Places in Possum Kingdom Texas for Family of 100 Reunions
This article was published in 2017
People call back they know everything about slavery in the The states, but they don't. They recollect the majority of African slaves came to the American colonies, only they didn't. They talk about 400 years of slavery, but it wasn't. They claim all Southerners owned slaves, only they didn't. Some argue it was all a long time ago, but information technology wasn't.
Slavery has been in the news a lot lately. From the discovery of the auction of 272 enslaved people that enabled Georgetown University to remain in performance to the McGraw-Hill textbook controversy over calling slaves "workers from Africa" and the slavery memorial being built at the University of Virginia, Americans are having conversations about this difficult menstruum in American history. Some of these dialogues have been wrought with controversy and conflict, similar the University of Tennessee student who challenged her professor'southward agreement of enslaved families.
Every bit a scholar of slavery at the Academy of Texas at Austin, I welcome the public debates and connections the American people are making with history. However, in that location are even so many misconceptions well-nigh slavery, as evidenced by the conflict at the University of Tennessee.
I've spent my career dispelling myths well-nigh "the peculiar institution." The goal in my courses is non to victimize one grouping and celebrate some other. Instead, we trace the history of slavery in all its forms to make sense of the origins of wealth inequality and the roots of bigotry today. The history of slavery provides vital context to gimmicky conversations and counters the distorted facts, internet hoaxes and poor scholarship I caution my students against.
Four myths nigh slavery
Myth Ane: The majority of African captives came to what became the Usa.
Truth: Only a petty more than 300,000 captives, or 4-6 percent, came to the United States. The majority of enslaved Africans went to Brazil, followed by the Caribbean area. A significant number of enslaved Africans arrived in the American colonies by way of the Caribbean, where they were "seasoned" and mentored into slave life. They spent months or years recovering from the harsh realities of the Heart Passage. Once they were forcibly accustomed to slave labor, many were so brought to plantations on American soil.
Myth Two: Slavery lasted for 400 years.
Pop culture is rich with references to 400 years of oppression. There seems to be confusion betwixt the Transatlantic Slave Merchandise (1440-1888) and the institution of slavery, confusion only reinforced by the Bible, Genesis 15:13:
Then the Lord said to him, 'Know for sure that for 4 hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country non their ain and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.'
Mind to Lupe Fiasco – just i hip-hop artist to refer to the 400 years – in his 2011 imagining of America without slavery, "All Black Everything":
[Hook] Yous would never know If you could ever be If you never endeavor Yous would never see Stayed in Africa We ain't never exit So at that place were no slaves in our history Were no slave ships, were no misery, call me crazy, or isn't he Come across I fell comatose and I had a dream, information technology was all black everything [Poesy i] Uh, and we own't get exploited White man ain't feared then he did not destroy it We ain't work for gratuitous, see they had to utilise information technology Congenital information technology up together so we equally appointed Commencement 400 years, see we actually enjoyed it 
Truth: Slavery was not unique to the United States; it is a role of almost every nation'southward history, from Greek and Roman civilizations to contemporary forms of human trafficking. The American function of the story lasted fewer than 400 years.
How, and so, exercise we calculate the timeline of slavery in America? Nigh historians use 1619 equally a starting betoken: 20 Africans referred to as "servants" arrived in Jamestown, Virginia on a Dutch transport. Information technology'due south important to note, however, that they were not the showtime Africans on American soil. Africans starting time arrived in America in the late 16th century not as slaves but as explorers together with Spanish and Portuguese explorers.
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One of the best-known of these African "conquistadors" was Estevancio, who traveled throughout the Southeast from present-24-hour interval Florida to Texas. Every bit far as the institution of chattel slavery – the handling of slaves as property – in the Us, if we use 1619 every bit the beginning and the 1865 13th Subpoena as its end, and so it lasted 246 years, not 400.
Myth Iii: All Southerners owned slaves.
Truth: Roughly 25 pct of all Southerners endemic slaves. The fact that ane-quarter of the southern population were slaveholders is still shocking to many. This truth brings historical insight to mod conversations virtually inequality and reparations.
Have the case of Texas.
When information technology established statehood, the Lone Star State had a shorter flow of Anglo-American chattel slavery than other southern states – merely 1845 to 1865 – because Kingdom of spain and United mexican states had occupied the region for almost ane-half of the 19th century with policies that either abolished or limited slavery. Still, the number of people impacted past wealth and income inequality is staggering. By 1860, the Texas enslaved population was 182,566, but slaveholders represented 27 pct of the population, and controlled 68 pct of the government positions and 73 percent of the wealth. These are astonishing figures, but today's income gap in Texas is arguably more stark, with x percentage of revenue enhancement filers taking home l percentage of the income.
Myth Four: Slavery was a long fourth dimension ago.
Truth: African-Americans accept been costless in this state for less time than they were enslaved. Do the math: Blacks have been free for 152 years, which ways that most Americans are only ii to three generations away from slavery. This is not that long agone.
Over this same period, withal, former slaveholding families take built their legacies on the establishment and generated wealth that African-Americans take not had admission to because enslaved labor was forced. Segregation maintained wealth disparities, and overt and covert discrimination express African-American recovery efforts.
The value of slaves
Economists and historians have examined detailed aspects of the enslaved experience for as long equally slavery existed. My own work enters this conversation by looking at the value of individual slaves and the means enslaved people responded to existence treated as a article.
They were bought and sold just like we sell cars and cattle today. They were gifted, deeded and mortgaged the same way we sell houses today. They were itemized and insured the same style we manage our assets and protect our valuables.
Enslaved people were valued at every stage of their lives, from before birth until after death. Slaveholders examined women for their fertility and projected the value of their "hereafter increase." As the slaves grew up, enslavers assessed their value through a rating system that quantified their work. An "A1 Prime manus" represented one term used for a "outset-rate" slave who could do the nearly work in a given day. Their values decreased on a quarter scale from three-fourths hands to one-fourth easily, to a rate of nada, which was typically reserved for elderly or differently abled bondpeople (some other term for slaves).
For example, Guy and Andrew, two prime number males sold at the largest sale in U.South. history in 1859, commanded unlike prices. Although like in "all marketable points in size, historic period, and skill," Guy was U.s.$1,280 while Andrew sold for $1,040 considering "he had lost his right middle." A reporter from the New York Tribune noted "that the market value of the right centre in the Southern country is $240." Enslaved bodies were reduced to monetary values assessed from year to year and sometimes from calendar month to calendar month for their entire lifespan and beyond. By today's standards, Andrew and Guy would be worth about $33,000-$40,000.
Slavery was an extremely diverse economical institution, 1 that extracted unpaid labor out of people in a variety of settings – from small-scale single-crop farms and plantations to urban universities. This diversity was too reflected in their prices. And enslaved people understood they were treated as commodities.
"I was sold away from mammy at 3 years old," recalled Harriett Hill of Georgia. "I remembers it! It lack selling a calf from the cow," she shared in a 1930s interview with the Works Progress Administration. "Nosotros are human beings," she told her interviewer. Those in bondage understood their status. Even though Harriet Colina was likewise picayune to remember her price when she was three, she recalled being sold for $1,400 at age nine or 10: "I never could forget it."
Slavery in popular culture
Slavery is function and packet of American popular culture, but for 40 years the television miniseries Roots was the primary visual representation of the establishment, except for a handful of contained (and not widely known) films such equally Haile Gerima's "Sankofa" or the Brazilian "Quilombo."
Today, from grassroots initiatives such as the interactive Slave Dwelling Projection, where schoolhouse-aged children spend the night in slave cabins, to comic skits on Sat Night Live, slavery is front and center. In 2016 A&E and History released the reimagined miniseries "Roots: The Saga of an American Family unit," which reflected four decades of new scholarship. Steve McQueen'south "12 Years a Slave" was a box office success in 2013, actress Azia Mira Dungey made headlines with the pop web series called "Ask a Slave," and "The Hugger-mugger" – a series near runaway slaves and abolitionists – was a striking for its network WGN America. With less than i year of functioning, the Smithsonian'due south National Museum of African American History, which devotes several galleries to the history of slavery, has had more ane million visitors.
The elephant that sits at the center of our history is coming into focus. American slavery happened – we are still living with its consequences. I believe we are finally fix to face information technology, acquire near it and acknowledge its significance to American history.
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Editor's annotation: This is an updated version of an commodity that originally appeared on Oct. 21, 2014.
Source: https://theconversation.com/american-slavery-separating-fact-from-myth-79620
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