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Ellen G. White’s Use Of The Term “Race War”, and Related Insights

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    Appendix B—Historical Case Studies

    1. “Slavery” more “favorable” and “secure”EGWUTRW 34.5

    Both the Debt Slavery System and the Convict Slavery System, which were increasingly practiced in various Southern states during the first decades of the twentieth century, poignantly illustrate Ellen White’s reference to a “slavery ... more favorable and secure to the white people.”EGWUTRW 34.6

    The following two accounts are taken from the volume, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, edited by Dr. Herbert Aptheker:EGWUTRW 35.1

    a. The Debt Slavery SystemEGWUTRW 35.2

    “The slavery is a cunningly contrived debt slavery to give the appearance of civilization and the sanction of law. A debt of a few hundred dollars may tie a black man and his family of ten as securely in bondage to a great white planter as if he had purchased their bodies. If the Thirteenth Amendment, which has never been enforced in this region, means anything, it is that a man’s body cannot be held for an honestly contracted debt; that only his property can be held; and that if a contracting debtor has no property, the creditor takes the risk in advancing credit. Otherwise a law abolishing slavery could be easily evaded, for the wealthy enslaver could get the poor victim into debt and then hold his body in default in payment. Wages could then be so adjusted to expenses and the cost of ‘keep’ that the slavery would be unending.

    “And that is precisely the system of debt-slavery. The only way for this debt-slave to get free from such a master is to get someone else to pay this debt; that is, to sell himself to another, with added charges, expenses of moving and bonuses. By this method, the enslaver gets his bondmen cheaper than in a regular slave system, for in the debt system he does not have to pay the full market price of a man.

    “The effect is to allow the ignorant and the poor unwittingly and unwillingly to sell themselves for much less than an old slaveholder would have sold them. The debtmaster has other advantages. He is free from liabilities on account of the debtor’s ill-health or the failure of his crops. The debtor takes all risk. In case of misfortune or crop failure, he gets deeper in debt, more securely tied in bondage.” 1Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, (New Jersey: 1973), p. 319.

    b. The Convict Slavery SystemEGWUTRW 35.3

    “The temptation of the large plantation owner to exploit the brawn of the defenseless Negro avails itself of another unfair advantage in which the state becomes a party to the wrong. It is the custom of farming out prisoners—state prisoners and even county and city prisoners. A Negro who has been jailed for some misdemeanor or fined for vagrancy, may be ‘sold’ to some landlord who needs farm hands, for the price of the Negro’s fine. The farmer pays the fine and is supposed to work it out of the Negro in a specified time. The colored man is still a prisoner of the state and is kept in chains and stockaded, maybe on the landlord’s private estate, under guards who may shoot him down if he attempts to escape, or whip his naked back if he does not work to suit them. Thus the state, under the technical right of law, does a slave business.

    “It can be readily understood why this system is so much more vicious than was the old slave system. In a regular slave system, the owner might have such selfish interest in the slave as any man may have in the preservation of his valuable property. But in the convict lease system of Georgia, it is to the landlord’s advantage to put the least into the Negro and get the most out of him whom he owns for a limited time only.” 2Ibid., p. 323.

    2. The Eruption of TulsaEGWUTRW 36.1

    The account that is mentioned here took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May, 1921, six years after the death of Ellen White. It was literally called a “veritable racial war.” 3Ibid., p. 318. Leaving out everything not essential to illustrate the point at hand, the following, like many other accounts, will adequately show the realities of Ellen White’s “race war” prediction:EGWUTRW 36.2

    “Around five o’clock Wednesday morning the mob, now numbering more than 10,000 made a mass attack on Little Africa. Machine guns were brought into use; eight aeroplanes were employed to spy on the movements of the Negroes and according to some were used in bombing the colored section. All that was lacking to make the scene a replica of modern ‘Christian’ warfare was poison gas. The colored men and women fought gamely in defense of their homes, but the odds were too great. According to the statements of onlookers, men in uniform, either home guards or ex-service men or both, carried cans of oil into Little Africa, and, after looting the homes, set fire to them. Many are the stories of horror told to me—not by colored people—but by the white residents.” 4Ibid., p. 331.

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