Yesterday, I visited “Amish Country” in Pennsylvania. My wife and I found ourselves in the home of an Amish family. It was the first time in my life I’ve ever met an Amish person and held a conversation with one. When we arrived, as we exited our car, the six children who had been playing in the yard stopped what they were doing. They stood there, frozen, staring at us. Perhaps they were fascinated with us; perhaps they were not used to vehicles pulling up to their house. We waved and called out a pleasant, “Hello,” to them. When none of them moved, we said, “We’re here to see Hannah,” while smiling and trying to sound as non-intimidating as possible; we weren’t sure if they’d ever seen a Black person before. However, with that last announcement, three of them ran to the house to retrieve her.

At the same time, Hannah was coming out of a side door, greeting us with a melodic, “Hello! I’m Hannah!” Like the children, she wore no shoes. While the four girls wore simple pink dresses that were apparently made from the same fabric, Hannah’s dress was blue. None of the dresses had buttons or zippers. They weren’t gathered anywhere, nor did they have sashes, bows, or anything else remotely decorative. Hannah spoke to the children in German, which was when we realized they likely didn’t speak much English. As we followed her directions to enter the house through the side door, the children followed.

During the approximately 20 minute visit, I managed to get a glimpse into the family’s life. Hannah smiled and was incredibly pleasant and willingly answered my questions. I asked her if they sold any of the produce we saw growing on their farm. She replied that they didn’t; everything they raised was for their own families’ use. The boxes of tomatoes sitting on the floor, however, were from a neighbor who had given them to her so she could make salsa before the fruit was in high demand later in the season. We saw a couple of cows, which I assumed provide them with milk, butter, and cheese.

Two things that really stood out to me were the retention of their native language, and that they had accents when they spoke English. They have lived in the United States all their lives, as had their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc…all the way back to the 1700s. And they still have heavy German and Dutch accents! The children, apparently, had learned German first (or Dutch. In the interest of transparency, I couldn’t tell what language they were speaking.). They have been allowed to retain their language from a country where none of them had ever lived or visited. Fascinating.

We conducted our business and prepared to take our leave. As we walked out of the door, we were greeted with the delightful sight of the tiniest buggy being pulled by a little pony. Dad was leading the pony out of a barn and helped two of the kids climb into the buggy once the contraption stopped outside. Two kids rode while the other four walked alongside the pony. The dad was the only person who was wearing shoes. I watched and wondered how the kids managed to walk so quickly in their bare feet on such a gravelly road. I thought to myself, if someone took a black and white photograph of this family in front of their barn, no one would be able to tell if the year was 2023…or 1823.

We tried to wave to the children again as they rode past us, but again elicited no acknowledgement from any of the seven passersby. We got in our car and started our two-hour journey back to the city. A short ways down the road, we saw a young girl riding a scooter that could easily have been made by (or for) one of her grandparents. The simplicity of their existence was apparent, and their contentment was palpable.

Theirs is a society that has been essentially left alone to practice religious and cultural traditions of their home countries since the 1600s, when William Penn received land and offered areas of it to several religious groups, including the Mennonites, Quakers, and Amish. The colony, which later became Pennsylvania, would practice religious tolerance, as the groups had immigrated to the United States to escape religious persecution.

The right of the Amish to be left alone has been normalized in this country. People might gawk if they see them out and about, but not many turn their noses up at them or publicly call them out as “unamerican” because they’ve yet to fully integrate or assimilate. By the time American schoolchildren get to a certain chapter in their history books, they’ve learned about William Penn, the Pennsylvania Dutch, and the Amish. We’re conditioned from a very young age to understand that their way of life is generally accepted, and should be respected. When anyone DOES have that first encounter with members of the Amish community, they have an idea of how NOT to respond. I’ll go out on a limb and say that as people traverse Amish Country, seeing them for the first time is likely to elicit a mere rubberneck-esque response.

The Amish are resilient. Their ways have survived myriad attempts to force them to join mainstream society or submit to laws and practices that conflict with their beliefs and religion. They’ve overcome adversity and held on to many original traditions of their culture for centuries. In more recent decades, they have been allowed to remain isolated from greater society, both physically and legally. Their commitment to preserve Amish culture has directly influenced American case law. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Amish argued that because they led a simple lifestyle, their children didn’t require more than an eighth grade education. Therefore, they should be exempt from state compulsory education laws requiring children to attend school until the age of 16. The Supreme Court ruled the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause included the right to keep children out of high school. The Amish have also benefited indirectly from the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment in cases brought and won by other groups on a few occasions. For example, the Amish are exempt from having to serve in the US armed forces, and from combat training. Many of them are also exempt from paying social security taxes.

Despite the exemptions and autonomy the government provides the Amish community that don’t apply to other US citizens, I’ve not heard or read any complaints about it in my lifetime. There’s no widespread public outcry over the simple clothing (no buttons or zippers allowed) the members wear, or the “oppressive” head coverings worn by the group’s women and girls. Neither have I heard of organized social services agendas dedicated to rescuing Amish citizens from their strict societies or removing their children from their homes to place them for adoption or in foster care to give them “better lives.” There are no aggressive state efforts to condemn thousands of acres of Amish farmland for the purpose of urban renewal aimed at “improving” their living conditions and life potential.

About thirty minutes into our drive back home, I became angry, sad, and my soul was perturbed. Why couldn’t Black descendants of slaves have had the same deference? When Black religious leaders specifically requested certain things at a meeting with Generals Sherman and Stanton, why were the requests originally granted, but soon thereafter snatched away?

The leaders met with the Generals to address public outcry following Union Brigadier Jeff C. Davis’ (not the president of the Confederacy) abandonment of about 5,000 ex-slaves who had followed his 14th Union Army Corps as it marched through Savannah, Georgia. Davis ordered his army to build a temporary bridge across 10 foot deep, 165 foot wide Ebenezer Creek for all to cross. He instructed the ex-slaves to wait until all the soldiers crossed. When it was the ex-slaves’ turn to cross, he ordered soldiers to cut the bridge loose and draw it to shore, and left them on the other side of creek. Soon, the Confederate army caught up with them. Many tried to swim across the creek in a panic; some used logs in an attempt to keep afloat. Witnesses recorded what they saw. They wrote that the General rode into the scene and began shooting and slashing the ex-slaves. They recall hearing screams as many drowned trying to cross. Others were trampled by Confederate army horses. Confederate Soldiers massacred hundreds (possibly thousands) of ex-slaves who had been abandoned and left to perish. Those who were captured were returned to slavery.

After that January 12, 1865 meeting, General Sherman issued Special Field Order 15, the order commonly referred to as the “forty acres and a mule” order. He asked the Black religious leaders what ex-slaves wanted: whether Black people preferred to live “scattered among the whites or in colonies by themselves.” One leader replied, “I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over … ” All but one of the leaders agreed. The Order confiscated 400,000 acres of land¹ spanning from Charleston, SC to Jacksonville, FL to be distributed to ex-slaves in 40-acre tracts. The Order was issued January 16, 1865. By June of 1865, 40,000 ex-slaves had already migrated to the area and begun to cultivate it. In my humble opinion, this demonstrates that ex-slaves welcomed the idea of living among their own.

I agree with the majority of the Black leaders at the meeting with Generals Sherman and Stanton – that we should have been left alone and allowed to form separate colonies, cities, and towns. Let me back up here, however, to say: Africans in Africa should have been left alone in AFRICA. However, once Africans in America were freed from bondage, they, too, should have been given the autonomy afforded societies like the Amish and other non-Black groups. They should have been eligible for the same benefits offered to white settlers and immigrants who had fled persecution in European countries. Ex-slaves were, in fact, attempting to flee persecution in their own country, where their very humanity was, and continues to be questioned. They should have received those benefits and been given the freedom to decide what to do with them. Subsequently, they should have been allowed a degree of sovereignty, and the ability to self-govern and be self-sustaining until (and IF) the general population came to a similar point of acceptance and resolve as it has with the Amish.

In the 1800s, land grants distributed hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland to encourage settlers to migrate westward. That land ownership was the start of generational wealth accumulation for many American families. The expansion across the western territories, however, was based on the concept of manifest destiny and the belief in the superiority of whites. They were called to conquer and inhabit the entirety of the continent, from sea to shining sea. As such, other races were neither needed, nor wanted to implement the manifest destiny strategy.

When it came to land ownership, whether acquired via patent, grant, or deed, the rights of Blacks, indigenous, and other races were secondary to the desires, demands, or even the whims of white settlers and land speculators. Blacks, many of whom were ex-slaves, were ABLE to purchase lots of land, however, high rates of illiteracy (prolonged unnecessarily by laws forbidding Blacks from learning to read), left them vulnerable to fraud and land theft. Whites willing to commit acts of violence and murder didn’t bother wasting time and effort to defraud Black people out of their land- they simply forced entire families off their property, sometimes at gunpoint, and took it. Those who resisted, and some who didn’t, were beaten, killed, or went “missing.”

Black people are resilient, arguably among THE most resilient in the world. They have survived genocide, Transatlantic journeys below ship decks and in chains, hundreds of years of bondage, violence, having to exist in a nation where they were not considered human. I could go on, but if you don’t know the story, I don’t have time to recount it here. Unlike the Amish, when Africans were kidnapped and brought to the US for the purpose of slavery, they weren’t allowed to retain many elements of their culture. Their culture was considered savage, subhuman, and inferior by their violent captors. Anything white people feared might help slaves maintain an emotional or psychological connection with their homeland was considered threatening.

Still, despite intense, coordinated (quite often state sanctioned) efforts to eradicate any and all remnants of African culture among the slave population, they were able to preserve some traditions. Elements of African languages endure to present day in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The perseverance of that dialect isn’t considered an impressive accomplishment, though. It’s considered a sign of being uneducated and/or poor.

The lens through which Black people are viewed in this country is cloudy and smeared with fingerprints of assumptions, misunderstanding, racism, and, yes, hate. The lens is so dirty it obscures the beauty of our accomplishments. Sadly, the powers that be KNOW the lens is not reliable. They simply refuse to wipe it clean.

What if? What if, when the Black religious leaders expressed a desire and willingness to self-segregate (effectively giving white America what they assumed it wanted) that request had been honored? What if those 400,000 acres of land confiscated from the traitorous Confederacy had remained in the hands of Black people who migrated there to start new lives after the Civil War? Unlike the Amish, who came to America intending to remain separate and minimally influenced by the general population, Blacks slaves were brought here and forced to assimilate. Slaves meeting in groups of more than two people was outlawed. Slaves speaking their native tongues was outlawed. Slaves retaining the names their parents gave them was outlawed. The ability to feel safe as a family unit, or even in a group of friends, was intentionally sabotaged by surprise sales of Black people’s family members and friends to other plantations. I can sometimes feel the despair in the core of my being as I imagine parents wailing as their children were driven off on the backs of wagons very much resembling the one I saw the Amish children riding for run.

I grieve what we have not been allowed to have. I grieve the loss of those things we did have that were violently destroyed and taken away. I grieve that after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Special Order 15 was repealed, and all the land in the new Black colony was given back to people who had committed treason against the US. I grieve the loss of Black communities that flourished and were punished for doing so with eminent domain, bulldozers, and violent removal. I grieve the loss of Black-owned houses, neighborhoods, and towns beneath lakes. My soul aches to see parks, highways, and city dumps standing where Black people used to live, work, attend school and church, play, farm, and simply exist in relative peace. I grieve that I have never known that. I grieve that freed slaves were physically scattered and forcibly disconnected from a culture their ancestors did not choose to abandon.

1. 400,000 acres equals about 625 square miles. To put it in perspective: Dallas, TX, with a population of about 1.3M, is about 340 square miles. Los Angeles, CA, with a population of about 3.8 million, is about 470 square miles. Houston, TX, with a population of about 2.3M, is 640 square miles. The end of the Civil War saw approximately 4M slaves freed. ​ ↩︎