Before there was a Juneteenth, before there was the First Emancipation Proclamation, before there was a need for a First Reconstruction, before even the nation’s founders encoded their ideals and flaws in the U.S. Constitution, there was Neptune Branch, my 5th-great grandfather. Born in 1748, thirty-five years before the birth of our nation, Neptune was a slave of plantation owner Benjamin Branch in Chesterfield, VA, not far from Richmond. He was born into a family of slaves whose probable origin was West Africa in the territory now known as Nigeria and Cameroon. He is the earliest of my known ancestors upon whose shoulders I stand, and I am his dream over 10 generations deferred.
Neptune’s dream was shared by most slaves, yet was unspeakable: freedom, equality and prosperity for himself and his family. Neptune nurtured and eventually gave voice to his dream due to a period in his early life when he experienced two very different realities. The first was the reality Neptune was born into, as a lifelong slave destined to be demeaned yet essential human currency for the wealth building of white supremacists. The second was the reality he experienced in his twenties, during a transformative moment in our history, as a body servant to his owner during the American Revolutionary War. Now Captain in the Colonial Virginia Militia, Branch took Neptune with him to ease the daily discomforts of war as he joined General George Washington to fight the tyranny of the British and birth a nation ready to institutionalize a tyranny of its own. For years, Neptune listened to the colonial elite debate, argue and plot the spoils of war, and saw first hand the world of possibilities for those who would be free.
Neptune had marched off to war with his Captain believing that if he and his master survived the revolution, he would be free. You see, to ensure Neptune’s loyalty outside the confines of the plantation and its overseer, Branch made Neptune a promise: serve loyally during the war and Branch would free Neptune when freedom from the British was won.
The war ended, a new nation was born, but Captain Branch did not keep his promise. He did not deliver the freedom pledged in return for Neptune’s service. Recovering his pre-war plantation wealth and lifestyle required free labor, so promises be damned. Nevertheless, Neptune’s dream begun was not to be deterred by a lie. If freedom could not be secured by a promise, perhaps it could be purchased with cash.
Neptune resolved to be the purchaser of his own emancipation. He determined to buy his freedom; to buy himself.
And he did.
But not right away. Captain Branch died, and Neptune was sold to a neighboring plantation. After many years, he was able to strike a deal with his new master. Neptune negotiated an agreement to pay his new owner, Mr. Epps, $50 per year for the privilege of renting himself out as a stevedore to earn the $700 price of his freedom, to be paid in installments. After more than 10 years, at the age of 44, Neptune obtained his freedom.
Or so he thought.
Upon Mr. Epps’ death, Neptune was re-enslaved based on a claim that he owed Mr. Epps’ estate $600 due to his failure to produce a Bill of Sale, conveniently never provided by Mr. Epps. So Neptune, determination undiminished, began again his journey to freedom, this time for the seemingly insurmountable price of $1,300 — $600 to cover the debt claimed by yet another owner and $700 for him to purchase his freedom, once again.
Neptune finally did purchase his freedom, at the age of 60, and documented it with an all important Bill of Sale, proof positive that he had not only paid a lifetime of free labor, twice paid the purchase price of $700 to secure his liberty, in addition to $50 of yearly privilege fees, and finally the false claim of $600 to add insult to injury.
But Neptune paid it nevertheless because his dream was never just about himself. It was about freeing his family as well. So 19 years later, at 79 he purchased and freed his wife Mary, then in her 70th year. Yet he was not able to do the same for their 12 children. They were sold and resold from one slaveholder to the next, making it difficult to know even where they were. None were able to accomplish what Neptune had done, either for themselves or their families. Some escaped to the North, yet remained fugitives subject to re-enslavement on any given day. The multigenerational family tragedy was beyond Neptune’s ability to alter. Their emancipation would fall on the shoulders of others. And so began my family’s dream deferred.
The American Dilemma
Neptune’s story is one of millions of life experiences of people of color struggling to lift themselves up and claim their humanity in the face of indignities, laws and practices intended to prevent them from doing so. Each life had its own particular details and nuances but they all spoke to the same truth: try as we might, we can’t emancipate ourselves one person or one family at a time.
White folks created the institution of slavery in our land and the horrors that came with it. White folks ensured the subjugation of former slaves and their children as second class citizens for generations to come. White folks withheld the Bill of Sale rightly due generations of slaves for building a nation with millions of lifetimes of free labor. White folks perfused the laws of our land and our way of life with the assumption of white supremacy that still haunts us today. All this time, white folks have also always held the power to face the truth of our history, say enough is enough, and bring these chapters of our history full of contractions, broken promises and deferred dreams to a close. The power to emancipate themselves of the Big Lie upon which our nation was built — that white folks matter most — and harness the extraordinary power released by such freedom to build our nation anew on the foundational belief that Black folks — and all people of color — matter just as much.
The Road to Redemption
The Proclamation of Emancipation, now the basis for a new national holiday, not only celebrates the end of American slavery but also marks our nation’s first act of redemption. Emancipation, the process of being set free, is a two way street. For slaves it meant bodily liberation, the first step on a long journey to social equality and economic equity — not just for a person or family, but an entire people. For whites it was a repentance, the first step in forgiving themselves for the sins of their ancestors who lacked the courage to be true to our highest national aspirations. For both parties, it was the clarion call to action for our First Reconstruction that produced the 13th and 14th Amendments and reset the trajectory of our nation.
But the emancipation of slaves was not enough. Freedom with no rights and few ways to make a decent living brought the dream closer, but not by much. A century later, Martin Luther King, Jr. made this damning observation:
“One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.”
With King’s leadership and the powerful backing of latter-day white abolitionists, the next step toward national redemption was taken during The Second Reconstruction, known as our Civil Rights Movement, which resumed the work left undone by the first. Its goal was to galvanize a movement whose aspirations went beyond freedom to also secure social equality and economic equity for the next generations of people of color to come. This pivotal event in our nation’s history also had its energizing act that defined it and propelled it forward: the historic MLK speech, “I Have A Dream” on the Washington Mall. It was a Proclamation of Social Equality that foreshadowed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the social equality legislation that followed.
Today we need another proclamation for our time, our Third Reconstruction. This Third Reconstruction, now well underway and building on both past gains and losses, is unfolding as it must in progressive parts, but is at risk of losing its momentum. Part 1, a Racial Reckoning, took form under the banner of Black Lives Matter, in the wake of countless killings of unarmed black men, women, and children by police officers around the country reaching a climax with the horrendous public killing by strangulation of George Floyd by a white police officer in 2020. These catalytic events stimulated protest around the world and brought into sharp focus the urgency of addressing the racial inequities that persist unabated — now.
Part 2, a Truth Reckoning, began on November 3, 2020, Election Day, when the nation chose a new President. The incumbent President rejected the results, called on his followers and election officials to disqualify the votes of the citizenry, and incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. These events further shocked the nation and made clear the truth that white supremacy is alive and well throughout our nation and is an imminent danger not only to folks of color but white folks as well.
Confronted with these monumental challenges, we risk failure by inaction.
Where is the acknowledgement today that our nation is still in a state of emergency and that the answer to our plight is more sustained commitment to equity, not less? Where is the admission that the most difficult and elusive tasks of national redemption are still before us? Where is the comprehensive and permanent uprooting of institutionalized white supremacy in our laws, policies and practices throughout our nation?
What next?
Part 3 of our Third Reconstruction requires the framing we have been avoiding for 150 years: a Proclamation of Economic Equity. A clarion call to act urgently to remove the last major bastion of inequity for people of color. An unwavering commitment to eliminate the systematic denial of access to resources essential to their economic wellbeing, particularly access to capital.
From whom should the call for sustained action come? Certainly from our political, social and moral leaders, but more importantly it must come from our business community. In the past, the business community had the most to gain from the persistence of the economic inequities that subjugated people of color and stymied their economic power. However, ironically, today the business community has the most to gain. It is no longer a matter of making good on a promise, or a Bill of Sale, but rather a national economic necessity. According to the Brookings Institution:
“People of color will be the source of all of the growth in the nation’s youth and working age population, most of the growth in its voters, and much of the growth in its consumers and tax base as far into the future as we can see. Hence, the more rapidly growing, largely white senior population will be increasingly dependent on their contributions to the economy and to government programs such as Medicare and Social Security. This suggests the necessity for continued investments in the nation’s diverse youth and young adults as the population continues to age.”
This is a matter of America remaining economically vital, and at long last becoming a prosperous nation for us all. What we do now will seal our fate as a nation for a generation or more to come.
Reinventure Capital is joining with other like-minded businesses to do our part. We are a private investment practice that does not extract or concentrate wealth, but creates and expands it; is not elitist but equitable; not exclusive, but inclusive. Profitable and purposeful.We are making good on the long-deferred ideals and dreams of this nation founded on the principle of equality. Reinventure invests exclusively in US-based companies led and controlled by BIPOC and/or womxn founders, at breakeven and poised to grow profitably. Our investment strategy is structured to catalyze economic equity and generate financial benefit for investees and investors alike.
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