Devil's Punchbowl

 I was this many days old when I learned about this atrocity against African Americans.   We always hear about the cruelty that the Jews faced by Nazi Germany during World War II when they were rounded off and placed in concentration camps.   We may have even remember vaguely hearing the story about how the U.S. forced Japanese Americans into camps by a policy enacted by then president Franklin D Roosevelt in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But besides forced slavery of blacks in America, I never knew that some blacks were forced to live in a concentration camp as well.    And this pre-dated both of the previously mentioned incidents.   According to this article featured in the African American Registry, the makings of the incident took place shortly after the Civil War ended and enslaved blacks were declared free.   A group of freed slaves made their way to the town on Natchez in Mississippi.   The white residents there grew fearful as the population of black folks went from 10,000 to over 100,000.   Fearing being ran over, a concentration camp was built by the Union Soldiers (the very ones that are always depicted in our history books as fighting against slavery) to encamp the freed slaves.

The camp was known as Devil's Punchbowl because of the shape of the location.   It was chosen as a way to trap them via a man-made wall so they couldn't get out.   Women and children were locked behind the walls and forced to starve.   Many wound up dying from smallpox.   The men were forced into hard labor.   Conditions were so bad that some of the folks were heard saying that they'd go back to their plantations.   

This is yet another example of man's cruelty towards one another.   Of course, there were no reparations given to future descendants of those affected by this tragedy.   There aren't any accurate numbers to denote how many blacks died from the camp since there was no record keeping that was done.    And this is not discussed in the history books.    One point Dom made when we talked about history was that the powers that be would mostly highlight historical events that ultimately puts the majority in a positive light.  Stories like these and the Tulsa Massacre where a whole town of self-made African Americans was burned to the ground would not be mentioned.   It's truly disgusting.  I wanted to blog about it so I would never forget.