Author: Trish

City Business Journals are reporting today that the mega-bank is looking at its past and neither minimizing or denying it profited from slavery.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia recently commissioned Chantilly, Va.-based historical research firm The History Factory to investigate its predecessor institutions…The investigation revealed two institutions that later became part of Wachovia through acquisitions — the Georgia Railroad and Banking Co. and the Bank of Charleston — owned slaves.

Through specific transactional records, historians determined the Georgia Railroad and Banking Co. owned at least 162 slaves and the Bank of Charleston accepted at least 529 slaves as collateral on mortgaged properties or loans, and subsequently acquired an undetermined number of slaves when customers defaulted on their loans.

Extensive Northeast banking interests eventually absorbed into Wachovia were also fat with slave profits, it was revealed.

According to the investigation, these banks outside the traditional South had founders, directors, or account holders who owned slaves and/or profited directly from slavery; invested in or transacted business with companies or individuals that owned slaves; invested in the bonds of slave states and municipalities; or invested in U.S. government bonds during years when the United States permitted and profited from slave labor directly through taxation…

Bank of North America (Philadelphia), The Philadelphia Bank (later Philadelphia National Bank), Girard National Bank (Philadelphia), Farmers’ & Mechanics’ Bank of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Company for Insurances on Lives and the Granting of Annuities (Philadelphia), Bank of Baltimore, Savings Bank of Baltimore, State Bank of Elizabeth (New Jersey), and State Bank of Newark (New Jersey).

Wachovia, whether it set out to or not, is following the Truth and Reconciliation process pioneered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa. After apartheid, whites feared blacks would rise up and kill them in revenge. That Israel/Palestine style conflict resolution didn’t happen, and Tutu won a Nobel prize as a result.

The crucial part of the process is acknowledging the crime or wrong-doing and its hurtful effects, then sincerely apologizing. Too often in this country, we deal with slavery by saying, “Oh that was a long time ago, and I didn’t personally own slaves.” That attitude is as helpful as denying slavery took place.

We also like to pretend that racism is confined to one geographic area, that the problem is in the South. We do this by refusing to see racism when it confronts us elsewhere. When a cross is burned in Durham, as three were recently, we call it a hate crime. When a cross is burned in Chicago, as it was last week, we call it a prank. When black people are killed by police in L.A., we say it’s a police brutality issue. When the same thing happens in Houston, we say it’s southern racism.

This allows us to perpetuate the myth that racism is a problem for other people, not for ourselves, and that it happens in some places, but not here. This blind eye does a disservice not only to those struggling to rise above prejudice everywhere, but particularly to the objects of racism. It’s more denial that they have a right to feel aggrieved.

Tutu says that until we, as a country, acknowledge our slave-holding past and the benefits it gave some of us while taking a huge price from others, we will continue to be mired in our race problems, endlessly trudging through the same old ground. Wachovia seems to get it:

“On behalf of Wachovia Corp., I apologize to all Americans, and especially to African-Americans and people of African descent,” said Ken Thompson, Wachovia chairman and CEO. “We are deeply saddened by these findings.”

Wachovia said it plans to partner with community organizations that are experts in furthering awareness and education of African-American history. Yesterday, Wachovia was named the principal sponsor of the National Center for Black Philanthropy (NCFBP) and national co-chair for its Fifth National Conference on Black Philanthropy.

“We know that we cannot change the past, and we can’t make up for the wrongs of slavery,” Thompson said. “But we can learn from our past, and begin a stronger dialogue about slavery and the experience of African-Americans in our country…”

Well said, Wachovia, and well done.

Photo: Baghdad burning in 2002.

Today, June 1, is an historic day for a free and active press.

From The Writer’s Almanac:

It was on this day in 1942, a newspaper in Warsaw published the first account of Jews being gassed to death in a concentration camp. This was the first time the news of the Nazis’ “Final Solution” became public.

Hitler had been in power for nine years, had never made a secret of his anti-Semitism. He had passed laws firing Jews from government jobs, dismissing them from public schools, and burning their books.

The first concentration camps were set up not for Jews but for political dissidents, unionists, social democrats; then homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Gypsies. The first people the Nazis exterminated were the mentally and physically disabled.

It wasn’t until after the invasion of Poland, with its enormous Jewish population, that Hitler began to consider what he called the “Jewish question.” There was a plan for a while to ship all the Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa, but that was scrapped.

By 1941, many thousands of Jews had already been rounded up and shot in Eastern Europe, as the Nazis marched north into Russia. Historians aren’t sure precisely when the decision was made to systematically exterminate the Jews in death camps, but it was Himmler’s idea to use gas chambers, after he’d witnessed a mass execution by gunfire, which he found shocking.

The newspaper that broke the story of the death camps was an underground Polish Socialist paper called the Liberty Brigade. A young man named Emanuel Ringelblum had escaped from the death camp, and his story was published on this day. The story was picked up by the London Daily Telegraph a week later. Around the same time, secret Polish agents began to send messages to the allies about Auschwitz. They met with Churchill and Roosevelt, but when the story reached the public, it was met with disbelief, even by many Jews.

British and American intelligence experts knew it was happening because they had cracked the Nazi codes, but they were reluctant to make their knowledge public because they didn’t want to signal the fact that they’d broken the codes. And Roosevelt and Churchill were reluctant to turn the war into a “Jewish war.”

It was not until American soldiers liberated the camps in the spring of 1945 that the full truth came out. The word genocide was not even coined until after the war. It wasn’t until 1957 that people began to use the term “the Holocaust.”

The press is just as important today, probably more so. Those running our government are corrupt and conniving, and we depend on journalists to keep them honest.

But when reporters do supply information about nefarious agendas, like the Downing Street memo, we can’t turn away. That story, and so many others like it, are out there. Where are we?

Tom Cruise is jumping on the anti-psychiatry Scientology bandwagon. Despite Florida Gov. Jeb Bush vetoing a bill last week after the cult sent heavyweight (and I told myself I wouldn’t make Kirstie Alley jokes) lobbyists to champion the cause, they aren’t giving up. And Cruise is mouthing his lines well.

Palm Beach Post:

Ignoring the pleas of Scientologist celebrities, Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday vetoed a measure that would have prohibited school administrators and teachers from keeping children who chronically misbehave out of school unless they take medication.

It will be awhile before Florida legislators get the image of a sobbing Kirstie, who testified in April, out of their minds. St. Petersburg Times:

Kirstie Alley was weeping so hard she could barely get the words out…

As she spoke, Alley held up pictures of adolescents who committed suicide after taking psychotropic drugs.

“None of these children were psychotic before they took these drugs. None of these children were suicidal before they took these drugs,” Alley said.

But the Scientology celebrity firepower, which included actor Kelly Preston, wife of actor John Travolta, wasn’t enough to convince the council.

Before they even heard from Alley and Preston, council members stripped the most controversial language out of the bill (HB 209).

The original bill said that before a school could refer a child for mental health treatment, it would have to tell parents there are no medical tests to diagnose mental illness. It also would have required schools to tell parents a mental disorder diagnosis will go on a student’s permanent record…

The council approved a watered-down version that simply prohibits schools from denying services to children who refuse psychotropic drugs. A similar federal law passed last year.

Why are Scientologists appearing before the Florida legislature? Scientology took over the west-central Florida town of Clearwater, starting in the 1970s. Today it’s their Salt Lake City, according to their web site.

Clearwater is the spiritual headquarters of the Scientology religion… [It] is the hub of the Scientology worldwide community, a dynamic, multilingual organization and is the largest single church of Scientology in the world.

Historically, when a small group of Church of Scientology staff first came to Clearwater in December 1975, acquiring the Fort Harrison and Clearwater Bank building, no Scientologist lived in the area.

Today, with more than a dozen buildings, the Church of Scientology’s 1,200 staff and more than 2,000 out-of-town visitors in any given week are only a small part of the Scientology community in the City, which is estimated to be in excess of 12,000.

Now, why would longtime residents feel they’d been taken over? The Travoltas live in nearby Ocala, by the way, which is why every John Travolta movie lately is filmed in or around Jacksonville.

Anyway, Cruise is mad as hell and he’s pledged to kick some psychiatric butt. After all, psychiatry isn’t a true science like, you know, Scientology. Tom, as quoted on Internet Movie Database:

“I’m going right after psychiatry and these false labels and this pseudo-science. I was diagnosed as dyslexic; I had a lot of energy as a child. They wanted to put me on drugs… Had I been put on those drugs, I never would be here today… I never would have had the career that I’m having. Am I making people aware of it by discussing it openly and saying what a fraud psychiatry is? You bet I am…”

Geez Tom, take a chill pill, why don’t cha?

The Los Angeles Times reports that conservative black pastors are not only enjoying total access to the State Department, but might get their own office soon.

Black pastors meet Rice, claim Africa ‘mandate’

Escalating its courtship of a politically powerful constituency, the Bush administration is teaming up with some of the nation’s best-known and most influential black clergy to craft a new role for U.S. churches in Africa…

The Rev. O’Neal Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach and a Republican [for more on Wingnut Dozier, read on], said Rice’s decision to huddle with the pastors gave them a “mandate” to craft Africa policy…

If it goes forward, the collaboration could substantially expand black-church participation in the faith-based initiative, from a largely domestic focus to an overseas portfolio that pastors think could make hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars available for black-church work combating AIDS and related social ills internationally. Rice and the pastors discussed establishing an office of faith-based initiatives within the State Department that would direct federal funds for overseas aid to church and community groups.

Blacks have traditionally been not only counted on to vote Democratic, but according to many, taken for granted by the Democratic party. Those days best come to a screeching halt.

The Democratic party isn’t just losing blacks to extreme religious causes. Many black business owners, just as white ones, see more value in aligning themselves with the GOP.

The Lakeland (Florida) Ledger:

The Frederick Douglass Republican Club of Central Florida will hold its chartering ceremony June 7.

The guest speaker will be Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele.

In 2003, Steele became the first black in Maryland to be elected to a statewide office…

[Insurance agent Phillip] Walker changed his registration from Democrat to Republican three years ago. He said the party — with its low tax, low regulation message — better aligns with his political beliefs and religious convictions…

Anthony Broadnax, an engineer technician with Lakeland Electric, said he hopes the club will groom potential candidates for public office. He’s hoping the club will bring awareness to the black community.

“We need to educate our people regarding the party,” he said.

I hope the Florida, and national, Democratic parties will take note. The civil rights era is over, and blacks need new reasons to be Democrats.

I’m not sure Howard Dean, who wanted to be the candidate for guys with rebel flags on their trucks, fully appreciates the nuance of race in this country. And I don’t think New England/Massachusettes whiter-than-white guys like John Kerry or Michael Dukakis will ever carry the day.

Attention, Democrats: our ship could well be sailing.

What has become an annual controversy over gay pride took a new twist this year in my adopted hometown of St. Augustine, Florida. First, a little background.

The Bridge of Lions, so named for the giant marble statues at its base, flies flags from lightposts across the two-lane structure, which carries people to and from Anastasia Island. The flags – sometimes American, sometimes with the city crest, sometimes a custom design – commemorate such events as federal holidays and our city’s founding in 1565.

In recent years, flags have been flown for less historic and patriotic reasons, such as to make things look nice for Bike Week visitors from nearby Daytona, or the annual big-bucks kingfishing tournament.

For the past couple of years, gay pride organizers have petitioned the city to post rainbow flags on the bridge during June. This request triggered a long-overdue discussion of a policy for the theme of flags, determining what would or wouldn’t “fly.”

St. Augustine Record:

After two years of rejections, the gay rights activists of St. Augustine Pride thought this was their year.

Their request to fly rainbow gay pride flags on the Bridge of Lions during their pride event in June had been turned down the last two years because the city requires that “the message on the banners or flags shall relate directly to a not-for-profit event that is in direct correlation to a historical landmark or event in the City and has historical significance associated with the City.”

You want history, the group asked? We’ll give you history.

This year, their argument was based on what they call the first American hate crime, committed more than 400 years ago in this area. They contend that in 1566 a Spanish governor secretly ordered the murder of a gay French interpreter of the Guale Native language.

They attached this and several other stories of historical gay citizens and presented them with this year’s application.

Commissioners and the city’s special events coordinator, who is in charge of flags on the bridge, listened to the group’s arguments and gave the old thumbs-down yet again.

“I sincerely hope we don’t have to keep meeting like this,” said Rev. Ruth Jensen, pastor at First Coast Metropolitan Community Church, addressing the commissioners and the mayor. She was one of 11 citizens who addressed the commission on behalf of the organization.

“This is historically significant,” said Jensen. “It can not be more so.”

I know many of the participants and don’t believe homophobia is the prime motivator. Even the Super Bowl, held in nearby Jacksonville this year, was not allowed to put up its Roman numeral flags. And yes, a gay pride festival is licensed in the city’s municipal exhibit areas.

Paul Williamson, director of public affairs, said the issue is more about the rules than rights. He turned downed an application from the Super Bowl Host Committee, citing the policy that was enacted in October of 2002.

“It has to be associated with an event that has historical significance,” said Williamson. “We’re denying their flags, not the festival. I hope they’ll continue to do it because it’s a good event.”

Still, it’s hard to parse out the fine distinction here, flag-wise.

The city has approved the flying of flags on the bridge celebrating Flagler College, the Lighthouse Festival and the civil rights movement.

“They were talking about civil rights, and we, in essence, are talking about the same thing,” said Jensen.

The lawyer who handled my divorce, who is one of the city commissioners, made me proud.

Vice Mayor Susan Burk said she would like to see the decision come from citizen support, a system similar to how license plates are chosen.

“I want to change the code to allow a group like this to fly their flag,” she said…

It isn’t over yet, though.

After the decision, Jensen spoke to those who had come to support St. Augustine Pride. She promised they would still be walking flags over the bridge during the event. Their next move will be legal action, said Rev. Jensen.

“We really didn’t expect anything to be different than it had been in the last two years,” said Jensen… “We were very pleased with the diversity of our supporters and with support we’re getting from all over the country. We’re going to keep trying.”

Blistering, wonderful editorial in today’s Daytona News-Journal about Florida’s 2006 governor’s race. We’re all, it turns out, counting the days to the end of Jeb’s reign.

In 592 days, Florida gets a new governor.

Just thinking about that will put you in a good mood. Consider the possibility — a governor who wants to help not only businesses, but also citizens. A governor who would save the state’s natural beauty, not pave it. A governor who wants to fill the Capitol with good public servants, not empty out government buildings.

Don’t get me wrong. Gov. Jeb Bush isn’t all bad. He’s bright, witty and dedicated. But Bush runs state government as though it’s a conservative think tank, every action taken to comply with a hide-bound Republican ideology.

He breaks a long-standing Florida tradition of governors more concerned with solving problems than following political orthodoxy — and the state has suffered for it.

Now, that’s what I’M talking about!