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    • Contact Us
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  • Columbus
  • Slavery
  • Native Americans
  • Civil War
  • Reconstruction
  • Asian Americans
  • Civil Rights Era
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
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SLAVERY

The Myth of a Loving Master

"(US President Thomas) Jefferson...had always been kind to the negroes on his plantation. When he got back they were so rejoiced that they took him out of his carriage and carried him into the house, some of them crying and others laughing with delight because 'massa come home again.'" - Excerpt from A First Book in American History, 1889, by Edward Eggleston:circa 1789


Hand in hand with slavery came attempts to whitewash it with romanticized claims that loving relationships existed between masters and slaves. Teaching these myths, as well as not teaching basic Black American history, was and still is an attempt to erase our shameful history of slavery and systemic white supremacy.


In the 1970s, a Texas geography book referred to slaves as "workers". In Alabama, the textbook, "Know Alabama", falsely claimed that slavery on the plantation was "one of the happiest ways of life." A fourth grade text book claimed slaves were treated like "family".


Make no mistake, there was no loving slave master. Despite whatever outrageously false and irresponsible claims are printed in these textbooks, 388,000 men, women and children were kidnapped, chained shoulder to shoulder to the floor of a ship, brought across the ocean, never to see their loved ones or home continent again, or speak their native tongue again. After being dispersed as property throughout the American slave community, North and South, they became the property of another human being. Slaves were given a new name, treated like cattle, sold at auction, branded, whipped, forced to breed, forced into labor. Men, women, men and children were raped. As property of another human being, and if slaves bore children, by law their children would also be someone's property. 


Up until the 1970s, an Alabama textbooks described slavery was "the happiest ways of life". A curriculum which teaches that the enslavement of human beings is "happy" is a clear reflection of a very sick society, and a very sick culture. Sadly, we still see symptoms of this societal and cultural illness today fueling our inability and/or unwillingness to end systemic racism and white supremacy in America.

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(Detail of Stars and Stripes) By M Susan Broussard

Thomas Jefferson

One of the three slave owners carved on Mt. Rushmore.

Find out more

AUCTIONS, BRANDING, PUNISHMENT

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SLAVERY

Slavery exposes the lowest possible depth, solid rock bottom, of man's inhuman cruelty and willingness to inflict endless suffering onto his fellow man. 


For centuries the slave trade flourished in the Americas. In 1492, when Columbus landed on the shores of the Caribbean, like other European conquerors ("explorers" is far too nice a word to describe them) before him, he arrived with a business plan reliant on slave labor. Columbus's system of extremely violent slavery resulted in the genocide of the indigenous people who had the misfortune of living on the islands where his ships landed.


The first European settlers in what was to become the United States, found the indigenous people living here on their ancestral land were nearly impossible to enslave. Hell bent on free slave labor, the colonists brought in kidnapped slaves from Africa. Those Africans who weren't killed crossing over in the slave ships, were left so traumatized and broken, they were defenseless against additional violence and abuse.


In the United States, hundreds of landmark buildings were constructed literally by the blood, sweat and tears of slaves: the White House, Monticello, the US Capital, the residences of former presidents including George Washington's Mount Vernon and James Madison's Montpelier, American universities and churches. Not only were these structures built by slaves, they remained connected to the slave trade and continued to use slave labor. In their ongoing attempt to justify slavery and white supremacy, American universities further disgraced themselves by being central to the development of the ridiculous pseudoscience of scientific racism which was of course embraced by slave owners. Confederate Vice President, Alexander H. Stephens famously asserted: “Our new government is founded upon… the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. “ Facts be damned, this theory wrongly claimed biological superiority and inferiority of certain racial groups. Never a group to be skilled in the realm of facts, some white supremacists still perpetuate this non-science.


Since our nation's inception, opponents of emancipation were diabolically masterful at creating hurdles to giving slaves and freed men their rights. Legislation often failed to achieve what it intended, also failing to live up to the name given the legislation. In 1807 President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation that was supposed to have officially ended the African slave trade beginning on January 1808. Rather than end slavery, this act switched the trade from trans Atlantic to domestic slave trade in the United States. The thriving cotton economy of the South relied on continuously replenishing its supply of new slaves. The lifetime of someone in slavery was expected to be about seven years, and some slaves succeeded at running away, creating the demand for new slaves. Jefferson's legislation was met with the heinous practice of “slave breeding,” which was not unlike animal husbandry. Since slaves would no longer be brought over on boats from the trans-Atlanctic slave trade, slaves were violently forced to "propagate". Female slaves as young as age 13, were forced to give birth as often as possible. Some slave owners raped the women and girls. Some slave masters forced the biggest and strongest male slave to have sex with his female slaves, not unlike livestock propagation, threatening violence to anyone who resisted, while the slave masters watched. 


Another piece of legislation that did not live up to its name, was the Emancipation Proclamation. It is wrongly assumed that with the Emancipation Proclamation, former slaves were automatically granted citizenship with true equality and the same rights as white Americans. It is wrong to assume the playing field was made level, fair and equal for Black and white Americans, and has been ever since. True equality and human rights have never been granted to Black Americans, even to this day.


On June 5th, 2020, yellow paint spelled out in huge letters: Black Lives Matter. Each letter two-lanes wide and two blocks long down the road leading to the White House. A few hundred years late, but still a great thing.

A First Book in American History, 1889, by Edward Eggleston:circa 1789

Slave Ships: Inhumanity Hitting Rock Bottom

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Lithogram Diagram of 454 People Crammed into a Slave Ship Hold

Publisher: James Phillips, George Yard, Lombard Street, London Date: 1787

"Image made an instantaneous impression of horror..."

"...Instrumental in UK in serving the cause of injured Africans."

This diagram of the 'Brookes' slave ship is probably the most widely copied and powerful image used by the abolitionist campaigners. It depicts the ship loaded to its full capacity - 454 people crammed into the hold. The 'Brookes' sailed the passage from Liverpool via the Gold Coast in Africa to Jamaica in the West Indies.

The diagram was a very useful piece of propaganda in England and the rest of the United Kingdom. By April 1787, the diagram was widely known across the United Kingdom appearing in newspapers, pamphlets, books and even posters in coffee houses and pubs. Unfortunately it was not distributed in the colonies and later the United States. 


Thomas Clarkson commented in his History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808) that the 'print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it, and was therefore instrumental, in consequence of the wide circulation given it in England and the rest of the U.K., in serving the cause of the injured Africans'. An image had rarely been used as a propaganda tool in this way before.

What the Year 1619 Means to Me

By Kevin Powell

I have very mixed feelings about the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves, my ancestors, to Jamestown, Virginia. It is because I know well American history, and it is because while a visiting scholar at James Madison University in Virginia earlier this year, I decided to make my first trip to Jamestown. I know what I had been taught from grade through high school about this momentous date. I barely was taught anything else about slavery, how my ancestors had been stolen from Africa, stripped of their names, languages, cultures, identities.   But I knew, minimally, they were not “indentured servants,” as there was never a choice to not be a slave. I knew that from 1619 to 1865, 246 long and soul-stripping years, they were beaten, raped, terrorized, reduced to human property, and killed as they, these profoundly wounded persons, literally built the economic infrastructure of America for free. As I walked through that Jamestown settlement, I could feel the energy of those first slaves. I struggled to read the history the way it was told in parts, as if slavery was not so bad. Yes it was so bad, as we still deal with the legacy of it in America. Many of the founding fathers were slave owners even as they were declaring all were created equal. Several of the early presidents of the United States participated in slavery. Much of what slaves were taught continue to trigger Blacks, from divisive conflicts around skin color, to our diets, born of necessity and desperation on those plantations, which wreak havoc on our health. 1619 means, to me, the mental brainwashing and physical and spiritual devastation of an entire race of people, and that truism undermined the morality of America right from the very beginning; and we are paying the price for it in this 21st century when we see so many trafficking in the same kind of hatred, violence, and fear-mongering that was levied against my ancestors back then. What we need in America, what has not happened, is an honest national conversation on race that tells the entire truth about the legacy of slavery, while also acknowledging that, per Dr. Ivan Van Sertima’s landmark book They Came Before Columbus, the history of this part of the world does not and did not begin with European history, that Black people and other people of color have been in these many spaces and places all along. What we need in America at schools, public and private, and from educators of every background, are lessons which do not whitewash slavery, which do not ask Black children, when discussing slavery, to be slaves. What we need in America is a steady gaze in the mirror, accepting that inseparable of any talk about history, about democracy, from 1619 to the Civil War to Dr. King to Black Lives Matter, is the story of those who were brought here as slaves, and how that painful legacy of white supremacist thinking and behavior remains a nasty open sore on the American democracy. I did not think about any of this until I got to college, because in spite of being a straight-A student K through 12, 1619 and what it wrought was watered down—nor were we ever taught the Civil Rights Movement and its efforts to right the wrongs, ever. As a result I grew up as dutifully self-hating as a Black slave on those plantations. It was not just me; it was most Blacks in my community. It was not until I got to that college, Rutgers University in my home state of New Jersey, and began to truly study American history through a different lens—my lens—that it blew me away what slavery had done to us.   I cried reading slave narratives and historical texts. I cried as I imagined what it must have felt like to be un-free for one’s entire life. I cried at how ashamed I had been for so long of Africa, of how I had swallowed whole the distorted and racist images of that motherland from whence my people had come. And yes I cried that day earlier this year when I walked the grounds of Jamestown wondering to myself how any people enslaved could still manage to worship God; to build and create numerous inventions; to put forth songs and sounds that are the foundation for much of American music; to be so patriotic that we have fought in virtually every American war, even as we were being denied our own freedoms; and to be so humanly resilient that we have bounced back time and again, even as what began in 1619 birthed, for many of us, including my single mother and me, generations of poverty and hand-me-down depression and traumas we can never seem to escape. This is why there have been calls for reparations from we descendants of African slaves across decades and eras. There has never been a true and consistent repairing of the human damage done—So, if 1619 should mean anything now, it should mean it is past time to pause, to be equally comfortable and uncomfortable in our American skins, as we face this tragic history, and ourselves, once and for all. Otherwise it is just another celebration, another anniversary, that will fade away like the haunting cries of those packed at the bottom of those slave ships so long ago.       


Kevin Powell is a civil and human rights activist, and author of 13 books including his autobiography, The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy’s Journey into Manhood. An upcoming book will be a biography of Tupac Shakur, the global pop culture and hip-hop icon. You can email Kevin: kevin@kevinpowell.net

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CROSS THAT RIVER - A Musical Tale of Black Cowboys

By Allan and Pat Harris

The 1860s is the setting for Cross That River, the musical tale by award winning musician/composer Allan Harris. This animated and moving musical features an escaped slave named Blue, and focuses on the history of the Black cowboy. A quarter of the cowhands out West were Black. Composer Allan Harris's storytelling and songs honors them with this historic journey from Louisiana, to Texas, and up the cattle trails to Kansas. 


Heard on: NPR, off Broadway, the Kennedy Center, New York Times feature, CBS, NBC NY, Aspen Writer's Festival. New York Musical Theater Festival, O'Neill Theater Center, ASCAP Musical Theater Festival, and 59E59 Theater NYC.

Storytelling with Superb Music

Preview of the musical.

Play Video

CROSS THAT RIVER

CROSS THAT RIVER

CROSS THAT RIVER

Allan Harris
performs Blue was Angry 

Play Video

CROSS THAT RIVER

CROSS THAT RIVER

CROSS THAT RIVER

Allan Harris

Interview with the Man behind the Musical

Play Video

Harriet Tubman

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Harriet Tubman

Harriet's Shawl

Harriet's Shawl

What's something exciting your business offers? Say it here.

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Harriet's Shawl

Harriet's Shawl

Harriet's Shawl

A gift from Queen Victoria. Silk lace and linen shawl given to Harriet Tubman by Queen Victoria, ca. 1897

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REWARD POSTER FOR HARRIET [MINTY] TUBMAN

Harriet Tubman, 1820-1913

Born a slave in Maryland’s Dorchester County around 1820, Harriet Tubman escaped to the North in 1849 out of fear that she was to be sold to another plantation. Shortly after her escape, she became one of the Underground Railroad’s most famous conductors. Tremendously courageous and selfless, for the next decade, she returned to the South approximately 13 times and helped an estimated 70 slaves, including multiple family members, reach freedom. 


"I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to; liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive." - Harriet Tubman


Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called her “Moses” after the Biblical prophet who led the Jews out of bondage from Egypt and Frederick Douglass said that “Excepting John Brown—of sacred memory—I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than [Harriet Tubman].” 


Though a cash reward was offered for Tubman’s capture, she was never caught. (See poster below.) She served as a nurse, scout and spy for the Union during the Civil War. After the war, Tubman moved to Auburn, New York, where she lived until her death in 1913.


PBS, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

"THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD

Ran away from the subscriber on Monday the 17th ult., three negroes, named as follows: Harry [Henry], aged about 19 years, has on one side of his neck a wen, just under the ear, he is of a dark chestnut color, about 5 feet 8 or nine inches hight [sic]; Ben, aged aged [sic] about 25 years, is very quick to speak when spoken to, he is chestnut color, about six feet high; Minty [Harriet], aged about 27 yers, is of a chestnut color, fine looking, about 5 feet high. One hundred dollars reward will be given for each of the above named negroes, if taken out of State, and $50 each if taken in the State. 

Eliza Ann Brodess 

Near Bucktown, Dorchester county, MD 

Oct. 2d, 1849 

Delaware Gazette

VINTAGE POSTERS: SLAVE DEALERS & KIDNAPPERS, RUNAWAY SLAVES;

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Reward for HARRIET [MINTY] TUBMAN

THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD

Ran away from the subscriber on Monday the 17th ult., three negroes, named as follows: Harry [Henry], aged about 19 years, has on one side of his neck a wen, just under the ear, he is of a dark chestnut color, about 5 feet 8 or nine inches hight [sic]; Ben, aged aged [sic] about 25 years, is very quick to speak when spoken to, he is chestnut color, about six feet high; Minty [Harriet], aged about 27 yers, is of a chestnut color, fine looking, about 5 feet high. One hundred dollars reward will be given for each of the above named negroes, if taken out of State, and $50 each if taken in the State. 

Eliza Ann Brodess 

Near Bucktown, Dorchester county, MD 

Oct. 2d, 1849 

Delaware Gazette


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N. B. FOREST, DEALER IN SLAVES

No. 87 Adams-st, Memphis, Ten., 

HAS just received from North Carolina, twenty-five likely young negroes, to which he desires to call attention of purchasers. He will be in the regular receipt of negroes from North and South Carolina every month. His Negro Depot is one of the most complete and commodious establishments of the kind in the Southern country, and his regulations exact and systematic, cleanliness, neatness and comfort being strictly observed and enforced. His aim is to furnish to customers A. 1 servants and field hands, sound and perfect in body and mind. Negroes taken on commission. jan21

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TO BE SOLD

on board the Ship Bance-Uland, on tuesday the 6th of May next, at Asbley-Ferry, a choice cargo of about 250 fine healthy NEGROES, just arrived from the Windward & Rice Coast. The utmost care has already beentaken, and shall be continued, to keep them free from SMALL-POX, no boat having been on board, and all other communication with people from Charles-Town prevented. 

Austin, Laurens, & Appleby.

N. B. Full one Halt of the above Negroes have had the SMALL-POX in their own Country.

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10 LIKELY and VALUABLE SLAVES AT AUCTION

On THURSDAY the 24th inst. WE WILL SELL, in front of our Office, without any kind of limit or reserve for cash, AT 11 O'CLOCK, 10 AS LIKELY NEGROES 

As any ever offered in this market; among them is a man who is a first rate House Servant, and an excellent seamstress.

BROOKE & HUBBARD Auctioneers

Wednesday, July 23, 1823.

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$1200 TO 1250 DOLLARS! FOR NEGROES!!

THE undersigned wishes to purchase a large lot of NEGROES for the New Orleans market. I will pay $1200 to $1250 for No. 1 young men, and $850 to $1000 for No. 1 young women. In fact I will pay more for likely NEGROES Than any other trader in Kentucky. My office is adjoining the Broadway Hotel, on Broadway, Lexington, Ky., where I or my Agent can always be found. 

WM. F. TALBOTT

LEXINGTON, JULY 2, 1852.

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CAUTION!! COLORED PEOPLE OF BOSTON, ONE & ALL,

You are hereby respectfully CAUTIONED and advised, to avoid conversing with the Watchmen and Police Officers of Boston,

For since the recent ORDER OF THE MAYOR & ALDERMEN, thy are empowered to act as KIDNAPPERS and Slave Catchers,

And they have already been actually employed in KIDNAPPING, CATCHING, AND KEEPING SLAVES. Therefore, if you value your LIBERTY, and the Welfare of the Fugitives among you, Shun them in every possible manner, as so many HOUNDS on the track of the most unfortunate of your race. Keep a Sharp Look Out for KIDNAPPERS, and have TOP EYE open. 

April 24, 1851.

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$50 REWARD! RANAWAY (sic)

From the subscriber's residence, Myrtle Grove, Chas. County, Maryland, 

Negro Man,

FRANK or FRANCIS, aged about 23 years. Frank is a Mulatto, not very bright, nearly, or full six feet in height, very straight and erect, of good development of flesh and size, without any approach to fatness. 

His dress was the ordinary drab Kersey jacket and pants, and cloth cap; thought he may get some other clothing from his acquaintances. He left my place on Monday morning, 10th April, 1854. I will give the above reward of Fifty Dollars for him if apprehended out of the Counties of Charles and Price George. But if in either of these Counties, I will pay Thirty Dollars, provided I get possession of him.

HENRY S. MITCHELL.

P.O. - Glymont, Charles Co., Md.

April 11, 1854.

Catalogue of official Robes and Banners by Ku Klux Klan (1915- )

Catalogue of Official Robes and Banners Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.

Atlanta, Georgia, Publication date: 1925


Slaves at Work

Slave Ships

More Information

Books, Articles

[1] How Slavery Shaped America's Oldest And Most Elite Colleges

NPR Staff

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/17/223420533/how-slavery-shaped-americas-oldest-and-most-elite-colleges


Books:


Barracooon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", 2018, Zora Neale Hurston, Subject: Biography of the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade


Caste: The origins of our Discontents, 2020, Isabel Wilkerson


Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities, 2013, Craig Steven Wilder


Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, 2010, Fred Wilderson


Afropessimism, 2020, Fred Wilderson


A People's History of the United States, 1980, Howard Zinn


Articles:

'Built by my family': America's grand buildings built by slaves

Reuters/The Wider Image, 2 September, 2019, By Makini Brice

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/built-by-my-family-americas-grand-buildings-built-by-slaves


Videos and Websites:


100 Amazing Facts About the Negro, PBS Public Broadcast S

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/


https://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/campaignforabolition/abolition.html


www.britannica.com


Databases:


Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 1525 - 1866, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson; most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade.

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