tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/slaves-13040/articlesSlaves – The Conversation2023-10-13T16:31:25Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134192023-10-13T16:31:25Z2023-10-13T16:31:25ZCardinal Newman: pro-slavery views of prominent 19th-century cleric raise questions about his educational legacy<p>One of the comforting stories the British told themselves in the 19th and 20th centuries was that they were implacably opposed to slavery.</p>
<p>Britons had decided “that the disgrace of slavery should not be suffered to remain part of our national system”, or so Lord Stanley, the colonial secretary at the moment of abolition, maintained. It was a claim willingly accepted by later generations. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/slavery-abolition-act-1833">1833 Act</a> that abolished slavery in Britain’s Atlantic empire reflected the undivided national will.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/439452/the-interest-by-michael-taylor/9781529110982">recent scholarship</a> casts doubt on that verdict. The West Indian planters, who held hundreds of thousands in bondage, were well-connected and influential. The freeing of their captive workers did not seem to them inevitable. Many abolitionists thought the same, despairing at the entrenched power of the slave masters. </p>
<p>When slavery went, it went because a series of political crises in Britain splintered the pro-slavery Tory coalition that had dominated politics for decades. It ended too because <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984301">resistance by the enslaved</a> in the Caribbean convinced legislators in London that slavery was no longer sustainable. But not all commentators were persuaded that slavery had to go. </p>
<h2>Newman and the Oxford Movement</h2>
<p>One of them was <a href="https://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/content/st-john-henry-newman">John Henry Newman</a> (1801-1890), fellow of Oriel College Oxford and the vicar of St Mary’s, Oxford’s university church. </p>
<p>Newman was one of the most significant churchmen of the age. Eventually received into the Roman Catholic church in 1845, he became the most influential English Catholic of the 19th century. He was made a cardinal in 1879, and in 2019 he was canonised. For that reason, Newman’s name is attached to dozens of Roman Catholic schools and colleges in Britain, as well as a university in the West Midlands.</p>
<p>But before his conversion, he was a leading figure in the Oxford Movement, a high church group that wanted to renew the institutional authority of Anglicanism by emphasising its rootedness in the early church. Appealing to scripture, the path favoured by Evangelical Anglicans, was dismissed as insufficient. </p>
<p>There were political consequences. Evangelicals of the time tended towards anti-slavery. The clergymen who made up the Oxford Movement did not. Indeed, notes prepared by John Henry Newman for a <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/display/10.1093/actrade/9780199200900.book.1/actrade-9780199200900-book-1">sermon at Oxford in 1835</a> reveal that he was profoundly hostile to the idea of emancipation.</p>
<h2>Preaching against emancipation</h2>
<p>Abolitionist rhetoric about human brotherhood was brushed aside. “It is a very easy thing,” Newman told his congregation, “to talk of loving all men”. But could his congregation, were they to be whisked from their cloistered lives in Oxford to the West Indies, do so in practice? Newman thought not:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is said to be one of the most difficult tasks of our Ministers to persuade white men to receive the Holy Communion with blacks. I do not say such reluctance is a light sin – it is a serious one – yet perhaps we should feel strongly tempted to it if we lived in the countries where they are to be found. I do not doubt we should.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An aversion to communing with black people was, Newman suggested, quite understandable. It would require white people to hurdle an insurmountable racial barrier.</p>
<p>Having established, in his own mind at least, that racial repulsion was instinctual, Newman turned to the matter of slavery. As was usual with clerical defenders of slavery, Newman reached for the epistles of St Paul. Taking <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Letter-of-Paul-to-the-Corinthians">Paul’s</a> first letter to the Corinthians as his text, the vicar of St Mary’s came to this conclusion:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now we find in these words a doctrine stated, very startlingly and unpalatable to men of this day, but which is most clear and certain and contained in other parts of Scripture – viz that slavery is a condition of life ordained by God…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Contemporary abolitionists who drew upon the gospel when criticising slavery did so without warrant. They were guilty of uttering “idle and false words”. Warming to his theme, Newman went on to rail against reformers more generally. Their talk of “liberty, equality, rights, privileges, and the like” was offensive to God.</p>
<h2>Assessing Newman</h2>
<p>Historical figures, it is often said, need to be assessed by the standards of their own time. Yet John Henry Newman’s venomous sermon, coming little more than a year after the end of slavery in the British sugar islands, reminds us that the “standards of the time” were plural. </p>
<p>Many Britons of the 1830s gloried in abolition, but there were many others who were content with slavery and racial subjugation. And there were some, like Newman, who were willing to say so in provocative ways.</p>
<p>Newman’s words from 1835 have been forgotten, but John Henry Newman has not. Students and educators at those institutions that bear his name might want to consider whether it should continue to be so attached.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Catholic schools in Britain retain the name John Henry Newman, despite his opposition to abolishing slavery.Chris Evans, Professor of History, University of South WalesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2091392023-07-24T04:52:17Z2023-07-24T04:52:17Z‘I’m really stuck’: how visa conditions prevent survivors of modern slavery from getting help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538882/original/file-20230724-23-c3qhzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C5920%2C3937&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Modern slavery is back in the spotlight, after fresh <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/brought-to-australia-as-a-student-henry-was-made-into-a-slave-20230718-p5dp4v.html">media reports</a> of migrants allegedly being brought to Australia as students but being forced to work long hours under harsh conditions with minimal pay.</p>
<p>In Australia, more than half of modern slavery survivors are <a href="https://www.redcross.org.au/globalassets/cms/migration-support/support-for-trafficked-people/support-for-trafficked-people-data-snapshot-2009-2019.pdf">migrants</a>. </p>
<p>Across our <a href="https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en&user=Nz217WoAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">research</a> on modern slavery, survivors (and the caseworkers and service providers who support them) consistently say issues with Australia’s visa system prevent people from getting the help they need.</p>
<p>In other words, the current design of the system helps replicate and reproduce the shameful inequalities at the heart of modern slavery in Australia.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1682897209749303296"}"></div></p>
<h2>The system increases risk of exploitation</h2>
<p>Australia’s temporary visa system <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/reports-news-commentary/temporary-workers">promotes</a> insecurity for migrants that can cause or contribute to exploitation.</p>
<p>For example, perpetrators can use a person’s insecure visa status to coerce victims to work for low pay or put up with poor conditions.</p>
<p>One survivor told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You need to have a visa to be in Australia, so you are going to do whatever is required.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/new-protections-herald-hope-migrant-worker-exploitation">response</a> to years of advocacy from migrant-led organisations, researchers and human rights experts, the Albanese government recently introduced new <a href="https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/AndrewGiles/Pages/albanese-govt-to-tackle-worker-exploitation.aspx">measures</a> to protect migrant workers at risk of exploitation.</p>
<p>This is a welcome first step. But our research has found Australia’s visa system continues to harm migrants once they have experienced exploitation.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1665463317706739713"}"></div></p>
<h2>How visas make it hard to seek help</h2>
<p>Visa fears can prevent people from seeking help. <a href="https://consultations.ag.gov.au/crime/modern-slavery-act-review/consultation/download_public_attachment?sqId=pasted-question-1684896770-4-75672-publishablefilesubquestion-1685505026-94&uuId=1008725617">One survivor told us</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes you’re afraid to report, because you might be going to lose the job. You might be going to lose your visa and everything you know.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This situation is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353397634_The_Impact_of_Covid-19_on_the_Identification_of_Victims_of_Modern_Slavery_and_their_Access_to_Support_Services_in_Australia">exacerbated</a> by requirements for survivors of modern slavery to report to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to access key services. </p>
<p>One caseworker told us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People that have faced any type of exploitation may fear of authority and will be reluctant to go to the police to initiate any type of support, or they might be having a lot of fear in terms of the consequences of an insecure or unknown immigration status.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Australia’s modern slavery visa framework</h2>
<p>The federal government’s <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/women/programs-services/reducing-violence/anti-people-trafficking-strategy/support-for-trafficked-people-program">human trafficking visa framework</a> enables migrants assessed by the AFP as victims of slavery to get a visa. </p>
<p>Under this framework, only those willing to give evidence against their alleged perpetrator(s) are granted long-term visas.</p>
<p>However, even these visas are still “temporary”. Survivors remain on them for the duration of a criminal justice process, which can last for years.</p>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.redcross.org.au/globalassets/cms/migration-support/support-for-trafficked-people/barriers-in-accommodating-survivors-of-modern-slavery.pdf">half</a> the survivors formally identified by the AFP are on temporary visas.</p>
<p>In other words, survivors often remain burdened by the insecurity that comes with temporary visas long after they’ve sought help.</p>
<h2>Survivors locked out of mainstream services</h2>
<p>Some temporary visa conditions can <a href="https://unisa.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/61USOUTHAUS_INST/12272458810001831">limit</a> survivors’ access to support services such as Medicare and Centrelink.</p>
<p>One caseworker explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Your] visa in Australia determines access to services. If it’s health, if it’s education, anything, it determines what happens next. The outcomes are not as good for people on temporary visas where they cannot access those payments.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Survivors described being left destitute, desperate and in a state of limbo without any access to services.</p>
<p>Temporary visa status can also make it impossible for survivors to find suitable and <a href="https://www.redcross.org.au/globalassets/cms/migration-support/support-for-trafficked-people/barriers-in-accommodating-survivors-of-modern-slavery.pdf">secure housing</a>.</p>
<p>The combination of insecure visa status and insecure housing can prevent many survivors from regaining their independence and moving forward with their lives.</p>
<h2>Risks of further harm</h2>
<p>For survivors on temporary visas, not being able to access vital supports means many face risks of re-exploitation. </p>
<p>Survivors with children are particularly <a href="https://unisa.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/61USOUTHAUS_INST/12272458810001831">susceptible</a> to experiencing further harm when temporary visas prevent them from supporting their families. </p>
<p>Caseworkers we <a href="https://unisa.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/61USOUTHAUS_INST/12272458810001831">interviewed</a> told us survivors may </p>
<blockquote>
<p>end up thinking, ‘well, I’m just going to have to try and get money anyway anyhow’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another caseworker said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve seen clients engaging with high-risk industries like sex work or fruit picking – where their work rights are not being met – in order to try and send something back to their children. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The human impact</h2>
<p>The experience of Grace*, who participated in our <a href="https://unisa.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/61USOUTHAUS_INST/12272458810001831">research</a>, shows how these elements conspire to produce exploitative conditions, hinder help-seeking and hamper recovery from slavery.</p>
<p>Grace met her former partner while in Australia and applied for a temporary partner visa when her existing visa expired. She was granted a bridging visa while her application was being processed.</p>
<p>Shortly after giving birth to their child, Grace and her child were trafficked out of Australia, allegedly by her partner.</p>
<p>Grace’s bridging visa was immediately cancelled, leaving her unable to return to Australia to support her child, who is an Australian citizen.</p>
<p>While overseas, Grace tried many times to seek support from Australian authorities but was constantly hindered by her lack of visa or residency.</p>
<p>When her case eventually came to the attention of the AFP, they facilitated her return to Australia, and she was granted a temporary visa through the government’s human trafficking visa framework.</p>
<p>Throughout her recovery from exploitation, Grace has constantly faced barriers to supporting herself and her child due to the temporary status of this visa, saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>With the bridging visa, you can stay, you can work, but you can’t do much around it. You can’t go to school. I want to study, but I can’t afford it. And I’m really stuck with that. Even when I look for job, there’s some jobs that required to be a permanent resident or citizen. Every job I applied for asked about residency status. I felt uneasy to explain my case and the reason why I had that visa. Same issue regarding applying for rental. I can’t get over it. So, it’s just hard for the visa.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Protecting the system rather than the people</h2>
<p>As modern slavery survivor and advocate Sophie Otiende <a href="https://www.sophieotiende.com/blog/what-makes-you-uncomfortable">puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Care cannot exist when we focus on protecting the system rather than the people at all costs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Australia’s visa system is entrenched within the problem of modern slavery, and future changes to it must refocus on caring for those who are most vulnerable to exploitation. </p>
<p>Migrant workers need further protections from exploitation caused by temporary visas, such as those recently proposed by government.</p>
<p>To support their recovery from exploitation, migrant survivors of modern slavery need:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>guaranteed access to mainstream supports</p></li>
<li><p>swifter access to permanent visas and</p></li>
<li><p>clearer pathways to residency. </p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>*Names have been changed to protect identities. If you or someone you know needs help, contact the Australian Red Cross Support for Trafficked People Program on 03 9345 1800 or email national_stpp@redcross.org.au</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209139/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nerida Chazal has received funding Department of Social Services. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kyla Raby works for the Australian Red Cross who has received funding from the Department of Social Services to undertake research discussed in this article.</span></em></p>Our research found Australia’s visa system continues to harm migrants once they’ve experienced exploitation. Survivors described being left destitute and desperate without access to services.Nerida Chazal, Lecturer in Criminal Justice and Sociology, University of South AustraliaKyla Raby, Anti-slavery researcher and practitioner, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1697852021-10-26T14:22:42Z2021-10-26T14:22:42ZNigerian museums must tell stories of slavery with more complexity and nuance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427828/original/file-20211021-25-1ifhwxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Gidan Makama national museum in Kano, Nigeria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aminu Abubakar/AFP/Getty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In many parts of the world, museums are considering how to present history through different lenses, rather than just representing colonial and imperialistic views of certain events, countries or whole continents.</p>
<p>The current museum presentations of exhibits and information about slavery – especially the transatlantic slave trade – are a stark example of colonisation that’s been spun through a white, eurocentric lens. Hence, it’s become a key part of the decolonisation debate. </p>
<p>Museums all over the world have struggled to move beyond presenting more than emotionally removed snapshots of the slave trade. Most of these halls are continuing a long tradition of disconnecting themselves and the public from personal and local stories of slavery. This makes them disconnected from community and public memories. </p>
<p>African museums are also guilty of this practice. The transatlantic slave trade was a 400-year period during which African people were stolen from their homes and shipped to colonial nations. It was complex and multi-faceted. But when presented by museums today, it is communicated as a singular and temporarily isolated event. African museums frame the transatlantic slave trade narratives from an economic perspective. Their narratives are built around economic drivers and the economic effects of slavery on African countries, and the countries that benefited from the trade.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21619441.2021.1963034">recent study</a>, I examined how slavery is presented in two Nigerian museums. One is Calabar’s Slave History <a href="http://slaveryandremembrance.org/partners/partner/?id=P0027">Museum</a>, which is government-funded; the other is the privately run Seriki Faremi Williams Abass <a href="https://seriki-williams-abass-slave-museum.business.site">Museum</a>. In both museums, the dominant narrative about slavery is that the Europeans arrived; the slave trade developed; and then it was abolished.</p>
<p>Little attention is paid to the practice of slavery in the region before Europeans arrived in the 1440s. There’s little mention of how the practice persisted, even after the British outlawed the slave trade in its empire. There’s no mention of concerns about <a href="https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/resources/downloads/">modern slavery</a> in Nigeria.</p>
<p>This is an isolationist approach to a large, complex set of stories. When I spoke with local communities descended from victims of slavery, members strongly criticised government funded museums’ approach. They kicked against the museums’ failure to convey the complete, complex, and conflicting localised human story of the slave trade. They also wanted museums to reflect that slavery continues to have an impact on local communities today. Especially on the culture and identity of individuals and ethnic groups.</p>
<h2>Official avoidance of history</h2>
<p>Elsewhere in Nigeria, transatlantic slavery and the slave trade are largely absent from national or state museums, including the <a href="https://momaa.org/directory/nigerian-national-museum/">Nigerian National Museum</a> in Lagos.</p>
<p>This official avoidance of the history of slavery and its accompanying acts of oppression and injustice could be linked to the colonial legacies of many of these museums. It may also be connected to wider political rhetoric that unsuccessfully urges Nigerians to forget such dark chapters. Of course, such avoidance is not limited to Nigeria – it’s a global trend of deliberate erasure. It has deep roots in imperialist and eurocentric agendas.</p>
<p>After independence in 1960, Nigeria’s heritage and past were used to enlighten and educate the public in national “official” histories. The aim was <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/og/article/view/141270">nation-building</a>. Six decades later, it has culminated in the exclusion of the transatlantic slave trade from wider narratives of independence, colonial geography, and ethnic histories in Nigerian museums.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A yellow bungalow, with a lawn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427834/original/file-20211021-17-o98oax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Slavery Museum at Badagry, Nigeria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MyLoupe/Universal Images Group/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Colonial heritage narratives about Nigeria have not been amended throughout the years. These incorrect narratives linger, despite evidence that slavery and enslavement form the core of the country’s personal, local and cultural memories. </p>
<p>Official efforts have failed to consider community narratives and memories, thereby removing Nigerians from the centre of their own history and heritage. The result is that these museums are often perceived as locally irrelevant: there is a disconnect between the official narrative and the descendent community’s <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333776834_Heritage_and_Community_Archaeology_in_South-Western_Nigeria">versions</a> of the past. </p>
<p>One of the museums in my study, the Seriki Faremi Williams Abass Slave Museum in Badagry, was developed as a direct result of the gaps in official museums’ offerings.</p>
<h2>Local collaboration is key</h2>
<p>It is critical that museum professionals in Nigeria – and the rest of the world – begin to open up dialogue with diverse local communities. Museums must be immersed in people-centric local narratives. They have to also build <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21619441.2021.1963034">trust</a> with the communities in which they operate. </p>
<p>This collaboration will allow for the co-production of culturally relevant, personalised and empathetic narratives. Via this collaboration, the story of slavery and slave trade can be sensitively and accurately presented. It will also enable museums to highlight the unique cultural impact of slavery on specific localities, especially at the points of origin and final destination. </p>
<p>This approach could encourage the public and museums to question over-simplified stories of the past. It’s also a valuable way to support empathy with the past. This could enable the public to face uncomfortable and potentially personal truths about the slave trade and enslavement that move beyond victimisation and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2013.771422">stereotypes</a>. </p>
<p>By considering transatlantic slavery and slave trade through this lens, museums have the potential to connect people to the past, so communities might learn, reflect and heal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Faye Sayer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nigerian museums continue to present colonised versions of history. This harms local communities.Faye Sayer, Researcher in Community Archaeology and Public History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1565582021-03-24T12:26:56Z2021-03-24T12:26:56ZUS museums hold the remains of thousands of Black people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391268/original/file-20210323-19-88tz9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5300%2C3765&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Museums across the U.S., including at Harvard University, collected human remains, which were often displayed to the public.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-exterior-photograph-in-near-profile-view-of-agassiz-news-photo/513864946">Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the human remains in Harvard University’s museum collections are those of 15 people who were probably enslaved African American people. Earlier this year, the school announced a new committee that will conduct a comprehensive survey of Harvard’s collections, develop new policies and propose ways to memorialize and repatriate the remains.</p>
<p>“We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2021/steering-committee-on-human-remains-in-harvard-museum-collections/">academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity</a>,” wrote Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow.</p>
<p>This dehumanizing history of collecting African American bodies as scientific specimens is not a problem just at Harvard. On April 12, 2021, The <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/penn-museum-to-repatriate-skulls-of-black-americans-and-slaves-from-cuba/">University of Pennsylvania announced</a> that its anthropology museum will return the skulls of 55 enslaved people from Cuba and the U.S. to their communities of origin for burial. And it apologized for possessing the remains, part of its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/Penn-museum-slavery-skulls-Morton-cranial.html">collection of 1,300 human skulls</a>, which were historically <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2007008">used to denigrate</a> the intelligence and character of Black people and Native Americans.</p>
<p>Other institutions have far more Black skeletons in their closets. <a href="https://core.tdar.org/document/434603/african-americans-and-nagpra-the-call-for-an-african-american-graves-protection-and-repatriation-act">By one estimate</a>, the Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Howard University hold the remains of some 2,000 African Americans among them. The total only increases when considering museums with remains from <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubling-origins-of-the-skeletons-in-a-new-york-museum">other populations</a> across the African diaspora. How many more sets of remains lie in museum storerooms across the United States, and whether or not they were collected with consent, is unknown.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FFy5tMUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As archaeologists</a>, <a href="https://www.american.edu/profiles/students/dj6541a.cfm">we understand</a> the impulse to gather human remains to tell our human story. Osteobiographies, life histories constructed from skeletal remains, can offer insights into nutritional, migratory, pathological and even political-economic <a href="https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2019.1007">conditions of past populations</a>. However, scholars and activists across the U.S. are now seeking to recognize and redress the deep history of violence against Black bodies. Museums and society are finally confronting how the desires of science have at times eclipsed the demands of human rights.</p>
<p>How did the remains of so many Black people end up in collections, and what can be done about it?</p>
<h2>Collecting Black bodies</h2>
<p>The abuse and circulation of African American human remains for research dates back at least to 1763, with the dissection of corpses of the enslaved for the <a href="https://columbiaandslavery.columbia.edu/content/college-physicians-and-surgeons">first anatomy lecture</a> in the American Colonies.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="chest up portrait of Samuel Morton" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American physician and naturalist Samuel Morton (1799-1861) collected human remains for pseudoscientific study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/samuel-george-morton-american-physician-and-naturalist-news-photo/3239062">Hulton Archive/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The systematic collection of African American remains, as well as those of people from other marginalized communities, began with the work of <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/samuel-morton">Samuel George Morton</a>. Considered the founder of American physical anthropology, Morton professionalized the acquisition of human remains in the name of scientific practice and education.</p>
<p>Morton boasted the first collection of human remains, at one point considered to be the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5820708.html">largest globally</a>. He used its subjects-turned-specimens to promote racist hierarchies through pseudoscientific interpretations of cranial measurements. His research resulted in his 1839 magnum opus, “<a href="http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/60411930R">Crania Americana</a>,” replete with hundreds of hand-drawn images of skulls and faulty-logic racial categorization.</p>
<p>His collection eventually ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. Only last year did the university <a href="https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/07/penn-museum-morton-cranial-collection-black-lives-matter">officially announce the collection</a> had been removed from a shelved display within an archaeology classroom. </p>
<p>The impact of Morton’s collection and career ricocheted far and wide, laying the foundation for unethical practices built on the theft, transportation and accumulation of human remains – especially of those most marginalized. Collecting <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-museums-rushed-fill-their-rooms-bones-180958424/">surged during the time of the Civil War</a>. From the late 19th century well into the 20th, <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161946">skeletal collections in museums across the country</a> skyrocketed.</p>
<p>Morton also influenced the ideology of biologist Louis Agassiz, his eventual collaborator. Agassiz founded Harvard’s <a href="https://mcz.harvard.edu/ornithology-history">Museum of Comparative Zoology</a>, which originally bore his name. His own collection practices around the photographed bodies of the enslaved have embroiled the university in <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/3/21/harvard-slavery-photo-lawsuit/">a public lawsuit</a>.</p>
<p>Institutions long embraced such collections primarily for the pseudoscientific work of justifying racial hierarchies. But they also enhanced their prestige by the number of remains in their collections that could be used for research as well as for exhibitions that fed the public’s morbid curiosity.</p>
<p>Eventually, most collecting institutions shifted away from these original goals but held on to human remains for teaching skeletal biology and testing new scientific methods. A majority of museum collections, however, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41771115">sit unused</a>, retained in the belief that they may help answer questions at some point in the future.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman holds historical photo of enslaved Black man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shonrael Lanier holds a photo of her ancestor, Renty, an enslaved Black man. Her family has sued Harvard University for ownership of his image. Scientists’ photos of him and others were discovered in a museum basement in the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/shonrael-lanier-a-descendant-of-former-slave-renty-taylor-news-photo/1151246352">Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, the remains of African American people, freed or enslaved, are in these collections because the captivity of their bodies, both <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/185986/medical-apartheid-by-harriet-a-washington/">living</a> and <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">deceased</a>, was the very foundation of museums of medicine, anthropology, archaeology, natural history and more. While some <a href="https://decolonizingmuseums.com/">academic</a> and <a href="https://www.aam-us.org/2020/01/01/knowing-better-doing-better-the-san-diego-museum-of-man-takes-a-holistic-approach-to-decolonization/">cultural</a> institutions have taken the initiative to confront their legacies with slavery – such as <a href="https://www.museumnext.com/article/what-does-it-mean-to-decolonize-a-museum/#:%7E:text=Decolonization%20is%20part%20of%20the,include%20Native%20people%20at%20every">decolonization</a> efforts to include more diverse perspectives and values – a national effort has yet to take shape.</p>
<h2>Desecrated in life and death</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/legislation-protect-african-american-burial-grounds-passes-senate-180976642/">U.S. Senate passed</a> the African American Burial Grounds Network Act in December 2020. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1179/text">This bill</a> would establish a voluntary network to identify and protect often at-risk African American cemeteries. The program would be administered through the National Park Service, and nothing in the legislation would apply to private property without the consent of landowners. More than 50 prominent national, state and local organizations <a href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Letter%20to%20Senate%20Supporting%20S%202827.pdf">support the passage of the act into law</a> and are working to have it reintroduced in Congress’ current session.</p>
<p>But even this legislation does not include the remains of Black people in museum collections. Such an addition would be <a href="https://blog.historian4hire.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/AfricanAmericanGraves-1992-A.pdf">more in line</a> with the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo21358784.html">Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act</a>, a 1990 federal law that addresses Native American human remains in all contexts – both in the ground and in collections. This work is necessary because many of the remains of Black people, like those of Native Americans, were taken without the consent of family, used in ways that contravened spiritual traditions, and treated with less respect than most others in society. </p>
<p>In the absence of such an addition, the work of finding all of the African American remains in museums will be unorganized and inconsistent. Institutions will need to make efforts on their own, which will cost more money and consume more resources. Even more importantly, the absence of a coordinated, national effort will mean the delay of justice for thousands of African American ancestors whose bodies have been, and continue to be, desecrated.</p>
<p><em>Article updated to include an <a href="https://www.penn.museum/documents/pressroom/MortonCollectionRepatriation-Press%20release.pdf">April 12, 2021 announcement</a> from The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Proposed legislation would identify and protect African American cemeteries. But it wouldn’t cover the remains of thousands of Black people in museum collections.Delande Justinvil, Doctoral Student in Anthropology, American UniversityChip Colwell, Associate Research Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1433392020-07-30T12:18:53Z2020-07-30T12:18:53ZEnslaved people’s health was ignored from the country’s beginning, laying the groundwork for today’s health disparities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350239/original/file-20200729-21-1lyimt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C3%2C2509%2C1831&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Freed slaves on the plantation of Confederate General Thomas F. Drayton in Hilton Head, South Carolina. This photograph was taken circa 1865.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-freed-slaves-gather-on-the-plantation-of-news-photo/615304338?adppopup=true">Getty Images / CORBIS</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some critics of Black Lives Matter say <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/black-lives-matter-all-lives-matter">the movement itself is racist</a>. Their frequent counterargument: All lives matter. Lost in that view, however, is a historical perspective. Look back to the late 18th century, to the very beginnings of the U.S., and you will see Black lives in this country did not seem to matter at all. </p>
<p>Foremost among the <a href="https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0074-02762006001000017">unrelenting cruelties</a> heaped upon enslaved people was the lack of health care for them. Infants and children fared especially poorly. After childbirth, mothers were forced to return to the fields as soon as possible, often having to leave their infants without care or food. The infant mortality rate was <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">estimated at one time to be as high as 50%</a>. Adult people who were enslaved who showed signs of exhaustion or <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mental-illness-in-black-community-1700-2019-a-short-history/">depression</a> were often beaten.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://socialwork.iu.edu/faculty-staff/profile.php?id=Kyere_Eric_ekyere">professor of social work</a>, I study ways to stop racism, promote social justice, and help the Black community empower itself. A relationship exists between the health of enslaved Blacks and the making of America. </p>
<h2>‘Racist medical theory’</h2>
<p>White masters, often brutal and violent, dehumanized the enslaved people who worked for them and became wealthy from their work. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.36">Slaveholders justified their treatment</a> by relying on the widely accepted view of Black inferiority and the physical differences between Blacks and whites. Racist medical theory, the racist notion that the blacks were inherently inferior and animal-like who needed maltreatment to be sound for work, <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">was a critical element</a>. </p>
<p>Enslaved people were poorly fed, overworked and overcrowded, which promoted germ transmission. So did their housing – bare, cold and windowless, or close to it. Because they were not paid, slaves could not maintain personal hygiene. Clothes went unwashed, baths were infrequent, dental care was limited, and beds remained unclean. Body lice, ringworm and bedbugs <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.14">were common</a>. </p>
<p>This treatment began in slave dungeons, built by Europeans on the coastal shores of Africa, where enslaved Blacks awaited shipment to the New World. In Ghana, for example, perhaps 200 were cloistered in tiny spaces where they ate, slept, urinated and defecated. Archaeological research has shown the dirt floors were soaked in vomit, urine, feces and menstrual blood. Conditions within the dungeon were so deadly that cleaning them was discouraged; those who tried <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2018.1578480">risked smallpox and intestinal infections</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In Ghana, a dungeon for enslaved females." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349795/original/file-20200728-19-1930dpn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A dungeon for enslaved females at the Cape Coast Fort in Ghana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eric Kyere</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sick slaves rarely saw doctors</h2>
<p>Diseases among the enslaved people in the colonies and later the states were common and at a disparate rate when compared to whites: typhus, measles, mumps, chicken pox, typhoid and more. Only as a last resort did the slave owner <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.36">bring in a doctor</a>.
Instead, the white master and his wife would provide the health care, though rarely were either one trained physicians. Older enslaved women <a href="https://www.japss.org/upload/5.%20Bronson.pdf">also helped</a>, and brought their knowledge of herbs, roots, plants and midwifery from Africa to the Americas.<br>
As with everything else, Blacks had no say about their care. And if a doctor was involved, Black patients were not necessarily told anything about their condition. The medical report <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/19.5.14">went directly</a> to the slave owner. </p>
<p>Black women played multiple roles. Of course, they were part of the labor force. And they took care of the sick. But they were also the machinery for producing more black bodies. <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">After the mid-Atlantic slave trade was banned</a>, slave owners needed a new source of labor. A pregnant enslaved woman provided that possibility. The birth of a baby born into slavery meant profits that potentially lasted generations, a product requiring little investment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="1860. Enslaved people on a South Carolina plantation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349793/original/file-20200728-19-1jg4sah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Slaves on an Edisto Island, South Carolina plantation, 1860.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/when-james-hopkinson-owner-of-a-plantation-on-edisto-island-news-photo/535796009?adppopup=true">Getty Images / Photo 12 / Universal Images Group</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Terrifying medical research</h2>
<p>Some of the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/19/fact-check-j-marion-sims-did-medical-experiments-black-female-slaves/3202541001/">Black women were used in medical experiments</a>; much of the research, some conducted without anesthesia, focused on maternal health. As the white scientists inflicted tremendous pain on the pregnant women, the infants being carried <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Apartheid-Experimentation-Americans-Colonial/dp/076791547X">sometimes died</a>. Through the torture of these enslaved women, many white physicians and white medical institutions gained <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305243">considerable fame and wealth</a>. </p>
<p>Adverse health consequences for Blacks facilitated the establishment of some medical advances, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/19/fact-check-j-marion-sims-did-medical-experiments-black-female-slaves/3202541001/">such as the invention of the speculum</a> for gynecological exams. One enslaved woman reportedly endured 30 gynecological surgeries without anesthesia. Medical interests and also economic and political interests were served. </p>
<p>More than 150 years later, the health disparities of Black and white Americans remain. To fix what is wrong today, an understanding of the inequities of the past is an imperative. Only then can we begin to dismantle the structural racism that is replete within the American system. Knowledge of the history is necessary to explore and identify the underlying mechanisms to understand how racism revives itself to continue to produce health disparities, and ways to interrupt it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Kyere does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The health care inequities suffered by Black Americans today began centuries ago.Eric Kyere, Assistant professor, social work, IUPUILicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1299692020-02-13T14:02:47Z2020-02-13T14:02:47ZThe power of a song in a strange land<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314568/original/file-20200210-109912-p5sg2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A studio group portrait of the Fisk University Jubilee singers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print">James Wallace Black/American Missionary Association</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the moment of capture, through the treacherous middle passage, after the final sale and throughout life in North America, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html">experience of enslaved Africans</a> who first arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, some 400 years ago, was characterized by loss, terror and abuse. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/abolition.htm">Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807</a> made it illegal to buy and sell people in British colonies, but in the independent United States slavery remained a prominent – <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=40">and legal</a> – practice until December 1865. From this tragic backdrop one of the most poignant American musical genres, the Negro spiritual, was birthed. </p>
<p>Sometimes called <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/ritual-and-worship/spirituals">slave songs, jubilees and sorrow songs</a>, spirituals were created out of, and spoke directly to, the black experience in America prior to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, that declared all slaves free. </p>
<h2>West African roots</h2>
<p>Spirituals have been a part of my life from childhood. In small churches in Virginia and North Carolina, we sang the songs of our ancestors, drawing strength and hope. I went on to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Art_Songs_and_Spirituals_by_Contemporary.html?id=ydzZuQAACAAJ">study</a>, perform and teach the spiritual for over 40 years to people across the U.S. and in various parts of the world. </p>
<p>Despite attempts, white slave-owners could not strip Africans of their culture. Even with a new language, English, and without familiar instruments, the enslaved people turned the peculiarities of African musical expressions into the African American sound.</p>
<p>Rhythms were complex and marked by syncopation, an accent on the weak beat. Call-and-response, a technique rooted in sub-Saharan West African culture, was <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ad802e59cc6835890d7c7c/t/59af147e197aea0fbfcc2e1f/1504646271536/THE+HYMN+Review.pdf">frequently employed</a> in spirituals. Call-and-response is very much like a conversation – the leader makes a statement or asks a question and others answer or expound. </p>
<p>An example of this is the spiritual, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/ritual-and-worship/spirituals">Certainly Lord</a>. The leader excitedly queries, “Have you got good religion?” and others jubilantly respond, “Certainly, Lord.” Using repetition and improvisation, the conversation continues to build until everyone exclaims, “certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord!”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-pgmXinmL5M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In Africa, drums were used to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode86/">communicate</a> from village to village because they could be used to mimic the inflection of voices. </p>
<p>As early as 1739 in the British colonies, drums were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode86/">prohibited by law</a> and characterized as weapons in an attempt to prevent slaves from building community and inciting rebellion. </p>
<p>As a result, enslaved people “played” drum patterns on the body. Hands clapped, feet stomped, bodies swayed and mouths provided sophisticated rhythmic patterns. This can be observed in Hambone, an example of improvised body music. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v8r5wxpa3hg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Oral tradition</h2>
<p>Some spirituals were derived from African melodies. Others were “new,” <a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=6&smtID=6">freely composed songs</a> with a melodic phrase borrowed from here and a rhythmic pattern from there – all combined to create an highly improvised form. </p>
<p>The spiritual was deeply rooted in the oral tradition and often created spontaneously, one person starting a tune and another joining until a new song was added to the community repertoire. The sophisticated result was beautifully <a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=6&smtID=6">described</a> in 1862 by Philadelphia musicologist and piano teacher <a href="http://www.njwomenshistory.org/discover/biographies/lucy-mckim-garrison/">Lucy McKim Garrison</a>. </p>
<p>“It is difficult to express the entire character of these negro ballads by mere musical notes and signs,” she said. “The odd turns made in the throat; the curious rhythmic effect produced by single voices chiming in at different irregular intervals, seem almost as impossible to place on score.” </p>
<p>Textually, the spiritual <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2293924?seq=1">drew from the Hebrew-Christian Bible</a>, particularly the Old Testament, with its stories of deliverance and liberation. Songs like “Go Down Moses” direct the awaited deliverer to “go down” to Southern plantations and “tell ole Pharaoh” – the masters – to “let my people go.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-skQwPQ1Q8w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Songs of survival</h2>
<p>For the slaves, the spiritual proved to be an ingenious tool used to counter senseless brutality and the denial of personhood. In order to survive emotionally, resilience was critical. In the spirituals, slaves sang out their struggle, weariness, loneliness, sorrow, hope and determination for a new and better life. </p>
<p>Yet these are not songs of anger. They are <a href="https://www.ecu.edu/african/sersas/Papers/WrightJ.pdf">songs of survival</a> that voice an unwavering belief in their own humanity and attest to an abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of good over systemic evil. </p>
<p>Interspersed within these seemingly hopeless texts are phrases that reflect the heart’s hope: the words “<a href="https://youtu.be/KiJx1Hbn_KM">true believer</a>” amid the acknowledgment that “sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” for example; and “glory, hallelujah” interjected after the text, “<a href="https://youtu.be/O977l4bkv-U">nobody knows the trouble I see</a>.” </p>
<p>Songs declaring, “<a href="https://youtu.be/CUNrEtS0KeY">I’ve got a crown up in a dat kingdom. Ain’t a dat good news</a>” proclaimed the certainty of a future hope totally unlike the day-to-day reality of enslavement. </p>
<p>People whose every movement was dictated audaciously declared, “I’ve got shoes. You’ve got shoes. All God’s children got shoes. When I get to heaven gonna put on my shoes, gonna walk all over God’s heaven.” In the same song they denounced the hypocrisy of the slaveholders’ religion: “Everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t going there.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/znDkWgvcLHg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Spirituals weren’t simply religious music. In his seminal work, “Narrative Of The Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave,” published in 1845, the abolitionist <a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Douglass/Narrative/Douglass_Narrative.pdf">explains</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The spirituals were <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/ritual-and-worship/spirituals">also acts of rebellion</a>. They were used to <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1202&context=reprints">organize clandestine meetings</a>, and announce activities of the Underground Railroad. For example, songs like “<a href="https://youtu.be/OEPpI0Nnd3c">Great Camp Meeting</a>,” were used to announce when secret gatherings were being planned.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The spiritual served as a mediator between the dissonance of oppression and the belief that there was “<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498536493/The-Motif-of-Hope-in-African-American-Preaching-during-Slavery-and-the-Post-Civil-War-Era-There's-a-Bright-Side-Somewhere">a bright side somewhere</a>.” </p>
<p>Four hundred years after the birth of slavery, as the world still struggles with racial division, injustice and a sense of hopelessness, spirituals can teach how to build hope in the face of despair and challenge the status quo.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rev. Dr. Donna M. Cox has received funding from the University of Dayton Research Council and The Ohio Humanities Council. She is affiliated with Doxology Ministries International, Inc, a 501c3 charitable organization. </span></em></p>Spirituals were created out of the experience of enslaved people in the US. They weren’t songs of anger – but of an abiding belief in the victory of good over evil.Donna M. Cox, Professor of Music, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1131682019-04-11T10:42:44Z2019-04-11T10:42:44ZMuslims arrived in America 400 years ago as part of the slave trade and today are vastly diverse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268456/original/file-20190409-2931-vj92z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An attorney for the Muslim enclave of Islamberg prays in a mosque in Tompkins, New York. American Muslims have a history going back 400 years. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Muslim-Enclave/f2e63aae36554942a24ff27b42d84678/531/0">AP Photo/Mark Lennihan</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most Americans say <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/17/how-many-people-of-different-faiths-do-you-know/">they don’t know a Muslim</a> and that much of what they understand about Islam is from the media. </p>
<p>It’s not surprising then to see the many misunderstandings that exist about Muslims. Some see them as outsiders and a <a href="https://www.ispu.org/journalists/#mythbusters">threat to the American way of life</a> and values. President Donald Trump’s controversial policy to impose a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/26/623646426/looking-back-at-the-timeline-of-president-trumps-travel-ban">ban on Muslims</a> from seven countries entering into the United States played into such fears.</p>
<p>What many don’t know, however, is that Muslims have been in America well before America became a nation. In fact, some of the earliest arrivals to this land were Muslim immigrants – forcibly transported as slaves in the transatlantic trade, whose <a href="http://www.400yearsofinequality.org/">400th anniversary</a> is being observed this year.</p>
<h2>The first American Muslims</h2>
<p>Scholars estimate that as many as <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/African-Muslims-in-Antebellum-America-Transatlantic-Stories-and-Spiritual/Austin/p/book/9780415912709">30% of the African slaves brought to the U.S.</a>, from West and Central African countries like Gambia and Cameroon, were Muslim. Among the difficulties they faced, were also those related to their faith.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.ispu.org/scholars/saeed-khan/">scholar</a> of Muslim communities in the West, I know African slaves were forced to abandon their Islamic faith and practices by their owners, both to separate them from their culture and religious roots and also to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xKsLCx2VmcwC&lpg=PP1&dq=muslims%20civil%20rights%20act%20immigration&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=muslims%20civil%20rights%20act%20immigration&f=false">“civilize”</a> them to Christianity. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="http://www.sylvianediouf.com/">Sylviane Diouf</a> explains how despite such efforts, many slaves <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479847112/servants-of-allah/">retained aspects of their customs and traditions</a>, and found new, creative ways to express them. Slave devotionals sung in the fields, for example, kept the tunes and memory of a bygone life alive well after the trauma of dislocation.</p>
<p>Diouf argues that blues music, one of the quintessential forms of American culture, can <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479847112/servants-of-allah/">trace its origins</a> to Muslim influences from the slave era. She also demonstrates how the famous blues song, “Levee Call Holler,” has a style and melody that comes from the Muslim call to prayer, the “adhan.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0qmO8XouJ2U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Blues has also influenced a host of other American music genres, from country to rock ‘n’ roll, and the most well-known of American musical forms, jazz. The famous jazz player <a href="https://www.johncoltrane.com/">John Coltrane</a>, known for his seminal work <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ph-ODQAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=A%20love%20supreme%20allah%20supreme&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=A%20love%20supreme%20allah%20supreme&f=false">“A Love Supreme,”</a> appears to be influenced by the cadence of Islamic prayers and devotionals.</p>
<p>Scholar <a href="https://sipa.columbia.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/hisham-aidi">Hisham Aidi</a>, author of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/1199/rebel-music-by-hisham-d-aidi/9780307279972/">“Rebel Music,”</a> along with a <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/John_Coltrane.html?id=sNIGngEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description">host of jazz musicians</a>, argues that Coltrane is singing “Allah Supreme” in the Islamic devotional style of “dhikr,” or remembrance of God. </p>
<h2>The Muslim communities of America today</h2>
<p>Today’s America incorporates a large diversity of Muslims, who have immigrated from many parts of the world. Many <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xKsLCx2VmcwC&lpg=PP1&dq=muslims%20civil%20rights%20act%20immigration&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=muslims%20civil%20rights%20act%20immigration&f=false">immigrated</a> after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xKsLCx2VmcwC&lpg=PP1&dq=muslims%20civil%20rights%20act%20immigration&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=muslims%20civil%20rights%20act%20immigration&f=false">They are from</a> Africa and the Middle East, as well as South and Southeast Asia. African American Muslims, descendants of the slave generations in this country, comprise a sizable chunk – about 20% – somewhere between 600,000 to 850,000 – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/03/new-estimates-show-u-s-muslim-population-continues-to-grow/">of the total Muslim population in the</a> in the United States. </p>
<p>In this diverse mix are also those who belong to the Nation of Islam – a political and religious movement founded by <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VdcQNcJZoSgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Elijah Muhammad</a> in the 1930s. Muhammad, son of former slaves, wanted to promote black empowerment in the face of racism. The number of those who belong to the Nation of Islam have greatly declined since then.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://theconversation.com/eid-al-fitr-2016-understanding-the-differences-among-americas-muslims-61347">diversity is reflected</a> in the customs, interpretations and rituals practiced by the many denominations here. It is also reflected in the racial, ethnic and cultural composition of the community, or perhaps more accurately, a group of communities. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268459/original/file-20190409-2935-16kmi8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268459/original/file-20190409-2935-16kmi8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268459/original/file-20190409-2935-16kmi8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268459/original/file-20190409-2935-16kmi8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268459/original/file-20190409-2935-16kmi8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268459/original/file-20190409-2935-16kmi8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268459/original/file-20190409-2935-16kmi8j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is a large and diverse Muslim community in the U.S. today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Divided-America-American-Moments/ae11b33133344a8c8df1b1fccc687704/81/0">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All these differences can make interaction between these communities a challenge. But American Muslims, despite their complex histories, have learned to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VhDRXHU8zzYC&lpg=PP1&dq=immigrant%20black%20american%20muslims&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=immigrant%20black%20american%20muslims&f=false">blend experiences</a> that are truly unique. </p>
<p>As more recently arrived immigrant Muslims interact with their coreligionists whose legacy dates back 400 years in this country, new engagements inform the new reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saeed Ahmed Khan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Muslims are not new to America. The first Muslims came as slaves and left a deep influence on a host of music genres, such as the blues and jazz.Saeed Ahmed Khan, Senior Lecturer, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1097092019-02-27T11:42:05Z2019-02-27T11:42:05ZWhat Catholic Church records tell us about America’s earliest black history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260032/original/file-20190220-148533-1tvovv2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"> St Augustine Catholic Church Archive.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David LaFevor</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most Americans, black history <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm">begins in 1619</a>,
when a Dutch ship brought some “20 and odd Negroes” as slaves to the English colony of Jamestown, in Virginia. </p>
<p>Many are not aware that black history in the United States <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">goes back at least a century before this date</a>.</p>
<p>In 1513, a free and literate African named Juan Garrido explored Florida with a Spanish conquistador, Juan Ponce de León. In the following decades, Africans, free and enslaved, were part of all the Spanish expeditions exploring the southern region of the United States. In 1565, Africans helped establish the first permanent European settlement in what is St. Augustine, Florida today.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://slavesocieties.org/">Slave Societies Digital Archive</a> which I direct <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">as a historian</a> at Vanderbilt University includes Catholic Church records from St. Augustine. </p>
<p>These records date back to the 1590s and document some of the earliest black history of the U.S. </p>
<h2>Catholicism and runaway slaves</h2>
<p>These Catholic Church records show that everyone was treated in theory as <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674062047">“brothers in Christ”</a> and that the Church helped incorporate Africans into Spanish communities. It also helped free some slaves. </p>
<p>St. Augustine’s Catholic records show that after English Protestants established a settlement in what became South Carolina in 1670, their African slaves began to flee southward <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A246118">seeking admission into the “True Faith”</a> – which to the Spaniards meant Catholicism.</p>
<p>Florida’s Spanish governors sheltered them and saw to their religious conversion, seeking royal approval of their actions. After some deliberation, in 1693, Spain’s monarch ruled that all slaves fleeing Protestant lands to seek conversion in Catholic colonies should be freed. Word of the fugitives’ reception in St. Augustine spread quickly through South Carolina, generating bitter complaints among planters and encouraging additional southward escapes by their slaves. </p>
<p>By 1738, the number of slave runaways reaching Florida had <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Society_in_Spanish_Florida.html?id=6KByoQgXZEcC">grown to approximately 100</a>. Based on Spain’s religious sanctuary policy, Florida’s Spanish governor freed the runaways and established them in a town of their own called <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/histarch/research/st-augustine/fort-mose/">Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose</a>, two miles north of the Spanish city of St. Augustine. Mose was modeled after the nearby Indian towns where Catholic priests were also assigned to teach the “new Christians” the principles of the Catholic faith. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260034/original/file-20190220-148513-2sly8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A museum presents the stories of Mose’s people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jane Landers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The site is now a National Historic Landmark, listed on the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/fl2.htm">National Park Service Underground Railroad Route</a>, and has been nominated for a UNESCO Slave Route designation. A museum based on both archaeological and historical studies <a href="https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/fort-mose-historic-state-park">presents the stories of the Mose townspeople</a>. </p>
<h2>African heritage in church records</h2>
<p>The records in St. Augustine’s church <a href="https://essss.library.vanderbilt.edu/islandora/object/essss%3A246118">reveal the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual nature of Mose</a>. </p>
<p>Its leader and captain of the town’s militia, Francisco Menéndez, was of Mandinga ethnicity and came from the Senegambian region of West Africa in modern-day Senegal. He probably spoke a variety of languages but learned Spanish as well and wrote petitions to the Spanish King. Others at Mose came from the Congo nation, that is today in West Central Africa. </p>
<p>Pedro Graxales, the Congo man who was sergeant of the Mose militia was married to a slave woman of the Carabalí nation, from what is today southeastern Nigeria. The couple chose godparents from Congo for their children. </p>
<p>Florida’s priests noted that some people from Congo had undergone previous Catholic baptisms in Africa and that even as they learned Spanish, some of them still prayed and blessed themselves in their native language of Kikongo, a Bantu language spoken throughout large areas of West Central Africa.</p>
<h2>Creating a black Catholic family</h2>
<p>Baptism into the Catholic faith was important because it cleansed black converts of the “stigma of original sin.” It also brought them into the “Christian brotherhood” of the church. Baptism also served an important social function. Families were linked in a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Slavery-and-Abolition-in-the-Atlantic-World-New-Sources-and-New-Findings/Landers/p/book/9781138633810">system of reciprocal obligations</a> between the baptized and his or her godparents, as also between the parents and godparents. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://fxsanchez.blogspot.com/">Francisco Felipe Edimboro</a> and his wife, Filis, were African-born slaves of Florida’s wealthiest planter, Don Francisco Sánchez. The couple had their three-year-old son baptized on the same day that their master and his mulatto consort baptized their natural son. Edimboro and Filis eventually had 10 more children baptized in St. Augustine’s church. On July 15, 1794, they were themselves baptized and married. </p>
<p>Their Catholic baptism and marriage coincided with their suit to buy their freedom and likely contributed to the successful outcome of that litigation. </p>
<p>As a free man, Felipe Edimboro became a landowner and sergeant of St. Augustine’s free black militia. He also served as godfather to 21 black children born in St. Augustine whose baptisms were recorded in its Catholic Church.</p>
<h2>What these records say about families</h2>
<p>These and other records allow scholars to track the history of several generations of the large Edimboro family to the present day. </p>
<p>One of Edimboro and Filis’s free daughters, Eusebia, had a child with an enslaved man named Antonio Proctor, described in the records as “the best translator of the Indian languages in the province.”</p>
<p>Edimboro and Proctor served on the Spanish frontier together and Proctor’s valuable military service earned him his freedom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260035/original/file-20190220-148517-fp0onf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Proctor Memorial signage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jane Landers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eusebia and Antonio’s freeborn son, George Proctor, became a master carpenter and builder in territorial Florida and George’s son, John Proctor, served in the Florida House of Representatives in the 1870s and in the Florida Senate from 1883 to 1886.</p>
<p>More than 100 descendants recently commemorated <a href="https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/home-garden/2018/11/01/hidden-history-reveals-new-marker/1835915002/">their family’s rich heritage</a> in a public ceremony in Tallahassee, Florida where they mounted a memorial plaque in the Old City Cemetery.</p>
<p>These records show that black history in United States begins much earlier than previously thought. They also show that men, women, and children once thought forgotten left rich histories in these little explored sources.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Landers receives funding from
National Endowment for the Humanities
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
American Council of Learned Societies
John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Historic S. Augustine Research Institute</span></em></p>Catholic Church records document the earliest black history in the US, going back to the 1590s. These records tell the histories of Africans, free and enslaved, who were part of Spanish expeditions.Jane Landers, Professor of History, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/726192017-02-15T02:02:43Z2017-02-15T02:02:43ZAmerica’s always had black inventors – even when the patent system explicitly excluded them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/157436/original/image-20170219-10209-10w0f9l.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A New York Times article from 1910 describes founding of Mound Bayou, a town founded on the wealth of a steamboat patent.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.sundaymagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/19100612-4-ex.pdf">SundayMagazine.org</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>America has long been the land of innovation. More than 13,000 years ago, the Clovis people created what many call the “<a href="http://www.thirteen.org/programs/first-peoples/the-clovis-point--the-first-american-invention_clip/">first American invention</a>” – a stone tool used primarily to <a href="http://www.uwyo.edu/surovell/pdfs/qi%202008.pdf">hunt large game</a>. This spirit of American creativity has persisted through the millennia, through the <a href="http://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/cambridge?a=d&d=Sentinel19420926-01.2.46">first American patent granted</a> in 1641 and on to <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/articles/2016-01-08/5-reasons-the-us-is-great-for-innovation">today</a>.</p>
<p>One group of prolific innovators, however, has been largely ignored by history: black inventors born or forced into American slavery. Though U.S. patent law was created with color-blind language to foster innovation, the patent system consistently excluded these inventors from recognition.</p>
<p>As a law professor and a licensed patent attorney, I understand both the importance of protecting inventions and the negative impact of being unable to use the law to do so. But despite patents being largely out of reach to them throughout early U.S. history, both slaves and free African-Americans did invent and innovate.</p>
<h2>Why patents matter</h2>
<p>In many countries around the world, innovation is fostered through a patent system. Patents give inventors a monopoly over their invention for a limited time period, allowing them, if they wish, to make money through things like sales and licensing.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156704/original/image-20170214-25992-15ubfe4.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patent Office relief on the Herbert C. Hoover Building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Patent_Office_relief_on_the_Herbert_C._Hoover_Building.JPG">Neutrality</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The patent system <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.32.2.173">has long been the heart</a> of America’s innovation policy. As a way to recoup costs, patents provide strong incentives for inventors, who can spend millions of dollars and a significant amount of time developing a invention.</p>
<p>The history of patents in America is <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=2473390">older than the U.S. Constitution</a>, with several colonies granting patents years before the Constitution was created. In 1787, however, members of the Constitutional Convention opened the patent process up to people nationwide <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=559145">by drafting</a> what has come to be known as the Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. It allows Congress:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This language gives inventors exclusive rights to their inventions. It forms the foundation for today’s nationwide, federal patent system, which no longer allows states to grant patents.</p>
<p>Though the language itself was race-neutral, like many of the rights set forth in the Constitution, the patent system didn’t apply for black Americans born into slavery. Slaves were not considered American citizens and laws at the time prevented them <a href="https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/40/3/distributive-justice-and-ip/DavisVol40No3_Aoki.pdf">from applying for or holding property</a>, including patents. In 1857, the U.S. commissioner of patents officially ruled that slave inventions <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-02-08/how-the-patent-office-helped-to-end-slavery">couldn’t be patented</a>.</p>
<h2>Slaves’ inventions exploited by owners</h2>
<p>During the 17th and 18th centuries, America <a href="http://www.history1700s.com/index.php/articles/14-guest-authors/1084-the-inventions-of-18th-century-which-transformed-agriculture.html">was experiencing rapid economic growth</a>. Black inventors were major contributors during this era – even though most <a href="http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040&context=jgspl">did not obtain any of the benefits associated with their inventions</a> since they could not receive patent protection.</p>
<p>Slave owners often took credit for their slaves’ inventions. In one well-documented case, a <a href="http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/02/11/5-inventions-by-enslaved-black-men-blocked-by-us-patent-office/4/">black inventor named Ned</a> invented an effective, innovative cotton scraper. His slave master, Oscar Stewart, attempted to patent the invention. Because Stewart was not the actual inventor, and because the actual inventor was born into slavery, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Wz-DTSXeLRYC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=Oscar+Stewart+Ned+patent&source=bl&ots=4AuokDOGVw&sig=p_jIR4bYZPFDk0tnNh74gSae-mI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3i-vq5oHSAhUD5YMKHXoeDVQ4ChDoAQgxMAg#v=onepage">the application was rejected</a>. </p>
<p>Stewart ultimately began selling the cotton scraper without the benefit of patent protection and made <a href="http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1076.htm">a significant amount of money</a> doing so. In his advertisements, he openly touted that the product was “the invention of a Negro slave – thus giving the lie to the abolition cry that slavery dwarfs the mind of the Negro. When did a free Negro ever invent anything?” </p>
<h2>Reaping benefits of own inventions</h2>
<p>The answer to this question is that black people – both free and enslaved – <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmscientists1.html">invented many things</a> during that time period.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156702/original/image-20170214-25987-q65aeh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One such innovator was <a href="http://nkaa.uky.edu/record.php?note_id=648">Henry Boyd</a>, who was born into slavery in Kentucky in 1802. After <a href="https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467111560">purchasing his own freedom</a> in 1826, Boyd invented a corded bed created with wooden rails connected to the headboard and footboard. </p>
<p>The “Boyd Bedstead” was so popular that historian Carter G. Woodson <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=zF6J8Zge4XgC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=Henry+Boyd+corded+bed&source=bl&ots=3U6YlDDtfB&sig=aDbhOuxCX_KQdUdXuiqVB2PQzbY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU-ZHT1IHSAhXl7YMKHfBRAB0Q6AEIOTAG#v=onepage&q=Henry%20Boyd%20corded%20bed&f=false">profiled his success</a> in the iconic book “The Mis-education of the Negro,” noting that Boyd’s business ultimately employed 25 white and black employees. </p>
<p>Though Boyd had recently purchased his freedom and should have been allowed a patent for his invention, the racist realities of the time apparently led him to believe that he wouldn’t be able to patent his invention. He ultimately decided to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qjWDoxwT6fIC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=Henry+Boyd+patent&source=bl&ots=BRUsY-wjc_&sig=u-q8LbCuHm4pvav2ExPRJj3kvYg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAkcn-04HSAhUJ5oMKHSz8AygQ6AEIOTAI#v=onepage&q=Henry%20Boyd%20patent&f=false">partner with a white craftsman</a>, allowing his partner to apply for and receive a patent for the bed.</p>
<p>Some black inventors achieved financial success but no patent protection, direct or indirect. Benjamin Montgomery, who was born into slavery in 1819, <a href="http://theblackhistorychannel.com/2013/benjamin-montgomery-slave-inventor/">invented a steamboat propeller designed for shallow waters</a> in the 1850s. This invention was of particular value because, during that time, steamboats delivered food and other necessities through often-shallow waterways connecting settlements. If the boats got stuck, life-sustaining supplies would be <a href="http://blackinventor.com/benjamin-montgomery/">delayed for days or weeks</a>. </p>
<p>Montgomery <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Montgomery">tried to apply for a patent</a>. The application was rejected due to his status as a slave. Montgomery’s owners tried to take credit for the propeller invention and patent it themselves, but the patent office also rejected their application because they were not the true inventors. </p>
<p>Even without patent protection, Montgomery amassed significant wealth and become one of the <a href="http://www.maricopa-az.gov/web/featured-contributors/1963-benjamin-montgomery-inventor-of-the-steam-operated-propeller">wealthiest planters</a> in Mississippi after the Civil War ended. Eventually his son, Isaiah, was able to purchase more than 800 acres of land and found the town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi after his father’s death.</p>
<h2>A legacy of black innovators</h2>
<p>The patent system was ostensibly open to free black people. From Thomas Jennings, the first black patent holder, who <a href="http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/40925874-thomas-l-jennings-was-the-first-black-man-to-receive-a-patent-the-patent-awarded-on-march-3-1821">invented dry cleaning</a> in 1821, to Norbert Rillieux, a free man who invented a revolutionary <a href="http://blackinventor.com/norbert-rillieux/">sugar-refining process</a> in the 1840s, to Elijah McCoy, who obtained <a href="http://www.historychannel.com.au/this-day-in-history/the-real-mccoy-patents-ironing-board/">57 patents</a> over his lifetime, those with access to the patent system invented items that still touch the lives of people today.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yQsf-qBjuGY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This legacy extends through the 21st century. Lonnie Johnson generated more than <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/bulls-eye---super-soaker-inventor-scores-huge-payday-232255648.html">US$1 billion in sales</a> with his Super Soaker water gun invention, which has consistently been among the <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/lonnie-g-johnson-17112946#synopsis">world’s top 20 best-selling toys</a> each year since 1991. Johnson now owns more than 80 patents and has since developed different <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-super-soakers-unlikely-role-in-the-green-energy-revolution">green technologies</a>.</p>
<p>Bishop Curry V, a 10-year-old black inventor from Texas, has already applied for a patent for his invention, which he says <a href="http://www.theroot.com/10-year-old-texas-boy-invents-device-to-stop-hot-car-de-1791880974">will stop accidental deaths of children in hot cars</a>. </p>
<p>Black women are also furthering the legacy of black inventors. <a href="http://www.blackenterprise.com/event/inventor-lisa-ascolese-talks-creating-invention/">Lisa Ascolese</a>, known as “The Inventress,” has received multiple patents and founded the <a href="http://www.aowie.com/about-aowie">Association for Women Inventors and Entrepreneurs</a>. <a href="http://inventors.about.com/od/blackinventors/a/bashen.htm">Janet Emerson Bashen</a> became the first black woman to receive a patent for a software invention in 2006. And <a href="http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/01/09/black-female-physicist-pioneers-technology-that-kills-cancer-cells-with-lasers/">Dr. Hadiyah Green</a> recently won a $1 million grant related to an invention that may help treat cancer. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZOlKC4MbxgE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>True to the legacy of American innovation, today’s black inventors are following in the footsteps of those who came before them. Now patent law doesn’t actively exclude them from protecting their inventions – and fully contributing to American progress.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated on Feb. 19, 2017 to replace a photo that incorrectly identified Thomas Jennings.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shontavia Johnson owns and consults for Jackson Johnson LLC, a business and innovation consulting firm.</span></em></p>American slaves couldn’t hold property – including patents on their own inventions. But that didn’t stop black Americans from innovating since the beginning of the country’s history.Shontavia Johnson, Associate Vice President for Academic Partnerships and Innovation, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/700632017-01-05T17:58:07Z2017-01-05T17:58:07ZFemale slaves’ stories from the 1830s echo today’s fight against patriarchy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149650/original/image-20161212-26070-1597gr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slaves' stories are not commonly known. But historical archives hold a clue to individual lives.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nic Bothma/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Towards the middle of 2016 a group of young women activists called on South Africans to “<a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-06-four-women-the-president-and-the-protest-that-shoock-the-election-results-ceremony">remember Khwezi</a>”. They were referring to the woman who accused then-deputy-president Jacob Zuma of rape (he was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/may/08/aids.southafrica">acquited</a>) and had to <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2006-05-11-zumas-rape-accuser-flees-south-africa">flee the country</a> amid threats on her life. </p>
<p>That rape trial unfolded a decade ago, and at the time organisations like <a href="http://oneinnine.org.za/about-us/">One in Nine</a> vocally supported Khwezi. They called on South Africans to remember all the women silenced by sexual violence even as rights to equality and safety were enshrined in the constitution.</p>
<p>But go even further back: to the times before the Constitution; before the existence of a space known as the Republic of South Africa; or even the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/union-south-africa-1910">Union of South Africa</a>. </p>
<p>It is possible to trace the links between patriarchy, violence, gender roles, and the state further into the past. It’s also possible to trace the ongoing resistance to these by some women.</p>
<p>In colonial records held in national archives – <a href="http://www.national.archsrch.gov.za/sm300cv/smws/sm300dl">the National Archives of South Africa</a>, <a href="https://www.westerncape.gov.za/cape-archives">the Western Cape Archives and Records Service</a> and <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/">The National Archives</a> in the UK – another group of women calls on us to remember their acts of resistance. </p>
<p>They were slave women in the Cape Colony of the 1830s, and their stories echo down the centuries into a country where women are still engaged in acts of resistance, opposition and agency to challenge violence against their bodies by those in positions of power.</p>
<h2>Lea’s story</h2>
<p>Lea was 26 years old when, in March 1832, she complained to the Assistant Protector of Slaves that she had experienced violence at the hands of Saartjie van der Merwe. Lea, a slave, reported that she had been struck and beaten on the back and other parts of her body with a piece of wood and a thong by Saartjie, her female owner. </p>
<p>Lea walked for eight days from the Camdeboo area of the Cape Colony (then under British rule) to the town of Graaff-Reinet to lay her complaint. She had very little food and water to sustain her and she carried her two-year-old child with her. </p>
<p>Later, she reported to the Assistant Protector that she had been pregnant when she came to lay her complaint and on her way back to the farm had “miscarried on the road, and delivered a foetus [sic] of about six months old”. </p>
<p>Lea’s body was a site of political contestation, resistance, and determination. She was resolved to assert her personhood, claim her “rights” and seek redress against the violence committed against her. </p>
<p>The complaints brought to the Protector reveal that Lea and Saartjie were active political agents. They asserted their own subjectivities and participated in state-sanctioned legal processes – even if these processes sought to construct particular notions of gender and determine what roles “women” were expected or not expected to play. </p>
<p>Lea was one of 990 female slaves in Graaff-Reinet – in what is today the Eastern Cape province – who lived alongside 1,257 male slaves. Between 1830 and 1834, 250 complaints were brought to the Assistant Protector; 116 by female slaves and 134 by male slaves. </p>
<p>Male slaves complained overwhelmingly about male owners. Their cases were almost evenly split between complaints of violence and other incidents not related to violence. By contrast, female slaves laid complaints against male <em>and</em> female owners. Their complaints related almost exclusively to violence.</p>
<p>Some colonial officials were not convinced that it was possible to “control” or “manage” female slaves without the threat or use of violence. By 1832 the maximum number of lashes a male slave could receive was reduced from 25 to 15 and it became illegal to beat female slaves.</p>
<p>In a December 1830 report Major George Jackman Rogers, Protector of Slaves for the Cape Colony, wrote about different approaches to punishment:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is certainly highly desirable that the flogging [of] female slaves should be wholly discontinued, but some punishment should be substituted adequate to the degree of the offences which many of these stubborn masculine women commit. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He went on:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The consequence is that very many Female slaves have become very insolent and most of them highly insubordinate. They will go out at unreasonable hours, and be Guilty of many serious offences, for which there is now no adequate punishment, and they put their Owners therefore at defiance. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Women slaves experienced physical violence or legal censure because their attitudes or actions were considered unsuitable, untrustworthy or provocative. Rachel’s story illustrates this point.</p>
<h2>Rachel’s fight to be heard</h2>
<p>Rachel was the slave of a Graaff-Reinet butcher. She sought the Assistant Protector out several times to lay complaints against both her female and male owners, on behalf of herself and her child Francina. </p>
<p>Rachel accused her female owner, Anna Sophia Pienaar, of locking a chain around her leg overnight. She also claimed that Anna had tied her daughter to a tree and punished her with a strap over her shoulders. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149647/original/image-20161212-26033-1p4bgi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Archive notes contain details about the lives of slave women in 1830s South Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carla Tsampiras</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both cases were dismissed. In the second instance, two witnesses, and Francina herself, contradicted Rachel’s complaint. Rachel was admonished and cautioned not to make false complaints again. </p>
<p>Rachel laid a complaint a month later against her male owner for putting her in the stocks overnight. She had threatened to run away – which she’d done before – and the magistrate found this sufficient reason for her to have been confined. Her owner was still fined a paltry one shilling though, as he had contravened the law by allowing her to remain in the stocks overnight. </p>
<p>The magistrate dismissed Rachel’s fourth complaint, again against her male owner for confining her to the stocks. He judged Rachel guilty of having made “an unfounded complaint with malevolent motive”. She was imprisoned for four days on a diet of rice water. </p>
<h2>Voices of resistance</h2>
<p>Lea and Rachel’s voices are filtered through a colonial archive. Their cases were recorded in a standard format used throughout the colony. </p>
<p>A clerk or other bureaucrat listened to their stories (we do not always know in which languages) and wrote them down in English. Then he made decisions about whether to send the complaints on to another colonial-state sanctioned authority in the form of the resident magistrate, or merely to record them. </p>
<p>Despite this filtering, the stories of Lea and Rachel – and others like Eva, Dina, Christina, and Josephina – are still available. They can be heard by those willing to listen. </p>
<p>These stories are a reminder of how important archives are and why it’s necessary that societies are able to critically engage with them. </p>
<p>Archives allow people to examine different forms of resistance from different times and require that societies remain continually aware of the complex nature of the relationships between laws, the state, those in power, and efforts to create gender identities and roles – and liberate themselves from the worst effects of those creations. </p>
<p>The struggle to dismantle patriarchy and stop the ongoing war against women’s bodies continues. Gendered historical consciousness is a way to closely scrutinise what has changed and what still sounds resoundingly familiar. </p>
<p>The echoes of Lea and Rachel’s resistance and determination call from another time. They strengthen those of us fighting today, demand that we amplify our effort, and insist that we remain stubborn and insubordinate until our efforts fill the archives and tell another story. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Author’s note: in my writing I prefer to use the term “womyn” as it demarcates the created and constructed nature of the idea of “women” and “womanhood” and acts as a reminder that they have changed over time and been influenced by social, political and economic contexts (in this context it is also inclusive of trans people). However I have used “women” in this piece in keeping with this site’s style.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carla Tsampiras does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is possible to trace the links between patriarchy, violence, gender roles, and the state further into the past. It’s also possible to trace the ongoing resistance to these by some women.Carla Tsampiras, Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647862016-09-05T11:39:33Z2016-09-05T11:39:33ZThe heritage of hair: stories of resilience and creativity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136443/original/image-20160902-20247-1k8qsmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hair speaks of the past, and of cultural heritage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Evans/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.jacarandafm.com/news-sport/opinion/its-not-just-about-hair/">Untangling</a> the <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-slavery-to-colonialism-and-school-rules-a-history-of-myths-about-black-hair-64676">racial politics</a> of hair has preoccupied casual observers and social analysts for centuries. </p>
<p>Cutting edge anthropological analyses suggest that contemporary hair styling is about “<a href="http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ai/article/view/110054">fashioning futures</a>”, since African identities are “works in progress that refuse to be <a href="http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ai/article/view/110054">impoverished by dichotomies</a>”.</p>
<p>However hair is also about the past and, specifically, cultural heritage. It is both tangible and intangible, a palpable thing that has long term symbolic value. As a changeable part of the human body, hair has long been modified for aesthetic and other ends. But skewed power structures entrenched by racism and sexism have meant that women, and particularly women of colour, have borne the brunt of stereotyping and prejudice. Even so, hair reveals the diversity of human history and cultural creativity.</p>
<h2>Profoundly political</h2>
<p>The politics of hair has deep roots. Ritually cleansing themselves, ancient <a href="http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/06/07/shaving-rituals/">Egyptian priests</a> would shave their bodies and pluck their eyebrows every other day. In ancient Ghana, historical hair grooming involving hair combs and pins revealed <a href="http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/fowler-focus-art-hair-africa/">leadership and status</a>, while in nineteenth century Madagascar the Tsimihety did not cut their hair, presenting their tresses as a sign of their <a href="http://www.madagascar-vision.com/ethnie-tsimihety-madagascar/">independence</a>. American slave traders, on the other hand, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hair-Story-Untangling-Roots-America/dp/0312283229">shaved their captives’ heads</a> supposedly to cleanse them. For many Africans, that act further stripped them of their dignity and symbolised cultural death. </p>
<p>In Europe and around the same time that the slave trade “boomed”, elaborate hairstyles flourished. This led to changes in European hair heritages. Increasing numbers of European men and women wore wigs and heavy makeup to signal their newfound <a href="http://thehistoryofthehairsworld.com/hair_18th_century.html">wealth and status</a>. Powdered and carefully coiffed, the wigs concealed undesirable odours and emerging ailments. Entire retinues of people were required to design, maintain and style the wigs. </p>
<p>Europeans promoted and entrenched racist discourses in slave and colonial society. In Zanzibar and Mauritius the short hair of African descendants was derisively described as pepper corns or sugar, major crops of the slave colonies. In South Africa, racist references to <em>kort kop</em> (short head) links short hair with inferior intelligence. The association of short hair with deficiency even makes it into song “<em>jou hare kan nie pom-pom nie</em>” (your hair cannot be tied in a bun).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5iL8TNl8mtg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Singer Emo Adams with his song ‘Jou hare kan nie pom-pom nie’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hair acquires new meaning</h2>
<p>But hairstyles are acquiring new meaning. In Madagascar women wear “braids of love” to signal (from afar) a woman’s sole interest in marriage. At marriage, a woman will ask her sister-in-law to braid her hair to symbolise the strengthening of the marital bond between the families. Many Africans living in America today (and many African South Africans) wear their hair in dreadlocks to publicly validate the natural texture of their hair and symbolise a return to roots. Women everywhere are relinquishing “white crack” - chemical relaxers.</p>
<p>Increasingly, people are deliberately setting out to show that they don’t aspire to “western” ideas of beauty. The Himba people in Namibia braid and colour their hair and body with butter, fat and ochre. The mixture beautifies and protects their skin from the sun. <a href="http://acacia-africa.com/blog/2014/11/18/the-himba-tribe-some-interesting-facts/">Himba women</a> may take up to 12 hours to do their hair. </p>
<p>Innumerable variations of cornrows and dreadlocks in South Africa, Malawi, Lesotho and Botswana also showcase the diversity of hair heritage in southern Africa. </p>
<p>As a black woman who has done some interesting things to her own hair, I would say that hair heritage is profoundly gendered. It reflects not only racism but the impact of patriarchy in society. Many rituals of womanly beauty, including hair styling, involve making a woman look younger. Fulfilling a patriarchal desire for youthfulness, women have endured the challenge of acquiring longer hair. Anyone who has had their hair braided in singles or cornrows knows about waiting for the “tightness” to subside and the fact that the pain might drive you to find a toothpick to loosen those unhappy baby hairs. </p>
<p>Clearly then, there is more to hair politics than hair straightening. What about the association of hairlessness with femininity in the “<a href="http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/news/a40350/everything-you-need-to-know-before-getting-a-brazilian-wax/">Brazilian</a>”? Women of all colours routinely request a “Brazilian” or a “Hollywood”, rituals of intimate depilation and purification. Contemporary women regardless of colour are modifying the hair they inherited. Billions subject themselves to plucking, waxing, tinting, electrolysis, crimping and perming.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the rise of manscaping suggests that women are not alone in this hair styling frenzy. Long held masculine hair heritages and hairy reassertions of manhood seem to emerge in <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5883155/_The_Beard_Goes_to_War_Men_s_Grooming_and_the_American_Civil_War_">times of crisis</a>. </p>
<h2>The role of globalisation</h2>
<p>Predictably, immigration and globalisation are diversifying hair heritages. Moroccan barbers have imported male nose and ear waxing to South Africa. The increasingly popular mixed martial arts trend, meanwhile, is encouraging an astonishing number of beard growers.</p>
<p>Given the rapid pace and intensity of globalisation, global trends may overcome local prejudices. The rise of <a href="http://www.askmen.com/daily/austin_100/102_fashion_style.html">metrosexual masculinity</a> might well encourage more ritualistic waxing of backs, cracks and sacks. Until then, things remain unequal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosabelle Boswell receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation. She currently holds a Competitive Rated Researchers' Grant (CPRR) to investigate silences and success in the management of African heritage.</span></em></p>Hair has long been modified for aesthetic and other ends. But skewed power structures have meant that women, particularly women of colour, have borne the brunt of stereotyping and prejudice.Rosabelle Boswell, Professor of Anthropology and Executive Dean of Arts, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/642642016-08-24T09:37:19Z2016-08-24T09:37:19ZIs the woman doing your nails a slave? How you, the consumer, can help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135163/original/image-20160823-30238-124ajqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/37553027@N02/8532621134/">Lucy Fisher</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/modern-slavery-bill">modern slavery laws</a> are now almost 18 months old. They send a strong message to people who trade in human beings – you will be pursued, arrested, and brought to justice.</p>
<p>But in practice, there have only been a small number of prosecutions under the laws, even though there are somewhere between <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/true-scale-of-modern-slavery-in-uk-revealed-as-strategy-to-tackle-it-published">10,000 and 13,000</a> victims of modern slavery living in the UK. Now the Salvation Army is reporting a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/slavery-victims-increases-fivefold-in-four-years-says-salvation-army-a7203791.html">five-fold increase</a> in the number of victims it has assisted since 2012. </p>
<p>In July, following concerns that the number of crimes being reported was falling well short of the real number of cases, the government pledged £33m to boost the fight against modern slavery. Its current approach relies heavily on public cooperation to tackle this crime. There have been numerous high profile calls for the British public to open their eyes and ears to spot slavery around them.</p>
<p>If they suspect a case of modern slavery, they are asked to report it in a number of ways – online, by calling the police, or by calling a <a href="https://modernslavery.co.uk/report-it.html">helpline</a>. Yet, my <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0153263">recent research</a> reveals that the public’s understanding of what this crime looks like and whether it actually affects them on a day-to-day basis is dangerously muddled.</p>
<p>In the West Midlands, where the number of <a href="http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/210-ukhtc-nrm-statistics-oct-dec-2013">potential victim referrals</a> is particularly high, the vast majority of people who completed a 30 question survey for our research did not believe modern slavery affected them. They didn’t understand what psychological coercion was and were largely unaware of why victims were trafficked. They often confused trafficking with immigration, thinking that it was the smuggling of illegal immigrants, and that victims allowed themselves to be trafficked to enter the country. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135170/original/image-20160823-30212-1lmum4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135170/original/image-20160823-30212-1lmum4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135170/original/image-20160823-30212-1lmum4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135170/original/image-20160823-30212-1lmum4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135170/original/image-20160823-30212-1lmum4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135170/original/image-20160823-30212-1lmum4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135170/original/image-20160823-30212-1lmum4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How much does a bargain really cost?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_on_the_move/3415946690/in/photolist-6cRBWA-6JJswN-4mxb8j-6S8jfM-6g6HZy-d8xdcS-9vVViM-abQyA3-cmqkxL-reyHR8-6fSXcE-5MHKT-djgd7c-84DAKe-hVdd3m-o1Xx38-d8xbFo-dBPy9B-5MwKvT-5YZe2w-6BpFYv-dzmvDN-9eMRG6-jGqGvb-hxVxy-6FgSTg-q8yWL5-byZDCi-9SXYqv-7P9s1W-ainmtM-AnRMwm-5p2KBc-a164QP-orSXc-bXEEcs-5oyMjT-8rZwLd-7hiiyj-bkmjSt-9ua3Jh-bDwtQM-a8TW66-81Rq8b-6uapbc-4XJsbd-8LaGrn-62xfMq-9ASLz1-rybYbW">ben_osteen</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This suggests that the general public is likely to see victims as willing partners in criminality. That makes things worse for the victim and even fuels the potential idea that they somehow deserve their fate.</p>
<p>Psychological abuse, coercion and mental manipulation play a powerful role in recruiting and controlling modern day slaves. Perpetrators typically live and work with their victims, watching and managing their movements, taking them to work and collecting them. Victims do not travel alone, and their identity papers, driving licence and passport are taken away.</p>
<p>They are denied access to healthcare and living conditions are cramped and unclean. Aggressive, credible threats are used to create anxiety, despair and humiliation, thereby ensuring compliant behaviour. The insidious, non-physical nature of this type of control means that modern slavery is easy to conceal. We cannot see it, and so we do not ask questions because we assume a victim will show physical signs of abuse and restraint.</p>
<h2>How to spot slavery</h2>
<p>In a value-for-money consumer environment, it’s unsurprising that many of us don’t bother to consider whether the people working in the cheapest nail bar, or the quickest and cheapest hand car wash in our towns are doing so willingly. But the reality is that many of them might not be. </p>
<p>The public are an influential interest group, but only if they are well informed and motivated towards positive action. People must be encouraged to think hard about where and how they spend their money, and look out for the subtle indicators of forced labour.</p>
<p>For example, are you being asked to pay in cash when you get your nails done? Are you not given a receipt? Do you ask for a receipt? Does the person polishing your nails or cleaning and waxing your car speak any English? Do they avoid eye contact and appear nervous of communicating? Does this service cost much, much less than the identical service offered over the road? Do you wonder why the same people are working every day of the week, from early morning until late at night? We must all ask ourselves these questions.</p>
<p>It is entirely possible that someone you have direct contact with, in a nail bar or a car wash for example, may be a victim of modern slavery. The nail bar and hand car wash industries have grown significantly over the past few years, and while many businesses are perfectly legitimate, intelligence has indicated that it is common for some in both industries to exploit victims of trafficking.</p>
<p>The public’s poor understanding of how to spot slavery undoubtedly fuels the secret trade in people. Despite their best intentions, the public don’t report crimes because they don’t know what to look out for. Asking yourself some basic questions when you visit a nail bar or a car wash, is, though, a good place to start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Coral Dando does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research shows the public has a poor understanding of what slavery is and how often they encounter it. Here’s how to tell if your manicurist is working against their will.Coral Dando, Professor of Psychology, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/602752016-06-07T08:38:24Z2016-06-07T08:38:24ZModern slave trade: how to count a ‘hidden’ population of 46 million<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124652/original/image-20160531-1925-7e3tcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ChameleonsEye/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1860, just before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the United States carried out a <a href="https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/overview/1860.html">national census</a>. One result was the very precise count of <a href="http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/images/public_education/publications/SocialEd79_SlaveryanditsLegacies.pdf">3,953,761 slaves</a> in the country, amounting to 12.6% of the total population. It was the last clear cut count of slavery in a national population in history.</p>
<p>Since the abolition of legal slavery, it has become a hidden and uncountable crime, making it hard to gauge the number of people truly affected. Globally, slavery takes many forms, with most slaves doing dirty, dangerous, demeaning work – digging and breaking rocks, shaping bricks by hand, <a href="https://theconversation.com/modern-slavery-is-destroying-the-environment-to-meet-demand-for-shrimps-and-pet-food-59015">cutting down forests</a> with hand axes, or scrubbing floors. </p>
<p>Modern slavery is especially hard to measure compared to other crimes. This is something <a href="https://www.walkfree.org/">Walk Free</a> and Hull University’s <a href="http://www2.hull.ac.uk/fass/wise.aspx">Wilberforce Institute</a> has tried to change with the <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/">Global Slavery Index</a>. By applying a method which was first used to estimate the number of fish in a Swedish fjord, and combining it with a survey of more than 25 countries, researchers have been able to get a widespread picture on the crime of slavery, from a global perspective.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124641/original/image-20160531-1964-1czahbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">African American slave family representing five generations all born on the same plantation in South Carolina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett Historical/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates there are <a href="http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/">45.8m people worldwide in slavery today</a>. This is an increase on previous estimates of 36m, but this does not necessarily mean that slavery is on the rise. Instead, the best way to view this figure is simply that the microscope is getting stronger, and better focused every year. This means we are now able to see slavery much more clearly, in places we weren’t able to in the past.</p>
<h2>Counting a crime</h2>
<p>In criminology, the difference between the actual number of crimes and the officially reported number of crimes is called the “<a href="http://www.academia.edu/6721162/Deviance_Crime_and_Social_Control_the_Dark_Figure_of_Crime">dark figure</a>”. There is a “rule of dark figures” which states that the more serious the crime, the more likely it is to be reported to the authorities. For example, <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime-and-sexual-offences--2012-13/rpt---chapter-2---homicide.html">the dark figure for murder is normally far below 1%</a>, but the dark figure for vandalism <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116417/hosb1011.pdf">might be as high as 95% </a> – so nearly everyone who experiences vandalism doesn’t bother to report it. This is a clear pattern in most countries, but there are two types of crime that often confound this rule.</p>
<p>Rape and sexual assault are very serious crimes, but are rarely reported to the police. This is primarily due to the social stigma attached to and felt by those who have been assaulted, along with the fear they might not be believed. Victims of slavery also feel stigma and shame, in part because sexual assault is very common in slavery cases. But slavery also defies measurement for a unique reason. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124643/original/image-20160531-1943-34t2iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Painting showing the abolition of slavery in the French Colonies in 1848.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett - Art/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Normally, to determine the level of any specific crime in developed countries, the results of a <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/crime-statistics-methodology/guide-to-finding-crime-statistics/crime-survey-for-england-and-wales--csew-/index.html">national sample crime survey</a> are compared to the official arrest and conviction rate. When being counted, all crimes are treated as “events” – also known as short single episodes – a mugging for example may only take one or two minutes. </p>
<p>But slavery is a crime which starts, and then continues for an indeterminate time – the victimisation may last for days, months, or even years. This unique fact about slavery crime means it can rarely be measured using national crime surveys, as the victim is so often hidden away, enslaved, and not available to answer questions.</p>
<h2>Understanding slavery</h2>
<p>This is what researchers are up against when they try to understand the scale of slavery across the world. In an attempt to combat this, for the slavery index, we cast the net wider and instead of just individuals, we surveyed households and families to see if anyone knew anyone who had experience of slavery. </p>
<p>Much like the 1860 US Census, these surveys provide an estimate of the proportion of the population who are enslaved, and includes cases that happened in other countries. For example, respondents in national surveys in Nepal identified significant numbers of family members enslaved in Qatar and other Gulf States. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124645/original/image-20160531-1943-1jehpsf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children of brick factory workers in Kolkata, India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">arindambanerjee/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These household surveys work well in countries in the developing world, but in North America and Europe more active law enforcement means criminals work hard to keep their slaves hidden – plus the total number of slaves in the population is much smaller. Fortunately a statistical technique called multiple systems estimation (MSE) can provide reliable estimates of these hidden populations. </p>
<p>First used to estimate the number of fish in a Swedish fjord, MSE has been regularly used to determine <a href="https://hrdag.org/syria">the number of civilian deaths in ongoing conflicts</a>, such as the current civil war in Syria. It works by comparing lists of casualties from hospitals, police, and families, to determine an estimate of the total killed. When applied to slavery, it creates an estimate by comparing the lists of victims known to different agencies, such as the police, non governmental organisations (NGOs), and social service providers. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124655/original/image-20160531-1951-da41ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Child labour on tea plantations in India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PavelSvoboda/shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The UK was the first country to use this technique to estimate slavery, in late 2014, and immediately revised its official figures upwards from the 2,744 cases that were known to exist to an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 slaves, which is where the estimated figure stands today.</p>
<p>As the modern antislavery movement pushes forward, these new breakthrough methods mean there is a yardstick to gauge the progress of liberation. This is important because you can’t solve a problem you can’t understand, so a metric is crucial if effective action is to be taken. </p>
<p>Knowing the geographical spread of slavery also brings with it knowledge of which products and commodities might be tainted by bondage – such as the minerals in our phones and laptops. And as the estimates become more precise, governments, NGOs, and international bodies can mark their progress (or lack thereof) allowing us to trace the best roads to freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Bales does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The number of people in slavery across the world is on the rise, or maybe researchers are just getting better at counting.Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/568762016-04-19T10:08:08Z2016-04-19T10:08:08ZSyrian refugees: will American hearts and minds change?<p><em>Editor’s note: This article is part of our collaboration with <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/">Point Taken</a>, a new program from WGBH that will next air on Tuesday, April 19 on PBS and online at pbs.org. The show features fact-based debate on major issues of the day, without the shouting.</em></p>
<p>How do we change our minds about a person or group we consider a threat?</p>
<p>As the first Syrian families <a href="http://nypost.com/2016/04/07/first-syrian-refugees-arrive-in-america/">arrive</a> in the United States from refugee camps in Jordan, it is important to consider public attitudes about this group.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119163/original/image-20160418-1269-1kyeuey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On April 19 PBS’ Point Taken debates whether the U.S. should take in more or fewer Syrian refugees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/point-taken/">WGBH</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Governors of 31 states have declared their <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks-syrian-refugees-backlash/">unwillingness</a> to accept any Syrian refugees despite having no authority to turn them away. The two leading Republican candidates for president have openly asserted their suspicion of and hostility toward these refugees.</p>
<p>Syrians fleeing the devastating war within their country are not the first group to face such a response. </p>
<p>Many groups have been labeled as “the enemy” in the past – including Native Americans, rebellious slaves, people of Japanese descent, communists and, most recently, Arab-Americans and Muslims. </p>
<p>As a literary scholar, I am interested in how we tell stories about unfamiliar persons and, over time, how we open ourselves to their complexity and humanity. <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2118_reg.html">My recent research</a> has looked specifically at the fate of Japanese Americans interned during the Second World War and the lawyers working in defense of detainees at Guantánamo Bay to explore the conditions under which empathy for an unfamiliar “other” emerges. </p>
<p>Let’s examine some of these conditions.</p>
<h2>The ‘magnificent enemy’</h2>
<p>The first perceived threat – from the perspective of the 17th-century European settlers whose vision shaped the American nation we know today – came from the Native Americans these settlers encountered. </p>
<p>Two 19th-century women writers – Lydia Maria Child and Catharine Maria Sedgwick – in their novels “Hobomok” (1824) and “Hope Leslie” (1827), respectively, both set in 17th-century Massachusetts, countered the prevailing hostile view by portraying two unforgettable Native American characters. </p>
<p>Child’s protagonist Hobomok is impressive for his courage and selflessness, which earn him the love of the daughter of an early Puritan settler. </p>
<p>In Sedgwick’s novel, the Native American woman Magawisca is equally impressive. She speaks about the dignity of her people and defends their attacks against the white settlers. With the force of her personality, she secures the admiration of the white male and female protagonists. </p>
<p>These novels contributed an empathetic perspective to the national conversation about Native Americans. In the end, however, they had little impact on the aggressive policy of Native American removals, and may have even unwittingly <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-134910558/land-and-the-narrative-site-in-sedgwick-s-hope-leslie">advocated</a> it. </p>
<p>By contrast, within abolitionist circles at least, Frederick Douglass’ 1853 novella <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass1853/douglass1853.html">“The Heroic Slave”</a> had a strong impact. </p>
<p>A white traveler from the North overhears the eloquent monologue of the nobly named runaway slave Madison Washington:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This living under the constant dread and apprehension of being sold and transferred, like a mere brute, is too much for me. I will stand it no longer… These trusty legs, or these sinewy arms shall place me among the free.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=862&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119160/original/image-20160418-1254-tqtq96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frederick Douglass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Douglass_portrait.jpg">George Kendall Warren, National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The traveler is so impressed by Washington’s “triumphant” demeanor that he determines that he will not turn him in as a fugitive, despite the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts">law</a> of the time requiring him to capture and return runaway slaves. </p>
<p>Douglass’ book, coming soon after the publication of the influential anti-slavery novel Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” helped present the slave as a person of strength and complexity and not an abject human being. </p>
<p>These all are examples of how a magnificent enemy, a near-perfect specimen of humanity, jolts us out of our assumptions about the threatening “other.” </p>
<p>Literature provides us a space in which to encounter the “ideal” other and “practice” our ability to shed our fears.</p>
<p>In the real world of laws and social rules, however, the perceived enemy rarely comes in such a noble cast. </p>
<p>The laws and structures that organize our societies are crafted to serve the most ordinary and least remarkable individuals, not just those with celebrated qualities. </p>
<h2>What makes a just society?</h2>
<p>People who come to the defense of groups and individuals considered to be threats do so not because they are swayed by a particular remarkable individual. What motivates them is commitment to an ideal.</p>
<p>Members of the organization <a href="http://forms.nomoredeaths.org/about-no-more-deaths/">No More Deaths</a>, for instance, aid undocumented border crosses in Arizona by setting up water stations in the severely inhospitable desert through which the migrants travel.</p>
<p>Though the volunteers break no immigration law, they profess loyalty to a higher law, a <a href="http://reflections.yale.edu/article/who-my-neighbor-facing-immigration/no-more-deaths-interview-john-rife">Christian</a> law that enjoins them to treat their fellow human beings as their neighbor.</p>
<p>Likewise, it is fierce allegiance to the values enshrined in the United States Constitution – such as <a href="http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/amendments/14/essays/170/due-process-clause">due process</a> – that has motivated many lawyers to defend the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.</p>
<p>The seven lawyers I interviewed may have come to empathize with their clients over time, but initially it was their faith in the Constitution and their refusal to see it tarnished that took them to Guantánamo Bay. </p>
<p>A just society, philosopher John Rawls argued, is one that formulates its laws and policies through a “veil of ignorance,” that is, with no knowledge of the “<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/">original position</a>” in which anyone is placed (i.e., race, sex, socioeconomic class or other attribute affecting life prospects). </p>
<p>Political scientist <a href="http://openborders.info/rawlsian/">Joseph Carens</a> takes this veil of ignorance condition and applies it to the global stage. </p>
<p>We likely, he concludes, would organize global society and its institutions so that regardless of where we are born, we would all have the same freedoms, and the least advantaged would be able to improve their conditions. </p>
<p>My question, therefore, is this: What laws do you wished existed if you were in the position of Syrian refugees? </p>
<h2>Empathy is hard work</h2>
<p>At an April 11, 2016 panel held at UMass Boston on what the U.S. response to the Syrian refugee crisis should be, a Syrian woman, displaced by the war and now living in the Greater Boston area, spoke about the need to make connections to those whom we don’t understand.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How many of you know a Muslim person? How many of you have asked us to tell you the story of what we have been through? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her reprimand and plea exhort us to make the effort to break free from our own emotional barriers. </p>
<p>Literature is one vehicle through which to make this outward journey. It allows us to prepare for the actual connections we must seek to forge with the perceived enemy. </p>
<p>But this outward journey toward empathy requires labor and commitment. </p>
<p>It was only in 1988, 40 years after the closing of the camps and 10 years after the Japanese American community started its <a href="https://jacl.org/redress/">redress effort</a> – that the U.S. government officially apologized for the internment and promised compensation. </p>
<p>At the time, Japanese Americans represented only <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asianamericans-graphics/japanese/">0.7</a> percent of the total population. Their campaign could not have succeeded without the support of the wider national community. </p>
<p>That the country was not at war with Japan certainly helped. But there is no doubt that the admission by several individuals, including one of the architects of the internment policy, Supreme Court Chief Justice <a href="http://www.vqronline.org/essay/unacknowledged-lesson-earl-warren-and-japanese-relocation-controversy">Earl Warren</a>, that the internment had been morally and constitutionally flawed was crucial in changing public sentiment. </p>
<p>By contrast, the U.S. is still actively engaged in the global “war on terror.” And, arguably, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arabs-Muslims-Media-Representation-Communication/dp/0814707327/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460737330&sr=1-1&keywords=Evelyn+Alsultany">media</a> coverage of terrorism and Muslims continues to be sensationalized. </p>
<p>At least two of the Guantánamo lawyers I interviewed explicitly attributed the public’s indifference or hostility to the detainees as a key reason for Congress’ unwillingness to close the prison facility at Guantánamo Bay. </p>
<p>In this political and social context, it requires commitment at the individual and governmental level to hold to constitutional and ethical ideals.</p>
<p>What would happen, for example, if leaders at the neighborhood, state and national levels initiated town hall conversations about the fears that keep us from empathizing with the dire predicament of Syrian refugees? </p>
<p>Would this affect our willingness to create spaces of refuge for them within our towns? </p>
<p>As a human rights scholar, I believe that people have a
responsibility to remind their leaders of what we value as a society. For their part, leaders have a responsibility to evoke in the public the best attributes of our collective humanity.</p>
<p>This is not an easy process. Nor is it quick. But we owe it to ourselves not to succumb to exaggerated fears that make enemies of those who, in reality, share our dreams and hopes. </p>
<p>Nobel laureate <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/books/nadine-gordimer-novelist-and-apartheid-foe-dies-at-90.html?_r=0">Nadine Gordimer</a>’s powerful short story <a href="http://www.napavalley.edu/people/LYanover/Documents/English%20123/Nadine_Gordimer_Once_Upon_a_Time.pdf">“Once Upon a Time”</a> is a cautionary tale about the siege mentality of white South Africans during the racist <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/apartheid">apartheid</a> era. </p>
<p>Focused on one family that surrounds itself with a foolproof security system against the threat of black South Africans, the story shows how the family is itself destroyed by the security apparatus. </p>
<p>We would do well to heed that warning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rajini Srikanth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many groups have been labeled ‘enemy’ in the American past. A literary scholar looks at the role literature and philosophy have played in dispelling fears and shifting public attitudes.Rajini Srikanth, Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts Dean, Honors College, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/430742015-06-11T05:14:02Z2015-06-11T05:14:02ZHow black slaves were routinely sold as ‘specimens’ to ambitious white doctors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84530/original/image-20150610-6814-cxat24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Used for whatever purpose.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-177970469/stock-photo-statue-of-a-child-slave-in-zanzibar.html?src=H4KyUz88CK6yJFqW4t_IOA-1-11">Slave by Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The history of human experimentation is as old as the practice of medicine and in the modern era has always targeted disadvantaged, marginalised, institutionalised, stigmatised and vulnerable populations: prisoners, the condemned, orphans, the mentally ill, students, the poor, women, the disabled, children, peoples of colour, indigenous peoples and the enslaved. </p>
<p>Human subject research is evident wherever physicians, technicians, pharmaceutical companies (and others) are trialling new practices and implementing the latest diagnostic and therapeutic agents and procedures. And the American South in the days of slavery was no different – and for those looking for easy targets, black slave bodies were easy to come by.</p>
<h2>Black bodies in the slave south</h2>
<p>There is a rich and rapidly expanding scholarly literature examining the history of human subject research, including studies of the burgeoning bio-medical economy in the US in the 20th century. The <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm">Tuskegee experiment</a> and other episodes of medical racism all feature prominently. </p>
<p>The history of the acquisition and exploitation of slave bodies for medical education and research in the US, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2207450">first explored in depth</a> by historians James Breeden and Todd Savitt, focused primarily on medical schools and the traffic in slave bodies in Virginia. Savitt’s work drew attention to professional medicine’s use of slaves in classroom and bedside demonstrations, in operating amphitheatres, and experimental facilities. </p>
<p>Savitt argued that African Americans were easy targets for ambitious and entrepreneurial white physicians in the slave south. Slaves, as human commodities, were readily transformed into a medical resource, easily accessible as empirical test subjects, “voiceless” and rendered “medically incompetent” through the combined power and authority of the enslaver and their employee, the white physician. <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_medicine_and_allied_sciences/summary/v058/58.4flannery.html">Savitt suggested</a> that “outright experimentation upon living humans may have occurred more openly and perhaps more often owing to the nature of slave society,” and also that “the situation may have been (and probably was) worse in the Deep South.”</p>
<h2>Power and opportunism</h2>
<p>When an elite white enslaver-physician, Charlestonian Elias S. Bennett, published notes recalling the case of a truly extraordinary tumour afflicting a young female slave on the family’s James Island plantation, his narrative revealed much about the opportunities for human subject research under American slavery. </p>
<p>Bennett recalled an unnamed female patient-subject who had developed “a small tumour the size of a ten cent piece” behind her right ear when she was just four weeks old. In 1817, when Bennett was training to become a doctor and “anxious to perform an operation”, he, together with a fellow physician-apprentice, made a disastrously crude surgical attempt to explore and remove this growth. </p>
<p>In an era prior to anaesthesia and asepsis, this type of surgical intervention was extremely dangerous – especially when undertaken by two unsupervised medical apprentices – who took liberty of an opportunity presented by an extremely vulnerable enslaved child. As Bennett remembered, the child suffered a great deal of “inflammation” as a result, and only “by very close attention” did she recover “in six to eight weeks” – the plantation/labour camp’s seclusion providing perfect cover for what would prove to be a major medical blunder. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84523/original/image-20150610-6804-1ufgbe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84523/original/image-20150610-6804-1ufgbe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84523/original/image-20150610-6804-1ufgbe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84523/original/image-20150610-6804-1ufgbe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84523/original/image-20150610-6804-1ufgbe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84523/original/image-20150610-6804-1ufgbe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84523/original/image-20150610-6804-1ufgbe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Unknown enslaved sufferer’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://bit.ly/1Hqp6z3">Waring Historical Library, Charleston</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bennett’s crude interference with the tumour, which may have been in a lymph node, was the cause of a severe inflammatory reaction and sudden excessive growth of the lesion. In 1821, when the child was six, Bennett described the tumour as being about the size of an ostrich egg, while in the years immediately prior to her death, his narrative reported that the tumour increased to an enormous, indeed “extraordinary” size. The case report concludes with an post-mortem analysis, or, as Bennett noted in a ghoulish tone, “an imperfect outline of the results furnished by the examination of the tumour, when I obtained the head, or at least so much of it as remained.” </p>
<p>The remains of the enslaved girl’s skull became a pathological specimen in the University of Maryland’s medical museum collection.</p>
<h2>Dark medicine: cash for ‘negros’</h2>
<p>All of the key training, networks and power bases of southern medicine —apprenticeships, private practice, colleges, hospitals, journals, and societies —<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_medicine_and_allied_sciences/v065/65.1.kenny.html">operated through</a> slavery’s ruthless traffic and exploitation of black bodies. White medical students, <a href="https://www.zotero.org/katie.holt/items/5BCTTNRD">as a matter of course</a>, expected education and training based on the observation, dissection and experimental treatment of black bodies. </p>
<p>White doctors, including those in remote rural locations, routinely sent reports of experiments on slave subjects to medical journals and trafficked black bodies to medical colleges. Medical museums openly solicited black body parts and medical societies relied on black bodies. Students too wrote graduating theses based on the medical manipulation of black “subjects” and “specimens”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84522/original/image-20150610-6790-w559jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lucinda.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Waring Historical Library, Charleston</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under slavery, there was also an extensive network of specialist “negro hospitals”. The grimmest of slavery’s institutions, these hospitals were often sites of risky medical research and were closely linked to “negro traders” anxious to patch up their “stock” for sale. Large numbers of individual doctors routinely advertised in southern newspapers that they would pay cash for black people suffering from chronic disease. The fate of these trafficked medical subjects, of course, assumed the very worst possibilities.</p>
<p>Slaves were generally unable to prevent treatments chosen by their owners and physicians could take enormous risks with the lives of these patients. Those risks were all the greater when doctors were also the owners of the enslaved patients. The opportunities presented by the system of chattel slavery meant that white doctors had at hand an easily accessible population upon which they could execute experimental research programs and develop new tools, techniques and medicines.</p>
<p>White racist attitudes, the enormous traffic in human chattel, and the slave regime rationalised and normalised the use and abuse of black bodies. Human subject research under American slavery was ultimately nothing unusual. In the context of a society defined by dehumanisation, impoverishment, violent punishment, incarceration, a vigorous trade in human property, racialisation and sexual interference, it should come as no surprise that human experimentation and the exploitation of enslaved bodies was a frequent, widespread and indeed commonplace feature of medical encounters between physicians and slaves. That was the culture of American slavery and every day slave patients faced appalling dangers. </p>
<p><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/on-human-experiments">Click here</a> to read more articles in The Conversation’s series <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/on-human-experiments">On Human Experiments</a>.</strong></p>
<p><em>An error was introduced into the article during the editorial process that confused the Guatemalan syphilis experiment, in which subjects were deliberately infected with syphilis, with the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which the natural progression of untreated syphilis was studied in a group in the US. This was corrected on the day of publication.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43074/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Kenny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The horrors of slavery also spread to research: black bodies provided easy targets for medical experiments.Stephen Kenny, Lecturer in 19th and 20th-century North American History, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/330042014-10-21T09:54:56Z2014-10-21T09:54:56ZSlavery in America: back in the headlines<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62297/original/nm3jfchy-1413841464.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Slave Trade painted by a French abolitionist artist. </span> </figcaption></figure><p><strong>This article was published in 2014. <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-slavery-separating-fact-from-myth-79620">An updated version was published in 2017</a></strong> </p>
<p><strong>Foundation essay</strong>: <em>This article was part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look at key issues affecting society.</em></p>
<p>People think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don’t. They think the majority of African slaves came to the American colonies, but they didn’t. They talk about 400 years of slavery, but it wasn’t. They claim all Southerners owned slaves, but they didn’t. Some argue it was a long time ago, but it wasn’t. </p>
<p>Slavery has been in the news a lot lately. Perhaps it’s because of <a href="http://www.polarisproject.org/hotline-statistics">the increase</a> in human trafficking on American soil or the headlines about income inequality, the mass incarceration of African Americans or discussions about reparations to the descendants of slaves. Several publications have fueled these conversations: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">The Case for Reparations</a> in The Atlantic Monthly, French economist <a href="http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/cv-en">Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century</a>, historian <a href="http://history.arts.cornell.edu/faculty-department-baptist.php">Edward Baptist</a>’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and The Making of American Capitalism, and law professor Bryan A. Stevenson’s <a href="http://www.eji.org/JustMercy">Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.</a></p>
<p>As a scholar of slavery at the University of Texas at Austin, I welcome the public debates and connections the American people are making with history. However, there are still many misconceptions about slavery. </p>
<p>I’ve spent my career dispelling myths about “the peculiar institution.” The goal in my courses is not to victimize one group and celebrate another. Instead, we trace the history of slavery in all its forms to make sense of the origins of wealth inequality and the roots of discrimination today. The history of slavery provides deep context to contemporary conversations and counters the distorted facts, internet hoaxes and poor scholarship I caution my students against. </p>
<h2>Four myths about slavery</h2>
<p><strong>Myth One:</strong> The majority of African captives came to what became the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Truth:</strong> Only 380,000 or 4-6% came to the United States. The majority of enslaved Africans went to Brazil, followed by the Caribbean. A significant number of enslaved Africans arrived in the American colonies by way of the Caribbean where they were “seasoned” and mentored into slave life. They spent months or years recovering from the harsh realities of the Middle Passage. Once they were forcibly accustomed to slave labor, many were then brought to plantations on American soil.</p>
<p><strong>Myth Two:</strong> Slavery lasted for 400 years.</p>
<p>Popular culture is rich with references to 400 years of oppression. There seems to be confusion between the <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces">Transatlantic Slave Trade</a> (1440-1888) and the institution of slavery, confusion only reinforced by the Bible, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2015:13">Genesis 15:13</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then the Lord said to him, ‘Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Listen to Lupe Fiasco - just one Hip Hop artist to refer to the 400 years - in his 2011 imagining of America without slavery, “All Black Everything”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Hook]
You would never know
If you could ever be
If you never try
You would never see
Stayed in Africa
We ain’t never leave
So there were no slaves in our history
Were no slave ships, were no misery, call me crazy, or isn’t he
See I fell asleep and I had a dream, it was all black everything</p>
<p>[Verse 1]
Uh, and we ain’t get exploited
White man ain’t feared so he did not destroy it
We ain’t work for free, see they had to employ it
Built it up together so we equally appointed
First 400 years, see we actually enjoyed it</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62516/original/jk8b3pbn-1413982535.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Auctioning slaves in South Carolina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Slave_Auction.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Truth</strong>: Slavery was not unique to the United States; it is a part of almost every nation’s history from Greek and Roman civilizations to contemporary forms of human trafficking. The American part of the story lasted fewer than 400 years.</p>
<p>How do we calculate it? Most historians use 1619 as a starting point: 20 Africans referred to as “servants” arrived in Jamestown, VA on a Dutch ship. It’s important to note, however, that they were not the first Africans on American soil. Africans first arrived in America in the late 16th century not as slaves but as explorers together with Spanish and Portuguese explorers. One of the best known of these African “conquistadors” was <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fes08">Estevancio</a> who traveled throughout the southeast from present day Florida to Texas. As far as the institution of chattel slavery - the treatment of slaves as property - in the United States, if we use 1619 as the beginning and the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment as its end then it lasted 246 years, not 400. </p>
<p><strong>Myth Three:</strong> All Southerners owned slaves.</p>
<p><strong>Truth</strong>: Roughly 25% of all southerners owned slaves. The fact that one quarter of the Southern population were slaveholders is still shocking to many. This truth brings historical insight to modern conversations about the Occupy Movement, its challenge to the inequality gap and its slogan “we are the 99%.” </p>
<p>Take the case of Texas. When it established statehood, the Lone Star State had a shorter period of Anglo-American chattel slavery than other Southern states – only 1845 to 1865 – because Spain and Mexico had occupied the region for almost one half of the 19th century with policies that either abolished or limited slavery. Still, the number of people impacted by wealth and income inequality is staggering. By 1860, the Texas enslaved population was 182,566, but slaveholders represented 27% of the population, controlled 68% of the government positions and 73% of the wealth. Shocking figures but <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/mitchell-schnurman/20140104-texas-is-a-leader-in-income-inequality-too.ece">today’s income gap </a>in Texas is arguably more stark with 10% of tax filers taking home 50% of the income. </p>
<p><strong>Myth Four:</strong> Slavery was a long time ago.</p>
<p><strong>Truth</strong>: African-Americans have been free in this country for less time than they were enslaved. Do the math: Blacks have been free for 149 years which means that most Americans are two to three generations removed from slavery. However, former slaveholding families have built their legacies on the institution and generated wealth that African-Americans have not been privy to because enslaved labor was forced; segregation maintained wealth disparities; and overt and covert discrimination limited African-American recovery efforts. </p>
<h2>The value of slaves</h2>
<p>Economists and historians have examined detailed aspects of the enslaved experience for as long as slavery existed. Recent publications related to slavery and capitalism explore economic aspects of cotton production and offer commentary on the amount of wealth generated from enslaved labor. </p>
<p>My own work enters this conversation looking at the value of individual slaves and the ways enslaved people responded to being treated as a commodity. They were bought and sold just like we sell cars and cattle today. They were gifted, deeded and mortgaged the same way we sell houses today. They were itemized and insured the same way we manage our assets and protect our valuables.</p>
<p>Enslaved people were valued at every stage of their lives, from before birth until after death. Slaveholders examined women for their fertility and projected the value of their “future increase.” As they grew up, enslavers assessed their value through a rating system that quantified their work. An “A1 Prime hand” represented one term used for a “first rate” slave who could do the most work in a given day. Their values decreased on a quarter scale from three-fourths hands to one-fourth hands, to a rate of zero, which was typically reserved for elderly or differently abled bondpeople (another term for slaves.) </p>
<p>Guy and Andrew, two prime males sold at the largest auction in US History in 1859, commanded different prices. Although similar in “all marketable points in size, age, and skill,” Guy commanded $1280 while Andrew sold for $1040 because “he had lost his right eye.” A reporter from the <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/whatbecameofslav00does/whatbecameofslav00does_djvu.txt">New York Tribune</a> noted “that the market value of the right eye in the Southern country is $240.” Enslaved bodies were reduced to monetary values assessed from year to year and sometimes from month to month for their entire lifespan and beyond. By today’s standards, Andrew and Guy would be worth about $33,000-$40,000.</p>
<p>Slavery was an extremely diverse economic institution; one that extrapolated unpaid labor out of people in a variety of settings from small single crop farms and plantations to urban universities. This diversity is also reflected in their prices. Enslaved people understood they were treated as commodities. </p>
<p>“I was sold away from mammy at three years old,” recalled Harriett Hill of Georgia. “I remembers it! It lack selling a calf from the cow,” she shared in a <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mesn&fileName=023/mesn023.db&recNum=258&itemLink=S?ammem/mesnbib:@field%28AUTHOR+@od1%28Hill,+Harriet%29%29">1930s interview</a> with the Works Progress Administration. “We are human beings” she told her interviewer. Those in bondage understood their status. Even though Harriet Hill “was too little to remember her price when she was three, she recalled being sold for $1400 at age 9 or 10, "I never could forget it.” </p>
<h2>Slavery in popular culture</h2>
<p>Slavery is part and parcel of American popular culture but for more than 30 years the television mini-series <a href="http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/shows/list/roots-slavery-in-america/">Roots</a> was the primary visual representation of the institution except for a handful of independent (and not widely known) films such as Haile Gerima’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108041/">Sankofa</a> or the Brazilian <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091816/">Quilombo</a>. Today Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is a box office <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=twelveyearsaslave.htm">success</a>, actress Azia Mira Dungey has a popular web series called <a href="http://www.askaslave.com/">Ask a Slave</a>, and in <a href="http://www.aampmuseum.org/exhibitions.html">Cash Crop</a> sculptor Stephen Hayes compares the slave ships of the 18th century with third world sweatshops. </p>
<p>From the serious - PBS’s award-winning <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/">Many Rivers to Cross</a> - and the interactive Slave Dwelling Project- whereby school aged children spend the night in slave cabins - to the comic at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHXwY1_n_cY">Saturday Night Live</a>, slavery is today front and center. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UvJufKoTrOk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Saturday Night Live’s African American History Week.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The elephant that sits at the center of our history is coming into focus. American slavery happened — we are still living with its consequences.</p>
<p><strong>This article was published in 2014. <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-slavery-separating-fact-from-myth-79620">An updated version was published in 2017</a></strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daina Ramey Berry receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a Public Voices Fellow with The Op-Ed Project.</span></em></p>This article was published in 2014. An updated version was published in 2017 Foundation essay: This article was part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays…Daina Ramey Berry, Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.