Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today!
Slavery made the US wealthy, and racist policies since have blocked African American wealth-building. Can we calculate the economic damage?
Sources:
Introduction
https://theconversation.com/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines-33004
https://www.civil-war.net/census.asp?census=Total
1.
1.5 million pounds in 1790 and 2.25 billion pounds in 1859, based on Empire of Cotton, by Sven Beckert (2014) pgs. 104, 106
77% based on: Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power, by Gene Dattel (2009)
https://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/161/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860
Joshua Rothman, email correspondence, 2015
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/
https://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincoln-in-depth/abraham-lincoln-and-civil-war-finance
48.3% in 1860 according to Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development (LSU Press, 2006, paperback 2013) [personal communication]
2.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/dc_emancipation_act/
https://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/slavery_in.PDF
The Politics of Despair: Power and Resistance in the Tobacco Wars. Tracy Campbell, 2015
7% based on: Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, Vol. 4. 1979.
3.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html
70-80%, according to: https://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/#ii-a-difference-of-kind-not-degree
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2010-08-05/html/CREC-2010-08-05-pt1-PgS6836.htm
https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/lui.pdf
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc
4.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf
Dime based on: https://www.insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/LayingTheFoundationForNationalProsperity-MeizhuLui0309.pdf
https://newsreel.org/guides/race/whiteadv.htm
$59 trillion: https://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2013/01/calculated-minimum-reparation-due-to.html
$15 trillion: National Legal and Policy Center, https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-reparations-black-farmers/2010/02/21/id/350458/
$25 trillion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/23/047r-112399-idx.html
Martin Luther King: https://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/07/mlk_s_case_for_reparations_included_disadvantaged_whites.html
Media that fights fascism
Truthout is funded almost entirely by readers — that’s why we can speak truth to power and cut against the mainstream narrative. But independent journalists at Truthout face mounting political repression under Trump.
We rely on your support to survive McCarthyist censorship. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation.