The Making of Slavery in America

This is required viewing.  Chilling!

Episode 1
Episode one opens in the 1620s with the introduction of 11 men of African descent and mixed ethnicity into slavery in New Amsterdam. Working side by side with white indentured servants, these men labored to lay the foundations of the Dutch colony that would later become New York. There were no laws defining the limitations imposed on slaves at this point in time. Enslaved people, such as Anthony d'Angola, Emmanuel Driggus, and Frances Driggus could bring suits to court, earn wages, and marry. But in the span of a hundred years, everything changed. By the early 18th century, the trade of African slaves in America was expanding to accommodate an agricultural economy growing in the hands of ambitious planters. After the 1731 Stono Rebellion (a violent uprising led by a slave named Jemmy) many colonies adopted strict "black codes" transforming the social system into one of legal racial oppression
Episode 2
From the 1740s to the 1830s, the institution of slavery continued to support economic development. As the slave population reproduced, American planters became less dependent on the African slave trade. Ensuing generations of slaves developed a unique culture that blended elements of African and American life. Episode two follows the paths of several African Americans, including Thomas Jefferson's slave Jupiter, Colonel Tye, Elizabeth Freeman, David Walker, and Maria Stewart, as they respond to the increasingly restrictive system of slavery. At the core of this episode is the Revolutionary War, an event which reveals the contradictions of a nation seeking independence while simultaneously denying freedom to its black citizens.
Episode 3
One by one the Northern states, led by Vermont in 1777, adopted laws to abolish and phase out slavery. Simultaneously, slavery in the Southern United States entered the period of its greatest expansion. Episode three, which starts at the beginning of the 1800s, examines slavery's increasing divisiveness in America as the nation develops westward and cotton replaces tobacco as the country's most valuable crop. The episode weaves national events through the personal histories of two African American slaves -- Harriet Jacobs and Louis Hughes -- who not only managed to escape bondage, but also exposed the horrific realities of the slave experience in autobiographical narratives. These and other stories of physical, psychological, and sexual exploitation fed the fires of a reinvigorated abolitionist movement. With a diverse membership comprised of men and women, blacks and whites, and led by figures including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Amy Post, abolitionist sentiment gathered strength in the North, contributing to the widening fissure and imminent break-up of the nation.
Episode 4
Episode four looks at Civil War and Reconstruction through the experiences of South Carolina slave Robert Smalls. It chronicles Smalls' daring escape to freedom, his military service, and his tenure as a congressman after the war. As the events of Smalls' life unfold, the complexities of this period in American history are revealed. The episode shows the transformation of the war from a struggle for union to a battle over slavery. It examines the black contribution to the war effort and traces the gains and losses of newly freed African Americans during Reconstruction. The 13th amendment abolished slavery in 1865, the 14th and 15th amendments guaranteed black civil rights, and the Freedmen's Bureau offered aid to former slaves throughout the 1870s. Yet simultaneously, the formation of militant groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan threatened the future of racial equality and segregation laws began to appear across the country. Slavery's eradication had not brought an end to black oppression.

Whose ancestors DID own slaves?

In every conversation I've ever had about race in my life, and that's been quite a few given my political and social leanings, I've yet to meet ONE white person that has said to me, "Yes, my ancestors owned and profited from slaves." I’m beginning to think that white people only know how to say, “MY family didn’t own slaves.” Well . . . I’ll be god damned, somebody’s family had to own slaves. Where are those descendents?

If I use the barometer of white people’s assertions, slavery didn't exist at all and it played no role in making the US the richest nation in the world. Apparently, the youngest and most violent nation is the richest because it's inhabited by intellectually superior white men not because they stole the land, its resources, and enslaved free labor.

Then there’s the ever popular, "My ancestors were (fill in the blank with some obscure ethnicity), they were immigrants that arrived after slavery, and they were discriminated against too." Which is in essence saying, “My ancestors endured the exact same thing as slaves and they were able to make it.” Which again is saying, “Blacks are just inherently lazy because if my ancestors were able to not speak the language, open a store, become successful, anyone can.” Let’s not take into account that Black people were denied the right to read and write for generations, that they were treated as sub human for 100s of years, that they were beaten, raped, bought sold, tortured, and brutalized for generation after generation. That has NOTHING whatsoever to do with our current standing, that’s just an unfortunate and uncomfortable fact that needs to be dismissed so that white people don’t have to think about the fact that the playing field isn’t really level as long as they don’t share the same history.

Apparently, slavery has no long term effects whatsoever. “Color doesn’t matter, slavery was in the past, let it go.” What conversation about slavery would be complete without white people saying, “Jews suffered during the Holocaust and look at how well they are doing today.” Sure, Jews were imprisoned for 7 years, not enslaved for generations so of course the effects would be vastly different. I'm not interested in comparative "Oppression Olympics" or proving that anyone suffered more or less than anyone else. I would like someone to stand up and say, my family had money passed down generationally that was the direct result of owning slaves.

I wonder what happened to the descendents of slave owners because they certainly don't exist anymore. They must have all evaporated into thin air at the end of the civil war. I would love to have someone say to me, my family didn't own slaves, but they did benefit by using the cheap labor of Blacks during the depression. Or my family was known to traffic in the illegal slave trade after slavery was abolished or some other such shocking revelation. Fuck that. Where are the white people who can say, “Hell, I benefited from slavery because my family didn’t have it as bad as Black families did, pure and simple.” It’s incomprehensible to almost every white person under the sun that NOT being the victim of racism, bigotry, oppression, lynching, and discrimination is a benefit. I had one white man write a three page letter telling me that the poverty stricken white people of the Appalachian Mountain region were the ONLY descendants of slave owners alive because slave owners were stupid and poor and they didn't survive after the Civil War. He seriously believed that.

Fuck that, how about a white person just admitting to me that they have no clue as to the extent of what the psychological damage to enslaved Black people was nor do they understand what its ramifications are today.