets that time has passed. We decry vendettas that go down the ages – contracts with the dead, which define their childrens’ life. Guilt is no less a dreadful master than revenge. Is guilt for a distant past to be our destiny?
Rating: 3 / 5
Alot of americans don’t now the true history of race in this country.
This shreds a little light on the subject. Mr. Jaspin even had to
fight to get his stories published in this millineum.
Rating: 4 / 5