Frederick Douglass wrote:
” What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
Today I want to reflect on Jane Iles. First, I want to introduce you to Jane Iles, my great-great-great-grandmother. Jane was probably born a slave, born in 1830 and lived at least until 1900. Not much is known about Jane other than information found on the census. Jane had at least one daughter, Caroline. Jane was illiterate and a laborer. Jane lived in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana which has fascinating history as the contested lawless Neutral Strip.
Calcasieu Parish was called the Neutral Ground and/or Sabine Free State
The Neutral Ground (also known as the Neutral Strip, the Neutral Territory, and the No Man's Land of Louisiana; sometimes anachronistically referred to as the Sabine Free State was a disputed area between Spanish Texas and the United States' newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. Local officers of Spain and the United States agreed to leave the Neutral Ground temporarily outside the jurisdiction of either country. The area, now in western Louisiana, had neutral status from 1806 to 1821.