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Slavery

What American High Schools Are Teaching Students About Slavery

February 5, 2018 By Jacob Sugarman, AlterNet.org , , , ,
Just eight percent of American high school seniors can identify the cause of the Civil War; less than a third (32 percent) know which amendment abolished slavery in the U.S.; and fewer than half (46 percent) know that the "Middle Passage" refers to the harrowing voyage across the Atlantic undertaken by Africans kidnapped for the slave trade. These are only a few of the more unnerving findings from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project, which concludes that in classrooms across the country, the subject of slavery is as mistaught as it is misunderstood. Drawing from online surveys of 1,000 12th-graders and more than 1,700 social studies teachers, along with an exhaustive analysis of the 10 most widely read U.S. history textbooks, the SPLC's latest report attempts to assess how the country understands its original sin. The answer, in a word, is "abysmally."

What! Slavery In Libya? You Weren’t Reading Black Agenda Report

December 10, 2017 Bruce A. Dixon, www.blackagendareport.com , ,
If the news that black Libyans and black migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were being sold as slaves in Libya was a surprise to you, then you were not reading Black Agenda Report during the 2011-2012 NATO intervention in that country. We covered it. Almost everybody refused to question US foreign policy in Africa during the reign of our first black president. Many US news outlets, many otherwise reasonable people with access to foreign news, and countless others around the world averted their eyes and their ears to the anguish of hunted, lynched and massacred black Africans in Benghazi, in Tripoli, in Sirte and Bani Walid. But as the US Navy and US Air Force unleashed thousands of tons of bombs and missiles on innocent civilians and the military forces of the Libyan government, without which Uncle Sam’s and Barack Obama’s racist rebels could never have toppled Muammar Gadaffi, you heard and read about it each week in Black Agenda Report.

U.S. Imperialism Created Slavery In Libya

December 4, 2017 Danya Zituni, fightbacknews.org , ,
By Danya Zituni for Fight Back! News - Chicago, IL – The corporate media has only now begun reporting the atrocities committed against black Libyans and African migrant workers by racist CIA-backed proxy forces since they ravaged the country and overthrew the Libyan government in a 2011. CNN reports that African migrants are currently being sold for as little as $400 each to perform excruciating labor. The racist proxy forces engaged in the slave trade would not exist without NATO. One of the CIA-trained proxy forces was called “The Brigade for purging slaves and black skin”- which sought to ethnically cleanse the Tawurgha area, was supported by NATO strikes from the air and on the ground by U.S. Special Forces. Tawergha was mostly inhabited by black Libyans, due to its 19-century origins as a transit town in the slave trade. There was horrific video footage showing public lynchings of black soldiers from the Libyan army, migrant workers from other African countries, and any darker skinned Libyan civilians. Human Rights Watch reported: “Dark skinned Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans face particular risks because [the CIA-trained proxy forces] consider them pro-Gaddafi mercenaries.” Amnesty International also reported on the cruel detention of Libyans and other Africans by the CIA-trained proxy forces. The myth of black mercenaries fighting to protect Libya from foreign occupiers was spread by NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu, British Defense Minister Liam Fox, and other Western leaders. This myth was useful to claim that the NATO invasion and occupation of Libya was actually a war “between Gaddafi and the Libyan people”, as if he had no domestic support at all - a colossal fabrication.

Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’ Led To Libyan Slave Trade

December 1, 2017 Jason Johnson, theroot.com , ,
By Jason Johnson for The Root - When CNN broke the story several weeks ago that slavery—not wage slavery, not emotional slavery, not virtual slavery, but actual whips-and-chains-forced labor slavery—was alive and well in the North African nation of Libya, Americans finally started to take notice. Sort of. While there has been some reporting on the issue and a few statements from government leaders across the world, there has not been a sustained political and social media effort to address the Libyan slave trade akin to the 2014 Bring Back Our Girls campaign for the kidnapping victims of Boko Haram in Nigeria, or even the well-intentioned but poorly conceived Kony 2012 campaign—perhaps because the “African slavery” issue is stickier, more pervasive and, worst of all, involves the United States. The Root spoke to criminal-defense attorney and asylum expert Yodit Tewolde, who is also a legal analyst for CNN, Fox and TV One, about what is really happening in Libya right now and what responsibility African Americans really have in the current crisis. Yodit Tewolde (pronounced YO-Deet Teh-WELL-dah) was raised in Dallas, but her family is from Eritrea, and she had firsthand experience with the African slave trade long before it become a late-2017 story. “People act like this is new; this has been going on for years,” she said over the phone, holding back frustration and emotion. Thousands of refugees, primarily from countries like Eritrea and Sudan, are fleeing poverty and violence in their own countries, only to end up the victims of smugglers and slave traders at major ports in Libya.

Thank CNN For The Slave Auctions In Libya

November 30, 2017 Danny Haiphong, blackagendareport.com , , ,
By Danny Haiphong for Black Agenda Report - On November 14th, CNN produced an "exclusive" report about the slave trafficking of migrants in Libya. The report detailed the devastating conditions of migrants fleeing from crisis in nations across North and East Africa. Smugglers, as CNN calls them, capture and terrorize migrants before selling them into day labor. Libyan authorities then detain the migrant laborers and repatriate them back to their nation of origin. CNN emphasizes the horror of the slave auctions with the caption "I was sold" underneath a picture of one of the migrants, Victory, whose story is told in the report. CNN's coverage of the matter is typical of the corporate media. Zero context is given as to why the slave auctions exist in the first place. It is as if the horrors in Libya had just been discovered because of CNN’s investigative journalism. The underlying assumption of the report is that slave markets are a fetter of the past completely foreign to the enlightened audiences in the US and Western countries. Yet we have CNN to thank for the emergence of slave relations in Libya. It was CNN that took part in the most slanderous of lies in cooperation with the US-NATO war on Libya in 2011. Libya was bombed for over seven months while CNN provided media cover all along the way. CNN produced opinion pieces explaining why the invasion of Libya was a just war . Reports from CNN described Libya as a nation ruled over by crazed dictator Muammar Gaddafi who suddenly found the appetite to murder "his own people."

Proposed Tax Reform Plan Will Destroy Black America

November 28, 2017 Phillip Jackson, www.blackstarjournal.org , , ,
By Phillip Jackson for Black Star Journal. Today, we have the Civil War 2.0 with many of the same southern states that lost the first Civil War initiating a Tax Reform Plan that would effectively, long term, disenfranchise most Black people in America. This time, the South plans to win! The negative impact of this proposed Tax Reform Plan, as it is being proffered by the Republican-controlled House, Senate and White House, will be that of 100 Hurricane Katrina’s on Black communities across America. This proposed tax plan for Black America is like the frog put in a pot of cold water under a low-burning flame so that it doesn’t jump out of the pot, but as the heat is turned up, the frog is slowly cooked. The early years of the proposed Tax Reform Plan would give most Blacks in America some tax relief. The later years of the proposed Tax plan would “cook” Black people in America!

Stop Using Inmates As Slaves

October 23, 2017 Annie McGrew and Angela Hanks, www.talkpoverty.org , ,
By Annie McGrew and Angela Hanks for Talk Poverty - Last week, a Louisiana sheriff gave a press conference railing against a new prisoner release program because it cost him free labor from “some good [inmates] that we use every day to wash cars, to change oil in the cars, to cook in the kitchen.” Two days later, news broke that up to 40 percent of the firefighters battling California’s outbreak of forest fires are prison inmates working for $2 an hour. Practices like these are disturbingly common: Military gear, ground meat, Starbucks holiday products, and McDonald’s uniforms have all been made (or are still made) with low-wage prison labor. Inmates are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires that workers are paid at least the federal minimum wage. That makes it completely legal for states to exploit inmates for free or cheap labor. More than half of the 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons work while incarcerated, and the vast majority only make a few cents per hour. Most inmates work in their own prison facilities, in jobs such as maintenance or food service. These jobs pay an average of just 86 cents an hour, and are primarily designed to keep the prison running at a low cost. Others may be employed in so-called “correctional industries,” where inmates work for the Department of Corrections to produce goods that are sold to government entities and nonprofit organizations.

Benjamin Lay A Dwarf Who Challenged The Big Issues

September 17, 2017 , , ,
By Natasha Frost for Atlas Obscura. During his life and after his death, many people, Rediker says, thought of Benjamin Lay as deranged. “[Historians] thought he was not sane, and this was a very effective way of putting him at the margins.” Ableism, too, seems to have factored in this general unwillingness to take him seriously. But some of those in the abolitionist movement did feel the need to celebrate this “Quaker comet,” as he came to be known. Benjamin Rush, one of his earliest biographers, said Lay was known to virtually everyone in Pennsylvania; his curious portrait was said to hang in many Philadelphia homes. This early abolitionist burned bright, and, despite his exclusion from many abolitionist narratives, refuses to be extinguished from history.

Millions For Prisoners’ Human Rights March In DC

August 18, 2017 Kyle Fraser, www.blackagendareport.com , , , ,
By Kyle Fraser for Black Agenda Report. Prisoner rights advocates will converge for what aims to be the largest abolitionist demonstration in U.S. history, Saturday, August 9, in Washington D.C. The Millions for Prisoners' Human Rights March is centered around the demand that the exceptions clause, which allows for slavery to continue in United States prisons, be removed from the Constitution's 13th Amendment. With over 1,100 lives claimed last year by today's slave-catchers in law enforcement, a Black imprisoned population that comprises 1/9 of the prisoners on earth and a manufactured “war on drugs” that rages on despite untold evidence of its foul origins, the fact of prison slavery should not exceed the imagination's limits -- and yet mass mobilization for its abolition has thus far not reflected the brutally severe implications of its ongoing practice. On August 19th, IAmWeUbuntu and the other march organizers both in and outside the walls seek to change that, as they bring family members, friends and supporters of the incarcerated from across the country together under the banner of abolitionism. The growing modern-day abolitionist movement calls on all people of conscience to join in on the mass denunciation of this country's original sin in D.C.'s Lafayette Park this Saturday, August 19th, to finally achieve the goal of ending slavery once and for all and without exception.

Baltimore Removes Confederate Monuments In Face Of Protests

August 16, 2017 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , , ,
By Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. Baltimore, MD - In the dark of the night, Baltimore City government removed four Confederate monuments. The removal began at 11:30 pm on August 15 and was completed at 5:30 am. Protests had been held against the monuments and more protests were being planned. Two days ago activists created a statue to replace General Robert E. Lee - Madre Luz (Mother Light), a pregnant woman standing with her fist in the air. In addition, another statue, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, had red paint sprayed all over it. We are currently out of town, but last night we organized so that a protest planned for today would be live streamed on Popular Resistance. Activists were going to build on the success in Durham, NC and pull down a Confederate monument. We awoke this morning to find the job had been done last night. Protests had been held against the monuments and more were being planned. Two days ago activists created a statute to replace General Robert E. Lee - Madre Luz (Mother Light), a pregnant women standing with her fist in the air. In addition, another statute, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, had red paint sprayed all over it.We are out of town, but last night we organized to have a protest planned for today to be live streamed as activists were going to build on the success in Durham, NC and pull down a Confederate monument. When we started working at 6 AM this morning we awoke to find the job had been done last night.

’13th’ And The Culture Of Surplus Punishment

August 13, 2017 Victor Wallis, www.sfbayview.com , , ,
By Victor Wallis for the San Francisco Bay View. From the late 1800s until now, unpaid prison labor has been the pattern, practice, and collective mindset of various states across America. Southern states have taken particular advantage of the wording of the 13th Amendment, and in turn, current resistance movements have risen out of prison-dense states like Texas and Alabama, where units are often compared to plantations. The degrading treatment of people in prison, however, is a nationwide issue, as shown in the widespread imposition of solitary confinement, assaults by guards, and medical neglect. On Saturday, August 19th, prison activists and everyone who wants to join in will march in Washington DC, San Jose CA, and other cities around the country.

Descendants Of Freed Slaves Fight For Their Land In The Amazon

August 9, 2017 Nick Barrickman and Alex González, www.wsws.org , , ,
By Nick Barrickman and Alex González for WSWS - Local residents inform the International Amazon Workers Voice that Amazon is attempting to seize 50 acres of land owned by elderly working class descendants of slaves in Northern Virginia, pave over the residents’ homes, and build power lines. The soil that Amazon plans to cover with asphalt contains the sweat of slaves and the blood of Civil War soldiers. The residents’ ancestors, who worked the land as slaves, took possession of these plots after being freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and liberated by the Union Army during the American Civil War. American capitalism has come full-circle: the government is stealing land from the descendants of slaves and giving it to one of the world’s most powerful corporations. A representative of a community group called the Alliance to Save Carver Road (ASCR) told the IAWV, “The homeowners have been there for generations. Many of the properties were purchased by freed slaves. After emancipation, the slaves that worked that area were allowed to purchase property. A number of the property owners are descendants of those freed slaves.” Last month, Amazon subsidiary VAData, working in collusion with local government agencies and utility company Dominion Virginia Power, announced plans to construct 230,000 volt power lines running through the semi-rural community of Carver Road just outside of Gainesville, in order to power nearby internet data centers.

Elon Musk Subsidiary Using Prison Labor

July 19, 2017 Aura Bogado, www.grist.org ,
By Aura Bogado for Grist - SolarCity is probably the best-known name in the U.S. for residential solar installations — it’s top in the market. The company was founded by Elon Musk, along with two of his cousins, and has set the popular standard for cleantech. But SolarCity has one thing it doesn’t want to be known for: For a huge solar-panel project launched in 2012 at two university campuses in Oregon, it relied on a vendor that used cheap prison labor to produce the panels, under a “buy American/buy local” banner. The story is a good reminder that we need to watch the renewables industry closely to make sure it doesn’t throw human rights and labor ethics out the window in its push toward a clean energy economy. Here’s how the SolarCity prison saga came about. Oregon State University and the Oregon Institute of Technology teamed up a few years ago to install solar panels on their campuses, in what would become one of the largest solar installations in the state. Since the vendor, ultimately SolarCity, would own and maintain the panels, the two schools wouldn’t need to spend a penny on the project. For SolarCity, the contract also looked like a win. Under a lucrative state program, the Oregon Department of Energy doled out $11.8 million in tax credits for the $27 million project. (SolarCity would not confirm the amount of the tax breaks despite repeated requests.)

The Invisible Threads Of Gender, Race, And Slavery

April 14, 2017 Sasha Turner, www.aaihs.org , ,
By Sasha Turner for Black Perspectives - On March 24, 2017 the United Nations commemorated its ten-year anniversary for the International Day of Remembrance honoring the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This year, the theme chosen for the commemoration is “Remember Slavery: Recognizing the Legacy and Contributions of People of African Descent.” In the keynote address, delivered by Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture urgently called on us to be vigilant in recognizing the ways in which the legacy of slavery continues today. Cloaking the history of slavery in silence, Bunch argues, permits the violence of slavery to live on, dishonoring the struggles, losses, and strength experienced by our ancestors. It is fitting that the UN-designated International Day of Remembrance falls on March 25, coinciding with Women’s History Month. Indeed, any attempt to remember the enslavement of African peoples is incomplete without considering women’s experiences in slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

Expanding The Slaveocracy

March 28, 2017 Matt Karp & Eric Foner, www.jacobinmag.com , ,
By Matt Karp & Eric Foner for Jacobin Magazine - One of the cottage industries in the historical profession right now is studying the relationship between capitalism and American slavery. This is an old discussion; it goes way, way back. Karl Marx said things about it. That’s not exactly the subject of your book, but I’m wondering how you think your study, which is a study of slaveowners and their vision of America as a great power in the world, fits into the ongoing debates about slavery and capitalism nowadays? The book joins a whole series of works that explore the slave South in a transnational sense. That’s another fashionable aspect: reemphasizing the dynamism and brutality of antebellum slavery.
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