{"id":20892,"date":"2012-02-26T22:08:18","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T22:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20892"},"modified":"2013-01-12T20:31:52","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T20:31:52","slug":"pain-of-trail-of-tears-shared-by-blacks-as-well-as-native-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20892","title":{"rendered":"Pain of ‘Trail of Tears’ shared by Blacks as well as Native Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pain of ‘Trail of Tears’ shared by Blacks as well as Native Americans<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cable News Network (CNN)
\nIn America: You define America. What defines you?<\/a>
\n2012-02-25<\/p>\n

Tiya Miles<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of American Culture, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies
\nUniversity of Michigan<\/em><\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: Tiya Miles is chairwoman of the Department of Afro-American and African Studies, and professor of history and Native American studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of “Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom” and “The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story.”\u00a0 She is also the winner of\u00a0 a 2011 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n

(CNN) \u2013 African American history, as it is often told, includes two monumental migration stories: the forced exodus of Africans to the Americas during the brutal Middle Passage<\/a> of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the voluntary migration of Black residents who moved from southern farms and towns to northern cities in the early 1900s in search of \u201cthe warmth of other suns.\u201d A third African-American migration story\u2013just as epic, just as grave\u2013hovers outside the familiar frame of our historical consciousness. The iconic tragedy of Indian Removal: the Cherokee Trail of Tears<\/a> that relocated thousands of Cherokees<\/a> to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), was also a Black migration. Slaves of Cherokees walked this trail along with their Indian owners.
\n\u00a0
\nIn 1838, the U.S. military and Georgia militia expelled Cherokees from their homeland with little regard for Cherokee dignity or life. Families were rousted out of their cabins and directed at gunpoint by soldiers. Forced to leave most of their possessions behind, they witnessed white Georgians taking ownership of their cabins, looting and burning once cherished objects. Cherokees were loaded into \u201cstockades\u201d until the appointed time of their departure, when they were divided into thirteen groups of nearly 1,000 people, each with two appointed leaders. The travelers set out on multiple routes to cross Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas at 10 miles a day with meager supplies.
\n\u00a0
\nAt points along the way, the straggling bands were charged fees by white farmers to cross privately owned land. The few wagons available were used to carry the sick, infant, and elderly. Most walked through the fall and into the harsh winter months, suffering the continual deaths of loved ones to cold, disease, and accident. Among these sojourners were African Americans and Cherokees of African descent. They, like thousands of other Cherokees, arrived in Indian Country in 1839 broken, depleted, and destitute…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pain of ‘Trail of Tears’ shared by Blacks as well as Native Americans Cable News Network (CNN) In America: You define America. What defines you? 2012-02-25 Tiya Miles, Professor of American Culture, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies University of Michigan Editor’s Note: Tiya Miles is chairwoman of the Department of Afro-American and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,3015,20],"tags":[9447,3142,2969],"class_list":["post-20892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-cable-news-network","tag-cnn","tag-tiya-miles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}