Pilgrims, fleeing from religious persecution in England, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and settled in the ‘New World’ and, after making it through harsh winters without many necessities, held a feast of Thanksgiving for being able to survive.
NOT.
Like Christopher Columbus sailing “the ocean blue” or George Washington’s cherry tree, this is the tale of Thanksgiving that most folks in the U.S. are familiar with. And, like most myths of origin, the truth is a lot uglier.
“Thanksgiving Day literally is a holiday celebrating the beginnings of the almost total extermination of an entire race of people, commonly called ‘Indians,’ and the enslavement, continued oppression and genocide of the Afrikan by European settlers. For over 100 years now Black folks in the United States have joined with the descendants of the same European murder[er]s who enslaved them and systematically all but destroyed the Amer-Indian, in feasting and giving thanks to God for the ‘opportunity’ to live in one of the most racist, imperialist, and oppressive countries on earth … Black People celebrating Thanksgiving Day is like the Americans celebrating the bombing of Pearl Harbor…”
So wrote the late Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango, author of African People and European Holidays: A Mental Genocide, back in 1979.
Only a handful of books tell of the destruction of indigenous peoples in order to control the land and resources of the “New World” such as Dr. Barashango’s book and the late Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, written in 1980.
Friday, Nov 25, 2016 · 6:33:22 PM +00:00 · Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Dear Daily Kos Community:
In this essay on ‘ThanksTaking,’ I attempted to provide some background on why some in the Black community hold this date with ambivalence and disdain. In doing so, I utilized a quote that offended, insulted and outraged many of you. That was never my intention, and for that, I am truly sorry. In pulling the quote, I did not go over it in its entirety; a careless act. The offensive wording has been removed.
I hope that you will accept these words from me. As a member of Daily Kos, you know from my writings that I am very passionate about injustice. To have committed an injustice while attempting to expose it is not only mortifying, it is unacceptable.
Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Speaking with Tavis Smiley on National Public Radio in 2003, Zinn stated that,
“the American colonists that came here from the beginning were invading Indian soil and driving the Indians out of their land and committing massacres in order to persuade the Indians that they’d better move. And the history of the U.S. is a history of hundreds of little wars fought against the Indians, annihilating them, pushing them farther and farther onto a smaller and smaller piece of the country. And finally, in the late 19th century, taking the Indians that were left and squeezing them onto a reservation and controlling them.”
In addition to outright aggression, Zinn and authors such as Francis Jennings’ 1975 work The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest, show that the settlers’ quest for control of the land also benefited from depopulation due to the spreading of deadly diseases. Smallpox, in particular, took its toll on the Indians through physical contact with infected settlers and by the passing on of blankets that the ill had utilized.
Such grisly beginnings are the main reason why many black folks throughout the U.S. refer to the holiday as “ThanksTaking,” in acknowledgement of the theft of the land of Native Americans who were here first. “ThanksTaking” began with greed and greed remains a staple of the holiday today. The date of the holiday, mandated by Congress in 1941, is the fourth Thursday of every month. That’s because in 1939:
“… the last Thursday of November was going to be November 30. Retailers complained to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that this only left 24 shopping days to Christmas and begged him to push Thanksgiving just one week earlier. It was determined that most people do their Christmas shopping after Thanksgiving and retailers hoped that with an extra week of shopping, people would buy more. So when FDR announced his Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1939, he declared the date of Thanksgiving to be Thursday, November 23, the second-to-last Thursday of the month.”
This turned into a hot mess: Americans were mad that the date was changed and who was the president of the United States to go and change the date? Several governors ignored Roosevelt and did their own thing; two ThanksTaking days were declared and families had fits trying to figure out their schedules. All because of those retailers. Congress stepped in and decided the date of ThanksTaking would be every year on the fourth Thursday of November. But the day after ThanksTaking is coveted across the U.S. as “Black Friday,” the day when gazillions of people go shopping for Christmas presents at allegedly lower prices and retailers’ bottom lines are written in black ink instead of red. ThanksTaking is book-ended with greed.
Black folks, many of whom share blood lineages with the indigenous/Native Americans of this land, should utilize this time of year to reflect on both our shared history of suffering and our efforts to unify and forge a new and liberatory existence for ourselves and others.
This year, the holiday of ThanksTaking takes place as hundreds of Native Americans fight to keep an oil pipeline from destroying a water source vital to the survival of a region. Once again, the Native Americans are fighting against the theft and destruction of their land by an unrelenting, invading and evil force.
Just like in the good old days.