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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2011)
arts & entertainment ‘Solutions’ New Account of America’s Antebellum South and the Aftermath By kam williams Special to The Skanner News PHOtO BY SUSaN FrIED A local writer and mental health survivor Tyrone Waters has published a new zine called “Solutions.” The tiny handbook is a grab-bag of how-to’s, positive thoughts and lifestyle ideas. he says the project was suggested to him by a California department of corrections officer who felt there aren’t enough books offering solutions to people experiencing problems in their everyday lives. The zine is available at Powell’s on Burnside and Reflections Coffee and Books on North Killingsworth Street. conventional wisdom in much the same way that the late Howard Zinn painted an empathetic picture from the point-of-view of blacks, women, Native-Americans and other oppressed groups in A People’s History of the United States. Here, for example, Neal cites freedman Richard Macks’ witnessing a merican history books typically sug- gest that most Africans were docile and that slave revolts like the one led by Nat Turner were rare occurrences on planta- tions. But truth be told, escapes, resistance and insurrections were the rule rather than the exception, Unburdened by given the whip- conscience pings, rapes and A Black People’s other forms of tor- Collective Account of ture routinely employed by own- America’s Antebellum ers and overseers to South and the Aftermath keep their chattel in by Anthony W. Neal line. Unburdened by Conscience sets the record straight by relying on Maryland slave auction narratives and journals kept where a mulatto female cas- by ex-slaves rather than on trated her new master when academic texts which never he attempted to molest her. bothered to consider the A similar case is recounted African-American experi- by ex-slave Charity Morris ence. Compiled by Boston- whose pregnant cousin based attorney Anthony W. Sallie cracked her master Neal, the book represents a over the head with a fire- refreshing alternative to the place poker in return for having repeatedly raped her. Sadly, Salllie was soon convicted of mur- der, although not execut- ed until the baby was born. A sobering opus belat- edly shedding light on a shameful chapter of our cultural legacy. “While pursuing my Bachelor of Arts degree in college, I took a lot of his- tory courses [which] offered an essentially unapologetic, Southern view of American slavery [as] a benign institu- tion. They focused primarily on the slaveholders, whom they euphemistically called ‘Southern planters.’ Each historian chose dif- ferent words to convey [the same] message about the slave owners: The majority of Southern planters were good people who were morally concerned about the welfare of their slaves… As I read those textbooks, it dawned on me that I was not the intended audience. After completing my assigned reading, I har- bored a deep resentment because I believed I had been required to read prop- aganda for academic cred- it… In trying to humanize the slaveholders, most of those historians were leav- ing out an indispensable part of the record… black people’s perspective. Determined to present slavery from their point of view… I offer this book as the product of that effort.” — From the Preface July 6, 2011 The Portland Skanner Page 5
