Slavery part 1

February is black history month. Yet the common topic of slavery is complex.  Slavery is often taught incompletely in school, favoring present-day politics over accuracy.  It was an institution to force labor of the worst jobs, existing before civilization began. Finally, after the British began wide-spread slave trading did it appall the public and bring about abolition in the mid 19^th century.  This was primarily the work of the evangelical Anglican church who then spread their movement.  European slavery had died out in the 13^th century in Europe before revival in the Caribbean.  In the Middle Ages serfs did the menial labor.  Every society has had slavery in some form of coerced labor. 

            Let’s focus on slavery of Africans following Afro-American Thomas Sowell’s prize winning work.  About 12 million Africans were captured and sold as slaves in the Americas.  They outnumbered European settlers—1.2 to 1 in continental British Colonies, but 6:1 in the Caribbean and 8:1 in Brazil. Slavery had been re-established when Spain and Portugal discovered sugar cane culture from Africa and slavery was the system of using conquered peoples for this hard labor.  Conquistadors puzzled over Native Americans dying of Eurasian diseases brought to America.  The population of Mexico-Peru declined from 20 million to 2M in a generation.  Indians were weak, it was mistakenly thought.  African slaves were imported to do the labor. But they never mined—except in Mexico’s silver mines.  Mines were dangerous and a slave was so expensive, yet often poorly motivated, so they weren’t risked.  Normally, free men dreaming riches mined. Plantation (single crop) agriculture used slaves in the West for sugar in the Caribbean, rubber,cocoa and coffee in S. America, cotton in USA.  About 1.4 million, mostly West Africans of Bantu race, were imported to USA.  Hardship reduced their numbers and life spans were less than Europeans.  (40 for Europeans; 35, Amer. slaves; 24, Caribbean slaves). To be sent to the Caribbean was like a death sentence, something threatened by owners of a contrary slave in the South. Hence there was a need in the Caribbean and Brazil for a constant influx of African slaves. That is why Voodoo (African religion) exists there. US slaves were exposed to reading, European culture, economics, and Christianity (think Frederick Douglass). Those were hardly allowed in Latin America.  Hence when Liberia was established almost all freed slaves from USA declined to go back to Africa.  Those who did return were skilled, valued folks and became upper classes of LIberia and Sierra Leone.

            There were degrees of slavery.  If a female African had a mixed race child, she was often freed or made a house servant (getting more cross-cultural exposure) and her child given education.  Hence Blanche Bruce, the first Negro Senator during Reconstruction, had been tutored alongside his master’s children. Mixed race slaves were given greater opportunity and status. Stories show a variety of masters.  Some were horrid and did all the evil that Hollywood depicts. Some were swayed by Christian appeal, and often by other Christian slaves.  “Free persons of color” (FPOC) were usually mulatto and often integrated into society. Hence Pres. Warren G. Harding was secretly octoon (1/8 black) and should be considered our first Black President.  But between the two groups were “nominal slaves.” Getting papers to prove free status was expensive so some masters kept nominal slaves who were free to go about their lives as if free.  Quakers opposed slavery. Many ‘owned’ nominal slaves. About 5% of US slaves purchased their own freedom.  37% of free Negros were upscale mulatto, and it explains why my friend Xavier LeMond, Conoco Vice Pres., bragged about how his sister “could almost pass” a huge social benefit even if you didn’t pass.  Xavier was from New Orleans which was unique in its Caribbean roots. Many FPOC’s in the Caribbean owned slaves.  Kamala Harris’s ancestors were FPOC plantation owners. Haiti, once the Jewel of France because it raised sugar (considered more valuable than the Louisiana Purchase!), had half its plantation owned by FPOCs.

            16th century British pirates harassed Spain and captured Islands—Bahamas, Jamaica and Barbados.  Barbados was flat and arable, and immediately crowded with plantation owners who feuded.  In order to relieve the fights, Britain established the two Carolina colonies and repatriated many to SC to raise rice, then cotton.  Cotton was a perfect slave-labor crop requiring hand-picking. Thus the Palmetto state virtually spawned chattel slavery in US colonies after Virginia had concluded that it was cheaper to import Irish to pick tobacco.  Slaves were kept in all the colonies.  That’s how most poor whites got here.  Fare was paid by a colonial who wrote a contract to keep a slave for 7 or 10 years. It also explains how various grades of slavery came to exist with “field slaves” at the bottom of the pecking order and nominal slaves atop.

            Despite importing so many more Africans, racial tension is relaxed in Brazil and the Caribbean today. That is because Africans were always lowest of society before legal abolition and never threatened Brazil’s Europeans and Indians.  USA’s transformation ending the Civil War, however, found Southerners threatened by educated blacks. Rules and anti-racial policies multiplied.  Unfortunately, Pres. Woodrow Wilson re-segregated the military during WWI.  Military experience is a good platform for minorities to learn more of the world (as with Oklahoma’s Indian population). During the 60s when I was a teen we all swore we wouldn’t be racially prejudiced like our dad’s generation. (Ahem. Every generation has sworn anti-parent stuff!) Recent studies by over a dozen universities have found the number of true racists in US society has declined to about ½% to 3% of Caucasians.  But the label is still thrown around as an insult. Mixed marriages are changing attitudes.  In 1950, 1% of Af-Ams married outside race.  Today it is 20%.Modern lore has grown about how Thomas Jefferson sired kids of his personal assistant, Sally Hemmings.  But Sowell is skeptical. Jefferson’s scoundrel nephew, Ray, ran the farm while Thomas was in office and she turned up pregnant.