TELLING A USCT STORY
Written and Presented by
Ser Seshs Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley
Ser Seshs Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley
6th United States Colored Heavy Artillery (Reenactor)
Photo submitted by
Isiah Edwards
Long Beach, Mississippi
Ser Seshs Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley’s Presentation at Kentucky’s Georgetown College Underground Railroad Research Institute’s Second Underground Railroad Summit: “Reframing History: African Americans in the Civil War.” Panel: “Telling a USCT Story.”
April 1, 2005 George Town College, Georgetown, Kentucky
Ser’s Presentation Title:
TELLING THE STORY OF THE GREATEST GENERATIONS OF ENSLAVED PERSONS SELF-EMANCIPATION CIVIL WAR FREEDOM FIGHTING ACTIONS FOR CONTROL OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER FROM MEMPHIS TO THE GULF OF MEXICO
Greetings
Thanks to Alicestyne Adams and Staff
Here on behalf of the spiritual work I do and have done since the mid 1960s of making forgotten offerings and libations to energize the spirits of enslaved Ancestors and Foreparents.
Here because of the need to rescue, resurrect, reconstruct and reconnect the history, culture, heritage, legacies and humanity of enslaved descendant African Foreparents and Ancestors where their, thus ours also, history culture, heritage, legacies and humanity has been deleted, denied, omitted, white-washed or white out of history.
To understand the freedom fighting actions of enslaved African Descendants during the Uncivil War it is necessary to know that from the times of outside strangers invading Africa in the likes of the Hittites, Hyksos, Greeks, Romans and Arabs to Europeans in contemporary times, African people have always resisted invasions, captivity, enslavement, colonization, dehumanizing oppression, racial subjugation and the taking away of our traditional freedom and independence.
It is necessary to know that historically, African people have always enjoyed God-given freedom and independence since the beginning of human kind in the womb of Mother Afrika.
When you understand that this God-Given freedom and independence is imbedded in the genetic DNA and spirit records of African people, then you can understand why hundreds of years of continuous invasions, captivity, enslavement, colonization, dehumanization oppression and racial subjugation, did not defeat our Ancestors and Forparents yesterday.
The Africans and African descendants people who were enslaved, oppressed and racially subjugated in America(s) were and still are connected to our culture and history that “are as old as man himself” as Malcolm X have said.
We all are spiritually and genealogically connected to: “There a people now forgotten discovered while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences, a race of men now rejected for their sable skin and fizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still governs the universe”…..Count C. F. Voluney, Ruins of Empire in 1789.
“The period of bondage is in fact dwarfed by the ages of magnificent African civilizations, glory and splendor, not just in Africa itself but throughout the whole of the global African community including early Iraq.” Stated the prolific African American researcher of the Black presence in Early Asia, Renoko Rashidi.
“The African is conditioned, by the cultural and social institutions of centuries, to a freedom of which Europe has little conception, and it is not in his nature to accept serfdom forever…wrote the Mau Mau Leader, Jomo Burning Spear Kenyatta.
THE STORY OF ENSLAVED PERSONS’ SELF-EMANCIPATION FREEDOM FIGHTING ACTIONS DECISIVELY HELPING THE UNITED STATES ARMY TO GAIN CONTROL OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER FROM MEMPHIS TO THE GULF OF MEXICO DURING THE UNCIVIL WAR MUST BE UNDERSTOOD.
IT CAN BEST BE UNDERSTOOD WHEN YOU PROPERLY CONNECT THOSE GREATEST GENERATIONS OF AFRICAN DESCENDANTS TO THEIRS’ AND OUR CENTURIES OLD GENETIC AND SPIRITUAL AFRICAN CONDITIONING TO FREEDOM AND THAT IT WAS NOT IN THEIR NATURE TO ACCEPT CHATTEL ENSLAVEMENT FOREVER.
The story of the Freedom Summer of 1863 when our GREATEST GENERATIONS of enslaved Ancestors and Foreparents deliberately runaway from their places of enslavement in the Lower Mississippi Valley to be free is simply another chapter in the long history of African people resisting, revolting, rebelling, uprising and overthrowing invasions, captivity, enslavement, colonization, dehumanizing oppression, racial subjugation and the taking away of our traditional freedom and independence.
Such resisting, revolting, rebelling and uprising in recent 8th to 19th centuries A. D. historical times began when the first Arab and European strangers set foot on the African soil.
Then such resisting, revolting, rebelling and uprising was imported to Arabia, Europe and the America(s) when African people were forced-brought in captivity to Arabia, Europe and the America(s).
The story of enslaved persons’ self-emancipation freedom fighting actions decisively helping the United States Army to gain control of the Mississippi River from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico during the Uncivil War were linked and connected to all other resistances, revolts, rebellions and uprisings of other generations of African descendants in captivity in America(s) under the system of chattel enslavement.
Why all this white men questioning will “Negroes fight during the Uncivil War?
These subjugated and dehumanized “slaves and Negroes” as the whites thought they had produced over the past two hundred or so years in America had no choice but to fulfill the Manifest Destiny for freedom.
Said Manifest Destiny for freedom was passed on down to those Greatest Generations and can best be understood in the simple statement of a former enslaved person as reported in the book Bullwhip Days.
“I’ve heard ‘em pray for freedom. I thought it was foolishness, then, but the old-time folks always felt they was to be free. It must have been something ‘vealed unto ‘em. Back then, if they’d catch you writing, they would break you if they had to cut off your finger, but still the old-time folks knew they would be free. It must have been ‘vealed unto ‘em.”
Now what was that “something vealed unto ‘em, that made the “old-time folk always felt they was to be free” if it was not African Spiritualism. It was African Spiritualism that has brought us through so far all this way and it will be African Spiritualism that we still have to use to rise above all this decadence in the world today.
We cannot and will not let or allow them to delete, deny, omit, white wash or white out the history of our enslaved Foreparents’ and Ancestors’ self-emancipation freedom fighting actions which decisively helped preserve the United States and put chattel slavery out of business.
Thus, these Greatest Generations of enslaved people gained “double victories!”
We cannot and will not let these “double victories” remain obscured and overshadowed by false concepts that Abraham Lincoln was the “great emancipator” or distracting assertions about “blacks fighting” for states in rebellion against the United States.
The Lincoln obscurity was addressed when Lerone Bennet ask the question in his book “Did Lincoln Really Free the Slaves.”
The “Blacks fighting for Confederates is put in perspective by the following statement of a former enslaved Freedom Fighter reported in the book Bullwhip Days:
“When I went to the war, I was turning seventeen. I was in the Battle of Nashville, when we whipped old General Hood. I went to see my mistress on my furlough, and she was glad to see me. She said, you remember when you were sick and I had to bring you to the house and nurse you? And I told her, yes’m, I remember. And she said, and now, you are fighting me? I said, no’m, I ain’t fighting you. I’m fighting to get free.”
The Greatest Generations of enslaved freedom fighters were the generations whose average ages ranged roughly between 16 and 32 years old and were born roughly between 1833 and 1848. They were the sum of all previous generations of African Descendants who had been enslaved in America and by all enslavers’ intentions, including the scientific calculations of the Willie Lynch formula for making a “slave,” should have been completely docile and enslaved for life.
They were the sum of all those enslaved generations who had their all seeing eyes on their African Ancestral homeland and African God drawing from these two sources the spiritual intuition “vealed” to them that one day they would be free.
When the Divine cycle of time of what goes round comes round when the two brothers Northern United States and Southern Confederate separatist States got into an Uncivil War, the greatest generations of enslaved people viewed the situation with circumspect. They seized the time and threw down on the side of the blue coats against the gray coats and decisively and fiercely fought their way to freedom from slavery at last.
They were the chattel-enslaved generations who in the words of Professor Edward E. Baptist of Miami University said they carried out “the greatest slave rebellion in the history of the United States by making the Civil War into a war against slavery.”
They were of the generations of thousands upon thousands of enslaved men, women and children who in the freedom summer of 1863 deliberately self-emancipated by abandoning their places of enslavement in the lower Mississippi River Valley. They ran away and successfully made it to emancipation proclamation freedom behind the United States Army’s lines. Thousands of these newly self-emancipated women, children and elderly African descendants willingly went to work for the United States Army. They performed direct military support work such as building fortifications and levees and digging trenches.
They became nurses, cooks, clothing manufacturers, washers, ironers, mechanics, draymen, teamsters, herdsmen, contract farmers, home plantation operators, spies, territorial guides and the likes.
In the Freedom Summer of 1863, thousands of self-emancipated able bodied men intentionally and enthusiastically joined the United States Army as freedom fighters in the lower Mississippi River Valley. They fought with extra gusto against their “slave masters” all the while freeing their people from slavery.
The heroic and glorious stories about the furious, the fierce and the decisive freedom fighting actions of self-emancipated runaway enslaved people with women, children and elderly men in support who more than amply helped the United States Army win the Civil War battles gaining control of the Mississippi River from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico, are yet to be properly told.
When you look at the true Civil War history records you will see, them fighting in the freedom summer of 1863. You will see them winning at Memphis, at Millikens Bend after just two weeks of being enrolled in the Union Army and at Donaldsonville. You will see them in a valiant but futile and no less than Glory glorious fight at Port Hudson. You will see them aiding in the burning of St. Joseph Louisiana. You will see them showing General Grant where to cross the Mississippi River from Louisiana to Mississippi after his grand-canal scheme had failed. You will see them in the battles of Port Gipson, Raymond and Jackson and onward to Vicksburg’s Fort Hill.
You will see them as the Corps De Afrique Infantry and Corps De Afrique Engineers and Louisiana Native Guards in New Orleans.
You will see that the months of May and June of the freedom summer of 1863 that the Battles of Port Hudson, Fort Butler and Millikens Bend on the Mississippi River were the proving grounds and definitive battles settling the question in white men’s minds north and south that chattel enslaved African decent men not only can fight in the white man’s war. But they can kick the slavery hell out of their “slave masters.”
History clearly tells us that those greatest generations of self-emancipated African descendants were the first of their racial group in America to bring freedom to the masses of Africans in America.
Lest we forget to make forgotten offerings, history certainly must remind us that because of the successful freedom fighting actions of the greatest generations, Juneteenth freedom and 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments Civil Rights benefits African descendants enjoy in America today were made possible.
When we take the Sankofa look back at history, we will have to acknowledge their legacy and maybe even show some appreciation and honor to our chattel enslaved Foreparents and common Ancestors so many of today’s African descendants arrogantly and disrespectfully continue to call “Slave” as if they were some kind of aliens.
History provides us with the profound revelation that it were those greatest generations of “slaves” who made it possible for us to have, enjoy and benefit from a variety of common benefits today.
Said benefits in the least are:
Our own physical existence, our freedom from physical
Slavery, our spirituality including the church institutions,
Our historically Black educational institutions, our citizenship
regardless of what class, our voting rights such as they are,
our participation in government, our land ownership
inheritance, our family continuity inheritance, our
fighting the klu klux Klan and other American terrorists
inheritance and so on.
Get up you mighty African people; stand up for those greatest generations you call “slaves!”
I want to publicly thank Nana Bennie McRae (Stand up Nana)
Nana is a Ghanaian term for respected and revered elder. I am qualified to recognize that Bennie McRae has provided the consistence volunteer services to his people and the broader community to the point that he has earned his elder’s stool and title of Nana.
Nana in the African Way is a title of elevated society value and structure of eldership that is conferred, recognized, respected and honored by all members of the African society regardless of that society’s members’ mundane political positions, educational degrees and occupations.
Nana Bennie McRae, I Ser Seshs Ab Heter, plantation and Christian name: Clifford M. Boxley says Asante Sana or Thank you for:
Nana Bennie’s contributions to my Proving the Mississippi River a Major UG. Railroad Uhuru (Freedom) Route From Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico Research Project helped me compile 250 pages on USCT. Alicestyne Adams is considering having Georgetown College publish our USCT research section as a UGRR Institute partner.
“History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on a map of human geography. The role of history is to tell a people what they have been, where they have been what they are and where they are. The most important role that history plays is that it has the function of telling a people where they still must go and what they still must be”….Dr. John Henrik Clarke.
And you must know that the reason our resistance and struggle continues here in America is because we have not regained our freedom and independence today and we neither received reparations.
What time is it?
Thank you!
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Copyright © 2006. Ser Seshs Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley, Natchez, Mississippi. All Rights Reserved.
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