Mad About Science

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

Most weeks, this article is filled with lots of fun facts peppered with my juvenile brand of humor. Not this week. Our country is in the middle of a crisis right now. The source of this crisis is not new, and to begin to understand it and heal as a country and a culture, we have to take an uncomfortable look back into our history and learn from the mistakes of our forefathers.

To encapsulate the true divide in America right now would take a lot more than 800 words, but it began with slavery in America.

There is a tremendous amount of conflicting information on the history of African-American slavery, as most of our historical documents were written by the very people who owned and abused the humans they saw as property. Slave owners harshly punished slaves who learned to read and write, as they knew how damning to their legacies the evidence of an educated mind could be. This was exposed frequently surrounding the events of the American Civil War from 1861-1865.

That seems like a long time ago, but I promise you that it’s not. The Civil War ended 155 years ago. Currently, the oldest living human on Earth is 117 years old. It is plausible to believe, then, that the Civil War concluded as few as three generations ago.

Many of the problems that were highlighted by American slavery are the same problems we struggle with as a country today, and are the very reasons why so many people are protesting in the streets at this very moment. 

Of course, the enslavement of black Africans in North America goes back much further in time than the 19th century — all the way to the first decades of European colonization in the early 1600s. 

At that time, wealth inequality held just as much — if not more — political sway than it does now. Amassing tremendous wealth gave slave owners access to status and privilege that not only buffered them from the suffering of the people they owned, but gave them the tools they needed to be able to oppress further generations of those very people without them being able to defend themselves. These tools were used extensively to propagandize the message of the wealthy colonial elite among lower-class whites, especially throughout what would later come to be regarded as the American South.

This tactic of extremely wealthy individuals using propaganda to tribalize the lower and middle classes and bring them in line with their way of thinking has been put on full display with the advent of social media.

It is difficult to pinpoint an exact date in which African slavery in America first began. The Atlantic slave trade is recorded to have begun in 1526 with the Portugese colonization of western Africa. The Portugese initially invaded a number of islands along the coast and enslaved members of the subjugated population to work the fields and plantations in the immediate area, but the bulk of the Africans shipped overseas came from enslaved peoples of other African countries.

The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, while America was just beginning as an English colonial enterprise. A little more than 20 men and women were brought to America then, with 12.5 million more to follow — of which, 10.7 million would survive the journey across the Atlantic.

Several historical diagrams exist of slave ships “efficiently” packed to capacity. Children were seen as highly valuable commodities as slaves were sold by the ton, and slavers could effectively pack more children onto a boat than adults. Children and mothers were frequently separated in a manner identical to how we handle livestock and pets today. Men and women were appraised based on the roles the slave owner wished for them to fulfill, be it field work, house work or breeding future generations of slaves. Damage, such as missing limbs, digits, or eyes, would be deducted from their overall price, in the same manner that an appliance store will sell you a dented washing machine at a discount.

In modern prices, a slave who was considered “good working quality” was worth about $40,000, around the price of a new car. Slave owners would often rent out their slaves to other slave owners during alternating harvests to recoup some of their initial expense. Frequently, individual slaves were sold to other plantations and separated from their families. Some slave owners offered writs, similar to a hall pass, that would allow the slave to return to visit their families, but these kinds of visits were rare and not often respected by local officials.

The American Civil War was the culmination of tension between the northern and southern sections of the country — tensions that can be traced to the colonial period, as the North industrialized, relying on manufacturing, commerce and trade, while the South entrenched itself as a slave-based agricultural powerhouse. 

While the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln took effect on Jan. 1, 1863, the war raged until 1865. Slave owners, not recognizing Lincoln’s authority, disregarded the executive order and worked to conceal from their slaves that the North had granted them their freedom.

It wasn’t until the intervention of the union troops that slavery in America was abolished in 1865, 246 years after the first slaves arrived here. As it currently stands, African Americans have been free for 155 years — 89 years fewer than the amount of time during which they were enslaved.

However, as you well know, the story doesn’t end there.

In the meantime, listen and learn from each other.

Stay compassionate, 7B.