tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/slave-labor-30471/articlesSlave labor – The Conversation2023-08-17T12:36:01Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2108632023-08-17T12:36:01Z2023-08-17T12:36:01ZWhat Florida gets wrong about George Washington and the benefits he received from enslaving Black people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542470/original/file-20230813-44910-sqa38t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7311%2C5894&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this 1853 painting, George Washington stands among Black field workers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-standing-among-african-american-field-workers-news-photo/90000530?adppopup=true">Buyenlarge/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If there was anyone who knew the rewards of slavery, it was George Washington. </p>
<p>Over a period of about 50 years, <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/the-growth-of-mount-vernons-enslaved-community/">the nation’s first president</a> enslaved about 577 Black Americans, starting when he was 11 years old. </p>
<p>One of them was a Black man named Morris who was skilled in carpentry and became an overseer of other enslaved men and women working on a farm at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. Though Morris’ skills afforded him a few extra benefits, he was still unable to buy what he coveted most – freedom.</p>
<p>Despite the existence of <a href="https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/projects/catalog/george-washington">voluminous public records</a> that reveal <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/george-washington-and-slavery/">Washington’s treatment of Morris and other human property he owned</a>, Florida officials want public school educators to instead emphasize <a href="https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20653/urlt/6-4.pdf">Washington’s efforts to abolish slavery</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://newsroom.asu.edu/expert/calvin-schermerhorn">a scholar of slavery in the U.S.</a>, my research has shown that Washington’s efforts to free Black people pale in comparison to how he fought to keep Black people enslaved.</p>
<h2>Washington’s benefits from slavery</h2>
<p>After marrying <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/martha-washington/george-marthas-courtship/">the widow Martha Custis</a> in 1759, Washington had big plans for Mount Vernon. </p>
<p>Not content to grow only tobacco, he diversified, planting over 60 crop varieties and producing value-added products like flour, beer and whiskey.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A white man dressed in a military uniform poses for a painting while a Black boy holds a coat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542677/original/file-20230814-24132-5zqk0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542677/original/file-20230814-24132-5zqk0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542677/original/file-20230814-24132-5zqk0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542677/original/file-20230814-24132-5zqk0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542677/original/file-20230814-24132-5zqk0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542677/original/file-20230814-24132-5zqk0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542677/original/file-20230814-24132-5zqk0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of George Washington with an enslaved Black boy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-washington-1799-artist-valentine-green-news-photo/1320418182?adppopup=true">Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In addition to operating five separate farming units, Washington wanted to nearly triple the size of his Mount Vernon mansion from 3,500 square feet to 11,000. To accomplish that goal, Washington put skilled enslaved carpenters like Morris to work. </p>
<p>Washington hadn’t <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-06-02-0164-0005">paid anything</a> for Morris or his carpentry training. Morris <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.082919803&seq=93">was born enslaved</a> to Martha Custis’ first father-in-law, and when Custis and Washington got married, the fruits of Morris’ labor became Washington’s property. </p>
<p>By the time Washington brought him to Mount Vernon in Virginia’s Fairfax County, Morris was 30 years old and had already trained as a carpenter in nearby New Kent County. </p>
<p>In addition to using Black enslaved people, Washington hired white overseers to deploy their “utmost endeavours to hurry and drive” Black workers. </p>
<p>The work never ended for enslaved Black people. Because skilled carpenters were scarce in Fairfax County, Washington hired them out to neighbors to make money once their work was finished at Mount Vernon.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://sanford.duke.edu/profile/william-darity/">economist William A. “Sandy” Darity Jr.</a> and folklorist <a href="https://www.heydaybooks.com/authors/a-kirsten-mullen/">A. Kirsten Mullen</a>, the lost wages cost generations of African Americans the modern equivalent of $14 trillion in <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469671208/from-here-to-equality-second-edition/">stolen wealth</a>. </p>
<h2>Life as an enslaved overseer</h2>
<p>Washington had different plans for Morris. </p>
<p>Impressed by his carpentry skills, he decided to keep Morris at Mount Vernon and promote him to work as an overseer. </p>
<p>Morris may not have wanted to oversee a dozen other enslaved workers, but Washington held out a carrot. Morris’ wife, Hannah, an enslaved woman who worked on another farm, could live with him. Washington permitted only 1 in 3 married people to live together at Mount Vernon. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A row of beds lines a wall in a room that has a table covered with different shaped bowls." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542675/original/file-20230814-6823-7apt29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542675/original/file-20230814-6823-7apt29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542675/original/file-20230814-6823-7apt29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542675/original/file-20230814-6823-7apt29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542675/original/file-20230814-6823-7apt29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542675/original/file-20230814-6823-7apt29.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542675/original/file-20230814-6823-7apt29.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">George Washington’s slave quarters at Mount Vernon, Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/slave-quarters-at-mount-vernon-virginia-news-photo/143078403?adppopup=true">Independent Picture Service/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>At 37, Morris started his management career.</p>
<p>It was hard work. </p>
<p>Morris oversaw teams of farm workers, making sure other enslaved people kept shoulders to the plow. He sent progress reports up the management chain and was responsible for crops and livestock. </p>
<p>Morris accounted for tools, responded to emergencies and was accountable for thefts and runaways. When a killing frost struck in 1768, he had to control damage. He had all the headaches of a middle manager with a small fraction of the pay and no ability to move on.</p>
<p>After two seasons, <a href="http://financial.gwpapers.org/?q=content/ledger-1750-1772-pg262">Washington started paying</a> “my overseer Morris” <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-08-02-0114">about one-tenth</a> the salary of a free overseer. </p>
<p>That bought Morris and Hannah a few comforts but wasn’t enough to save any money. Unlike white overseers, who could parlay a few years’ wages into their own farms, Morris and Hannah built no wealth. </p>
<p>And a path to freedom was out of the question, even though his master <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0004-0023">called the farm</a> “Morris’.”</p>
<p>Based on Morris’ success, Washington promoted other <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Overseers-of-Early-American-Slavery-Supervisors-Enslaved-Labourers/Sandy/p/book/9781032237077">enslaved people into management</a>. </p>
<p>Davy Gray was about 16 years old when Washington brought him to Mount Vernon from his home in Hanover County, 80 miles away. By the time Gray turned 27, he had become overseer of Washington’s Mill Tract farm and went on to manage other farms for three decades. Whenever Mount Vernon had management troubles, Gray filled in. </p>
<p>But unlike the white overseers, Gray couldn’t quit and start his own farming business.</p>
<h2>Washington’s legacy on slavery</h2>
<p>After winning the American Revolution, Washington <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4413/">expressed hesitation</a> over slavery but said of <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-13-02-0150">the children he enslaved</a>, “I Expect to Reap the Benefit of their Labour Myself.”</p>
<p>Washington recognized Black talent, even if he didn’t reward it. </p>
<p>While president, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-14-02-0356-0001">he commended Gray</a> and wrote that he “carries on his business as well as the white Overseers, and with more quietness than any of them.” </p>
<p>That same year, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-12-02-0503">Gray begged his master</a> to no avail for adequate food, reporting that “what his people received was not sufficient, and that to his certain knowledge several of them would often be without a mouthful for a day.” </p>
<p>Despite opposition from abolitionists, as president, Washington signed the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h62.html#:%7E:text=On%20February%2012%2C%201793%2C%20the,to%20rule%20on%20the%20matter.">Fugitive Slave Act of 1793</a> that authorized federal police power to recapture runaway human property.</p>
<p>In one instance, Washington doggedly <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Never-Caught/Erica-Armstrong-Dunbar/9781501126413">pursued one of his wife’s enslaved maids</a> for nearly 50 years. <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/ona-judge/">Ona Judge</a> escaped and never returned to enslavement.</p>
<p>In his will, Washington set free 123 enslaved people, including <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/06-04-02-0405">a Black woman named Kate</a> who was “old” and presumably freed in 1799, the year Washington died. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A painting shows a white man walking with a young girl as Black men and women work in nearby fields." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542673/original/file-20230814-23-z88y99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542673/original/file-20230814-23-z88y99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542673/original/file-20230814-23-z88y99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542673/original/file-20230814-23-z88y99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542673/original/file-20230814-23-z88y99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542673/original/file-20230814-23-z88y99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542673/original/file-20230814-23-z88y99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 1800 painting, George Washington watches over a group of enslaved Black people working in a field at Mount Vernon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-president-george-washington-watches-over-a-group-news-photo/3438349?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Kate became a midwife at Mount Vernon and performed surgery on infants. She was married to another enslaved manager named Will. When she <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-16-02-0392">applied for the job of midwife</a>, or “Granny,” she argued that “she was full as well qualified for this purpose as those into whose hands it was entrusted.” </p>
<p>At the time, Washington was paying about what an entry level nurse earns today to Mount Vernon’s white midwife, who was married to a white overseer. Though <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/kate/#2">Kate got the job</a>, with all the responsibility of delivering babies, she received none of the pay.</p>
<p>She did receive her freedom, but her husband, Will, Davy Gray and Morris did not. </p>
<p>Morris died at age 66 on the farm he managed for 25 years.</p>
<p>Like Morris, Gray was property of the <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/first-family-cassandra-a-good?variant=40993035485218">heirs of Martha Washington</a> and likely ended his days enslaved by one of Martha’s grandchildren.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated to correct the spelling of Martha Custis.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210863/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Calvin Schermerhorn 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>Florida’s new standards for teaching social studies include throwbacks to an interpretation of slavery as benign or inconsequential.Calvin Schermerhorn, Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1741142022-02-02T13:08:37Z2022-02-02T13:08:37ZHow 18th-century Quakers led a boycott of sugar to protest against slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443056/original/file-20220127-7574-v5e3rd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C7%2C722%2C567&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">English Quakers on a Barbados plantation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/78bd1744-d78b-dd15-e040-e00a18064d92">Image courtesy of New York Public Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Buying items that are fair trade, organic, locally made or cruelty-free are some of the ways in which consumers today seek to align their economic habits with their spiritual and ethical views. For 18th-century Quakers, it led them to abstain from sugar and other goods produced by enslaved people.</p>
<p>Quaker Benjamin Lay, a former sailor who had settled in Philadelphia in 1731 after living in the British sugar colony of Barbados, is known to have <a href="https://www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/archive/winter-2018-issue-ii-volume-cxv/fearless-and-fiery.html">smashed his wife’s china</a> in 1742 during the annual gathering of Quakers in the city. Although Lay’s actions were described by one newspaper as a “publick Testimony against the Vanity of Tea-drinking,” Lay also protested the consumption of slave-grown sugar, which was produced under horrific conditions in sugar colonies like <a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Fearless-Benjamin-Lay-P1357.aspx">Barbados</a>.</p>
<p>In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, only a few <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300180770/peace-freedom">Quakers protested African slavery</a>. Indeed, individual Quakers who did protest, like Lay, were often disowned for their actions because their activism disrupted the unity of the Quaker community. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Quakers-and-Their-Allies-in-the-Abolitionist-Cause-1754-1808/Jackson-Kozel/p/book/9781138058651">Beginning in the 1750s</a>, Quakers’ support for slavery and the products of slave labor started to erode, as reformers like Quaker John Woolman urged their co-religionists in the North American Colonies and England to bring about change.</p>
<p>In the 1780s, British and American Quakers launched an extensive and unprecedented propaganda campaign against slavery and slave-labor products. Their goal of creating a broad nondenominational antislavery movement culminated in a boycott of slave-grown sugar in 1791 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2014.927988">supported by nearly a half-million Britons</a>. </p>
<p>How did the movement against slave-grown sugar go from the actions of a few to a protest of the masses? As a scholar of Quakers and the antislavery movement, I argue in my book “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">Moral Commerce: Quakers and the Transatlantic Boycott of the Slave Labor Economy</a>” that the boycott of slave-grown sugar originated in the actions of ordinary Quakers seeking to draw closer to God by aligning their Christian principles with their economic practices.</p>
<h2>The golden rule</h2>
<p>Quakerism <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-quakers-a-very-short-introduction-9780199206797?cc=us&lang=en&">originated in the political turmoil</a> of the English civil war and the disruption of monarchical rule in the mid-17th century. In the 1640s, George Fox, the son of a weaver, began an extended period of spiritual wandering, which led him to conclude the answers he sought came not from church teaching or the Scriptures but rather from his direct experience of God. </p>
<p>In his travels, Fox encountered others who also sought a more direct experience of God. With the support of Margaret Fell, the wife of a wealthy and prominent judge, Fox organized his followers into the Society of Friends in 1652. Quaker itinerant ministers embarked on an ambitious program of mission work traveling throughout England, the North American Colonies and the Caribbean.</p>
<p>The restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 and the passage of the Quaker Act in 1662 brought religious persecution, physical punishment and imprisonment but did not dampen the religious enthusiasm of Quakers like Fox and Fell.</p>
<p>Quakers believe <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p083471">that God speaks to individuals personally and directly</a> through the “inward light” – that the light of Christ exists within all individuals, even those who have not been exposed to Christianity. As Quaker historian and theologian <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/tr/dandelion-ben.aspx">Ben Pink Dandelion</a> <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-quakers-a-very-short-introduction-9780199206797?cc=us&lang=en&">notes</a>, “This intimacy with Christ, this relationship of direct revelation, is alone foundational and definitional of [Quakerism]. … Quakerism has had its identity constructed around this experience and insight.” </p>
<p>This experience of intimacy with Christ led Friends to develop distinct spiritual beliefs and practices, such as an emphasis on the golden rule – “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” – as a fundamental guiding principle. </p>
<p>Quakers were to avoid violence and war-making and to reject social customs that reinforced superficial distinctions of social class. Quakers were to adopt “plain dress, plain speech and plain living” and to tell the truth at all times. These beliefs and practices allow Quakers to emphasize the experience of God and to reject the temptations of worldly pleasures.</p>
<h2>Stolen goods</h2>
<p>In slave traders’ and slave holders’ minds, <a href="https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/ibram-x-kendi/stamped-from-the-beginning/9781568585987/">racial inferiority</a> justified the enslavement of Africans. By the 18th century, the slave trade and the use of slave labor were integral parts of the global economy. </p>
<p>Many Quakers owned slaves and participated in the slave trade. For them, the slave trade and slavery were simply standard business practice: “God-fearing men going about their godless business,” as historian <a href="https://doi.org/10.3828/quaker.12.2.189">James Walvin observed</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p083471">Still, Quakers were far from united in their views about slavery</a>. Beginning in the late 17th century, individual Quakers began to question the practice. Under slavery, Africans were captured, forced to work and subjected to violent punishment, even death, all contrary to Quakers’ belief in the golden rule and nonviolence. </p>
<p>Individual Quakers began to speak out, often linking the enslavement of Africans to the consumption of consumer goods. </p>
<p>John Hepburn, a Quaker from Middletown, New Jersey, was one of the first Quakers to protest against slavery. In 1714, he published “The American Defence of the Christian Golden Rule,” <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">which cataloged</a>, as no other Quaker had done, the evils of slavery. </p>
<p>Although the publication of Hepburn’s book coincided with statements issued by the London Yearly Meeting, the primary Quaker body in this period, warning of the effects of luxury goods on Quakers’ relationship with God, “The American Defence” did not result in any significant outcry among Quakers against slavery. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of man with a white beard, wearing a hat and a long coat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443195/original/file-20220128-15-1iby0jy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Portrait of Benjamin Lay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.79.171">National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; this acquisition was made possible by a generous contribution from the James Smithson Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quaker Benjamin Lay also <a href="http://www.beacon.org/The-Fearless-Benjamin-Lay-P1357.aspx">published his thoughts about slavery</a>. He also refused to dine with slaveholders, to be served by slaves or to eat sugar. Lay also dressed in coarse clothes. When smashing his wife’s dishware, he claimed that fine clothes and china were luxury goods that separated Quakers from God. Lay’s actions proved too much for Philadelphia Quakers, who disowned him in the late 1730s.</p>
<h2>Quaker antislavery and sugar</h2>
<p>Like Lay, Woolman too <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14993.html">was shocked when he saw the conditions</a> of enslaved people. For Woolman, the slave trade, the enslavement of Africans and the use of the products of their labor, such as sugar, were the most visible signs of the growth of an oppressive, global economy driven by greed, an evil that threatened the spiritual welfare of all. Consumed most often in tea, sugar symbolized for Woolman the corrupting influence of consumer goods. Soon after his travels through the South, Woolman, who was a merchant, stopped selling and consuming sugar and sugar products such as rum and molasses.</p>
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<p>The sweetness of sugar <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">hid the violence of its production</a>. Caribbean sugar plantations were infamous for their high rate of mortality and deficiencies in diet, shelter and clothing. The working conditions were brutal, and tropical disease contributed to a death toll that was 50% higher on sugar plantations than on coffee plantations. </p>
<p>Until his death in 1772, Woolman worked within the structure of the Society of Friends, urging Quakers to abstain from slave-grown sugar and other slave-labor products. In his writings, Woolman envisioned a just and simple economy that benefited everyone, freeing men and women to “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748493/moral-commerce/">walk in that pure light in which all their works are wrought in God</a>.” If Quakers allowed their spiritual beliefs to guide their economic habits, Woolman believed, the “true harmony of life” could be restored to all.</p>
<p>Eighteenth-century Quakers’ attempts to align religious beliefs and economic habits continued into the 19th century. Woolman, in particular, influenced many who believed it possible to create a moral economy. His <a href="https://quakerbooks.org/products/the-journal-and-major-essays-of-john-woolman-3533">journal</a>, published in 1774, is an important text about religiously informed consumer habits. </p>
<p>In the 1790s and again in the 1820s, British consumers, Quaker and non-Quaker alike, organized popular boycotts of slave-grown sugar. Although the boycott of sugar and other products of slave labor did not bring about the abolition of slavery on its own, the boycott did raise awareness of the connections between an individual’s relationship with God and the choices they made in the marketplace.</p>
<p></p><hr> <p></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?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">
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<p><em>This article is part of a series examining sugar’s effects on human health and culture. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/sugar-2022-114641">Click here to read the articles on TheConversation.com.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie L. Holcomb 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>Eighteenth-century Quakers attempted to align their religious beliefs with what they purchased. These Quakers led some of the early campaigns against sugar being produced by enslaved people.Julie L. Holcomb, Associate Professor of Museum Studies, Baylor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1738312022-01-13T13:01:50Z2022-01-13T13:01:50ZMaking sugar, making ‘coolies’: Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439550/original/file-20220105-25-x462d2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C93%2C3128%2C2062&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harvesting on a Louisiana sugar plantation, 1875.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/93505862/">Alfred R. Waud/Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: This article quotes historical sources using terms now considered racist to describe Black and Asian workers.</em> </p>
<p>The recent surge in anti-Asian violence in the U.S. has put a spotlight on Asian American history, at least for a moment. “Racism is real in America, and it always has been,” <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/03/19/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-at-emory-university/">Vice President Kamala Harris said on March 19, 2021</a>. “In the 1860s, as Chinese workers built the transcontinental railroad, there were laws on the books, in America, forbidding them from owning property.”</p>
<p>In fact, far more Asian workers moved to the Americas in the 19th century to make sugar than to build the transcontinental railroad. It is a history that can force Americans to contend with colonial violence in the making of the modern world, dating back centuries to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/sugar-masters-in-a-new-world-5212993/">Christopher Columbus and his search for trade routes and quick wealth</a>.</p>
<p>As I explore in my book “<a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/coolies-and-cane">Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation</a>,” thousands of Chinese migrants were recruited to work side by side with African Americans on Louisiana’s sugar plantations after the Civil War. Though now a largely forgotten episode in history, their migration played a key role in renewing and reinforcing the racist foundation of American citizenship. Recruited and reviled as “coolies,” their presence in sugar production helped justify racial exclusion after the abolition of slavery.</p>
<h2>Empire, sugar and slavery</h2>
<p>In places where sugar cane is grown, such as Mauritius, Fiji, Hawaii, Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname, there is usually a sizable population of Asians who can trace their ancestry to India, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere. They are descendants of sugar plantation workers, whose migration and labor embodied the limitations and contradictions of chattel slavery’s slow death in the 19th century. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BLzgD11RwEc?wmode=transparent&start=45" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sugar was a rare and expensive status symbol until colonial powers created an industry based on enslaved labor.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beginning in the 17th century, the global sugar industry and slavery grew hand in hand to shape the course of capitalist development. Mass consumption of sugar in industrializing Europe and North America rested on mass production of sugar by enslaved Africans in the colonies. The whip, the market, and the law institutionalized slavery across the Americas, including in the U.S.</p>
<p>When the Haitian Revolution erupted in 1791 and Napoleon Bonaparte’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/opinion/france-year-of-napoleon.html">mission to reclaim Saint-Domingue</a>, France’s most prized colony, failed, slaveholding regimes around the world grew alarmed. In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/29/slavery-abolition-compensation-when-will-britain-face-up-to-its-crimes-against-humanity">British emancipation</a> included a payment of £20 million to slave owners, an immense sum of money that British taxpayers made loan payments on until 2015.</p>
<p>Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system. In 1838 John Gladstone, father of future prime minister William E. Gladstone, arranged for the shipment of 396 South Asian workers, bound to five years of indentured labor, to his sugar estates in British Guiana. The experiment with “Gladstone coolies,” as those workers came to be known, inaugurated what historian Hugh Tinker called “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/A_New_System_of_Slavery.html?id=q1_tAAAAMAAJ">a new system of slavery</a>,” which would endure for nearly a century.</p>
<h2>Louisiana’s sugar bowl</h2>
<p>Louisiana is firmly enmeshed in the global history of empire, sugar and slavery. When Bonaparte’s dream to make France great again collapsed in Haiti, he agreed to sell France’s claims in North America to the U.S. empire in 1803, in what has come to be known as the Louisiana Purchase. Plantation owners who escaped Saint-Domingue with their enslaved workers helped <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/the-most-successful-slave-rebellion-in-history-created-an-independent-haiti-and-secured-the-louisiana-purchase-and-the-expansion-of-north-american-slavery.html">establish a booming sugar industry in southern Louisiana</a>.</p>
<p>On huge plantations surrounding New Orleans, home of the largest slave market in the antebellum South, sugar production took off in the first half of the 19th century. By 1853, Louisiana was producing <a href="http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/83038/5/04%20Estados%20Unidos%20(Richard%20Follet).pdf">nearly 25% of all exportable sugar in the world</a>. </p>
<p>Enslaved Black workers made that phenomenal growth possible. On the eve of the Civil War, Louisiana’s sugar industry was valued at US$200 million. More than half of that figure represented the valuation of the ownership of human beings – Black people who did the backbreaking labor of making sugar on a grand scale.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Vintage print depicting Native Americans and sugar cane workers in Louisiana." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439560/original/file-20220105-15-15ikwte.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1855 print shows workers on a Louisiana plantation harvesting sugar cane at right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015650277/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>During the Civil War, Black workers rebelled and joined <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/12/reading-w-e-b-dubois-black-reconstruction-chapters-4-and-5.html">what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “General Strike</a>,” abandoning sugar production as quickly as they could. On plantation after plantation, Black workers ran away. By the war’s end, approximately $193 million of the sugar industry’s prewar value had vanished. </p>
<h2>Disappearing acts</h2>
<p>Desperate to regain power and authority after the war, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts. They, too, looked to Asian workers for their salvation, fantasizing that so-called “coolies” would be cheap, industrious and submissive – a “<a href="https://densho.org/catalyst/inventing-the-model-minority-a-critical-timeline-and-reading-list">model minority</a>” of sorts.</p>
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<p>Thousands of Chinese workers landed in Louisiana between 1866 and 1870, recruited from the Caribbean, China and California. Bound to multiyear contracts, they symbolized Louisiana planters’ racial hope for a new system of slavery. “We can drive the niggers out and import coolies that will work better, at less expense,” journalist Whitelaw Reid <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/coolies-and-cane">reported hearing all across the South in 1866</a>, “and relieve us from this cursed nigger impudence.” </p>
<p>To great fanfare, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters spent thousands of dollars to recruit gangs of Chinese workers. When 140 Chinese laborers arrived on Millaudon plantation near New Orleans on July 4, 1870, at a cost of about $10,000 in recruitment fees, the New Orleans Times reported that they were “young, athletic, intelligent, sober and cleanly” and superior to “the vast majority of our African population.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Engraving of men in conical hats working in cane fields." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439559/original/file-20220105-17-idovqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1871 engraving titled ‘Chinese cheap labor in Louisiana - Chinamen at work on the Milloudon Sugar Plantation.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002716000/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mostly segregated in specifically designated buildings in former slave quarters, Chinese workers generally contracted to work for wage rates far below the prevailing rate in the sugar region: around $14 per month, compared with about $20 per month that local Black men received. But the competition between Black and Chinese laborers that planters predicted did not materialize. </p>
<p>On the ground, Chinese workers behaved no differently from Black workers. When they heard that other workers earned more, they demanded the same. When planters refused, they ran away. The Chinese recruits, the Planters’ Banner observed in 1871, were “fond of changing about, run away worse than negroes, and … leave as soon as anybody offers them higher wages.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Faded letters on a building spell 'On Leong Chinese Merchants Association'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439561/original/file-20220105-17-lkjeqw.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">The former headquarters of the Chinese Merchants Association at 530 Bourbon St. in New Orleans, part of a Chinatown neighborhood that formed in the 1940s after a larger one was destroyed by fire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_New_Orleans#/media/File:530_Bourbon_Street.jpg">Winstonho0805/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adapting to the rhythms of sugar production, where workers were in high demand during the harvest season at the end of the year, Chinese workers transformed themselves from long-term contract laborers to short-term seasonal laborers. Many moved around Louisiana throughout the 1870s, stopping over in New Orleans and other towns between stints on sugar plantations. Many others left sugar production altogether. In their search for something better, Chinese workers blended into the landscape so well that they disappeared. </p>
<p>But the racial image of Asian workers as industrious and submissive “coolies” making sugar on plantations stuck. When Congress debated excluding the Chinese from the United States in 1882, Rep. Horace F. Page of California argued that the United States could not allow the entry of “millions of cooly slaves and serfs.” That racial reasoning would justify a long series of anti-Asian laws and policies on immigration and naturalization for <a href="https://aatimeline.com">nearly a century</a>.</p>
<p></p><hr> <p></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439239/original/file-20220103-48418-1p7tcpi.png?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">
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<p><em>This article is part of a series examining sugar’s effects on human health and culture. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/sugar-2022-114641">Click here to read the articles on theconversation.com.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Moon-Ho Jung 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>Sugar has deep links with slavery in the US, but Black workers weren’t the only ones affected. In post-Civil War Louisiana, Chinese workers also toiled cutting and processing cane.Moon-Ho Jung, Professor of History, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1263152019-11-15T13:28:36Z2019-11-15T13:28:36ZHaiti protests summon spirit of the Haitian Revolution to condemn a president tainted by scandal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301791/original/file-20191114-26202-1yymhsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C13%2C4510%2C2984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jean Marcellis Destine, dressed as Haitian independence hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines, heads to a protest against President Jovenel Moïse in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Oct. 4, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Haiti-Protests/11d660c323c64a7fa26d140e9d3d9acb/4/0">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A radical, unlikely figure has emerged as the icon of Haiti’s months-long protests against President Jovenel Moïse, who stands <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article231122978.html">accused of embezzling millions in public funds</a>.</p>
<p>That figure is <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-haitis-founding-father-whose-black-revolution-was-too-radical-for-thomas-jefferson-101963">Jean-Jacques Dessalines</a>, the black Haitian revolutionary who defeated the French to free Haiti from colonial rule in 1804. By summoning Dessalines, Haitian protesters implicitly contrast the achievements of that revolution – <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-haitis-founding-father-whose-black-revolution-was-too-radical-for-thomas-jefferson-101963">freedom, universal citizenship and racial equality</a> – with the disappointments of the Moïse government.</p>
<p>Dessalines wrote a radical <a href="https://haitidoi.com/constitutions/1805-2/">constitution</a> that eliminated racial hierarchy, established equality before the law and instituted freedom of religion in Haiti.</p>
<p>One of Haiti’s opposition political parties is called “<a href="https://ageofrevolutions.com/2016/02/15/the-2015-16-haitian-elections-politicizing-dessalines-and-the-memory-of-the-haitian-revolution/">Pitit Dessalines</a>” – Children of Dessalines. </p>
<p>When demonstrations began last year, simple stenciled images of Dessalines wearing a military hat and holding a protest sign appeared on walls across the capital. This year, at several marches, men in revolutionary-era garb have ridden the streets of Port-au-Prince on horseback. They were waving Dessalines’ red-and-black version of the Haitian flag inscribed with the words “Viv Lib ou Mouri” – “Live Free or Die.”</p>
<h2>A commitment to equality</h2>
<p>I am writing a biography of Dessalines, who has long been overshadowed outside of Haiti by the formerly enslaved revolutionary leader <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/loverture-toussaint-1743-1803/">Toussaint Louverture</a>, who is often heralded as Haiti’s founding father despite dying before independence.</p>
<p>My research on the <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469625621/haitian-connections-in-the-atlantic-world/">diplomacy and state-building practices</a> of Dessalines, conducted using archives from the Caribbean, North America and Europe, shows the Americas’ first black head of state to be a <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-haitis-founding-father-whose-black-revolution-was-too-radical-for-thomas-jefferson-101963">groundbreaking enlightenment thinker and revolutionary leader</a>.</p>
<p>At the time of his birth, around 1758, Haiti – then a French Caribbean slavery-based colony called <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018266&content=reviews">Saint-Domingue</a> – was the most lucrative colony in the world. By the time of Dessalines’ 1806 assassination, it was the Americas’ first sovereign abolitionist state. </p>
<p>Though European and American powers refused to recognize the young nation, Dessalines steadfastly rebuffed any concession to world powers that might undermine Haiti’s hard-won independence. </p>
<p>In early 1804, Dessalines even <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.69.3.0583?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">declined</a> to sign a treaty with the British governor of Jamaica that would have given Haiti diplomatic recognition. The reason: It would have limited Haitian sea travel and allowed the British to occupy a strategic fort. </p>
<p>A few months before, when Dessalines discovered that white Frenchmen were plotting to overthrow his government, he <a href="http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805-const.htm">ordered the execution</a> of all remaining French people in Haiti. Some women and children were targeted in these public executions. </p>
<p>White world leaders took note of Dessalines’ gruesome retaliation against the French, which may have contributed to Haiti’s <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469625621/haitian-connections-in-the-atlantic-world/">diplomatic isolation</a> in the early 19th century. Haiti’s independence would go unrecognized until 1825, when France <a href="http://islandluminous.fiu.edu/part04-slide06.html">finally conceded</a> that it had lost the war. </p>
<p>To maintain Haitian autonomy, Dessalines’ constitution also declared that only <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4876">Haitian citizens</a> and the Haitian government could own land and property in Haiti. </p>
<p>But he also <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469625621/haitian-connections-in-the-atlantic-world/">established a policy of offering refuge</a> in Haiti for the downtrodden and oppressed of the Americas. In the decades to come, Haiti would welcome <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-doesnt-understand-haiti-immigration-or-american-history-87982">13,000 African Americans who fled racial discrimination in the southern U.S.</a> and many <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/117/1/40/46487">others fleeing slavery in the Caribbean islands</a>.</p>
<p>Dessalines is the only Haitian revolutionary to have been incorporated into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-haitian-voodoo-119621">Haitian religion</a> as a spirit, named <a href="https://romantic-circles.org/praxis/circulations/HTML/praxis.2011.twa.html">Ogou Desalin</a>. Among Haitian spirits, the Ogou are known as warriors. Ogou Desalin is the warrior who defends liberty.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301794/original/file-20191114-26243-1anftgg.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An anti-government protest called by the artist community in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Oct. 20, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Haiti-Political-Crisis/56d84ed9c34042f49656e83fb2f9e14b/64/0">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Wanted: government accountability</h2>
<p>This legacy underpins Haitians’ desire for a new kind of independence – an existence free of predatory leaders and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/11/haiti-and-the-failed-promise-of-us-aid">reliance</a> on <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-haiti-climate-aid-comes-with-strings-attached-108652">international aid that comes with strings attached</a>. </p>
<p>After the 2010 earthquake, many Haitians hoped that the devastation would <a href="https://lenouvelliste.com/article/78780/agriculture-energie-sante-priorites-des-usa-pour-reconstruire-haiti">inspire positive change</a>. Instead, the influx of foreign aid and global investment in Haiti opened the door for the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/can-haitis-corrupt-president-hold-on-to-power/">corruption</a> that has tainted Haiti’s last two leaders.</p>
<p>Moïse’s predecessor, Michel Martelly, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/world/americas/michel-martelly-haitis-president-departs-without-a-successor.html">departed office amid scandal</a> in February 2016 without a successor in place, leaving the country with a provisional government. Moïse, a businessman who was Martelly’s chosen successor, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38140316">became president in February 2017</a> with 56% of the vote. </p>
<p>To deter the fraud that had marred recent presidential elections in Haiti, <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article93333377.html">monitors from the Organization of American States</a> supervised the vote. But many Haitians still doubted that Moise’s victory was <a href="https://www.caribbeanlifenews.com/stories/2016/12/2016-12-30-nk-haiti-electoral-process-cl.html">legitimate</a>. </p>
<p>By late 2017, Haitians had learned that <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article231122978.html">Moïse was implicated</a> in an embezzlement scheme involving <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article184740783.html">US$2 billion</a> meant to finance infrastructure development in the country. The pillaged funds came from an international organization called <a href="https://caricom.org/projects/detail/petrocaribe">PetroCaribe</a>, which sells Venezuelan gas and oil to Caribbean countries at reduced cost to free up money for development. Under Martelly and Moïse, Haiti’s extra money seems to have disappeared.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, <a href="https://theconversation.com/latin-america-shuts-out-desperate-venezuelans-but-colombias-border-remains-open-for-now-123307">Venezuela’s own political and economic crisis</a> has rendered the PetroCaribe program unable to meet Haiti’s oil and gas needs, creating an acute gas shortage. In mid-2018, Haiti’s government <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article214722915.html">raised the cost of gas</a> by 38%.</p>
<p>Saying they are suffering the direct consequences of government corruption, angry Haitians <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/06/11/731640235/protesters-demand-resignation-of-haitian-president-over-corruption-allegations">have demanded Moïse’s resignation</a>. The president, who has largely retreated from the public eye, <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article235443547.html">refuses</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C39%2C2044%2C1168&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C39%2C2044%2C1168&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299916/original/file-20191101-88428-dwxy91.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">Graffiti in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, shows the revolutionary hero Jean-Jaques Dessalines holding a sign reading, ‘Where is the PetroCaribe Money?’ November 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nathan Dize</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legacies of imperialism</h2>
<p>Dessalines’ track record as a leader <a href="https://ageofrevolutions.com/2016/02/15/the-2015-16-haitian-elections-politicizing-dessalines-and-the-memory-of-the-haitian-revolution/">was not perfect</a>, either. </p>
<p>Shortly after he overthrew French rule, Dessalines declared himself emperor of Haiti and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03585522.1984.10408024">revived the plantation system</a> that revolutionaries had just burned to the ground. Field workers were called “cultivateurs,” and they received some pay or a share of their crop. However, they were bound to a specific plantation. </p>
<p>This form of coerced labor resembled the U.S. sharecropping system and others <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/problem-freedom">that arose across the Americas</a> after slavery ended. </p>
<p>Two centuries after his assassination in 1806, some still consider Dessalines a barbarous <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo16724367.html">despot</a>. To others, he is an uncompromising <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/fondateur-devant-lhistoire/oclc/1892049">freedom fighter</a>. </p>
<p>Both of these conflicting portrayals reduce Dessalines to a one-dimensional character. The protesters inspired by his legacy aren’t necessarily ignoring Dessalines’ shortcomings. Instead, they are championing his unwavering determination to rid the country of foreign rule so that Haitians could live “<a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C12756259">by ourselves and for ourselves</a>.”</p>
<p>[ <em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Gaffield has received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies. </span></em></p>Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who freed Haiti from French colonial rule in 1804, is revered as a spirit in the Haitian religion. Now he’s become an icon of the uprising against President Jovanel Moïse.Julia Gaffield, Associate Professor of History, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1195052019-07-31T15:29:05Z2019-07-31T15:29:05ZIf Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286479/original/file-20190731-186809-75qwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Slavery is not so far removed. Anderson and Minerva Edwards met in the 1860s as enslaved laborers in Texas, had 16 children and lived into their 90s in a cabin a few miles from the plantations they once worked. They are photographed here in 1937.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsc.01097/">U.S. Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of paying reparations for slavery is gaining momentum in the United States, despite being long derided as an unrealistic plan, to compensate for state violence <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/09/politics/mitch-mcconnell-obama-reparations/index.html">committed by and against people long dead</a>.</p>
<p>The topic saw substantive debate in the July 30 Democratic primary debate, with candidate Marianne Williamson calling slavery “<a href="https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/marianne-williamson-democratic-debate-reparations.html">a debt that is owed</a>.” Some Democratic congressional representatives are also <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6892403/Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez-calls-agenda-reparations.html">pushing for financial recompense for the descendants of enslaved people</a>. </p>
<p>Calls for reparations in the U.S. are generally met with <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/07/09/mcconnells-opposition-to-reparations-under-new-scrutiny-after-report-reveals-ancestors-owned-slaves/">skepticism</a>: What would reparations achieve? Who should receive them, and under what conditions?</p>
<p>Other countries have tackled these questions. In 1995, South Africa established its <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/1995/12/truth-commission-south-africa">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> and paid reparations to the victims of apartheid. Eight years before, the United States apologized to 82,000 Japanese Americans unduly imprisoned during World War II and <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-102/pdf/STATUTE-102-Pg903.pdf">paid them US$20,000 each</a> to compensate for their suffering. </p>
<p>Even Germany, birthplace of the worst racism ever institutionalized and elevated to official policy, has some lessons for the United States as it considers reparations.</p>
<h2>Compensating victims of Nazi enslavement</h2>
<p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pGUCXiUAAAAJ&hl=en">professor of political science</a> who studies the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Reiter;%20https://berndreiter.academia.edu">relationship between democracy, citizenship and justice</a>. My recent work on Germany examines how the country dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Nazi Germany not only killed millions of Jews between 1933 and 1945. It also forced over 20 million people into slave labor, working them to their death in German industries. By 1944, <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PlatoHitler">a quarter of the German workforce was enslaved laborers</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284376/original/file-20190716-173338-y9ymb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish slave laborers at an ammunition factory at Germany’s Dachau concentration camp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/GERMANY-NAZI-LABOR/17b24ae990ab4ab09735cc417999c1a4/87/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Hitler’s defeat in World War II, the newly democratic government of West Germany knew it had to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/what-did-germans-know-secret-anti-nazi-diary-gives-voice-to-man-in-the-street/">face the evils</a> of the past. </p>
<p>Nazi industries that used slave labor, such as the steel and artillery producer Krupp, were dismantled. High-ranking Krupp CEOs were judged war criminals at the <a href="https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781616080211/the-nuremberg-trial/">Nuremberg Trials</a> and imprisoned. </p>
<p>Pressured by Israeli leaders David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer agreed to pay <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Germany-and-Israel-Moral-Debt-and-National-Interest-1st-Edition/Lavy/p/book/9781315036335">3 billion German marks in reparations</a> to Israel between 1953 and 1967. Germany also paid <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805066609">450 million German marks to the World Jewish Congress</a>, an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations.</p>
<p>Assuming the midcentury rate of 4 German marks to $1, that’s the equivalent today of $7 billion for Israel and $1 billion for the Jewish Congress. </p>
<p>Some Germans protested against Adenauer’s support for Israel. Their country was just beginning its economic recovery after the war – a process aided, incidentally, by the U.S.-funded <a href="https://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2014/05/Marshall_Plan_1947-1997_A_German_View.pdf">Marshall Plan</a> – and many Germans insisted they had <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623521003633461?journalCode=cjgr20">nothing to do with the persecution of the Jews</a>.</p>
<p>In negotiating the <a href="https://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/personalsites/Israel-Germany/Division-of-Germany/Pages/Reparations-Agreement.aspx">German reparations agreement of 1952</a>, Ben-Gurion invoked the biblical question, from Kings 21:29, “Have you murdered and also inherited?” </p>
<p>Germany’s post-war Chancellor Adenauer knew that, for the German people, the answer was yes.</p>
<p>“In the name of the German people, unspeakable crimes were committed which create a duty of moral and material restitution,” he <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23739770.2010.11446619">said</a>.</p>
<p>By 1956, the German state was supplying <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805066609">87.5%</a> of Israel’s state revenue. The young new country <a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/west-german-reparations-to-israel/9780813590912">used the money</a> to buy equipment and raw materials to build up its industry, railways and electrical grid. Mining equipment, irrigation and fuel were also high on the list of Israel’s reparations-fueled development priorities.</p>
<h2>Atonement is a process</h2>
<p>Germany’s efforts to atone for the Holocaust were not limited to money. </p>
<p>To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/German_Federal_Republic_2012.pdf">1949 German Constitution</a> – as well as the penal and criminal codes of the country – outlaw the use of symbols that incite hatred against any segment of its population. The Constitution also guarantees asylum to political refugees and all people fleeing war.</p>
<p>In 1952 Germany officially apologized for the Nazis’ crimes, at Israel’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23739770.2010.11446619">demand</a>.</p>
<p>“The responsibility rests on the German nation as a whole,” <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137343727_6">replied Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett</a> of making amends for the Holocaust. </p>
<p>Reparations went to individuals, too. In 2000, the German government, together with partner organizations from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, the Czech Republic and the not-for-profit <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/">Jewish Claims Conference</a>, created the <a href="https://www.stiftung-evz.de/eng/the-foundation.html">Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation</a>. </p>
<p>By 2007, the organization had paid a total of <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PlatoHitler">$4.9 billion to 1.66 million people worldwide</a> who’d been forced into labor and servitude by the Nazis, or to their living descendants – their share of the wealth slavery produced for Germany.</p>
<p>Most recently, the German government in 2013 agreed with the Jewish Claims Conference to pay <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-to-pay-772-million-euros-in-reparations-to-holocaust-survivors-a-902528.html">about $1 billion</a> for the home care of all elderly Holocaust survivors.</p>
<p>As a result of the reparations paid, Germany’s open admission of guilt and the policies it put in place to prevent another Holocaust from occurring, German-Jewish relations have largely normalized since World War II. </p>
<p>Germany’s Jewish population has even begun to recover from genocide. With <a href="https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/de">150,000 Jewish residents</a> in 2018, Germany is home to Europe’s fourth-largest Jewish community.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284378/original/file-20190716-173370-1b5tn9l.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marly Shamir, 98, a Holocaust survivor from Berlin, photographed in 2017. The German government now pays for the care of elderly Holocaust survivors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Israel-Holocaust-Remembrance-Day/11e52b971efe445e803efefcbfa5508e/19/0">AP Photo/Oded Balilty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lessons for the United States</h2>
<p>Instead of seeking to wipe the Holocaust from its history, the German government has worked hard to ensure remembrance, penance, recompense and justice. </p>
<p>The United States, in contrast, has no official policy of atoning for slavery. </p>
<p>While the <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93059465">House of Representatives</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105850676">Senate</a> made separate apologies for slavery in 2008 and 2009, these apologies were never reconciled or signed by President Barack Obama, due to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/opinion/an-apology-for-slavery.html">lack of political support</a>.</p>
<p>Racist symbols are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-videos/?utm_term=.aed0c467d932">openly displayed</a> in the United States, protected by the First Amendment. </p>
<p>Nor has there been any financial compensation for the descendants of formerly enslaved Americans, despite President Abraham Lincoln’s famous <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-40-acres-and-a-mule-to-lbj-to-the-2020-election-a-brief-history-of-slavery-reparation-promises-114547">promise of “40 acres and a mule” for all freed black men</a>. </p>
<p>The German experience with reparations is, of course, not directly comparable to that of the United States. </p>
<p>Germany had to lose a devastating war before it compensated the Jewish people. And, as in the case of the Japanese American prisoners of war who received reparations, the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime and their descendants were relatively easy to identify.</p>
<p>The U.S. government paying reparations today for state terror that ended 150 years ago poses numerous practical challenges. They include identifying the rightful recipients and sourcing the money appropriately – whether state-based or federal. </p>
<p>Those who say <a href="https://reason.com/2019/04/05/reparations-likely-to-divide-not-heal/">they did not benefit from slavery</a> must be persuaded that reparations are required to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">right a moral wrong</a>. Polling shows a majority of Americans <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/261722/redress-slavery-americans-oppose-cash-reparations.aspx">oppose cash payments</a> as a redress for slavery.</p>
<p>But old injustices don’t simply disappear with time. Left unaddressed, they fuel the kind of division, shame and resentment that, as America knows well, can divide a nation.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated to correct a figure on the number of people who have received compensation from the Jewish Claims Conference.</em></p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernd Reiter 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>Old injustices don’t simply disappear with time – they tear a nation apart.Bernd Reiter, Professor of Political Science, University of South FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1146552019-05-23T13:35:11Z2019-05-23T13:35:11ZRecent attempts at reparations show that World War II is not over<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275725/original/file-20190521-23848-16qgujk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chen Yabian, 74, of Hainan Province, southern China, testifies during the International Symposium on Chinese 'Comfort Women' in 2000 in Shanghai that she was 14 when Japanese Imperial Army soldiers forced her to work as a sex slave during the war. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-China-CHINA-COMFORT-WOMEN/410224f891e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/44/0">AP/Eugene Hoshiko</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>World War II ended in 1945. </p>
<p>But the world has never stopped debating its legacy and how to make restitution for the damage done to the war’s victims. Consider some recent events.</p>
<p>In February, the <a href="https://franceintheus.org/spip.php?article6343">Holocaust Deportation Claims Program</a>, which compensates Jewish survivors of Nazi death camps transported on French trains, doubled its compensation payments, from US$200,000 to nearly $400,000. This makes it the most generous of any of the recent compensatory programs worked out by U.S. and European governments. This one is paid for by the French government, but administered by the U.S. State Department.</p>
<p>In March, a <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/South-Korean-court-approves-seizure-of-Mitsubishi-Heavy-assets">South Korean trial court</a> ordered the seizure of property owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation in South Korea. Such efforts are apparently needed to enforce a November judgment by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/world/asia/south-korea-wartime-compensation-japan.html">South Korean Supreme Court</a>, ordering Mitsubishi to pay $100,000 to each of five Koreans who performed forced labor during the war.</p>
<p>Whether the Koreans will ever see that money, or die before the forfeiture action is completed, remains up in the air.</p>
<p>These are among the latest manifestations of global efforts to review, revise, repair and remember the war – akin to the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/nuremberg">Nuremberg or Tokyo War Crimes Trials</a> - but for the 21st century.</p>
<h2>Restoring human dignity</h2>
<p>In the 1990s, a renewed interest in human rights, greater access to historical materials and a less polarized international political environment converged to <a href="https://www.dw.com/cda/en/world-war-ii-reparations-germany-must-show-willingness/a-46208757">spur reflection on World War II</a>. </p>
<p>In the United States, civil lawsuits emerged as one tool, among many, to probe wartime human rights violations. </p>
<p>Federal courts in <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/67/424/2375384/">New Jersey</a>, <a href="http://www.swissbankclaims.com/Overview.aspx">New York</a> and <a href="https://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ememory/data/judicial/POWs_and_Forced_Labor_US/ClassAction/Jan212003DeutschTurnerDecision.pdf">California</a> presided over cases against Swiss banks, French insurers, German corporations and even the Austrian government. </p>
<p>Plaintiffs sought wages for unpaid labor, return of looted art, restitution of bank accounts and other assets, and the restoration of their human dignity. </p>
<p>Two cases ended up in the United States Supreme Court. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-13.ZO.html">One</a>, in which an elderly refugee mounted a lawsuit to recover family artwork seized by the Nazis, got a Hollywood ending. In “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404425/">Woman in Gold</a>,” Ryan Reynolds helps Helen Mirren sue Austria to recover a painting by Gustav Klimt.</p>
<p>Most cases did not follow the Hollywood script. Plaintiffs generally lost, either because the claims were too old or already resolved by postwar treaties.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275731/original/file-20190521-23829-eqhan6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jews await deportation from French internment camp Rivesaltes to Nazi concentration camps in Poland, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1109851">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Friedel Bohny-Reiter</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Selective leadership</h2>
<p>But that did not dispel the pressure from Jewish organizations or human rights activists to provide reparations. </p>
<p>During President Bill Clinton’s second term (1996-2000), the U.S. government, led by Ambassador <a href="https://www.conference-board.org/bio/index.cfm?bioid=971">Stuart Eizenstat</a>, worked with European allies to craft international agreements and reparations mechanisms. </p>
<p>Germany set up <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-12-15-9912150077-story.html">a $5 billion fund</a> to compensate wartime forced laborers and slave laborers, and to support projects on history and human rights.</p>
<p>Later, the State Department set up additional programs, including the 2016 Holocaust Deportation Claims Program. The French government still runs the <a href="http://www.civs.gouv.fr/home/">Commission for Reparations of Victims of Spoliation</a>, established in 1999 to process claims about seized property and art.</p>
<p>In East Asia, survivors of World War II human rights abuses have had their day (decades, actually) in court. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/17/world/unmasking-horror-a-special-report-japan-confronting-gruesome-war-atrocity.html">Chinese victims of wartime medical experimentation</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/world/asia/south-korea-japan-compensation-world-war-two.html">Korean forced laborers</a> and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mgmzea/filipina-comfort-women-demand-reparations-from-japan">Filipina “comfort women,”</a> among others, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/pow-compensation/japan.php">have sued Japan and the Japanese government</a> throughout the Asia-Pacific, including the United States. </p>
<p>But instead of using these lawsuits to reevaluate Japan’s role in World War II – as other programs did for European countries – the U.S. government has either absented itself from these discussions, or <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/186456/hwang-geum-joo-v-japan/">challenged</a> the lawsuits on various grounds. </p>
<p>The moral leadership that yielded transatlantic solutions to war responsibility issues in Europe dissolved when the topic emerged in East Asia. </p>
<p>Whereas the Clinton administration, especially Stuart Eizenstat, worked with European officials to set up compensation mechanisms in France, Germany and Switzerland, the administration of President George W. Bush asked <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jul-31-me-28622-story.html">U.S. courts</a> to dismiss the East Asian cases.</p>
<h2>US security interests</h2>
<p>South Korea and Japan are America’s closest and most important allies in a region simmering with geopolitical tension, from trade wars with China to nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula. U.S. regional security interests hinge upon the successful coordination of relations among Japan, Korea and the United States.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://law.case.edu/Our-School/Faculty-Staff/Meet-Our-Faculty/Faculty-Detail/id/1020">an international legal scholar</a> with a background in Asian legal systems, international human rights and international economic law, I believe the United States ignores the Asian tensions over World War II at its peril. </p>
<p>The Obama administration understood this, and tried to persuade both Japan and South Korea to resolve their “<a href="https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/030414_Testimony%20-%20Daniel%20Russel1.pdf">difficult historical issues</a>.” Chief among those issues is, of course, making reparations for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-forcedlabour-southkorea/thousand-koreans-sue-government-over-wartime-labor-at-japan-firms-idUSKCN1OJ0F7">injuries</a> that Japan visited upon Koreans during the war: from the comfort women system to the forced mobilization of Korean laborers.</p>
<p>But the Trump administration seems unconcerned. It has exhibited indifference or hostility to human rights matters generally, refusing to respond to <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-administration-stopped-responding-un-human-rights-investigators-91920a35-d1c9-4ed7-82a4-b9b451a78889.html">U.N. investigations</a> about U.S. abuses along the Mexican border, and withdrawing from the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621435225/u-s-announces-its-withdrawal-from-u-n-s-human-rights-council">U.N. Human Rights Council</a>. Nor does the administration place much stock in international relations or diplomacy, with its attempts to starve the State Department of <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/12/17004372/trump-budget-state-department-defense-cuts">funding</a>, and belatedly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/28/politics/trump-harry-harris-ambassador-to-south-korea/index.html">appointing</a> an ambassador to South Korea. </p>
<p>In Asia, civil litigation has emerged as the key method to seek war reparations, though the track record is spotty. </p>
<p>Japanese courts have largely dismissed these suits, although a small handful of Japanese corporations decided to settle the cases and to pay modest amounts of compensation.</p>
<p>That state of affairs changed with recent decisions from the South Korean Supreme Court. The November judgment against Mitsubishi suggests compensation is still possible, at least in certain jurisdictions. Henceforth, Korean courts will almost certainly order other Japanese companies to pay compensation. </p>
<p>But even if plaintiffs win, they might still encounter difficulties enforcing the judgment. Losing Japanese companies may refuse to pay the Korean judgments, requiring Korean courts to seize Japanese assets located in South Korea. </p>
<h2>Transforming the tragic past</h2>
<p>The agreements reached in the 1990s and early 2000s by the United States with Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria to provide war reparations are not perfect, but each aspires to transform and repair a tragically forgotten past. </p>
<p>The United States’ failure to do the same in Asia perpetuates a pernicious double standard set after the war. </p>
<p>The United States has the experience, leverage and opportunity to resolve simmering animosities between its allies in Asia, as it did in Europe.</p>
<p>But does it have the ambition?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Webster 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>US agreements with Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria provide reparations to WWII victims. But an international law scholar writes that the US has failed to address war crimes in Asia.Timothy Webster, Associate Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1153582019-05-02T09:43:53Z2019-05-02T09:43:53ZBlockchain can help break the chains of modern slavery, but it is not a complete solution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272403/original/file-20190503-103053-ammmc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Global supply chains have struggled to deal with poor working conditions including child labour, forced labour and debt slavery. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s a good chance the device on which you are reading this contains cobalt. It’s an essential metal for batteries in phones and laptops. There’s also a chance the cobalt was mined by slaves. </p>
<p><a href="https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cobalt/mcs-2019-cobal.pdf">Almost two-thirds of the cobalt</a> mined around the world comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The central African country has a notorious recent history of human rights abuses, including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/oct/12/phone-misery-children-congo-cobalt-mines-drc">slave labour</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269899/original/file-20190418-139097-1c2ge5a.png?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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Democratic Republic of the Congo highlighted in green.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg">Connormah/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Right now it is all but impossible to know if cobalt from the country is slave-free. It’s the same around the world for many other commodities, from tuna to coffee.</p>
<p>Some businesses see a solution in blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, to verify global supply chains. </p>
<p>It is the latest promise for a technology that is touted as a solution for <a href="https://www.cellblocks.io/">unregulated prison economies</a>, <a href="https://climatecoin.io/">climate change</a> and <a href="https://seal.network/">counterfeiting</a>. Maybe it will prove part of the solution. But we can’t put all our hopes on any technology solving a complex social problem. </p>
<h2>Modern slavery in supply chains</h2>
<p>Figuring out if goods are sourced and produced ethically gets increasingly difficult as <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zBqJDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA319&ots=SZb5mjjtry&sig=5b1zksIBTyMg0Dtj4CbwGjQHPlo#v=onepage&q&f=false">supply chains become more complex</a>. </p>
<p>In the case of cobalt, <a href="http://www.mining.com/congo-miners-buying-cobalt-artisanal-operators-balance-market/">the supply chain</a> can consist of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mining-blockchain-cobalt/blockchain-to-track-congos-cobalt-from-mine-to-mobile-idUSKBN1FM0Y2">countless middlemen</a> who buy and mix cobalt from countless different mines. This means it is almost impossible for a cobalt buyer such as a battery maker to trace where the metal comes from. </p>
<p>The DRC’s cobalt industry encompasses a wide range of working conditions. Some miners are paid relatively well and work in safe conditions. </p>
<p>But around a fifth of the cobalt is dug up by about <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AFR6231832016ENGLISH.PDF">110,000 to 150,000 workers in small “artisanal” mines</a>. Those who work in this unregulated sector often earn a pittance and work in unsafe conditions. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271687/original/file-20190430-136797-1mbijsc.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">For impoverished artisanal miners, cobalt is an alluring prospect despite the treacherous conditions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/16935515@N00/1872000955/">julien_harneis/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Working in such mines includes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/">descending into small hand-dug holes</a> that defy even basic safety precautions. Poor construction and ventilation have led to injuries and deaths. </p>
<p>As sales of electric cars <a href="https://smallcaps.com.au/cobalt-supply-chain-transparency-human-rights-violations-drc/">swells</a> demand for cobalt, these conditions are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-25/cobalt-child-labour-smartphone-batteries-congo/10031330">worsening</a>. </p>
<p>It is difficult to know exactly what proportion of the DRC’s cobalt industry uses slave labour. But a 2013 investigation by the Washington-based organisation <a href="https://www.freetheslaves.net">Free the Slaves</a>, found 866 of the 931 individuals interviewed in three mining communities were slaves. </p>
<p>The report identified <a href="https://www.freetheslaves.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Congos-Mining-Slaves-web-130622.pdf">seven types</a> of slavery, including forced labour and debt bondage. </p>
<p>Almost one in four slaves was under 18 years of age. A 2014 <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AFR6231832016ENGLISH.PDF">report by UNICEF</a> estimated 40,000 children were working in mines in DRC’s south, most of them digging cobalt. </p>
<h2>Blockchain’s promise</h2>
<p>It is not just cobalt. The same is true of everything from copper to <a href="https://www.raconteur.net/business-innovation/child-labour-cocoa-production">cocoa</a>. It is hard to know how products are made or where they are sourced from.</p>
<p>So how can we ensure supply chains are not tainted by modern slavery?</p>
<p>This is where companies are experimenting with blockchain technology. To understand their interest, let’s recap the basics of this technology.</p>
<p>Think of blockchain as an online public ledger. Once a transaction occurs, a permanent and unchangeable record of that transaction is created and has to be validated by others in the blockchain. These records are called “blocks” and are chained together chronologically. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271686/original/file-20190430-136810-1eowtsg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How blockchain technology works.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Blockchain technology can therefore be used to <a href="http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10043048/1/Aste_BlockchainIEEE_600W_v3.3_A.doccceptedVersion.x.pdf">create a verified and tamper-proof record</a> of supply chains from source to end user. </p>
<p>The World Wildlife Fund is working with technology partners and a tuna fishing company to use <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-blockchain-is-strengthening-tuna-traceability-to-combat-illegal-fishing-89965">blockchain technology to track tuna</a> from “bait to plate”. A consumer will be able to find out when and where the tuna was caught by scanning a code on the packaging.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/almost-every-brand-of-tuna-on-supermarket-shelves-shows-why-modern-slavery-laws-are-needed-108421">Almost every brand of tuna on supermarket shelves shows why modern slavery laws are needed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>BHP wants to use it to <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/bhp-looks-to-improve-copper-supply-chain-transparency-20190407-p51bns.html">verify copper supplies</a>. Blockchain is also being used to track <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTmJMkd-Rd8">cotton</a>, <a href="https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/fashion-tech/how-luxury-fashion-learned-to-love-the-blockchain">fashion</a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bringing-blockchain-to-the-coffee-cup-1523797205">coffee</a> and <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/ibm-completes-blockchain-trial-tracking-a-28-ton-shipment-of-oranges">organically farmed products</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockchain-congo-cobalt-electric/ford-and-ibm-among-quartet-in-congo-cobalt-blockchain-project-idUSKCN1PA0C8">Ford and IBM</a> are part of the consortium looking to use the technology to monitor cobalt supplies. It would mean the ability to track the metal from mine to battery. Ethically mined cobalt can be recorded in the blockchain and followed as it moves around the supply chain. </p>
<h2>Challenges remain</h2>
<p>While blockchain is promising, we need to address several challenges if it is going to work. </p>
<p>A crucial element in any blockchain is the “consensus protocol”. This determines who gets to validate a transaction, whether it be all participants, a majority, a select few or a random selection. In a blockchain dedicated to ethical sourcing it is crucial that workers can attest to their working conditions. There is no guarantee this will happen, especially for marginalised or oppressed workers. </p>
<p>Second, it is important to know what standard for ethical sourcing a blockchain upholds. There are <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/mapping-the-blockchain-project-ecosystem/">several blockchain platforms</a>, so different, potentially less robust, standards could easily develop. This is an issue for other areas of ethical certification, where competing schemes for goods <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0170840612443629">such as coffee</a> exist.</p>
<p>Third, we should always question the link between a “block” and its material reality. Finding a way to insert goods made using slave labour into the blockchain would be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/20/australia-imports-12bn-worth-of-goods-at-risk-of-being-made-by-slaves-report">highly lucrative</a>. Since the integrity of blockchain data depends on humans, it is vulnerable to inaccuracies or fraud. </p>
<p>Fourth, blockchain may create a “digital divide”. Larger suppliers with technical experience will have less trouble using this technology, while smaller suppliers may be left out. We need to guard against blockchain becoming a barrier to small suppliers entering the market. </p>
<h2>No technological fix</h2>
<p>As a transparency tool blockchain can – in theory – give insights into where goods came from. But no technology on its own can solve a complex social problem. </p>
<p>Ultimately, as with any other technology, the saying “garbage in, garbage out” applies. If humans want to undermine accountability systems, they will find ways of doing so. </p>
<p>Just recording transactions is not enough. As part of a comprehensive agenda to tackle the myriad factors underlying modern slavery, though, it may prove a useful tool.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martijn Boersma is co-author of a book on modern slavery that will be published in 2019.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justine Nolan is co-author of a book on modern slavery that will be published in 2019.</span></em></p>Blockchain is a promising tool to fight modern slavery by making global supply chains more accountable. But there a few kinks to be worked out.Martijn Boersma, Lecturer, University of Technology SydneyJustine Nolan, Associate Professor, UNSW Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/634912016-08-22T00:22:12Z2016-08-22T00:22:12ZSlavery on campus – recovering the history of Washington College’s discarded slaves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134799/original/image-20160819-30363-q3uatp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Profits from slavery funded education. Washington and Lee University campus.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/smokey_blue/445126209/in/photolist-e8HtDo-9NH9LR-9NJAiA-FkovP-n1TaXZ-9LPBnH-4nFpth-9NEYMC-9NvF6h-9Nvxqd-7DEoHP-4nBkKi-7DJcaN-4LpfYb-7DEnXr-9NDgMs-4nFpuE-4Lpg6W-5AQHT4-7DJbMW-2U1mbF-7DJbCN-4Lpg1L-4LpfZs-7DJbWy-8ZHpHq-9G5Mmz-9NJdLE-4Lk3tX-6VxbtK-2Uikx4-9NJfwE-kgVUc-biZQxp-kgVDi-8AY9Xy-2oyvb-8dRFLG-8dRFWA-7qfLPq-8xaGE4-4zwQ6Q-8dNrhK">Robert of Fairfax</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When First Lady Michelle Obama reminded Americans during the Democratic National Convention that she lives in a house literally built by slaves, it once again <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/07/27/bill-oreilly-michelle-obama-white-house-slaves-speech/87604632/">sparked discussion of slavery</a> in the United States’ history.</p>
<p>The White House is not the only famous building built by enslaved African-Americans. Slaves and the wealth created by their forced labor were used to build many American institutions. For example, the Smithsonian Institution’s storied “castle” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/researcher-finds-slaves-quarried-sandstone-used-to-build-smithsonian-castle/2012/12/12/381c1762-44a5-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_story.html">was built using limestone quarried by slaves</a>. Universities too benefited from slavery and enslaved labor.</p>
<p>We are slavery scholars who are attempting a challenging task – helping recover the lost stories of those individuals who built some of America’s oldest institutions. </p>
<h2>Building schools with slavery</h2>
<p>Donors made rich by the products of slave labor endowed schools in the North and South. Sometimes those donors willed enslaved laborers <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Z74wCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">to schools and to churches</a>. That is how a religious order – the Jesuits – ended up as owner of hundreds of enslaved humans in Maryland in the 1830s. </p>
<p>In 1838, <a href="http://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/browse?collection=1">Jesuits sold 272 such enslaved humans</a>. Many of those people ended up in Louisiana, where slave labor was needed to provide the <a href="http://www.crt.state.la.us/louisiana-state-museum/online-exhibits/the-cabildo/antebellum-louisiana-agrarian-life/">labor for cotton and sugar plantations</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the proceeds from the sale were used to fund buildings on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-search-for-slave-descendants.html?_r=0">Georgetown University’s campus.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134794/original/image-20160819-30396-5tlg0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134794/original/image-20160819-30396-5tlg0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134794/original/image-20160819-30396-5tlg0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134794/original/image-20160819-30396-5tlg0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134794/original/image-20160819-30396-5tlg0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134794/original/image-20160819-30396-5tlg0k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134794/original/image-20160819-30396-5tlg0k.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">Georgetown University campus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/2847038031/in/photolist-5kzPdB">Ken Lund</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The sale of humans to endow Georgetown is only one of the most dramatic examples of how wealth made from slavery supported education and universities. In some years the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=WlCsDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT373&dq=royal+dumas+my+son+and+my+money&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5qfni98vOAhXJGh4KHTU8BIQQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=royal%20dumas%20my%20son%20and%20my%20money&f=false">vast majority of students</a> at the University of Alabama came from slave-owning families. Even at less elite southern colleges, <a href="http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/howard-college-southern-scholar.pdf">more than 50 percent of students</a> came from slave-owning families.</p>
<p>The profits from slavery funded education. Indeed, this was often an explicit part of the wills left behind by slave owners. For example, when one Alabama slave owner, Absalom Morton, died in 1845, <a href="http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/greene-county-probate.pdf">his will instructed</a> that his slave, David, be rented out and the profits used for his cousin’s education.</p>
<p>Faculty, too, owned enslaved African-Americans. </p>
<p>For instance, Frederick Barnard, the namesake of Barnard College in New York City, <a href="http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/barnard-trial-university-of-mississippi-1.pdf">owned several female slaves</a> when he was the chancellor of the University of Mississippi before the Civil War. </p>
<p>Faculty throughout the South wrote and taught about the <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/smith/menu.html">need for slavery,</a> and <a href="https://archive.org/details/isslaveryconsist00holc">that it was consistent with morality and natural law.</a> </p>
<h2>The story of Washington and Lee University</h2>
<p>Schools did their part to promote slavery as well. For example, in 1825 when slave owner John Robinson died, Washington College (now known as Washington and Lee University) in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley <a href="https://www.wlu.edu/presidents-office/issues-and-initiatives/timeline-of-african-americans-at-wandl">inherited about 80 people from him</a>.</p>
<p>This is the story we’ve been looking to tell: Robinson instructed the college to <a href="https://www.wlu.edu/presidents-office/issues-and-initiatives/timeline-of-african-americans-at-wandl/robinson-will-image/robinson-will">not sell the slaves</a> for 50 years. He further instructed that the “strictest regard be paid to (the slaves’) comfort and happiness.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=817&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134791/original/image-20160819-30377-13qb96q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1027&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robinson Slave Provision.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alfred Brophy</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But when the college found that renting them proved a burden, <a href="https://www.wlu.edu/presidents-office/issues-and-initiatives/timeline-of-african-americans-at-wandl/account-of-sale">it sold about 50 of them</a> to Samuel Garland of Lynchburg, Virginia for about $US20,000.00, roughly $500,000 in today’s dollars. </p>
<p>Some of the money was used for a new building on campus, still known as Robinson Hall. Recently Washington and Lee University <a href="http://rockbridgereport.academic.wlu.edu/2016/04/07/web-bentslave/">placed a memorial to them outside Robinson Hall.</a> </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134793/original/image-20160819-30403-1nad6r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robinson Monument, Washington and Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alfred Brophy</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What happened to the Washington College slaves?</p>
<p>Samuel Garland bought these slaves to work on his family land in Hinds County, Mississippi. So, Washington College’s slaves most likely walked from their home near the James River in Lexington, Virginia, down through Knoxville and then on to the Garland land in Mississippi, a journey of around 800 miles. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134802/original/image-20160819-30409-1w0y67q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134802/original/image-20160819-30409-1w0y67q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134802/original/image-20160819-30409-1w0y67q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134802/original/image-20160819-30409-1w0y67q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134802/original/image-20160819-30409-1w0y67q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134802/original/image-20160819-30409-1w0y67q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134802/original/image-20160819-30409-1w0y67q.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">Robinson Hall, Washington and Lee University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alfred Brophy</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Samuel Garland made a fortune in Mississippi off enslaved labor. But like many who made their fortunes in the deep South, he used his money to live in Virginia. He built a mansion on <a href="http://www.garlandhill.org/history.php">“Garland Hill” in Lynchburg.</a> By the time of his death in 1861, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9AALAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA335&dq=samuel+garland+lynchburg+will&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_jfScm6bOAhXDSSYKHd5vBLAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=samuel%20garland%20lynchburg%20will&f=false">Samuel Garland had slaves</a> on two plantations in Hinds County and another one in Coahoma County. </p>
<h2>Rebuilding lost histories</h2>
<p>But no one should forget that these are just dramatic vignettes about a system that held millions in bondage. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of humans were sold as chattel and moved from the upper South to the lower South of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana before the Civil War. Families were ripped apart and tremendous efforts were exerted to reunite after emancipation.</p>
<p>What happened to those families? </p>
<p>Last year, Georgetown started to track down the descendants of those enslaved people who were sold by the Jesuits. This spring they found some of the descendants of those people sold nearly 200 ago. Many live in Louisiana and some have retained the Catholic faith of their ancestors.</p>
<p>In the past few months <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/20/us/-descendants-of-slaves-sold-to-aid-georgetown.html">those descendants</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/us/moving-to-make-amends-georgetown-president-meets-with-descendant-of-slaves.html">officials at Georgetown</a> and many others <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/us/intent-on-a-reckoning-with-georgetowns-slavery-stained-past.html">have been asking what should be done</a> about that legacy of slavery. </p>
<p>The New York Times editorial board suggested one form of repair should be <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/opinion/sunday/georgetown-and-the-sin-of-slavery.html">scholarships for descendants who attend Georgetown</a>. Georgetown’s president has met with some descendants and is listening to their ideas about how best to acknowledge and repair this legacy. </p>
<p>That leads to questions about other schools, too. What happened to those dozens of enslaved African-Americans who were forced to leave their homes and walk 800 miles to labor on Garland’s plantations? </p>
<p>What did it mean to be torn away from family and friends? To be uprooted after the promise of remaining near all they knew? </p>
<h2>Looking for descendants</h2>
<p>We are writing about this in part because we want to remind people that there are many such stories of slavery and uprooting, of pain and sorrow, of perseverance and strength. </p>
<p>In the stories of a few we can trace the trajectory of our nation’s history, reconnect families and attempt to confront the demons of our collective pasts. If we wait any longer these memories and connections will be lost. </p>
<p>Many don’t want to remember. And that is understandable. </p>
<p>As historians we want to provide maps for those who do want to know now, and for those who will want to know in the future.</p>
<p>We are looking for people who are descended from those enslaved African-Americans once owned by John Robinson, then by Washington College and later by the Garland family. In an effort to capture any memories passed down through the generations, and to possibly reconnect relatives, we want to interview anyone who knows anything about these people and their families.</p>
<p>If you or anyone you know is willing to speak with us please contact us at vamiss1825@gmail.com.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63491/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>The slave trade was used to fund American universities. Scholars are looking to recover the lost stories of the enslaved humans who built some of America’s oldest institutions.Kelley Fanto Deetz, Research Associate for the President's Commission on Slavery, University of VirginiaAlfred L. Brophy, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.