Controversial right-wing-leaning talking head Barrington Martin II has found himself in a social media dust-up after posting on Twitter comments about “good slave masters.”
He queried out loud why no one ever talks about the planters and slavers who treated their enslaved Africans with “kindness” and worried about the physical and mental health of their unpaid laborers forced to work on their properties— or risked being sold to another person.
On the morning of Sunday, Feb. 26, Martin tweeted, “We hear about all of the horrors of slavery, automatically assuming that all slave owners were hateful, vengeful, and sought to inflict their slaves with fear, but it’s funny we never hear about those other slave owners who led with kindness and wanted their slaves to be in the best shape mentally as well as physically. Why do you think that is?”
The tweet was inspired by some reading Martin, a Black Georgia politician and educator had been doing. He ran in the 2020 special election in Georgia’s 5th District to fill John Lewis’ seat in the House of Representatives but fell short.
He shared with his more than 64,100 followers on social media a 20th-century slavery narrative from a person born into enslavement in 1851 named Charles Coles.
In the narrative, Coles says he was “reared on a large farm owned by a man by the name of Silas Dorsey, a fine Christian gentleman and a member of the Catholic Church.”
According to the narrative, dated Nov. 15, 1937, the person who was a young teen was an early teen when emancipated, said, “Mr. Dorsey was a man of excellent reputation and character, was loved by all who knew him, Black and white, especially his slaves. He was never known to be harsh or cruel to any of his slaves, of which he had more than 75.”
In Coles’ account, enslaved people were…
Read the full article here
