From Colorlines: 10 Things You Should Know About Slavery and Won’t Learn at ‘Django’

by Relando Thompkins-Jones · January 10, 2013

“Underwater sculpture, in Grenada, in honor of our African Ancestors who were thrown overboard the slave ships during the Middle Passage of the African Holocaust.” Sculpture: Viscissidudes. Artist Jason DeCaires Taylor

New from Colorlines.com

Written by Imara Jones, Economic Justice Contributor at Colorlines;

10 Things You Should Know About Slavery and Won’t Learn at “Django”

“Though sadistic and macabre, the plain truth is that slavery was an unprecedented economic juggernaut whose impact is still lived by each of us daily. Consequently, here’s my top-10 list of things everyone should know about the economic roots of slavery.”

1. Slavery laid the foundation for the modern international economic system.

2. Africans’ economic skills were a leading reason for their enslavement.

3. African know-how transformed slave economies into some of the wealthiest on the planet.

4. Until it was destroyed by the Civil War, slavery made the American South the richest and most powerful region in America.

5. Defense of slavery, more than taxes, was pivotal to America’s declaration of independence.

6. The brutalization and psychological torture of slaves was designed to ensure that plantations stayed in the black financially.

7. The economic success of former slaves during Reconstruction led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

8. The desire to maintain economic oppression is why the South was one of the most anti-tax regions of the nation.

9. Many firms on Wall Street made fortunes from funding the slave trade.

10. The wealth gap between whites and blacks, the result of slavery, has yet to be closed.