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| SLAVES ON PLANTATION c. 1862 |
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| EX-SLAVES GATHER FOR PICTURE BY NORTHERN ARMY |
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| NO JUSTICE - NO PROTECTIONS - NO FREEDOM |
Black people did not
"come to
this country seeking a better life." They were kidnapped from their homes
in Africa, dragged in chains and loaded onto slave ships--treated not like
human beings but like things, commodities to be traded and used to enrich others.
Tens of millions of enslaved Africans died before even reaching America, so
terrible were the conditions on the slave ships. Those who survived the trip
and were then sold to plantation owners were treated like pieces of machinery.
Slaveowners commonly referred to the slaves as "talking tools." That
is how Black people were treated for the first 250 years of their experience in
America. Revolution Magazine
African
peoples, and the native peoples in North America, were treated as something
less than human--as though they were "beasts" or "savages"
who never had reached and never could reach the "high level of
civilization" of the Europeans. The fact that, both in Africa and in North
America, there were highly developed societies and cultures long before
Europeans came to dominate these places--this basic truth was denied and
"written out of history" by the European conquerors and enslavers. Revolution Magazine
Black
people's own major and heroic role in fighting against slavery is denied or
downgraded by the "official histories." The facts are that there were
over 200 slave revolts, including the more famous ones led by Nat Turner in
Virginia and Denmark Vesey in South Carolina, as well as other revolts that
were covered up and written out of history by the slavemasters. Revolution Magazine
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| SLAVE CABINS |
What about the Civil War that finally
ended slavery? Once they were allowed to, masses of Black people flooded into
the northern (Union) army in that war and fought courageously and with great
sacrifice on the front lines--even though they were still subjected to
segregation and discrimination, even down to the level where their pay as
soldiers was only about half that of the white soldiers! Nearly 200,000 Blacks
fought in the Union army and one out of every five (almost 40,000) gave their
lives in this fight. Revolution Magazine
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