In 1712 a slave owner from the West Indies named Willie Lynch gave a speech to the colony of Virginia. The Virginia slave owners requested Willie Lynch, because they were having problems controlling the slaves at the time. Mr. Lynch had devised a plan that was guaranteed to control black slaves and it was working in the West Indies. His speech follows in its entirety.

The 1712 Speech by Willie Lynch

Gentlemen:

I greet you here on the bank of the James River in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and twelve. First, I shall thank you, The Gentlemen of the Colony of Virginia, for bringing me here. I am here to help you solve some of your problems with your slaves. Your invitation reached me on my modest plantation in the West Indies, where I have experimented with some of the newest and still the oldest methods of control of slaves.

Ancient Rome would envy us if my program is implemented. As our boats sailed south on the James River, named for our illustrious King whose version of the Bible we cherish, I saw enough to know that your problem is not unique. While Rome used cords of wood as crosses for standing human bodies along its old highways in great numbers, you are here using the tree and the rope on occasion. I caught a whiff of a dead slave hanging from a tree a couple of miles back. You are not only losing valuable stock by hangings, you are having uprisings, slaves are running away, your crops are sometimes left in the fields too long for maximum profit, you suffer occasional fires, your animals are killed, gentlemen, you know what your problems are: I do not need to elaborate. I am not here to enumerate your problems.

I am here to introduce you to a method of solving them. In my bag here, I have a fool proof method for controlling your black slaves. I guarantee every one of you that if installed correctly, it will control the slaves at least 300 years. My method is simple, any member of your family or any overseer can use it.
 

I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves and I take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies and it will work throughout the south. Take this simple list of differences, and think about them.

On top of my list is "Age", but it is there only because it starts with an "A": the second is "Color" or shade, there is intelligence, size, sex, size of plantation, status on plantation, attitude of owner, whether the slaves live in the valley, on the hill, east, west, north, south, have fine or course hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences. I shall give you an outline of action-but before that, I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust, and envy is stronger than adulation, respect or admiration. The black slave, after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self re-fueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands.

Don't forget, you must pitch the old black versus the young black, and the young black male against the old black male. You must use the dark skin slaves versus the light skin slaves and the light skin slaves versus the dark skin slaves. You must use the female versus the male and the male versus the female. You must also have your white servants and overseers distrust all Blacks, but it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect and trust only us.

Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control, use them. Have your wives and children use them, never miss an opportunity. My plan is guaranteed, and the good thing about this is that if used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful.

Thank you gentlemen.
 

Are remnants of ol’ boy Willie’s methods still in use today? How many times have you heard someone say??..“so and so has “good hair”? What did that mean? “Good hair” being the closest thing to Caucasian hair? How about the observance that Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rica and Clarence Thomas “speaks well?” Speaks well a compared to whom? When OJ was on trial how many shades of the same picture did you detect? For me, it was easy to tell where each component of the media stood, as to his guilt or innocence, simply by the shade of that same picture seen over and over again. The darker the shading, the more “evil” the portrayal intended. How many of you have fallen victim to ol’ Willie’s “experiment”? 300 years later can we honestly say that we have overcome his instructions on that day centuries ago? It seems that his prediction I guarantee everyone of you that if installed correctly, it will control the slaves at least 300 years” was not so far off the mark!!

Hmmmmm

I pray that as you read the following, you will bear in mind ol’ Willie’s “instruction” to those who congregated to learn his “technique” of controlling you. I pray that you remember that the lesson was not simply learned by the whites attending this “riverside seminar” but was taught to whites and blacks alike throughout the centuries. The “lesson” is so skillfully ingrained into our psyches we forgot where it came from and accept it as the norm. I pray that we revisit our thinking, motives behind our actions and revise the manner by which we treat our brothers and sisters remembering that our “beliefs” may very well have been well-established before our birth.

Moving from hate to love, I recently read “Where Do We Go From Here?” a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered in August 16, 1967, Annual Report Delivered at the 11^th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in which he addressed this issue. He stated: His ultimate aim was to bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible”.

(Photo by www.jimiflixx.com)

Where do we go from here? ( www.googleonomics.com )  First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amidst a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being Black. The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.

Even semantics have conspired to make that which is Black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget’s Thesaurus there are 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, as for example, blot, soot, grime, devil and foul. And, there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. The most degenerate member of a family is a ‘black sheep.’ Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the Black child sixty ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his sense of inferiority, and the White child 134 to adore himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority.

The tendency to ignore the Negro’s contribution to American life and to strip him of his personhood is as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary as the morning’s newspaper. To upset this homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. Any movement for the Negro’s freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian emancipation proclamation or Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation. And, with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, ‘I am somebody.’ I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history.

How painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents and I am not ashamed of that. I am ashamed of the people who were so sinful as to make me a ‘slave.’ Yes, we must stand up and say, ‘I’m Black and I’m beautiful,’ and this self affirmation is the Black man’s need, made compelling by the White man’s crimes against him.”

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