American Slavery to Freedom after 246 years. Photos Ex Slaves 1900-1940.
111,108
Published 2012-12-19
The new U.S. Constitution After the American Revolution acknowledged Slavery
counting each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of Taxation and Representation in Congress in guaranteeing the right to repossess any person held to service or labor "Slaves"
Dec. 6, 1865
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution Outlaws Slavery
After 246 years
Twelve Presidents owned Slaves, nine owned slaves while serving as President.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
THOMAS JEFFERSON
JAMES MADISON
JAMES MONROE
ANDREW JACKSON
JOHN TYLER
JAMES POLK
ZACHARY TAYLOR and U. S. GRANT All owned slaves while serving as President.
MARTIN VAN BUREN
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
ANDREW JOHNSON "Owned slaves but not while President".
35,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the
Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries about 15 to 25 percent died in transit at sea. England, Spain Portugal, France, The Netherlands and the Arab nations dominated the slave trade. Eventually England outlawed slave trading by Englishmen in 1807 and there would have been no African slave trade were it not for the connivance of the tribal rulers in Africa who raided other tribes to capture slaves to sell and/or use as tribal slaves.
Those who were sold to Arab and white slavers actually had, in most cases, already been slaves in Black Africa. They simply went from being slaves in Africa to being slaves in America, South America and The Caribbean.
Slavery goes back thousands of years. The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt 4,000 years ago. The Romans enslaved every nation they conqured. The American Indians enslaved other tribes whom they had defeated in wars.
Not all slaves were black.
Most of these photos of former slaves came from the Slave Narratives this collection contains over 20,000 pages of typewritten interviews with more than 3,500 former slaves, collected over a 10-year period. In 1929, both Fisk University in Tennessee & Southern University in Louisiana began to document the life stories of former American slaves. Kentucky State College continued the work in 1934. In the midst of the Depression between 1936 & 1939, these narratives continued to be collected as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the WPA, the Works Progress Administration.
Music by Arvo Pärt "Spiegel im Spiegel" "mirror in the mirror"
Presented by Peter Hinds