Can Donald Trump cancel an election? Can one man cancel a boycott? Can one corporation cancel your right to privacy?
Unlike most Fridays, today’s episode of The Wake-Up Call didn’t begin with my youngest sibling, Comelita, demanding that I say: “Good morning, sister.”
Comelita lives in Monck’s Corner, S.C., a small town in Berkeley County near the Cooper River, just outside of Charleston (not far from Kingstree, S.C.). Sometimes, she’s late for work because morning traffic backs up on Ashley River Road, so I understand. Berkeley County actually borders 70% Black Clarendon County, location of the school district that was sued in Briggs v. Elliot. Although our paternal grandparents lived in Charleston our entire lives, they were actually born in majority-Black Colleton County, S.C. Our maternal grandparents were born in Lee County, S.C., which is even Blacker.
Charleston was originally named “Charles Town at Albemarle Point” in 1670. A few months later, Sir John Yeamans arrived on a ship near Georgetown with 200 enslaved Africans. The Carolina Colony would be majority Black for the next 150 years. Until the 1960s, whites were the minority in Charleston.
My sisters and I are the first generation of our family born in a majority-white town, city, county or state.
What does this have to do with ContrabandCamp?
In 1663, King Charles II formed a joint-stock corporation to reward the eight men who stuck beside him during England’s version of the Civil War. The “Lord Proprietors” essentially owned a tract of land in the New World that stretched from Virginia to Florida. Not only did these “Lord Proprietors” use enslaved labor to build their company, but they also hired John Locke, “the father of Liberalism,” to write their Constitution, including one provision that would define their business model:
“Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over Negro slaves.”
And that’s why they were so mad about emancipation. It’s why there was a backlash after the Civil Rights Movement. The reason they hate DEI dates back to the name of those eight lord proprietors:
William Berkeley
John Colleton
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon;
George Monck, Duke of Albemarle;
William Earl Craven, who landed near the King’s Tree
John, Lord Berkeley;
Anthony Ashley Cooper;
and Sir George Carteret
We destroyed their business model.
Thank you, Dr. Mary M. Marshall, Sara Frischer, Chloe, Greg Owens, Sera Bella, and many others for tuning in to The Wake-Up Call.
