The Slave Ship

[Wild Bill]

I have read Stampp's book, Eva. Stampp's book was written in 1956 as assault of Brown v. Bd. of Educ. and as part of the coming Civil Rights movement and especially to counter the influence of UB Phillips' American Negro Slavery and his Life and Labor in the Old South, deemed racist by our modern standards. Stamp posited that blacks were nothing more than whites with a different color skin.

I suggest that if you wish to really understand American (US) Slavery read Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll. It sees blacks as having a different culture from whites, none of which denotes either race as being superior or inferior, just different. BTW, Genovese has an excellent essay in the paperback version on Stampp and Phillips and asserts that Philips, for all his racism, is a more accurate account.

Genovese was a Marxist when he wrote and lived in exile in Canada during the Viet Nam War. Then he moved to South Carolina and became a Conservative. Stampp taught at U Cal Berkley his whole career. It gets so that you cannot trust anyone, anymore! Especially me, from Louisiana St U.