The American democratic experiment has been an object of fascination since its infancy. Claiming to study the prison system, French magistrates and aristocrats Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont traveled across the United States in 1831 and 1832 to get a closer look. They observed in this country not only “its inhabitants, its towns, its institutions, its customs”, but also “the mechanism of its republican government”. Tocqueville drew two emblematic works from this 10-month stay: Democracy in America And Fifteen days in the desert. Duty followed in their footsteps, 193 years later, at a time when this democracy seems more threatened than ever.
New stops: the Lorraine Motel in Memphis (Tennessee), the Destrehan plantation near New Orleans (Louisiana) and Africatown (Alabama), where the marks of slavery and segregation are indelible.
A police officer walks in front of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, followed by about forty recruits dressed in black pants, white shirts and ties. “While you’re here, stay together. It’s dangerous,” he says behind his sunglasses. The trainer turns his head towards the wreath of artificial flowers hanging in front of room 306 of the establishment. The leading figure of the civil rights movement Martin Luther King was assassinated there on April 4, 1968.
The Lorraine Motel was one of the few establishments in the American South to appear in the travel guide Negro Motorist Green Book documenting hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe for African Americans during the era of Jim Crow laws imposing racial segregation. Artists Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, BB King and Nat King Cole stopped there.
The building, located just east of the Mississippi River, now houses the National Civil Rights Museum, much to the regret of the establishment’s last patron, Jacqueline Smith, who is camped out on the sidewalk at the intersection of Mulberry and Butler streets, far from the frenzy of Beale Street, in order to denounce the gentrification of the neighborhood.
Inside, the horror of the slavery and segregation that reigned under the sunny South of the United States hits visitors in general, and black people in particular, hard. There, a woman tells her two daughters about the hatred that relegated black people to the back of public buses. There, a man explains to his granddaughter the murderous hatred that lurked beneath the white hoods of Ku Klux Klan members. “I brought my daughter and my granddaughters. We have just repeated the experience [de l’esclavage et de la ségrégation] together. We know more about where they come from and where they should go,” explains Reushell, on the eve of a family celebration in the area.
After crossing the row of rooms plunged into darkness, one wonders how African-Americans were able to get through nearly 250 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow laws, then the ordinary racism that they left behind. in their wake.
“They still refuse to grant us reparations,” laments Turone Sledge as he leaves the museum. “You are talking about a country founded on racism! We were brought here against our own will. The country was built on our backs. The White House was built by black people. All infrastructure was built by black people. Free labor,” adds the new retiree, who pays “tribute” to those who fought at the risk of their lives for equality.
Moreover, the resident of Cleveland, Ohio, says he has no other choice but to vote on November 5, since his grandparents and parents fought to obtain this right.
After a few stops in Tennessee, Turone Sledge will head to Alabama, where, in the mid-20th centurye century, his mother and other children had fun identifying the white supremacists of the KKK marching in the streets by spotting distinctive signs crossing their cover, like a pipe. “Oh, it’s Mr. Jones!” Oh, it’s Mr. Smith! » he relates in front of the retro sign of the Lorraine motel rising into the air. “I have a dream,” it says.
Crime against humanity
The southern United States is dotted with places of memory, such as old plantations here and there.
Visitors to the Destrehan sugar plantation, located near New Orleans, are apparently satisfied with the balance between the history of the slaves and the history of the owners that is told there. In fact, the plantation established in 1787 gets a rating of four out of five from Tripadvisor users.
The guide, dressed in a wine red dress, lists the value of the slaves held by the Destrehan family: from Babette, a blind 60-year-old woman, worth $5, to Essex, a 28-year-old man in full form, which was worth $1500. “These are human beings to whom we attribute value,” she emphasizes, pointing to the only document available on the slaves who were held captive there.
The plantation, where “enslaved Africans, free Creoles of color, Acadians and Native Americans lived, worked and died,” is now popular for weddings and “historical and mystery tours.” “Your guide, an experienced paranormal investigator, will tell you terrifying stories about the slave revolt of 1811 and other ghosts that some believe inhabit this former sugar plantation,” reads a promotional document.
During their stay in the United States in 1831 and 1832, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were “painfully astonished that the freest people in the world were now almost alone among civilized and Christian nations in still maintaining personal servitude.” .
“The Ancients only knew irons and death to maintain slavery; Americans in the Union South found more intellectual guarantees for the duration of their power. They have, if I may put it this way, spiritualized despotism and violence. In Antiquity, people sought to prevent the slave from breaking his chains; nowadays, we have undertaken to remove the desire for it,” writes Alexis de Tocqueville, calling for the abolition of servitude for ethical, political and economic reasons. “This is a crime against humanity that stains the very principles of American democracy. »
At the beginning of the 19th centurye century, the 1,500,000 people reduced to slavery were the driving force of both the agriculture of the South and the industrial success of the North, starting with the textile companies which were supplied with cotton grown by slaves in the fields of the South . They have no civil rights. At that time, American democracy, in addition to being masculine, was white…
Alexis de Tocqueville is convinced that the Union will experience “great misfortunes” if nothing is done. He fears not a conflict between states, but a war between whites and blacks, “the most horrible of all civil wars”, which will perhaps culminate “in the ruin of one of the two races”. “ [L’esclavage] will cease by the act of the slave or by that of the master. »
Nearly 30 years later, the election of Abraham Lincoln would serve as a pretext for the outbreak of the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation making “henceforth free […] all persons held as slaves” in the rebel states broadcast on 1er January 1863, then on the 13the amendment “abolished[ssant] Slavery and Involuntary Servitude in the United States, Except as Punishment for Crime,” proclaimed on December 18, 1865, would wipe slavery off the map of the United States. (It would take another century for the Civil Rights Act, passed in 1966, to come into force.)
The descendants of Clotilda
The 110 passengers of the schooner Clotilda are considered the last slaves kidnapped in Africa and forcibly dragged to the United States.
In 1860, they were captured in West Africa, forced into the Clotildalanded in southern Alabama, separated, hidden, then sold to cotton producers, even though the importation of African slaves had been illegal in the United States for more than 50 years.
In the wake of the civil war, they regained their freedom.
In 1866, 30 of them chose to buy land five kilometers north of downtown Mobile and found a unique community there: Africatown. They erected around thirty wooden houses with brick chimneys, a church, a school, in addition to building a local government from scratch, setting rules, conducting trials and inflicting punishments.
Africatown still exists today, notably housing some descendants of the community’s founders.
John says he enjoys a peaceful retirement in his small house, which is surrounded by a Frost fence. When asked what the most pressing issue to be addressed in south Alabama is, the former trucker cites “the right to vote”… even before the rising cost of living.
Cats jump in the driveway before squeezing between the wheels of his red van. “Want one?” » John asks, half-seriously.
Due to voter roll purges, long wait times at polling places, inefficient processing of mail-in ballots, and redistricting, Alabama is the second least democratic state of the United States, behind the Mississippi, according to the think tank Movement Advancement Project (MAP).
Despite the pitfalls, Sally promises to vote on November 5 in order to curb the authoritarian zeal of Donald Trump, she says. “I’m scared. He wants to be the master of the United States, like Vladimir Putin in Russia,” says the mixed-race Cree and African-American on the gallery of his bungalow. “Harris would make a damn good president!” » she adds, in a deep red state where voters supported Donald Trump in a proportion of 62% in both 2016 and 2020.
A few steps through the narrow streets of Africatown reveals an impressive mural depicting a two-masted schooner, the Clotildablackened tombstones from the Vieux Plateau cemetery, a monument in honor of one of the very last slaves, Cudjoe Lewis (1841-1935), and signs that say “Drugs destroy dreams”.
Racism sucks too.
If I consider the United States today, I see clearly that, in certain parts of the country, the legal barrier which separates the two races tends to be lowered, not that of morals: I see slavery receding; the prejudice it gave birth to is immovable.