Berry, Daina Ramey

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Slavery in America: Back in the Headlines - Not Even Pasthttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines/[6/15/2020 11:31:44 AM]"The past is never dead. It's not even past." William FaulknerNOT EVEN PAST     THE PUBLIC HISTORIANMore from The Public HistorianBOOKSMore BooksDIGITAL HISTORYSlavery in America: Back in theHeadlinesBy Daina Ramey Berry, University of Texas at Austin(This article was originally published on The Conversation.)People think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don’t. They think themajority of African slaves came to the American colonies, but they didn’t. They talk about 400 hundredyears of slavery, but it wasn’t. They claim all Southerners owned slaves, but they didn’t. Some argue itwas a long time ago, but it wasn’t.Slavery has been in the news a lot lately. Perhaps it’s because of the increase in human trafficking onAmerican soil or the headlines about income inequality, the mass incarceration of African Americans ordiscussions about reparations to the descendants of slaves. Several publications have fueled theseconversations: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Case for Reparations in The Atlantic Monthly, French economistThomas Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century, historian Edward Baptist’s The Half Has NeverBeen Told: Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism, and law professor Bryan A. Stevenson’s JustMercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.As a scholar of slavery at the University of Texas at Austin, I welcome the public debates and connectionsthe American people are making with history. However, there are still many misconceptions about slavery.I’ve spent my career dispelling myths about “the peculiar institution.” The goal in my courses is not tovictimize one group and celebrate another. Instead, we trace the history of slavery in all its forms to makesense of the origins of wealth inequality and the roots of discrimination today. The history of slaveryprovides deep context to contemporary conversations and counters the distorted facts, internet hoaxesand poor scholarship I caution my students against.Four myths about slaveryMyth One: The majority of African captives came to what became the United States.Truth: Only 380,000 or 4-6% came to the United States. The majority of enslaved Africans went to Brazil,followed by the Caribbean. A significant number of enslaved Africans arrived in the American colonies byway of the Caribbean where they were “seasoned” and mentored into slave life. They spent months oryears recovering from the harsh realities of the Middle Passage. Once they were forcibly accustomed toslave labor, many were then brought to plantations on American soil. Like 170TweetMaking History: Houston’s “Spirit of theConfederacy”May 06, 2020America for Americans: A History ofXenophobia in the United States byErika Lee (2019)April 20, 2020Más de 72: Digital Archive ReviewBOOKS FILMS & MEDIA THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN BLOG TEXAS ABOUTSTUDENTSOUR/STORIES15 MINUTE HISTORYSlavery in America: Back in the Headlines - Not Even Pasthttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines/[6/15/2020 11:31:44 AM]More from Digital HistoryFILMS & MEDIAMore from Films & MediaTEXASMore from TexasMyth Two: Slavery lasted for 400 years.Popular culture is rich with references to 400 years of oppression. There seems to be confusion betweenthe Transatlantic Slave Trade (1440-1888) and the institution of slavery, confusion only reinforced by theBible, Genesis 15:13:Then the Lord said to him, ‘Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants willbe strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.’Listen to Lupe Fiasco – just one Hip Hop artist to refer to the 400 years – in his 2011 imagining ofAmerica without slavery, “All Black Everything”:[Hook]You would never knowIf you could ever beIf you never tryYou would never seeStayed in AfricaWe ain’t never leaveSo there were no slaves in our historyWere no slave ships, were no misery, call me crazy, or isn’t heSee I fell asleep and I had a dream, it was all black everything[Verse 1]Uh, and we ain’t get exploitedWhite man ain’t feared so he did not destroy itWe ain’t work for free, see they had to employ itBuilt it up together so we equally appointedFirst 400 years, see we actually enjoyed it““March 16, 2020Ayka (Dir: Sergei Dvortsevoy, 2018)October 02, 2019A (Queer) Rebel Wife In TexasMarch 11, 2020Slavery in America: Back in the Headlines - Not Even Pasthttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines/[6/15/2020 11:31:44 AM]A plantation owner with his slaves. (National Media Museum from UK)Truth: Slavery was not unique to the United States; it is a part of almost every nation’s history from Greekand Roman civilizations to contemporary forms of human trafficking. The American part of the story lastedfewer than 400 years.How do we calculate it? Most historians use 1619 as a starting point: 20 Africans referred to as ”servants”arrived in Jamestown, VA on a Dutch ship. It’s important to note, however, that they were not the firstAfricans on American soil. Africans first arrived in America in the late 16th century not as slaves but asexplorers together with Spanish and Portuguese explorers. One of the best known of these African“conquistadors” was Estevancio who traveled throughout the southeast from present day Florida toTexas. As far as the institution of chattel slavery – the treatment of slaves as property – in the UnitedStates, if we use 1619 as the beginning and the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment as its end then it lasted 246years, not 400.Myth Three: All Southerners owned slaves.Truth: Roughly 25% of all southerners owned slaves. The fact that one quarter of the Southern populationwere slaveholders is still shocking to many. This truth brings historical insight to modern conversationsabout the Occupy Movement, its challenge to the inequality gap and its slogan “we are the 99%.”Take the case of Texas. When it established statehood, the Lone Star State had a shorter period ofAnglo-American chattel slavery than other Southern states – only 1845 to 1865 – because Spain andMexico had occupied the region for almost one half of the 19th century with policies that either abolishedor limited slavery. Still, the number of people impacted by wealth and income inequality is staggering. By1860, the Texas enslaved population was 182,566, but slaveholders represented 27% of the population,Slavery in America: Back in the Headlines - Not Even Pasthttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines/[6/15/2020 11:31:44 AM]controlled 68% of the government positions and 73% of the wealth. Shocking figures but today’s incomegap in Texas is arguably more stark with 10% of tax filers taking home 50% of the income.Myth Four: Slavery was a long time ago.Truth: African-Americans have been free in this country for less time than they were enslaved. Do themath: Blacks have been free for 149 years which means that most Americans are two to threegenerations removed from slavery. However, former slaveholding families have built their legacies on theinstitution and generated wealth that African-Americans have not been privy to because enslaved laborwas forced; segregation maintained wealth disparities; and overt and covert discrimination limited African-American recovery efforts.The value of slavesEconomists and historians have examined detailed aspects of the enslaved experience for as long asslavery existed. Recent publications related to slavery and capitalism explore economic aspects of cottonproduction and offer commentary on the amount of wealth generated from enslaved labor.My own work enters this conversation looking at the value of individual slaves and the ways enslavedpeople responded to being treated as a commodity. They were bought and sold just like we sell cars andcattle today. They were gifted, deeded and mortgaged the same way we sell houses today. They wereitemized and insured the same way we manage our assets and protect our valuables.Extensive Sale of Choice Slaves, NewOrleans 1859, Girardey, C.E. (Natchez TraceCollection, Broadside Collection, DolphBriscoe Center for American History)Enslaved people were valued at every stage of their lives, from before birth until after death. Slaveholdersexamined women for their fertility and projected the value of their “future increase.” As they grew up,enslavers assessed their value through a rating system that quantified their work. An “A1 Prime hand”represented one term used for a “first rate” slave who could do the most work in a given day. Their valuesdecreased on a quarter scale from three-fourths hands to one-fourth hands, to a rate of zero, which wasSlavery in America: Back in the Headlines - Not Even Pasthttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines/[6/15/2020 11:31:44 AM]typically reserved for elderly or differently abled bondpeople (another term for slaves.)Guy and Andrew, two prime males sold at the largest auction in US History in 1859, commanded differentprices. Although similar in “all marketable points in size, age, and skill,” Guy commanded $1240 whileAndrew sold for $1040 because “he had lost his right eye.” A reporter from the New York Tribune noted“that the market value of the right eye in the Southern country is $240.” Enslaved bodies were reduced tomonetary values assessed from year to year and sometimes from month to month for their entire lifespanand beyond. By today’s standards, Andrew and Guy would be worth about $33,000-$40,000.Slavery was an extremely diverse economic institution; one that extrapolated unpaid labor out of people ina variety of settings from small single crop farms and plantations to urban universities. This diversity isalso reflected in their prices. Enslaved people understood they were treated as commodities.“I was sold away from mammy at three years old,” recalled Harriett Hill of Georgia. “I remembers it! It lackselling a calf from the cow,” she shared in a 1930s interview with the Works Progress Administration. “Weare human beings” she told her interviewer. Those in bondage understood their status. Even thoughHarriet Hill “was too little to remember her price when she was three, she recalled being sold for $1400 atage 9 or 10, “I never could forget it.”Slavery in popular cultureSlavery is part and parcel of American popular culture but for more than 30 years the television mini-series Roots was the primary visual representation of the institution except for a handful of independent(and not widely known) films such as Haile Gerima’s Sankofa or the Brazilian Quilombo. Today SteveMcQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is a box office success, actress Azia Mira Dungey has a popular web seriescalled Ask a Slave, and in Cash Crop sculptor Stephen Hayes compares the slave ships of the 18thcentury with third world sweatshops.From the serious – PBS’s award-winning Many Rivers to Cross – and the interactive Slave DwellingProject- whereby school aged children spend the night in slave cabins – to the comic at Saturday NightLive, slavery is today front and center.The elephant that sits at the center of our history is coming into focus. American slavery happened — weare still living with its consequences.Daina Ramey Berry receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a PublicVoices Fellow with The Op-Ed Project.You might also like:Articles about slavery on Not Even PastSlavery in America: Back in the Headlines - Not Even Pasthttps://notevenpast.org/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines/[6/15/2020 11:31:44 AM]19th century 20th Century African American History american history Asia Asia & Middle East book review Brazil British Empire China Civil War Cold War Colonialism communism cultural history digital history Early Modern Europe Europe film gender history History of Science immigration India Islam Latin America Latin American History Mexico Not Even Past Public History race religion Russia slavery Texas Texas History Texas History Day Transnational Twentieth Century History United States US History USSR Womens History world history World War IINOT EVEN PAST is produced byThe Department of HistoryTHE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN We are supported by the College of Liberal ArtsAnd our READERSDONATECONTACTAll content © 2010-present NOT EVEN PAST and the authors,unless otherwise notedSign up to receive bi-weekly email updatesThis article was originally published on The Conversation.Read the original article.Posted October 22, 2014More 1800s, 2000s, Africa, Blog, Slavery/Emancipation, Transnational, United StatesBOOKS FILMS & MEDIA THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN BLOG TEXAS

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