We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a shocking piece of news
just in from Memphis, Tennessee.
Today, April 4, the spiritual leader of America's Negroes, Martin Luther King,
winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, was shot and wounded by an unknown gunman.
He is in very grave condition.
We are awaiting further information, which we will pass on to the public
as soon as we receive it.
The assassin's bullet didn'tjust kill Martin Luther King.
It killed a historical era. The war has begun.
We Negroes have embarked on the violent phase of our fight for freedom.
Today we have guns, bombs, dynamite, knives.
America will be stained red. Corpses will fill the streets.
Martin Luther King, a slave of the bourgeoisie,
a useless social element, a public servant,
an adulator, Washington's bootlicker, a traitor.
Down with the doubters and the Evangelists.
Down with the Uncle Toms.
It's our turn to get to work now, cutting throats.
No white throats were cut.
The shouts of the revolt were nothing, compared to the police sirens.
After all, who was that minister who was killed in Memphis,
that 30 million Negroes were supposed to avenge?
A hero, as Cleaver said, or a swine, an Uncle Tom, as LeroyJones said?
Tom.
Thomas.
I named him Tom. Don't you think it's cute?
Nowadays it's different, but in the old days
all house Negroes were called Tom, then Uncle Tom when they grew old.
That was how we could tell the good Negroes,
the ones who lived in homes, with their masters,
from the bad ones, who lived separately, in the cotton fields.
Even that nice Negro priest that they killed, what was his name?
They called him Uncle Tom, too, because he was good.
He didn't go around spurring those people to revolt against us.
They're not actually bad, but none of them are called Tom.
They can't keep their houses clean, and they spend all their money on cars,
which they break immediately and throw away, like old toys.
They're just like children. But that may be a good thing.
This way they're closer to God.
You should hear them singing in the family chapel I gave them.
They're extraordinary.
His land extended further than the horizon--
He had enormous herds of cattle, and a house full of slaves.
When Jesus had finished speaking, the man asked him:
''Is there anything that my slaves can hold against me?
I feed them. I clothe them. I aid them. I even gave them a temple to pray in.
So you see, my generosity is great.'' And Jesus said to him:
''I will tell you that it is not your generosity that is great,
but your pride.
You love your slaves because they are slaves,
and as long as they remain slaves.
But your power will melt, like fog in the sun.
Your riches will be gone.
And then your slaves will leave your land and your home,
and they will ignore you.
The worst punishment for your pride will be your loneliness.''
Our house was so big. 500 slaves were hardly enough to keep it up.
Then a little Tom left a candlestick sitting next to a curtain,
and the fire burned for three days. Can you imagine?
So many things fed that fire. But this land is still mine.
This good land of the south, once white with cotton balls.
Thank you, Tom. Do you remember that movie?
What was it called? Gone--
Anyway, she took a handful of dirt and held it to her chest. Like this.
And all around her, everything was burned and ravaged by war.
And the Negroes had become bad. And she said-- I can't remember.
Anyway, she said she would farm the land even without slaves.
Not cotton, of course. You'd need Negroes for that.
It's so hard, under the sun.
But there are many other good things here in the south:
fruits, vegetables. Our vegetables are so good.
The salad, the peas.
Have you ever tasted southern peas?
...as we can see by reading the pages of the greatest American Negro poet,
LeroyJones, whose poem --
''Land, Land, Land. The Negro will not be a man until he has his own land.
Negro, look at the ground. ''
- Yoo-hoo, I'm ready. - ''Grab a handful of dirt,
and shove your nails into the concrete. It's real and it's yours.
- You just have to want it. '' - On page 2 1 7, Malcolm X adds.:
''There's only one people on earth that can slit the white man's throat.
His population of slaves, the Negroes. ''
We will now hand the microphone over to the leader of the Black Panthers.
But that's not all. They reject integration, they practice violence,
ideological crime, reverse racism.
They indoctrinate their children in exchange for a meal.
They want to own five states, immediate freedom for all Negro criminals,
exemption from military service, and the freedom to carry machine guns.
But sometimes we're too quick to judge.
Let's take a look at these strange humans.
Their intentions are good, though at times misunderstood.
These humans practice non-violence, ideological love,
free love, the integration of the sexes,
and a perfect racial confusion with the Negroes,
together with whom they propose to build the America of the future.
And yet, LeroyJones, today's foremost representative of Negro-ness says,
''Embracing the non-violence that young whites preach about is nothing short of
diving into the current of this failed American civilization.
America is a Sodom. America is a Gomorrah.
America is a Babylon. This is the society in which
Martin Luther King wanted the Negroes to get ready to join.
I'd rather go to hell. But the chance of becoming citizens of Gomorrah
is the best thing that whites have right now to offer the Negroes.
If you hope for the survival of this rotten society, of this corrupt order,
of this falling Rome, ready to cut your balls off with the edge of a dollar,
you'll lose. Christ and the effigy of the dollar are one and the same.
We Negroes must remember all that we are seeing now,
and in the end we must erupt like a volcano,
so we can crush, under flowing, molten lava this herd of pigs
who have transformed the world into a giant garbage can.''
June 1 9, 1 97 0.
LeroyJones, again: ''The white man's attitude toward sex is sick.
The white man makes sex dirty. The white man is primitive,
and he has the sexual intelligence of a cave man.
The white man is afraid of the Negro because he knows he's sexually inferior.
His sexual device is out of order.
That's why liberal whites have allowed us
a certain amount of progress toward virility,
and today he's telling us, 'One day we'll let you have balls.
Until then, keep yourself cool.'
American whites are taught to be pederasts in school.
That's why their faces are weak and expressionless.
Their voices, gestures and mannerisms are those of eunuchs.
white women are stocky whores, covered in makeup.
They don't know what to do to fire up their impotent males.
white American women are the ugliest and most obscene on earth.
The famous question, 'Would you allow your daughter to marry a Negro?'
is outdated.
Today the question is,
'Would you allow your son to marry a white woman?'
Today the roles are reversed.''
The Black Panthers say, ''When the people rise up
to free themselves from slavery, they must arm themselves with guns.
If we want to free ourselves of guns, we must arm ourselves with guns.''
And now Cleaver:
''America is defended by sadistic and bloodthirsty masters.
The blood, the tears and suffering of the Negro
are the foundation on which America rests.
We were forced to build it. But if they force us to, we will destroy it,
and the result will be a horrific bloodbath.
We, too, are bloodthirsty.''
But the Negroes are also hungry.
At least that's what it says on the banner
that leads the demonstration at Cape Kennedy
on the occasion of the first white men on the moon.
The demonstration was organized by Martin Luther King's successor,
Reverend Abernathy, who says,
''You, white man, are the cause of all our woes.
You tore us away from Africa, made us slaves,
kept us in ignorance, exploited us, got rich, and now you're going to the moon.
We can't accept that. Stop playing with your millionaire's toys,
and pay us the damages you owe us.
Where are you going, white man, with your billionaire's toy?
What are you running away from, your past?
What did you do, that was so bad?
Why do your black brothers hate you so?
It's useless to run away,
because the past is not behind us, as Abernathy believes,
but ahead, traveling toward the stars, just like Einstein said.
And the faster you run, the faster you'll get there.''
GOODBYE UNCLE TOM
- Is this a bad time? - No, please, come in.
- Who are these people? - They are Europeans.
To be exact, they're Italians, Italian journalists.
They've come here to the south to conduct an inquiry, right?
In inquiry on slavery. They seem to be quite shocked.
- What is their religion? - Catholic, I think.
- You're Catholic, aren't you? - Roman Catholic Apostolic.
They shouldn't be so shocked, then.
After all, the Pope, who is usually so generous with his excommunications,
has never excommunicated a merchant of black meat.
Unless he eats it on Fridays.
- Why are they here, then? - I think they're slaves, too.
You know Catholics. They're slaves of the fascination of sin.
Or they simply want to protest. What are we going to do about it?
These Europeans, after the French Revolution, do nothing but protest.
Please, times have changed: Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire...
This is rich, Catholics who read books written by the devil.
What would His Holiness say?
Please! These gentlemen are my guests.
And following the example of other friends of mine,
have given them free access to the entire house.
This way they'll see who the real slaves and masters are.
No, Senator, please. No chicken bones.
They're very dangerous to puppies.
I had to take two of them to the vet. It's so annoying.
Well, since each one of you is a famous person,
your frank and authoritative statements on the subject of slavery
should be very useful to these gentlemen.
I agree, and I'll be the first.
It's absolutely true that slavery cannot be hidden,
just like a volcano's eruption or a cancerous affliction
that erodes a man's face. I, for one, have freed my slaves,
but I did so only because they were stupid, smelly, sad and boring.
I am an aristocrat, and I believe in freedom, but not in equality.
This is my statement. Signed,John Randolph of Roanoke.
I'm John Pithiou,
and I think that slavery is the natural condition of the poor,
whether white or black.
In fact, I consider it ideal,
because it's synonymous with a full belly, a guaranteed dwelling,
medical help and security in old age, whereas for us it's a status symbol.
Furthermore, we mustn't forget, gentlemen,
that we whites make up only 20%% of the world's population,
so if one day we gave up our power, it would be the end of us.
It will depend solely on us, and I mean solely on us,
if a meek slave or a snake in the grass gets off the slave trader's ship.
What a stench! What did you bring, a load of rotten meat?
What are you talking about? It's top choice.
They stink because they eat like pigs, then they throw up and mess themselves.
- How long was the trip? - 94 days.
Didn't they get air on the bridge?
Are you crazy, with the sea full of English ships?
The times have changed.
This is contraband merchandise.
If I get caught with one Negro on board, I'll be hung.
And I wouldn't be the first.
If they spent the entire trip down there, they must be all rotten.
No way! On this ship rule number one is hygiene.
Hygiene and cleanliness. If one of them gets really sick,
I don't wait for him to spread it to the whole load.
I throw him overboard and that's that. I deliver my merchandise in good shape.
- Are you interested or not? - How many are there?
3 27 between males and females. These are all males. No syphilis.
Black meat was sold either by the head or by weight.
The load was arranged in layers, and each Negro had a berth
3 5 by 1 2 inches, in which he was chained from 45 to 90 days,
depending on the wind.
This way, over the course of two centuries,
about 50 million slaves were shipped to the Americas,
30 million of which did not survive the journey.
To keep epidemics at bay, the Negroes were watered three times a day
with carbolic acid and sea water.
The load was always insured.
But since the insurance paid only if the Negro died on board,
if an epidemic broke out, the captain would rather not take chances,
and preferred to unload a whole shipment in the sea, still alive,
rather than risk unloading a ship of dying men and women.
Dysentery depreciated the merchandise, so in order to keep it from buyers,
the captain would order the sealing of''leaky holes'' with a cork
sealed with tow and tar.
In November of 1 81 2,
in a shipment of 41 5 slaves, the buyer contested 21 6,
because he realized that they had been plugged up.
The captain was Jean Lafitte, the famous pirate patriot hero
who sold slaves in Louisiana to raise money for Karl Marx in Europe.
- What's that mushy stuff? - Corn, molasses and fat.
They love it. We have to tie them up and give them a little at a time,
otherwise they'd choke.
That one doesn't seem to like it.
That one has decided to let himself starve to death. Pitiful!
Hey, we need a chisel and hammer and a funnel over here.
The remedy was quite frightening, and served as an example.
And even if it cost the master a little damage,
a Negro minus three or four teeth was always better than a dead one.
- Let's say $1 50 a head. - I said I'll buy them by the pound.
- The whole shipment for $2 a pound. - Seven dollars.
- Three. - Six.
- Four. - All right, but I'm losing money.
1 20 years later, three or four generations at the most,
and some of them have already forgotten. They are not many.
Perhaps the equivalent of a few hundred shipments of slaves.
Ambassadors, ministers, industrialists, intellectuals, artists:
all individual fortunes worth millions of dollars.
Deaf to the insults of the priests of Negro-ness, these Uncle Tom pigs
have quietly joined the system,
and followed the great American dream of success,
seen as the sporting victory over life's adversities.
For the first time, the self-made man is black, and that's saying a lot,
if we consider that among his many misfortunes this is perhaps the worst:
well-dressed, worldly,
so well integrated as to appear lighter skinned than his fellow Negroes,
a little chubby, due to a residual hunger that subconsciously still haunts him,
he is still the same Negro who arrived on board a ship with LeroyJones,
Malcolm X, Cleaver and the Black Panthers.
Those men are either in Harlem or in prison, plotting revenge.
This man is here. He dances a waltz in a tuxedo,
and tomorrow will go to work wearing a double-breasted suit.
The self-made Negro is proud of his past misfortunes,
and the horrors of slavery are his epic.
This was the most famous slave sorting and clearing center in Louisiana.
Even Thomas Ewell wrote about it.
Let's read some excerpts from the camp's rules and regulations:
''It is ordered that at Fort Bastille all African slaves be quarantined.''
Page 1 1 6: ''In large iron cages, slaves with mange and scabies
will be fumigated with ailanthus vapors.
The epileptics will be hung by the feet
so their blood, flowing to the head, will arrest their convulsions.''
Reading from page 1 22: ''It is mandatory for all slaves
to receive an initial bath in a mixture of water, salt, ash, and soapwort root.''
Now, reading from page 1 30:
''The bath will be followed by a greasing with lard, palm oil and turpentine.
We remind our employees that 82%%
of imported slaves is afflicted with contagious skin diseases,
and that therefore the law forbids their trade.
Using the specially designed slides, the slaves will be gathered
for the next phase of their cleansing.
Eggs and lice that may have survived the previous treatments
will be exterminated with the total destruction of their natural habitat.
The razors must be sharpened every 200 shavings,
to avoid damage to the scalps.''
Cleansed both inside and out,
the Negro was fortified before the long journey inland
with a daily ration of a half gallon of corn meal,
a pint of beans, a pound of sweet potatoes,
- a pound of fat -- - Don't go overboard.
They only get a half-pound of fat. This is not an Italian restaurant.
Besides, we don't need a defense lawyer.
Look at them. All they want is to eat, to eat anything.
To eat and to fuck, that's all they want. And they want to survive.
To survive anything, beatings, syphilis, cholera, the heat, the cold.
Their strength lies in their adaptability.
Both in heaven and in hell, they fill their bellies
and spit out dozens of children.
I for one agree with those who support mandatory castration.
I don't mean to be cruel,
but if we don't cut off a few million black balls now,
you can be sure that in one or two hundred years--
Dick Gregory, the first Negro President of the United States!
What makes this candidate for the White House exceptional
is that his political program does not include cutting the throats
of all white Americans.
Perhaps this is why he wasn't very successful.
The more popular David Hillyard screamed,
''We'll kill Nixon and all the sons of bitches that are against us.''
Gregory is more modest. He's content with his image on the dollar bill,
and obtaining what the signers of the Black Manifesto requested:
300 billion dollars as damages for the suffering of 3 million slaves.
In the meantime he's handing out small advances,
and promises that the rest will be delivered promptly.
The livestock cars that transported the slaves up north
covered 400 miles in three days along the left bank of the Mississippi,
all the way up to Natchez or Pittsburgh. The slave trade was very busy.
It slowed down only in the autumn,
when the trains had to stop in Baton Rouge,
and the slaves had to proceed on foot through rain-flooded swamps.
The red flag, which back then was the symbol of slavery, preceded the convoys.
A tuba, a violin and a trombone kept up the slaves' morale
when the going was rough.
Neither the slave traders nor the public, at the time,
considered this trade immoral.
They were comforted in part by the fact that among their clients
were men such as PresidentJackson and PresidentJefferson.
Among their colleagues were men such as David Mitchell, governor of Georgia,
and James Bowie, hero of the Alamo.
Come on. Move it!
Let's have some music! Make merry! Play!
Come on. Let's have some music! Be merry. Play for me!
Go free with God. Go forth, free with God.
Go on, go free with God.
Well then, $300 for the males, $200 for the females,
and $1 00 for the puppies. It's all there, right?
In addition to having illustrious clients,
the traders also had illustrious suppliers,
like theJesuits of Saint Inigoe in Maryland.
The Catholic Church had always ignored slavery,
but when in 1 838 the Pope ordered that slaves in convents be freed,
theJesuits immediately got rid of them: they sold them.
When the convoys reached the sugarcane and cotton mills,
the traders would allow their Negroes a few days' rest, so they could present them
to their customers in good shape. The customers were few, but good.
In 1 850, 4 million slaves were owned by 4,000 planters.
There were only 400 families who owned more than 1 0 slaves.
Eighty percent of the white population had never owned slaves.
The dream of possessing a young Negro woman tormented the lonely dreams
of poor white men, forced to long periods of abstinence in such a hot land,
where the white women were few and intractable.
Not bad, eh?
Many of these poor and restless men were--
Cut it out.
This is my buddy, Buzz.
This is my buddy, Sonny.
This is my buddy,Jake.
- So, are you coming with us? - Isn't it illegal?
What do you mean? Nothing is illegal in this fucking country.
You hear that? He wants money.
Many of these poor white men, the Crackers, as they were called,
were serving what was called time-limited slavery,
a period of hard labor, usually of five years,
to pay off the price of the trip to America from Europe.
Another group was formed by thieves, rapists, murderers,
who had been deported to the colonies from French and English prisons.
Their hatred toward the Negroes was not just a racial issue.
Negroes were always slaves, and therefore obliged to work for free,
but also to be the scabs of the white laborers,
who had to choose between unemployment and a miserable pay.
Come on, let's go.
Thus, the hatred of the white slave toward the Negro slave
was appeased through gratuitous acts of violence,
perpetrated especially on the women, who slept alone at night
in the barn with the animals, and were therefore defenseless.
Oh, go away.
The black puppies not yet ready for work were like toys,
and as such they were given to children.
But the black puppies grew up quickly, and pretty soon they preferred
a new kind of game, that the white kids often enjoyed watching.
Let's read an excerpt from the diary of Fanny Kemble, English actress:
''From the early morning the boughs of the large tree before my window
were full of couples chirping like blackbirds in love.
I, who was English, and had just joined my American husband in Georgia,
was amazed that such a puritanical white society could allow its slaves
to indulge in such depravity in every corner of the jungle.
Another time, in the rice fields,
I came upon such a carefree, shameless band of urchins,
who were so busy with their pleasure that they didn't even notice me.''
But after her marriage to the planter George Butler,
Fanny Kemble became a typical southern lady.
I, a typical southern lady?
Have you ever seen a southern lady ride a horse western style?
Now I'll show you another thing that a southern lady would never show you.
Look at all the lovebirds!
Look at them running from the sugarcane field.
The masters themselves encourage them.
Do you know what my husband says? ''Go on, get busy!
The more children you have, the happier you'll make me.
Do as you please.
I get rich, and you have a good time.''
In this shop, you don't pay for what you break, and I pick up the pieces.
Excuse me, ma'am, where is the church at Turner Bridge?
I don't understand. I'm German.
- Where is church? - Three miles down road.
- What's happening here, ma'am? - Very interesting.
They're cutting the Negro who broke 20 virgins at the Peterson plantation.
- Cutting what? - Cutting his balls, what else?
He's through fucking.
The pliers! The pliers!
If on the one hand the masters allowed their slaves
an almost unlimited sexual freedom,
it was also true that he would be furious if that freedom cost him money.
On every plantation there were always a number of virgins
destined for the marketplace.
Their virginity had a very definite value, and if you took it,
you were a thief.
Such thieves were publicly castrated,
and the castration took place at the very scene of the crime.
Hewlett, a Louisiana man, wrote in 1 831 :
''Such an exciting spectacle was a pleasant interruption
to the boredom of a Sunday afternoon.
Males, females and puppies enjoyed it from start to finish.
The more the victim screamed, the more fun they had.''
The master calls for the pliers.
No, not my balls!
Shut up! Take the balls with your hands and pull.
- Quick, put the balls in the pliers. - He's pissing! He got me all wet!
Not my balls! No!
- Do you want to go in? - No, thank you.
- Listen. - Squeeze!
Did you hear that? It's done.
- What did they use for the operation? - Horse pliers.
- It's horrible to make him suffer so. - No, Negroes never suffer.
That Negroes felt physical and moral pain less that white men
was a widely held belief.
The scientific writings of that time,
first among them those by the authoritative Samuel Cartwright,
a professor at the University of Louisiana,
mention ''poor motor skills, typical of monkeys and subhuman species in general.''
No one suspected yet that all the folklore, the excesses,
the collective hysteria don't Negate the presence of pain.
On the contrary, they underline its intensity.
At this point I have only to remind you that God condemned to slavery
the damned line of Canaan from the time ofJoshua.
God ordered Abraham's descendants to keep slaves,
and he decreed that those slaves were to be inherited by their children.
God recognized Abraham as the master of the slaves.
And Jesus ordered
that any who dare object to or disrupt the institution of slavery
be repudiated as subversive individuals, whose behavior is --
The Protestant Church,
then even more powerful than the Catholic Church in America,
approved of and preached slavery as a divine decree.
The sermons of the most influential ministers, like this one,
by Reverend Stringfellow of Virginia, were bound and published in volumes.
The curse in the Old Testament on the black man, Canaan,
the evil son of Noah, who had castrated his father,
was falling heavily on his descendants, who were now reduced to slavery.
The Baptists said, ''Flog them.''
The Presbyterians, ''Deny them rights.''
The Methodists, ''Chain them up.''
While Bishop Polk, the same one who later became a Confederate general,
beat all records as a slaveholder.
Slavery is thus a divine institution, ordered and sanctioned by God.
Therefore, with all the authority granted my by the church,
I, Reverend Stringfellow of the State of Virginia,
order you to honor slavery
and not to question it on the basis of false moral grounds.
Instead of false moral grounds, Reverend Stringfellow would have done better
talking about false economic grounds.
For example, it was false to think that a slave's labor was free
simply because he wasn't paid.
Let's consider the eternal problem of domestic servants.
When a master thought he could solve it
by filling his huge house with droves of Negroes dressed to the nines,
he was solving a very different problem--
the problem of his prestige in the eyes of his family and his guests.
Please, come in. But I'm warning you, I can't give you much of my time.
As you can see, this isn't a house, it's a madhouse.
- The luggage. - What luggage? Oh, yes!
Mr. Thackeray's luggage.
Haven't I told you a million times to get it and bring it downstairs?
Go on, don't waste anymore time.
My God, they're useless! Hurry up!
I'll have to leave you to your own devices. Take a look around.
- I'll see you later. - Where do the sheets go, ma'am?
Come on. Let's hurry it up!
This looks nice.
Always cleaning, cleaning. My fingers are hurting, ma'am.
Even at night I dream that I'm still cleaning.
Black slave's always cleaning.
And you keep telling me I have to clean even better.
Where do we put the sheets, ma'am?
''Where do we put the sheets, ma'am?'' Put them on the bed, you idiots!
The real mistress of the house, though, was the Mammy.
The house was her kingdom. The children were her subjects.
She reigned upstairs, over the children of both masters and slaves alike,
in absolute promiscuity, because black or white,
all babies have the same color pee.
She was almost always fat, thanks to her privileges in the kitchen.
She was always mean and arrogant, and mistreated everyone, black or white.
All this thanks to the immunity she enjoyed in the domestic setting.
When, for instance, a white man --
- Whom does this one belong to? - Throw him over there.
When I'm done with your pup, I'll latch him onto my tit.
Be careful, he's got the runs, he's messing everywhere.
- I'm freezing, do I have to bathe? - Get in there and wash up good.
Hey you, pump the water, faster!
- Don't let them play with my dress. - Get back in there!
Take that dress off. Give me that, face powder is $5 an ounce!
It's not meant for dirty Negroes like you. Now get out of here!
- Enough Mammy, I'm clean. - Let me take a look.
You don't like the water, eh? You're worse than a Negro.
Not so hard, you're hurting me.
You know those Italian photographers that are here?
Mammy, I want them to take my portrait in the pink dress.
Is it cut too low?
Get out of here! You whites are such bastards.
Scoundrels! You're all scoundrels! And you, get the fuck away!
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
And you, will you stop plucking those feathers!
Drinking water! Drinking water!
Thief!. Let me see! Where is the chicken?
Give me your hat.
Look here! Thief!.
- Cake with cherries. - Wait!
I keep putting the cherries on, and I never run out of cherries.
These are onions, not carrots! Can't you smell them?
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
The almonds, I can't crush them. I'm going to use a plate.
This is not a kitchen! It's a huge latrine!
Dirty Negro woman, she's putting her hands in the mayonnaise.
I'm a clean Negro, and I crack eggs with my glove on.
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
Get down from there!
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
Pigs! You're worse than pigs!
Pigs are much better.
And all this just to seat two people at the dinner table!
This is the first image of a historical carousel called ''Pilgrimage'',
which is celebrated every year in the spring.
At this time, the old south takes a trip down memory lane.
For the sake of the carousel, everything comes out of storage:
from the old granny in a wheelchair to the few neighborhood Negroes,
who for $1 2 an hour agree to pose as slaves.
The slaveholders bravely revisit their sins of yore, like this one,
the first of the day.
They had a slave bring them their coffee in bed. Incredible.
The 1 9th century feels very far away, halfway up the ladder of time.
How was it? It depends if you're looking from the bottom or the top.
From the bottom, we discover under old drapes
a modern and hypocritical reality.
From above, on the other hand,
we enjoy a stale view of ancient, innocent customs,
such as chaste girls bathing with their nightgowns on.
Right next door, we find a walnut stool used to flog slaves.
It looks more like an antique than an instrument of torture.
Next to the music box we see the blond Eveline,
sitting on Uncle Tom's lap on a rainy evening.
In the dusky sitting room, the old grandfather clock keeps time.
It makes us feel almost sorry that General Sherman is at the gates.
Sherman arrived with 30,000 Union troops.
Today, there are 1 00,000 northerners.
A mere hundred years have passed
since the General swept like a fury down from the north
and tore down these candid temples to slavery, and already the south
seems to have bounced back to the original splendor of its dark age.
The pretentious Neoclassical style of its large houses
shines again over the green parks as it did in those opulent times,
which were rife with slaves, cotton, tobacco,
and the coffers of the south were full of Confederate dollars.
Today the old houses of the south are national museums,
and their owners are responsible for their upkeep.
The woman of the house is usually in charge of protecting the furniture
and the antique rugs.
Stop! You can't come in with high-heeled shoes.
After a long, grim winter without northerners in the house,
the old south relives in the spring its economic boom.
The north today buys cotton at $1 0 per hundred kilograms.
The south sells its high-quality, slave-grade cotton at $1 per ball.
Nixon devalues the dollar by 7%%.
The south revalues its old Confederate dollar by 1 07%%, exchanging it equally.
The boom goes on.
Someone found an old column in the cellar and sliced it up.
Today, the old white south can be bought by the slice.
$1 0 a slice, and the Negro, posing as a slave, keeps half of the proceeds.
New York, Fifth Avenue. It's Easter.
A religious extremist waves a flag and a Bible.
He yells something to do with Negroes, but no one can understand him.
On the most bourgeois street in the world,
they celebrate Easter with the spring parade,
and spring is the most bourgeois of the seasons.
Up here, far from the rotting crowd below,
a chosen few have found an altar close enough to the sky,
even though it's been sullied by the arrival of the police.
''We're here,'' they say, ''to declare our contrition over the sins of the world.''
''Naked?'' The police ask.
''We're not naked, we're undressed.''
Satisfied, they kiss. Today the police no longer trust the penal code.
A crime looks like a crime.
Then, it turns out that it's an ideological crime,
and they look like idiots.
Might as well drop the whole thing.
Today, being white, as well as being shameful, is also a grave sin.
One of the many ways to atone is to cover smear paint on one's body.
Each smear is a sin, and each sin has its color.
Red for wars, massacres and the like,
yellow for gold and riches and all the evils associated with wealth.
Black for racism, Nazism, fascism and lots of other -isms.
The evil one, meaning the devil, is white.
The devil's first victim,
according to these penitents who are ashamed of their white bottoms,
is the Negro, who seems here to feel slightly out of place.
''Abracadabra, I'm going to exorcise you.''
For centuries the white devil kept the Negro in hell.
He forced him to squirm on the ground like a worm.
He imprisoned him, flogged him, tortured him.
Then he dragged him in chains through his American ordeal.
He chose him over Barabbas.
He betrayed him likeJudas. He crucified him in Vietnam.
But today it's Easter, and the Negro is reborn
and ascends to the sky, to take his place at his father's side,
because the Negro is the son of God, because God is black.
In fact in Detroit, in the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart,
Jesus has been painted black. Is it antiracism or reverse racism?
Once upon a time they said, ''When God was white,
the Negro was not a man,
because God, who had made man in his image, was not black.''
That must mean that today, since God is black, we'll say this,
''God made man in his image,
and since God is no longer white, the white man is no longer a man.''
The Negro community has flocked to this church where all the saints,
and even the Virgin Mary are all black.
We can't help but think back
to the famous black Manifesto written in August, 1 969, and still extant,
in which the Negroes claimed that the Church owed them
300 billion dollars in damages for what they'd been put through.
The Lord's Prayer says: ''Forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.''
So now who will pay, if the father who forgives trespasses is no longer white,
nor is anyone in his family?
They had only just begun to hear about it,
but already that white God, who promised a heaven with no slaves
and no masters, fascinated them.
He seemed to be one of them.
He was humiliated, flogged, crucified.
And for his whole life he had eaten out of the same plate as the poor.
Get another plate, son.
Hewlett writes:
''It is tolerated that the slaves gather when they are free from work
in order to imitate in their fashion the Christian rituals.
Experience has taught us that the more a slave is religious,
the calmer, more humble and resigned he will be.
However, the law prescribes also
that these gatherings will be moderated and presided over by a white man.''
Of all the tales in the Bible, the flight from Egypt fascinated them the most.
They were so convinced that the story related to them personally,
that they would draw it on the walls. Africa was Palestine,
the ocean was the Red Sea, the sharks were the Pharaohs,
and the Egyptians were the white masters.
All those fantastical analogies between their dark history
and the flight of the chosen people toward the Promised Land
influenced them so, that they started running away at a rate of 5,000 a year.
They always ran toward the rivers and the swamps,
because they had crossed the water to come here,
and they thought that freedom lay across the water.
There was always a reward on the head of a runaway slave.
The reward was not contingent, however, on the slave being returned alive.
All that were needed were their hands or their heads.
Thus many hunters, especially in Florida, specialized in runaway slaves.
The fire of Atlanta destroyed a daguerreotype
that portrayed a scene like this one. On the back it bore this inscription:
''A good catch today, 1 87 heads.''
Even Andrew Jackson, the great president, approved of hunting slaves.
Kenneth Stamp writes:
''One dayJackson promised $50 to whoever could bring back one of his slaves,
and $1 0 extra for every 1 00 lashes, up to a maximum of 300.''
None of the 1 4 American presidents who were slave owners
were ever too kind to the Negroes.
They usually found them dumb, clumsy, and mostly loud.
Another great president, Thomas Jefferson, wrote:
''My slaves are such idiots, that instead of going to bed,
they waste the night away under my windows, making up dances and songs
which, according to them, mock their master.''
When a Negro mocked his master, to useJefferson's phrase,
he tried to wound his pride with the only weapon he had, the grotesque.
Today he wields that weapon against his entire civilization,
against his hero, his symbol, his system.
The white hero is armed, and the sword is the symbol of his prevarication.
He's lurking, again, under a friar's tunic,
with threats of damnation, pale and ugly like the devil.
''We are beautiful,'' says Carmichael, the leader of the black students.
''We are a splendid race.''
That's all well and good, but this year there will be two Miss Americas.
A white one, and a black one, who will be called Boganda,
not because it's a nice name, but because it's an African name.
Today, everything that's black has to have that Negro-ness.
Afro, African, anything but American.
''Do you know,'' says Carmichael, ''why the Negroes spoke so badly?''
They were protesting against English.
Protest is an ugly fad word, like Negro-ness.
Boganda, too, is an ugly name for a queen.
It sounds more like chains than like freedom.
''We don't want this white freedom.'' Another slogan from Harlem.
''We want a black freedom, and five white states,
that the United States must give us.''
They dance like Africans, dress like Africans, and speak Swahili.
''We repudiate your American language,
which you use to say that we are savages, beasts, monkeys,
and that our sweat smells bad.''
This was said for the first time by Professor Cartwright in 1 831 .
Smell this sweat. Do you think it smells human?
Or does it have a beastly smell?
Well, why does it have a beastly smell? Because our skin is different.
And it's not because of the color, that's the last thing.
Our illustrious colleagues up north know
that in one square centimeter of this black skin
there are at least twice the sweat glands than in ours.
You don't need a microscope to observe that in this limited cranial capacity
there is very little brain: that this is not hair, but beastly bristles:
this forehead is absurdly low,
these eyes totally lack luster, and show no flicker of intelligence:
that these monstrous nostrils resemble those of a monkey:
that these teeth and this jaw,
characteristic of anthropophagus creatures,
are the indisputable proof that this is a merely humanoid race,
a race inferior to ours.
A race that is merely
another attempt on nature's part
in its millennial journey
toward its ultimate goal, perfection,
the white race, homo sapiens,
in other words, us.
Excuse me, Professor, are you Jewish?
Yes, of course. Why?
Let's imagine we wanted to exterminate them.
Fire, gas, deportation? Oh, no.
It would be enough to refrain from curing their illnesses.
Remember, a healthy Negro is a perfect slave.
And an imperfect slave is a sick Negro.
Sick? With which disease, Professor?
These individuals are afflicted by a disease called ''draptomania'',
which is an impulse to flee.
It's a nervous disease, which drives the Negro to flee.
Mind you, not out of a desire for freedom or a sense of dignity.
Negroes have no such sentiments.
He runs because he is ill. Oh, here's a perfect case:
in fact, an exemplary case of that affliction
which we scientists call African scatopathy.
- Are those muzzles? - Oh, no! Looks are deceiving.
It's not a muzzle.
It's just an obstacle that stops them from eating all sorts of garbage,
like dirt and their own excrement.
This may be one of the more repugnant illnesses found in nature.
I'm sure it's caused by the lack of some unknown substance.
Look at what extremes they go to. They have such a fear of work,
and such a desire to do nothing, that they have tricked their masters.
Look, they're so clever.
They make their legs, arms, feet or hands drop off,
so they can live of their mutilation.
It seems impossible. How did they end up like this?
I told you.
To get out of working, they inflicted some small wound on themselves,
and then gangrene set in,
so the surgeon had to cut off arms and legs to save their hides.
What are these people doing here? Aren't they Indians?
Yes, but the Indians are useless.
Between a Negro and an Indian
there's the same difference as between a dog and a coyote.
You can beat a dog to death, and he'll go on licking your feet.
If you deprive a coyote of its freedom, you might as well deprive it of air.
An Indian will never be a slave.
No one has ever succeeded in having them reproduce in captivity.
They don't eat. They don't speak. They don't sleep and they don't make love.
Look at these bizarre creatures, neither men nor beasts.
These black and sick projections of our humanity,
who suddenly ask us to survive in this world of ours.
They are as ancient as we are, and yet up until now
they had never seen a wheel.
But in a world like ours, rich with centuries of civilization,
what could they ever do, but bask in the reflection of our glory?
Every year in February, the white people of Louisiana
hold a carnival draped in black skin.
Today it feels like the parody
of the privilege enjoyed for one day a year by all the slaves.
That day, the masters would tolerate insults and threats.
''Further left than any left, we'll drive against the current.''
But if Cleaver and Bobby Seale, founder of the Black Panthers,
had lived 1 50 years ago, the things they yell out every day now,
they could have said them only on the day of the carnival.
''You whites, who still today wave your discriminating and racist flags,
we'll put you all up against a wall!''
But the next day, Cleaver and Seale would have been sold right here,
in the huge slave market, where the rum ran like a river in the streets.
Then, when the trumpet would sound the closing of the market,
and the drunken crowd would be thrown out of the enclosure,
they would have been locked up like jailbirds in the shacks of the camp,
so they could spend their last night with their wives and children.
All this is now in the past, and is part of history.
Any reference to the people in these images is purely coincidental.
They happened to be walking by here while our cameras
were filming the site of the most famous slave market in the south,
where every year, during the carnival, 20,000 slaves were sold.
400, I said 400 and not a penny less.
- No, 200 is as high as I will go. - I didn't steal him, you know.
- 300, then. - No.
You can keep your Negro, then.
New Orleans, February, 1 831 .
The son of the sheriff, Tommy Adley,
draws the winning numbers of the state lottery at the 27 th slave market.
First prize, a quarter mulatto girl of 1 5 years.
Second prize, a cook, and third prize, three fat pigs from Virginia.
Together with the Memphis fair, the fair in New Orleans
is the most important fair in the south,
with a volume of business of more than 40 million dollars a year.
The merchandise is all homegrown,
and comes from farm consortia in Florida and in Virginia.
The market is on the upswing.
A typical male, that only six years ago went for $500,
is now worth $1 ,500 plus taxes.
Colonel Bowie, who only deals in wholesale pups,
can sell them today at up to $1 5/lb.
This year the most popular races are Ausa, Mandingo, and Turkana.
The Ausa are more graceful, but more fragile.
The Mandingo are more sturdy, but not as intelligent.
The Turkana are of smaller build, more docile and manageable.
They are the most popular with the religious institutions.
In 1 863, the French Ursuline nuns alone had 200 of them.
Of all the ones we saw at the market, this is the loveliest little angel.
He's really a delightful creature.
What should we do, sister?
It's very tempting, but have you seen the prices this year?
- He's too expensive. - But he's such an angel.
And he's healthy and strong. He could help in the kitchen.
Sister, can you imagine what the Mother Superior would say?
- She's already bought four this year. - Oh, sister.
He's not that expensive, at $300. Let's offer them $200.
He got scared and lost his mother in the crowd.
They can't even get him to tell them his name.
He just stands there, quiet, frowning,
but a little calmer, with so many policemen around,
who seem to protect him from those large white ghosts, who scared him.
After only one day of power,
the Negro king of the carnival has lost his throne.
His short time of privilege has expired.
Now it's the white man's turn.
Right here, in the Carré, where the queens of the neighborhood have gathered,
there once stood two famous houses of ill repute.
The one called The Two Sisters,
and right across the street, the other, Mr. Roberts'.
Since at the time there were only two, distinct genders,
anyone could choose what they liked in either of the two houses,
without the danger of making mistakes.
At the Two Sisters one could find anything in the ''normal'' variety,
as it was once thought of.
At Mr. Roberts', instead, there was the best of the ''other'', as it were,
that which today is considered the ''normal'' variety.
In fact, the two houses were not competitors at the time.
Both houses got their wares from the market, two blocks away from here.
All top quality merchandise, the genuine article,
what we would think of today as ''good old-fashioned wares.''
In the New Orleans market there was a secret sector, where the merchandise,
before it was put on display,
was prepared and arranged by gender, age and quality.
The girls chosen to become ''fancy girls'',
were given over to a man named Buzz, described by Hewlett
as a repulsive and obese individual, always filthy with the grease
which he used to oil the fillies to make their skin softer.
But the keys to the warehouse where the pieces for real collectors were kept
were jealously guarded by a funny little midget known as the General.
Only I have these keys. I'm the master here.
Get inside, you bastards, or I'll have you flogged.
I'll show you who's in charge here. I am the General, you hear?
Come on, follow me. Open up, it's me, the General.
Open up, you sons of bitches!
Hurry up!
Hey, white men, look at the merchandise I'm in charge of.
The General is the guard of the market. This is the market's safe.
Look, tens of thousands of dollars. Top quality whores. All virgins.
You, get to work, dirty Negress. None of them are all Negro.
They all have at least half human blood in their veins, like me.
They've all been sold, and are ready for delivery.
Delivered to your doorstep, luxuriously packaged.
Hey, white men, you can look, but don't touch.
You know the rules.
It's forbidden to touch the merchandise on display.
Only I, the General, can touch.
Do you want to see? Here.
This is Cassandra, a half-caste. She comes from the Harrison estate.
She's the daughter of Zephira and the great Meatto.
Artemis, three-quarters human blood, the firmest tits in the warehouse.
$5,000, payment in cash, comes with a two-year warranty.
Vintage of 1 848. Imperial Reserve, white or Rosé,
guaranteed by the consortium.
This is Eva. You like apples, huh?
Go ahead and eat them, but stay away from any snakes.
You've never seen anything like this. Who cares if you've never seen it?
That's enough, let's go. I don't have time to waste. I'm the General.
Open up!
Come on, keep it up. You clown, dance, move it!
Go on, dance.
No, no, no.
Not like that, not like that, beasts, Like this!
I'll show you.
Like this, not with your hips. Move your ass!
Open up, it's me.
Oh, the Europeans. What an honor!
I'm in a state, I'm afraid. Look at my hands.
Excuse the mess, but you should see in what state they deliver them.
Come on, take your places. I go crazy getting them ready.
They're in such demand that they rip them out of my hands
even before they're ready.
I'm sorry, I don't have much time.
I'm so busy. Come on, show yourselves off to the gentlemen. Take a look.
Not bad, eh? Try to guess the prices. $500, $1 ,000, $1 ,500?
No, $3,000, my dear gentlemen.
Hewlett writes:
''Pairs of male twins at a certain point enjoyed a moment of great popularity,
also because of an ugly habit that became a fad.
But due to the extreme rarity of this particular merchandise,
as there were many orders, there were many tricksters.''
Tricksters? What are you talking about?
This is a reputable establishment, renowned throughout the south.
Look at this pair, a rarity.
- You faggot! - Our clients can rest assured.
These are two authentic Kelloggs. Look, they're signed.
Quiet. Open up, it's me, the General.
Come in, but no questions. These should be in a museum.
They're fit for a king. Base price, $1 5,000.
- What's so special about him? - He's got three of them!
One, two, three. Three, three, three!
Three, he has three, three!
This one had six, including one that broke and is now being repaired.
They were all sold to six different masters,
and the mother killed herself out of desperation.
This is the most important exhibit in the museum.
In the wax museum of New Orleans, among many statues of slaves in chains
and of evil masters, the group that today fascinates the tourists
is the group of Madame La Laurie, the most famous sadist of all time.
We know that she was the wife of a doctor,
that she was a member of the Creole high society in Louisiana,
and that she had a good reputation
until the day when the firemen, who responded to a fire alarm,
they went into the attic and found all the evidence that enabled Judge Caldwell
a nearly exact reconstruction of how the respectable lady
and her faithful helper, Caesar, enjoyed their leisure time.
Come.
Caesar, Caesar, you've done it again.
She died on me.
Caesar, you really go too far.
It's the third girl in a week.
Don't be so upset. I'll buy you another.
But look at my partner, my dear, sweet playmate.
The lovely countess.
She knows how to wait,
how to postpone the divine moment of the first drop of blood.
Pleasure can wait, there's no hurry.
We've given them opium.
And now they're sleeping. They've been sleeping for centuries.
It's all ours, all we have to do is reach out.
We can take our pleasure quickly, consuming it quickly, like Caesar does,
or we can take it a little at a time, allowing them to survive
over a long, drawn-out, exhausting wait,
tormented by desire, fed by her fear.
What about you? Aren't you afraid?
No, you're not afraid, my brave little cock.
But don't worry, fear will come later, when the pliers will bite you
right there, where you now want me.
In your country, when a Negro dares to want a white woman,
isn't this what you do to him?
I don't know who you are, nor where you come from,
but don't you think the time I live in is marvelous?
All this lovely flesh is mine. This body is mine.
I can buy 1 0, 1 00, 1 ,000 of them, if I want to.
Males, females, little boys, little girls.
I can consume them, corrupt them,
enjoy them, destroy them.
What are you waiting for, idiots?
Come on, help yourselves.
When will you ever have another chance like this?
In New Orleans such chances were never lacking.
If a gentleman received an invitation to visit a friend who lived in the city
while the wife and children were on vacation,
in addition to good food and clean linen,
he could expect a comely Negress to share his bed at night.
A refusal would insult the host.
This was just part of the rules of hospitality,
for which the Mammy was responsible.
Get in line.
You, let me see your hands.
Your nails are like a pig's nails. Go on, get washed up!
You, come here. Let me smell you.
You smell like the goats in the barn. Go, and wash with ashes.
You, open your mouth and let me smell your breath.
You smell of garlic. Chew this, it'll take away the stench of a hog.
You're usually clean. You hardly smell at all. Good filly.
You, turn around. You haven't been fucking, have you?
Spread your legs!
Sleeping with a black slave every night was,
for all the white males of the house
fathers, sons and guests, a good hygienic practice, like brushing your teeth.
As a pretext they said it was healthy.
For the sons, it was supposed to be a remedy for teenage acne.
And it was good for the husbands, as the puritanical mores of the times
limited their access to their wives.
But, aside from health considerations,
let's find out how these slave girls were in bed.
Just like the first cigar.
At first there's a horrible stench, and you feel nauseous.
But by the third time you're hooked.
Harder on my back, you know I like it.
Her mother was my first cigar. I smoked her when I was ten.
I was terrified my father would catch me in the act.
But when I realized that my father, too, smoked,
well, I stopped being afraid, and started to enjoy it.
Perhaps it's that gamy smell they have, but I like them more than white ones.
If I can catch one, I'll try to get her into bed.
But where will I find a white woman around here?
Besides, my father says it's not worth it.
They smell too, but like corpses. He says they're bad for your health.
He's been bedding Negresses for 7 0 years, and he hasn't missed a beat.
He likes them big, especially in the tit department.
Look at this merchandise. Not bad, eh?
If you ignore them, you're playing right into their hand.
You destroy them, one night at a time.
At my age, it's starting to get rather trying.
But with the help of divine providence, and oysters,
I can still hold my own.
Mammy! Mammy! Where are you, you black whore?
Where are you, Mammy?
- I'm coming, I'm coming. - Mammy!
What's the matter, master? Why are you angry?
You idiot. You have the gall to ask why I'm angry, you asshole!
Did you, or did you not rip me off by sending this idiot to my room?
Don't talk like that, master.
I've never ripped anyone off.
- She looks like a beautiful lover. - What do I care at my age for beauty?
This filly is a virgin.
What do you expect me to do with a virgin at my age, you idiot?
Take her back.
Don't talk like that, master. Please, don't get mad. Wait.
I'll send you another filly, one who's been broken in.
You should be ashamed of yourself, you ugly whore.
When you came here, were you really a virgin?
Or is the old man too old to fuck anymore?
Are you really a virgin?
You whore, you whore!
Come in, child. Come on in.
Do you want me, master? I asked for you. I'm clean.
- I'm also a virgin. - What are you saying, child?
- How old are you? - I'm thirteen.
- You're just a child. - I'm thirteen, Mammy says.
You mean that here, girls like you-- Where I come from we don't do this.
- I'm not from here. - Do you want this first?
Mammy says that if whites don't play with the whip first,
they can't get it up to fuck a woman.
What are you saying?
The stranger is the journalist Malcolm Fawcett,
and this conversation was excerpted from his experiences in Louisiana.
It refers to his first night in Mobile, in the home of Mr. Charleston,
a planter, whose guest he was for a week.
Please, master, don't send me away.
- Do me this favor. - Don't raise your voice.
Mammy will be angry if I stay a virgin.
- Please,join me. - What do you mean, right here?
Your bed is so big, and I am so small.
If I take my dress off, I don't smell.
You know, I washed my whole body.
I don't smell, master. If you're tired though, for real,
- I'll let you sleep. - Sleep. It would be hard now, child.
It would be too bad, though, master. I like you.
''I wanted to dissuade her,'' writes Fawcett,
''even though, knowing the custom, I realized I was being rude.
But when I recommended that she turn to a young man of her same condition --''
You mean with a Negro? No, I don't like Negroes.
No, Negroes disgust me. I tried once with a Negro.
He hurt me so much. He was so big.
You know,
White men are much smaller, master.
It's much better for a beginner like me.
White men don't smell like Negroes.
Do me the favor,
master, please.
Yes, like that, master. Yes.
This awful book from Boston goes on to spread even more filth. Listen.
''As for the southern ladies, their famous virtue
is greatly devalued by the fact that they have no choice in the matter.''
Listen to this. ''How could they not be virtuous,
since their men would much rather go with colored girls?''
- I can't believe it. - ''The truth is that these women
can get no satisfaction from either husbands or potential lovers,
as these are too often occupied with the comely slaves on the plantation.''
The horror! How could someone write such venomous nonsense?
It's all shameless political propaganda. What do they know of the Negroes,
those pencil pushers from Boston and Philadelphia?
Nothing. But envy, prejudice and malice induce them to try to humiliate us
in every way possible.
My God, how could they insult our husbands like this? Our men?
It's absolutely disgraceful.
Goodness, accusing our men of fornicating with slaves
is like saying that they're copulating with animals.
It's nothing less than an accusation of sexual aberration.
The phenomenon of abnormal mating between whites and Negroes
has a scientific name: Bestiality.
- It's disgraceful! - Lies!
As if we didn't know all too well where our husbands take their incontinence!
Every Friday night -- but what am I saying?
I'm sorry, my friends, but we shouldn't speak so clearly in front of them.
Don't worry, my dear. I've noticed a tendency among our slaves
a general tendency to develop a lighter skin tone.
As time goes by, they become lighter and lighter.
But their mentality, intelligence and sensitivity are those of animals.
It's true, each generation is lighter than the previous one.
In my house there have been a few pink Negro babies, even.
My husband says that this phenomenon is called --
Symbiosis. The scientific term is symbiosis. Your husband is right.
It's like those creatures that take on the color of their habitat.
You're right, dear. Take Scipio, for example.
He's left-handed, like my brother.
Or takeJason, here.
My husband raised him personally from when he was a child.
And now, incredibly, he's almost as blond as my husband.
Nature is truly bizarre.
Here it is, my Negro factory. You get the general idea down there.
Business was going downhill. Cotton and tobacco were in crisis.
So I got up my courage and transformed the plantation into a stud farm.
And I have to say it's worked out well
because the new law that prohibits importing Negroes from Africa
has practically doubled the price of slaves.
- And so, after everything-- - Hey, Pa!
Mr. Wilson's here!
Hello Mr. Bighorn. I've brought the Negress.
Here she is. Did you count the days well?
- Are you completely sure she's in heat? - Of course she's in heat.
She's perfectly ready for breeding.
If we give her to the male right away, he'll certainly go right for her.
Okay.
How many days has it been since the bleeding stopped?
My wife counted 1 2. With the trip, that makes 1 3.
If you let me breed her right away, I'll be out of your hair within two hours.
Can I have her, Pa?
We'll talk about that after the examination.
For now, do your homework.
- Is she healthy? - Of course.
- She doesn't have crabs? - What are you saying?
We always kept her at home.
- Oh, so she's a virgin. - Of course.
You know that we've been saving her forJason.
What? A virgin for such a stallion?
He'll rip her innards apart.
If he does, you can sew her up again. Don't worry.
You know I could breed this one for at least $50.
And right at home, too.
If I've made 60 Negroes and paid 200 for it
it's because I likeJason's line.
- Okay. - Let's go.
You know full well you won't find another one like this.
Well done! But that's your business.
Hey stallion! Hey three-legged stallion!
Hi General.
How's your father's arthritis?
He's been doing much better since getting Negro compresses on his legs.
You're right, Mr. Bighorn.
Strong wine and dark meat cure arthritis, nice and neat.
That's right.
But then I'll find myself with a whole litter with arthritis.
Hey Wilson, look there!
- Where? - Over there, up ahead, that glass.
Why?
Those journalists always want us to look in that glass.
Go wait for me in the barn. I'll be right there.
Okay.
First I have to deal with these gentlemen.
Bring me some more sugar cane!
They're almost all vintage '43. A very good year.
I only lost 25%%.
It's usually 40-60%%, especially from German measles,
which is nothing when it comes to human blood, but it wipes them out.
Why are there so many blondes?
What you want me to say?
One or another might be mine. Lots of them are my brother's.
Some are from the priest.
Some are from some guests who were passing through.
Okay, enough, don't be greedy.
These are the breeding females.
With the new stallions Auze and Mandico that I bought three years ago,
I've been successful with 86%% of them.
With an interval between productions of less than 60 days.
Hey, where are you? Come over here, look at this one!
The black pearl of the ranch. Seven sets of twins in six years.
And I'm sure that this time, too, there are two inside.
This heifer alone is worth a fortune.
Come in, come on in. Damn, you're in luck.
Come inside and see how a little bastard is born.
Fine, isn't he?
He must be six or seven pounds at least.
You know something? I'm going to dedicate this one to you guys.
I'm going to call him ''Macaroni''.
Bravo, Cleopatra. Who's the male?
- Me no know. - What do mean you don't know?
Me no know.
They breed me first with Pluto, then with four other males.
Me no know.
It doesn't matter. You've done a good job.
See what respect the master has?
It's the reward. One dollar per pup.
Family tradition.
Another beloved tradition among breeders
is presenting new prized breeds every year at the big fair in the south
which, like fine horses, carry the name of their family.
The Bighorn breed, celebrated for the precociousness of its females
which can be bred by their 1 0th year
earned its owner two gold medals at theJackson fair.
Hey, bring me Poppea.
I said Poppea!
No, you imbeciles.
That one's pregnant. Drop her.
No, that one.
Here in Louisiana, the breeding ratio is one male to every five females.
But in Virginia,
a great specialist of the time declares the ideal ratio
to be one male for eight females.
In fact, on this basis Virginia produced more than 6000 Negroes per year.
It was the Golden Age in which the great breeding plantations
such as the famous North Carolina planter were even quoted on the stock market.
Now tell me if it doesn't take talent to invent a breed like this.
You see, to create a hybrid, the breeder combines the various races
as an artist does with the colors of his palette.
A little white here, a little black there
a pinch of red and the smidgen of yellow.
Until something comes forth that's not black, not white,
not red, not yellow.
It's a masterpiece.
Get him!
A slave trying to escape.
No, he's afraid of the branding.
It always happens with the new stallions.
At the 1 8th birthday, on the eve of his first services
the new stallion is branded with fire with a conventional mark
that prevents mistakes and confusion in the breeding registry.
- Are you ready, Wilson? Can we go? - I was waiting for you.
- And the heifer? - Ready.
Okay then. Bring her along.
Get back!
Fine, Casanova, fine.
These stallions!Just let them catch the scent of a female!
They have more semen than four teams of oxen.
Did you know they offered me $4500 each?
Here he is, our oldest stud.
Two hundred pounds of muscle and not a single ounce the fat.
And this devil's good for at least 20 shots a day.
With these tanks!
- Is the heifer ready, Wilson? - Ready, Mr. Bighorn.
Okay, then, bring her in.
Hey, Wilson. I told you.
Be careful. But it's your business.
Don't you worry.
I'll take care of it.
That's enough,Jason. Stop!
Get some water. Quick!
''Your honor, my name is Nat Turner.
I intend to provide you with a full confession of my crimes.
On August 21 st, 1 831 , 5 5 whites were massacred
as a result of my doing and that of 7 0 other slaves.
My deep-seated hatred of the whites was--''
''My deep-seated hatred of the whites was--''
Damned idiots!
''Deep-seated hatred came from God, who ordered me to kill them.''
Let's see, 1 831 .
If Cleaver, LeroyJones, Malcolm X, had lived 1 40 years ago
they too, like Nat Turner, would have fallen into hating whites
men, women, children who were there by God's orders.
The slave Cleaver, like the slave Turner, certainly never would have dared imagine
that the order would come to them directly from within.
''The evening of August 21 st, we lined up single file in the cornfield.
We came out right in front of the Travis house.
The night before, God had clearly given me the sign
that this would be our first target.
We knew that inside was the little Travis,
his wife Sarah,''
Who knows if the whites in those days were like those of today?
Or rather, who knows if the whites of today
would have been like those back then if Nat Turner had never existed?
Would they have allowed me to attend their schools,
to become a doctor, to earn $2000 a week,
to have a beautiful house, a wife, a healthy, well-fed baby?
''Nelson, Sam,Jack, Hark and I silently climbed in the living room window.
Will, who was bringing up the rear, took a false step
and tumbled onto the table that was still set.
I was afraid old Travis had woken up
since Will kept making an infernal racket.
Instead, old Travis was still asleep next to his wife
when Sam and Jack moved forward on tiptoe.
His sleep was deep and peaceful
as evidenced by that deep, rhythmic snoring
that I had known since my childhood.
So Sam and Jack moved forward.
That old man who had practically raised me
and had been a tolerant and kindly master
was nevertheless a white man and, as such, had to die.
Grandpa Travis, like all whites, had never dreamed that a slave,
a meek creature without courage or dignity
could ever one day rebel against a master.
So it was perhaps only disbelief
that dominated his mind still clouded with sleep, when--''
''We were about--''
''We were about to leave the house when Hark, on the run was called--''
''was called back by the cry of the children whom we had forgotten.''
''After the murder of the Travis family
our second goal was the extermination of the Reeses.''
Oh, it's those idiots again.
''After the murder of the Travis family
our second goal was the extermination of the Reeses.
Reese was a dull-witted, cruel master
who amused himself by tormenting his Negroes...
with every sort of stupid prank.
His wife and sister-in-law, two dull-witted, insignificant women
encouraged those vapid stunts with little hysterical--''
Buffoon!
''With little hysterical, shrill cries that pierced the ears like daggers.
It was in front of their house that I swore to never again disobey God's orders
and to also spill my share of blood.
I hated Reese
and one day he involved me, too, in one of his humiliating, vulgar pranks.
I could have refused to rebel. But how could I, a slave--''
''I could have refused to rebel. But how could I, a slave?
Reese was a dull-witted, cruel master.''
Nat Turner didn't kill out of hate.
He killed out of love between the columns of that big house.
Who knows why, for us Negroes, this story never loses its value?
Well, Nat Turner, the pious Nat Turner, biblical fanatic
almost a tutor to little Margaret, but nevertheless a Negro
and thus not suspected of desiring that white girl who hung around him all day,
who excited him in a thousand ways without even realizing it.
Where are you, Nat? Come here, Nat.
Here's something new.
It's beautiful!
Come on, Nat. Get me that rose.
No, no. Not the silk one!
The bright one, Nat.
There, see! Now here we are, the two of us.
She and Nat. Almost in skin contact.
The wind in that blond hair, that white neck that he desired so badly.
''Hey Nat,'' she said to me one day
as her closeness and her youthful scent of lavender made me stiff.
''Nat, why are Negroes born so wretched?''
''Why, in this warm spring, are they only fallen flowers?''
Let's take a look. 1 40 years later.
If I were to fall in love with that white girl.
In love to the point of not being able to do any less than what she's doing now.
To want her.
But just because I'm a Negro, like Nat Turner--
I can just imagine the scene!
Sir, I'm Dr. Nat Turner.
I love your daughter and I intend to marry her.
Margaret had just returned from Southampton College for summer vacation
when we decided that the Whitehead house would be our next target.
We advanced, remaining hidden in the oak forest
that surrounded the house on three sides.
When we saw the father so overjoyed at the arrival of his daughter...
and so absorbed in demonstrating all his joy as to not notice us--
I was looking for Margaret.
She was hiding behind a corner of the house.
When I finally saw her, she ran away...
as light and fast as a deer, through the cornfield.
I ran after the glint of that flowing hair in the sun
after the gleam of that face looking back.
She ran faster than I did.
But I caught up.
I must! I must!
I must kill you!
Because I love you! Because you're white!
White!
''Your honor, before condemning me to the gallows
you asked if I felt remorse.
Well, completely at peace and tranquil, I answer you that if I could go back--''
Peace, peace, peace.
I'm a Negro like you, an ex-slave like you.
But today I've dealt with the whites, and I'm speaking with their permission.
And this is a police car.
If you think I'm a traitor, then shoot me.
But first listen to what I have to say.
Slavery was not our disgrace. It is our glory.
We must not soil it with revenge.
In every plan that the racist attempts to search for an alibi
for his evil conscience towards the Negro
all that's necessary is one broken window to make him feel absolved ofhis guilt.
When we allow ourselves to bend before the white man's hatred
we're playing his game.
We're also playing the game of the white communists
who want to make use of us to destroy America.
We don't love America,
but neither do we want to be used to destroy it.
We Negroes must not fall into the same errors that the whites make.
We must not respond to their old white racism
with a new black racism.
To the recent events that have made us understand,
we must respond peace, peace, peace.
On one side, the north that wanted to abolish slavery.
On the other, the south that wanted to keep it.
So the war to liberate slaves cost America one million dead.
Today, the American public assisting in the reenactment of the battle of Shiloh
doesn't root for anyone.
They enjoy the show.
Northern and southern combatants are interchangeable.
It just depends upon the color of the uniform.
The anonymous slavery society closed the books a hundred years ago.
And the accounts are balanced.
For every imported slave, one American death.
The wounded don't count.
Here's one that ended up in bad shape.
A northern uniform. So he wanted it this way, right?
Of course. Say cheese!
Today, everyone's smiling,
dead and wounded, victor and vanquished.
It's wonderful to return home on this splendid day in May
and to take a nice shower to wash away all of the dust of the past.
THIS FI LM IS A DOCUMENTARY.
THE EVENTS OCCURRED I N HISTORY AND THE CHARACTERS REALLY EXISTED.
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a shocking piece of news
just in from Memphis, Tennessee.
Today, April 4, the spiritual leader of America's Negroes, Martin Luther King,
winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, was shot and wounded by an unknown gunman.
He is in very grave condition.
We are awaiting further information, which we will pass on to the public
as soon as we receive it.
The assassin's bullet didn'tjust kill Martin Luther King.
It killed a historical era. The war has begun.
We Negroes have embarked on the violent phase of our fight for freedom.
Today we have guns, bombs, dynamite, knives.
America will be stained red. Corpses will fill the streets.
Martin Luther King, a slave of the bourgeoisie,
a useless social element, a public servant,
an adulator, Washington's bootlicker, a traitor.
Down with the doubters and the Evangelists.
Down with the Uncle Toms.
It's our turn to get to work now, cutting throats.
No white throats were cut.
The shouts of the revolt were nothing, compared to the police sirens.
After all, who was that minister who was killed in Memphis,
that 30 million Negroes were supposed to avenge?
A hero, as Cleaver said, or a swine, an Uncle Tom, as LeroyJones said?
Tom.
Thomas.
I named him Tom. Don't you think it's cute?
Nowadays it's different, but in the old days
all house Negroes were called Tom, then Uncle Tom when they grew old.
That was how we could tell the good Negroes,
the ones who lived in homes, with their masters,
from the bad ones, who lived separately, in the cotton fields.
Even that nice Negro priest that they killed, what was his name?
They called him Uncle Tom, too, because he was good.
He didn't go around spurring those people to revolt against us.
They're not actually bad, but none of them are called Tom.
They can't keep their houses clean, and they spend all their money on cars,
which they break immediately and throw away, like old toys.
They're just like children. But that may be a good thing.
This way they're closer to God.
You should hear them singing in the family chapel I gave them.
They're extraordinary.
His land extended further than the horizon--
He had enormous herds of cattle, and a house full of slaves.
When Jesus had finished speaking, the man asked him:
''Is there anything that my slaves can hold against me?
I feed them. I clothe them. I aid them. I even gave them a temple to pray in.
So you see, my generosity is great.'' And Jesus said to him:
''I will tell you that it is not your generosity that is great,
but your pride.
You love your slaves because they are slaves,
and as long as they remain slaves.
But your power will melt, like fog in the sun.
Your riches will be gone.
And then your slaves will leave your land and your home,
and they will ignore you.
The worst punishment for your pride will be your loneliness.''
Our house was so big. 500 slaves were hardly enough to keep it up.
Then a little Tom left a candlestick sitting next to a curtain,
and the fire burned for three days. Can you imagine?
So many things fed that fire. But this land is still mine.
This good land of the south, once white with cotton balls.
Thank you, Tom. Do you remember that movie?
What was it called? Gone--
Anyway, she took a handful of dirt and held it to her chest. Like this.
And all around her, everything was burned and ravaged by war.
And the Negroes had become bad. And she said-- I can't remember.
Anyway, she said she would farm the land even without slaves.
Not cotton, of course. You'd need Negroes for that.
It's so hard, under the sun.
But there are many other good things here in the south:
fruits, vegetables. Our vegetables are so good.
The salad, the peas.
Have you ever tasted southern peas?
...as we can see by reading the pages of the greatest American Negro poet,
LeroyJones, whose poem --
''Land, Land, Land. The Negro will not be a man until he has his own land.
Negro, look at the ground. ''
- Yoo-hoo, I'm ready. - ''Grab a handful of dirt,
and shove your nails into the concrete. It's real and it's yours.
- You just have to want it. '' - On page 2 1 7, Malcolm X adds.:
''There's only one people on earth that can slit the white man's throat.
His population of slaves, the Negroes. ''
We will now hand the microphone over to the leader of the Black Panthers.
But that's not all. They reject integration, they practice violence,
ideological crime, reverse racism.
They indoctrinate their children in exchange for a meal.
They want to own five states, immediate freedom for all Negro criminals,
exemption from military service, and the freedom to carry machine guns.
But sometimes we're too quick to judge.
Let's take a look at these strange humans.
Their intentions are good, though at times misunderstood.
These humans practice non-violence, ideological love,
free love, the integration of the sexes,
and a perfect racial confusion with the Negroes,
together with whom they propose to build the America of the future.
And yet, LeroyJones, today's foremost representative of Negro-ness says,
''Embracing the non-violence that young whites preach about is nothing short of
diving into the current of this failed American civilization.
America is a Sodom. America is a Gomorrah.
America is a Babylon. This is the society in which
Martin Luther King wanted the Negroes to get ready to join.
I'd rather go to hell. But the chance of becoming citizens of Gomorrah
is the best thing that whites have right now to offer the Negroes.
If you hope for the survival of this rotten society, of this corrupt order,
of this falling Rome, ready to cut your balls off with the edge of a dollar,
you'll lose. Christ and the effigy of the dollar are one and the same.
We Negroes must remember all that we are seeing now,
and in the end we must erupt like a volcano,
so we can crush, under flowing, molten lava this herd of pigs
who have transformed the world into a giant garbage can.''
June 1 9, 1 97 0.
LeroyJones, again: ''The white man's attitude toward sex is sick.
The white man makes sex dirty. The white man is primitive,
and he has the sexual intelligence of a cave man.
The white man is afraid of the Negro because he knows he's sexually inferior.
His sexual device is out of order.
That's why liberal whites have allowed us
a certain amount of progress toward virility,
and today he's telling us, 'One day we'll let you have balls.
Until then, keep yourself cool.'
American whites are taught to be pederasts in school.
That's why their faces are weak and expressionless.
Their voices, gestures and mannerisms are those of eunuchs.
white women are stocky whores, covered in makeup.
They don't know what to do to fire up their impotent males.
white American women are the ugliest and most obscene on earth.
The famous question, 'Would you allow your daughter to marry a Negro?'
is outdated.
Today the question is,
'Would you allow your son to marry a white woman?'
Today the roles are reversed.''
The Black Panthers say, ''When the people rise up
to free themselves from slavery, they must arm themselves with guns.
If we want to free ourselves of guns, we must arm ourselves with guns.''
And now Cleaver:
''America is defended by sadistic and bloodthirsty masters.
The blood, the tears and suffering of the Negro
are the foundation on which America rests.
We were forced to build it. But if they force us to, we will destroy it,
and the result will be a horrific bloodbath.
We, too, are bloodthirsty.''
But the Negroes are also hungry.
At least that's what it says on the banner
that leads the demonstration at Cape Kennedy
on the occasion of the first white men on the moon.
The demonstration was organized by Martin Luther King's successor,
Reverend Abernathy, who says,
''You, white man, are the cause of all our woes.
You tore us away from Africa, made us slaves,
kept us in ignorance, exploited us, got rich, and now you're going to the moon.
We can't accept that. Stop playing with your millionaire's toys,
and pay us the damages you owe us.
Where are you going, white man, with your billionaire's toy?
What are you running away from, your past?
What did you do, that was so bad?
Why do your black brothers hate you so?
It's useless to run away,
because the past is not behind us, as Abernathy believes,
but ahead, traveling toward the stars, just like Einstein said.
And the faster you run, the faster you'll get there.''
GOODBYE UNCLE TOM
- Is this a bad time? - No, please, come in.
- Who are these people? - They are Europeans.
To be exact, they're Italians, Italian journalists.
They've come here to the south to conduct an inquiry, right?
In inquiry on slavery. They seem to be quite shocked.
- What is their religion? - Catholic, I think.
- You're Catholic, aren't you? - Roman Catholic Apostolic.
They shouldn't be so shocked, then.
After all, the Pope, who is usually so generous with his excommunications,
has never excommunicated a merchant of black meat.
Unless he eats it on Fridays.
- Why are they here, then? - I think they're slaves, too.
You know Catholics. They're slaves of the fascination of sin.
Or they simply want to protest. What are we going to do about it?
These Europeans, after the French Revolution, do nothing but protest.
Please, times have changed: Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire...
This is rich, Catholics who read books written by the devil.
What would His Holiness say?
Please! These gentlemen are my guests.
And following the example of other friends of mine,
have given them free access to the entire house.
This way they'll see who the real slaves and masters are.
No, Senator, please. No chicken bones.
They're very dangerous to puppies.
I had to take two of them to the vet. It's so annoying.
Well, since each one of you is a famous person,
your frank and authoritative statements on the subject of slavery
should be very useful to these gentlemen.
I agree, and I'll be the first.
It's absolutely true that slavery cannot be hidden,
just like a volcano's eruption or a cancerous affliction
that erodes a man's face. I, for one, have freed my slaves,
but I did so only because they were stupid, smelly, sad and boring.
I am an aristocrat, and I believe in freedom, but not in equality.
This is my statement. Signed,John Randolph of Roanoke.
I'm John Pithiou,
and I think that slavery is the natural condition of the poor,
whether white or black.
In fact, I consider it ideal,
because it's synonymous with a full belly, a guaranteed dwelling,
medical help and security in old age, whereas for us it's a status symbol.
Furthermore, we mustn't forget, gentlemen,
that we whites make up only 20%% of the world's population,
so if one day we gave up our power, it would be the end of us.
It will depend solely on us, and I mean solely on us,
if a meek slave or a snake in the grass gets off the slave trader's ship.
What a stench! What did you bring, a load of rotten meat?
What are you talking about? It's top choice.
They stink because they eat like pigs, then they throw up and mess themselves.
- How long was the trip? - 94 days.
Didn't they get air on the bridge?
Are you crazy, with the sea full of English ships?
The times have changed.
This is contraband merchandise.
If I get caught with one Negro on board, I'll be hung.
And I wouldn't be the first.
If they spent the entire trip down there, they must be all rotten.
No way! On this ship rule number one is hygiene.
Hygiene and cleanliness. If one of them gets really sick,
I don't wait for him to spread it to the whole load.
I throw him overboard and that's that. I deliver my merchandise in good shape.
- Are you interested or not? - How many are there?
3 27 between males and females. These are all males. No syphilis.
Black meat was sold either by the head or by weight.
The load was arranged in layers, and each Negro had a berth
3 5 by 1 2 inches, in which he was chained from 45 to 90 days,
depending on the wind.
This way, over the course of two centuries,
about 50 million slaves were shipped to the Americas,
30 million of which did not survive the journey.
To keep epidemics at bay, the Negroes were watered three times a day
with carbolic acid and sea water.
The load was always insured.
But since the insurance paid only if the Negro died on board,
if an epidemic broke out, the captain would rather not take chances,
and preferred to unload a whole shipment in the sea, still alive,
rather than risk unloading a ship of dying men and women.
Dysentery depreciated the merchandise, so in order to keep it from buyers,
the captain would order the sealing of''leaky holes'' with a cork
sealed with tow and tar.
In November of 1 81 2,
in a shipment of 41 5 slaves, the buyer contested 21 6,
because he realized that they had been plugged up.
The captain was Jean Lafitte, the famous pirate patriot hero
who sold slaves in Louisiana to raise money for Karl Marx in Europe.
- What's that mushy stuff? - Corn, molasses and fat.
They love it. We have to tie them up and give them a little at a time,
otherwise they'd choke.
That one doesn't seem to like it.
That one has decided to let himself starve to death. Pitiful!
Hey, we need a chisel and hammer and a funnel over here.
The remedy was quite frightening, and served as an example.
And even if it cost the master a little damage,
a Negro minus three or four teeth was always better than a dead one.
- Let's say $1 50 a head. - I said I'll buy them by the pound.
- The whole shipment for $2 a pound. - Seven dollars.
- Three. - Six.
- Four. - All right, but I'm losing money.
1 20 years later, three or four generations at the most,
and some of them have already forgotten. They are not many.
Perhaps the equivalent of a few hundred shipments of slaves.
Ambassadors, ministers, industrialists, intellectuals, artists:
all individual fortunes worth millions of dollars.
Deaf to the insults of the priests of Negro-ness, these Uncle Tom pigs
have quietly joined the system,
and followed the great American dream of success,
seen as the sporting victory over life's adversities.
For the first time, the self-made man is black, and that's saying a lot,
if we consider that among his many misfortunes this is perhaps the worst:
well-dressed, worldly,
so well integrated as to appear lighter skinned than his fellow Negroes,
a little chubby, due to a residual hunger that subconsciously still haunts him,
he is still the same Negro who arrived on board a ship with LeroyJones,
Malcolm X, Cleaver and the Black Panthers.
Those men are either in Harlem or in prison, plotting revenge.
This man is here. He dances a waltz in a tuxedo,
and tomorrow will go to work wearing a double-breasted suit.
The self-made Negro is proud of his past misfortunes,
and the horrors of slavery are his epic.
This was the most famous slave sorting and clearing center in Louisiana.
Even Thomas Ewell wrote about it.
Let's read some excerpts from the camp's rules and regulations:
''It is ordered that at Fort Bastille all African slaves be quarantined.''
Page 1 1 6: ''In large iron cages, slaves with mange and scabies
will be fumigated with ailanthus vapors.
The epileptics will be hung by the feet
so their blood, flowing to the head, will arrest their convulsions.''
Reading from page 1 22: ''It is mandatory for all slaves
to receive an initial bath in a mixture of water, salt, ash, and soapwort root.''
Now, reading from page 1 30:
''The bath will be followed by a greasing with lard, palm oil and turpentine.
We remind our employees that 82%%
of imported slaves is afflicted with contagious skin diseases,
and that therefore the law forbids their trade.
Using the specially designed slides, the slaves will be gathered
for the next phase of their cleansing.
Eggs and lice that may have survived the previous treatments
will be exterminated with the total destruction of their natural habitat.
The razors must be sharpened every 200 shavings,
to avoid damage to the scalps.''
Cleansed both inside and out,
the Negro was fortified before the long journey inland
with a daily ration of a half gallon of corn meal,
a pint of beans, a pound of sweet potatoes,
- a pound of fat -- - Don't go overboard.
They only get a half-pound of fat. This is not an Italian restaurant.
Besides, we don't need a defense lawyer.
Look at them. All they want is to eat, to eat anything.
To eat and to fuck, that's all they want. And they want to survive.
To survive anything, beatings, syphilis, cholera, the heat, the cold.
Their strength lies in their adaptability.
Both in heaven and in hell, they fill their bellies
and spit out dozens of children.
I for one agree with those who support mandatory castration.
I don't mean to be cruel,
but if we don't cut off a few million black balls now,
you can be sure that in one or two hundred years--
Dick Gregory, the first Negro President of the United States!
What makes this candidate for the White House exceptional
is that his political program does not include cutting the throats
of all white Americans.
Perhaps this is why he wasn't very successful.
The more popular David Hillyard screamed,
''We'll kill Nixon and all the sons of bitches that are against us.''
Gregory is more modest. He's content with his image on the dollar bill,
and obtaining what the signers of the Black Manifesto requested:
300 billion dollars as damages for the suffering of 3 million slaves.
In the meantime he's handing out small advances,
and promises that the rest will be delivered promptly.
The livestock cars that transported the slaves up north
covered 400 miles in three days along the left bank of the Mississippi,
all the way up to Natchez or Pittsburgh. The slave trade was very busy.
It slowed down only in the autumn,
when the trains had to stop in Baton Rouge,
and the slaves had to proceed on foot through rain-flooded swamps.
The red flag, which back then was the symbol of slavery, preceded the convoys.
A tuba, a violin and a trombone kept up the slaves' morale
when the going was rough.
Neither the slave traders nor the public, at the time,
considered this trade immoral.
They were comforted in part by the fact that among their clients
were men such as PresidentJackson and PresidentJefferson.
Among their colleagues were men such as David Mitchell, governor of Georgia,
and James Bowie, hero of the Alamo.
Come on. Move it!
Let's have some music! Make merry! Play!
Come on. Let's have some music! Be merry. Play for me!
Go free with God. Go forth, free with God.
Go on, go free with God.
Well then, $300 for the males, $200 for the females,
and $1 00 for the puppies. It's all there, right?
In addition to having illustrious clients,
the traders also had illustrious suppliers,
like theJesuits of Saint Inigoe in Maryland.
The Catholic Church had always ignored slavery,
but when in 1 838 the Pope ordered that slaves in convents be freed,
theJesuits immediately got rid of them: they sold them.
When the convoys reached the sugarcane and cotton mills,
the traders would allow their Negroes a few days' rest, so they could present them
to their customers in good shape. The customers were few, but good.
In 1 850, 4 million slaves were owned by 4,000 planters.
There were only 400 families who owned more than 1 0 slaves.
Eighty percent of the white population had never owned slaves.
The dream of possessing a young Negro woman tormented the lonely dreams
of poor white men, forced to long periods of abstinence in such a hot land,
where the white women were few and intractable.
Not bad, eh?
Many of these poor and restless men were--
Cut it out.
This is my buddy, Buzz.
This is my buddy, Sonny.
This is my buddy,Jake.
- So, are you coming with us? - Isn't it illegal?
What do you mean? Nothing is illegal in this fucking country.
You hear that? He wants money.
Many of these poor white men, the Crackers, as they were called,
were serving what was called time-limited slavery,
a period of hard labor, usually of five years,
to pay off the price of the trip to America from Europe.
Another group was formed by thieves, rapists, murderers,
who had been deported to the colonies from French and English prisons.
Their hatred toward the Negroes was not just a racial issue.
Negroes were always slaves, and therefore obliged to work for free,
but also to be the scabs of the white laborers,
who had to choose between unemployment and a miserable pay.
Come on, let's go.
Thus, the hatred of the white slave toward the Negro slave
was appeased through gratuitous acts of violence,
perpetrated especially on the women, who slept alone at night
in the barn with the animals, and were therefore defenseless.
Oh, go away.
The black puppies not yet ready for work were like toys,
and as such they were given to children.
But the black puppies grew up quickly, and pretty soon they preferred
a new kind of game, that the white kids often enjoyed watching.
Let's read an excerpt from the diary of Fanny Kemble, English actress:
''From the early morning the boughs of the large tree before my window
were full of couples chirping like blackbirds in love.
I, who was English, and had just joined my American husband in Georgia,
was amazed that such a puritanical white society could allow its slaves
to indulge in such depravity in every corner of the jungle.
Another time, in the rice fields,
I came upon such a carefree, shameless band of urchins,
who were so busy with their pleasure that they didn't even notice me.''
But after her marriage to the planter George Butler,
Fanny Kemble became a typical southern lady.
I, a typical southern lady?
Have you ever seen a southern lady ride a horse western style?
Now I'll show you another thing that a southern lady would never show you.
Look at all the lovebirds!
Look at them running from the sugarcane field.
The masters themselves encourage them.
Do you know what my husband says? ''Go on, get busy!
The more children you have, the happier you'll make me.
Do as you please.
I get rich, and you have a good time.''
In this shop, you don't pay for what you break, and I pick up the pieces.
Excuse me, ma'am, where is the church at Turner Bridge?
I don't understand. I'm German.
- Where is church? - Three miles down road.
- What's happening here, ma'am? - Very interesting.
They're cutting the Negro who broke 20 virgins at the Peterson plantation.
- Cutting what? - Cutting his balls, what else?
He's through fucking.
The pliers! The pliers!
If on the one hand the masters allowed their slaves
an almost unlimited sexual freedom,
it was also true that he would be furious if that freedom cost him money.
On every plantation there were always a number of virgins
destined for the marketplace.
Their virginity had a very definite value, and if you took it,
you were a thief.
Such thieves were publicly castrated,
and the castration took place at the very scene of the crime.
Hewlett, a Louisiana man, wrote in 1 831 :
''Such an exciting spectacle was a pleasant interruption
to the boredom of a Sunday afternoon.
Males, females and puppies enjoyed it from start to finish.
The more the victim screamed, the more fun they had.''
The master calls for the pliers.
No, not my balls!
Shut up! Take the balls with your hands and pull.
- Quick, put the balls in the pliers. - He's pissing! He got me all wet!
Not my balls! No!
- Do you want to go in? - No, thank you.
- Listen. - Squeeze!
Did you hear that? It's done.
- What did they use for the operation? - Horse pliers.
- It's horrible to make him suffer so. - No, Negroes never suffer.
That Negroes felt physical and moral pain less that white men
was a widely held belief.
The scientific writings of that time,
first among them those by the authoritative Samuel Cartwright,
a professor at the University of Louisiana,
mention ''poor motor skills, typical of monkeys and subhuman species in general.''
No one suspected yet that all the folklore, the excesses,
the collective hysteria don't Negate the presence of pain.
On the contrary, they underline its intensity.
At this point I have only to remind you that God condemned to slavery
the damned line of Canaan from the time ofJoshua.
God ordered Abraham's descendants to keep slaves,
and he decreed that those slaves were to be inherited by their children.
God recognized Abraham as the master of the slaves.
And Jesus ordered
that any who dare object to or disrupt the institution of slavery
be repudiated as subversive individuals, whose behavior is --
The Protestant Church,
then even more powerful than the Catholic Church in America,
approved of and preached slavery as a divine decree.
The sermons of the most influential ministers, like this one,
by Reverend Stringfellow of Virginia, were bound and published in volumes.
The curse in the Old Testament on the black man, Canaan,
the evil son of Noah, who had castrated his father,
was falling heavily on his descendants, who were now reduced to slavery.
The Baptists said, ''Flog them.''
The Presbyterians, ''Deny them rights.''
The Methodists, ''Chain them up.''
While Bishop Polk, the same one who later became a Confederate general,
beat all records as a slaveholder.
Slavery is thus a divine institution, ordered and sanctioned by God.
Therefore, with all the authority granted my by the church,
I, Reverend Stringfellow of the State of Virginia,
order you to honor slavery
and not to question it on the basis of false moral grounds.
Instead of false moral grounds, Reverend Stringfellow would have done better
talking about false economic grounds.
For example, it was false to think that a slave's labor was free
simply because he wasn't paid.
Let's consider the eternal problem of domestic servants.
When a master thought he could solve it
by filling his huge house with droves of Negroes dressed to the nines,
he was solving a very different problem--
the problem of his prestige in the eyes of his family and his guests.
Please, come in. But I'm warning you, I can't give you much of my time.
As you can see, this isn't a house, it's a madhouse.
- The luggage. - What luggage? Oh, yes!
Mr. Thackeray's luggage.
Haven't I told you a million times to get it and bring it downstairs?
Go on, don't waste anymore time.
My God, they're useless! Hurry up!
I'll have to leave you to your own devices. Take a look around.
- I'll see you later. - Where do the sheets go, ma'am?
Come on. Let's hurry it up!
This looks nice.
Always cleaning, cleaning. My fingers are hurting, ma'am.
Even at night I dream that I'm still cleaning.
Black slave's always cleaning.
And you keep telling me I have to clean even better.
Where do we put the sheets, ma'am?
''Where do we put the sheets, ma'am?'' Put them on the bed, you idiots!
The real mistress of the house, though, was the Mammy.
The house was her kingdom. The children were her subjects.
She reigned upstairs, over the children of both masters and slaves alike,
in absolute promiscuity, because black or white,
all babies have the same color pee.
She was almost always fat, thanks to her privileges in the kitchen.
She was always mean and arrogant, and mistreated everyone, black or white.
All this thanks to the immunity she enjoyed in the domestic setting.
When, for instance, a white man --
- Whom does this one belong to? - Throw him over there.
When I'm done with your pup, I'll latch him onto my tit.
Be careful, he's got the runs, he's messing everywhere.
- I'm freezing, do I have to bathe? - Get in there and wash up good.
Hey you, pump the water, faster!
- Don't let them play with my dress. - Get back in there!
Take that dress off. Give me that, face powder is $5 an ounce!
It's not meant for dirty Negroes like you. Now get out of here!
- Enough Mammy, I'm clean. - Let me take a look.
You don't like the water, eh? You're worse than a Negro.
Not so hard, you're hurting me.
You know those Italian photographers that are here?
Mammy, I want them to take my portrait in the pink dress.
Is it cut too low?
Get out of here! You whites are such bastards.
Scoundrels! You're all scoundrels! And you, get the fuck away!
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
And you, will you stop plucking those feathers!
Drinking water! Drinking water!
Thief!. Let me see! Where is the chicken?
Give me your hat.
Look here! Thief!.
- Cake with cherries. - Wait!
I keep putting the cherries on, and I never run out of cherries.
These are onions, not carrots! Can't you smell them?
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
The almonds, I can't crush them. I'm going to use a plate.
This is not a kitchen! It's a huge latrine!
Dirty Negro woman, she's putting her hands in the mayonnaise.
I'm a clean Negro, and I crack eggs with my glove on.
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
Get down from there!
The Negro little boy Flew right up into the sky
Pigs! You're worse than pigs!
Pigs are much better.
And all this just to seat two people at the dinner table!
This is the first image of a historical carousel called ''Pilgrimage'',
which is celebrated every year in the spring.
At this time, the old south takes a trip down memory lane.
For the sake of the carousel, everything comes out of storage:
from the old granny in a wheelchair to the few neighborhood Negroes,
who for $1 2 an hour agree to pose as slaves.
The slaveholders bravely revisit their sins of yore, like this one,
the first of the day.
They had a slave bring them their coffee in bed. Incredible.
The 1 9th century feels very far away, halfway up the ladder of time.
How was it? It depends if you're looking from the bottom or the top.
From the bottom, we discover under old drapes
a modern and hypocritical reality.
From above, on the other hand,
we enjoy a stale view of ancient, innocent customs,
such as chaste girls bathing with their nightgowns on.
Right next door, we find a walnut stool used to flog slaves.
It looks more like an antique than an instrument of torture.
Next to the music box we see the blond Eveline,
sitting on Uncle Tom's lap on a rainy evening.
In the dusky sitting room, the old grandfather clock keeps time.
It makes us feel almost sorry that General Sherman is at the gates.
Sherman arrived with 30,000 Union troops.
Today, there are 1 00,000 northerners.
A mere hundred years have passed
since the General swept like a fury down from the north
and tore down these candid temples to slavery, and already the south
seems to have bounced back to the original splendor of its dark age.
The pretentious Neoclassical style of its large houses
shines again over the green parks as it did in those opulent times,
which were rife with slaves, cotton, tobacco,
and the coffers of the south were full of Confederate dollars.
Today the old houses of the south are national museums,
and their owners are responsible for their upkeep.
The woman of the house is usually in charge of protecting the furniture
and the antique rugs.
Stop! You can't come in with high-heeled shoes.
After a long, grim winter without northerners in the house,
the old south relives in the spring its economic boom.
The north today buys cotton at $1 0 per hundred kilograms.
The south sells its high-quality, slave-grade cotton at $1 per ball.
Nixon devalues the dollar by 7%%.
The south revalues its old Confederate dollar by 1 07%%, exchanging it equally.
The boom goes on.
Someone found an old column in the cellar and sliced it up.
Today, the old white south can be bought by the slice.
$1 0 a slice, and the Negro, posing as a slave, keeps half of the proceeds.
New York, Fifth Avenue. It's Easter.
A religious extremist waves a flag and a Bible.
He yells something to do with Negroes, but no one can understand him.
On the most bourgeois street in the world,
they celebrate Easter with the spring parade,
and spring is the most bourgeois of the seasons.
Up here, far from the rotting crowd below,
a chosen few have found an altar close enough to the sky,
even though it's been sullied by the arrival of the police.
''We're here,'' they say, ''to declare our contrition over the sins of the world.''
''Naked?'' The police ask.
''We're not naked, we're undressed.''
Satisfied, they kiss. Today the police no longer trust the penal code.
A crime looks like a crime.
Then, it turns out that it's an ideological crime,
and they look like idiots.
Might as well drop the whole thing.
Today, being white, as well as being shameful, is also a grave sin.
One of the many ways to atone is to cover smear paint on one's body.
Each smear is a sin, and each sin has its color.
Red for wars, massacres and the like,
yellow for gold and riches and all the evils associated with wealth.
Black for racism, Nazism, fascism and lots of other -isms.
The evil one, meaning the devil, is white.
The devil's first victim,
according to these penitents who are ashamed of their white bottoms,
is the Negro, who seems here to feel slightly out of place.
''Abracadabra, I'm going to exorcise you.''
For centuries the white devil kept the Negro in hell.
He forced him to squirm on the ground like a worm.
He imprisoned him, flogged him, tortured him.
Then he dragged him in chains through his American ordeal.
He chose him over Barabbas.
He betrayed him likeJudas. He crucified him in Vietnam.
But today it's Easter, and the Negro is reborn
and ascends to the sky, to take his place at his father's side,
because the Negro is the son of God, because God is black.
In fact in Detroit, in the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart,
Jesus has been painted black. Is it antiracism or reverse racism?
Once upon a time they said, ''When God was white,
the Negro was not a man,
because God, who had made man in his image, was not black.''
That must mean that today, since God is black, we'll say this,
''God made man in his image,
and since God is no longer white, the white man is no longer a man.''
The Negro community has flocked to this church where all the saints,
and even the Virgin Mary are all black.
We can't help but think back
to the famous black Manifesto written in August, 1 969, and still extant,
in which the Negroes claimed that the Church owed them
300 billion dollars in damages for what they'd been put through.
The Lord's Prayer says: ''Forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.''
So now who will pay, if the father who forgives trespasses is no longer white,
nor is anyone in his family?
They had only just begun to hear about it,
but already that white God, who promised a heaven with no slaves
and no masters, fascinated them.
He seemed to be one of them.
He was humiliated, flogged, crucified.
And for his whole life he had eaten out of the same plate as the poor.
Get another plate, son.
Hewlett writes:
''It is tolerated that the slaves gather when they are free from work
in order to imitate in their fashion the Christian rituals.
Experience has taught us that the more a slave is religious,
the calmer, more humble and resigned he will be.
However, the law prescribes also
that these gatherings will be moderated and presided over by a white man.''
Of all the tales in the Bible, the flight from Egypt fascinated them the most.
They were so convinced that the story related to them personally,
that they would draw it on the walls. Africa was Palestine,
the ocean was the Red Sea, the sharks were the Pharaohs,
and the Egyptians were the white masters.
All those fantastical analogies between their dark history
and the flight of the chosen people toward the Promised Land
influenced them so, that they started running away at a rate of 5,000 a year.
They always ran toward the rivers and the swamps,
because they had crossed the water to come here,
and they thought that freedom lay across the water.
There was always a reward on the head of a runaway slave.
The reward was not contingent, however, on the slave being returned alive.
All that were needed were their hands or their heads.
Thus many hunters, especially in Florida, specialized in runaway slaves.
The fire of Atlanta destroyed a daguerreotype
that portrayed a scene like this one. On the back it bore this inscription:
''A good catch today, 1 87 heads.''
Even Andrew Jackson, the great president, approved of hunting slaves.
Kenneth Stamp writes:
''One dayJackson promised $50 to whoever could bring back one of his slaves,
and $1 0 extra for every 1 00 lashes, up to a maximum of 300.''
None of the 1 4 American presidents who were slave owners
were ever too kind to the Negroes.
They usually found them dumb, clumsy, and mostly loud.
Another great president, Thomas Jefferson, wrote:
''My slaves are such idiots, that instead of going to bed,
they waste the night away under my windows, making up dances and songs
which, according to them, mock their master.''
When a Negro mocked his master, to useJefferson's phrase,
he tried to wound his pride with the only weapon he had, the grotesque.
Today he wields that weapon against his entire civilization,
against his hero, his symbol, his system.
The white hero is armed, and the sword is the symbol of his prevarication.
He's lurking, again, under a friar's tunic,
with threats of damnation, pale and ugly like the devil.
''We are beautiful,'' says Carmichael, the leader of the black students.
''We are a splendid race.''
That's all well and good, but this year there will be two Miss Americas.
A white one, and a black one, who will be called Boganda,
not because it's a nice name, but because it's an African name.
Today, everything that's black has to have that Negro-ness.
Afro, African, anything but American.
''Do you know,'' says Carmichael, ''why the Negroes spoke so badly?''
They were protesting against English.
Protest is an ugly fad word, like Negro-ness.
Boganda, too, is an ugly name for a queen.
It sounds more like chains than like freedom.
''We don't want this white freedom.'' Another slogan from Harlem.
''We want a black freedom, and five white states,
that the United States must give us.''
They dance like Africans, dress like Africans, and speak Swahili.
''We repudiate your American language,
which you use to say that we are savages, beasts, monkeys,
and that our sweat smells bad.''
This was said for the first time by Professor Cartwright in 1 831 .
Smell this sweat. Do you think it smells human?
Or does it have a beastly smell?
Well, why does it have a beastly smell? Because our skin is different.
And it's not because of the color, that's the last thing.
Our illustrious colleagues up north know
that in one square centimeter of this black skin
there are at least twice the sweat glands than in ours.
You don't need a microscope to observe that in this limited cranial capacity
there is very little brain: that this is not hair, but beastly bristles:
this forehead is absurdly low,
these eyes totally lack luster, and show no flicker of intelligence:
that these monstrous nostrils resemble those of a monkey:
that these teeth and this jaw,
characteristic of anthropophagus creatures,
are the indisputable proof that this is a merely humanoid race,
a race inferior to ours.
A race that is merely
another attempt on nature's part
in its millennial journey
toward its ultimate goal, perfection,
the white race, homo sapiens,
in other words, us.
Excuse me, Professor, are you Jewish?
Yes, of course. Why?
Let's imagine we wanted to exterminate them.
Fire, gas, deportation? Oh, no.
It would be enough to refrain from curing their illnesses.
Remember, a healthy Negro is a perfect slave.
And an imperfect slave is a sick Negro.
Sick? With which disease, Professor?
These individuals are afflicted by a disease called ''draptomania'',
which is an impulse to flee.
It's a nervous disease, which drives the Negro to flee.
Mind you, not out of a desire for freedom or a sense of dignity.
Negroes have no such sentiments.
He runs because he is ill. Oh, here's a perfect case:
in fact, an exemplary case of that affliction
which we scientists call African scatopathy.
- Are those muzzles? - Oh, no! Looks are deceiving.
It's not a muzzle.
It's just an obstacle that stops them from eating all sorts of garbage,
like dirt and their own excrement.
This may be one of the more repugnant illnesses found in nature.
I'm sure it's caused by the lack of some unknown substance.
Look at what extremes they go to. They have such a fear of work,
and such a desire to do nothing, that they have tricked their masters.
Look, they're so clever.
They make their legs, arms, feet or hands drop off,
so they can live of their mutilation.
It seems impossible. How did they end up like this?
I told you.
To get out of working, they inflicted some small wound on themselves,
and then gangrene set in,
so the surgeon had to cut off arms and legs to save their hides.
What are these people doing here? Aren't they Indians?
Yes, but the Indians are useless.
Between a Negro and an Indian
there's the same difference as between a dog and a coyote.
You can beat a dog to death, and he'll go on licking your feet.
If you deprive a coyote of its freedom, you might as well deprive it of air.
An Indian will never be a slave.
No one has ever succeeded in having them reproduce in captivity.
They don't eat. They don't speak. They don't sleep and they don't make love.
Look at these bizarre creatures, neither men nor beasts.
These black and sick projections of our humanity,
who suddenly ask us to survive in this world of ours.
They are as ancient as we are, and yet up until now
they had never seen a wheel.
But in a world like ours, rich with centuries of civilization,
what could they ever do, but bask in the reflection of our glory?
Every year in February, the white people of Louisiana
hold a carnival draped in black skin.
Today it feels like the parody
of the privilege enjoyed for one day a year by all the slaves.
That day, the masters would tolerate insults and threats.
''Further left than any left, we'll drive against the current.''
But if Cleaver and Bobby Seale, founder of the Black Panthers,
had lived 1 50 years ago, the things they yell out every day now,
they could have said them only on the day of the carnival.
''You whites, who still today wave your discriminating and racist flags,
we'll put you all up against a wall!''
But the next day, Cleaver and Seale would have been sold right here,
in the huge slave market, where the rum ran like a river in the streets.
Then, when the trumpet would sound the closing of the market,
and the drunken crowd would be thrown out of the enclosure,
they would have been locked up like jailbirds in the shacks of the camp,
so they could spend their last night with their wives and children.
All this is now in the past, and is part of history.
Any reference to the people in these images is purely coincidental.
They happened to be walking by here while our cameras
were filming the site of the most famous slave market in the south,
where every year, during the carnival, 20,000 slaves were sold.
400, I said 400 and not a penny less.
- No, 200 is as high as I will go. - I didn't steal him, you know.
- 300, then. - No.
You can keep your Negro, then.
New Orleans, February, 1 831 .
The son of the sheriff, Tommy Adley,
draws the winning numbers of the state lottery at the 27 th slave market.
First prize, a quarter mulatto girl of 1 5 years.
Second prize, a cook, and third prize, three fat pigs from Virginia.
Together with the Memphis fair, the fair in New Orleans
is the most important fair in the south,
with a volume of business of more than 40 million dollars a year.
The merchandise is all homegrown,
and comes from farm consortia in Florida and in Virginia.
The market is on the upswing.
A typical male, that only six years ago went for $500,
is now worth $1 ,500 plus taxes.
Colonel Bowie, who only deals in wholesale pups,
can sell them today at up to $1 5/lb.
This year the most popular races are Ausa, Mandingo, and Turkana.
The Ausa are more graceful, but more fragile.
The Mandingo are more sturdy, but not as intelligent.
The Turkana are of smaller build, more docile and manageable.
They are the most popular with the religious institutions.
In 1 863, the French Ursuline nuns alone had 200 of them.
Of all the ones we saw at the market, this is the loveliest little angel.
He's really a delightful creature.
What should we do, sister?
It's very tempting, but have you seen the prices this year?
- He's too expensive. - But he's such an angel.
And he's healthy and strong. He could help in the kitchen.
Sister, can you imagine what the Mother Superior would say?
- She's already bought four this year. - Oh, sister.
He's not that expensive, at $300. Let's offer them $200.
He got scared and lost his mother in the crowd.
They can't even get him to tell them his name.
He just stands there, quiet, frowning,
but a little calmer, with so many policemen around,
who seem to protect him from those large white ghosts, who scared him.
After only one day of power,
the Negro king of the carnival has lost his throne.
His short time of privilege has expired.
Now it's the white man's turn.
Right here, in the Carré, where the queens of the neighborhood have gathered,
there once stood two famous houses of ill repute.
The one called The Two Sisters,
and right across the street, the other, Mr. Roberts'.
Since at the time there were only two, distinct genders,
anyone could choose what they liked in either of the two houses,
without the danger of making mistakes.
At the Two Sisters one could find anything in the ''normal'' variety,
as it was once thought of.
At Mr. Roberts', instead, there was the best of the ''other'', as it were,
that which today is considered the ''normal'' variety.
In fact, the two houses were not competitors at the time.
Both houses got their wares from the market, two blocks away from here.
All top quality merchandise, the genuine article,
what we would think of today as ''good old-fashioned wares.''
In the New Orleans market there was a secret sector, where the merchandise,
before it was put on display,
was prepared and arranged by gender, age and quality.
The girls chosen to become ''fancy girls'',
were given over to a man named Buzz, described by Hewlett
as a repulsive and obese individual, always filthy with the grease
which he used to oil the fillies to make their skin softer.
But the keys to the warehouse where the pieces for real collectors were kept
were jealously guarded by a funny little midget known as the General.
Only I have these keys. I'm the master here.
Get inside, you bastards, or I'll have you flogged.
I'll show you who's in charge here. I am the General, you hear?
Come on, follow me. Open up, it's me, the General.
Open up, you sons of bitches!
Hurry up!
Hey, white men, look at the merchandise I'm in charge of.
The General is the guard of the market. This is the market's safe.
Look, tens of thousands of dollars. Top quality whores. All virgins.
You, get to work, dirty Negress. None of them are all Negro.
They all have at least half human blood in their veins, like me.
They've all been sold, and are ready for delivery.
Delivered to your doorstep, luxuriously packaged.
Hey, white men, you can look, but don't touch.
You know the rules.
It's forbidden to touch the merchandise on display.
Only I, the General, can touch.
Do you want to see? Here.
This is Cassandra, a half-caste. She comes from the Harrison estate.
She's the daughter of Zephira and the great Meatto.
Artemis, three-quarters human blood, the firmest tits in the warehouse.
$5,000, payment in cash, comes with a two-year warranty.
Vintage of 1 848. Imperial Reserve, white or Rosé,
guaranteed by the consortium.
This is Eva. You like apples, huh?
Go ahead and eat them, but stay away from any snakes.
You've never seen anything like this. Who cares if you've never seen it?
That's enough, let's go. I don't have time to waste. I'm the General.
Open up!
Come on, keep it up. You clown, dance, move it!
Go on, dance.
No, no, no.
Not like that, not like that, beasts, Like this!
I'll show you.
Like this, not with your hips. Move your ass!
Open up, it's me.
Oh, the Europeans. What an honor!
I'm in a state, I'm afraid. Look at my hands.
Excuse the mess, but you should see in what state they deliver them.
Come on, take your places. I go crazy getting them ready.
They're in such demand that they rip them out of my hands
even before they're ready.
I'm sorry, I don't have much time.
I'm so busy. Come on, show yourselves off to the gentlemen. Take a look.
Not bad, eh? Try to guess the prices. $500, $1 ,000, $1 ,500?
No, $3,000, my dear gentlemen.
Hewlett writes:
''Pairs of male twins at a certain point enjoyed a moment of great popularity,
also because of an ugly habit that became a fad.
But due to the extreme rarity of this particular merchandise,
as there were many orders, there were many tricksters.''
Tricksters? What are you talking about?
This is a reputable establishment, renowned throughout the south.
Look at this pair, a rarity.
- You faggot! - Our clients can rest assured.
These are two authentic Kelloggs. Look, they're signed.
Quiet. Open up, it's me, the General.
Come in, but no questions. These should be in a museum.
They're fit for a king. Base price, $1 5,000.
- What's so special about him? - He's got three of them!
One, two, three. Three, three, three!
Three, he has three, three!
This one had six, including one that broke and is now being repaired.
They were all sold to six different masters,
and the mother killed herself out of desperation.
This is the most important exhibit in the museum.
In the wax museum of New Orleans, among many statues of slaves in chains
and of evil masters, the group that today fascinates the tourists
is the group of Madame La Laurie, the most famous sadist of all time.
We know that she was the wife of a doctor,
that she was a member of the Creole high society in Louisiana,
and that she had a good reputation
until the day when the firemen, who responded to a fire alarm,
they went into the attic and found all the evidence that enabled Judge Caldwell
a nearly exact reconstruction of how the respectable lady
and her faithful helper, Caesar, enjoyed their leisure time.
Come.
Caesar, Caesar, you've done it again.
She died on me.
Caesar, you really go too far.
It's the third girl in a week.
Don't be so upset. I'll buy you another.
But look at my partner, my dear, sweet playmate.
The lovely countess.
She knows how to wait,
how to postpone the divine moment of the first drop of blood.
Pleasure can wait, there's no hurry.
We've given them opium.
And now they're sleeping. They've been sleeping for centuries.
It's all ours, all we have to do is reach out.
We can take our pleasure quickly, consuming it quickly, like Caesar does,
or we can take it a little at a time, allowing them to survive
over a long, drawn-out, exhausting wait,
tormented by desire, fed by her fear.
What about you? Aren't you afraid?
No, you're not afraid, my brave little cock.
But don't worry, fear will come later, when the pliers will bite you
right there, where you now want me.
In your country, when a Negro dares to want a white woman,
isn't this what you do to him?
I don't know who you are, nor where you come from,
but don't you think the time I live in is marvelous?
All this lovely flesh is mine. This body is mine.
I can buy 1 0, 1 00, 1 ,000 of them, if I want to.
Males, females, little boys, little girls.
I can consume them, corrupt them,
enjoy them, destroy them.
What are you waiting for, idiots?
Come on, help yourselves.
When will you ever have another chance like this?
In New Orleans such chances were never lacking.
If a gentleman received an invitation to visit a friend who lived in the city
while the wife and children were on vacation,
in addition to good food and clean linen,
he could expect a comely Negress to share his bed at night.
A refusal would insult the host.
This was just part of the rules of hospitality,
for which the Mammy was responsible.
Get in line.
You, let me see your hands.
Your nails are like a pig's nails. Go on, get washed up!
You, come here. Let me smell you.
You smell like the goats in the barn. Go, and wash with ashes.
You, open your mouth and let me smell your breath.
You smell of garlic. Chew this, it'll take away the stench of a hog.
You're usually clean. You hardly smell at all. Good filly.
You, turn around. You haven't been fucking, have you?
Spread your legs!
Sleeping with a black slave every night was,
for all the white males of the house
fathers, sons and guests, a good hygienic practice, like brushing your teeth.
As a pretext they said it was healthy.
For the sons, it was supposed to be a remedy for teenage acne.
And it was good for the husbands, as the puritanical mores of the times
limited their access to their wives.
But, aside from health considerations,
let's find out how these slave girls were in bed.
Just like the first cigar.
At first there's a horrible stench, and you feel nauseous.
But by the third time you're hooked.
Harder on my back, you know I like it.
Her mother was my first cigar. I smoked her when I was ten.
I was terrified my father would catch me in the act.
But when I realized that my father, too, smoked,
well, I stopped being afraid, and started to enjoy it.
Perhaps it's that gamy smell they have, but I like them more than white ones.
If I can catch one, I'll try to get her into bed.
But where will I find a white woman around here?
Besides, my father says it's not worth it.
They smell too, but like corpses. He says they're bad for your health.
He's been bedding Negresses for 7 0 years, and he hasn't missed a beat.
He likes them big, especially in the tit department.
Look at this merchandise. Not bad, eh?
If you ignore them, you're playing right into their hand.
You destroy them, one night at a time.
At my age, it's starting to get rather trying.
But with the help of divine providence, and oysters,
I can still hold my own.
Mammy! Mammy! Where are you, you black whore?
Where are you, Mammy?
- I'm coming, I'm coming. - Mammy!
What's the matter, master? Why are you angry?
You idiot. You have the gall to ask why I'm angry, you asshole!
Did you, or did you not rip me off by sending this idiot to my room?
Don't talk like that, master.
I've never ripped anyone off.
- She looks like a beautiful lover. - What do I care at my age for beauty?
This filly is a virgin.
What do you expect me to do with a virgin at my age, you idiot?
Take her back.
Don't talk like that, master. Please, don't get mad. Wait.
I'll send you another filly, one who's been broken in.
You should be ashamed of yourself, you ugly whore.
When you came here, were you really a virgin?
Or is the old man too old to fuck anymore?
Are you really a virgin?
You whore, you whore!
Come in, child. Come on in.
Do you want me, master? I asked for you. I'm clean.
- I'm also a virgin. - What are you saying, child?
- How old are you? - I'm thirteen.
- You're just a child. - I'm thirteen, Mammy says.
You mean that here, girls like you-- Where I come from we don't do this.
- I'm not from here. - Do you want this first?
Mammy says that if whites don't play with the whip first,
they can't get it up to fuck a woman.
What are you saying?
The stranger is the journalist Malcolm Fawcett,
and this conversation was excerpted from his experiences in Louisiana.
It refers to his first night in Mobile, in the home of Mr. Charleston,
a planter, whose guest he was for a week.
Please, master, don't send me away.
- Do me this favor. - Don't raise your voice.
Mammy will be angry if I stay a virgin.
- Please,join me. - What do you mean, right here?
Your bed is so big, and I am so small.
If I take my dress off, I don't smell.
You know, I washed my whole body.
I don't smell, master. If you're tired though, for real,
- I'll let you sleep. - Sleep. It would be hard now, child.
It would be too bad, though, master. I like you.
''I wanted to dissuade her,'' writes Fawcett,
''even though, knowing the custom, I realized I was being rude.
But when I recommended that she turn to a young man of her same condition --''
You mean with a Negro? No, I don't like Negroes.
No, Negroes disgust me. I tried once with a Negro.
He hurt me so much. He was so big.
You know,
White men are much smaller, master.
It's much better for a beginner like me.
White men don't smell like Negroes.
Do me the favor,
master, please.
Yes, like that, master. Yes.
This awful book from Boston goes on to spread even more filth. Listen.
''As for the southern ladies, their famous virtue
is greatly devalued by the fact that they have no choice in the matter.''
Listen to this. ''How could they not be virtuous,
since their men would much rather go with colored girls?''
- I can't believe it. - ''The truth is that these women
can get no satisfaction from either husbands or potential lovers,
as these are too often occupied with the comely slaves on the plantation.''
The horror! How could someone write such venomous nonsense?
It's all shameless political propaganda. What do they know of the Negroes,
those pencil pushers from Boston and Philadelphia?
Nothing. But envy, prejudice and malice induce them to try to humiliate us
in every way possible.
My God, how could they insult our husbands like this? Our men?
It's absolutely disgraceful.
Goodness, accusing our men of fornicating with slaves
is like saying that they're copulating with animals.
It's nothing less than an accusation of sexual aberration.
The phenomenon of abnormal mating between whites and Negroes
has a scientific name: Bestiality.
- It's disgraceful! - Lies!
As if we didn't know all too well where our husbands take their incontinence!
Every Friday night -- but what am I saying?
I'm sorry, my friends, but we shouldn't speak so clearly in front of them.
Don't worry, my dear. I've noticed a tendency among our slaves
a general tendency to develop a lighter skin tone.
As time goes by, they become lighter and lighter.
But their mentality, intelligence and sensitivity are those of animals.
It's true, each generation is lighter than the previous one.
In my house there have been a few pink Negro babies, even.
My husband says that this phenomenon is called --
Symbiosis. The scientific term is symbiosis. Your husband is right.
It's like those creatures that take on the color of their habitat.
You're right, dear. Take Scipio, for example.
He's left-handed, like my brother.
Or takeJason, here.
My husband raised him personally from when he was a child.
And now, incredibly, he's almost as blond as my husband.
Nature is truly bizarre.
Here it is, my Negro factory. You get the general idea down there.
Business was going downhill. Cotton and tobacco were in crisis.
So I got up my courage and transformed the plantation into a stud farm.
And I have to say it's worked out well
because the new law that prohibits importing Negroes from Africa
has practically doubled the price of slaves.
- And so, after everything-- - Hey, Pa!
Mr. Wilson's here!
Hello Mr. Bighorn. I've brought the Negress.
Here she is. Did you count the days well?
- Are you completely sure she's in heat? - Of course she's in heat.
She's perfectly ready for breeding.
If we give her to the male right away, he'll certainly go right for her.
Okay.
How many days has it been since the bleeding stopped?
My wife counted 1 2. With the trip, that makes 1 3.
If you let me breed her right away, I'll be out of your hair within two hours.
Can I have her, Pa?
We'll talk about that after the examination.
For now, do your homework.
- Is she healthy? - Of course.
- She doesn't have crabs? - What are you saying?
We always kept her at home.
- Oh, so she's a virgin. - Of course.
You know that we've been saving her forJason.
What? A virgin for such a stallion?
He'll rip her innards apart.
If he does, you can sew her up again. Don't worry.
You know I could breed this one for at least $50.
And right at home, too.
If I've made 60 Negroes and paid 200 for it
it's because I likeJason's line.
- Okay. - Let's go.
You know full well you won't find another one like this.
Well done! But that's your business.
Hey stallion! Hey three-legged stallion!
Hi General.
How's your father's arthritis?
He's been doing much better since getting Negro compresses on his legs.
You're right, Mr. Bighorn.
Strong wine and dark meat cure arthritis, nice and neat.
That's right.
But then I'll find myself with a whole litter with arthritis.
Hey Wilson, look there!
- Where? - Over there, up ahead, that glass.
Why?
Those journalists always want us to look in that glass.
Go wait for me in the barn. I'll be right there.
Okay.
First I have to deal with these gentlemen.
Bring me some more sugar cane!
They're almost all vintage '43. A very good year.
I only lost 25%%.
It's usually 40-60%%, especially from German measles,
which is nothing when it comes to human blood, but it wipes them out.
Why are there so many blondes?
What you want me to say?
One or another might be mine. Lots of them are my brother's.
Some are from the priest.
Some are from some guests who were passing through.
Okay, enough, don't be greedy.
These are the breeding females.
With the new stallions Auze and Mandico that I bought three years ago,
I've been successful with 86%% of them.
With an interval between productions of less than 60 days.
Hey, where are you? Come over here, look at this one!
The black pearl of the ranch. Seven sets of twins in six years.
And I'm sure that this time, too, there are two inside.
This heifer alone is worth a fortune.
Come in, come on in. Damn, you're in luck.
Come inside and see how a little bastard is born.
Fine, isn't he?
He must be six or seven pounds at least.
You know something? I'm going to dedicate this one to you guys.
I'm going to call him ''Macaroni''.
Bravo, Cleopatra. Who's the male?
- Me no know. - What do mean you don't know?
Me no know.
They breed me first with Pluto, then with four other males.
Me no know.
It doesn't matter. You've done a good job.
See what respect the master has?
It's the reward. One dollar per pup.
Family tradition.
Another beloved tradition among breeders
is presenting new prized breeds every year at the big fair in the south
which, like fine horses, carry the name of their family.
The Bighorn breed, celebrated for the precociousness of its females
which can be bred by their 1 0th year
earned its owner two gold medals at theJackson fair.
Hey, bring me Poppea.
I said Poppea!
No, you imbeciles.
That one's pregnant. Drop her.
No, that one.
Here in Louisiana, the breeding ratio is one male to every five females.
But in Virginia,
a great specialist of the time declares the ideal ratio
to be one male for eight females.
In fact, on this basis Virginia produced more than 6000 Negroes per year.
It was the Golden Age in which the great breeding plantations
such as the famous North Carolina planter were even quoted on the stock market.
Now tell me if it doesn't take talent to invent a breed like this.
You see, to create a hybrid, the breeder combines the various races
as an artist does with the colors of his palette.
A little white here, a little black there
a pinch of red and the smidgen of yellow.
Until something comes forth that's not black, not white,
not red, not yellow.
It's a masterpiece.
Get him!
A slave trying to escape.
No, he's afraid of the branding.
It always happens with the new stallions.
At the 1 8th birthday, on the eve of his first services
the new stallion is branded with fire with a conventional mark
that prevents mistakes and confusion in the breeding registry.
- Are you ready, Wilson? Can we go? - I was waiting for you.
- And the heifer? - Ready.
Okay then. Bring her along.
Get back!
Fine, Casanova, fine.
These stallions!Just let them catch the scent of a female!
They have more semen than four teams of oxen.
Did you know they offered me $4500 each?
Here he is, our oldest stud.
Two hundred pounds of muscle and not a single ounce the fat.
And this devil's good for at least 20 shots a day.
With these tanks!
- Is the heifer ready, Wilson? - Ready, Mr. Bighorn.
Okay, then, bring her in.
Hey, Wilson. I told you.
Be careful. But it's your business.
Don't you worry.
I'll take care of it.
That's enough,Jason. Stop!
Get some water. Quick!
''Your honor, my name is Nat Turner.
I intend to provide you with a full confession of my crimes.
On August 21 st, 1 831 , 5 5 whites were massacred
as a result of my doing and that of 7 0 other slaves.
My deep-seated hatred of the whites was--''
''My deep-seated hatred of the whites was--''
Damned idiots!
''Deep-seated hatred came from God, who ordered me to kill them.''
Let's see, 1 831 .
If Cleaver, LeroyJones, Malcolm X, had lived 1 40 years ago
they too, like Nat Turner, would have fallen into hating whites
men, women, children who were there by God's orders.
The slave Cleaver, like the slave Turner, certainly never would have dared imagine
that the order would come to them directly from within.
''The evening of August 21 st, we lined up single file in the cornfield.
We came out right in front of the Travis house.
The night before, God had clearly given me the sign
that this would be our first target.
We knew that inside was the little Travis,
his wife Sarah,''
Who knows if the whites in those days were like those of today?
Or rather, who knows if the whites of today
would have been like those back then if Nat Turner had never existed?
Would they have allowed me to attend their schools,
to become a doctor, to earn $2000 a week,
to have a beautiful house, a wife, a healthy, well-fed baby?
''Nelson, Sam,Jack, Hark and I silently climbed in the living room window.
Will, who was bringing up the rear, took a false step
and tumbled onto the table that was still set.
I was afraid old Travis had woken up
since Will kept making an infernal racket.
Instead, old Travis was still asleep next to his wife
when Sam and Jack moved forward on tiptoe.
His sleep was deep and peaceful
as evidenced by that deep, rhythmic snoring
that I had known since my childhood.
So Sam and Jack moved forward.
That old man who had practically raised me
and had been a tolerant and kindly master
was nevertheless a white man and, as such, had to die.
Grandpa Travis, like all whites, had never dreamed that a slave,
a meek creature without courage or dignity
could ever one day rebel against a master.
So it was perhaps only disbelief
that dominated his mind still clouded with sleep, when--''
''We were about--''
''We were about to leave the house when Hark, on the run was called--''
''was called back by the cry of the children whom we had forgotten.''
''After the murder of the Travis family
our second goal was the extermination of the Reeses.''
Oh, it's those idiots again.
''After the murder of the Travis family
our second goal was the extermination of the Reeses.
Reese was a dull-witted, cruel master
who amused himself by tormenting his Negroes...
with every sort of stupid prank.
His wife and sister-in-law, two dull-witted, insignificant women
encouraged those vapid stunts with little hysterical--''
Buffoon!
''With little hysterical, shrill cries that pierced the ears like daggers.
It was in front of their house that I swore to never again disobey God's orders
and to also spill my share of blood.
I hated Reese
and one day he involved me, too, in one of his humiliating, vulgar pranks.
I could have refused to rebel. But how could I, a slave--''
''I could have refused to rebel. But how could I, a slave?
Reese was a dull-witted, cruel master.''
Nat Turner didn't kill out of hate.
He killed out of love between the columns of that big house.
Who knows why, for us Negroes, this story never loses its value?
Well, Nat Turner, the pious Nat Turner, biblical fanatic
almost a tutor to little Margaret, but nevertheless a Negro
and thus not suspected of desiring that white girl who hung around him all day,
who excited him in a thousand ways without even realizing it.
Where are you, Nat? Come here, Nat.
Here's something new.
It's beautiful!
Come on, Nat. Get me that rose.
No, no. Not the silk one!
The bright one, Nat.
There, see! Now here we are, the two of us.
She and Nat. Almost in skin contact.
The wind in that blond hair, that white neck that he desired so badly.
''Hey Nat,'' she said to me one day
as her closeness and her youthful scent of lavender made me stiff.
''Nat, why are Negroes born so wretched?''
''Why, in this warm spring, are they only fallen flowers?''
Let's take a look. 1 40 years later.
If I were to fall in love with that white girl.
In love to the point of not being able to do any less than what she's doing now.
To want her.
But just because I'm a Negro, like Nat Turner--
I can just imagine the scene!
Sir, I'm Dr. Nat Turner.
I love your daughter and I intend to marry her.
Margaret had just returned from Southampton College for summer vacation
when we decided that the Whitehead house would be our next target.
We advanced, remaining hidden in the oak forest
that surrounded the house on three sides.
When we saw the father so overjoyed at the arrival of his daughter...
and so absorbed in demonstrating all his joy as to not notice us--
I was looking for Margaret.
She was hiding behind a corner of the house.
When I finally saw her, she ran away...
as light and fast as a deer, through the cornfield.
I ran after the glint of that flowing hair in the sun
after the gleam of that face looking back.
She ran faster than I did.
But I caught up.
I must! I must!
I must kill you!
Because I love you! Because you're white!
White!
''Your honor, before condemning me to the gallows
you asked if I felt remorse.
Well, completely at peace and tranquil, I answer you that if I could go back--''
Peace, peace, peace.
I'm a Negro like you, an ex-slave like you.
But today I've dealt with the whites, and I'm speaking with their permission.
And this is a police car.
If you think I'm a traitor, then shoot me.
But first listen to what I have to say.
Slavery was not our disgrace. It is our glory.
We must not soil it with revenge.
In every plan that the racist attempts to search for an alibi
for his evil conscience towards the Negro
all that's necessary is one broken window to make him feel absolved ofhis guilt.
When we allow ourselves to bend before the white man's hatred
we're playing his game.
We're also playing the game of the white communists
who want to make use of us to destroy America.
We don't love America,
but neither do we want to be used to destroy it.
We Negroes must not fall into the same errors that the whites make.
We must not respond to their old white racism
with a new black racism.
To the recent events that have made us understand,
we must respond peace, peace, peace.
On one side, the north that wanted to abolish slavery.
On the other, the south that wanted to keep it.
So the war to liberate slaves cost America one million dead.
Today, the American public assisting in the reenactment of the battle of Shiloh
doesn't root for anyone.
They enjoy the show.
Northern and southern combatants are interchangeable.
It just depends upon the color of the uniform.
The anonymous slavery society closed the books a hundred years ago.
And the accounts are balanced.
For every imported slave, one American death.
The wounded don't count.
Here's one that ended up in bad shape.
A northern uniform. So he wanted it this way, right?
Of course. Say cheese!
Today, everyone's smiling,
dead and wounded, victor and vanquished.
It's wonderful to return home on this splendid day in May
and to take a nice shower to wash away all of the dust of the past.
THIS FI LM IS A DOCUMENTARY.
THE EVENTS OCCURRED I N HISTORY AND THE CHARACTERS REALLY EXISTED.