Sessions: 'A Good Nation' Doesn't Admit 'Illiterate' Immigrants

[Sophia4]

31. You know who is ignorant?

Jeff Sessions. That's who.

He needs to look at the family history websites.

Many of our ancestors came here as slaves and indentured servants. That is if we came here long enough ago.

And indentured servants and slaves sent their children to school as soon as they could. Today, the descendants are scientists and teachers and preachers and lawyers and engineers, farmers and grocers and construction workers -- doing all kinds of productive things.

Jeff Sessions needs a lesson in history. I suggest that he go to the law library and look up some of the earliest case law in the US that concerned indentured servants. He should know better.

Here is where he went to school himself:


After attending Wilcox County High School in nearby Camden, Sessions studied at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1969. He was active in the Young Republicans and was student body president.[14] Sessions attended the University of Alabama School of Law and graduated with a J.D. degree in 1973.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sessions

It's very sad when an attorney general knows so little about American history.

We all know the history of slavery and civil rights, but what was an indentured servant?

Indentured servants

Between one-half and two-thirds of white immigrants to the American colonies between the 1630s and American Revolution had come under indentures.[2] However, while almost half the European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies were indentured servants, at any one time they were outnumbered by workers who had never been indentured, or whose indenture had expired, and thus free wage labor was the more prevalent for Europeans in the colonies.[3] Indentured people were numerically important mostly in the region from Virginia north to New Jersey. Other colonies saw far fewer of them. The total number of European immigrants to all 13 colonies before 1775 was about 500,000; of these 55,000 were involuntary prisoners. Of the 450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that 48% were indentured.[4] About 75% of these were under the age of 25. The age of adulthood for men was 24 years (not 21); those over 24 generally came on contracts lasting about 3 years.[5] Regarding the children who came, Gary Nash reports that "many of the servants were actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labor once in America."[6]

Several instances of trepanning[7] for transportation to the Americas are recorded such as that of Peter Williamson (1730–1799). As historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out, "Although efforts were made to regulate or check their activities, and they diminished in importance in the eighteenth century, it remains true that a certain small part of the white colonial population of America was brought by force, and a much larger portion came in response to deceit and misrepresentation on the part of the spirits [recruiting agents]."[8] One "spirit" named William Thiene was known to have spirited away[9] 840 people from Britain to the colonies in a single year.[10] Historian Lerone Bennett, Jr. notes that "Masters given to flogging often did not care whether their victims were black or white."[11]

Indentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were sometimes subject to physical punishment and did not receive legal favor from the courts. To ensure that the indenture contract was satisfied completely with the allotted amount of time, the term of indenture was lengthened for female servants if they became pregnant. Upon finishing their term they received "freedom dues" and were set free.[12]

. . . .

The American and British governments passed several laws that helped foster the decline of indentures. The UK Parliament's Passenger Vessels Act 1803 regulated travel conditions aboard ships to make transportation more expensive, so as to hinder landlords' tenants seeking a better life. An American law passed in 1833 abolished imprisonment of debtors, which made prosecuting runaway servants more difficult, increasing the risk of indenture contract purchases. The 13th Amendment, passed in the wake of the American Civil War, made indentured servitude illegal in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude

As for education?

Public education in Europe did not become common until into the 19th century, maybe 200 years ago.
ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_England

Maria Theresa of Austria was one of the leaders in the movement in which governments funded public education:

Aware of the inadequacy of bureaucracy in Austria, and wishing to improve it, Maria Theresa reformed education in 1775. In a new school system based on the Prussian one, all children of both genders from the ages of six to twelve were required to attend school. Education reform was met with hostility from many villages; Maria Theresa crushed the dissent by ordering the arrest of all those opposed. Although the idea had merit, the reforms were not as successful as they were expected to be since no funding was offered from the state; in some parts of Austria, half of the population was illiterate well into the 19th century.[119][138]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa

The basic foundations of a generic Prussian primary education system were laid out by Frederick the Great with his Generallandschulreglement, a decree of 1763, authored by Johann Julius Hecker. Hecker had already before (in 1748) founded the first teacher's seminary in Prussia. His concept of providing teachers with the means to cultivate mulberries for homespun silk, which was one of Frederick's favorite projects, found the King's favour.[3] It expanded the existing schooling system significantly and required that all young citizens, both girls and boys, be educated by mainly municipality-funded schools from the age of 5 to 13 or 14. Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education.[4] In comparison, in France and Great Britain, compulsory schooling was not successfully enacted until the 1880s.[5]

The Prussian system consisted of an eight-year course of primary education, called Volksschule. It provided not only basic technical skills needed in a modernizing world (such as reading and writing), but also music (singing) and religious (Christian) education in close cooperation with the churches and tried to impose a strict ethos of duty, sobriety and discipline. Mathematics and calculus were not compulsory at the start and taking such courses required additional payment by parents. Frederick the Great also formalized further educational stages, the Realschule and as the highest stage the gymnasium (state-funded secondary school), which served as a university-preparatory school.[6]

Construction of schools received some state support, but they were often built on private initiative. Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow, a member of the local gentry and former cavalry officer in Reckahn, Brandenburg, installed such a school. Von Rochow cooperated with Heinrich Julius Bruns (1746–1794), a talented teacher of modest background. The two installed a model school for rural education that attracted more than 1,200 notable visitors between 1777 and 1794.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

England was a late learner when it came to establishing a strong public education system.

In August 1833, Parliament voted sums of money each year for the construction of schools for poor children, the first time the state had become involved with education in England and Wales (whereas a programme for universal education in Scotland had been initiated in the seventeenth century). A meeting in Manchester in 1837, chaired by Mark Philips, led to the creation of the Lancashire Public Schools' Association. The association proposed that non-denominational schools should be funded from local taxes. Also 1837, the Whig former Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham presented a bill for public education.[16]

In 1839 government grants for the construction and maintenance of schools were switched to voluntary bodies, and became conditional on a satisfactory inspection.

In 1840 the Grammar Schools Act expanded the Grammar School curriculum from classical studies to include science and literature. In 1861 the Royal Commission on the state of popular education in England, chaired by the Duke of Newcastle, reported "The number of children whose names ought [in summer 1858 in England and Wales] to have been on the school books, in order that all might receive some education, was 2,655,767. The number we found to be actually on the books was 2,535,462, thus leaving 120,305 children without any school instruction whatever."[17]

In fee-paying public schools, which served the upper-class, important reforms were initiated by Thomas Arnold in Rugby. They redefined standards of masculinity, putting a heavy emphasis on sports and teamwork.[18][19]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_England#National_schools_and_British_Schools

The history of public education in the South is something no southerner should be proud of. Jeff Sessions should read up before speaking.

Republican governments during the Reconstruction era established the first public school systems to be supported by general taxes. Both whites and blacks would be admitted, but legislators agreed on racially segregated schools. (The few integrated schools were located in New Orleans).

Particularly after white Democrats regained control of the state legislatures in former Confederate states, they consistently underfunded public schools for blacks which continued until 1954 when the United States Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

Generally public schooling in rural areas did not extend beyond the elementary grades for either whites or blacks. This was known as "eighth grade school"[17] After 1900, some cities began to establish high schools, primarily for middle class whites. In the 1930s roughly one fourth of the US population still lived and worked on farms and few rural Southerners of either race went beyond the 8th grade until after 1945.[18][19][20][21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States

Horrors! Jeff Sessions' got some larnin to do.