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Slavery

After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond by Eyre Crowe, 1853 (Now hanging in the Chicago History Museum)

The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Thom Hartmann, AlterNet — The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says “State” instead of “Country” (the Framers knew the difference – see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia’s vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.

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Cotton weighing during harvest time in the Mississippi Delta

To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice — By Walter Johnson

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Walter Johnson — In Memory of Cedric Robinson (1940–2016) It is a commonplace to say that slavery “dehumanized” enslaved people, but to do so is misleading, harmful, and worth resisting. I hasten to add that there are, of course, plenty of right-minded reasons for adopting the notion of “dehumanization.” It is hard to square the idea of millions of people being bought and sold, of systematic sexual violation, natal…

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The British Treasury’s tweet shows slavery is still misunderstood

The British Treasury’s tweet shows slavery is still misunderstood

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

The modern equivalent of £17bn was paid out to compensate slave owners for the loss of their human property. Some people believe we should be proud. By David Olusoga — It is hard to imagine why somebody at the Treasury thought that the subject of slavery was fertile territory from which they might harvest their weekly “surprising #FridayFact”. Just after lunchtime on 9 February the department’s Twitter page presented its third of a million followers with its latest offering. “Millions of you helped end the slave trade through your taxes,” it trumpeted.

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“Halting at Noon,” a wood engraving showing a slave drive through Virginia in the early nineteenth century, 1864

Slavery and the American University

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Alex Carp — According to the surviving records, the first enslaved African in Massachusetts was the property of the schoolmaster of Harvard. Yale funded its first graduate-level courses and its first scholarship with the rents from a small slave plantation it owned in Rhode Island (the estate, in a stroke of historical irony, was named Whitehall). The scholarship’s first recipient went on to found Dartmouth, and a later grantee…

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Convicts leased to harvest timber in Florida around 1915

Exploiting Black Labor After The Abolition Of Slavery

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can choose otherwise. By Kathy Roberts Forde and Bryan Bowman, University of Massachusetts Amherst — The U.S. criminal justice system is riven by racial disparity. The Obama administration pursued a plan to reform it. An entire news organization, The Marshall Project, was launched in late 2014 to cover it. Organizations like Black Lives Matter and The Sentencing Project are dedicated to unmaking a system that unjustly targets people of color. But how did we get this system…

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The Lincoln Emancipation Statue, paid for by former enslaved people and erected in Washington, D.C., in 1876, has been criticized for representing the history of slavery from a paternalistic perspective.

What Kids Are Really Learning About Slavery

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

A new report finds that the topic is mistaught and often sentimentalized—and students are alarmingly misinformed as a result. By Melinda D. Anderson — A class of middle-schoolers in Charlotte, North Carolina, was asked to cite “four reasons why Africans made good slaves.” Nine third-grade teachers in suburban Atlanta assigned math word problems about slavery and beatings. A high school in the Los Angeles-area reenacted a slave ship—with students’ lying on the dark…

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In Ouidah, Benin, a man walks past a statue of Francisco Félix de Souza, a major slave merchant who worked in the 18th and 19th centuries in what is now Benin and is considered the father of the city. The statue is covered with lights.

An African country reckons with its history of selling slaves

By News & Current Affairs

Benin was a hub of the slave trade. But many people want to forget their families’ role. By Kevin Sieff, Washington Post — OUIDAH, Benin — Less than a mile from what was once West Africa’s biggest slave port, the departure point for more than a million people in chains, stands a statue of Francisco Félix de Souza, a man regarded as the father of this city. There’s a museum…

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