According to colonial records, the first slave owner in the United States was a black man.
By 1830 there were 3,775 black families living in the South who owned black slaves. By 1860 there were about 3,000 slaves owned by black households in the city of New Orleans alone.
The popular opinion regarding slavery in the United States is that it was a simple matter of racial oppression of blacks by whites. However,
the presence of black slaveholders in North America prior to the Civil War shows that slavery was not based solely on color but on economics. Black slave owners, for the most part, were complicities in support of the institution deriving from it wealth and privileges denied to other groups.
Unspoken Reality: Black Slaveholders Prior to the Civil War
Listen, you know as well as me that it was the White Americans who controlled and perpetuated a grand majority of the US slave trade, period. Blacks couldn't even vote in the US at this time!
Don't be a moron.
Well duh, if you look at a small percentage of the trans-atlantic slave trade, that percentage ending up here then you can say that it was white Americans that controlled it.
Myth: Most slaves were imported into what is now the United States
Fact: Well over 90 percent of slaves from Africa were imported into the Caribbean and South America
Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism.
Fact: Slavery is older than the first human records.
Myth: Slavery is a product of Western Civilization.
Fact: Slavery is virtually a universal institution.
Myth: Slavery in the non-western world was a mild, benign, and non-economic institution.
Fact: Slaves were always subject to torture, sexual exploitation, and arbitrary death.
Myth: Slavery was an economically backward and inefficient institution.
Fact: Many of the most progressive societies in the world had slaves.
Myth: Slavery was always based on race.
Fact: Not until the 15th century was slavery associated primarily with people of African descent.
Myth: Europeans physically enslaved Africans or hired mercenaries who captured people for export or that African rulers were "Holocaust abettors" who were themselves to blame for the slave trade.
Fact: Europeans did engage in some slave raiding; the majority of people who were transported to the Americas were enslaved by Africans in Africa.
Myth: Many slaves were captured with nets.
Fact: There is no evidence that slaves were captured with nets; war was the most important source of enslavement.
Myth: Kidnapping was the usual means of enslavement.
Fact: War was the most important source of enslavement; it would be incorrect to reduce all of these wars to slave raids.
Myth: The slave trade permanently broke slaves' bonds with Africa.
Fact: Slaves were able to draw upon their African cultural background and experiences and use them as a basis for life in the New World.
Myth: Plantation life with its harsh labor, unstable families, and high mortality, made it difficult for Africans to construct social ties
Fact: African nations persisted in America well into the 18th century and even the early 19th century.
Myth: Masters assigned names to slaves or slaves imitated masters' systems of naming.
Fact: In fact, slaves were rarely named for owners. Naming patterns appear to have reflected African practices, such as the custom of giving children "day names" (after the day they were born) and "name-saking," such as naming children after grandparents.
Myth: Slaveholders sought to deculturate slaves by forbidding African names and languages and obliterating African culture.
Fact: While deculturation was part of the "project" of slavery, in fact African music, dance, decoration, design, cuisine, and religion exerted a profound, ongoing influence on American culture.
Fact: Slaves adapted religious rites and perpetuated a rich tradition of folklore.
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