Tag: Slavery

In defense of his blackface, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam mentioned "indentured servants". The interviewer replied:"Aka slaves." Both were wrong. Slaves were not indentured servants and the terms are not synonyms. Some of the earliest black people in the Virginia Colony were indentured servants, yes, but 40 years later most blacks were enslaved ... Read More

The American Revolution: The 13 British colonies rebelled because they resented the taxation without representation. They won the Revolutionary War -- America's new government was the envy of the world. The westward move of the pioneers and the loss of the Native Americans' way of life was inevitable. Right? Independence Lost by Kathleen DuVal sets the record straight ... Read More

To discuss race and real estate, we must go back to the beginning of white land use in America, when the South was a slave-based economy ... Read More

Some thoughts about my own white responsibility, my white privilege and my unconscious racism, and a few shocking peeks at living while black in Trump Country ... Read More

American history education is comprised mostly of disjointed, unimportant personal anecdotes, dates of battles and numbers killed. Cause and effect are barely touched upon. I can see why kids think, "Booooring!" ... Read More

The governor is removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State Capitol, but Southern politicians are still careful not to offend the folks who are proud of their Confederate heritage ... Read More

If the Federal Army had stayed in the South longer, if the Reconstruction had lasted longer, if America didn't experience the century-long setback that came after the Federal Army left, what would black history look like now? ... Read More

White Slaveholders, Black slaveholders, gradualists, immediatists, persuasive abolitionists,moral abolitionists and those who wanted all blacks shipped to Liberia -- they covered a broad spectrum of opinions that ranged from pro slavery to unconditional freedom ... Read More

Before the abolition of slavery, freedom didn't mean the same thing for free people of color as it meant for whites. There were lots of formal and informal restrictions ... Read More

In good history education, the focus is not the war itself. (In this case the American Civil War.) It's why it was fought, the effects of a war on the following years, decades, centuries, and most importantly, what we learned from it ... Read More

There's really no such thing as a quick overview of American slavery and the Civil War, so this is turning into a series ... Read More

Laura Plantation is the remains of one of the old sugar plantations of the Deep South, which depended completely on slavery for their success. They were brutal places where the death toll among slaves was always higher than the birth rate. You wouldn't know it from the tour ... Read More