research questions on slavery

271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples

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Writing an essay on slavery may be challenging as the topic brings up negative emotions to many people.

This issue is related to differences between social positions and their negative effects. In addition, slavery reveals racial disparities in society and damages race relations in many cultures.

Good slavery essays discuss the aspects and problems that are important and relevant today. Choose slavery essay topics that raise significant problems that remain acute in modern society. Slavery essay titles and topics may include:

• The problem of human trafficking in today’s world
• Why is it hard to stop child trafficking in today’s world?
• The aspects of plantation life for slaves
• The development of American slavery
• Was slavery inevitable?
• Differences and similarities between slavery in the US and serfdom in Russia
• The ineffectiveness of peaceful means against slavery
• Destructive aspects of slavery
• The link between slavery and racism
• The differences between the impact of slavery on women and men of color

Once you select the issue you want to discuss, you can start working on your paper. Here are some tips and secrets for creating a powerful essay:

• Remember that appropriate essay titles are important to get the readers’ interest. Do not make the title too long but state the main point of your essay.
• Start with developing a structure for your essay. Remember that your paper should be organized clearly. You may want to make separate paragraphs or sections for the most important topics.
• Include an introductory paragraph, in which you can briefly discuss the problem and outline what information the paper will present.
• Remember to include a concluding paragraph too, in which you will state the main points of your work. Add recommendations, if necessary.
• Do preliminary research even if you feel that you know much about the topic already. You can find useful information in historical books, peer-reviewed journals, and trusted online sources. Note: Ask your professor about the types of sources you are allowed to use.
• Do not rely on outside sources solely. Your essay should incorporate your knowledge and reflections on slavery and existing evidence. Try to add comments to the citations you use.
• Remember that a truly powerful essay should be engaging and easy-to-understand. You can tell your readers about different examples of slavery to make sure that they understand what the issue is about. Keep the readers interested by asking them questions and allowing them to reflect on the problem.
• Your slavery essay prompts should be clearly stated in the paper. Do not make the audience guess what the main point of the essay is.
• Although the content is important, you should also make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures. Grammatical mistakes may make your paper look unprofessional or unreliable.
• If you are writing an argumentative essay, do not forget to include refutation and discuss opposing views on the issue.
• Check out slavery essay examples online to see how you can structure your paper and organize the information. In addition, this step can help you to avoid possible mistakes and analyze the relevance of the issue you want to discuss.

Do not forget to check our free samples and get the best ideas for your essay!

• Slavery in To Kill a Mockingbird Novel The introduction of Tom by the author is a plot device to represent the plight of the slaves in the state.
• Slavery in the Roman Empire The elite were the rich people, and majority of the population that comprised of the common farmers, artisans, and merchants known as the plebeians occupied the low status.
• Sex Slavery in India According to authorities and international organizations such as the UN, human trafficking for sexual exploitation in India is mainly internal with the country low income and lower cast communities providing the major source of victims. […]
• Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Jefferson believed that the landless laborers posed a threat to the nation because they were not independent. He believed that if Englishmen ruled over the world, they would be able to extend the effects of […]
• Analysis of Themes of Slavery in Literature The paper will be concentrated on the analysis of the works ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’ by Olaudah Equiano, ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass’ by Frederick Douglass, and ‘Incidents […]
• Analysis of Documents on Greek Slavery The passages will be examined and evaluated better understand the social and cultural history of the period and learn more about the social order in Ancient Greece. It can be asserted that the issue of […]
• Protest Against Slavery in ”Pudd’nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson is the ironic tale of a man who is born a slave but brought up as the heir to wealthy estate, thanks to a switch made while the babies were still in the […]
• Economic Impact of Slavery Growth in Southern Colonies 1 The need to occupy southern colonies came as a result of the successes that were recorded in the north, especially after the establishment of cash crop farming. The setting up of the plantations in […]
• Chapters 4-6 of ”From Slavery to Freedom” by Franklin & Higginbotham At the same time, the portion of American-born slaves was on the increase and contributed to the multiracial nature of the population.
• Slavery in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” The character traits of the slaveholders are brought out by the use of the word nigger and the emphasis on ignorance as a weapon against the empowerment of the blacks.
• Analysis of Slavery in United States The main points highlighted in the lecture are focused on the socio-economic differences between the two systems, the actual life of slaves, and methods of blacks’ rebellion.
• “Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades” by Patrick Manning The author’s approach of examining the slavery issue from the lens of economic history and the involvement of normal Africans living in Africa is then examined.
• Sethe’s Slavery in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison In spite of the fact that the events depicted in Beloved take place after the end of the American Civil War, Sethe, as the main character of the novel and a former slave, continues to […]
• “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Slavery It is said that “the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery; and it is so, necessarily, for this reason, – that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purposes […]
• Expansion of Freedom and Slavery in British America The settlement in the city of New Plymouth was founded by the second, and it laid the foundation for the colonies of New England.
• How “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” Addresses Slavery The insensitivity in this mistreatment and dehumanization of Black people is pervasive to the extent that Jim considers himself “property” and was proud to be worth a fortune if anyone was to sell him. To […]
• Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
• Paternalistic Ethos During American Slavery Era The slave owner gains directly from the welfare of the slaves and the slaves gained directly from offering their services to the slave owner.
• Impact of Revolution on Slavery and Women Freed slaves and other opponents of the slave trade in the north agitated for release and freedom of slaves in the south.
• The Slavery in America The slaves were to serve their masters who were the whites. This paper discusses the challenges that the slaves encountered as well as their resistance and the relativity of slavery to gender.
• The “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary The documentary highlights how the laws and policies of that time enabled the exploitation of Black people and how the legacy of slavery continued to shape the racial dynamics of the country.
• Human Trafficking: Slavery Issues These are the words to describe the experiences of victims of human trafficking. One of the best places to intercept human trafficking into the US is at the border.
• The Slavery Experience: Erra Adams Erra Adams indicates that he was the oldest of the children and his task was to plow the land. The formerly enslaved person noted that the death of the master was a real grief for […]
• Abraham Lincoln: The End of Slavery Lincoln actively challenged the expansion of slavery because he believed the United States would stay true to the Declaration of Independence. It is worth considering the fact that Lincoln was not the only advocate for […]
• Recreation of Slavery in “Sweat” Book by Hurston Perhaps the best-portrayed theme and the most controversial one is the recreation of slavery on the part of Afro-Americans who have just been freed of it.
• California’s Issues With Slavery However, the report and the book indicate this point and emphasize that the concept of free land was made in favor of white people but not in the interests of African Americans.
• Sexual Slavery and Human Smuggling They were the only people in the house, and it appeared that her parents were not home. The social worker’s job in Tiffani’s life is to look into her past, from her childhood through her […]
• Were the Black Codes Another Form of Slavery? Slavery in the United States has been a part of the nation’s history for hundreds of years, and yet it did not end abruptly.
• How Slavery Makes Sense From Various Perspectives Given that there is a historical precedent for the “peculiar institution,” it would be erroneous to dismiss slavery as something that is new. Thus, the institution of slavery is found even in the Bible, and […]
• Slavery in The Fires of Jubilee by Stephen Oates Apart from the story being arranged in chapters, the layout and approach suggest that the author has described the area of events narrated and then given the narration.
• Modern Slavery in Global Value Chains: Case Study The main reason for accusations of forced labor is that most of the factories Nike owns are in Vietnam, and they provide the lowest possible wages.
• Differences of Slavery: Oklahoma Writers’ Project vs. The Textbook Today, many sources discuss the characteristics of slavery, its causes, and the outcomes and describe the conditions under which the Civil War began. In the accounts and the textbook, different opportunities for slaves are given […]
• Autobiography & Slavery Life of Frederick Douglass This essay discusses the slavery life of Frederick Douglass as written in his autobiography, and it highlights how he resisted slavery, the nature of his rebellion, and the view he together with Brinkley had about […]
• The American Civil War: Pro- & Anti-Slavery Forces The pro-slavery forces argued that slavery was the right thing to do, promoting abolitionists and the anti-slavery forces as terrible villains because they wanted to abolish slavery.
• Slavery: Historical Background and Modern Perspective Despite the seemingly short period of contract slavery, people did not have the right to marry without the owner’s permission while the contract term was in effect.
• Irish Immigrants and Abolition of Slavery in the US The selected historical events are Irish immigration to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s and the movement for slavery abolition, which existed in the country at the same time.
• Irish Immigration to America and the Slavery Despite the fact that the Irish encountered a great number of obstacles, the immigration of Irish people to the United States was advantageous not only to the immigrants but also to the United States.
• Irish Immigrants and the Abolition of Slavery Irish people, though not as deprived of rights as the enslaved Africans, also endured much suffering and fought slavery to the best of their ability.
• North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 – 1860 The book North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 1860 by Leon Litwack is an illustration of how African Americans were treated in the northern states just before the start of The […]
• Modern Slavery and Its Emergence The author turns to the examples of three European countries and, through the analysis, reveals the piece of the effects of the slave trade and the modernization of its forms.
• Moral Aspect of Slavery from a Northern and Southern Perspective Pro-slavery, non-expansionist, and abolitionist perspectives on the moral foundations of slavery identify both differences between the North and south of the US and the gradual evolution of the nation’s view of African people.
• Thomas Jefferson on Slavery and Declaration of Independence Additionally, with the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson set the foundation for the abolition of slavery in the future. Thus, the claim that Jefferson’s participation in slavery invalidates his writing of the Declaration of Independence is […]
• Slavery and Indentured Servitude Slavery practices were perceived to extend in Boston, which is believed to be the first place where someone tried to force enslaved people to have children to earn money. To summarize, the practice of slavery […]
• Indentured Servitude and Slavery The slave population in the North progressively fell throughout the 1760s and 1770s with slaves in Philadelphia reducing to approximately 700 in 1775.
• Critical Response: The Origin of Negro Slavery Considering that individuals of all races were involved in slavery in the New World, racism emerged as a consequence of forced labor and was not originally connected to the targeted discrimination of African Americans.
• Review of Slavery Topic in “Never Caught” Thus, the former’s relationship to this institution was guided by humanity towards the slaves and the development of legal methods of improving their lives that did not exist in the latter case.
• Prohibiting Slavery in the United States In other words, the original ideas incorporated the considerations of sexual immorality due to the abuse of the affected persons and the practice of breeding people for sale. The contributions to the discussion were also […]
• Slavery Experience by Abdul Rahman ibn Ibrahim Sori Abdul Rahman continued talking about his family and status, but his royal priorities were not enough to confirm his identity and return to his family.
• Discussion of Slavery in Focus For this reason, the audience that reads about cases of slavery in some of the third-world countries has the feeling of encountering the past something that, in readers’ understanding, is already a history.
• New Slavery in “Disposable People” by Kevin Bales The immense increase of the population after World War II and the influence of development and globalization of the world’s economy on traditional families in developing countries have led to the increment in the gap […]
• Discussion of Justification of Slavery As a result, such perceptions gave rise to the argument that the latter people are inferior to Europeans and, thus, should be in a position of servitude.
• The Industrial Revolution, Slavery, and Free Labor The purpose of this paper is to describe the Industrial Revolution and the new forms of economic activity it created, including mass production and mass consumption, as well as discuss its connection to slavery.
• Should the U.S. Government Pay Reparations for Slavery Coates tries to get the attention of his audience by explaining to them the importance of understanding the benefits of the impact the slaves faced during the regime of white supremacy.
• Metaphoric Theme of Slavery in “Indiana” by George Sand In her novel about love and marriage, Sand raises a variety of central themes of that time society, including the line of slavery both from the protagonist’s perspective and the French colonial slavery.
• Antebellum Slavery’s Role in Shaping the History and Legacy of American Society The novel tells the story of two different times, the 1970s and 1815s, and shows other conditions of the heroes’ existence due to gender and racial characteristics.
• Alexander Stephens on Slavery and Confederate Constitution The speaker remarks that the persistent lack of consensus over the subordination and slavery of the “Negro” between the South and North was the immediate reason why the Confederates decided to secede and establish their […]
• Origins of Modern Racism and Ancient Slavery The diversity of African kingdoms and the empires were engaged in the slave trade for hundreds of years prior to the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. The working and living condition of slaves were […]
• Isaac Burt: Modern-Day Slavery in the US Therefore, the author begins with the critical review of data on the notion of human trafficking, including sex and labor trafficking forms, which often use immigrants and women as vulnerable populations.
• How Violent Was the Slavery? Ask African American Women The book significantly impacted American literature due to the writer’s roots and the problems of slavery addressed in a detailed manner.
• The Role of Slavery for the American Society: Lesson Plan Understand how the development of slavery could influence the social and economic life of the Southern states and the role of the plantation system in the process.
• Colonialism and the End of Internal Slavery The Atlantic slave trade was considered among the main pillars of the economy in the western region between the 16th and 19th centuries.
• The History of American Revolution and Slavery At the same time, the elites became wary of indentured servants’ claim to the land. The American colonies were dissatisfied with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 it limited their ability to invade new territories and […]
• The Expansion of Slavery: Review Their purpose was to track and catch runaway slaves and return them to their masters. The work of slaves was primarily agricultural.
• Abolitionist Movement: Attitudes to Slavery Reflected in the Media One of the reasons confirming the inadmissibility of slavery and the unfairness of the attitude towards this phenomenon is the unjustification of torture and violence.
• Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson As a result, relatively same practices of social death were applied to indigenous American people, which proves Patterson’s point of view that this attitude was characteristic not only for the African slave trade.
• Antebellum Culture and Slavery: A Period of History in the South of the United States The antebellum era, also known as the antebellum south, is a period of history in the south of the United States before the American Civil War in the late 18th century.
• Slavery and Society Destruction Seduced by the possibility of quick enrichment, the users of slave labor of both the past and the present, betrayed their humanity due to power and money.
• Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery and the Rise of the Modern Capitalist World System The reading provides an extensive background of the historical rise and fall of the African nations. The reading gives a detailed account of the Civil War and the color line within its context.
• Modern Slavery: Definition and Types Modern slavery is a predatory practice that is being utilized by businesses and organizations, some seemingly legitimate, worldwide through the exploitative and forced labour of victims and needs to be addressed at the policy and […]
• Slavery in “Disposable People” Book by Kevin Bales The key point of his book is that the phenomenon of slavery is impossible to be eradicated. He has studied the current economic and political situations of the countries presented in his book that help […]
• Late Slavery and Emancipation in the Greater Caribbean The epoch of slavery defined the darkest history in the evolution of the civilization of humanity; the results of slavery continue permeating the psychology of very “far” descendants of the slaves themselves.
• Transatlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Chesapeake Slavery Most of the West African slaves worked across the Chesapeake plantation. This paper will explore the various conditions and adaptations that the African slaves acquired while working in the Chesapeake plantation.
• Slavery and Secession in Georgia The representatives of the State of Georgia were worried because of the constant assaults concerning the institution of slavery, which have created the risk of danger to the State.
• Slavery of African in America: Reasons and Purposes Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the African slaves were shipped to Europe and Eastern Atlantics, but later the colonies started demanding workers and the trade shifted to the Americas.
• Slavery in Charleston, South Carolina Prior to the Year 1865 Charleston is a city in South Carolina and one of the largest cities in the United States. It speaks about the life and origin of the slaves and also highlights some of their experiences; their […]
• Verisimilitude of Equiano’s Narrative and Understanding of Slavery The main argument in the answer to Lovejoy was that the records could clarify the author’s true age, which is the key to the dismissal of the idea that Equiano is a native African.
• The Case for Reparations: Slavery and Segregation Consequences in the US Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his essay The Case for Reparations, examines the consequences of slavery and segregation in the United States and argues the importance of reparations for black Americans, both in a financial and moral […]
• Critique of Colin Thies’ “Commercial Slavery” The goal of the article was to evaluate the economic and political situation of the African slave trade and avoid other aspects according to which people were considered as oppressed and enslaved.
• Fredrick Douglas Characters. Impact of Slavery The institution of slavery drove and shaped the enslaved people to respond and behave in different ways in that Fredrick Bailey was forced to flee away from slavery and later changed his name to Fredrick […]
• John Brown and His Beliefs About Slavery John Brown was a martyr, his last effort to end slavery when he raided Harper’s Ferry helped to shape the nation and change the history of slavery in America.
• Litwack’s Arguments on the Aftermath of Slavery This paper seeks to delve into a technical theme addressed by Leon on what kind of freedom was adopted by the ex-slaves prior to the passage of the 13th U.S.constitutional amendment of 1865 that saw […]
• Slavery, Civil War, and Abolitionist Movement in 1850-1865 They knew they were free only they had to show the colonists that they were aware of that.[1] The slaves were determined and in the unfreed state they still were in rebellion and protested all […]
• Concept of Slavery Rousseau’s Analysis Rights and slavery are presented by the thinker as two contrary notions; Rousseau strived to provide the analysis of rights in their moral, spiritual sense; the involvement into dependence from the rulers means the involvement […]
• The Literature From Slavery to Freedom Its main theme is slavery but it also exhibits other themes like the fight by Afro-Americans for freedom, the search for the identity of black Americans and the appreciation of the uniqueness of African American […]
• Du Bois’ “The Soul of Black Folk” and T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” Du Bois in the work “The Soul of Black Folk” asks the question, why black people are considered to be different, why they are treated differently as they are the same members of the society, […]
• African Slavery and European Plantation Systems: 1525-1700 However, with the discovery of sugar production at the end of the 15th Century to the Atlantic Islands and the opening up of the New World in the European conquests, the Portuguese discovered new ways […]
• The Theme of Slavery in Aristotle’s “Politics” He notes that the fundamental part of an association is the household that is comprised of three different kinds of relationships: master to slave, husband to wife, and parents to their children.
• Abraham Lincoln`s Role in the Abolishment of Slavery in America In this speech, Lincoln emphasized the need for the law governing slavery to prevail and pointed out the importance of the independence of individual states in administering laws that governed slavery without the interference of […]
• Slavery in Latin America and North America In the French and British Caribbean colonies, slaves were also imported in great numbers and majority of the inhabitants were slaves.
• Betty Wood: The Origins of American Slavery Economic analyses and participation of the slave labor force in economic development are used to analyze the impact and role of slave labor in the development of the American economy.
• “American Slavery an American Freedom” by Edmund S. Morgan The book witnesses the close alliance between the establishment of freedom rights in Virginia and the rise of slavery movement which is considered to be the greatest contradiction in American history.
• Western Expansion and Its Influence on Social Reforms and Slavery The western expansion refers to the process whereby the Americans moved away from their original 13 colonies in the 1800s, towards the west which was encouraged by explorers like Lewis and Clarke.
• “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington Each morning it was the duty of the overseer to assign the daily work for the slaves and, when the task was completed, to inspect the fields to see that the work had been done […]
• U.S. in the Fight Against a Modern Form of Slavery Since the United States of America is the most powerful nation in the world it must spearhead the drive to eradicate this new form of slavery within the U.S.and even outside its borders.
• “American Slavery, 1619-1817” by Peter Kolchin The concluding chapter details of the demise of slavery on the onset of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The period of American Revolution was a “watershed “in transforming the vision that portrayed slavery was justifiable […]
• Slavery in the United States There was a sharp increase in the number of slaves during the 18th century, and by the mid of the century, 200,000 of them were working in the American colonies.
• Sociology, Race & Law. Cuban Form of Slavery Today Castro was benefiting alone from the sweat of many Cubans who worked abroad and in Cuba thinking that they could better their livelihood.
• Abraham Lincoln and Free Slavery Moreover, he made reference to the fact that the union was older than the constitution and referred to the spirit of the Articles of the Constitution 1774 and Articles of Confederation of 1788.
• “Slavery Isn’t the Issue” by Juan Williams Review The author claims that the reparation argument is flawed as affirmative action has ensured that a record number of black Americans move up the economic and social ladder.
• Gender Politics: Military Sexual Slavery In this essay, it will be shown that military power and sexual slavery are interconnected, how the human rights of women are violated by the military, and how gender is related to a war crime.
• African Americans Struggle Against Slavery The following paragraphs will explain in detail the two articles on slavery and the African American’s struggle to break away from the heavy and long bonds of slavery. The website tells me that Dredd Scott […]
• Slavery in the World The first independent state in the western hemisphere, the United States of America, was formed as a result of the revolutionary war of North American colonies of England for Independence in 1775-1783.
• Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Rome The revolt of slaves under the direction of Spartacus 73-71 BC is considered the most significant event of the period of crisis of the Roman republican regime in the first century DC and is estimated […]
• Olaudah Equiano as a Fighter Against Slavery Equiano’s Narrative demonstrates a conscious effort to ascribe spiritual enlightenment to the political arena and hence ascertain the importance of the relationship between spiritual intervention, the amysterious ways of Providence’ and parliamentary decisions concerning the […]
• Slavery: Central Paradox of American History Since the rise of United States as a nation, historians have long thought of the emergence of slavery and freedom in our society as a great contradiction. As the central paradox, slavery needed to emerge […]
• Virginia After the Boom: Slavery and “The Losers” New labor force that came to Virginia “threatened the independence of the small freeman and worsened the lot of the servant”.
• Antebellum Slavery in Mark Twain’s World Twain’s depiction of Jim and his relationship with Huck was somewhat flawed in order to obey the needs of the story, and also by Twains’ interest in slave autobiographies and also in blackface minstrelsy.
• Slavery in New York City: Impact and Significance Blacks’ significance in the development of the city’s most critical systems, such as labor, race, and class divisions, makes it possible to conclude that the influence of slavery in New York was substantial. The effect […]
• Slavery Still Exists in American Prisons An examination of the history of the penal system as it existed in the State of Texas proves to be the best illustration of the comparisons between the penal system and the system of slavery.
• Ghana: The Consequences of Colonial Rule and Slavery One of the reasons for this dependency is that the country had been the foothold for the slave trade for about four centuries.
• “Slavery and the Making of America” Documentary According to the film Slavery and the Making of America, slavery had a profound effect on the historical development of American colonies into one country.
• Harriet Jacobs’s Account of Slavery Atrocities She wrote that she wanted the women living in the North to understand the conditions in which slaves lived in the Souths, and the sufferings that enslaved women had to undergo.
• Anti Slavery and Abolitionism Both gradual emancipation and conditional emancipation were not allowed, but free blacks from the North and evangelicals revealed their opposition in the form of the movement that required the development of social reform.
• Sexual Slavery in “The Apology” Film by Hsiung The documentary being discussed focuses on the experiences of three women, the survivors of military sexual slavery in China, South Korea, and the Republic of the Philippines.
• Slavery Resistance from Historical Perspective The lack of rights and power to struggle resulted in the emergence of particular forms of resistance that preconditioned the radical shifts in peoples mentalities and the creation of the tolerant society we can observe […]
• Slavery Abolition and Newfound Freedom in the US One of the biggest achievements of Reconstruction was the acquisition of the right to vote by Black People. Still, Black Americans were no longer forced to tolerate inhumane living conditions, the lack of self-autonomy, and […]
• Slavery Elements in Mississippi Black Code These are the limitation of the freedom of marriage, the limitation of the freedom of work, and the limitation of the freedom of weapon.
• Slavery in “Abolition Speech” by William Wilberforce The following article is devoted to the description of the problem of slavery and the slave trade in Africa. The author also underlines the incompetency of the committee, which is in charge of the question […]
• Slavery History: Letters Analysis The letters analyzed in this paper give a piece of the picture that was observed during the 1600s and the 1700s when slaves from different parts of the world had to serve their masters under […]
• Social Psychology of Modern Slavery The social psychology of modern slavery holds the opinion that slavery still exists today, contrary to the belief of many people that slavery does not exist in the modern world.
• Slavery: History and Influence The slaves were meant to provide labor for the masters and generate wealth. During the day, they would sneak to breastfeed the newborns.
• Reformer and Slavery: William Lloyd Garrison The newspaper was published until the end of the civil war and the abolition of slavery by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment.
• Slavery Role in the American Literature Stowe has claimed that the anti slavery groups questioned the morality of the white Christians who were at the fore front in the oppression of the Black people.
• Thomas Jefferson on Civil Rights, Slavery, Racism When I authored the declaration of independence of the United States of America, I was having a democratic perspective of the American people on my mind.
• Slavery and Identity: “The Known World” by Edward Jones Moses is used to this kind of life and described by one of the other characters as “world-stupid,” meaning he does not know how to live in the outside world. He has a strong connection […]
• Slavery in the USA and Its Impact on Americans The following paper will present a discussion of slavery in the USA and an explanation of the tremendous impact it made on the lives of all Americans.
• “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary To assure the existence of the social and historical support, the movie is presented in the form of the documentary and can be viewed by an extended audience to spread awareness about the drawbacks of […]
• Cultural Consequences of the US Slavery: 1620-1870 3 In the same way that the African had adopted the new language and devised their own language, the Whites began to be influenced by their style of talking and their speech began to be […]
• Frederick Douglass as an Anti-Slavery Activist In “What to the slave is the fourth of July?” the orator drives the attention of his audience to a serious contradiction: Americans consider the Declaration of independence a document that proclaimed freedom, but this […]
• George Whitfield’s Views on Slavery in the US Whitfield’s article attempted to open the eyes of the Christians to the sins that were committed against the Negro slaves. Thomas Kidd’s article, on the other hand, criticized Whitfield’s ownership of slaves.
• Internal Colonization and Slavery in British Empire The act of alienating Ireland in the development process brought the distinction in the collaboration. Slave trade contributed to the growth of the economy of the British Empire via the production of the raw materials […]
• Globalization and Slavery: Multidisciplinary View Globalization is an exciting concept and maybe one of the greatest achievements of the modern world. A case of the multidisciplinary nature of slavery is also evident in Pakistan, where slavery thrives on religious grounds.
• Slavery in “A Brief History of the Caribbean” That is why, the history of America is always connected with this issue and the works, which study it, have a great number of pages devoted to the analysis of slavery, its roots and its […]
• Slavery in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass In the fifth chapter, for instance, the author notes that he was moved to Baltimore, Maryland, something that played a critical role in transforming his life since he faced the realities of slavery.
• Slavery Phenomenon and Its Causes in the USA The dominance of agricultural production in these areas was one of the reasons why slavery persisted in the South. In turn, the experiences of the owners could be very diverse.
• Women Trafficking and Slavery: Trends and Solutions However, inherent in human trafficking is the upholding of slavery in different forms because a definitive element of the constitution of human trafficking includes the use of force or coercion in the abrogation of an […]
• Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery One of the biggest challenges in addressing modern slavery and human trafficking is the fact that the vice is treated as a black market affair where facts about the perpetrators and the victims are difficult […]
• Ethical Problems With Non-Human Slavery and Abuse The last part of this paper discusses the role of religion and spirituality in changing the situation of non-humans caught in human webs of self-interest.
• Racism in USA: Virginia Laws on Slavery The provided laws emphasize the differences between the English, the Indigenous people, and the African slaves juxtaposing the former to the others as superior.
• Sojourner Truth: Slavery Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage The main aim of this step was to show that black people should also be given the right to participate in elections and chose the future of their own state.
• Slavery in Islamic Civilisation The Quran, which is the Holy book of the Islamic religion, played a key role in the grounding of the slave trade in the Muslim community.
• Religious Studies of the Slavery Problem The key point of the discussion was the prohibition or, on the contrary, the permission of the slavery on the new territories.
• Slavery and the Abolition of Slave Trade To a great extent, this outcome can be attributed to such factors to the influence of racist attitudes, the fear of violence or rebellion, and economic interests of many people who perceived the abolition of […]
• Abraham Lincoln Against Slavery Due to this hindrance to abolish slavery in the union, Lincoln decided to do it from the southern states of America using his powers as the commander in chief of the United States.
• Blacks Role in Abolishing Slavery The abolitionist movement and the Black slaves of Britain both played a role in the ultimate abolishment of slavery in Britain.
• The Poetry on the Topic of Slavery There was the belief that some people were born to be free while the rest of the world should serve them, being just slaves, deprived of any rights and is doomed to spend the rest […]
• John Brown and Thomas Cobb Role in Ending Slavery Thomas Cobb invested in his political career with the help of his brother and agitated for the end of slavery in the South.
• Impacts of Slavery and Slave Trade in Africa Slavery existed in the African continent in form of indentured servitude in the previous years, but Atlantic slave trade changed the system, as people were captured by force through raids before being sold to other […]
• Slavery in the Southern Colonies Apart from the favorable climate, the close proximity of the colonies to broad rivers allowed the colonialists to ship in slaves and their produce with ease.
• Christianity, Slavery and Colonialism Paradox He is prominent in opposing the Atlanta Compromise Treaty that advocated for the subjection of the southern blacks to the whites’ political rule. In conclusion, the paradox of Christianity, slavery, and colonialism has been a […]
• Slavery and the Civil War Thus, the main impact of the Civil War was the abolition of slavery which changed the economic and social structures of the South and contributed to shifting the focus on the role of federal government.
• Literary Works’ Views on Slavery in the United States Perhaps, one of the best narratives describing the plight of the captured African people and their journey through slavery is Equiano’s ‘The interesting narrative of Olaudah Equiano.’ Olaudah Equiano provides an in-depth analysis of his […]
• Analysis of Slavery in American History in “Beloved“ by Tony Morrison In such a manner, the novel widens the concept of freedom and provides a new meaning of such words as arememory’ and wouldisremember.’ In particular, although Seth’s new life is deprived of slavery, her memories […]
• History of Abolishing Slavery The abolishment of slavery in Britain empires and the involvement of the British in preaching against slavery contributed immensely towards the end of slavery in the United States and France.
• The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery By digging deep into Lincoln’s history, times, speeches and writings, Foner has attempted to examine the President’s stance on slavery in the United States and his reaction to the issue that greatly affected the American […]
• The Period of Slavery in the “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs The book shows that there was a lot of ignorance in the course of the period of slavery. The masters were well aware of the situation that the slaves were in and they took full […]
• Slavery in America: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” The Author is also the persona in entire narration as he recounts his real experience in slavery right from childhood. In the narration, there are major and minor characters that the author has used to […]
• Abolition of Slavery in Brazil In most parts of America, the legislation to abolition slave trade was greatly opposed by big plantation owners who needed the services of slaves and knew that the legislation to end slavery was a major […]
• Slavery Effects on Enslaved People and Slave Owners Reflecting on the life of Douglass Frederick and written in prose form, the narrative defines the thoughts of the author on various aspects of slavery from the social, economic, security, and the need for appreciation […]
• The Problem of Slavery in Africa The capture of Constantinople by Ottoman in 1453 led to a stop of the movement of slaves from the Balkans and the Black Sea region.
• Racial Slavery in America
• “Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery”: Campaign Critique
• Colonial Portuguese Brazil: Sugar and Slavery
• Aristotle on Human Nature, State, and Slavery
• Reform-Women’s Rights and Slavery
• Human Trafficking in the United States: A Modern Day Slavery
• Oronooko by Aphra Behn and the Why there is no Justification for Slavery
• Rise and Fall of Slavery
• History of Slavery Constitution in US
• Propaganda in Pro-slavery Arguments and Douglass’s Narrative
• Testament Against Slavery: ”Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
• Comparing and Contrasting three Versions of Slavery
• How Did the French Revolution Impacted the Issue of Slavery and the History of Santo Domingo?
• Why slavery is wrong
• The Evolution of American Slavery
• Slavery and Racism: Black Brazilians v. Black Americans
• History of the African-Americans Religion During the Time of Slavery
• The Emergence of a Law of Slavery in Mississippi
• The Effects of Slavery on the American Society
• The Ideas of Freedom and Slavery in Relation to the American Revolution
• Up from Slavery, Down to the Ground: Sailing Amistad. A
• Slavery in the British Colonies: Chesapeake and New England
• Slavery and the Old South
• African American Culture: A History of Slavery
• Slavery and the Underground Railroad
• Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay
• The Southern Argument for Slavery
• Did Morality or Economics Dominate the Debates Over Slavery in the 1850s?
• Masters and Slaves: ”Up From Slavery” by Washington Booker
• No Reparations for Blacks for the Injustice of Slavery
• Slavery: The Stronghold of the Brazil Economy
• Slavery, Racism, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• Slavery, the Civil War & Reconstruction
• Slavery in American History
• Beloved by Toni Morrison: History of Slavery and Racial Segregation in America
• “Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America” by Morgan Kenneth
• African Americans: The Legacy of Slavery in the U.S.
• Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During WWII and US Occupation in Japan
• A New Dawn: The Abolishment of Slavery in the USA
• How Slavery Applies to Africans Within the Islamic World?
• Where Did Slavery Start First in the World?
• How Did Slaves Respond to Slavery?
• How the Germans Influenced Modern Day Slavery?
• How Did Slavery Change From the Arrival of the First Enslaved People in the 1600s to the Abolition of Slavery in the 1860s?
• How Did Slavery Encourage Both Economic Backwardness and Westward Expansion?
• Why Did Colonial Virginians Replace Servitude With Slavery?
• Did Slavery Create More Benefits or Problems for the Nation?
• What Was Slavery Like and How Is It Today?
• When and How Did Slavery Begin?
• What Were the Positive and Negative Effects of Slavery on the Americas?
• Is There a Difference Between Human Trafficking and Slavery?
• How Did Slavery Shape Modern Society and the Colonial Nations?
• How Did Economic, Geographic, and Social Factors Encourage the Growth of Slavery?
• How Did Colonization Along the Atlantic Contribute to Slavery?
• What Degree Did Slavery Play in the Civil War?
• Modern Day Slavery: What Drives Human Trafficking?
• How Did Slavery Start in Africa?
• How Did Slavery Affect the Spirit of the Enslaved and the Enslavers?
• What Did the Haitian Revolution Do to End Racial Slavery?
• How Were African Americans Treated During the Slavery Period?
• What Created Slavery?
• How Important Was Slavery Before 1850? Was It a Marginal Institution, Peripheral to the Development of American Society?
• How Did African American Slavery Help Shape America?
• When Did Slavery Start in America?
• How Can the World Allow Slavery to Continue Today?
• What Were the Differences Between Indentured Servitude and Slavery?
• In What Industries Is Slavery Most Prevalent?
• How Was Slavery Abolished?
• Did the Atlantic Plantation Complex Create Slavery?
• African American History Essay Ideas
• Frederick Douglass Essay Ideas
• Colonialism Essay Ideas
• Fascism Questions
• Human Rights Essay Ideas
• Freedom Topics
• Global Issues Essay Topics
• US History Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Slavery Research Paper Topics

Explore the rich history of slavery through our comprehensive guide on slavery research paper topics . This page is designed for history students seeking in-depth insights into various aspects of slavery, including ancient, medieval, Islamic, and modern periods. We present an extensive list of slavery research paper topics categorized into 10 sections, each comprising 10 thought-provoking topics. Additionally, our article on slavery delves into the historical context, impact, and legacies of slavery, offering students a broad perspective for their research endeavors. Furthermore, we provide valuable tips on selecting and crafting compelling research paper topics on slavery, empowering students to develop well-structured and impactful papers. To support students in their academic journey, iResearchNet offers specialized writing services, featuring expert degree-holding writers, in-depth research, and customized solutions. Embrace the opportunity to excel in your history studies!

100 Slavery Research Paper Topics

In the annals of history, few topics have been as impactful and poignant as the institution of slavery. From ancient civilizations to modern societies, slavery has left an indelible mark on humanity, shaping economies, societies, and cultures throughout the ages. For students of history, delving into the complexities of slavery through research papers offers a unique opportunity to explore this dark chapter of human history and its enduring legacies. In this comprehensive section, we present a curated list of slavery research paper topics, meticulously organized into 10 categories, each encompassing 10 diverse and thought-provoking subjects. Our aim is to provide students with a wide array of historical themes and perspectives, covering ancient slavery, medieval slavery, Islamic slavery, slavery in the United States, modern slavery, slavery and human rights, slavery and economics, slavery and social movements, slavery and cultural impact, and slavery and historical memory. As we embark on this journey, we seek to foster a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of slavery and its profound implications on the past, present, and future.

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• The Role of Slavery in Ancient Civilizations: A Comparative Study
• Slavery in Ancient Greece: Social and Economic Impact
• Roman Slavery: From Captives to Household Servants
• Slavery in Ancient Egypt: Labor and Society
• Slavery in Mesopotamia: Legal Framework and Rights of Enslaved Individuals
• Slavery in Ancient China: Patterns of Enslavement and Liberation
• The Status of Slaves in Pre-Colonial Africa: A Case Study
• Slavery in the Indus Valley Civilization: Evidence and Interpretations
• The Treatment of Slaves in the Aztec Empire: Perspectives and Challenges
• Slavery in the Mayan Civilization: Myths and Reality
• Serfdom and Slavery in Medieval Europe: A Comparative Analysis
• Slave Trade in the Byzantine Empire: Routes and Impact
• Slavery in the Islamic Caliphates: Legal and Social Dimensions
• The Role of Slavery in Feudal Japan: Samurai and Peasants
• Slavery in Medieval China: Institutions and Reforms
• The Slave Trade in Medieval Africa: Regional Variations and Consequences
• Enslavement in the Viking Age: Raiding and Slave Markets
• Slavery in the Middle Ages: Church, State, and Social Norms
• The Experience of Slaves in Medieval Persia: Stories and Perspectives
• Slave Revolts and Resistance in the Medieval World: Causes and Outcomes
• Islamic Slavery and the Trans-Saharan Trade: Connections and Implications
• The Role of Slavery in the Ottoman Empire: Administration and Abolition
• Slavery in the Mamluk Sultanate: Military and Economic Contributions
• The Treatment of Slaves in Medieval Islamic Society: Rights and Restrictions
• Female Slaves in the Islamic World: Roles and Perceptions
• Slavery in Medieval India: Influence of Islamic and Hindu Traditions
• The African Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean: Trade Routes and Networks
• Slavery and Conversion to Islam: Examining the Impact on Enslaved Individuals
• The Experience of African Slaves in the Arab World: Cultural Identity and Resistance
• Slavery in the Maldives: Local Practices and Global Influences
• Slavery in the Southern Colonies: Labor Systems and Plantation Life
• The Experience of Enslaved Individuals in the Northern States: Urban vs. Rural
• Slave Trade and the Middle Passage: Trauma and Survival
• The Role of Free Blacks in the Antebellum South: Rights and Restrictions
• The Underground Railroad in the United States: Networks and Abolitionist Activity
• Slavery and Indigenous Peoples: Interactions and Conflicts
• The Economic Impact of Slavery on the United States: Cotton, Tobacco, and Beyond
• Slavery and the US Constitution: Legal Framework and Political Debates
• Slavery and the American Legal System: Court Cases and Precedents
• The Legacy of Slavery in US Society: Racial Inequality and Systemic Racism
• Slavery in the United States: From Colonial Times to the Civil War
• The Abolitionist Movement in the United States: Key Figures and Campaigns
• The Underground Railroad: Escaping Slavery and Freedom Seekers
• Slavery and the American Civil War: Causes, Consequences, and Legacies
• Slavery in Latin America: Plantations, Labor Systems, and Resistance
• The British Abolition of the Slave Trade: Policy and Impact
• The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Origins, Scale, and Aftermath
• Slavery in the Caribbean: Plantation Economies and Cultural Heritage
• The Impact of Slavery on African Societies: Continuity and Change
• Modern-Day Slavery: Human Trafficking and Forced Labor in the 21st Century
• Slavery and International Law: From Condemnation to Enforcement
• The Role of Slavery in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Slavery Reparations: Historical Injustices and Contemporary Debates
• The Legacies of Slavery: Intergenerational Trauma and Healing
• The Fight for Abolition: Social Movements and Civil Rights Activism
• Slavery in Modern Literature: Representation and Cultural Memory
• The Impact of Slavery on Identity and Belonging: Descendants of Enslaved Individuals
• Modern Slavery and Global Supply Chains: Corporate Responsibility and Accountability
• The Role of Museums and Memorials in Preserving Slavery’s History
• Slavery and Memory Studies: Commemoration and Remembrance
• The Economics of Slavery: Plantations, Labor, and Capital Accumulation
• The Impact of Slavery on Economic Development: Case Studies and Perspectives
• Slavery and Trade Routes: The Triangular Trade and Its Consequences
• Slavery and Industrialization: Labor Systems and Technological Advances
• Slavery and Urbanization: The Role of Enslaved Individuals in Building Cities
• The Economic Justifications for Slavery: Historical Debates and Perspectives
• Slavery and Wealth Inequality: Historical and Contemporary Patterns
• Slavery and Globalization: Connections and Disparities
• The Role of Slave Labor in Building Infrastructures: Roads, Canals, and Railways
• Slavery and Economic Migration: The Movement of Enslaved Individuals
• Slave Revolts and Rebellions: Causes, Strategies, and Outcomes
• Abolitionist Literature: Narratives of Freedom and Empowerment
• The Role of Religion in the Abolitionist Movement: Faith and Advocacy
• The Underground Railroad and Its Impact on African American Communities
• Slavery and Women’s Rights: Intersectionality and Activism
• The Role of Free African Americans in the Abolitionist Movement
• Slave Songs and Music: Expressions of Resistance and Identity
• Slave Codes and Laws: The Legal Framework of Enslavement
• Slavery and Education: Restrictions, Access, and Agency
• The Role of International Diplomacy in Abolitionist Efforts
• Slavery in Art and Literature: Representations and Interpretations
• The Influence of African Cultures on Slave Communities
• Slavery and Memory in Visual Culture: Museums, Monuments, and Memorials
• The Impact of Slave Narratives on Cultural Awareness and Empathy
• Slavery in Folklore and Oral Traditions: Stories of Survival and Resilience
• Slavery and Music: Contributions of Enslaved Africans to American Music
• The Legacy of Slavery in Language and Linguistics: Words and Expressions
• Slavery and Food: Culinary Traditions and Adaptations
• The Representation of Slavery in Films and Media: Stereotypes and Revisionist Narratives
• Slavery’s Influence on Fashion and Clothing: Textiles and Identity
• The Politics of Memory: Commemorating and Memorializing Slavery
• Slavery and Public History: Interpretation and Controversies
• The Role of Confederate Monuments in Shaping Historical Narratives
• Slavery and Heritage Tourism: Ethics and Responsibilities
• The Memory of Slavery in African American Communities: Cultural Expressions
• The Debate over Confederate Symbols and Names: Renaming and Removals
• Slavery and Education: Teaching Difficult Histories in Schools
• The Role of Historical Reenactments in Representing Slavery
• Slavery in Family Histories: Genealogy and Ancestral Connections
• The Future of Slavery Studies: Research Directions and Challenges

This comprehensive list of slavery research paper topics serves as a gateway for students to explore the multifaceted dimensions of slavery across different epochs and societies. From ancient civilizations to the present day, slavery has been a pervasive and deeply troubling institution that has shaped human history in profound ways. By examining these carefully selected topics, students can gain a deeper appreciation for the historical, social, economic, and cultural complexities surrounding slavery. Moreover, delving into these research paper ideas opens avenues for critical thinking, fostering empathy, and raising awareness about the enduring legacy of slavery in contemporary society. As we engage with these slavery research paper topics, it is crucial to approach them with sensitivity and a commitment to shedding light on the human experience, even in the darkest chapters of history.

Slavery: Exploring the History, Impact, and Legacies

Slavery stands as a harrowing chapter in human history, marked by its profound impact on societies, economies, and the lives of countless individuals. This article delves into the complex and troubling history of slavery, tracing its origins, evolution, and far-reaching consequences on both local and global scales. Additionally, it sheds light on the enduring legacies of slavery, as its shadows continue to cast a long and influential reach into the modern world. By examining the historical context of slavery and its multifaceted impact, we can better understand the challenges faced by enslaved people and the enduring repercussions felt across generations and continents.

The Origins of Slavery: Tracing the Roots

The history of slavery can be traced back to ancient civilizations, where individuals were subjected to forced labor and bondage. Exploring the origins of slavery illuminates the early forms of human exploitation and the development of slave systems in various societies, from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece and Rome. Understanding the earliest manifestations of slavery helps contextualize its transformation over time and its role in shaping societies.

Slavery in Medieval Times: Continuity and Change

As the world transitioned into the medieval period, the institution of slavery adapted and persisted. This topic examines the continuity of slavery in medieval Europe, Africa, and Asia, and delves into the changes and variations that occurred during this era. The rise of serfdom, indentured servitude, and chattel slavery all played significant roles in shaping the medieval world’s social, economic, and political landscape.

Islamic Slavery: Unraveling the Narrative

Islamic history also saw the presence of slavery, with a diverse range of experiences and practices within the Islamic world. This section explores the nuances of Islamic slavery, challenging misconceptions and providing a more nuanced understanding of its historical context. The discussion encompasses the role of slavery in Islamic societies, the treatment of enslaved people, and the Quranic teachings related to slavery.

Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Dark Era

One of the most infamous chapters in slavery’s history is the transatlantic slave trade, which forcibly transported millions of Africans to the Americas. This topic delves into the grim reality of the slave trade, analyzing its economic, social, and humanitarian ramifications. The harrowing journey of enslaved Africans, the brutal conditions of the Middle Passage, and the impacts on African societies are essential aspects of this exploration.

Slavery and Abolition Movements: Struggle for Freedom

The fight against slavery was met with resistance from enslaved individuals and abolition movements worldwide. This section examines the courageous efforts of abolitionists, enslaved rebels, and humanitarian activists in challenging the institution of slavery. The works of prominent figures such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, William Wilberforce, and Sojourner Truth are exemplars of the determination to end slavery.

Impact on Culture and Identity

Slavery profoundly influenced the cultural fabric and identities of both enslaved and enslaving societies. This topic investigates how cultural expressions, traditions, and identities were shaped by the institution of slavery, leaving indelible marks on the collective consciousness. From African cultural retentions in the Americas to the enduring legacy of slavery in shaping national identities, this section delves into the power of culture in preserving and challenging the past.

Slavery’s Economic Legacy: Prosperity Built on Exploitation

The economic impact of slavery cannot be underestimated, as it fueled the growth of industries and economies in different regions. This section delves into the economic repercussions of slavery, exploring its role in the accumulation of wealth and its lasting influence on global trade. The exploitative labor practices that underpinned the economies of plantation-based societies and their connection to contemporary economic systems are crucial aspects of this examination.

The Long Road to Emancipation: Legacies of Struggle

Even after the abolition of slavery, the legacy of oppression persisted through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and systemic racism. This topic examines the legacies of slavery’s aftermath and the ongoing struggles for equality and justice. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States and similar movements worldwide demonstrate the enduring efforts to dismantle the structures of racism and discrimination.

Slavery in the US: A Tumultuous History

Focusing on the United States, this category explores the unique history of slavery in the nation. From its early colonial beginnings to the Civil War and beyond, the United States grappled with the profound impact of slavery on its development. Examining slave narratives, the Underground Railroad, and the Emancipation Proclamation, this section highlights the complexities of slavery’s legacy in the US.

Slavery in the Modern World: Contemporary Forms of Exploitation

Despite its historical abolition, slavery has not been eradicated entirely. Modern slavery, including human trafficking and forced labor, continues to affect millions worldwide. This section sheds light on the modern manifestations of slavery and the challenges of combating this global issue. The examination includes efforts by international organizations, governments, and NGOs to address this ongoing human rights violation.

By examining these critical aspects of slavery, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the history, impact, and enduring legacies of this tragic institution. Through rigorous research and compassionate inquiry, we aim to honor the experiences of those who suffered under slavery while striving to create a more just and equitable world for all.

How to Choose Slavery Research Paper Topics

Choosing slavery research paper topics requires thoughtful consideration and a deep understanding of the historical, social, and cultural complexities surrounding this dark period in human history. While the topic selection process can be challenging, it is essential to find a subject that not only interests you but also allows for a comprehensive exploration of the issues related to slavery. Here are ten tips to guide you in selecting the most compelling slavery research paper topics:

• Conduct Preliminary Research : Before settling on a specific topic, conduct preliminary research to familiarize yourself with various aspects of slavery. Read books, scholarly articles, and historical accounts to gain insight into different angles and perspectives. This will help you identify gaps in the existing literature and potential areas for further exploration.
• Define Your Scope : Given the vastness of the subject, it is crucial to define the scope of your research paper. Consider the time period, geographic location, and specific themes you want to delve into. Whether you choose to focus on a particular region, a specific era, or a comparative analysis of different slave systems, defining your scope will provide clarity and direction.
• Explore Different Perspectives : Slavery has left an indelible mark on various societies and individuals. Consider exploring different perspectives, such as the experiences of enslaved individuals, the role of slaveholders, the impact on economies, and the cultural and social repercussions. This multi-faceted approach will enrich your research and foster a comprehensive understanding of the subject.
• Select a Specific Theme or Question : Rather than opting for a broad topic, narrow down your focus by selecting a specific theme or research question. For instance, you could investigate the resistance strategies employed by enslaved people, the economic motivations behind the transatlantic slave trade, or the role of women in slave societies. A focused approach will allow for in-depth analysis and a more cohesive research paper.
• Consult with Your Instructor or Advisor : If you are struggling to choose a research paper topic, don’t hesitate to seek guidance from your instructor or academic advisor. They can offer valuable insights, suggest potential slavery research paper topics, and provide feedback on the feasibility of your ideas.
• Consider Understudied Topics : Exploring less-discussed or understudied topics can be a rewarding endeavor. Look for aspects of slavery that have not received as much scholarly attention and consider shedding light on these lesser-known areas. This can contribute to the broader understanding of the subject and make your research paper stand out.
• Use Primary Sources : Incorporating primary sources in your research can add depth and authenticity to your paper. Letters, diaries, interviews, and official documents from the time of slavery provide firsthand accounts and perspectives, enriching your analysis and providing a more nuanced understanding of historical events.
• Stay Ethical and Sensible : Slavery is a highly sensitive and traumatic subject. When choosing a research paper topic, ensure that you approach it with sensitivity and respect for the individuals who suffered under this institution. Avoid trivializing the experiences of enslaved people or using offensive language in your research.
• Consider Comparative Studies : Comparing the experiences of enslaved people in different regions or exploring how slavery intersected with other historical events can yield fascinating insights. Comparative studies can highlight similarities and differences, providing a broader context for understanding the complexities of slavery.
• Follow Your Passion : Ultimately, choose a slavery research paper topic that genuinely interests you. A passionate approach to your research will drive your motivation, commitment, and enthusiasm throughout the writing process. Embrace a topic that ignites your curiosity and allows you to make a meaningful contribution to the field of historical research.

In conclusion, selecting a research paper topic on slavery requires careful consideration of various factors, including scope, perspective, and sensitivity. By conducting thorough research and defining a focused theme or question, you can explore the depths of this complex historical period and contribute to a deeper understanding of the enduring legacies of slavery. Remember to seek guidance from your instructor, utilize primary sources, and stay passionate in your pursuit of knowledge. With these tips, you can embark on a compelling research journey that sheds light on the history, impact, and ongoing relevance of slavery in our world.

How to Write a Slavery Research Paper

Writing a slavery research paper requires careful planning, extensive research, and a thoughtful approach to address the complex historical, social, and cultural dimensions of this topic. Here are ten essential tips to guide you through the process of writing an engaging and well-structured slavery research paper:

• Develop a Strong Thesis Statement : A compelling thesis statement is the foundation of your research paper. It should present a clear argument or claim that you will explore and support throughout your paper. Your thesis statement should be specific, concise, and indicative of the main focus of your research.
• Conduct In-Depth Research : Thoroughly research your chosen topic using both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources include historical documents, letters, diaries, interviews, and other firsthand accounts from the time of slavery. Secondary sources encompass scholarly books, articles, and analyses that provide context and interpretations of historical events.
• Organize Your Research : Organize your research material systematically to facilitate a coherent and logical structure for your paper. Create an outline that outlines the main sections and arguments you plan to cover. This will help you maintain a clear flow of ideas throughout your research paper.
• Provide Historical Context : Begin your research paper by providing essential historical context. Explain the background of slavery, its origins, evolution, and global impact. Offer insights into the economic, social, and political forces that influenced the growth and sustenance of slavery in different regions.
• Explore Various Perspectives : Dive into the multifaceted perspectives related to slavery. Consider the experiences of enslaved individuals, slaveholders, abolitionists, and the broader society. By exploring diverse viewpoints, you can present a well-rounded analysis of the complex issues surrounding slavery.
• Analyze Primary Sources Critically : When using primary sources, analyze them critically to identify biases, gaps, and limitations. Interrogate the perspectives of the authors and the context in which the sources were created. Critical analysis of primary sources strengthens the authenticity and credibility of your research paper.
• Utilize Comparative Analysis : Consider adopting a comparative approach to enrich your research. Compare and contrast different forms of slavery in various regions or analyze the impact of slavery on different social groups. Comparative analysis enhances the depth of your research and offers valuable insights.
• Address the Legacy of Slavery : Acknowledge the ongoing implications of slavery in the modern world. Examine how slavery has shaped contemporary social, economic, and political structures. Addressing the legacy of slavery demonstrates the relevance of this historical topic in today’s society.
• Cite Sources Properly : Ensure that you cite all your sources properly and adhere to the required citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago). Accurate citation gives credit to the original authors, validates your research, and helps avoid plagiarism.
• Revise and Edit Thoroughly : The final step is to revise and edit your research paper thoroughly. Review the content for coherence, clarity, and logical flow of ideas. Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Consider seeking feedback from peers or instructors to gain different perspectives on your work.

In conclusion, writing a slavery research paper demands meticulous research, critical analysis, and careful consideration of the historical context and its impact on contemporary society. By developing a strong thesis statement, organizing your research, and exploring various perspectives, you can create an engaging and comprehensive research paper on this crucial aspect of human history. Remember to acknowledge the ongoing legacy of slavery and cite your sources accurately. With dedication and attention to detail, you can produce a research paper that sheds light on the complexities of slavery and its enduring significance.

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Research Paper Topics About Slavery: Know Your Enemy

When we recall the most crucial issues of the modern world, we think of global warming, wars, hunger, environmental pollution, and many other problems. But we never associate modern society with slavery. Unfortunately, we still should. It’s not as bad as it used to be. However, this horrifying form of inhumanity still exists. We’ve decided to follow the rule “know your enemy.”

Below, you’ll find an impressive list of research paper topics on slavery. We’ve also placed here a few links to our samples on slavery topics. Moreover, you can check out our business research paper topics or music research topics if you can’t figure out what to write about. Learn more about this global issue and get prepared for any type of debate on the topic! With such a list on hand, writing a slavery or a death penalty research paper will get much easier. 

Below, you’ll find an impressive list of research paper topics on slavery. We’ve also placed here a few links to our samples on slavery topics. Learn more about this global issue and get prepared for any type of debate on the topic!

Argumentative topics about slavery

• Does slavery still exist?
• Is racial inequality in the criminal justice system inherited from slavery?
• Why is slavery immoral?
• Was the impact of slavery on women of color different from the impact on men?
• Did slavery have any positive effects? Exemplify your answer.
• Why were peaceful means against slavery ineffective?
• Why did slavery as a massive phenomenon last so long?
• What type of rehabilitation for ex-slaves should exist?
• Can addictions be considered a form of slavery?
• Was slavery inevitable after all?
• Why are discussions about slavery important for modern students around the world?
• For whom was the idea of slavery the most beneficial when it appeared?
• What is the most destructive aspect of slavery?
• Is slavery the most essential reason for racism in American society?
• Reparations for slavery: are they possible?

Compare and contract slavery topics

• Compare and contrast bullying and slavery.
• Compare and contrast slavery in Cuba and in the USA.
• Compare and contrast serfdom in Russia and slavery in the Americas.
• Compare and contrast the economic gain for the USA from the African American sharecropping system and the bracero program.
• Compare and contrast the Dutch form of slavery and those of other places in Europe.
• Compare and contrast “de facto” and “de jure” slavery in the 17th century.
• What were the main differences between indentured servants and slaves?
• Differences and similarities between American and Middle Eastern slavery systems.
• Compare and contrast the representation of slavery in English and American literature.
• Compare and contrast the participation of white and black women in the feminist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Definition research paper topics on slavery

• Define the term “abolitionism.”
• Define the term “genocide slavery.”
• Define the term “sex trafficking.”
• Define the term “psychological slavery.”
• Define the term “slave narrative.”

Topics about slavery in art and literature

• Why does the slave narrative “Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House” by Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley have great historical value?
• Why was the novel “Clotel” by William Wells Brown important for the abolitionist movement?
• How did the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe help to make public the issue of slavery?
• The arguments against individual freedom in the novel “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley.
• What struggles of female slaves are shown in the autobiography “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs?
• In the slave narrative “In My Bondage and My Freedom,” Frederick Douglass states that slavery makes victims out of everyone: slaves, slavers, and non-slave holding whites. Do you agree or disagree? Defend your viewpoint.
• Does the movie “Spartacus” (1960) portray a slave revolt accurately?
• The issue of slavery in the novel “Invention of Wings” by Sue Monk Kidd.
• Pro-slavery arguments in the book “Defending Slavery” by Paul Finkelman.
• Antislavery motives in the novel “Oroonoko” by Aphra Behn.
• What forms of slavery does Margaret Atwood depict in her dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”?
• Religious worldview on slavery in works by Julia Ward Howe.
• The quest for freedom in the movie “Twelve Years a Slave.”
• Can marriage in the 19th century be suggested as a form of slavery taking into consideration female portrayal in literature?
• Is the movie “Free State of Jones” directed by Gary Ross historically accurate?

Research paper topics on slavery in world history

• Domestic slavery in Medieval Florence.
• The history of slavery in Latin America.
• Was the policy of colonialism the main reason for slavery?
• The impact of the Haitian Revolution on slavery in the Caribbean.
• What were Aristotle’s beliefs regarding slavery?
• What was the social structure in Ancient Egypt? What role did slaves play in its society?
• How was the women’s rights movement related to the antislavery movement in the 19th century?
• What factors caused the development of indentured servitude?
• The role of the Atlantic slave trade in the world economy.
• The evolution of slavery from inception to abolition.
• Why was slavery considered normal in Ancient Greece?
• Was the formation of the Roman Empire possible without slavery?
• What was the most effective form of slave resistance in history? Why?
• Did the ideas of the Enlightenment confront slavery?
• What was Adam Smith’s view on slavery and how did he represent it in his works?

Topics about slavery in US history

• What was Lincoln’s policy toward slavery?
• American politics on slavery in the 19th century.
• How did slavery affect the modern labor politics in the USA?
• Why was the attitude toward slavery different in the northern and in the southern states?
• Mason’s and Dixon’s line as a boundary between the North and the South.
• Is American capitalism rooted in slavery?
• How did slavery form the political landscape in the USA before the Civil War?
• Was the conflict over slavery the only reason for the Civil War?
• What arguments were used by the Confederates to defend slavery?
• What role did slaveholders play in the Texas Revolution?
• Why was the passage on slavery deleted from the Declaration of Independence?
• Why was slavery more important for agricultural regions than for industrial regions?
• The Dred Scott decision and its influence on the beginning of the Civil War.
• How did the Civil War end up with the abolition of slavery?
• What Bible passages did the southerners use to justify slavery?
• Did slaves help the North to win the Civil War?
• What problems did former slaves face after the Civil War? How did Congress help them to solve those problems?
• What was the connection between the enslavement of the indigenous population and African slavery in the Americas?
• How did slavery influence the formation of jazz?
• The British government at the end of the 18th century was both seen as a liberator by African Americans and as a potential enslaver by white Americans. What was the reason for such a difference in their beliefs?
• How did Lincoln’s election affect slavery in the USA?
• What were the main goals of the Abolitionist movement?
• Will legalizing prostitution reduce sex slavery in the USA?
• Why did the slavery system last even after the American industrial revolution?
• Why did white families in the South defend slavery even though not all of them had slaves?

Topics about slavery today

• Nigeria’s policy toward slavery and human trafficking.
• Why does slavery still exist in modern society?
• Why is stopping modern-day human trafficking difficult?
• What agricultural crop is connected with slavery the most?
• What aspects of slavery are different for men and women?
• Does child slavery in China exist?
• The issue of sex slavery in Ghana.
• Can slavery be beneficial in some modern countries? Why or why not?
• How do GCC countries fight slavery now?
• What are the modern forms of slavery?

Paper samples on slavery

As we’ve promised, there are two samples on slavery topics from our writers:

• What was the role of slavery and slave rebellions in Jamaica’s past?
• The antislavery appeal sample .

We hope that our list of research paper topics on slavery along with these samples will help you with composing your piece of writing on this topic. Check out topics for essays about sharks as well. 

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9 thoughts on “ Research Paper Topics About Slavery: Know Your Enemy ”

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Yale’s Ties to Slavery Confronting a Painful History, Building a Stronger Community

Introduction.

Founded in 1701, Yale has a complex past that includes direct and indirect ties to slavery. That history cannot be remade. What can be done is to reveal, share, and learn from that history, so we can strengthen our community and advance Yale’s mission of education and research to create a better future.

To that end, Yale in 2020 launched the Yale and Slavery Research Project to study the institution’s historical involvement with slavery. The discoveries made by the project’s historians and scholars were made public and addressed by Yale throughout the research process. You will find on this website much of what the team learned. For those who wish to know more, we encourage you to read the full account in Yale and Slavery: A History , by Sterling Professor of History David W. Blight with the Yale and Slavery Research Project.

In the webpages that follow, you will also be able to discover what Yale has done, is doing, and will continue to do to address the legacy of slavery.

Violence between Pequots and English colonists intensifies in areas surrounding Long Island Sound. Disease, displacement, and warfare have taken a toll on Indigenous communities. By this time, the Pequot population has declined by nearly 80 percent to around 3,000 people. Pequot culture and security are under tremendous threat.

Map of New England, Yale University Library .

English troops with some Native allies massacre an entire village of 400 Pequot men, women, and children in their fort near the Mystic River. “The fires… in the centre of the fort blazed most terribly,” writes a captain in the English force, “and burnt all in the space of half an hour.”

William Hubbard, “A narrative of the troubles with the Indians in New-England…” Yale University Library .

The first known Africans in Massachusetts, purchased with proceeds earned by selling Pequot captives, arrive on a ship with cotton and tobacco. This trade continues, and in 1646, the New England Confederation codifies that Native captives should “be shipped out and exchanged” for enslaved Black people.

English Castle at Anamabou, Yale University Library .

New Haven Colony, led by John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, is founded.

The Reverend John Davenport, Yale University Art Gallery .

1638 September

The Treaty of Hartford is forced upon the Pequots, designed to both humiliate and liquidate them as a people. The term “Pequot” is outlawed and the Pequot people are declared extinct (though they still survive until today). The first Africans in the Connecticut colony, meanwhile, likely arrive during the Pequot War, probably in trade for Indigenous people who are taken prisoner and enslaved.

Although it is uncertain exactly when the first Africans arrive in Connecticut, their presence is initially recorded at this time, when an enslaved Black boy named Louis Berbice, from Dutch Guiana, is killed by his owner in Hartford. Africans may have been present in New Haven even earlier, likely from its founding; Lucretia, a Black woman, belonged to the colony’s founder and governor, Theophilus Eaton, and may have arrived with him. 

CHAPTER  1 African Captives Arrive in New England

The first Africans in the Connecticut colony likely arrived during the years of the Pequot War, perhaps as a result of trade in Native men who were taken prisoner and enslaved. In fact, the first known Africans in neighboring Massachusetts were bought from the proceeds of selling Pequot captives; they arrived in 1638, on a ship with cotton and tobacco. This trade continued, and in 1646, the New England Confederation codified that Native captives should “be shipped out and exchanged for Negroes.”

New Haven, home of Yale College, was an integral node in the vast world-wide network of commerce in human beings and cultural transformations.

Although it is uncertain exactly when the first Africans arrived in Connecticut, their presence was initially recorded in 1639, when an enslaved Black boy named Louis Berbice, from Dutch Guiana, was killed by his owner in Hartford. And Africans may have been present in New Haven even earlier, likely from its founding. Lucretia, a Black woman, belonged to the colony’s founder and governor, Theophilus Eaton, and may have arrived with him.

Africans came to New England generally via British colonies in the West Indies, although some were transported directly from Africa. They hailed from the Senegambia basin of West Africa, the Grain Coast, the Windward Coast, Benin, Biafra, Dahomey, West Central Africa, and once in a while even as far east as Madagascar. But after 1700, the majority had been swept from the coastal and inland regions of modern-day Ghana, known by the eighteenth century as the Gold Coast or the “slave coast” to European slave traders.

The ghastly business of the slave trade was a three-to-four-century-long commercial enterprise in which Africa provided the one product Europeans most wanted—people—in exchange for firearms, textiles, and other manufactured goods. Its scale, methods, and consequences have defined the meaning of inhumanity, as well as forged humane mass movements against oppression, ever since the emergence of a modern world. New Haven, home of Yale College, was an integral node in the vast world-wide network of commerce in human beings and cultural transformations.

In 1700, on the eve of the creation of the Collegiate School that would soon become Yale, one in ten property inventories in the colony of Connecticut included enslaved people. The prominent property-holding families in the principal towns of New London, New Haven, Norwich, and Hartford were slaveholders. Fully half of all ministers, doctors, and public officials in the colony owned at least one or two enslaved Africans. One could not live and work in or near a Connecticut town without seeing enslaved Black people.

They were, of course, people—with identities, although too often recorded only by first names. In Farmington, an Isaac Miller owned Phebe, Cuff and their son, Peter. Cuff was sold to a Joseph Coe in 1744, and Phebe to the same slaveholder ten years later. A notation in Coe’s deed of sale demonstrates the enslaved man’s demand for a last name that he himself chose: “Cuff desires to have the Sir Name Freeman annexed to his Name.”

This excerpt has been condensed and lightly edited to fit a shorter format.

New Haven Colony is incorporated into the larger colony of Connecticut. 

King Philip’s War breaks out, pitting Native inhabitants of coastal Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut against English colonists supported by some Indigenous allies. The war is fought over land and water, but also stems from hatred and fear among the English that, in living so close to people they consider barbarous, they are losing their faith and purpose. Many Natives, for their part, have come to loathe the English for their greed, arrogance, and conquests; many Indigenous leaders, or sachems, also fear the conversion to Christianity of some of their rival neighbors. Despite opposition from some (not all) clergy, kidnapping and a regional slave trade in Native refugees intensifies as a profitable business during and after the war.

1676 August

A Native marksman serving the English kills King Philip, a sachem of the Wampanoag of southeastern Massachusetts whose real name is Metacom. The sachem’s body is dismembered and decapitated, and his body parts are circulated as mythic objects by English colonists for years to come. His son is one of countless Native children sold into slavery by the English.

Image above: A 19th century depiction of Metacom, known to the English settlers as “King Philip,” Yale University Library .

Chapter 1 Yale’s Beginnings

In the fall of 1676, during the brutal and destructive conflict that came to be known as King Philip’s War, James Noyes wrote to John Allyn, a colonial military and political official, pleading for Native captives. Noyes, a Harvard-educated minister, was serving as chaplain to a company of colonial settlers. Feeling wronged and overburdened, he reminded Allyn he had “been 3 times in your war service,” and on each occasion he was cheated out of the wages and captives rightfully due him. 

The Reverend James Noyes, who would become one of Yale’s founding trustees, wanted a captive to enslave who “maye be worth having.” 

Already in possession of four captives—a fourteen-old girl, a five-year-old girl, their sick mother, and “a Gentleman never used to work, [who] had been sick & lame in his limbs”—Noyes wanted Allyn to send him a young, healthy captive. The minister had sent the sick man away, presumably to die, but, regrettably, he returned to him, and Noyes had been nursing him with food and medicine for three weeks. 

Noyes seemed well informed about the other available captives and was not interested in any of them; “I know of none I like lately come in,” he said. Still others, he knew, had been sent to Barbados—a reminder of this war’s global reverberations in the West Indies and throughout the Atlantic. Noyes was willing to keep the girl, her mother “if she live,” and the five-year-old, but he hoped to receive “a young man a fourth when I can light of one that maye be worth having.” Worth having; the Reverend Noyes wanted a laborer to own in body and perhaps soul. 

In this wartime emergency as well as in more stable times, the Reverend Noyes viewed enslaved Native Americans and eventually Africans as saleable property, commodities at his disposal as a Christian Englishman in a colonial frontier society. In their ambitions, their theological certainties, and their material quests, the Puritans at war in seventeenth-century Connecticut were also the drivers of an early form of commercial expansion and conquest. 

As the theologian Willie James Jennings writes, the Christian “imagination” of the English colonists in New England produced a “breathtaking hubris” demanding that “the natives, black, red or everyone not white, must be brought from chaos to faith. The land, wetlands, fields, and forests must be cleared, organized and brought into productive civilization.” In this lethal mixture of historical circumstances forged by mercantile empire, religious migration, displacement into new worlds, and war for survival and dominance, the Christian imagination, writes Jennings, fell into a “diseased form” increasingly linked to slavery and conquest, to a concept of property in man that demanded ever more creative justifications. 

Twenty-five years after writing his letter to Allyn, in 1701, Noyes was one of the ten trustees who established the Collegiate School, the forerunner to Yale College, in Saybrook, on the shoreline of Long Island Sound. When Noyes and his contemporaries set out to found their school, they did so within a political, cultural, and demographic landscape that had been transformed by decades of warfare—by the blood shed—between settlers and indigenous peoples. Yale’s New England origins lie in these seventeenth-century stories of destruction, migration, and enslavement, both Indigenous and African. 

The Connecticut Colony bans Black and Indigenous people from occupying public roadways after 9 p.m.

On the eve of the creation of the Collegiate School that would become Yale, one in 10 property inventories in the colony of Connecticut includes enslaved people.

1701 October 9

The General Assembly in New Haven authorizes the creation of a college and names 10 clergymen as trustees. The following month, seven of those ministers gather in Saybrook, Connecticut, for their first meeting. Enslaved people are likely present; at least seven of the 10 minister-trustees owned enslaved people. An early 20th-century history of Yale College describes the clergymen as “followed on horseback by their men-servants or slaves, into old Killingworth Street.”

Image above: 1701 Yale Charter, Yale University Library .

Images below, left to right: A New Map of the Most Considerable Plantations of the English in America. Dedicated to His Highness William Duke of Glocester, Yale University Library ; Portrait of Mary Hooker Pierpont, Yale University Art Gallery .

CHAPTER  2 Yale’s Founders and Slavery

On October 9, 1701, the general assembly in New Haven authorized the creation of a college and named ten clergymen as trustees of the new school. The next month, seven of these ministers, all but one trained at Harvard, gathered in Saybrook, Connecticut on the shores of the Long Island Sound, for their first meeting.

Enslaved men, women, and children in the archives of Yale’s founders have remained nearly invisible for three centuries, but to a degree they have been hiding in plain sight.

In attendance were Samuel Andrew of Milford, Thomas Buckingham of Saybrook, Israel Chauncey of Stratford, James Pierpont of New Haven, Abraham Pierson of Kenilworth, Noadiah Russell of Middletown, and Joseph Webb of Fairfield. Together, what they established was essentially the idea of a college, with a few rules about how degrees were to be administered and a stipulation that its leader would be called “rector.”

Fledgling to say the least, this school had been authorized by the colonial assembly, which began with a grant of £120 as well as the assembly’s approval to spend an additional £500 per annum. A wealthy landowner, James Fitch, also donated a farm the college might use for rental revenue. And so instruction of a sort began, with one undergraduate degree given in 1702, along with a handful of master’s degrees.

Some slaves were likely present at the first trustees’ meeting. An early twentieth-century history of Yale describes the journey to Buckingham’s house, picturing the clergymen “followed on horseback by their men-servants or slaves, into old Killingworth Street.” In early eighteenth-century Connecticut, laborers of all sorts, particularly those who served the clergy class, were frequently enslaved or indentured servants. Indeed, of the ten first trustees of what became Yale College, at least seven, and possibly others, owned one or more slaves.

The Reverend Buckingham, in his will, left to his son, Hezekia Buckingham, “my negro boy called Peter to be his Slave Servant,” and to his “son-in-law John Kirtland of Saybrook my negro boy called Philip to be his Slave Servant.” The Reverend Chauncy, in the inventory of his estate, listed “A Negro girl” valued at £40, below “An horse” and “eight sheep” and above “a Great Brass kettle.” Other founders left similar such calculations and matter-of-fact statements of human chattel property in their estates and inventories.

Enslaved men, women, and children in the archives of Yale’s founders have remained nearly invisible for three centuries, but to a degree they have been hiding in plain sight. Of the founding trustees, the Reverend Woodbridge—namesake of Woodbridge Hall—was the largest slaveholder. Church records show that he and his wife owned and baptized Black individuals named Isabella, Cesar Diego, Thomas, and a thirteen-year-old boy named Thorn, whom he sold “in plain and open market.” Furthermore, Abigail Woodbridge, his wife, inherited from her first husband a man named Andrew, who eventually married Tamar, a slave owned by the Reverend Woodbridge. Tamar and Andrew had children named Lydia, Isabella, and Daniel.

Parents, children, and siblings were often separated, sometimes as gifts or when an estate was broken up.

• View enlarged image

Elihu Yale, a wealthy Bostonian who had moved to England as a child, sends hundreds of books, a portrait of King George I, and “goods and merchandizes” to support the Collegiate School of Connecticut. Some portion of Elihu Yale’s fortune is derived from his commercial entanglements with the slave trade; as the governor of Madras, India, for the East India Company, he had a direct role in the trafficking of enslaved people.

Images, left to right: Elihu Yale Snuffbox, Yale University Art Gallery ; Elihu Yale with His Servant, Yale University Art Gallery ; Fort St. George, Yale Center for British Art ; Elihu Yale, Yale University Art Gallery .

Thirteen-year-old Jonathan Edwards begins his studies in Wethersfield, Connecticut, just south of Hartford, one site where Collegiate School students are educated at the time. That same year, the Collegiate School, after conducting classes in Saybrook, Wethersfield, and other Connecticut towns for more than a decade, moves permanently to New Haven.

In honor of the contributions of Elihu Yale—and to entice him to make additional donations—the Collegiate School constructs a building called “Yale College.” This house, the first school building for instruction in New Haven, stands three stories high, 170 feet long, and 22 feet wide, and contains some 50 studies for students.

Elihu Yale with Members of his Family and an Enslaved Child, Y ale Center for British Art .

CHAPTER  2 How Yale Got Its Name

The small Collegiate School, Yale’s precursor, conducted classes in Saybrook, Wethersfield, and other Connecticut towns until it moved permanently to New Haven in 1716. During this period the college found a major benefactor and future namesake from abroad.

Elihu Yale oversaw many sales, adjudications, and accountings of enslaved people for the East India Company. 

Elihu Yale was a wealthy man, born in Boston, who had moved to England as a child and grown up as landed aristocracy in Wales. He spent many years in Madras, India, first as a clerk, then as a writer, eventually becoming governor of the East India Company in that lucrative outpost of the British empire.

The East India Company conducted enormous commerce out of Madras, on India’s southeast coast, and it sanctioned and regulated part of the Indian slave trade. Yale himself oversaw many sales, adjudications, and accountings of enslaved people for the East India Company. When he was governor, the “Consultation Books” frequently would report such decisions, as in 1687, when he and his agents, over Yale’s signature, “Order’d that ten Slaves be sent upon each of the Europe ships for St. Helena, to supply that Island.”

Because of a famine in 1687, enslaved people were frequently sold off to Indian Ocean coastal ports and islands. The governor’s office reported that year “that one hundred Slaves bee sent them … they being by the famine, extreamly cheap.” In 1689, Yale reported that the frigate Pearle returned from Vizagapatam. Part of the cargo was shackles “for well secureing the slaves.”

Sometimes Yale and his fellow agents dealt out enslavement as punishment for crimes, as on September 24, 1687, when “Three people were punished for a crime by being sentenced to life slavery for the company.” Dozens more of these kinds of reports exist in records of Fort St. George.

Precisely whether or how many people Yale personally may have owned is not yet discernable, nor perhaps even the key question. Some portion of Yale’s considerable fortune, amassed while British governor-president in Madras, derived from his myriad entanglements with the purchase and sale of human beings.

In an otherwise highly favorable history of Yale College’s origins, written in 1918, Franklin Bowditch Dexter leaves a remarkable statement about the governor’s character, saying he left a “record of arrogance, cruelty, sensuality, and greed,” and compares him to the biblical king Nebuchadnezzar.

Between 1713 and 1721, Yale sent hundreds of books, a portrait of King George I, and “sundry goods and merchandizes” to support the Collegiate School of Connecticut. As per Yale’s instructions, the goods were sold, and the proceeds went to the building of the college house. It was not an insignificant donation, but in the context of Yale’s enormous wealth, the college was hoping for more.

In honor of his contributions, and to entice him into additional donations, the Collegiate School constructed a building called Yale College. From that day forward, the third-oldest institution of higher learning in America would be known by that name.

1718 September 12

Yale College holds a “splendid Commencement” ceremony, presided over by Connecticut governor Gurdon Saltonstall, a passionate defender of slavery. From this day forward, the third-oldest institution of higher learning in America is known as Yale.

Image above: First Commencement, Held in 1718, Yale University Library .

Image below: Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Yale University Art Gallery .

Jonathan Edwards receives his baccalaureate degree from Yale College. Over the nearly four decades that follow, he becomes America’s most renowned theologian.

Images, left to right: Valedictory Oration, in Latin, delivered at the Yale College commencement of September 1720, Yale University Library ; Jonathan Edwards, Princeton University Art Museum . 

CHAPTER  1 The Contradictions of Jonathan Edwards

In 1720, Jonathan Edwards, an extraordinarily well-read teenager, completed his baccalaureate degree in New Haven at what had become Yale College. Over the next nearly four decades he became America’s greatest theologian.

Edwards, perhaps Yale’s most prominent graduate in its first century, was a willing and representative slaveholder, a famed model for so many other Yale leaders and graduates.

Edwards viewed all races of people as descendants of Adam and Eve, and therefore of the same original sin and human possibility, and he saw Africans and Native Americans as equal to Europeans in their potential for godliness and evil.

In 1739, he surmised that when the millennium arrived in a few hundred years, “Negroes and Indians will be divines.” They would write “excellent books,” become “learned men, and “shall then be very knowing in religion.” Edwards contended that a slaveholder should not abuse his servant because “we are made of the same human race.”

Although he would condemn slave trading in the Atlantic, he never opposed the ownership of enslaved Africans in his community and his household. Indeed, Edwards, perhaps Yale’s most prominent graduate in its first century, was a willing and representative slaveholder, a famed model for so many other Yale leaders and graduates.

A genius with rhetoric and the most probing founder of American theological and philosophical literature, Edwards embodied multiple contradictions or “Puritan dilemmas.” Piety and oppression, deep personal religious faith and a fully hierarchical view of human society, marched together in the Puritan worldview.

The Puritans came to accept the existence of slavery, while endeavoring to control and condemn the abuses of slaveholders. They tried to infuse the inhumanity of slavery with ethical guards against the tyranny of the slave owner. Servitude was somehow natural, including chattel slavery, but the slaveholder must not abuse his terrible power, an ethically untenable proposition. Such a complex paradox in the life of Edwards informs much of the evolving early history of Yale College as well.

During his undergraduate years at Yale, the young Edwards kept a spiritual diary, attempting to record the nature and growth of his faith. Intensely intellectual, anti-social, and constantly questing to embrace an elusive “holiness,” Edwards struggled with inner “wicked inclinations,” as “God would not suffer [him] to go on with any quietness.” And there is little surprise that Edwards’s inward “violent struggles” did not concern the fate of the Black and Native people he saw around him, free or enslaved. Their fate, though, walked within and without his life and that of Yale College.

As Yale expands, much of its funding comes from commerce dependent on enslaved labor—including the West Indies rum business. The Connecticut General Assembly this year passes “An Act for the better Regulating the Duty of Impost upon Rhum,” which includes the provision, “That what shall be gained by the impost on rum for two years next coming shall be applied to the building of a rectors house for Yale College.”

Map of New Haven, Yale University Library . 

The Connecticut Colony passes a law stating that Black, Indigenous, or mixed-race people would be “whipped with forty lashes” if they “uttered or published… words” about a white person that were deemed “actionable” under law. At this time, Africans number roughly 700 out of 38,000 people in Connecticut, or 1.8 percent of the population.

Jonathan Edwards surmises that a few hundred years hence, “Negroes and Indians will be divines,” and will write “excellent books,” become “learned men,” and “shall then be very knowing in religion.” Although he condemns slave trading in the Atlantic, he and his wife enslave several Black people. Edwards never opposes the ownership of enslaved Africans in his community or his household, which serves as a model of behavior for many other Yale leaders and graduates.

Philip Livingston Sr. a businessman and human trafficker, donates the considerable sum of £28, ten shillings to Yale College in recognition of the education his sons have received there. The Livingston fortune is derived in part from investments in slave ships transporting hundreds of Africans from the continent to forced labor in the Americas, and from the provisioning of plantations in the Caribbean. In 1756, Livingston’s gift becomes the basis for the Livingstonian Professorship in Divinity, the college’s first professorship and one of its most prestigious for many years.

Robert Livingston, Yale University Library .

CHAPTER  3 Follow the Money

From its founding, Yale received financial and political support from some of the most influential and prominent families in Connecticut and beyond. These same families were often involved, personally and through their business interests, in slaveholding.

By the 1730s, Philip Livingston, Sr., with his own sons attending Yale, owned shares in at least four slave ships operating out of New York harbor; all told, he and his sons invested in at least fifteen slave voyages to and from Africa. 

Among the wealthiest and most significant family benefactors of Yale were the Livingstons of New York, a dynasty of three generations of human traffickers and merchants. In 1690, New Yorker Robert C. Livingston first invested in a slave voyage to the west coast of Africa.

Robert’s son, Philip Livingston Sr. (1686-1749), patriarch of the eighteenth-century extended family, sent four of his six sons to Yale College, including Philip Livingston, Jr., who later signed the Declaration of Independence. For the senior Livingston, an education at Yale for most of his sons represented the kind of learning as well as prestige he sought for his family’s ascendance into the world of the New York mercantile elite.

By the 1730s, Philip Livingston, Sr., with his own sons attending Yale, owned shares in at least four slave ships operating out of New York harbor; all told, he and his sons invested in at least fifteen slave voyages to and from Africa. The family’s trade routes reached all the way to Madagascar off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean.

The Livingstons imported enslaved Africans directly from the continent; records exist for at least seven ships that disembarked 549 slaves in New York. Their wealth also stemmed from a steady trade of grain, flour, and meat to the islands.

Many in the family, moreover, were significant slaveholders. A Columbia University study found that, by the 1790 federal census, a tally of all branches of the family tree came to some 170 people enslaved by the Livingstons.

In 1745, Philip Livingston Sr. donated the considerable sum of £28 10s. to Yale College “as a small acknowledgment of the sence [sic] I have for the favour and Education my sons have had there.” Livingston’s gift, one of the largest in the middle of the eighteenth century, was originally intended to finance building projects. However, the ambitious president of Yale, Thomas Clap, asked that the money instead be used to create an endowment for the college’s first professorship. Combined with other funds, Livingston’s gift became the basis for the Livingstonian Professorship in Divinity in 1756, one of the most prestigious at Yale for many years. The New York clan remains well commemorated at the university: at the Memorial Quadrangle, the Livingston Gateway was dedicated in 1921.

Without such merchant families, the college would not have prospered into the leading American institution of higher learning that it became by the time of the American Revolution. The West Indian trade, rooted so deeply in slavery, was an indispensable element in Yale College’s birth, growth, and eventual prosperity.

The Black population of the Connecticut Colony reaches 1,000, a number that will grow to 3,587 by 1756.

A plan of the town of New Haven with all the buildings in 1748… Yale University Library .

1750 April 17

The first stone is laid in the construction of Connecticut Hall. This prized work of architecture—now the oldest surviving brick structure in the state—is built in part by Black workers enslaved by Yale luminaries.

Image above: Osborn Hall and South Middle College, Yale University Library .

Images below, left to right: Plan of the City of New Haven, Yale University Library ; Connecticut Hall ca. 1930s, Yale University Library ; Connecticut Hall ca. 1890s, Yale University Library .

Chapter 3 Building Connecticut Hall

Constructed from 1750 to 1753, Connecticut Hall is a prized work of architecture at Yale, the oldest building on campus, and the oldest surviving brick structure in the state. Its large meeting room on the second floor, lined with portraits of Yale deans, long served as the site of Yale faculty meetings. The building is well-marked with commemorative dates on plaques, but nowhere does it record how and by whom it was constructed. Connecticut Hall was built, in part, by Black workers who were enslaved by Yale luminaries.

One can only wonder if Clap and the trustees of Yale College ever arranged any recognition of the many people, enslaved and free, Black and white, who built this new edifice.

Yale’s first president, the Reverend Thomas Clap, had to secure donors to pay the bills and provide the construction materials. He was remarkably assiduous in pursuing both aims. Among eight donors Clap recorded who specifically made gifts to the building of the “new college,” at least three were slaveholders. They included Reverends Jared Eliot of Killingworth, Solomon Williams of Lebanon (brother of Elisha Williams), and Jonathan Todd of East Guilford, Connecticut.

In 1748, Clap’s construction team, under the direction of Thomas Bills and Francis Letort, began to purchase and amass the materials, which included door locks, shingles, masonry of all kinds, hay, thousands of bricks, kilns, lime, stones, carts for hauling, long beams, joiners, pine boards, nails, “oyl,” “White Lead,” “41 Squares of Glass for Round Windows,” and various tools.

Clap was extraordinarily meticulous in his recordkeeping, assembling notes on the approximately twenty-two laborers who worked over two to three years. Some were paid, and some were not. “Jethro’s Gad,” a free person of color, and the son of Jethro Luke, worked 161 ½ days. “Mr. Noyes’s Negro” (named Jack) put in 172 ¾ days. “Theophilus Munson’s Negro” (named Dick) labored 68 days. “Mr. Bonticou’s Negro” (his name as yet unknown) spent 96 days on the job. “Mingo,” enslaved by Archibald McNeil, worked 92 ¾ days. Finally, “Mr. President’s Negro”—that is, one of the people enslaved to Clap himself, possibly George—gave 83 days of strength, sweat, and skill to the job. This record demonstrates that Black workers (almost all unpaid) worked a total of at least 672 days in building this prominent Yale structure.

Many of the white workers, though perhaps not all, are named with their days of labor as well in the president’s “Account of the Cost of New College.” They include Letort and Bills, Samuel Tharp, Samuel Griffin, Daniel Sperry, Joseph Stacey, Nicolas Wood, Abel Wood, John Osborn, Daniel McConnelly, and Richard Cutler.

One can only wonder if Clap and the trustees of Yale College ever arranged any recognition of the many people, enslaved and free, Black and white, who built this edifice in the heart of the educational enterprise at the corner of Chapel and College Streets. Gad Luke worked elbow to elbow with Samuel Sharp and Joseph Stacey, and they may have spent days mixing mortar together. Mingo must have carted bricks and lifted beams with Daniel Sperry. Dick and Abel Wood likely dug the cellar or fired up a kiln on numerous mornings.

On several pages of Clap’s accounts, he describes payments for “team work,” a term with no irony in the listing of people and numbers at that time. It took a team to raise beams or install a window or large door. Some days Gad broke from the “team” on the construction site and worked “culling tobacco” personally for President Clap.

The students, rectors, teachers, and anyone who lived or worked around Yale College as it grew from the 1730s to 1760s would have known Jethro Luke and his family, and perhaps Jack, Dick, Mingo, and other enslaved workers. Do these early workers who laid the foundations of Yale also deserve the title, “founders?” How might we break the silence about their vivid visibility in the university’s archives?

James Hillhouse graduates from Yale. He will go on to serve in the state legislature, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate, and will leave his mark on both Yale and New Haven, helping design Old Brick Row, draining and beautifying the New Haven Green, organizing Grove Street Cemetery, and serving as Yale’s treasurer for 50 years. Though he takes public stances against slavery, he and his wives own enslaved people.

Images, left to right: A view of Old Brick Row, including Connecticut Hall, Yale University Library ; James Hillhouse, Yale University Library ; Elevations and Plans of Present and Projected buildings of Yale College by John Trumbull, Yale University Library . 

Jonathan Edwards, Jr., son of the famous theologian, writes a series of five articles anonymously in The Connecticut Journal and the New-Haven Post-Boy , entitled “Some Observations on the Slavery of Negroes.” The articles establish a theological basis for the antislavery cause, challenging slavery and the slave trade as Christian hypocrisy.

The Connecticut colony outlaws further importation of enslaved people into its borders, a statute not easily enforced. A census the same year counts 6,464 Black people in Connecticut, the largest number in any New England colony, representing 3.2 percent of the population. New Haven County contains 854 enslaved people, and the town of New Haven records 262 people held in bondage.

Interlude Names of the Enslaved

Enslaved people were part of New Haven and Connecticut from the beginning days of European settlement and of the extended community of Yale University from its founding as the Collegiate School in 1701. The people whose names are recorded here were enslaved by the founding and successor trustees, rectors and presidents, and major early donors in Yale’s first century.

The vast majority of the people listed here were identified as Black, but in some cases they were identified as Indigenous. Records of inheritances, sales, baptisms, and other events provide some details, such as family relationships and ages, but in many cases, their names are all that the surviving evidence provides.

This list, although it contains the names of over two hundred human beings, is incomplete. Research has focused on wills, estate papers, church records, and the federal census. Estate documents present an accounting of a household only at the time of a person’s death. Yale’s leaders, like fellow elites of church and society in Connecticut, often enslaved other people earlier in their lives whose names were not recorded in their wills (because they died, were sold, or were manumitted). For this and other reasons, further research would likely show evidence of additional enslaved people connected to Yale.

The names listed are those given, in most cases, to these people by slaveholders. Individual names listed may thus differ from names given at birth by their parents. In some instances, the available records note a person without including any name, and these people are included as well. The absence of a name in the records does not constitute the absence of a life.

• James 
• Phillis 
• Polag 
• Sylvanus 
• unnamed man 
• unnamed person 
• Bristo 
• Agnes 
• Anthony 
• Philip 
• Peter 
• Devonshire 
• Jethro 
• unnamed girl 
• George 
• Pompey 
• Sylva 
• Tamar 
• Dinah 
• Primus 
• Aaron 
• Lettice 
• Ollive 
• Maria 
• Naomi 
• unnamed “next youngest” 
• Binney 
• Joseph 
• Titus 
• Venus 
• Hager 
• Lilly 
• Samson 
• Kedar 
• Dauphin 
• Toney 
• Jenny 
• Benjamin 
• Cesar 
• Daniel 
• Hannibal 
• Joe the Miller
• Pietvlek 
• Son of Joe the Miller 
• Jenne 
• Chiman 
• Chloe 
• Daphnis 
• Eolus 
• Exeter 
• Fortune 
• Rubie 
• Scipio 
• Sylve 
• unnamed 14th child of Dinah 
• unnamed 15th child of Dinah 
• unnamed 16th child of Dinah 
• unnamed 17th child of Dinah 
• unnamed 18th child of Dinah 
• unnamed 19th child of Dinah 
• unnamed 20th child of Dinah 
• Betty 
• Dolle 
• Linus 
• Michael 
• Ceaser 
• unnamed girl
• unnamed man
• unnamed woman
• Sabina 
• Arabella 
• Thomas 
• Sampson 
• Andrew 
• Presey 
• Annise 
• Clary 
• Jerusha 
• Lowes 
• Rachel 
• Rhoda 
• Newport 
• Hagar 
• Zylpha 
• Easter 
• Williams 
• London 
• Grigg 
• Lemmon 
• Mabel 
• Bristol 
• Grace 
• Hector 
• Isaac 
• Flora 
• Isabel 
• Tully 
• unnamed boy 
• unnamed woman 
• Desire 
• Merea 
• Polan 
• Prince 
• Sarah 
• Silvi 
• Candace 
• Diego 
• Isabella 
• Jacob 
• John Waubin 
• Lydia 

1774 October

In Connecticut, “a humble petition of a number of poor Africans,” signed by Bristol Lambee on behalf of many others, asks for “deliverance from a state of unnatural servitude and bondage.” The petitioners assert “that LIBERTY , being founded upon the law of nature, is as necessary to the happiness of an African, as it is to the happiness of an Englishman.” Lambee and his friends beg those inclined toward revolution against Great Britain to “hear our prayers.” Just as the revolutionaries of the colony protest those who “would subject you to slavery,” they write, African Americans demand that those same revolutionaries reflect upon their own “unnatural custom” of holding people as property.

John Trumbull, The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775, Yale University Art Gallery .

Chapter 4 Questions of Freedom

Many Africans and African Americans, some born in Connecticut or Pennsylvania or Virginia, some fighting as soldiers in the Continental army or the British Army, demanded their “rights” to the various “liberties” at stake in this inspiring, if bloody, new age. As the historian J. Franklin Jameson wrote, “the stream of revolution, once started, could not be confined within narrow banks, but spread abroad upon the land.”

The Black petitioners asserted “that LIBERTY , being founded upon the law of nature, is as necessary to the happiness of an African, as it is to the happiness of an Englishman.”

In late 1774, a “ humble Petition of a Number of poor Africans ,” addressed to the “Sons of Liberty in Connecticut,” declared the case boldly. Signed by Bristol Lambee on behalf of many others, the petition considered the radical Sons of Liberty the “most zealous assertors of the natural rights and liberties of mankind” and asked for help in their own “deliverance from a state of unnatural servitude and bondage.”

The petitioners further asserted “that LIBERTY , being founded upon the law of nature, is as necessary to the happiness of an African, as it is to the happiness of an Englishman.” They claimed, “in common with other men, a natural right to be free.” Their “services” could only be exerted by “voluntary compact,” they maintained, stating in clear language the doctrine of consent. They had been captured and taken to “this distant land to be enslaved… to serve like a horse in a mill,” and they established, in light of such dehumanizatioun, a right to resist in self-defense.

Their deepest sense of family, of “endearing ties,” had been sundered; they were “strangers” in their new land. They felt blocked from properly serving God because they were chattel, under “absolute controul “of a “master.” And finally, Lambee and his friends knew the religious teachings of slaveholders. “So contrary is slavery to the very genius of Christianity,” they argued, that the good men of Connecticut risked their own eternal damnation.

The Connecticut petitioners begged those with the revolutionary spirit against Great Britain to “hear our prayers.” As the revolutionaries of the colony protested those who “would subject you to slavery,” the petitioners demanded they reflect upon their own “unnatural custom” of holding property in man. All of Jefferson’s four first principles in the later Declaration of Independence are addressed in Lambee’s eloquent petition: natural rights and consent explicitly, equality and the right of revolution more implicitly.

Black people, enslaved and free, did not stop articulating their hopes that the country would make good on the promises of the Revolution. In the 1780s, a group of Black New Haveners, living not far from Yale College, produced yet another extraordinary petition for freedom. It likely found its spirit in resistance to the nature of Connecticut’s long-term gradual emancipation scheme.

The petition was crafted with verve and passion for the same natural rights and Christian religious inclusion as the earlier document. These people considered themselves “Africas Blacks,” declared themselves still in “Chaine Bondage” and “Cruil Slavirre.” They wanted their “human Bodys” recognized as such. They had “fought the grandest Battles… in this War,” the petition maintained, demanding “Rite and justes” if America was ever to become a “free contry.”

They felt the power of natural rights in their bones and their souls. The New Haveners, in the shadow of the famous college at Yale, declared their right to “Pubblick woship,” and to “larning… our C A B or to reed the holy BiBle. Simple justice, born of a revolution for human liberty, had rarely been stated so directly.

Samuel Hopkins, Yale Class of 1741, delivers a sermon appealing to the consciences of American patriots. “Rouse up then my brethren and assert the Right of universal liberty;” Hopkins declares, “you assert your Right to be free in opposition to the Tyrant of Britain; come be honest men and assert the Right of Africans to be free in opposition to the Tyrants of America.”

Samuel Hopkins, The New York Public Library .

Chapter 4 Yale’s Christian Abolitionists

Yale-trained white ministers laid the foundations for biblically grounded abolitionism in the nineteenth century. One of the most prominent among them was Samuel Hopkins (Yale 1741). 

“Rouse up then my brethren and assert the Right of universal liberty,” pronounced Hopkins. “You assert your Right to be free in opposition to the Tyrant of Britain; come be honest men and assert the Right of the Africans to be free in opposition to the Tyrants of America.”

Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the Reverend Hopkins came under the profound influence of the New Light revivalists while at Yale, especially Jonathan Edwards. But Hopkins did not merely adopt Edwards’ teachings; he undertook, according to scholars Kenneth Minkema and Harry Stout, a “major revision” of Edwards’ theology. 

To Hopkins, slaveholding was a mortal personal and social sin. He was a staunch supporter of American independence but converted republican ideology into a rationale for abolitionism as well as for resistance to Britain. He became Edwards’ “most renowned intellectual heir.” 

In a sermon Hopkins delivered in 1776, he appealed, as firmly as the latter-day radical abolitionists of the early nineteenth century, to the consciences of American patriots. “Rouse up then my brethren and assert the Right of universal liberty,” pronounced Hopkins. “You assert your Right to be free in opposition to the Tyrant of Britain; come be honest men and assert the Right of the Africans to be free in opposition to the Tyrants of America.”

Hopkins was considered dull in the pulpit, but with his pen he penetrated to the heart of the matter: “We cry up Liberty but know it the Negros have as good a Right to be free as we can pretend to.” Hopkins may rightly be said to be present at the creation of moral suasion, the appeal to the conscience and the heart in American abolitionism. 

Another disciple of Edwards forged his own approach to abolitionism in these years. Jonathan Edwards Jr., the theologian’s own son, was born in 1745—a full generation younger than Hopkins, although very much his protégé. Always in the shadow of his famous father, Edwards Jr. was orphaned by age thirteen. While a boy living in Stockbridge at the Indian School, he studied Indigenous languages and was sent to live with the Iroquois near Albany, New York, in preparation for future missionary endeavors. Graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1765, Edwards Jr. eventually moved to New Haven where he pastored the White Haven Church for most of the rest of his life (1769-95). He developed many associations at Yale and delivered examinations to students, although it appears President Stiles passed him over for a professorship of divinity in 1781. 

In 1773, Edwards, Jr. published a series of five articles anonymously in the Connecticut Journal and the New Haven Post-Boy , entitled “Some Observations upon the Slavery of Negroes.” The articles established a New Divinity theological basis for the antislavery cause. They challenged slavery and the slave trade as Christian hypocrisy. 

Edwards Jr. countered specific proslavery arguments, rejecting all biblical justifications for slavery. He noted that although God had permitted the ancient Israelites to invade Canaan and enslave the Canaanites, that did not give Europeans and Americans the right to do the same thing to Africans. He also condemned the idea that slavery benefitted Africans by making Christians out of heathens—an idea that would take generations to weaken or die—asserting that religion had nothing to do with why Africans were enslaved. By repudiating the argument that war captives were fair game for enslavement, he took on one of his father’s own weakest justifications for slavery. 

These early antislavery writings would have been relatively well known around Yale College in a year of increased resistance to British authority, although the younger Edwards’ parishioners frequently found him too radical and theologically rigid. 

In the year of American political independence, fully one-quarter of wills probated in Connecticut include enslaved property.

Signing of the Declaration of Independence begins. Four of the signatories are Yale graduates—Philip Livingston (New York), Lewis Morris (New York), Oliver Wolcott (Connecticut), and Lyman Hall (Georgia)—all of whom are enslavers.

Dunlap Broadside of the Declaration of Independence, Yale University Library .

Two enslaved men, Prince and Prime, submit a petition to the state General Assembly demanding their freedom in the name of both Enlightenment doctrine and Christian virtue.

The British invade New Haven.

Images, left to right: Sketch of the British Invasion of New Haven from Ezra Stiles Papers, Yale University Library ; Ezra Stiles, Yale University Art Gallery ; Map of the British Invasion, Yale University Library ; New Haven Green, Yale University Library .

The state of Connecticut enacts a gradual abolition law, stating that anyone born to enslaved parents after March 1, 1784, would become free on their 25th birthday. An addition in 1797 changes the age to 21 for girls.

Interlude Gradual Emancipation in Connecticut

The name of James Hillhouse, perhaps the town’s most prominent citizen of the early republic, is inscribed across the city of New Haven, including on the city’s oldest public high school and one of its famous avenues. In 1782, Hillhouse was appointed treasurer of Yale College—a position he held until his death fifty years later.

Hillhouse himself recorded his ownership of two enslaved children: a girl named Hagar, born on March 17, 1786, and a boy named Jupiter, born on June 22, 1789.

An astute money manager and a builder, Hillhouse left an enduring mark on the college and the city. Among other things, he helped design Yale’s famed Old Brick Row, drained and beautified the New Haven Green, and organized Grove Street Cemetery, the first cemetery of its kind in the country. Hillhouse also became a powerful politician, serving in the state legislature (1791-96), U.S. Congress (1791-96), and U.S. Senate (1796-1810). As a U.S. Senator, he introduced amendments that would have restricted slavery, particularly in the new lands added to the United States through the Louisiana Purchase.

Yet in the same years that Hillhouse was building an illustrious career as a public servant, he was enslaving people. According to New Haven vital records, Hillhouse himself recorded in front of the justice of the peace his ownership of two enslaved children: a girl named Hagar, born on March 17, 1786, and a boy named Jupiter, born on June 22, 1789.

The children Hagar and Jupiter grew up in the shadow of Connecticut’s Gradual Abolition Act, which gave them only the nebulous future hope of freedom and autonomy. Passed in 1784, the act stipulated that boys born to enslaved mothers after March 1, 1784, would be free on their twenty-fifth birthday, and girls would be free on their twenty-first birthday. Another act, in 1788, required Connecticut slaveholders to register the birth of enslaved children, which explains why Hillhouse recorded his ownership of young Hagar and Jupiter when he did. The Connecticut law was the most prolonged among Northern states that passed such enactments.

Tragically, Hagar would not live to experience freedom. Hillhouse, a member of the First Congregational Church in New Haven, had the young girl baptized “in private” on July 21, 1794. Hagar died two days later at the age of nine, and like her biblical namesake, one of Abraham’s wives, she died a slave.

The little boy named Jupiter outlived Hagar, but only to endure other trials of slavery, separation, and hardship. In 1795, the boy’s mother, Judith Cocks, wrote to Hillhouse, bereft and confused. Cocks and Jupiter had been taken to Marietta, Ohio, by Hillhouse’s first cousin, Lucy Backus Woodbridge and her husband, Dudley Woodbridge (Yale 1766). (This fact alone suggests a disregard for the law, since it was illegal to transport enslaved people outside the state.) Cocks told Hillhouse that Mrs. Woodbridge and her sons “thump and beat [Jupiter] as if he was a Dog” and begged for clarity about Jupiter’s status.

Living in a “strange country without one friend,” Cocks asked Hillhouse to “be so kind as to write me how Long Jupiter is to remain with them.” Woodbridge had told Cocks that Jupiter “is to live with her untill he is twenty five years of age,” something she “had no idea of.”  Cocks further implored Hillhouse not to sell her boy to Mrs. Woodbridge. Even more wrenching, she mentions her daughter Hagar, apparently unaware that the girl had died the year before.

In this rare document, an enslaved mother speaks directly to one of the most powerful men in the country about her fears, and in doing so, articulates the grief, frustration, and sense of powerlessness many enslaved parents felt. Unable to navigate the gradual abolition law with any certainty or genuine hope, Cocks was trying as best she could to protect her children from the violence and cruelty of slavery. In starkest terms, it dramatizes the painfully slow and extended process of abolition in Connecticut, which made children property and subject to the violence and whims of their owners through early adulthood.

Young Jupiter’s fate is unknown, but slavery continued in the Woodbridge household.

Jupiter Hammon, a man enslaved by the Lloyd family of Long Island—relatives by marriage to James Hillhouse, in whose New Haven home he spent time—writes a poem, “An Essay on Slavery”—a revelatory work of Christian devotion and moral condemnation of slavery. Hammon is today recognized as the first published African American poet.

Image above: A View of Old Brick Row, Including Connecticut Hall, Yale University Library .

Image below: Yale College and the College Chapel, Yale University Library .

Chapter 4 ‘Tis Thou Alone Can Make Us Free’

In 1779, when the British invaded New Haven, Sarah Lloyd Hillhouse was twenty-six years old and pregnant with her first child. Her husband James Hillhouse, a Yale graduate and future college treasurer, was off commanding a company of volunteers—including many Yale students—as they attempted to defend the city.

This rare find from the depths of the Yale archives can leave one breathless at the brown paper, the slightly faded ink, and the careful writing.

Sarah described her ordeal to a relative: “You who have gone through a like scene can easily imagine the consternation this town must be in on the occasion,” she wrote. “However we fared much better than we feared as we expected nothing but to see the town reduced to ashes…the rest of the inhabitants were plundered & abused without regard to friend or foe.”

Fortunately for young Hillhouse, she was not alone: an enslaved Black man named Jupiter Hammon was with her at the time of the invasion. “I am happily reassured & have abundant reason to rejoice in the merciful protection of a kind providence—Our old faithful Jupiter happened to be here & was a great comfort to me in my flight.” In the years to come, “faithful Jupiter” would decry slavery in verse and claim his place as America’s first published Black poet.

In 1786, Hammon wrote a poem, “An Essay on Slavery”—a revelatory work of Christian devotion and moral condemnation of slavery. Hammon was a devout Christian and much of the poem reads like an expression of faith, a prayer for deliverance for all the enslaved, and a praise song for Jesus, an all-powerful and liberating God. The manuscript was a working draft, including revisions by Hammon himself.

This rare find from the depths of the Yale archives can leave one breathless at the brown paper, the slightly faded ink, and the careful writing. Here as well is tactile evidence of the paradox of slavery and freedom in the Age of the Revolution.

Hammon was born enslaved in 1711, the property of a wealthy family on Long Island. Yet well into his seventies, he used his considerable literary gifts to envision an end to slavery and the suffering that African and African American people had experienced at the hands of their fellow Christians. Hammon gave keen attention to his rhyme and meter; his handwriting was strong. He repeatedly references both salvation and America through the metaphor of a “distant shore” and the “Christian shore.” He names the Middle Passage with fatefulness and controlled emotion:

Our forefathers came from africa  tost over the raging main  to a Christian shore there for to stay  and not return again.

Exuding Christian humility and supplication in the face of the awesome power of God, Hammon demands that the enslaved and free pray together for “Liberty.” Hammon’s language is King James in style and tone; many a “thee,” “thou,” and “ye” give beauty to the verse. “Tis thou alone can make us free,” the poet declares. In stanzas 11 and 12, Hammon enters briefly the actual voice of God: “Come unto me ye humble souls… bond or free.” After freedom itself, the poem insists on human equality. As he moves the poem with refrain toward crescendo, Hammon returned to the idea of the “shore”:

Come let us join with humble voice  Now on the christian shore  If we will have our only choice  Tis slavery no more…  When shall we hear the joyfull sound  Echo the christian shore  Each humble [voice with songs resound]  That Slavery is no more.

The population of enslaved people in New Haven is declining. The county contains 433 enslaved people, a little more than half the number 16 years earlier. The town of New Haven includes 76 enslaved people, less than a third of the number in 1774.

1790 October 20

Joseph Mountain, a 32-year-old Black man, is convicted of rape and hanged on the New Haven Green. A reported crowd of 10,000 people, more than twice New Haven’s population, gathers to watch the spectacle. Mountain’s notoriety traveled broadly thanks to a purportedly autobiographical account of the crime, Sketches of the Life of Joseph Mountain , likely ghostwritten by David Daggett (Yale 1783), one of the future founders of the Yale Law School. Daggett claimed to have only taken dictation, but he was the magistrate who recorded the confession and saw that it was published. The popular text widely disseminated ideas of Black criminality, threats to social order, and propensities to sexual violence.

The Connecticut state legislature passes a law forbidding enslavers from selling their human property outside of the state.

Eli Whitney, a recent graduate of Yale, obtains a patent for a new type of cotton gin. The innovation revolutionizes cotton production and fuels slavery’s expansion in the South.

Image above: The Eli Whitney Gun Factory, Yale University Art Gallery .

Image below, left to right: Drawing of a Mechanical Cotton Gin, Yale University Library ; Eli Whitney, Yale University Art Gallery .

Chapter 5 Eli Whitney and the Cotton Boom

In 1792, a twenty-seven-year-old Eli Whitney arrived at the Mulberry Grove plantation, some ten miles north of the city of Savannah, Georgia, where he seemed untroubled by the large number of enslaved Black men, women, and children on the rice operation. The Yale graduate had first gone to South Carolina in search of a tutor’s position on a plantation but failed to land the job. Through connections, Catherine Greene, widow of the Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene and mistress at Mulberry Grove, invited Whitney to take up residence at the bend in the Savannah River. There he would tutor and begin to study for the law.

Whitney strove to control his invention as it revolutionized cotton production, the explosion of the textile manufacturing business in the North, and indeed slavery’s expansion in the South.

After overhearing conversations among local planters lamenting that they could not grow short staple cotton to any profit because of enormous difficulty in extracting the green seeds, Whitney did what he had always done—he found some tools and wire and experimented. He constructed a small box with two cylinders rotating in opposite directions and wire teeth in the middle. It worked; after demonstrating it to the locals and showing that the seeds in the cotton could be removed mechanically, all around him he saw the potential for “ginning” the crop at ever increasing scale.

Whitney returned to New Haven. With excitement and vigor, he began to make the cotton gins in his own shop and quickly tried to achieve a patent. But he was too late; his idea and model wereduplicated that same year in Georgia and soon other Southern states. He eventually obtained a patent in 1794, but the machine was out of the bag. Through some sixty or more lawsuits over several years, Whitney strove to control his invention as it revolutionized cotton production, the explosion of the textile manufacturing business in the North, and indeed slavery’s expansion in the South.

In 1790, the U.S. produced 1.5 million pounds of cotton but exported far less. In 1800, after Whitney’s invention, the U.S. produced 36.5 million pounds, and then, in 1820, 167.5 million pounds.

The number of African Americans enslaved grew in proportion with the cotton revolution. In 1790, there were approximately 700,000 people enslaved in the new United States; by 1800, 908,000; in 1810, 1.19 million; in 1820, 1.55 million; in 1830, 2.02 million; in 1840, 2.53 million; in 1850, 3.2 million people were enslaved.

On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, when the South produced its largest cotton crop ever and dominated the nation’s exports, almost 4 million people lived and labored in bondage.

Timothy Dwight, an enslaver and a minister who regards antislavery activities as socially disruptive, succeeds Ezra Stiles as president of Yale College.

Timothy Dwight, Yale University Art Gallery .

The United States produces 36.5 million pounds of cotton, up from 1.5 million pounds produced a decade before. The number of enslaved people in the United States grows to 908,000, up from roughly 700,000 in 1790—and continues to increase significantly along with the expansion of cotton production.

Image above: Drawing from an 1840 Book Showing Enslaved Black People Picking Cotton, Yale University Art Gallery .

John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina graduates from Yale, after which he studies law for one year. He becomes an influential congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, presidential candidate, and vice president—as well as a zealous protector of the “minority rights” of enslavers and a proponent of slavery as a “positive good.”

Images, left to right : John C. Calhoun Portrait , Daguerreotype of John C. Calhoun , John C. Calhoun Portrait , Stained Glass Window of John C. Calhoun , A. B. Doolittle Engraving of Yale College , Yale University Library.

Chapter 5 The Legacy of John C. Calhoun

Yale College produced no more influential political actor or thinker in the half century after the revolution than John C. Calhoun. He studied law for one year, and after practicing as a lawyer back in the town of his roots, Abbeville, in the South Carolina upcountry, as the cotton boom and slavery surged, he entered politics to stay by 1810. The brilliant and ambitious politician would become congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, presidential candidate, and vice-president. In his path he would leave a trail of awe, loathing, failure, and collective tragedy.

Calhoun was revered and feared for his genius, but also obsessed with duty and zeal in protection of the “liberty” and the “minority rights” of slaveholders.

Calhoun was revered and feared for his genius, but also obsessed with duty and zeal in protection of the “liberty” and the “minority rights” of slaveholders. He strove most of his career for the failed dream of a unified South. He believed liberty had to be earned and checked by power, and that democratic virtues were no match for the darkness of human nature. The former Yale historian David Potter once called Calhoun “the most majestic champion of error since Milton’s Satan.”

Above all, through his arguments first honed in the nullification crisis of 1828-33, Calhoun became the principal voice of the compact theory of government, an increasingly rigid states’ rights doctrine first rooted in his Jeffersonianism and with time transforming into secessionism. He advanced a theory of the natural inequality of humankind, based in the widespread claim that humans are divided by nature into laborers and property holders. Finally, and most lastingly, he defended slavery as an eternal “positive good,” rooted in part in the historical claim that African peoples had never created a civilized polity and never could do so in the Americas.

In his time, these ideas were anything but fringe constitutionalism or lonely historical theories; tragically, they served as the intellectual fuel of what many Northerners came to call the “Slave Power,” a radical proslavery persuasion satisfied only by vigorous expansion and then by withdrawal from the federal union. With singular force of mind and logic, Calhoun advanced this cluster of constitutional and moral positions to such a powerful extent that some abolitionists by the 1840s and 1850s referred to the South itself as “Calhoundom.” As his biographer Robert Elder writes, “We do not have to honor John C. Calhoun, nor should we. But he has not left us the luxury of forgetting him.”

Connecticut’s General Assembly passes legislation formally prohibiting Black men from voting. Despite eloquent petitions from Black New Haveners William Lanson and Bias Stanley, the restrictions are incorporated into the Connecticut constitution of 1818.

The American Colonization Society ( ACS ) is formed in Washington, D.C. It fosters a scheme to send willing Black Americans to the new colony of Liberia on the west coast of Africa and develops a popular following across the U.S. political spectrum.

Jeremiah Day, a staunch social and religious conservative, becomes president of Yale. He presides during a period when the divinity and law schools are founded.

Jeremiah Day, Yale University Art Gallery .

Black residents of New Haven come together with Simeon Jocelyn, a white man, to form a separate Black congregation, soon known as the African Ecclesiastical Society. In 1829, it receives formal recognition as a Congregational church and is known as the Temple Street Congregational Church, a center of Black education, abolitionism, and community life in New Haven.

The last sale of enslaved people in New Haven takes place on the New Haven Green. The buyer is an abolitionist, Anthony P. Stoddard, who immediately frees Lois and Lucy Tritton, a mother and daughter.

John Warner Barber, New Haven Green, 1825, Yale University Library .

William Grimes, living in New Haven and running a shop near the Yale campus, authors the first published narrative by an American-born slave: Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, Written by Himself .

Leonard Bacon, an 1820 graduate of Yale, together with prominent Yale graduate and science professor Benjamin Silliman Sr. establish the Connecticut branch of the American Colonization Society.

William Lloyd Garrison, a white Bostonian, begins publishing the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator .

1831 August 7

A group calling itself the Peace and Benevolent Society of Afric-Americans meets in New Haven and unanimously passes a set of resolutions condemning efforts to push Black people to move to Africa. “Resolved, That we know of no other place that we can call our true and appropriate home,” one resolution reads, “excepting these United States, into which our fathers were brought, who enriched the country by their toils, and fought, bled and died in its defence, and left us in its possession—and here we will live and die…”

1831 September 10

An abolitionist alliance, with $10,000 from Black donors and $10,000 from white donors, prepares to build in New Haven the first college for Black men in the United States. In response, New Haven Mayor Dennis Kimberly, a Yale graduate, hosts an “extraordinary meeting” of white property owners “to take into consideration a scheme (said to be in progress) for the establishment, in this City, of ‘a College for the education of Colored Youth.’”  At the packed whites-only meeting, 700 people oppose the college and only four vote in favor. The plan is thwarted.

Engraving of Yale College Scene by S. S. Jocelyn, Yale University Library . 

CHAPTER  6 Dashed Dreams of a Black College

Only months after a new state house opened on New Haven’s Upper Green in 1831, the city’s freemen—the white male property owners, many affiliated with Yale—gathered for an extraordinary town hall meeting that would obliterate bold hopes for the nation’s first Black college.

The white male voters of New Haven spoke with in a near-unanimous voice: seven hundred stood opposed to the college and only four in favor.

The idea had been brought to life by a coalition, both local and national, of free Black leaders and white allies. They considered New Haven a prime location in part because it was vibrant and urbane, had ties to the Caribbean, and was a noted center of higher education as home to Yale.

The September 10 meeting was held in the State House, the co-capital building that had opened earlier in the year. A contemporary account describes that intense afternoon: “So great was the interest to hear the discussion,” declared the New Haven Advertiser , “that, notwithstanding the excessive heat and the almost irrespirable atmosphere of the room, the hall was crowded throughout the afternoon.”

At question was whether New Haven would make history as home to the first college dedicated to the education and advancement of the Black race—or whether it would gain notoriety as a city where those dreams died.

The white male voters of New Haven spoke with in a near-unanimous voice: seven hundred stood opposed to the college and only four in favor. Contemporary newspapers reported that five people addressed the meeting. The speakers against it—Isaac Townsend, Ralph Ingersoll, Nathan Smith, and David Daggett—included three Yale alumni. Only the Reverend Simeon Jocelyn spoke in favor.

On the table were resolutions put forward by a committee that Mayor Kimberly had appointed. The committee included ten people, at least six of whom were Yale alumni. Opposition to the proposal stemmed from several quarters, but the committee members began by expressing their disapproval of—even horror at—the abolitionist impulses latent in the scheme to educate Black Americans.

The committee’s resolutions had two parts. The first part read: “The immediate emancipation of slaves in disregard of the civil institutions of the States in which they belong, and as auxiliary thereto the contemporaneous founding of Colleges for educating colored people, is an unwarrantable and dangerous interference with the internal concerns of other States, and ought to be discouraged.”

Thus the entire abolition movement, along with plans to open educational and other opportunities to free Black people, was depicted as an “unwarrantable and dangerous interference” in Southern institutions—that is, slavery. In voting to support this resolution, seven hundred to four, New Haven’s leading citizens went on record. These Northern gentlemen of standing, in opposing the college proposal, stood together in defense of the South’s proslavery regime.

Other objections hit closer to home, particularly concerns about the potential damage to Yale’s reputation. The second part of the resolution stated: “Yale College, the institutions for the education of females, and the other schools already existing in this city are important to the community and the general interests of science, and as such, have been deservedly patronized by the public and the establishment of a College in the same place to educate the colored population is incompatible with the prosperity, if not the existence of the present institutions of learning, and will be destructive of the best interests of the city….we will resist the establishment of the proposed College in this place, by every lawful means.” New Haven’s white freemen, including the elites of “town and gown,” were clear: they believed a Black college would be a threat to Yale and other schools in town.

1833 May 24

The Connecticut state legislature passes what becomes known as the “Connecticut Black Law,” preventing Black people from outside of the state from being educated in Connecticut.

James W. C. Pennington becomes the first Black person known to attend classes at Yale. Pennington, who had escaped from slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was denied formal admission on account of his race, but he was allowed to be a “visitor” at the Yale divinity school. “My voice was not to be heard in the classroom asking or answering a question,” Pennington later wrote. “I could not get a book from the library and my name was never to appear on the catalogue.”

Image above: Yale College, J. W. Barber’s View, Yale University Library .

Image below: The Reverend James W. C. Pennington, National Portrait Gallery .

CHAPTER  8 Yale’s First Black Student

The Reverend James W.C. Pennington’s experience in Yale classrooms provides a marker in the university’s history, now commemorated with a portrait and a room named for him at the divinity school. But it also represents a historical moment—one that followed from the failure, in 1831, to establish a Black college in New Haven.

“I beg our Anglo-Saxon brethren to accustom themselves to think that we need something more than mere kindness. We ask for justice, truth, and honour as other men do.”

From the fall of 1834 into at least the summer of 1836, Pennington attended theology lectures by professors Nathaniel Taylor and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Both were among the four original faculty of the Yale Theological Department. Pennington later called this period his “visitorship,” since he was never officially admitted. “My voice was not to be heard in the classroom,” Pennington wrote in an 1851 article, “asking or answering a question. I could not get a book from the library and my name was never to appear on the catalogue.”

He boarded in quarters given or rented to him by [white abolitionist] Simeon Jocelyn who, though he had moved away from New Haven after its white residents had refused to allow a Black College a few years earlier, still owned property in the city. Indeed, Jocelyn smoothed Pennington’s transition to Yale and likely helped him get part-time work at the Temple Street Church, of which Jocelyn had been a founder. Pennington, who had escaped slavery as a young man, now helped pastor the African American congregants at that church while studying at Yale.

Pennington earned an international reputation as an abolitionist and the author of two books, including a first attempt to tell the story of Black people’s history, culture, and achievements, A Text Book of the Origin, and History, &c. &c. of the Colored People , published in 1841. But in the preface to his classic autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith: Or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington , he told a different, unforgettable story, exploiting the irony of slaveholders and their Northern defenders who repeatedly argued that many bondspeople lived and were “reared in the mildest form of slavery.”

“In the month of September 1848,” wrote Pennington, “there appeared in my study, one morning, in New York City, an aged coloured man of tall and slender form.” He had “anxiety bordering on despair” on his face. The old man also hailed from Maryland, like Pennington. He laid out a batch of letters in front of the minister. The letters demonstrated that the desperate man had two daughters, age fourteen and sixteen, who were about to be sold South. Their enslaver demanded large sums of money from their father to prevent the sale.

On the following Sabbath Pennington “threw the case before my people” (his congregation). They and other churches managed to raise some $2,250 to purchase the two girls’ freedom. Pennington did not miss the opportunity to employ this story for antislavery propaganda against the “chattel principle,” the idea that there can be property in humans. He made it clear that Black people were fed up with the notion of “property vested in their persons.”

By the time he wrote his autobiography in 1849, Pennington declared on behalf of his fellow free Blacks in Connecticut that they were also fed up with a certain kind of moderate, paternalistic racism. He was grateful for his Yale educational opening in the 1830s but wrote nonetheless: “I beg our Anglo-Saxon brethren to accustom themselves to think that we need something more than mere kindness. We ask for justice, truth, and honour as other men do.”

Samuel F. B. Morse, the famous inventor, artist, and one of Yale’s most notorious proslavery advocates of the antebellum and Civil War eras, tests his first telegraph. He spurs a technological revolution but rejects the principles of democracy and abolition. By the early 1850s he defends slavery as “a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom.”

Images, left to right:  Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, Library of Congress ; Samuel F. B. Morse, Yale University Library .

CHAPTER  8 Samuel F.B. Morse: Artist, Inventor, White Supremacist

No residential college is named for any of Yale’s antislavery advocates of the antebellum era. But there is one for Samuel F. B. Morse, the famous inventor and artist, and one of Yale’s most notorious proslavery advocates of the antebellum and Civil War eras.

Morse was an aggressive white supremacist in an era when that was often no special distinction; he was doggedly anti-Catholic and anti-abolition.

Born in 1791, Samuel was the son of Yale graduate Jedidiah Morse, the famous geographer and Calvinist preacher. Jedidiah helped spread the conspiracy theory of the Illuminati at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and politically became a Federalist, suspicious of all liberal or radical legacies of the French Revolution. Samuel Morse’s rigid conservatism derives from this influence and background, but he forged his own worldview.

Entering Yale College in 1805 at age fourteen, Morse cultivated his talent as an artist, painting portraits, and imbibed lectures by Benjamin Silliman on electricity and other scientific subjects. After graduating from Yale in 1810, the Anglophile studied painting in London, the first of many sojourns in Europe to forge an artistic career.

Returning to America, Morse created a studio in Boston and later moved back to New Haven where he painted portraits of eminent Yale “worthies” Eli Whitney, Noah Webster, and President Jeremiah Day. Morse struggled for commercial success as a painter, but the young artist always had an eye for business ventures, especially as he entered the competitive world of scientific invention.

Morse made a series of partnerships with some scientists and especially with investors, and by 1837, he managed to string ten miles of wire and test his first telegraph. Soon patent wars and legal battles began over who would take ownership of the amazing new technology.

Morse was hardly the first or the only person to perfect the telegraph, but he surely knew how to take and get credit. He demonstrated the telegraph in a university studio, and then in Congress and to President Martin Van Buren at the White House. By 1840, he obtained his United States patent and was on his way to almost unparalleled fame as an inventor.

Simplifying messages into a system of signals soon known as “Morse code,” the former painter was ready to cash in and transform how people passed information, did business, checked a credit rating, gambled their money, gained news of sporting events, and even fought wars. The “news” itself now spread “on the wires.”

Morse and his associates had changed the world, but the inquisitive man had other keen interests, both political and ideological. His thought was a synthesis of science and religion, of Enlightenment and latter-day Calvinism. He was a technological revolutionary and an ideological counterrevolutionary.

Above all, he seems to have despised the idea of America as a pluralistic nation dedicated to any goal of equality, whether in law or in morality. He did not believe in the natural rights tradition, nor in the nod to equality in the Declaration of Independence. Morse was an aggressive white supremacist in an era when that was often no special distinction; he was doggedly anti-Catholic and anti-abolition. He changed how humans used technology but rejected most social change and the principles of democracy.

Morse judged abolitionists, especially immediatists, as “demons in human shape.” A more “wretched, disgusting, hypocritical crew, have not appeared on the face of the earth,” he wrote his brother in 1847, “since the times of Robespierre.” The more he considered the slavery issue, he wrote by 1857, “the more I feel compelled to declare myself on the Southern side of the question.”

The Reverend Amos Gerry Beman becomes pastor of the Temple Street Church. Beman, a national leader of antislavery, temperance, suffrage, and other reform efforts, serves the church for two decades. His scrapbooks document a rich period of organizing and activism in New Haven’s Black community.

Southern students make up roughly 10 percent of the Yale student body, and their numbers continue to grow. “Yale was the favorite college of the southern planters,” wrote Julian Sturtevant, an 1826 graduate, in a later memoir. “From the days of John C. Calhoun, almost to the war of the rebellion, the number of southern students was large.”

1839 June 30

Enslaved Africans aboard the slave-trading vessel La Amistad revolt and take over the ship. After a tortuous journey in which several captives die of hunger and disease, the ship is eventually captured by the U.S. Navy and brought to New London, Connecticut. The Africans are put on trial in New Haven, becoming the focus of both local and national attention.

Images, left to right: Death of Capt. Ferrer, the Captain of the Amistad, Yale University Library ; Cinque: The Chief of the Amistad Captives, Y ale University Art Gallery .

CHAPTER  7 Strangers in a Strange Land

The African survivors of a rebellion aboard La Amistad , a coastal schooner from Cuba, were the talk of New Haven and of the nation in 1839-40. Hailing from the Gallinas coast and Sierra Leone region of West Africa, these people had been captured in Africa, enslaved, and transported across the Atlantic. Then, bought and sold like chattel in Cuba, they had—through an unfathomable combination of daring, courage, and luck—overthrown their captors and seized a kind of tentative, uncertain freedom. Yet in 1839, forty-three of the original captives were imprisoned and put on trial just steps from Yale’s campus.

“Some people say Mendi people crazy dolts,” Kale wrote, “because we no talk American language. Americans no talk Mendi. American people crazy dolts?”

Their ordeal—years of incarceration and complex legal battles—attracted thousands of onlookers, gawkers, and what might be called slavery “tourists” from all over the northeastern United States. The famous white New York abolitionist Lewis Tappan came to New Haven to help organize the defense and publicity for the survivors, and a cast of Yale characters became involved in the unfolding legal and cultural drama. Over the next two years, the African people of the Amistad would leave their mark on the city of New Haven, on Yale, and on the American abolition movement.

Immediately, numerous legal questions arose about just who and what the Amistad Africans were. Were they slaves and murderers, and the property of their Cuban owners, or were they free people exercising their natural rights to liberty and the right of revolution? Were they Spanish property, seized on the high seas by the United States in violation of Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795? Would this ship’s story and the fate of its passengers grow into an international crisis between the United States and Spain that might itself stoke the flames of the slavery issue in American politics? And as abolitionists quickly seized on the Amistad survivors’ legal case, if a Northern state like Connecticut could “free” captive Africans, what might it mean for enslaved African Americans in the South?

Everyone who worked with the Amistad captives in jail and beyond, including Yale professors, graduates, and students, raved about their zeal for education, language, and human connections. They took especially to maps, almanacs, grammar books, and the Bible.

Cinqué, Kinna, and Fuli were often leaders of these study sessions, and the best pupils were the youngest, especially Kale. In their own letters, many of the Africans clearly felt the need not only to describe their conditions but to make appeals to be returned to their home continent, as Cinqué did on behalf of the group.

They also seemed compelled to defend themselves against the various accusations they had endured. “Mendi people,” contended Kinna, “no lie, not steal, no swear, no drink rum, no fight.” And Kale, one of the young boys, complained with a sense of humor. “Some people say Mendi people crazy dolts,” he wrote, “because we no talk American language. Americans no talk Mendi. American people crazy dolts?” 


The abolitionists, the Amistad Committee, and all their allies greatly feared that neither legal logic nor moral arguments would carry the day before this proslavery U.S. Supreme Court, presided over by chief justice Roger Taney, a Maryland slaveholder. The Africans themselves, back in Westville on the edge of New Haven, waited in agony for news as they underwent considerable humiliation and bad treatment in the jail.”

On March 9, Justice Joseph Story of Massachusetts rose in the Court chamber and announced the ruling, a vote of seven to one to deny all the Spaniards’ claims, free the Amistad captives, and asserted their legal, if not their natural, rights. Story, who was antislavery but contemptuous of abolitionists, wrote for the majority that the captives were free-born, were illegally enslaved even under Spanish law, and had struck for freedom by the right of “self-defense.”

Morally, as historian Howard Jones remarks, the Amistad decision was a “Pyrrhic victory,” since it clung to the notion that the slavery question only hinged on positive law, not natural law. The Supreme Court, therefore, made certain that this decision would in no way threaten American slavery where it was lawful. The abolitionists who had spent more than a year and a half fighting for the captives celebrated for the moment; they had won the Africans’ freedom and their liberty to return to Africa if they chose, but they had not won a victory over any legal underpinnings of slavery in their own country.

1841 March 9

The Africans who survived the Amistad ordeal, backed by abolitionists—including some Yale graduates and students—win their case before the Supreme Court. The Court denies Spanish claims to ownership over the Africans, who are set free. The verdict, however, does not challenge the underpinnings of slavery where it is legal in the United States.

1841 November 26

Thirty-five surviving Amistad rebels, along with five missionaries, board a vessel in New York Harbor to begin a voyage to Sierra Leone. Their eventual homecomings are difficult. Most shed their Western clothes to the chagrin of the missionaries who accompany them. Some find their parents and other family members and experience emotional reunions. Yet they soon find themselves back in an African society ravaged by war and slave-trading.

1846 October 21

Theodore Dwight Woolsey becomes president of Yale, serving in that position until 1871.

Reverend Theodore D. Woolsey, President of Yale College, Yale University Library .

1850 September 18

Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring that enslaved people be returned to their owners even if they reside in a free state. One of a series of compromises meant to forestall disunion, the legislation is a turning-point for some moderate abolitionists from Yale who become more committed to antislavery causes.

Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed receives an MD from Yale, becoming the first known Black person ever to graduate from the medical school. (Richard Henry Greene graduates from Yale College in the same year.) Creed’s family has deep roots in New Haven.

The fiercely pro-slavery merchant Joseph Sheffield purchases the old Medical Department building on College Street in New Haven, adds two wings, and remodels the entire structure. With a supporting gift of $50,000 for “the maintenance of Professorships of Engineering, Metallurgy, and Chemistry,” Sheffield makes Yale a training center for scientists. Over time, Sheffield’s financial gifts to Yale reach $1.1 million, a figure not matched by any Yale donor until well into the 20th century.

Images, left to right: Sheffield Mansion, Yale University Library ; Joseph Earl Sheffield, Yale University Art Gallery ; Joseph Earl Sheffield, Yale University Library .

CHAPTER  8 The Anti-Abolitionist Who Bolstered the Sciences at Yale

The largest nineteenth-century donor to Yale was the fierce anti-abolitionist Joseph Earl Sheffield. Born in Southport, Connecticut in 1793, Sheffield became a wealthy cotton merchant, eventually headquartered in the port of Mobile, Alabama. He inherited some wealth and business acumen from his father, who was deeply invested in the West Indian trade, particularly sugar production and slavery in Cuba.

“… although an outspoken hater of slavery as such, I was the defender of the slave holders from the foul aspersions of the abolitionists.”

By 1835, Sheffield moved his family back north to New Haven because he did not want his children to grow up in a slave society, even as he owned the people who worked in his house. He continued to spend winters in Mobile managing his lucrative trade interests. With major donations, the merchant established the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale and helped put the college on the world map for science education.

Sheffield purchased the old Medical Department building on College Street in 1858, added two wings, and remodeled the entire structure. With a supporting gift of $50,000 more for “the maintenance of Professorships of Engineering, Metallurgy, and Chemistry,” Sheffield made Yale a university to train scientists. He lived in a handsome house on Hillhouse Avenue, behind the school that by 1861 carried his name.

In the end, Sheffield’s financial gifts to Yale before his death in 1882 reached $1.1 million, a figure not matched by any Yale donor until well into the twentieth century.

Sheffield despised abolitionists. He warmly defended his many friends among Southern planters and believed the enslavement of African Americans was a benevolent practice that could never be terminated suddenly without enormous social and economic upheaval. When the Civil War erupted in 1861 and caused great disruption at Yale, Sheffield was among those Northern merchants who blamed the radicalism of abolitionists for the entire crisis.

When the trans-continental railroads emerged as a Republican party initiative during the war, he hatched an elaborate proposal to use Black labor to build the railroads through the Pacific West. “By the employment of the emancipated slaves,” Sheffield imagined, “they may be gradually withdrawn from our midst and ultimately diffused through the fertile region of the West… now inhabited by the Indian and the Buffalo; so that in the course of time when these regions shall have been peopled by the ever moving Anglo-Saxon, we shall find the negro so mixed and amalgamated, so improved by cultivation, precept and example, so  diluted  as a people, that their presence will hardly be noticed or detected in the mighty nation which is to inhabit these regions.”

Even though his terrible scheme never materialized, Sheffield demonstrated the extent to which cunning and racist theory could be put to material ends in the nineteenth century.

Sheffield’s political positions in the Civil War era provide a window into the worldviews of many others around Yale, as well as a stark contrast. In his “Personal Reminiscences,” he wrote, “Of course, then although an outspoken hater of slavery as such , I was the defender of the slave holders from the foul aspersions of the abolitionists and often predicted the results which would be precipitated if the people of the North persisted in fanning the flames.”

When Abraham Lincoln was elected and secession exploded in the Deep South, Sheffield was “so certain of the consequences, that I sold, at great sacrifice, my remaining property in Mobile. I had always been an ardent  old-line Whig of the Clay and Webster School , but when that party began to run after the abolitionists and other gods, for the sake of votes; when in fact they began to  run away  from  their principles , I could not follow them.”

On the eve of the Civil War, the number of enslaved people in the United States reaches nearly four million people.

During the war, virtually no Southerners remain enrolled at Yale. By the end of the war, according to one authoritative account, 511 Yale men have served the Confederacy as soldiers and civil officials, of whom 55 die in the war. Among Yale Confederates, 68 are from Northern states; Connecticut contributes an astonishing 28 Yale men who serve the Confederate cause. There is no definitive account of how many Yale students and alumni serve in the Union Army, but researchers have estimated that total at roughly 700 to 850 men.

Image above: The Army of the Potomac — Our Outlying Picket in the Woods, from Harper’s Weekly, Yale University Art Gallery .

1861 April 12

Confederate troops fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor—the first shots of the Civil War.

Image above: Interior of Fort Sumter: During the Bombardment, April 12, 1861, Library of Congress .

1861 June 10

Theodore Winthrop, Yale class of 1848 and President Woolsey’s nephew, becomes the first Yale death in Civil War combat. His killing in eastern Virginia at the battle of Big Bethel, an early and humiliating Union defeat, is reported by the Yale Literary Magazine 10 months later. He is buried in Grove Street Cemetery.

Theodore Winthrop, Yale University Library . 

CHAPTER  9 Heroic Sacrifice

In March 1862, the Yale Literary Magazine reported the first Yale death in combat. Theodore Winthrop, an 1848 graduate, had been killed in eastern Virginia at the Battle of Big Bethel, June 10, 1861, an early and humiliating Union defeat.

“It was worth a life, that march,” wrote Winthrop. “Only one who passed, as we did, through that tempest of cheers, two miles long, can know the terrible enthusiasm of the occasion.”

Born in New Haven, an admired student and a poet, novelist, and travel writer, Winthrop was Yale President Theodore Dwight Woolsey’s nephew. Only a few days after the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, on April 17, 1861, Winthrop told his uncle Theodore that he had enlisted in the army “for the purpose of lending my aid to the great work of attempting to get rid of slavery in this country.”

As he went to war, Winthrop wrote dispatches for the Atlantic Monthly . In his first, he described in vivid terms the spectacular march through Manhattan of the Seventh Regiment in April. “It was worth a life, that march,” he wrote. “Only one who passed, as we did, through that tempest of cheers, two miles long, can know the terrible enthusiasm of the occasion. I could hardly hear the rattle of our own gun-carriages, and only once or twice the music of our band came to me muffled and quelled by the uproar. Handkerchiefs, of course, came floating down upon us from the windows, like a snow. Pretty little gloves pelted us with love-taps.”

When the regiment reached Washington, DC , they encamped inside the chamber of the House of Representatives in the Capitol. Winthrop exploited the irony of the moment in the Atlantic . “Our presence here was the inevitable sequel of past events,” he said. “We appeared with bayonets and bullets because of the bosh uttered on this floor; because of the bills—with treasonable stump-speeches in their bellies—passed here; because of the cowardice of the poltroons… the arrogance of the bullies, who had here cooperated to blind and corrupt the minds of the people.” These images of nearly a thousand men sleeping on their knapsacks in the House chamber would be unforgettable to his eager readers in those early months of the war, especially after they learned of the journey of his flag-draped coffin to New York City and to the honored burial in New Haven.

Official recruiting of Black soldiers to the Union Army and Navy begins. Before war’s end, they number nearly 200,000, including both former slaves from the South and free men of the North.

1863 January 1

President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which declares that all enslaved people within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

Emancipation Proclamation, Yale University Art Gallery . 

CHAPTER  9 A Meaningful Death

Yale student Uriah Parmelee enlisted immediately when the war commenced in April 1861. He dropped out in his junior year and joined a New York regiment of cavalry as a private because no Connecticut unit was yet available. His letters, as well as his diary, which he kept in 1864 and 1865, provide glimpses of the war’s brutality and one soldier’s effort to make sense of the suffering.

“I do not intend to shirk now there is really something to fight for—I mean freedom,” Parmelee declared.

Parmelee had attended sermons by the famous antislavery preacher Henry Ward Beecher while a student at Yale, and he carried into the army as strong a commitment to abolitionism as one may find in such a young Union soldier. In early 1862 he declared his passion for the cause. “I am fighting for Liberty, for the slaves & for the white man alike,” he wrote to his mother.

Parmelee believed the constitutional questions would surely be solved by the war, “but the great heart wound, Slavery, will not be reached” without an aggressive emancipation policy enacted by the Union forces. On September 8, 1862, only a week and a half before the pivotal battle of Antietam, the young soldier lamented that this cruel struggle had not yet resulted in “universal Emancipation.”

But in the wake of President Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, and then one hundred days later with the final proclamation, Parmelee changed his tune. By March 1863, anticipating the spring and summer campaigns in Virginia, the Guilford farm boy turned intellectual soldier refused to apply for a furlough to take a break back home. “I do not intend to shirk now there is really something to fight for—I mean freedom,” he declared. “Since the First of January it has become more and more evident to my mind that the war is henceforth to be conducted upon a different basis…. So then I am willing to remain & endure whatever may fall to my share.”

With his patriotic commitment to emancipation and Union refurbished, and believing in a kind of redemption through bloodshed that became a popular Northern attitude, Parmelee nevertheless betrayed his caustic, hardened sense of what soldiering and war had done to his psyche. “We are liable to become mere machines,” he complained in that same spring of 1863, enduring endless camp life. “One can make no plans in the army, indulge no hopes in any particular direction, have no independence, no voice in anything.”

“If it were not for that spark of hope which lives with nothing to feed upon,” he “would soon give up everything,” concluded the lonely son to his frightened mother. Fifty-six percent of the First Connecticut died before the war ended; he was increasingly a scribe to the bereaved back home.

Parmelee made the final entry in his diary on March 30, 1865, saying he “went out alone seeking intellectual clearness.” After two days of pelting rain, and with spring blossoms of red bud and dogwoods now in full bloom all over central Virginia, the last major battle of the war occurred at Five Forks on April 1. About mid-day, the First Connecticut saw Confederates at a short distance in a peach orchard in full bloom. Parmelee, as was his way, stood up and led his men in a charge as cannon opened up from the orchard. He was struck in the chest by an artillery shell and fell dead on the field.

Only eight days later, the end that everyone sought came as Lee surrendered some twenty-two thousand malnourished soldiers to Grant farther west at Appomattox Court House in one of the signal events of American history.

1863 November

The Connecticut General Assembly authorizes the organization of an African-American regiment to fight in the Civil War; Governor William A. Buckingham thereupon calls for the recruitment of the Twenty-Ninth Connecticut Volunteers. Black men from some 119 towns and cities around Connecticut ultimately enlist.

Alexander Herritage Newton (left), Quartermaster Sergeant, and Daniel S. Lathrop, Quartermaster Sergeant, both of the Twenty-Ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, Yale University Library . 

CHAPTER  9 Black Soldiers Help Turn the Tide

One of the most revolutionary aspects of the Civil War was the enlistment of Black men in the Union army and navy; before the war’s end, nearly two hundred thousand Black men, formerly enslaved in the South as well as free in the North, served in both state and federal regiments.

“What we now want is a country—a free country—a country nowhere saddened by the footprints of a single slave—and nowhere cursed by the presence of a slaveholder,” Frederick Douglass declared.

Official recruiting of Black soldiers began in the spring of 1863. Some Black men from Connecticut sought their chance in the famous Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, recruited in the Bay State by summer of that year. Not until November 1863 did the Connecticut General Assembly authorize the organization of an African American regiment; Governor William A. Buckingham thereupon called for the recruitment of the Twenty-Ninth Connecticut Volunteers.

These enactments were highly partisan in the state: Democratic Party representative William W. Eaton of Hartford called the legislation “the most disgraceful bill ever introduced” at the New Haven State House. Eaton declared he would rather “let loose the wild Camanchees [sic] than the ferocious negro.” Black soldiers would only “spread lust and rapine all over the land.”

Against such racist perceptions, hundreds of men came forward immediately, and by early January 1864, the ranks of the Twenty-Ninth, eventually over 1,200 strong, were filled. The response was so robust that a second regiment, the Thirtieth Connecticut, was formed at the same time.

Soldiers of the Twenty-Ninth Regiment came from several Northern states, but more than half hailed from Connecticut’s cities, towns, and countryside. Crowds came to watch them over the more than three months they trained and practiced; the sounds of marching feet and officers’ shouted commands, the smell of cook fires, and the sight of flags around an African American regiment were scenes that staid Connecticut had never witnessed.

On January 28, 1864, the great orator Frederick Douglass came to town for two extraordinary speaking events—one to the general public, another to the Black regiments. The Palladium advertised his first speech, “The Mission of the War,” as “Fred. Douglass To-night,” at the Music Hall in New Haven on Crown Street, at twenty-five cents per person.

The Music Hall, later known as the New Haven Opera House, was filled beyond its capacity for Douglass’s speech. In this, one of the great orations of Douglass’s life, which he delivered many times, he offered perhaps his clearest description of the war as an apocalyptic, purposeful collision in history, in which “Providence” (God, nature, or fate) entered human affairs and turned that history in a new direction. In stirring terms, Douglass declared a new day possible with a Union victory: “What we now want is a country—a free country—a country nowhere saddened by the footprints of a single slave—and nowhere cursed by the presence of a slaveholder. We want a country… which shall not brand the Declaration of Independence as a lie.”

The following day Douglass rode out to Grapevine Point and delivered a different kind of address to the assembled troops of the Twenty-Ninth and Thirtieth Connecticut. “You are pioneers of the liberty of your race,” Douglass announced. “With the United States cap on your head, the United States eagle on your belt, the United States musket on your shoulder, not all the powers of darkness can prevent you from becoming American citizens.” He left no doubt of the heavy burden on these men. “On you depends the destiny of four millions of the colored race in this country.”

1864 August

The New York Times attacks Yale for its alleged “draft-shirking,” accusing Yale students and their faculty and administration of “plotting evasion and desertion.” At the college, claims the Times , “how to escape the draft” is the issue of the day. “The gutters are dragged for substitutes… Negro slaves who owe to the Republic nothing but curses, are driven to the rescue.”

Image above: Soldiers Assembled on the New Haven Green, Yale University Library . 

1865 April 9

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, symbolizing the end of a long and bloody civil war.

Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett is appointed United States Minister Resident to Haiti, becoming the nation’s first Black diplomat. He had studied at Yale and was the first Black graduate of the State Normal School. Two of his sons go on to attend Yale, including Ulysses Simpson Grant Bassett, Class of 1895, named for the president who appointed his father to the diplomatic service.

Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett Jr., Yale University Library . 

Congress passes the Third Enforcement Act, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which enables the president to suspend habeas corpus in his efforts to combat the KKK and rein in what was beginning to seem like a second civil war.

1871 April 10

Mary A. Goodman signs her last will and testament, leaving her entire estate, except a small annual bequest to her father, to the Yale Theological Department to “be used in aiding young men in preparing for the Gospel ministry, preference being always given to young men of color.” Goodman had worked her entire life in domestic service and as a washerwoman taking in laundry. But when she died in 1872, her real and personal property was worth the substantial sum of about $5,000.

James W. Morris becomes the first Black student to graduate from the Yale Theological Seminary. His contemporary Solomon M. Coles, born enslaved in Virginia, matriculated first but graduated a year later. Coles was the first African American student to complete the entire three-year course of study in theology at Yale.

Solomon M. Coles, Blackpast.org .

CHAPTER  10 Dreams Deferred

On April 10, 1871, Mary A. Goodman signed her last will and testament, leaving her entire estate, except a small annual bequest to her father, to the Yale Theological Department to “be used in aiding young men in preparing for the Gospel ministry, preference being always given to young men of color.”

“Of African Descent,” it was written on Mary A. Goodman’s tombstone, “she gave the earnings of her life to educate men of her own color in Yale College for the Gospel ministry.”

Goodman, a Black New Haven woman, had worked her entire life in domestic service and as a washerwoman taking in laundry. But when she died in 1872, her real and personal property was worth about $5,000. A church newspaper out of Boston, reporting on the gift, said that Goodman had been a member of the College Street Church and “felt that the time was coming, in the rapid progress of her race and people, when they would require a more highly educated ministry.”

The university had her buried in the Grove Street Cemetery, inscribing the tombstone, “Of African Descent, she gave the earnings of her life to educate men of her own color in Yale College for the Gospel ministry.”

James W. Morris became the first Black student to graduate from the Yale Theological Seminary in 1874. His contemporary Solomon M. Coles, born enslaved in Virginia, matriculated before Morris but graduated the next year; Coles was first African American student to complete the entire three-year course of study in theology.

Other Black students were making inroads in the School of Medicine. Bayard Thomas Smith and George Robinson Henderson both transferred to Yale’s medical school from Lincoln University, a Black institution in Oxford, Pennsylvania, when its medical department closed. They graduated in 1875 and 1876, respectively. Between 1876 and 1903, when Cleveland Ferris graduated, at least eight Black students received medical degrees from Yale. This number, while small, exceeds all the known Black graduates of the Yale School of Medicine for the forty years after Ferris’s graduation.

During Reconstruction, some observers believed that widening educational opportunity at Yale presaged hopeful trends in the country at large. In 1874, the Connecticut Courant reported that the U.S. Senate had passed an amended version of a civil rights bill. They noted that one of the senators, Orris S. Ferry of Connecticut, Yale Class of 1844, opposed the bill “because the wisdom, expediency, and right of such legislation were doubted.” The editors of the Courant were dismayed by Ferry’s opposition, suggesting that much of the opposition to the bill centered on school integration. But, as a counterargument, they pointed to Yale:

“The battle has been fought and won in New England, and the prejudice was effectually killed here when Yale opened its doors to the colored student. If the new bill shall in the end accomplish the same good for the country at large, it will prove the best piece of legislation of any congress since slavery was abolished.”

Their optimism was premature.

Bayard Thomas Smith graduates from Yale’s medical school. His fellow student George Robinson Henderson, who like Smith transferred to Yale from Lincoln University, a Black institution in Oxford, Pennsylvania, graduates a year later. Smith and Henderson are the first Black graduates of the Yale medical school since Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed graduated in 1857—a hiatus of nearly 20 years.

New Haven native Edward Bouchet, just two years after finishing his bachelor’s degree at Yale, earns his PhD in physics from Yale. He is the first African American to earn a PhD in any subject in the United States and only the sixth person of any background or race to earn a PhD in physics from an American university. His research delves into geometrical optics and refraction in glass.

Edward Alexander Bouchet, Yale University Library . 

CHAPTER  10 ‘A Good Story from Yale’

A May 1871 headline in the Connecticut Courant promised “A Good Story from Yale.”

The article told of a Democratic politician from New York who was upset his son was forced to sit next to Edward Bouchet, a student in the Yale College Class of 1874. The politician wrote to the professor on his son’s behalf, asking for a new seat, “as it was for many reasons distasteful to sit so near a negro.”

Despite Bouchet’s sterling academic credentials, the professional obstacles he faced throughout his adult life presaged the challenges to come for African Americans.

But according to the article, “The professor wrote back that at present the students were ranged in alphabetical order, and it was not in his power to grant the favor, but ‘next term the desired change will be brought about, for the scholarship then being the criterion, Mr. Bouchet will be in the first division, and your son in the fourth .’”

Edward Bouchet’s arrival as a student at Yale was in many ways the product of decades of growth and organizing within New Haven’s African American community. Born in 1852 on Bradley Street in New Haven, Edward was the youngest of four children. His mother, Susan Cooley Bouchet, was a native of Connecticut; his father, William Francis Bouchet, may have come to New Haven in 1824 as the “body servant” of a student from South Carolina.

Young Edward, a prodigy, first attended school at his church, where children were taught by Vashti Duplex Creed, the city’s first Black schoolteacher. He later went to the Artisan Street Colored School and from there to the New Haven High School from 1866 to 1868. From 1868 to 1870, he attended the prestigious Hopkins School in New Haven. Bouchet was not the first Black student to enroll in that preparatory school, but he flourished there, graduating as valedictorian in 1870.

Bouchet was soon admitted to Yale College, where he excelled in mathematics, physics, and chemistry, graduating sixth in his class of 124 students, and was nominated to Phi Beta Kappa. Bouchet attracted the attention of philanthropist Alfred Cope, who encouraged him to return to Yale to pursue further study.

In 1876, just two years after finishing his bachelor’s degree, Bouchet earned his PhD in physics from Yale. He was the first African American to earn a PhD in any subject in the United States and only the sixth person of any background or race to earn a PhD in physics. His research delved into geometrical optics and refraction in glass. Yet despite his sterling academic credentials, the professional obstacles he faced throughout his adult life presaged the challenges to come for African Americans, even for those, like Bouchet, who had reached the highest tiers of educational achievement.

With a Yale doctorate in hand, Bouchet could not find a job in the universities or laboratories of Jim Crow America. Instead, he did what several of his fellow educated African Americans did in this period: he taught in segregated schools until, at the age of fifty-two, Bouchet sought a teaching position at his alma mater.

His Yale application, dated 1905, delineated his sterling qualifications—six years of Latin, six of Greek, ranked sixth in his Yale class—and described teaching as his “life work.” Bouchet listed Arthur W. Wright, professor of experimental physics at Yale, as his reference. In a confidential questionnaire attesting to Bouchet’s personality, scholarship, and “force of character and ability,” the eminent faculty member recommended Bouchet without reservation.

Yale did not hire Bouchet. Over the next fourteen years he lived a peripatetic life, crisscrossing the country to hold teaching jobs in Missouri, Ohio, and Virginia. He became ill and eventually returned to New Haven, where he died in 1918, in a house on the same street where he had grown up. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Evergreen Cemetery.

Edwin Archer Randolph becomes the first Black graduate of Yale Law School. He is also the first African American admitted to practice law in Connecticut, although he never does. Instead, after graduation he moves to Virginia where he goes into private practice, is elected to political office, and founds the Richmond Planet , a Black newspaper.

Edwin Archer Randolph, Yale University Library .

John Wesley Manning, an early Black student whose parents escaped slavery in North Carolina, graduates from Yale College. Like many other academically gifted Black graduates, he spends his post-graduate career working at segregated schools. After moving to Tennessee, he teaches Latin and serves as the principal of a school in Knoxville. Active in church and civic affairs, Manning holds leadership positions in the East Tennessee Association of Teachers in Colored Schools and the Tennessee Conference of Educational Workers and participates in the Southern Sociological Congress in 1915.

John Wesley Manning, Yale University Library .

Interlude A Yale Family in Slavery and Freedom

During the Civil War, a couple named Alfred and Eliza Manning boarded a steamship off the coast of North Carolina with their young son. They found an empty steamer drum, drilled holes in it, and placed their child, John, inside. Like the mother of Moses hiding her baby in a basket of bulrushes, they covered their own boy with clothes and told him to be quiet.

Being able to raise a family, unburdened by the threat of sale or estrangement, was one of the great distinctions between slavery and freedom.

The vessel belonged to the Union navy, part of a northern blockade intended to prevent the Confederacy from transporting—and profiting from—plantation goods. Alfred and Eliza said goodbye to John and asked the Union sailors to take him to safety. The ship was bound for New Haven, Connecticut, and the Mannings, along with other family members, eventually joined the little boy there. Many years later, in 1881, John Wesley Manning graduated from Yale College. When his own wife gave birth to their first child, they christened her “Yale.”

Stories like this one—of separation and unification, daring and sacrifice, death and new life—played out in ways both spectacular and mundane during the Civil War. And in the years following Appomattox, the country had to reckon with the consequences of a conflict that had torn apart both families and a nation. African Americans searched for loved ones who had been sold away, sometimes many years earlier, or others who had escaped of their own volition when the timing was right. Others sought new opportunities away from those who had held them as chattel, sometimes in faraway cities like New Haven.

Being able to raise a family, unburdened by the threat of sale or estrangement, was one of the great distinctions between slavery and freedom, and the Mannings achieved it. In another turn, John Wesley Manning, his brother Henry Edward Manning, and Samuel Johnston, their family’s onetime enslaver, all came to share the same alma mater. In time, the Manning family, along with many other wartime migrants, would leave their mark on both the university and the city of New Haven.

Henry Edward Manning, brother of John Wesley Manning, receives a three-year certificate from the Yale School of Fine Arts. (The art school did not begin granting degrees until 1891.) Manning may have been the first Black student to receive a certificate from the Yale art school. After graduation, he teaches drawing at a school in Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, but he spends most of his career as a sign painter in New Haven. In the 1920 census, he is listed as self-employed, owning his own business and his own house.

Photographs of Classes, Including for Art, Yale University Library . 

Thomas Nelson Page published his story “Marse Chan,” one of his most popular works offering a sentimental vision of antebellum Southern life, depicting slavery as benevolent and enslaved people as unwaveringly loyal to their enslavers. Part of a national turn toward reconciliation, in which the advances of Black rights during Reconstruction were viewed as a terrible mistake, Page’s writing received glowing reviews in the Yale Daily News , and he was invited to speak on campus.

A statue of Yale science professor Benjamin Silliman Sr. is unveiled on campus. His “faithful” associate Robert M. Park, a free Black man who contributed to Silliman’s work, is on hand to draw aside the veil. Park’s commitment to movements for Black rights paid some dividends in his lifetime: He lived to see one of his grandchildren, Ulysses S. Grant Bassett, graduate from Yale only months before he died.

Ulysses Simpson Grant Bassett, Yale University Library .

CHAPTER  5 A ‘Faithful Servant’ and Abolitionist

Yale science professor Benjamin Silliman is honored today for establishing and promoting scientific education both at Yale and in the United States more broadly. More recently, historians have explored Silliman’s status as a slaveholder and his views on the institution of slavery. Few if any, however, have noticed his close relationship with his longtime assistant, a free Black man named Robert M. Park.

Silliman accompanied his Black assistant, Robert M. Park, in a second-class car because he had been “unwilling to disturb the feelings of one who had served me so well, and contributed materially to my success.”

In the census and city directories, Park was described as a “custodian” and “sexton.” Yet Silliman’s own accounts suggest Park’s duties extended far beyond cleaning or janitorial tasks; he participated in and contributed to the professor’s scientific work. In fact, the elder Silliman came to rely on and credit Park with some of his own success.

In 1835, the celebrated professor was invited to give a series of lectures to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at the Masonic Temple on Tremont Street in Boston. Already well known as a scientist, textbook author, and founder of a leading scientific journal, Silliman was keen to further bolster his reputation and attract funding. The opportunity in Boston was well paying and promised to connect him with even larger audiences. Park accompanied Silliman to Boston, staying for over a month while Silliman delivered his lectures.

Park’s role was not only behind the scenes but out front during the lectures. On March 9, Silliman wrote, “I am well, and all goes well—charmingly indeed,—cordiality and interest and numbers far beyond my expectations. Robert is well and does exceedingly well; he is much admired in his station, and is regarded by the audience as a sub-professor!” Perhaps the audience was able to see what Silliman could not.

The great scientist may have thought it was amusing to consider his “faithful Robert” a “sub-professor.” But he acknowledged Park’s contributions. On their return home to New Haven several weeks later, Silliman decided to sit with his assistant in the second-class car since, he wrote, “objections might be made to the admission of a colored man into the passenger cars of the first class.” Silliman continued, explaining that he accompanied him in part because he had been “unwilling to disturb the feelings of one who had served me so well, and contributed materially to my success.”

Decades later, at the 1884 unveiling of Silliman’s statue on the Yale campus, Andrew Dickson White—a former Silliman student and by then president of Cornell University—told the story of his old professor choosing to sit in the second-class car. To White, an erstwhile abolitionist, the anecdote illustrated Silliman’s humanity and humility. But he also told another story that perhaps better illuminates the place of Robert M. Park—and no doubt others like him—in Yale’s history: Professor Silliman says to a student. ‘How would I test sulphuric [sic] acid?’ The student answers: ‘You would taste it.’ Silliman, indignantly, ‘Taste it, sir; it would burn my tongue out. Tell me, how would I test sulphuric acid?’ Student: ‘You would make Robert taste it.’

The joke “works” because those hearing it would have known Park and would have recognized him as a “faithful” associate who stood by Silliman’s side and did what he was asked to do—whether to further the cause of science or because his job depended upon it. Silliman had been dead twenty years when White recounted those stories, but Park was there, on hand to do a job both dignified and menial: drawing aside the veil covering the statue of his late employer.

Park lived a life that went well beyond his job. In the 1820s, he was one of the four men who, with twenty-one women, founded the Temple Street Congregation in New Haven, a center of Black community and anti-slavery organizing. In 1849, he was a delegate to the Connecticut State Convention of Colored Men, held at the Temple Street Church, “to consider our Political condition, and to devise measures for our elevation and advancement.” Black suffrage and increased educational opportunities “for our children” were on the agenda. Park’s commitment to antislavery and social and political movements for Black rights paid some dividends: he lived to see one of his grandchildren graduate from Yale only months before he died.

Student publications and alumni reminiscences, including Sketches of Yale Life , published this year, often feature racist and derogatory accounts of Black custodians and “campus characters.” These men made their living by cleaning dormitories or selling candy and other goods to Yale students. They had lives beyond their work at Yale of which most students were unaware.

Images, left to right: Candy Vendor Theodore Ferris ; Candy Vendors Theodore and Mary Ferris ; Candy Vendor Hannibal Silliman ; Custodian John Jackson ; Yale Custodians Osborn Allston, Isom Allston, John Jackson, and George Livingston ; A Group of Yale Custodians, Including Isom Allston and George Livingston ; Custodian Osborn Allston , Yale University Library. 

Interlude Black Employees at Yale

In the decades after the Civil War, it was still far more likely to find African Americans cleaning rooms or selling their wares on campus than it was to see them sitting in those rooms as students. The war changed much about New Haven, but employment opportunities for Black men and women remained limited. Given these constraints, a job at Yale as a custodian or a “sweep,” as they were known, was desirable.

Memoirs by Yale alumni include perhaps the most disparaging and caricatured accounts of the men who held these jobs, full of racist slurs, dialect, and stereotypes.

Sweeps made students’ beds, swept the dormitory rooms weekly, and were responsible for keeping campus buildings clean. For many years, there were both private sweeps, paid by individual students, and “regular sweeps” employed by the university. Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg, a member of the Class of 1869, identified a private sweep as “a negro who, besides making the beds and doing the ordinary chamber work, builds the fires, draws the water, blacks boots, buys the oil, fills and trims the lamps, and runs on miscellaneous errands.”

Memoirs by Yale alumni include perhaps the most disparaging and caricatured accounts of the men who held these jobs, full of racist slurs, dialect, and stereotypes. Pontificating on the advantages of living in the dormitories as opposed to lodging in town, one alumnus wrote that in the dorm he “is his own master. His room is his castle. And if he can’t ‘wallop his own n——,’ he can at least swear at his private sweep.”

In addition to the sweeps, a cast of so-called “campus characters,” nearly all African American, were part of Yale life and lore in these years. “Apple Boy,” “Candy Sam,” “Old Clothes’ Man,” “Fine Day,” and “Free Bill” were among the itinerant salespeople, known also as “nondescript purveyors, vendors, beggars, ragamuffins, and other nuisances,” mentioned in the Yale Banner .

Members of the Class of 1868 remembered them as part of their first initiation into college life: “We made an early acquaintance with Candy Sam, who was always to be found, just before recitation, in his place leaning against the wall of the old Atheneum, and, with his dejected smile, trying to persuade us to part with our fractional currency.” “Candy Sam,” whose real name was Theodore Ferris, was blind, and he was often accompanied by his wife, whom the students called Mrs. Candy Sam. A lengthy profile of Ferris in the Yale Literary Magazine reflected students’ affection for and interest in him, declaring his “life more adventurous than many of us imagined. We hope it may long be preserved, for if the Candy Man were removed, college life would lose much of its sweetness.”

Another confectioner, George Joseph Hannibal, L.W. Silliman (known as “Hannibal”) was distinguished by his speeches, which were as long as his full name. “‘Notwithstanding, even under the most superlative temptation, to interrupt the gentlemen in their studies, I beg to ask whether they are not moved to purchase a package of my old-fashioned, home-made molasses candy,’” quoted Clarence Demming in his 1915 book Yale Yesterdays . Demming said “every graduate of Yale since the later sixties” would be able to recall this speech and remember Hannibal, whom Demming deemed the “alpha” of the “original Campus characters.” Around him others like Candy Sam and Fine Day “twinkled as minor stars.”

Other observers were less generous than Demming and the alumni whose memories were steeped in nostalgia. One anonymous member of the Class of 1868 complained about the “the uninvited and usually unwelcome guests who knock at the college doors,” including Candy Sam. With a less than charitable attitude, this author remembered that freshmen would take up a collection for Ferris at Thanksgiving and that he would receive donations of old clothes from the students. He recalled his “chief rival,” Silliman (aka Hannibal), as a “crafty black man.”

The students knew little about the lives of these men. A native of New Haven, Silliman had served with the Black Twenty-Ninth Connecticut Infantry in the Civil War. When he enlisted on December 8, 1863, at the advanced age of twenty-five, he gave his occupation as “confectioner.” Silliman served for the duration of the war, mustering out on October 4, 1865, and returning to his work making and selling sweets. It is unknown whether many students knew about Silliman’s wartime service or considered his life outside campus, but it was reported in the newspapers when he died in 1907.

The Southern Club is established at Yale, open to “all men whose homes are or were south of the old Mason and Dixon line.” Five years later, the club occupies an entire page of the Yale Banner yearbook, with a long list of members and a racist cartoon featuring a buffoonish Black figure.

CHAPTER  11 The Southern Club

Established in 1890, the Yale Southern Club was a student organization open to “all men whose homes are or were south of the old Mason and Dixon line.” At the initial meeting, the founders decided “no party lines [would] be drawn so long as a man comes from the South and is in full sympathy with the Southern people and their best interests.”

The same year that the Yale Daily News “joked” that the Southern Club was planning to “lynch” “a n—— … on the Green,” President Hadley announced plans for a Southern tour.

Although fledgling at first, the Southern Club came into its own only five years later. In 1895, the club occupied an entire page in the Yale Banner , the yearbook, with a long list of members and a cartoon featuring a buffoonish, stereotypical Black figure. And in 1901, the club took up two full pages and featured a new image—a white female figure as well as two cartoons of Black figures.

Trends on campus aligned with the university’s broader plans for courting the South. The same year that the Yale Daily News “joked” that the Southern Club was planning to “lynch” “a n—— … on the Green,” President Hadley began announcing plans for a Southern tour. The Yale Alumni Weekly reported in 1904 that before the Civil War, about 11 percent of students “came from the Slave states,” whereas that figure stood at about 6 percent in the 1903-1904 academic year. However, the organization of alumni groups in Texas, Alabama, New Orleans, and Savannah, and soon Charleston, heralded “a revival of Yale interests at the South.”

The alumni magazine looked favorably on the president’s plans to visit “for the first time” “Yale’s far away children.” The tour of Southern Yale alumni clubs would, it was hoped, bring about a “closer union” and “the forging of fresh links of sympathy and of interest.” It was important, they believed, that Hadley was making “a definite and official expression of the fact that the University, as a national seat of learning, tolerates no sectional divisions.”

Hadley and his wife, Anne, visited alumni clubs in Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah, Dallas, and New Orleans. The president spoke of the university’s needs—new dormitories, a new library, and “sufficient money to help the University out of her difficulties”—but he also invoked Yale’s broader ambitions. Bringing the South back to Yale, he suggested, meant recapturing some of the honor and grandeur that Southern students had once brought to the college.

Whether due to the university’s outreach campaign or for other reasons, the composition of Yale’s alumni body began to change. In 1908, the Yale Daily News rejoiced that the number of alumni living in the South Atlantic and the South Central divisions of the country had increased by 20 percent and 21 percent, respectively, over the previous four years.

Yale’s efforts to court Southern students and alumni yielded a public and tangible result in 1915, with the establishment of the John C. Calhoun Memorial Scholarships. Founded and funded by the Southern Club of Yale and the Yale Southern Alumni Association, with blessing and praise from university leaders, the Calhoun scholarships were to be awarded to two Southern students each year. The Yale Daily News reported that the dean of Yale College, the alumni registrar, the Southern Club president, and “two Southern Yale graduates,” yet to be named, would form a committee to raise the requisite $15,000.

“The Southern Club has long felt the need of establishing a memorial of some sort to J. C. Calhoun, and it seems most fitting that the scholarships for general excellence in athletics and scholarship should be dedicated to this eminent Yale graduate and national statesman,” the Southern Club president declared.

The Reverend Joseph Twichell—an 1859 graduate of Yale College, longtime member of the Yale Corporation, and close friend of Mark Twain—speaks at the dedication of a new statue commemorating former Yale President and Union stalwart Theodore Woolsey. Hearing that the senior class aims to plant, as its “class ivy,” a sprig from the grave of Robert E. Lee, Twitchell is horrified. He tells the gathering that Woolsey’s face would, if it could, be “averted from the scene.”

Joseph Twichell, Yale University Library .

CHAPTER  11 Honoring Robert E. Lee

“For God, for country, and for Yale.” These were the pillars of the Reverend Joseph Twichell’s life. An 1859 graduate of Yale College and a longtime member of the Yale Corporation, Twichell was the pastor of Asylum Hill Congregational Church, a prominent white parish in Hartford, Connecticut. Beyond the pulpit, he was known widely as Mark Twain’s closest friend, and he traveled in distinguished literary and social circles.

Just before giving his speech, Twichell learned that the senior class had chosen to plant a sprig of ivy from the grave of Robert E. Lee. The very idea of it horrified Twichell.

Yale was a central feature of Twichell’s Gilded Age life. He organized reunions, gave toasts at alumni dinners, and said the benediction at commencement. But above all, the pastor and writer considered the Civil War a defining experience for himself, his generation, and the nation at large. The pages of his journal, kept for over forty years, document his dogged determination to honor those who had served—and died—for the Union cause.

From the 1870s until his death in 1918, Twichell was involved in an array of efforts to memorialize the war: he organized reunions of the Third Army Corps, served on the committee to erect the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Hartford, spoke at the laying of the cornerstone of the Excelsior Brigade monument at Gettysburg, advocated for a monument in Georgia to Connecticut soldiers who died in Andersonville prison, and eulogized Ulysses S. Grant from his pulpit.

And so it was fitting that Twichell was invited to speak at the dedication of a new statue of [former Yale President] Theodore Dwight Woolsey during the commencement festivities in June 1896. Later that afternoon, the senior class, in keeping with tradition, would plant its “class ivy.” But just before ascending the platform to give his speech, Twichell learned that the senior class had chosen to plant a sprig of ivy from the grave of Robert E. Lee.

The very idea of it—honoring the “Confederate chief,” as Twichell called him, on the same day as they gathered to remember Union stalwart Woolsey—horrified Twichell. How could such a thing be happening at his beloved Yale? “I disliked the thing so much that I could not forbear an open protest against it,” he later wrote.

Twichell ascended the platform and began delivering his prepared remarks about Woolsey. And for a time, he largely followed his notes. But then he spoke extemporaneously. The Yale Alumni Weekly reported that Twichell paused, turned, and looked “into the face of the statue…showing the intense-est feeling in his voice and manner” and then spoke: “And if I may be pardoned, I must say that if it were possible that face would be averted from the scene, when it shall happen this afternoon…that an ivy from the grave of Robert Lee, a good man, but the historic representative of an infamous cause, shall be planted on this campus to climb the walls of ever loyal Yale.”

“The ivy was planted nevertheless,” Twichell wrote in his journal, “but I had the satisfaction of speaking my mind.” And Twichell learned he was not alone in his feelings. After his remarks, Charles Lane Fitzhugh, a brevet brigadier general in the Union Army and a fellow Yale graduate, “heartily embraced” Twichell. Rumors spread that alumni who graduated during the war years “had expressed the intention of tearing up the ivy tonight,” so the seniors posted a guard to protect it. And in the weeks following, the pastor received many letters supporting his public declaration—and others, “chiefly from the South,” he said, “condemning it.”

Twichell’s rebuke made headlines and elicited support from older alumni, but it did not alter the trajectory of how Yale, or the nation as a whole, would remember the Civil War. Major university celebrations, including the bicentennial in 1901 and the university pageant in 1916, provided special opportunities to embrace the white South and make room for it in the Yale pantheon — especially for that Southerner par excellence, John C. Calhoun. For as the university celebrated, and refashioned, its own history to suit the national mood of reconciliation, it also undertook a deliberate campaign to attract Southern alumni and students back to New Haven.

The Sheffield Debating Club at Yale decides to address the topic, “Resolved: That lynching is justifiable.” Two debaters take the affirmative position and two the negative. The judges and “the house” decide in favor of the affirmative. The same year, more than 120 Black people are lynched in the United States.

CHAPTER  10 Open for Debate: Lynching

From the 1880s into the early decades of the twentieth century, Yale students engaged with the most pressing issues of the day as they flocked to hear national figures speaking on their campus. A sampling of topics from these years reflects the urgency with which the college, and the nation, wrestled with the legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Perhaps most striking is the extent to which the questions of Black rights, political inclusion, and humanity were considered valid topics of debate.

William Pickens and George W. Crawford, two African American students, won the most prestigious awards for oratory in 1903 and 1904. Despite these accolades, Pickens was denied a spot on the university debating team.

The subjects for junior disputes and essays in the 1880s included “Lynch law as now practiced in the United States,” “Are the Southern Negroes Better Off than in the Days of Slavery?” and “The Future of the Negro in America.” The Dwight Literary Society debated the resolution “That lynch law is sometimes justifiable.” The sophomore composition topics in 1890 included the question, “Should the emancipated negro have received unconditional citizenship?”

Colonization and disenfranchisement were floated as solutions to “the Negro Problem.” In 1895, the first meeting of the Freshman Union attracted seventy-five students to consider the following: “Resolved: That the Southern States should take steps to disfranchise the negroes by means of state constitutions.” The Yale Daily News reported that “the affirmative won the debate.” In 1896, the Political Science Club considered the ‘Negro Problem from a Southern Standpoint.’”

In 1897, the Sheffield Debating Club took as its topic, “Resolved: That lynching is justifiable.” Two speakers argued in the affirmative and two in the negative; “The decision of the judges and the house was in favor of the affirmative.” That year, more than 120 Black people were lynched in the United States.

When Yale faced Princeton in 1901, the intercollegiate debate was featured in multiple front-page articles of the Yale Daily News . Princeton submitted the debate question—“Resolved, that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States has been justified”—giving Yale the choice of which side to argue. At the final trials, eighteen students vied for a spot on the Yale team; fourteen of these would-be orators chose to argue against the Fifteenth Amendment.

All six of those who made the team took the position that the Fifteenth Amendment, giving African American men the right to vote, was not justified. In making their case, the Yale debaters repeated racist stereotypes of Black inferiority and laziness. The first speaker noted that the Fifteenth Amendment had “enfranchise[ed] a race of utterly ignorant freedmen.” Students insisted that even Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman had seen the error of their ways. “The Republican party has since repudiated universal suffrage, and the whole country tacitly acquiesces in the practical nullification of the Fifteenth Amendment.” Based on these and other arguments, the News deemed it an “Unusually Interesting Contest.”

And the longevity of such topics is notable. The repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment was still being debated by the Freshman Union in both 1909 and 1911, and John Brown’s legacy was a topic for the Porter Prize as late as 1910, the year after the fiftieth anniversary of the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. 

Given debate’s importance on campus, it is all the more noteworthy that William Pickens and George W. Crawford, two African American students, won the most prestigious awards for oratory in 1903 and 1904. Despite these accolades, Pickens was denied a spot on the university debating team, depriving Yale of one of its best speakers when the team competed against Princeton. One newspaper declared, “Reason Seems Obvious to Many Why Winner of Ten Eyck Prize is Not to Face the Tiger Debaters.”

Yale celebrates its bicentennial, using the occasion to welcome white Southerners back to the college. One speaker declares that Yale has “ever been proud” of its Southern alumni of the antebellum era, praising them as “eminent as statesmen, as soldiers, as scholars, and as divines.” Thomas Nelson Page is among a number of Southerners who receive honorary degrees at the bicentennial celebration.

Image above: Bicentennial Buildings, View from Corner of College and Grove Streets, Yale University Library .

Images below, left to right: Yale Alumni Weekly: the Bicentennial ; Booker T. Washington , Delegate to the Bicentennial from Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute; Graduates Passing Hendrie Hall , Elm Street, During Yale’s Bicentennial Celebration; Commons Set for Dinner , Yale University Library.

George W. Crawford graduates from Yale Law School, where he is awarded the prestigious Townsend Prize for oratory. He goes on to ascend the highest ranks of Black professional life in New Haven, practicing law in the city for decades and serving four terms as the city’s corporation counsel. Crawford establishes an NAACP branch in New Haven and is a longtime member of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church (formerly the Temple Street congregation). He serves on the boards of Howard University and, for over 50 years, Talladega College.

George W. Crawford ( LL .B., 1903). The Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School. MssA C858  flat.

Thomas Nelson Baker, born enslaved in Virginia in 1860, completes his second Yale degree, becoming the first Black person in the United States to earn a PhD in philosophy.

William Pickens graduates from Yale College. He goes on to teach at Talladega College in Alabama and at Wiley College in Texas and serves as dean of academics at Morgan State College in Baltimore. He helps to build the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where he works for over two decades.

William Pickens, Yale University Library . 

Edward Bouchet graduates from Yale College in 1874 and earns a doctorate in physics from Yale University in 1876. He is the first Black person to earn a PhD in the United States. In 1905, he is turned down for a teaching position at Yale despite his sterling qualifications—six years of Latin, six of Greek, ranked sixth in his Yale class—and a ringing endorsement from Arthur W. Wright, an eminent Yale professor of molecular physics and chemistry. Over the next 14 years, Bouchet lives a peripatetic life, crisscrossing the country to hold teaching jobs in Missouri, Ohio, and Virginia. He becomes ill and eventually returns to New Haven, where he dies in 1918 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Evergreen Cemetery.

Edward Alexander Bouchet, Yale University Library .

A Black student at Brown University, Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard, plays football in the newly built Yale Bowl—the first Black person to do so. A halfback, Pollard must enter the field separately from the rest of his team to avoid hostile crowds. When he gets the ball, Yale fans yell racist epithets at him. Pollard goes on to distinguish himself as the first African-American player to appear in the Rose Bowl, the first African-American quarterback, and the first African-American head coach in the National Football League, among many other barrier-breaking achievements.

Fritz Pollard, Brown University Library .

CHAPTER  11 A Bitter Victory

Later in the same year that John C. Calhoun was feted and honored with a scholarship in his name, a Black student played football in the newly built Yale Bowl for the first time—but not for the Blue.

Brown’s win against Yale that day was one stop on the team’s—and Pollard’s—journey to the Rose Bowl. But the victory was not sweet for Pollard.

Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard, a halfback for Brown University, had to enter the field separately from the rest of his team to avoid the hostile crowds. William M. Ashby, a student in the divinity school, went to the game with a handful of other Black students. As Ashby recalled later, they had heard of Pollard, who was rumored to be an exceptional player. Yet they, like Pollard, expected to face insults and perhaps injury—even from their fellow Yale students.

Ashby wrote, “We went to the Brown side of the field, wanting to give Pollard as much moral support as possible, but also because we knew that there would be animosity toward us in the Yale stands. We would be baited with the foulest and vilest epithets hurled right into our teeth, and we could do nothing about it.”

Over the course of an outstanding career on and off the field, Pollard would distinguish himself as the first African American player to appear in the Rose Bowl and the first African American quarterback and the first African American head coach in the National Football League, among many other barrier-breaking achievements. On that November day in 1915, however, he was something else to the white Yale fans. When Pollard had the ball, Ashby remembered, “The Yale stands arose, ‘Catch that n——. Kill that n——,’ they screamed.”

Brown’s win against Yale that day was one stop on the team’s—and Pollard’s—journey to the Rose Bowl. But the victory was not sweet for Pollard. “For all the glory he achieved in New Haven, Pollard later expressed bitterness about his playing in the Yale Bowl. He had never felt so ‘n——ized,’ as he put it,” said one historian of the game.

The John C. Calhoun Memorial Scholarships are established. Founded and funded by the Southern Club of Yale and the Yale Southern Alumni Association—with the blessing and praise of Yale’s leadership—the Calhoun scholarships are to be awarded to two Southern students each year. “The Southern Club has long felt the need of establishing a memorial of some sort to J. C. Calhoun, and it seems most fitting that the scholarships for general excellence in athletics and scholarship should be dedicated to this eminent Yale graduate and national statesman,” the Southern Club president declares.

1915 June 20

In an elaborate ceremony, the Yale Civil War Memorial is dedicated. It honors fallen soldiers from both the North and South and makes no mention of slavery.

The Yale and Slavery Research Project completes its study of Yale’s history here. The research team chose 1915 as the endpoint in part because the dedication of Yale’s Civil War Memorial was the capstone to decades of deliberate forgetting, both at Yale and in the country as a whole, about the reasons for the Civil War. Yale’s collections are available for other faculty members, scholars, and students to conduct further research on the legacies of slavery and racism in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Images below: Yale’s Civil War Memorial, Yale University Office of Public Affairs and Communications. 

CHAPTER  12 Yale’s Civil War Memorial

A 2021 study of memorials in America counted 5,917 monuments of various kinds that memorialize the Civil War. In that total, only 1 percent include the word “slavery”; Yale’s striking Civil War memorial, carefully and artfully designed, located in a very public setting, and dedicated in 1915, is not among that 1 percent.

The Yale memorial masks the deep meanings of the Civil War as it also almost perfectly reveals the solemn tragedy of the national culture of reunion and reconciliation that came to dominate American society.

For more than a century, the Yale Civil War Memorial has honored the sacrifice of Yale men on both sides in the struggle of 1861-1865 and encouraged the deliberate forgetting of the deepest meanings of that event.

On the floor of the slightly sloped hallway, some verses of the reconciliationist poem, “The Blue and the Gray” were etched into stone as part of the 1915 memorial. By then the poem, by 1849 Yale graduate Francis Miles Finch, was a national classic that had already appeared and still does on monuments and wayside markers at national cemeteries and Civil War battlefield sites.

As the story goes, Finch was deeply moved by an incident he read about in spring 1866, when white Southern women in Columbus, Mississippi, had gone to a Civil War cemetery and adorned with flowers the graves of both Confederate and Union dead buried there. In September 1867 in the Atlantic Monthly , he published his nine-verse poem that soon became a sentimental symbol of national reconciliation of North and South around the elegiac memory of the mutual valor of soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

In 1868 when an “official” beginning to Memorial Day was announced by the Grand Army of the Republic, the growing Union veterans’ organization, Finch’s poem suddenly soared in significance as people who wished to believe in a reunion devoid of cause and conflict, but steeped in the solemnity of soldierly virtue and sacrifice, now had lovely, well-timed verses through which to advance their cause. No one need be blamed for all the bloodshed; everyone who fought with courage and died for devotion to a cause, whichever they believed in, was equal and heroic in death. Finch’s sweet mutuality intones,

No more shall the war-cry sever,  Or the winding rivers be red;  They banish our anger forever,  When they laurel the graves of our dead!  Under the sod and the dew,  Waiting the judgment day; -  Love and tears for the Blue;  Tears and love for the Gray.

That single verse is carved into the floor of the corridor of Memorial Hall near the following inscription:

TO THE MEN OF YALE   WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE CIVIL WAR   THE UNIVERSITY HAS DEDICATED THIS MEMORIAL   THAT THEIR HIGH DEVOTION   MAY LIVE IN ALL HER SONS AND THAT THE BONDS    WHICH NOW UNITE THE LAND MAY ENDURE   MCMXV

The inscriptions, which are badly faded and worn by foot traffic, with some of Finch’s words unrecognizable, are today hidden beneath industrial strength removable carpets protecting the floor; the burgundy-colored rugs have a special effect in afternoon sunlight from the doors. Any casual visitor to the Memorial Hall will note the sounds of thuds and clicks of shoes on the uncarpeted sections of the rotunda and the larger spaces commemorating the Yale dead of the twentieth-century world wars and other conflicts. Voices echo in this hallowed space, depending on how crowded it is.

One will also witness an endless array of people hurrying by, faces leaning into cell phones, unaware of anything hallowed around them. Indeed, as scholars working in a range of disciplines, cultures, and time periods have shown, no monument means anything without knowledge of its conception and purpose, of its significance at its unveiling and then over time. The Yale memorial masks the deep meanings of the Civil War as it almost perfectly reveals the solemn tragedy of the national culture of reunion and reconciliation that came to dominate American society after the beginning of the twentieth century.

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Learning About Slavery With Primary Sources

In this lesson, students will use primary sources from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to better understand the history of slavery in the United States.

By Nicole Daniels

Find all our Lessons of the Day here.

Lesson Overview

Featured Article: “ A Brief History of Slavery That You Didn’t Learn in School ”

In August 2019, The New York Times Magazine published The 1619 Project , an ongoing initiative that aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

In this lesson, you will read an essay that uses primary sources as a point of entry to making sense of the history of slavery in the United States. The primary sources were selected by Mary Elliott, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The featured article was written by both Ms. Elliott and Jazmine Hughes, a New York Times writer and editor.

Note : If you are looking for more teaching resources related to The 1619 Project, The New York Times Magazine partnered with the Pulitzer Center to create a free curriculum that includes a reading guide, extension activities and other curricular resources.

The article uses primary sources to tell the story of slavery from 1619 to 1865. To begin thinking critically about primary sources, look at the cover image for the article, which uses this broadside from the museum’s collection . As you look closely at the image, make some observations about what you notice, wonder and feel. You can share in small groups or in a larger class discussion, “I notice…,” “I wonder …” and “I feel …” Or, you can create a chart with three columns to record your observations and reactions.

Then, if you would like to further investigate the broadside from a historical lens, you can use a document analysis worksheet from the National Archives. There are two worksheet options for written documents: one for secondary students and one for younger students and English-language learners .

If you would like more background, take some time to read the two-paragraph introduction to the article, either to yourself or aloud as a class.

Why do you think Ms. Elliott and Ms. Hughes chose to start their exploration of primary sources with these words? What drew you into the text? How did their use of language and imagery affect your reading experience?

According to the authors, why was the moment in August 1619 significant? How was the arrival of “20 and odd Negroes” different from the earlier presence of people of African descent in North America?

Questions for Writing and Discussion

Note to Teachers: Given the length and structure of the featured article , we have created questions for each of its three sections. Depending on how much time you are able to dedicate to this lesson, it may be most effective to have students work in small groups, with each group focusing on one section and then sharing their findings with the class.

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Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery

On April 26, 2022, Harvard President Larry Bacow released the Report of the Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, accepted the committee’s recommendations in full, and announced a historic commitment of $100 million to fund their implementation.

The first phase of the initiative’s work was to uncover the truth of Harvard’s ties to slavery through deep research guided by a committee of distinguished faculty drawn from across the University. This research provides a strong foundation for our next phase: the process of reckoning and repair.

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Sara Bleich, vice provost for special projects, charts the course for implementing recommendations from the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery report.

Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery

The report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery documents the University’s ties to slavery—direct, financial, and intellectual—and offers seven recommendations that will guide the work of reckoning and repair now beginning.

A Legacy of Leadership

Early African American alumni of Harvard and Radcliffe

Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery: Tour Experience

Explore Harvard University’s entanglements with the institution of slavery and the history of Black leadership through a 10-stop tour in Cambridge, MA.

Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery: Film

This short film offers an introduction to the first phase of the initiative's work—the history—which undergirds the presidential committee's seven recommendations for action.

Telling the Truth about All This: Reckoning with Slavery and Its Legacies at Harvard and Beyond

Over the past two decades, universities around the world have begun to engage with their legacies related to slavery. With this history uncovered, we now ask: What must institutions of higher education do? What types of repair work can and should we undertake? We explore these questions through discussions about a range of topics, including engagement with descendant communities, legacies of slavery in libraries and museums, and novel public engagement and educational opportunities.

Responsibility and Repair: Legacies of Indigenous Enslavement, Indenture, and Colonization at Harvard and Beyond

This conference, “Responsibility and Repair”—led by Harvard University’s Native American Program in collaboration with Harvard Radcliffe Institute—brought together Native and university leaders to advance a national dialogue, expand research, and establish and deepen partnerships with Indigenous communities. Activists, scholars, Native leaders, tribal historians, and others explore the responsibility of universities to confront their past and recommended steps toward repair that is often centuries overdue.

Explore our program archives: Watch videos of past events

Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery: Reckoning with the Past to Understand the Present

Beyond “Fair Harvard”: Perspectives from Black Alumni

Reckoning with Echoes of the Past: A South African Story

Prejudice and Power: Stratification Economics, a General Theory of Intergroup Inequality

Book Talk with Tiya Miles

The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Racism in the North

The Time of Slavery: History, Memory, Politics, and the Constitution

Oklahoma and a Blacker America?

Universities and Slavery: Bound by History

Feeding the Nation: Michael W. Twitty on American Foodways and the History of Enslavement

Who Is Policing the Police?

Book Talk with Clint Smith

Medical Racism from 1619 to the Present: History Matters

Racial Inequity and Housing Instability in Boston: Past, Present, and Future

Obesity, COVID-19, and Systemic Racism

The Impact of 2020 on Higher Education: Colleges, COVID-19, and a Time of Racial Reckoning

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Opening Discussion for Brown II

Naming Racism

The Intentional Museum

Perfecters of This Democracy: A Conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones

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American Policing and Protest

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Researching Slavery and the Slave Trade

Freely available databases, licensed databases.

• Microform Collections
• Literature & Popular Culture
• Images & Artifacts
• Manuscripts & Printed Narratives
• Gov Documents

Subject Guide

• Slave Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database Contains information on more than 35,000 slave voyages involving the forcible transport of more than 12 million Africans to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
• Historical Document Repository (Brown University) Contains over one hundred and fifty historical documents, some six hundred manuscript pages in all, as well as introductory headnotes, bibliographic information, and technical data. The collection can be browsed by date, name, or type of document. Many of the documents have been transcribed, as part of an ongoing project. Compiled by the University Steering Committee on Slavery & Justice from sources at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, the Rhode Island Historical Society Library, and the Brown University Archives.
• Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally, 1764-1765 (Brown University) The voyage of the Sally was an example of "the triangle trade." Rum-laden Rhode Island ships sailed to Africa and acquired cargoes of Africans, who were carried to the plantation colonies of the Caribbean and sold. The ships returned home with holds filled with sugar and molasses, which was distilled into rum and shipped to Africa to produce more slaves, more sugar, and more rum. In the century before 1807, roughly 100,000 Africans were carried into New World slavery on Rhode Island ships, most to the Caribbean. The Sally's voyage stands out for several reasons. It the best-documented Rhode Island slaving venture, but it was also one of the deadliest. The timing of the voyage was significant: 1764 marked the beginning of the imperial crisis between Great Britain and its thirteen mainland North American colonies. Drawn from holdings of the John Carter Brown Library and the Rhode Island Historical Society.
• Manuscript Collections Relating to Slavery (New York Historical Society) Comprises fourteen significant collections from the NYHS's extensive manuscript holdings on slavery. They consist of diaries, account books, letter books, ships’ logs, indentures, bills of sale, personal papers, and records of institutions. Some of the highlights are the records of the New York Manumission Society and the African Free School, the diaries and correspondence of English abolitionists Granville Sharp and John Clarkson, the papers of the Boston anti-slavery activist Lysander Spooner, the records of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the draft of Charles Sumner’s famous speech The Anti-Slavery Enterprise, and an account book kept by the slave trading firm Bolton, Dickens & Co.
• Legacies of British Slave Ownership (University College - London) Traces the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain and the significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833.
• Digital Library on American Slavery Mounted by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in collaboration with the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, this database provides a searchable index to the "Race, Slavery and Free Blacks" microform set, which is available at the Brown University Library. PLEASE SEE the "Microforms" tab of this guide for further details.
• Georgetown Slavery Archive (Georgetown University) "A repository of materials relating to the Maryland Jesuits, Georgetown University, and slavery," supported by the Georgetown University Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation. This project has recently been discussed in the New York Times, which helped to connect Louisiana descendants of slaves sold by the Jesuits in 1838 to fund Georgetown University with the history of their ancestors.
• Columbia University & Slavery (Columbia University) The University, founded as King's College in 1755, reports on research into its slaveholding past in New York City.
• First Blacks in the Americas (CUNY Dominican Studies Institute) A bilingual site that explores the history of slavery on the island of Hispaniola.
• Black Craftspeople Digital Archive A growing body of material documenting the work, skills and knowledge of enslaved and free people of color in the American South during the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing initially on the South Carolina low country and Tennessee.
• Enslaved.org A comprehensive resource devoted to representing the lives of peoples of the historical slave trade -- those enslaved, those who owned slaves, those connected with the trade, and those who sought to abolish the trade and emancipate slaves.

• Next: Microform Collections >>
• Last Updated: Jul 12, 2023 8:33 AM
• URL: https://libguides.brown.edu/slavery

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Modern Slavery Research Methods: Enabling Data-Driven Decisions

This post is part of the Council on Foreign Relations’ blog series on human trafficking, in which CFR fellows and other leading experts assess new approaches to improve U.S. and global efforts to curb trafficking and modern slavery. 

This post was authored by Laura Gauer Bermudez, director of evidence and learning, April Stewart, senior evidence and learning associate, and Shannon Stewart, senior data scientist, and at the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery (GFEMS) .

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Human Trafficking

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Women and Women's Rights

Modern slavery is a crime that is both hidden and embedded within the world around us. From the food we eat to the clothes we wear, our daily routines are likely only a few degrees of separation away from someone suffering under exploitative working conditions.

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Beyond labor exploitation in supply chains, modern slavery also exists through the commercial sexual exploitation of women and children and forced marriage. The International Labor Organization and Walk Free Foundation estimate forty million people are in modern slavery globally. Twenty-five million are in forced labor and fifteen million in forced marriage, with women and girls accounting for 71 percent of all cases of modern slavery. Due to the challenges in accessing and measuring these populations, experts consider such estimates to be conservative.  

Nevertheless, the breadth of exploitation indicated by that report has spurred governments and other key stakeholders to address the issue in more substantial ways. Foreign assistance agencies have begun to earmark funding to address modern slavery, new legislation on modern slavery has been enacted, and the private sector has begun to expand efforts to interrogate supply chains.

Yet, many stakeholders are taking actions while lacking the appropriate data to make targeted changes within their realm of influence. Though companies know that modern slavery is a problem globally, and have a sense that it could be hidden somewhere in their supply chains, the evidence needed to drive specific mitigation efforts often does not exist. To generate the evidence required to make data-driven decisions and to empower the private sector to make targeted changes, greater investments in modern slavery research need to be made.

Diversified research methods and partners are key to addressing a hidden phenomenon 

As a hidden phenomenon, many modern slavery experiences are difficult to measure in traditional ways. Victims are often isolated or too intimidated to come forward and may remain uncounted for months or years. Because modern slavery includes a spectrum of experiences, individuals can also pass in and out of the criteria required to be ‘counted’ as a victim, and, especially in cases of sexual exploitation, may reframe the experience several times. Such measurement challenges mean traditional research methods may not be capturing the full scope and scale of the problem, hindering informed policy or business decision-making. To better support evidenced-based decision-making, research efforts need to be diversified.

Prevalence estimation is one approach to modern slavery research. Scientifically sound prevalence estimation methods enable researchers to estimate the proportion of individuals within a given target population that are experiencing indicators of modern slavery. GFEMS works with researchers skilled in a number of prevalence estimation methods, including Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS), Network Scale-Up Method (NSUM), Time & Location Sampling (TLS), Probability Proportionate to Size (PPS) household sampling, and variations on and combinations of these methods, to achieve the most accurate estimate possible given the confines of measuring a hidden population.

Despite its critical importance, modern slavery research efforts must go beyond prevalence estimation to capture the full picture of modern slavery globally. In the short term, quantitative insights from target populations using census or sample data can provide stakeholders with much needed point-in-time snapshots to make informed program, policy, or supply chain decisions. In the medium- and long-term, evaluative research designs can offer insights into the effectiveness of specific interventions designed to reduce or mitigate risks.

The way we capture such data is also evolving. As access to communications technology increases globally, GFEMS sees enhanced value in remote data collection using SMS, social media, and telephone surveys. Operating during the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need to explore alternative channels for data collection, allowing GFEMS and its partners to remain engaged with workers and communities, identifying evolving needs and vulnerabilities.

Expanding beyond quantitative designs, qualitative information gathered from workers, survivors, community members, suppliers, law enforcement officials, and civil society organizations can provide critical background to support and provide context for quantitative data. Qualitative data helps build a narrative, bringing together the stories and first-person accounts of modern slavery, and aids the understanding of complex and interconnected systems perpetuating exploitation.

Research on modern slavery is not just the purview of academic institutions. Brands and suppliers in private sector supply chains can make data on modern slavery risk central to their decision-making. The deployment of worker voice mechanisms is an entry point to a comprehensive strategy of dialogue and engagement with workers. Data from these platforms can help businesses assess working conditions, flagging risk when indicated.

In addition, innovative techniques for analyzing large datasets are creating new opportunities and insights. Artificial intelligence is enabling data scientists to work with supply chain data and predict where forced labor may be more likely to occur, offering the private sector and regulatory bodies the opportunity to better target enhanced social audits, ramp up capacity building measures, and make better informed procurement decisions. Data analytics can also indicate when and where erratic purchasing or planning shortfalls may be putting undue pressure on suppliers, heightening the risk for slavery or slave-like conditions of workers to try and meet purchaser demand. Their ability to make tangible and significant impact in the way companies do business is a primary reason why GFEMS invests in risk detection techniques.

Whether it be via academic institutions, research firms, consultancy practices, communication companies, or in-house data science units within corporations, diversity and representation in research design, data collection, data analysis, and reporting of data on modern slavery makes for better research. For instance, putting female scientists front and center when examining modern slavery, particularly those issues disproportionately affecting women and girls, is one way to address this. Building research teams that better reflect the population under study— whether it be gender identity, ethnicity, minority status, religious affiliation, or sexual orientation—aids in a diversity of perspectives when framing research questions, survey items, design elements, and analytical frameworks, enabling teams to more comprehensively examine the social complexities and power imbalances underlying modern slavery.

Research findings should spur evidence-informed action

Evidence-informed decision-making to reduce modern slavery takes a variety of forms. Examples include corporate leadership supporting supply chain decisions based on data collected from worker voice platforms, government officials making data-driven budgeting decisions on modern slavery mitigations, financial institutions leveraging data analytics to efficiently flag potential illicit financial flows to traffickers, and civil society organizations designing community risk reduction messaging based on available evidence of what works.   

Though limited data have historically been a challenge for the anti-trafficking field, investment in diverse research methods can close the gap in actionable data. For there to be returns on investment in research, however, findings must be acted upon. As global stakeholders coalesce around evidence-informed action, coherent strategies can be forged and diverse efforts can be aligned with the goal of yielding substantial social change. Through consistent investment in action-oriented modern slavery research, GFEMS will continue to support evidence generation for maximum social impact.

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Slavery in America

By: History.com Editors

Published: April 25, 2024

Millions of enslaved Africans contributed to the establishment of colonies in the Americas and continued laboring in various regions of the Americas after their independence, including the United States. Many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619 , when the privateer The White Lion brought 20 enslaved Africans ashore in the British colony of Jamestown , Virginia . The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista. Yet, enslaved Africans had been present in regions such as Florida, that are part of present-day United States nearly one century before.

Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than Indigenous populations and indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans.

Existing estimates establish that Europeans and American slave traders transported nearly 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas. Of this number approximately 10.7 million disembarked alive in the Americas. During the 18th century alone, approximately 6.5 million enslaved persons were transported to the Americas. This forced migration deprived the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern Atlantic coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia.

Slavery in Plantations and Cities

In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia. Starting 1662, the colony of Virginia and then other English colonies established that the legal status of a slave was inherited through the mother. As a result, the children of enslaved women legally became slaves.

Before the rise of the American Revolution , the first debates to abolish slavery emerged. Black and white abolitionists contributed to the enactment of new legislation gradually abolishing slavery in some northern states such as Vermont and Pennsylvania. However, these laws emancipated only the newly born children of enslaved women.

Did you know? One of the first martyrs to the cause of American patriotism was Crispus Attucks, a former enslaved man who was killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre of 1770. Some 5,000 Black soldiers and sailors fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War.

But after the end of the American Revolutionary War , slavery was maintained in the new states. The new U.S. Constitution tacitly acknowledged the institution of slavery, when it determined that three out of every five enslaved people were counted when determining a state's total population for the purposes of taxation and representation in Congress.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, European and American slave merchants purchased enslaved Africans who were transported to the Americas and forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work in the production of crops such as tobacco, wheat, indigo, rice, sugar, and cotton. Enslaved men and women also performed work in northern cities such as Boston and New York, and in southern cities such as Charleston, Richmond, and Baltimore.

By the mid-19th century, America’s westward expansion and the abolition movement provoked a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody Civil War . Though the Union victory freed the nation’s four million enslaved people, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the Reconstruction to the civil rights movement that emerged a century after emancipation and beyond.

In the late 18th century, the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton, a southern crop planted and harvested by enslaved people, but whose production was limited by the difficulty of removing the seeds from raw cotton fibers by hand.

But in 1793, a U.S.-born  schoolteacher named Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin , a simple mechanized device that efficiently removed the seeds. His device was widely copied, and within a few years, the South transitioned from the large-scale production of tobacco to that of cotton, a switch that reinforced the region’s dependence on enslaved labor.

Slavery was never widespread in the North as it was in the South, but many northern businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Although gradual abolition emancipated newborns since the late 18th century, slavery was only abolished in New York in 1827, and in Connecticut in 1848.

Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the United States nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South.

Living Conditions of Enslaved People

Enslaved people in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most lived on large plantations or small farms; many enslavers owned fewer than 50 enslaved people.

Landowners sought to make their enslaved completely dependent on them through a system of restrictive codes. They were usually prohibited from learning to read and write, and their behavior and movement were restricted.

Many enslavers raped women they held in slavery, and rewarded obedient behavior with favors, while rebellious enslaved people were brutally punished. A strict hierarchy among the enslaved (from privileged house workers and skilled artisans down to lowly field hands) helped keep them divided and less likely to organize against their enslavers.

Marriages between enslaved men and women had no legal basis, but many did marry and raise large families. Most owners of enslaved workers encouraged this practice, but nonetheless did not usually hesitate to divide families by sale or removal.

Slave Rebellions

Enslaved people organized r ebellions as early as the 18th century. In 1739, enslaved people led the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, the largest slave rebellion during the colonial era in North America.  Other rebellions followed, including the one led by  Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and by Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822. These uprisings were brutally repressed.

The revolt that most terrified enslavers was that led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Turner’s group, which eventually numbered as many 50 Black men, murdered some 55 white people in two days before armed resistance from local white people and the arrival of state militia forces overwhelmed them.

Like with previous rebellions, in the aftermath of the Nat Turner’s Rebellion, slave owners feared similar insurrections and southern states further passed legislation prohibiting the movement and assembly of enslaved people.

Abolitionist Movement

As slavery expanded during the second half of the 18th century,  a growing abolitionist movement emerged in the North.

From the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery in America gained strength, led by formerly enslaved people  such as Frederick Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison , founder of the radical newspaper The Liberator .

While many abolitionists based their activism on the belief that slaveholding was a sin, others were more inclined to the non-religious “free-labor” argument, which held that slaveholding was regressive, inefficient and made little economic sense.

Black abolitionists  and antislavery northerners led meetings and created newspapers. They also had begun helping enslaved people escape from southern plantations to the North via a loose network of safe houses as early as the 1780s. This practice, known as the Underground Railroad , gained real momentum in the 1830s.

Conductors like Harriet Tubman guided escapees on their journey North, and “ stationmasters ” included such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Secretary of State William H. Seward and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Although no one knows for sure how many men, women, and children escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad, it was in the thousands ( estimates range from 25,000 to 100,000).  

The success of the Underground Railroad helped spread abolitionist feelings in the North. It also undoubtedly increased sectional tensions, convincing pro-slavery southerners of their northern countrymen’s determination to defeat the institution that sustained them.

Missouri Compromise

America’s explosive growth—and its expansion westward in the first half of the 19th century—would provide a larger stage for the growing conflict over slavery in America and its future limitation or expansion.

In 1820, a bitter debate over the federal government’s right to restrict slavery over Missouri’s application for statehood ended in a compromise: Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state and all western territories north of Missouri’s southern border were to be free soil.

Although the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain an even balance between slave and free states, it was only temporarily able to help quell the forces of sectionalism.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1850, another tenuous compromise was negotiated to resolve the question of slavery in territories won during the Mexican-American War .

Four years later, however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict, leading pro- and anti-slavery forces to battle it out—with considerable bloodshed —in the new state of Kansas.

Outrage in the North over the Kansas-Nebraska Act spelled the downfall of the old Whig Party and the birth of a new, all-northern Republican Party . In 1857, the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court (involving an enslaved man who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his enslaver had taken him into free territory) effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by ruling that all territories were open to slavery.

John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry

In 1859, two years after the Dred Scott decision, an event occurred that would ignite passions nationwide over the issue of slavery.

John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry , Virginia—in which the abolitionist and 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown’s sons raided and occupied a federal arsenal—resulted in the deaths of 10 people and Brown’s hanging.

The insurrection exposed the growing national rift over slavery: Brown was hailed as a martyred hero by northern abolitionists but was vilified as a mass murderer in the South.

The South would reach the breaking point the following year, when Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected as president. Within three months, seven southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America ; four more would follow after the Civil War began.

Though Lincoln’s anti-slavery views were well established, the central Union war aim at first was not to abolish slavery, but to preserve the United States as a nation.

Abolition became a goal only later, due to military necessity, growing anti-slavery sentiment in the North and the self-emancipation of many people who fled enslavement as Union troops swept through the South.

When Did Slavery End?

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State…in rebellion,…shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

By freeing some 3 million enslaved people in the rebel states, the Emancipation Proclamation deprived the Confederacy of the bulk of its labor forces and put international public opinion strongly on the Union side.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t officially end all slavery in America—that would happen with the passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War’s end in 1865—some 186,000 Black soldiers would join the Union Army, and about 38,000 lost their lives.

The Legacy of Slavery

The 13th Amendment, adopted on December 18, 1865, officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples’ status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period.

Previously enslaved men and women received the rights of citizenship and the “equal protection” of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment and the right to vote in the 15th Amendment , but these provisions of the Constitution were often ignored or violated, and it was difficult for Black citizens to gain a foothold in the post-war economy thanks to restrictive Black codes and regressive contractual arrangements such as sharecropping .

Despite seeing an unprecedented degree of Black participation in American political life, Reconstruction was ultimately frustrating for African Americans, and the rebirth of white supremacy —including the rise of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)—had triumphed in the South by 1877.

Almost a century later, resistance to the lingering racism and discrimination in America that began during the slavery era led to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which achieved the greatest political and social gains for Black Americans since Reconstruction.

Ana Lucia Araujo , a historian of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, edited and contributed to this article. Dr. Araujo is currently Professor of History at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Projects. Her three more recent books are Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History , The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism , and Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery .

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• Table Of Contents

slavery , condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property , or chattel , and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons.

There is no consensus on what a slave was or on how the institution of slavery should be defined. Nevertheless, there is general agreement among historians, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and others who study slavery that most of the following characteristics should be present in order to term a person a slave. The slave was a species of property ; thus, he belonged to someone else. In some societies slaves were considered movable property, in others immovable property, like real estate. They were objects of the law, not its subjects. Thus, like an ox or an ax, the slave was not ordinarily held responsible for what he did. He was not personally liable for torts or contracts. The slave usually had few rights and always fewer than his owner, but there were not many societies in which he had absolutely none. As there are limits in most societies on the extent to which animals may be abused, so there were limits in most societies on how much a slave could be abused. The slave was removed from lines of natal descent. Legally, and often socially, he had no kin . No relatives could stand up for his rights or get vengeance for him. As an “outsider,” “marginal individual,” or “socially dead person” in the society where he was enslaved, his rights to participate in political decision making and other social activities were fewer than those enjoyed by his owner. The product of a slave’s labor could be claimed by someone else, who also frequently had the right to control his physical reproduction.

Slavery was a form of dependent labor performed by a nonfamily member. The slave was deprived of personal liberty and the right to move about geographically as he desired. There were likely to be limits on his capacity to make choices with regard to his occupation and sexual partners as well. Slavery was usually, but not always, involuntary. If not all of these characterizations in their most restrictive forms applied to a slave, the slave regime in that place is likely to be characterized as “mild”; if almost all of them did, then it ordinarily would be characterized as “severe.”

Slaves were generated in many ways. Probably the most frequent was capture in war , either by design, as a form of incentive to warriors, or as an accidental by-product, as a way of disposing of enemy troops or civilians. Others were kidnapped on slave-raiding or piracy expeditions. Many slaves were the offspring of slaves. Some people were enslaved as a punishment for crime or debt, others were sold into slavery by their parents, other relatives, or even spouses, sometimes to satisfy debts, sometimes to escape starvation. A variant on the selling of children was the exposure, either real or fictitious, of unwanted children, who were then rescued by others and made slaves. Another source of slavery was self-sale, undertaken sometimes to obtain an elite position, sometimes to escape destitution.

Slavery existed in a large number of past societies whose general characteristics are well known. It was rare among primitive peoples, such as the hunter-gatherer societies, because for slavery to flourish, social differentiation or stratification was essential. Also essential was an economic surplus, for slaves were often consumption goods who themselves had to be maintained rather than productive assets who generated income for their owner. Surplus was also essential in slave systems where the owners expected economic gain from slave ownership.

Ordinarily there had to be a perceived labor shortage, for otherwise it is unlikely that most people would bother to acquire or to keep slaves. Free land , and more generally, open resources, were often a prerequisite for slavery; in most cases where there were no open resources, non-slaves could be found who would fulfill the same social functions at lower cost. Last, some centralized governmental institutions willing to enforce slave laws had to exist, or else the property aspects of slavery were likely to be chimerical. Most of these conditions had to be present in order for slavery to exist in a society; if they all were, until the abolition movement of the 19th century swept throughout most of the world, it was almost certain that slavery would be present. Although slavery existed almost everywhere, it seems to have been especially important in the development of two of the world’s major civilizations, Western (including ancient Greece and Rome ) and Islamic.

There have been two basic types of slavery throughout recorded history. The most common has been what is called household, patriarchal, or domestic slavery. Although domestic slaves occasionally worked outside the household, for example, in haying or harvesting, their primary function was that of menials who served their owners in their homes or wherever else the owners might be, such as in military service . Slaves often were a consumption-oriented status symbol for their owners, who in many societies spent much of their surplus on slaves. Household slaves sometimes merged in varying degrees with the families of their owners, so that boys became adopted sons or women became concubines or wives who gave birth to heirs. Temple slavery, state slavery, and military slavery were relatively rare and distinct from domestic slavery, but in a very broad outline they can be categorized as the household slaves of a temple or the state.

The other major type of slavery was productive slavery. It was relatively infrequent and occurred primarily in Classical Athenian Greece and Rome and in the post-Columbian circum-Caribbean New World. It also was found in 9th-century Iraq , among the Kwakiutl Indians of the American Northwest, and in a few areas of sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th century. Although slaves also were employed in the household, slavery in all of those societies seems to have existed predominantly to produce marketable commodities in mines or on plantations.

A major theoretical issue is the relationship between productive slavery and the status of a society as a slave or a slave-owning society. In a slave society, slaves composed a significant portion (at least 20–30 percent) of the total population , and much of that society’s energies were mobilized toward getting and keeping slaves. In addition the institution of slavery had a significant impact on the society’s institutions, such as the family , and on its social thought, law, and economy. It seems clear that it was quite possible for a slave society to exist without productive slavery; the known historical examples were concentrated in Africa and Asia . It is also clear that most of the slave societies have been concentrated in Western (including Greece and Rome) and Islamic civilizations. In a slave-owning society, slaves were present but in smaller numbers, and they were much less the focus of the society’s energies.

Slavery was a species of dependent labor differentiated from other forms primarily by the fact that in any society it was the most degrading and most severe. Slavery was the prototype of a relationship defined by domination and power. But throughout the centuries man has invented other forms of dependent labor besides slavery, including serfdom , indentured labor , and peonage . The term serfdom is much overused, often where it is not appropriate (always as an appellation of opprobrium). In the past a serf usually was an agriculturalist, whereas, depending upon the society, a slave could be employed in almost any occupation. Canonically, serfdom was the dependent condition of much of the western and central European peasantry from the time of the decline of the Roman Empire until the era of the French Revolution . This included a “second enserfment” that swept over central and some of eastern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Russia did not know the “first enserfment”; serfdom began there gradually in the mid-15th century, was completed by 1649, and lasted until 1906. Whether the term serfdom appropriately describes the condition of the peasantry in other contexts is a matter of vigorous contention . Be that as it may, the serf was also distinguished from the slave by the fact that he was usually the subject of the law—i.e., he had some rights, whereas the slave, the object of the law, had significantly fewer rights. The serf, moreover, was usually bound to the land (the most significant exception was the Russian serf between about 1700 and 1861), whereas the slave was always bound to his owner; i.e., he had to live where his owner told him to, and he often could be sold by his owner at any time. The serf usually owned his means of production (grain, livestock, implements) except the land, whereas the slave owned nothing, often not even the clothes on his back. The serf’s right to marry off his lord’s estate often was restricted, but the master’s interference in his reproductive and family life ordinarily was much less than was the case for the slave. Serfs could be called upon by the state to pay taxes, to perform corvée labor on roads, and to serve in the army, but slaves usually were exempt from all of those obligations.

A person became an indentured servant by borrowing money and then voluntarily agreeing to work off the debt during a specified term. In some societies indentured servants probably differed little from debt slaves (i.e., persons who initially were unable to pay off obligations and thus were forced to work them off at an amount per year specified by law). Debt slaves, however, were regarded as criminals (essentially thieves) and thus liable to harsher treatment. Perhaps as many as half of all the white settlers in North America were indentured servants, who agreed to work for someone (the purchaser of the indenture) upon arrival to pay for their passage. Some indentured servants alleged that they were treated worse than slaves; the economic logic of the situation was that slave owners thought of their slaves as a long-term investment whose value would drop if maltreated, whereas the short-term (typically four years) indentured servants could be abused almost to death because their masters had only a brief interest in them. Practices varied, but indenture contracts sometimes specified that the servants were to be set free with a sum of money, sometimes a plot of land, perhaps even a spouse, whereas for manumitted slaves the terms usually depended more on the generosity of the owner.

Peons were either persons forced to work off debts or criminals. Peons , who were the Latin American variant of debt slaves, were forced to work for their creditors to pay off what they owed. They tended to merge with felons because people in both categories were considered criminals, and that was especially true in societies where money fines were the main sanction and form of restitution for crimes. Thus, the felon who could not pay his fine was an insolvent debtor. The debt peon had to work for his creditor, and the labor of the criminal peon was sold by the state to a third party. Peons had even less recourse to the law for bad treatment than did indentured servants, and the terms of manumission for the former typically were less favourable than for the latter.

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Lesson Plan Slavery in the United States: Primary Sources and the Historical Record

This lesson introduces students to primary sources — what they are, their great variety, and how they can be analyzed. The lesson begins with an activity that helps students understand the historical record. Students then learn techniques for analyzing primary sources. Finally, students apply these techniques to analyze documents about slavery in the United States.

Students will be able to:

• assess the credibility of primary sources; and
• use a variety of primary sources to clarify, elaborate, and understand a historical period.

Lesson Preparation

• Primary Source Analysis tool
• Teacher's guide  Analyzing Primary Sources
• Primary source gallery Slavery in the United States, 1790-1865

Lesson Procedure

Leaving evidence of our lives.

How can the historical record be both huge and limited? To consider the strengths and limitations of the historical record, do the following activity:

• Assign students to work individually or in small groups. Alert students that they will share their activity responses with the class.
• Ask students to think about all the activities they were involved in during the past 24 hours, and list as many of these activities as they can remember.
• Have students write down what evidence, if any, each activity might have left behind.
• Which of the daily activities were most likely to leave trace evidence behind?
• What, if any, of that evidence might be preserved for the future? Why?
• What might be left out of a historical record of these activities? Why?
• What would a future historian be able to tell about your life and your society based on evidence of your daily activities that might be preserved for the future?
• What kinds of evidence might this event leave behind?
• Who records information about this event?
• For what purpose are different records of this event made?
• Based on this activity, students will write one sentence that describes how the historical record can be huge and limited at the same time. As time allows, discuss as the strengths and limitations of the historical record.

In this section, students analyze primary source documents.

• Assign two primary sources from the primary source gallery  Slavery in the United States, 1790-1865  to individuals or groups. Students should be assigned to look at two different kinds of primary sources to allow for comparison.
• Allow 30 to 50 minutes for students to analyze the documents. Students analyze the documents, recording their thoughts on the  Primary Source Analysis Tool . Before the students begin, select questions from the teacher’s guide  Analyzing Primary Sources  to focus the group work, and select additional questions to focus and prompt a whole class discussion of their analysis.

In this section, students discuss their primary source analysis with the entire class and compare and contrast analysis results.

• Have student groups summarize their analysis of a primary source document for the class. Ask students to comment on the credibility of the source. If several groups have analyzed the same document, encourage supporting or refuting statements from other groups.
• What was slavery like for African-Americans in the period before the Civil War?
• Was any document completely believable? Completely unbelievable? Why or why not?
• Did some types of primary sources seem less believable than other kinds of sources? Why do you think this is true?
• What information about slavery did each document provide? How did looking at several documents expand your understanding of slavery?
• If you found contradictory information in the sources, which sources did you tend to believe? Why?
• What generalizations about primary historical sources can you make based on this document set?
• What additional sources (and types of sources) would you like to see to give you greater confidence in your understanding of slavery?

Each student might be asked to find one additional primary source on slavery. Individuals or groups might be challenged to research and gather a set of primary sources on a topic other than slavery.

Additional activity suggestions for different types of primary sources:

• Hypothesize about the uses of an unknown object pictured in an old photograph. Conduct research to support or refute the hypothesis. Make a presentation to the class to "show and tell" the object, hypothesis, search methods, and results.
• Study old photographs to trace the development of an invention over time (examples: automobiles, tractors, trains, airplanes, weapons). What do the photographs tell you about the technology, tools, and materials available through time?
• Use a historic photograph or film of a street scene. Describe the sights, sounds, and smells that might surround the scene. Closely examine the image to find clues that will help you. (weather, time of day, clothing of people, vehicles and other technology, architecture, etc.)
• Select a historical photograph or film frame. Predict what will happen one minute or one hour after the photograph or film was taken. Explain the reasoning behind your predictions
• Research your family history by interviewing relatives. Make note of differing recollections about the same event.
• Listen to audio recordings from old radio broadcasts. Compare the language, style of speaking, and content to radio and television programs today. How do they differ? What do they tell you about the beliefs and attitudes of the time?
• Study historical maps of a city, state, or region to find evidence of changes in population, industry, and settlement over time.
• Choose a famous, historical, public building in your area. Research blueprints or architectural drawings of the building. Compare the plans to the building as it exists today. What changes do you see? Why do you think the changes occurred?
• Select a cookbook from another era. Look at the ingredients lists from a large number of recipes. What do the ingredients lists tell you about the types of foods available and the lifestyle of the time?
• Select a time period or era. Research and read personal letters that comment on events of the time. Analyze the point of view of the letter writer. Compose a return letter that tells the author how those historical events have affected modern society.
• Make a record of family treasures (books, tools, musical instruments, tickets, letters, photographs) using photographs, photocopies, drawings, recordings, or videotapes. What was happening in the world when ancestors were using these family treasures? How did those events affect your family?
• Prepare a community time capsule. What primary sources will you include to describe your present day community for future generations? When should your time capsule be opened?

Lesson Evaluation

As an assessment activity, ask students to select a document from the primary source gallery  Slavery in the United States, 1790-1865  that they have not yet analyzed. Have students write an analysis of the document using the rules and questions provided in the Analysis section of the lesson.

The Social Science Education Consortium University of Colorado, Boulder

Slavery in the United States, 1790-1865

What specific information about slaves and slavery can you see in (or infer from) these photographs and text documents?

View photo gallery

Excerpt from "Report of the Board of Education for Freedmen" (1864)

Report of the Board of education for freedmen, Department of the Gulf, for the year 1864.

Read the full transcription of this document

REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION FOR FREEDMEN, DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF, FOR THE YEAR 1864. NEW ORLEANS: PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE TRUE DELTA. 1865.

{Begin page}

REPORT. Office of the Board of Education for Freedmen, ) Department of the Gulf, .......... February 28, 1865. .......... Major General S. A. Hurlbut, Commanding Department of the Gulf:

General--In complaince with your order, we have the honor to submit the following Report of the Board of Education for Freedmen, Department of the Gulf.

The Report relates the operations of the Board from the date of its organization, March 22d, 1864, to December 31st, same year--a period of nine months.

COLORED SCHOOLS IN NEW ORLEANS.

When, in April, 1862, the guns of Farragut transferred the city of New Orleans from rebel to national rule, no such thing as a "Public School" for colored children, was found in the schedule of the conquest.

No such thing had ever existed in the Crescent City. Even that portion of the colored population, who, for generations, had been wealthy and free, were allowed no public school, although taxed to support the school-system of the city and State. Occasionally a small donation was made from the public fund to a school for orphans, attached to the Colored Orphans' Asylum.

The children of the free colored people who were in good circumstances, known as "Creoles," generally of French or Spanish extraction, when not educated abroad, or at the North, or from fairness of complexion, by occasional admission to the white schools, were quietly instructed at home, or in a very few private schools, of their class.

Even these, although not contrary to law, were really the ban of opinion, but were tolerated, because of the freedom, wealth, respectability and light color of the parents, many of whom were nearly white, and by blood, sympathy, association, slaveholding, and other interests, were allied to the white rather than to the black.

For the poor, of the free colored people, there was no school.

To teach a slave the dangerous arts of reading and writing, was a heinous offence, having, in the language of the statute, "a tendency to excite insubordination among the servile class, and punishable by imprisonment at hard labor for not more than twenty-one years, or by death, at the discretion of the Court."

In the face of all obstacles, a few of the free colored people, of the poorer class, learned to read and write. Cases of like proficiency were found among the slaves, where some restless bondsman, yearning for the knowledge, that somehow he coupled with liberty, hid himself from public notice, to con over, in secret and laboriously, the magic letters.

In other cases, limited teaching of a slave was connived at, by a master, who might find it convenient for his servant to read.

Occasionally, the slave was instructed by some devout and sympathizing woman or generous man, who secretly violated law and resisted opinion, for the sake of justice and humanity.

A single attempt had been made to afford instruction, through a school, to the poor of the colored people, by Mrs. Mary D.Brice, of Ohio, a student of Antioch College, who, with her husband, both poor in money, came to New Orleans in December, 1858, under a sense of duty, to teach colored people.

So many and great were the obstacles, that Mrs. Brice was unable to begin her school until September, 1860. At that time she opened a "school for colored children and adults," at the corner of Franklin and Perdido streets.

The popular outcry obliged her to close the school in June, 1861.

Subsequently receiving, as she believed, a divine intimation that she would be sustained, Mrs. Brice again opened her school in November following, near the same place; afterwards removing to Magnolia street, on account of room.

Under Confederate rule, she was repeatedly "warned" to desist teaching.

The gate-posts in front of her house were covered at night by placards, threatening "death to nigger teachers."

When forced to suspend her school, Mrs. Brice stole round at night, especially on dark and rainy nights, the more easily to elude observation, to the houses or resorts of her pupils, and there taught the eager learners, under every disability of mutual poverty, often of sore need, in face of imprisonment, banishment, or possible death.

Upon the occupation of the city by our forces, her school was preserved from further molestation, rather by the moral sentiment of the army than by any direct action; for so timid or prejudiced were many of our commanders, that long after that time General Emory sent for the Rev. Thomas Conway, to admonish him not to advocate,

publicly, the opening of schools for colored children, as it would be very dangerous!

The school of Mrs. Brice continued to thrive, and subsequently passed under the Board of Education, in whose employ she is now an efficient and honored Principal.

The advent of the Federal army weakened slavery, and suspended the pains and penalties of its bloody code, and a few private teachers began to appear, in response to the strong desire of the colored people for instruction.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOR COLORED PEOPLE.

No public schools were established until October, 1863. The great work was fairly begun by the "Commission of Enrollment," created by order of Major General Banks, commanding Department of the Gulf.

In February, 1864, was published General Order No. 23, of Gen. Banks, known as the "Labor Order." That order bridged the chasm between the old and the new. By it the laborer, although a slave, was permitted to choose his employer. The governing power was shifted from the planter to the Provost Marshal.

In addition to food, clothing, quarters, fuel, medical attendance and wages, instruction for his children was promised the colored man by the Government. ....

DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF COUNTRY SCHOOLS.

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the difficulty of establishing these schools in the country parishes.

Considering the expense and the probability of change in the school districts, the Board decided not to build school-houses at present, but to avail themselves of such accommodations as could be found.

The parish Provost Marshals were directed to seize and turn over to the Board all buildings designated by our agents as essential to the schools, taking care not to incommode or irritate any one, beyond the necessities of the case.

Any hesitancy to act, or indifference on the part of the Marshals, was met forthwith by the Provost Marshal General in the shape of a peremptory order, or by the prompt removal of the refractory subordinate. By this means the first obstacles were overcome. Had the Board received from the same office a continuance of the active interest in these schools manifested by General Bowen during his incumbency, we should have had, at this time, at least three thousand additional pupils.

Cabins, sheds, unused houses, were appropriated, roughly repaired, fitted with a cheap stove for the winter, a window or two for light and air a teacher sent to the locality, the neighboring children gathered in, and the school started.

In some of the parishes, so great was the difficulty of obtaining boarding places for our teachers--notwithstanding the efforts of agents and Provost Marshals--that a special order or circular letter was published, (see Appendix D,) by which many of the teachers were provided with temporary homes. But it frequently occurs, that in a desirable locality for a school, it is impossible to obtain boarding for the teachers. In such cases, a weather-proof shelter of some kind--very poor at best--is obtained, some simple furniture provided, and a teacher sent who is willing to undergo the privations--often hardships-of boarding herself, in addition to the fatigues of her school,

Compelled to live on the coarsest diet of corn bread and bacon; often no tea, coffee, butter, eggs, or flour; separated by miles of bad

roads from the nearest provision store; refused credit because she is a negro teacher, unable to pay cash because the Government is unavoidably in arrears; subjected to the jeers and hatred of her neighbors; cut off from society, with unfrequent and irregular mails; swamped in mud--the school shed a drip, and her quarters little better; raided occasionally by rebels, her school broken up and herself insulted, banished, or run off to rebeldom; under all this, it is really surprising how some of these brave women manage to live, much more how they are able to render the service they do as teachers.

Despite all the efforts of our agents, the assistance of the Provost Marshals, and the devotion of the teachers, many of these schools would have to be abandoned but for the freedmen themselves. These, fully alive to all that is being done for them, gratefully aid the teachers from their small store, and mount guard against the enemy of the schools, whether he be a rebel, a guerilla, or a pro-slavery professed unionist skulking behind the oath.

Excerpt from "What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation?" (1859)

What became of the slaves on a Georgia plantation?: Great auction sale of slaves, at Savannah, Georgia, March 2d & 3d, 1859. A sequel to Mrs. Kemble's Journal.

{Begin handwritten} Life in the Southern States {End handwritten} WHAT BECAME OF THE SLAVES ON A GEORGIA PLANTATION? GREAT ACTION SALE OF SLAVES

{Begin handwritten} by Price M. Butler {End handwritten} AT  SAVANNAH, GEORGIA MARCH 2d 3d, 1859. A SEQUEL TO MRS. KEMBLE'S JOURNAL. {Begin handwritten} Savannah, Ga. {End handwritten} 1863.

SALE OF SLAVES

The largest sale of human chattels that has been made in Star-Spangled America for several years, took place on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, at the Race-course near the City of Savannah, Georgia. The lot consisted of four hundred and thirty-six men, women, children and infants, being that half of the negro stock remaining on the old Major Butler plantations which fell to one of the two heirs to that estate. Major Butler, dying, left a property valued at more than a million of dollars, the major part of which was invested in rice and cotton plantations, and the slaves thereon, all of which immense fortune descended to two heirs, his sons, Mr. John A. Butler, sometime deceased, and Mr. Pierce M. Butler, still living, and resident in the City of Philadelphia, in the free State of Pennsylvania.

Losses in the great crash of 1857-8, and other exigencies of business, have compelled the latter gentleman to realize on his Southern investments, that he may satisfy his pressing creditors. This necessity led to a partition of the negro stock on the Georgia plantations, between himself and the representative of the other heir, the widow of the late John A. Butler, and the negroes that were brought to the hammer last week were the property of Mr. Pierce M. Butler, of Philadelphia, and were in fact sold to pay Mr. Pierce M. Butler's debts. The creditors were represented by Gen. Cadwalader, while Mr. Butler was present in person, attended by his business agent, to attend to his own interests.

The sale had been advertised largely for many weeks, though the name of Mr. Butler was not mentioned; and as the negroes were known to be a choice lot and very desirable property, the attendance of buyers was large. The breaking up of an old family estate is so uncommon an occurrence that the affair was regarded with unusual interest throughout the South. For several days before the sale every hotel in Savannah was crowded with negro speculators from North and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, who had been attracted hither by the prospects of making good bargains.

Nothing was heard for days, in the bar-rooms and public rooms, but talk of the great sale; criticisms of the business affairs of Mr. Butler, and speculations as to the probable prices the stock would bring. The office of Joseph Bryan, the Negro Broker, who had the management of the sale, was thronged every day by eager inquirers in search of information, and by some who were anxious to buy, but were uncertain as to whether their securities would prove acceptable. Little parties were made up from the various hotels every day to visit the Race-course, distant

some three miles from the city, to look over the chattels, discuss their points, and make memoranda for guidance on the day of sale. The buyers were generally of a rough breed, slangy, profane and bearish, being for the most part from the back river and swamp plantations, where the elegancies of polite life are not, perhaps, developed to their fullest extent. In fact, the humanities are sadly neglected by the petty tyrants of the rice-fields that border the great Dismal Swamp, their knowledge of the luxuries of our best society comprehending only revolvers and kindred delicacies. ...

WHERE THE NEGROES CAME FROM.

The negroes came from two plantations, the one a rice plantation near Darien, in the State of Georgia, not far from the great Okefonokee Swamp, and the other a cotton plantation on the extreme northern point of St. Simon's Island, a little bit of an island in the Atlantic, cut off from Georgia mainland by a slender arm of the sea. Though the most of the steek had been accustomed only to rice and cotton planting, there were among them a number of very passable mechanics, who had been taught to do all the rougher sorts of mechanical work on the plantations. There were coopers, carpenters, shoemakers and blacksmiths, each one equal, in his various craft, to the ordinary requirements of a plantation; thus, the coopers could make rice-tierces, and possibly, on a pinch, rude tubs and buckets; the carpenter could do the rough carpentry about the negro-quarters; the shoemaker could make shoes of the fashion required for the slaves, and the blacksmith was adequate to the

manufacture of hoes and similar simple tools, and to such trifling repairs in the blacksmithing way as did not require too refined a skill. Though probably no one of all these would be called a superior, or even an average workman, among the masters of the craft, their knowledge of these various trades sold in some cases for nearly as much as the man--that is, a man without a trade, who would be valued at $900, would readily bring $1,600 or $1,700 if he was a passable blacksmith or cooper. ...

... None of the Butler slaves have ever been sold before, but have been on these two plantations since they were born. Here have they lived their humble lives, and loved their simple loves; here were they born, and here have many of them had children born unto them; here had their parents lived before them, and are now resting in quiet graves on the old plantations that these unhappy ones are to see no more forever; here they left not only the well-known scenes dear to them from very baby-hood by a thousand fond memories, and homes as much loved by them, perhaps, as brighter homes by men of brighter faces; but all the clinging ties that bound them to living hearts were torn asunder, for but one-half of each of these two happy little communities was sent to the shambles, to be scattered to the four winds, and the other half was left behind. And who can tell how closely intertwined are the affections of a little band of four hundred persons, living isolated from all the world beside, from birth to middle age? Do they not naturally become one great family, each man a brother unto each?

It is true they were sold "in families," but let us see: a man and his wife were called a "family," their parents and kindred were not taken into account; the man and wife might be sold to the pine woods of North Carolina, their brothers and sisters be scattered through the cotton fields of Alabama and rice swamps of Louisiana, while the parents might be left on the old plantation to wear out their weary lives in grief, and lay their heads in far-off graves, over which their children might never weep. And

no account could be taken of loves that were as yet unconsummated by marriage; and how many aching hearts have been divorced by this summary proceeding no man can ever know. And the separation is as utter, and is infinitely more hopeless, than that made by the Angel of Death, for then the loved ones are committed to the care of a merciful Deity; but in the other instance, to the tender mercies of a slave-trade. These dark-skinned unfortunates are perfectly unlettered, and could not communicate by writing even if they should know where to send their missives. And so to each other, and to the old familiar places of their youth, clung all their sympathies and affections, not less strong, perhaps, because they are so few. The blades of grass on all the Butler estates are outnumbered by the tears that are poured out in agony at the wreck that has been wrought in happy homes, and the crushing grief that has been laid on loving hearts.

But, then, what business have "niggers" with tears? Besides, didn't Pierce Butler give them a silver dollar a-piece? which will appear in the sequel. And, sad as it is, it was all necessary, because a gentleman was not able to live on the beggarly pittance of half a million, and so must needs enter into speculations which turned out adversely.

HOW THEY WERE TREATED IN SAVANNAH.

The negroes were brought to Savannah in small lots, as many at a time as could be conveniently taken care of, the last of them reaching the city the Friday before the sale. They were consigned to the care of Mr. J. Bryan, Auctioneer and Negro Broker, who was to feed and keep them in condition until disposed of. Immediately on their arrival they were taken to the Race-course, and there quartered in the sheds erected for the accommodation of the horses and carriages of gentlemen attending the races. Into these sheds they were huddled pell-mell, without any more attention to their comfort than was necessary to prevent their becoming ill and unsaleable. Each "family" had one or more boxes or bundles, in which were stowed such scanty articles of their clothing as were not brought into immediate requisition, and their tin dishes and gourds for their food and drink.

...In these sheds were the chattels huddled together on the floor,

there being no sign of bench or table. They eat and slept on the bare boards, their food being rice and beans, with occasionally a bit of bacon and corn bread. Their huge bundles were scattered over the floor, and thereon the slaves sat or reclined, when not restlessly moving about, or gathered into sorrowful groups, discussing the chances of their future fate. On the faces of all was an expression of heavy grief; some appeared to be resigned to the hard stroke of Fortune that had torn them from their homes, and were sadly trying to make the best of it; some sat brooding moodily over their sorrows, their chins resting on their hands, their eyes staring vacantly, and their bodies rocking to and fro, with a restless motion that was never stilled; few wept, the place was too public and the drivers too near, though some occasionally turned aside to give way to a few quiet tears. They were dressed in every possible variety of uncouth and fantastic garb, in every style and of every imaginable color; the texture of the garments was in all cases coarse, most of the men being clothed in the rough cloth that is made expressly for the slaves. The dresses assumed by the negro minstrels, when they give imitations of plantation character, are by no means exaggerated; they are, instead, weak and unable to come up to the original.

There was every variety of hats, with every imaginable slouch; and there was every cut and style of coat and pantaloons, made with every conceivable ingenuity of misfit, and tossed on with a general appearance of perfect looseness that is perfectly indescribable, except to say that a Southern negro always looks as if he could shake his clothes off without taking his hands out of his pockets. The women, true to the feminine instinct, had made, in almost every case, some attempt at finery. All wore gorgeous turbans, generally manufactured in an instant out of a gay-colored handkerchief by a sudden and graceful twist of the fingers; though there was occasionally a more elaborate turban, a turban complex and mysterious, got up with care, and ornamented with a few beads or bright bits of ribbon. Their dresses were mostly coarse stuff, though there were some gaudy calicoes; a few had ear-rings, and one possessed the treasure of a string of yellow and blue beads. The little children were always better and more carefully dressed than the older ones, the parental pride coming out in the shape of a yellow cap pointed like a mitre, or a jacket with a strip of red broadcloth round the bottom. The children were of all sizes, the youngest being fifteen days old. The babies were generally good-natured; though when one would set up a yell, the complaint soon attacked the others, and a full chorus would be the result.

The slaves remained at the Race-course, some of them for more than a week, and all of them for four days before the sale. They were brought in thus early that buyers who desired to inspect them might enjoy that privilege, although none of them were sold at private sale. For these preliminary days their shed was constantly

visited by speculators. The negroes were examined with as little consideration as if they had been brutes indeed; the buyers pulling their mouths open to see their teeth, pinching their limbs to find how muscular they were, walking them up and down to detect any signs of lameness, making them stoop and bend in different ways that they might be certain there was no concealed rupture or wound; and in addition to all this treatment, asking them scores of questions relative to their qualifications and accomplishments. All these humiliations were submitted to without a murmur, and in some instances with good-natured cheerfulness--where the slave liked the appearance of the proposed buyer, and fancied that he might prove a kind "Mas'r." ...

... The negroes looked more uncomfortable than ever; the close confinement in-doors for a number of days, and the drizzly, unpleasant weather, began to tell on their condition. They moved about more listlessly, and were fast losing the activity and springiness they had at first shown. This morning they were all gathered into the long room of the building erected as the "Grand Stand" of the Race-course, that they might be immediately under the eye of the buyers. The room was about a hundred feet long by twenty wide, and herein were crowded the poor creatures, with much of their baggage, awaiting their respective calls to step upon the block and be sold to the highest bidder. This morning Mr. Pierce Butler appeared among his people, speaking to each one, and being recognized with seeming pleasure by all. The men obsequiously pulled off their hats and made that indescribable sliding hitch with the foot which passes with a negro for a bow; and the women each dropped the quick curtsy, which they seldom vouchsafe to any other than their legitimate master and mistress. Occasionally, to a very old or favorite servant, Mr. Butler would extend his gloved hand, which mark of condescension was instantly hailed with grins of delight from all the sable witnesses.

... Mr. Walsh mounted the stand and announced the terms of the sale, "one-third cash, the remainder payable in two equal annual instalments, bearing interest from the day of sale, to be secured by approved mortgage and personal security, or approved acceptances in Savannah, Ga., or Charleston, S. C. Purchasers to pay for papers." The buyers, who were present to the number of about two hundred, clustered around the platform; while the negroes, who were not likely to be immediately wanted, gathered into sad groups in the back-ground, to watch the progress of the selling in which they were so sorrowfully interested. The wind howled outside, and through the open side of the building the driving rain came pouring in; the bar down stairs ceased for a short time its brisk trade; the buyers lit fresh cigars, got ready their catalogues and pencils, and the first lot of human chattels was led upon the stand, not by a white man, but by a sleek mulatto, himself a slave, and who seems to regard the selling of his brethren, in which he so glibly assists, as a capital joke. It had been announced that the negroes would be sold in "families," that is to say, a man would not be parted from his wife, or a mother from a very young child. There is perhaps as much policy as humanity in this arrangement, for thereby many aged and unserviceable people are disposed of, who otherwise would not find a ready sale. ...

... It seems as if every shade of character capable of being implicated in the sale of human flesh and blood was represented among the buyers. There was the Georgia fast young man, with his pantaloons tucked into his boots, his velvet cap jauntily dragged over to one side, his cheek full of tobacco, which he bites from a huge plug, that resembles more than anything else an old bit of a rusty wagon tire, and who is altogether an animal of quite a different breed from your New York fast man. His ready revolver, or his convenient knife, is ready for instant use in case of heated argument. White-neck-clothed, gold-spectacled, and silver-haired old men were there, resembling in appearance that noxious breed of sanctimonious deacons we have at the North, who are perpetually leaving documents at your door that you never read, and the business of whose mendicant life it is to eternally solicit subscriptions for charitable associations, of which they are treasurers. These gentry, with quiet step and subdued voice, moved carefully about among the live stock, ignoring, as a general rule, the men, but tormenting the women with questions which, when accidentally overheard by the disinterested spectator, bred in that spectator's mind an almost irresistible desire to knock somebody down.

And then, all imaginable varieties of rough, backwoods rowdies, who began the day in a spirited manner, but who, as its hours progressed, and their practice at the bar became more prolific in results, waxed louder and talkier and more violent, were present, and added a characteristic feature to the assemblage. Those of your readers who have read "Uncle Tom,"--and who has not?--will remember, with peculiar feelings, Legree, the slave-driver and woman-whipper. That that character is not been overdrawn, or too highly colored, there is abundant testimony. Witness the subjoined dialogue: A party of men were conversing on the fruitful subject of managing refractory "niggers;" some were for severe whipping, some recommending branding, one or two advocated other modes of torture, but one huge brute of a man, who had not taken an active part in the discussion, save to assent, with approving nod, to any unusually barbarous proposition, at last broke his silence by saying, in an oracular way, "You may say what you like about managing niggers; I'm a driver myself, and I've had some experience, and I ought to know. You can manage ordinary niggers by lickin' 'em, and givin' 'em a taste of the hot iron once in awhile when they're extra ugly; but if a nigger really sets himself up against me, I can't never have any patience with him. I just get my pistol and shoot him right down; and that's the best way." ...

...The expression on the faces of all who stepped on the block was always the same, and told of more anguish than it is in the power of words to express. Blighted homes, crushed hopes and broken hearts, was the sad story to be read in all the anxious faces. Some of them regarded the sale with perfect indifference, never making a motion, save to turn from one side to the other at the word of the dapper Mr. Bryan, that all the crowd might have a fair view of their proportions, and then, when the sale was accomplished, stepped down from the block without caring to cast even a look at the buyer, who now held all their happiness in his hands. Others, again, strained their eyes with eager glances from one buyer to another as the bidding went on, trying with earnest attention to follow the rapid voice of the auctioneer. Sometimes, two persons only would be bidding for the same chattel, all the others having resigned the contest, and then the poor creature on the block, conceiving an instantaneous preference for one of the buyers over the other, would regard the rivalry with the intensest interest, the expression of his face changing with every bid, settling into a half smile of joy if the favorite buyer persevered unto the end and secured the property, and settling down into a look of hopeless despair if the other won the victory. ...

... Many other babies, of all ages of baby-hood, were sold, but there was nothing particularly interesting about them. There were some thirty babies in the lot; they are esteemed worth to the master a

hundred dollars the day they are born, and to increase in value at the rate of a hundred dollars a year till they are sixteen or seventeen years old, at which age they bring the best prices. ...

... The highest price paid for a single man was $1,750, which was given for William, a "fair carpenter and caulker."

The highest price paid for a woman was $1,250, which was given for Jane, "cotton hand and house servant."

The lowest price paid was for Anson and Violet, a gray-haired couple, each having numbered more than fifty years; they brought but $250 a piece. ...

...And now come the scenes of the last partings--of the final separations of those who were akin, or who had been such dear friends from youth that no ties of kindred could bind them closer--of those who were all in all to each other, and for whose bleeding hearts there shall be no earthly comfort--the parting of parents and children, of brother from brother, and the rending of sister from a sister's bosom; and O! hardest, cruellest of all, the tearing asunder of loving hearts, wedded in all save the one ceremony of the Church-these scenes pass all description; it is not meet for pen to meddle with tears so holy.

As the last family stepped down the block, the rain ceased, for the first time in four days the clouds broke away, and the soft sunlight fell on the scene. The unhappy slaves had many of them been already removed, and others were now departing with their new masters. ...

Excerpt from "My Ups and Downs," an interview with Kert Shorrow" (1939)

[My Ups and Downs]

The  complete interview  is available.

MY UP'S AND DOWN'S

Written By: Mrs. Ina B. Hawkes

Research Field Worker, Georgia Writers' Project, Athens -

Edited By: Mrs. Maggie B. Freeman

Editor, Georgia Writers' Project, Athens - WPA Area -6

October 9, 1939

September 14, 1939

[Kert Shorrow?] (Negro)

Route # 1, Athens, Georgia

Mrs. Ina B. Hawkes

It was just a small Negro shanty, just off the highway. I went up to the front door. I noticed it was open, but I found the screen door shut and latched.

I came back down off the porch and walked around the house. I saw an old Negro woman coming down a little grassy lane. I walked up to meet her. She looked a little tired. She had a white cotton sack on her back where she had been picking cotton and a big sun hat on. She looked up and appeared very much surprised to see me.

"Good morning, Aunty. Do you live here?" She said, "Good morning, Miss. Yes, man, I lives here. I aint been here so long though. Is der something I can do for yo?"

I told her that I wanted to talk to her a little while if she had time. She said, "Yes'um, but you see I don't want to be [empolite?] cause I won't raised dat way. But if you will come in I will talk to you while

I fix a little dinner. I works in the field all I can."

About that time I saw a small boy coming around the house with his cotton sack.

"My name is [Sadie?]," she said, "and dis is my great grandson here. I'se got seventeen chillun, Honey."

"How did you manage with so many children, Aunty?" I asked. "By the help of the Lawd. We didn't have much, but you know what the old frog said when he went to the pond and found jus a little water, don't you? Well, he said, "A little is better than none.' Dat's de way I all'ers felt about things.

"I was born and raised in Walton County. But dey is done changed things back over der so much. I was over der to see my daughter while back and, Lawdy mussy, chile, dey is done built a new bridge ah didn't know nothing about.

"Here, Sammy, make mama a fire in de stove while I gits a few things ready to cook."

The little boy had a kerosine lamp over the blaze and, before I could stop myself, I had yelled at him to get it away from that blaze. Aunt Sadie said, "Dat's right, Miss. Correct him. Chillun des days don't see no danger in nothing.

"Back in my day as far back as I can remember

my mother and father was [Marse?] Holt and Mistess Holt's slaves. 'Case we chilluns wus too, but slavery times wus over fo I wus big nuf to know very much 'bout hit.

"But I do know about [Marse?] Holt and Mistess Holt. Lawd, child, dey wus de best people in de world I do think. Ole Mistess use to make us go to bed early. She would feed us out under a walnut tree. She wouldn't let us eat lak chilluns do now. We would have milk and bread, and dey would always save pot liquor left over from the vegetables. They put corn bread in it. We little Niggers sho' injoyed hit though. Sometimes we would get syrup and bread and now and then a biscuit.

"[Marse?] and Mistess died, but Ma and Pa and we chillun just stayed on and waked hard. Pa and Ma both wus good farmers. But, Honey, talk 'bout slavery times, hit's mor lak slavery times now with chillun dan it wus den. 'Cause us didn't have to go to de fields til we wus good size chillun. Now de poor things has to go time dey is big nuf to walk and tote a cotton sack.

"Miss Ruth is [Marse?] and Mistess Holt's daughter. I wus fortunate to know Miss Ruth. She larnt me to say my A B C's. If I didn't know them or say them fast nuf she would slap me and make me do hit right". She got up and went over to an old washstand and got an old blue

back speller. "Here," she said, "look at dis and you will see whut she taught me wid. You can see why I loves dat book. I don't let nobody bother wid dat.

"I sits and looks at my little book lots of times and think of dem good old days. I went to regular school two months in my life.

"I thought I wus grown when I hopped up and married."

..."My life, Honey, is jus been  ups  and  downs . Me and

pa and the chilluns always jus had to stay home and work 'cept on Saddays. We would always go to town and church on Sundays. We would fix a big box of oats and get up soon Sadday morning, and Tom and the boys would hitch up old Buck to the cart. Yes, dat old ox wus jus as fast as anybody's mule. He would take us to town and bring us back safe.

"I never will forget one Sadday we wus in town. It wus a treat to jus go to town for us, the lights wus so pretty, but coming home dat day a man stopped us. Me and Tom had most of the chilluns with us. He said he wanted to take our pictures, so he could save it and show it ot his grandchilluns.

"We jus sold old Buck in 1934. He wus gitting old and couldn't plow and git 'bout lak he used too. And we needed a mule too.

"Lawdy, dere's Tom now. He come in the back door, a little man not much older looking than I is."....

Excerpt from "Mrs. Lulu Bowers II," an interview with Mrs. Lulu Bowers (1938)

[Mrs. Lula Bowers, II]

{Begin handwritten} Beliefs Customs - Customs {End handwritten}

Accession no. - 10160

Date received - 10/10/40

Consignment no.

Shipped from Wash. Off.

Amount - 4p.

WPA L. C. PROJECT Writers' UNIT

Folklore Collection (or Type)

Title Social Customs. Mrs. Lula Bowers II

Place of origin Hampton Co., S. Car. Date 6-28-38

Project worker Phoebe Faucette

Project editor

{Begin deleted text} 8882 {End deleted text}

Project #-1655

Phoebe Faucette

Hampton County {Begin handwritten} [?] {End handwritten} {Begin deleted text} 390552 {End deleted text}

Records of the Past

SOCIAL CUSTOMS

Mrs. Lula Bowers {Begin handwritten}, II {End handwritten}

...."There is a great change in the men and women, too, from what it used to be. It used to be that the men tended to all the business. Now most all the business is tended to by the women!

I remember the first woman free dealer. She was Mr. Ned Morrison's grandmother. She was the first free-dealer I ever heard of. Her husband was an excellent man but no business man. He had a large farm to manage after the war, with free labor. He'd get so mad with the negroes that he'd just let them go, and give up. So she had to take charge. She went to the courthouse and got an appointment. She was the only woman I know that got an appointment to run her own farm. Now women run their farms if they want to.

"The churches and schools wasn't much. They got free-schools for three months then. Now they get it for nine.

"The roads weren't good either like they are now. And it was so hard to get anybody to work on the roads. Each farmer had to send a certain amount of hands to work the roads, and someone had to oversee the work. My father was generally the one.

"In slavery time we had three slave quarters - ten houses in each quarter. The houses were kept nice, kept clean. And there was one special house where they kept the children and a nurse. The houses were log-houses, and they didn't have any windows more than ten or twelve inches square. And they had shutters, not sash. The hinges for the shutters were made in the blacksmith shop. They wouldn't have but two rooms. Very often they wouldn't have lumber enough to put in the partition, and would have to hang up sheets between the rooms.

They'd ceil them with clapboards from the woods. Their furniture was just anything that they could get - little stools, and little benches, and just anything. They'd use the back of their old dresses for quilts.

"The clothes of the slaves were spun at home and made by their mistresses. The'd weave them white, then dye the cloth. They'd go in the woods and get bark and dye them.

"The slaves had bread and hominy, and what little meat they could get hold of now and then. There were a lot of cattle in this country. And they raised a lot of geese, and guineas, and such like. Most of the slaves were doctored by their owners. Dr. Nathan A. Johnston was the first doctor I knew anything about. They'd rake soot off the back of the chimney and make a tea out of it for the colic. Called it soot-tea. I've seen my grandmother do it a many a time! The slaves didn't have any education in that day. They'd have Sunday Schools for the white people and for the slaves. The old people would write down what the children had to say. They had no books then, and paper was so scarce they sometimes had to use paste-board. When the slaves wanted to go off on a visit they were given tickets, and allowed to go for just so many hours.

"After the war, military rule was oppressive for a while; but they got so they dropped that. There was much lawlessness. There was no law at all, and they couldn't manage the negroes at all. There was a man that came from Beaufort named Wright, and he controlled them. He was a northerner but he was a

good man. He and his wife came. They stayed in three different homes when they were here. Only three homes would take those people in! One of them was a relative of mine. She said one night Mrs. Wright said she would make a pudding for them all - what she called Hasty Pudding. So my aunt got out the sugar, and eggs and seasonings for her; but the 'Pudding' proved to be just Fried Hominy - cold hominy sliced and rolled in egg and flour and fried. They had a son and a daughter. After a while they came, too,"

Source: Mrs. Lula Bowers, 79, Luray, S. C.

(Second interview.)

Excerpt from "E.W. Evans, Brick Layer & Plasterer," an interview with E.W. Evans (undated)

[E. W. Evans, Brick Layer & Plasterer]

E. W. Evans (Negro)

610 Parsons Street, S.W.

Brick Layer Plasterer

by Geneva Tonsill

"My parents were slaves on the plantation of John H. Hill, a slave owner in Madison, Georgia. I wuz born on May 21, 1855. I wuz owned and kept by J. H. Hill until just befo' surrender. I wuz a small boy when Sherman left here at the fall of Atlanta. He come through Madison on his march to the sea and we chillun hung out on the front fence from early morning 'til late in the evening, watching the soldiers go by. It took most of the day.

"My master wuz a Senator from Georgia, 'lected on the Whig ticket. He served two terms in Washington as Senator. His wife, our mistress, had charge of the slaves and plantation. She never seemed to like the idea of having slaves. Of course, I never heard her say she didn't want them but she wuz the one to free the slaves on the place befo' surrender. Since that I've felt she didn't want them in the first place....

The next week after Sherman passed through Madison, Miss Emily called the five ... wimmen ... women ... that wuz on the place and tole them to stay 'round the house and attend to things as they had always done until their husbands come back. She said they were free and could go wherever they wanted to. See ... she decided this befo surrender and tole them they could keep up just as befo' until their husbands could look after a place for them to stay. She meant that they could rent from her if they wanted to. In that number of ... wimmen ... women ... wuz my mother, Ellen, who worked as a seamstress for Mrs. Hill. The other ... wimmen ... women ... wuz aunt Lizzie and aunt Dinah, the washer- ...wimmen ... women ... , aunt Liza ... a seamstress to help my mother, and aunt Caroline ... the nurse for Miss Emily's chilluns.

"I never worked as a slave because I wuzn't ole 'nough. In 1864, when I wuz about nine years ole they sent me on a trial visit to the plantation to give me an idea of what I had to do some day.

{Begin page no. 2}

The place I'm talkin' about, when I wuz sent for the tryout, wuz on the outskirts of town. It wuz a house where they sent chilluns out ole 'nough to work for a sort of trainin'. I guess you'd call it the trainin' period. When the chilluns wuz near ten years ole they had this week's trial to get them used to the work they'd have to do when they reached ten years. At the age of ten years they wuz then sent to the field to work. They'd chop, hoe, pick cotton ... and pull fodder, corn, or anything else to be done on the plantation. I stayed at the place a whole week and wuz brought home on Saturday. That week's work showed me what I wuz to do when I wuz ten years ole. Well, this wuz just befo Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea and I never got a chance to go to the plantation to work agin, for Miss Emily freed all on her place and soon after that we wuz emancipated.

"The soldiers I mentioned while ago that passed with Sherman carried provisions, hams, shoulders, meal, flour ... and other food. They had their cooks and other servants. I 'member seeing a woman in that crowd of servants. She had a baby in her arms. She hollered at us Chillun and said, 'You chilluns git off dat fence and go learn yore ABC's.' I thought she wuz crazy telling us that ... for we had never been 'lowed to learn nothing at all like reading a writing. I learned but it wuz after surrender and I wuz over tens years ole.

"It wuz soon after the soldiers passed with Sherman that Miss Emily called in all the ... wimmen ... women ... servants and told them they could take their chillun ... to the cabin and stay there until after the war. My father, George, had gone with Josh Hill, a son of Miss Emily's to wait on him. She told my mother to take us to that cabin until a place could be made for us.

{Begin page no. 3}

"I said I wuz born a slave but I wuz too young to know much about slavery. I wuz the property of the Hill family from 1855 to 1865, when freedom wuz declared and they said we wuz free....

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203 Slavery Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on slavery, 👍 good slavery research topics & essay examples, 🔎 easy slavery research paper topics, 🎓 most interesting slavery research titles, 💡 simple slavery essay ideas, 🌶️ hot slavery ideas to write about, ❓ slavery research questions.

• Toni Morrison’s Novel “Beloved”: Slavery Theme
• The History of Slavery: Impacts on Contemporary Society
• The Machiavellianism Theory’s Application to Slavery
• Slavery in “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler
• The Theme of Slavery in Poetry
• “The Escape, Or: A Leap for Freedom”, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”: The Need for Social Action on Slavery
• “Up from Slavery” by Booker T. Washington Analysis
• Race and Slavery in the “Clotel” Novel by Brown In “Clotel,” Brown explores the aspect of race through the ravaging effects of slavery and uses a number of female characters who undergo suffering as a result of the slave trade.
• Slavery in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” the Novel by Mark Twain Mark Twain was a true trailblazer of his era by writing a bold and courageous novel about the problems of slavery.
• The Impact of Slavery on Society Slavery is a tragedy in human history due to its cruel barbarism, scale, organized nature, and denial of the victims’ essence.
• Historical and Modern-Day Slavery In this paper, the concept of modern-day and historical slavery will be compared and contrasted, exemplifying the similarities between the notions.
• Haratins: Slavery in Mauritania Yesterday and Today The article provides a detailed analysis of how the situation with slavery in Mauritania has changed over time and how things are now.
• The Slavery Debate Between 1820 and 1850 The work is aimed to provide a historical overview of the slavery debate between 1820 and 1850, which meant the conflict between North and South of the USA.
• Slavery in the Novel “Satyricon” by Gaius Petronius The excellent Roman novel, Satyricon, by Gaius Petronius, offers modern readers a way to delve into the class structure in the twilight of Roman society by depicting characters from all levels.
• The History of Slavery and Contemporary Society Slavery is one of the most harmful concepts devised by humans. This paper will provide an overview of the history of slavery, as well as the effects it has on modern society.
• The Sexual Abuse of Black Men Under American Slavery The thesis of this article is that violence has no face, race, or gender. The times of slavery left a large number of people disfigured and offended, including men.
• Injustices Faced by African American People Since Slavery The paper states that African Americans experienced a great deal of racial discrimination, which diminished their confidence among whites.
• Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery Henry Brown was born in Louisa County, Virginia, in 1816 and became known as Henry “Box” Brown after the box he used to escape slavery.
• Slavery and Human Rights Violation The work presents three stories from various time periods and places, but they are common in the fact that, due to greed, some people are ready to sacrifice all human qualities.
• Comparison of the Slavery Systems in Ancient Rome and Ottoman This research defines how slavery was carried out in the two empires and compares and contrasts some of the activities that were involved in the practice of slavery in the two empires.
• Economics and Slavery in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative This work discusses Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and the author’s view on the way economics affects slavery.
• Human Trafficking – Modern-Day Slavery Modern-day slavery is one of the outcomes of globalization; it affects millions of people and brings immense revenue to the criminals.
• Gender Dynamics in American Slavery This study explores the gendered experiences of slavery in the US, highlighting the challenges faced by women in daily life.
• Indentured Servitude and Slavery in the American Colonies The main difference between indentured servitude and slavery in the American colonies was the duration of service.
• Slavery’s Legacy in Kindred by Octavia Butler “Kindred” offers a thought-provoking perspective on the complexities of slavery. Octavia Butler examines power, control, and the ramifications of one’s choices in chapters 7 and 8.
• Pre-Civil War Slavery and Black Women The pressing issue of enslavement of African-American individuals had been apparent in the United States for a long time.
• Whigs’ vs. Democrats’ Views on Slavery and Race The political life of America in the 1830s – early 1850s was largely determined by the rivalry between Whigs and Democrats.
• How the White Southerners Justified Slavery White Southerners are thriving members of the society living in the Southern parts of the USA. Typical white southerners were yeomen who cultivated small portions of land.
• Slavery Experiences Depicted in Primary Documents Women were among the most vulnerable slaves who suffered from psychological and physical torture during slavery.
• Slavery in The American South: Slavery and Southern Society Many masters did not provide a comfortable life for their slaves. Black people were often exploited and sold into slavery in the American South.
• The History of African American Slavery The fact that African Americans were taken captive and brought to America as enslaved gave them an unfair start in the country.
• The Phenomenon of Slavery and Its Abolition The paper states that revolutions and amendments ensured the actualization of the abolition of slavery and created equality between the various races.
• The Invention of the Cotton Gin and Its Impact on Slavery The invention of the cotton gin in the US allowed the planters to increase production, which led to a dramatic increase in the number of slaves working in the fields.
• African Kingdoms, Atlantic Slave Trade, and New World Slavery The connections between African kingdoms, the Atlantic slave trade, and the new world slavery are shown in this paper.
• The American Yawp: Poking the Slavery Epoch This paper examines the troubling history of slavery in the US and the justifications used by American elites to perpetuate racial subjugation and enslavement of Africans.
• Women’s Rights, Abolition of Slavery, and Nationalism in the US This paper examines such important events in the US history as women’s rights convention, the abolition of slavery, and nationalism development.
• Slavery and Democracy in the United States On the road to progress and enlightenment, virtually all races have resorted to such a terrible form of social development as slavery.
• The Ideas and Perspectives of Literary Works About Slavery and Racism The essay aims to provide insights into opinions about the ideas and perspectives of literary works about slavery, racism, and the oppression of African-Americans.
• The Reconstruction Amendments: Abolishing Slavery The current paper states that the Reconstruction Amendments aimed to protect rights by abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude.
• Slavery as a Human Rights Issue The paper argues slavery in underdeveloped countries, especially Africa, continues to be a pressing and contemporary problem.
• The Haitian Revolution and Slavery The Haitian Revolution is intertwined with the ideas of enslaved people’s desires for freedom, social justice, and equity.
• Frederick Douglass’ Illustrations Concerning Slavery Frederick Douglass provides insightful and educative illustrations concerning slavery and its severe negative impacts that suggest that it should be eradicated.
• Racial Ideology and Slavery in the United States This paper examines the concept of race and how previous racial ideologies contributed to the expansion of racial slavery in the United States.
• Westward Migration and Expansion of Slavery The Westward expansion began in 1803 with the purchase of land that doubled the territory of the United States. The Louisiana purchase sparked the interest of Americans.
• Civilizations and Their Thinkers’ Views on the Subject of Slavery Different people throughout the years had different views on slavery, and depending on their living conditions, philosophy, and ideas, their treatment of slaves changed.
• The History of Slavery Impact Analysis The history of slavery is one of the most complex and debated topics in modern research because the issue of human trafficking and enslavement is still relevant.
• Analysis of Slavery and Resistance Slavery was the most abhorrent practice in both American and world history because violated every connotation and notion of human decency, right, freedom, and justice.
• The Abolition of American Cotton Slavery The abolition of slavery became possible and necessary as America’s cotton monopoly met intense competition from India, Egypt, Brazil, and other countries.
• Civil War: The Legacy in Ending Slavery The Civil War was among the worst wars that happened in America. However, it also left a legacy that caused the ending of slavery.
• New World Slavery and Racism in Society The effects of slavery and racial ideology can be observed even after the official abolition of this policy. There is racial discrimination in labor and health care.
• The Struggle Against Slavery Was for All The paper indicates that the fight against slavery was a fight for humanity that took a long but eventually bore incredible fruits.
• Supply Chain Slavery and Exploitation Modern-day slavery is no different from the historic term due to similarities when it comes to exploitation, abuse, and entrapment of vulnerable individuals.
• Slavery in the American Colonies This paper aims to discuss the institution of slavery established in the American colonies and the impact of the American revolution on slavery.
• American History: Reconstruction Era, Slavery, Indian Wars This period was characterized by attempts to rectify the inequities of slavery and its political, social and economic legacy left by the American Civil War.
• Slavery in the Texas: Declaration of Causes and Address by Sam Houston The first document under review is titled “Texas Declaration of Causes”. This piece of writing represents an account of the grudge.
• African American Slavery in Case of Harriet Jacobs This paper reviews life for Harriet Jacobs and other slaves, how African Americans were treated, and how Harriet Jacobs and other slaves coped with the bondage.
• Haiti’s and Cuba’s Independence Movement and Slavery The independence movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, as can be seen from the Cuban and Haitian experiences, were mostly guided by the problem of slavery.
• Slavery and Racism: History and Linkage Slavery has changed over time; this institution in the ancient world was different from its modern forms; in particular, the Atlantic slave trade added a racial aspect to it.
• Stowe and Douglass’s Depiction of Slavery In this work, the messages of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” will be discussed.
• History of African American Slavery Before the introduction of the slave trade, Africans who lived in West Africa had diverse and rich histories of their culture.
• Slavery Abolishment and Underlying Reasons We should understand the value of human life, and liberating slaves will permit the States to advance as a country with high ethics and solid equity.
• Slavery: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” depicts and illustrates the author’s life and his journey from being a slave to becoming a free and independent man.
• The Role of Religion in Propping-Up Slavery The article discusses that Christianity and its principles contributed to the propping up of the slavery system.
• What Is More Impactful: Freedom or Slavery? In modernity, the history of slavery in the United States can primarily be contextualized as the history of abolition.
• Slavery in Colonial America The paper discusses slavery. It is different from indentured servitude in many aspects. It was widely spread in many regions of Colonial America.
• Slavery in Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass Fredrick Douglas is one of the most famous Afro-American leaders of the XIX century. He was an abolitionist and one of the main figures of the anti-slavery movement in the USA.
• Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy and Tsotsi The movie’s message tells the viewer that there are many children like this, and there are many of Tsotsi nowadays.
• Slavery as a Part of America’s History More than two centuries of American history were overshadowed by such a terrible phenomenon as slavery when people were divided into white and black.
• Indentured Servitude and Slavery in Virginia in the 1600s The paper indicates that indentured servitude and slavery possessed different connotations for individuals in Virginia in the 1600s.
• James Baldwin’s Essays on Racism and Slavery By studying Baldwin’s reflection on the nature of racism, its link to slavery, and its traces in the American community, one can understand the nature of modern racism.
• Hard Questions About Living in Poverty or Slavery The paper aims to find the answers to several questions, for example, how to remain human while living in the conditions of extreme poverty or slavery.
• Post-Slavery African-American Exploitation The central theme of the paper is the oppressive laws adopted in the southern states after the abolition of slavery.
• The Abolition of Slavery After the Civil War This essay covers topics directly addressing the racial problems from Reconstruction when the civil war between the North and the South pushed society to critical changes.
• DuBois’ and Tocqueville’s Perspective on Legacy of Slavery The plight for equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities has been one of the most long-standing issues in world history, with the history of slavery in the U.S.
• Indentured Servitude and Slavery: Similarities and Differences The current paper aims to discuss indentured servants and slaves. They were brought from outside America to work in plantations in the colony.
• Features of Slavery in South America Slavery was crucial in creating the Southern mentality and worldview and significantly formed the social background.
• The Significant Events Leading to the End of Slavery This essay looks at some of the significant events leading to the end of slavery by reviewing David Wyatt’s opinion on how slavery died out according to history.
• Slavery and the Civil War: Reasons and Outcomes Slavery stressed the issue of freedom in America and led to effective national changes in its legislation, economy, policy, and social structure.
• Slavery vs. Indentured Servitude The paper explains how and why slavery developed in the American colonies and describes how the practice of slavery differed between each colonial region.
• From Slavery to Racism: Historical Background Racism did not spur slavery or encourage it; instead, it was used to justify a phenomenon that would exist nonetheless due to the economic situation in the world at the time.
• Slavery and Slaves in the United States of America The article analyzes the Garnet speech where he proclaimed the time for slaves to start fighting for justice and freedom for the sake of past and future generations.
• Slavery and Discrimination: The Foundations of the Problem This work explores the roots of the slavery problem and raises the question of whether discrimination would be so intense in the modern world if only white people were slaves.
• Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass: Slavery and Christianity Douglass distinguishes between the truthful and hypocritical versions of Christianity. He demonstrates how the slaveholders’ beliefs do not adhere to religious doctrine.
• Slavery Institution as a Source for Victimization In conclusion, the slavery institution as a concept was harmful not only to slaves but also to slaveholders. This practice degrades the common values.
• Slavery and the Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850 gave the US a temporary respite but did not and could not solve the problem of slavery.
• Gendered Aspects of Slavery in American History The US social, political, and economic development is significantly shaped by slavery among African Americans.
• Eric Williams: Slavery Was Not Born Out of Racism In “Capitalism and Slavery,” Williams writes: “Slavery was not born out of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery”.
• History of Texas: Colonization and Slavery Texas has a rich history characterized by its unintended colonization by the Spaniards and the ultimate widespread African slavery.
• Plantation Slavery in Louisiana The period of slavery in the US is one of the darkest periods in the history. The purpose of this essay is to study the stories of former slaves to get an idea of slavery in Louisiana.
• The Birth of Slavery in America Indeed, all thirteen of the original states actively practiced slavery, but the same patterns of using cheap labor differed markedly.
• Antebellum Period Southerners and Slavery The South relied on slavery for economic prosperity and used the wealth acquired from plantations with slaves as laborers to justify slavery and the slave trade.
• To Right the Wrongs: Reparations for Slavery The former colonial powers must repair the damage caused by centuries of violence and discrimination. The total number of victims of the slave trade is difficult to estimate.
• The Role of Christianity in Slavery: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Religion is an efficient tool of persuasion. The owners used faith to control the workers and claimed to be virtuous since they prayed regularly.
• Changes in the Character of Slavery in North America Colonial North America became the first continent on which the slave system took root and developed on a colossal scale.
• Haiti: From Slavery to Emancipation The Haitian Revolution had a significant impact on the African American movements and the subsequent abolition of slavery in many countries of America.
• Douglass’s Arguments on Slavery Abolition The cotton culture became not only the basis for international trade and violence of Native Americans but also the desire for social justice.
• Impacts of Slavery on the Antebellum USA This article is about the impact of slavery on the American economy, society, and politics before the Civil War.
• Treatment of Women During Slavery in the North American Colonies Slave reproduction was considered to be good in the North American colonies, the region where the greatest slave population growth was recorded.
• Geography of Slavery in Virginia One of the prime examples of slavery’s impact on the lives of human beings is the slavery patterns in Virginia in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• White Slave Owners and the Tyranny of Slavery in Phillis Wheatley’s Poetry Published in 1773, Wheatley had an opportunity to speak out on the tyranny she and her race faced from day today.
• The History of Slavery: Its Formation and Development Historically, slavery was spread across the world, taking many forms, nowadays it is seen as a quintessence of injustice, which brought suffering to many people, and is forbidden.
• History of Slavery and Contemporary Society The study should provide comprehensive information on the influence of slavery and its history on the contemporary world and its people.
• Rise of Slavery and Slave Trade Main Reasons In the Atlantic Ocean Basin Between 1400 and 1750 The main reason for the rise of the Atlantic slave trade between 1400 and 1750 was the importance of colonies for the development of the economy of European countries.
• Southern Whites Defending Slavery Analysis This paper will attempt to explore the common moral justifications of slavery and the reasons why they appeared.
• At-Will Employment: The 21st Century Form of Slavery At-will employment is defined as such relationships between an employer and employee in which the latter could be dismissed without any warning or valid reason.
• Fight Over Slavery of the Southern Population An increasing number of anti-slavery politicians and supporters of emancipation contributed to the paranoia among the Southern population.
• History of Slavery: Slaves and Servants in Virginia The history of slavery in Virginia traces back to the 1600s, as it was found as the colony of the English through the London Virginia Company.
• Slavery vs. Indentured Servants The main difference between slaves and indentured servants is that while slaves were not free as they were their masters’ property, indentured servants enjoyed some freedom.
• Post-Slavery Abolishment United States This paper discusses the post-Civil war period’s issues with the South, paces of industrialization and business development, and expansion to the West after slavery abolishment.
• America: A Culture Around Slavery American cultural background, reflected in the practice of sending Africans and blacks into slavery, as well as the position of women in slavery and the sale of their bodies.
• Sectionalism and Slavery in American History Sectionalism and slavery are important topics in American history. Sectionalism refers to the divide that was created between the northern and southern territories.
• Slavery Operation Institution and Its Impacts to Slaves Slavery was indeed the worst crime against humanity in that era, a lot of people suffered from mistreatment some even dying.
• Child Slavery and Sexual Trafficking Child slavery is a business, which brings milliards of dollars to its owners, a reality of our world. Many people believe that it happens somewhere far away and not in our community.
• Abraham Lincoln’s Policies on Slavery in 1861-1863 Abraham Lincoln was one the most powerful presidents of the United States. The essay explains the evolution of Lincoln’s policies on slavery from July 1861 to November 1863.
• Readings on Slavery and Racial Segregation in the US Certain themes expressed in the readings are too surprising to be true. Many years after slavery was abandoned, the black generation still suffered its consequences.
• Slavery as a Peculiar Institution When slavery was defined as a peculiar institution, it was thought to mean a distinctive aspect of the people of the US who had embraced it.
• Slavery in the South: Definite or Indefinite? This paper will try to explore what doomed slavery in the South by the eve of the Civil War. It will try to discuss whether the institution could have been maintained indefinitely.
• The North and South of America and a Slavery Revealition of the sub-regional diffrences between the North and the South due to the opposing points of view as to abolishment of slavery.
• The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery Abolishment Slave trade carried out mostly in the 17th-18th centuries encompassed the capturing, selling, and purchase of people for the sole purpose of forced labor.
• International Child Trafficking: The Modern Slavery The modern-day slavery represented by the millions of children who cross borders as sex slaves should turn the blot into a wound.
• Labor Exploitation and Slavery Employment mistreatment is associated with remorseless communal relations where a fastidious cluster is treated unjustly to profit the other revelry.
• Slavery and Literacy. The Triumph of a Poor Slave Olaudah Equiano begins his story by telling readers how he was being kidnapped by the members of rivaling tribe in his native Africa while still a child and turned into a slave.
• Major Slavery Events Between 1850-1860 The essay describes the crucial historical events that caused the complete slavery abolition that took place between 1850 and 1860.
• Transnational Labour, Slavery, and Revolt Nowadays The theory of class conflict paints history as a never-ending series of struggles between different classes in order to achieve political and economic dominance.
• Slavery in Hispaniola and Mexico This paper analyzes the history of slavery in Hispaniola and Mexico, its evolution, abolition, and similar malpractices encountered in the region today.
• Slavery and Its Religious and Moral Aspects The letter by Foster included in “The Brotherhood of Thieves” and the work “Slavery and the Bible” by an unknown author discuss the religious and moral aspects of slavery.
• Slavery and Its Impact on Modern Social Relations Slavery used to be a part of the history of many countries. This paper aims at investigating the history of slavery and its influence on modern social relations.
• Impact of Slavery on Modern Society Slavery casts a dark shadow on the history of the United States, and knowing about the devastating impact it had on generations of people is fundamental.
• Transformations in Slavery and Effects of Slavery on Society In order to provide an adequate periodization of slavery, it is critical to distinguish between incidental and systematic slavery.
• Concepts of Pro-Slavery and Anti-Slavery Fighting class inequality is one of the most controversial topics in American history, and the role of some human rights defenders in eradicating this dangerous trend is significant.
• Slavery Concepts in Africa Slavery existed in Africa in the form of servitude long before Europeans landed on the continent and commercialized the practice.
• Slavery vs. Indentured Servitude in North America The first Europeans settled in North America began to buy Africans in order to provide farm labor. Such individuals or plantation owners treated them as servants.
• Slavery Impact on Modern American Society Slavery casts a dark shadow on the history of the US, and knowing about the devastating impact is fundamental. The paper investigates the impact of slavery on modern society.
• Slavery in Africa After European Colonization Slavery existed among most modern societies, including African. Even before the European colonization and the onset of the slave trade, it was a part of the culture.
• Slavery in Africa and British American Colonies In the middle of the seventeenth century, the British American colonies were strongly connected to and ruled by the motherland.
• Slavery Practices of Africans vs. Europeans Even though slavery had existed among African peoples prior to the European slave trade, its conditions were significantly different when comparing these two regions.
• Slavery in African vs. European Countries In historical time, slavery in Africa had various forms which sometimes did not correspond to the concept of slavery adopted in the rest of the world.
• History: Transnational Labor, Slavery, and Revolt Slavery is a tragedy and one of the darkest pages of human history. At present, slavery is officially prohibited in all countries of the world.
• Slavery in “The Satyricon” Novel by Petronius The excellent Roman novel, Satyricon, by Gaius Petronius, is a suitable platform, from which the subject of slavery gets a different approach.
• The Impact of Slavery Slavery had a massive impact upon the development of the United States of America and on the transformation of the African-American ethnic group into the way it currently is.
• Colonialism and Slavery in American History This essay discusses reasons for colonization by the European countries and compares the slave experience in the upper South and the lower South.
• Slavery and Civil War: American History American history is defined by slavery. The founding fathers of America, in the 17th and 18th century, grew the economy through slave labor.
• How Frederick Douglass Escaped Slavery? When Douglas managed to escape from slavery and safely landed in New York, he felt that he had come to a completely new world. He compares a day in New York to a year in slavery.
• The Issue of Slavery and the State’s Rights This paper seeks to find out whether the issue of slavery and the state’s rights were important in the secession process and the role of the northern abolition movement.
• The History of Slavery and Its Impacts This paper argues that a majority of the stated discriminatory issues that are witnessed in contemporary society are the effects of slavery.
• The Impact of Slavery on the Development of the USA In this paper, the researcher analyzes the history of slavery in order to identify the impact it had on the development of the US. Slavery is an alien concept to the modern citizens of the USA.
• Thomas Jefferson and the Concept of Slavery Jefferson stated that Native Americans were unspoiled by the sins of the developed world despite advocating for their extinction.
• The Slavery Question: Destiny and Sectional Discord The nation was split into those who believed that the slavery question had been successfully resolved and those who saw its threat to American society.
• Development of the Northern Slavery System in America In one form or another slavery had been existing in any part of the world. There is hardly a nation that has managed to avoid this terrible form of a social development.
• Slavery Impact on the United States’ Development Slavery is an alien concept to the modern citizens of the United States of America. Since late 19th century, this undemocratic institution has been abolished in the US.
• Slavery’s Impact on Contemporary Society This study reveals that the history of slavery influences the politics of the United States, the identity of African-Americans, and the education system.
• Slavery in Different Periods of American History The paper investigates the history of slavery in the United State by analyzing E. Berenson’s textbook, Cabet’s voyage to Icaria, and K. Marx ‘The American Civil War’.
• Modern Slavery, Human Trafficking and Poverty Be it through the sexual enslavement of girls or trafficking of males for forced labor, slavery has had a tremendous impact on modern society.
• Modern Slavery, Its Consequences and Countermeasures The relevance of the problem of slavery is statistically confirmed, and certain measures and interventions can help society to stop this danger.
• Contemporary Slavery: Sex Trafficking Sex trafficking is an outlawed business practised by several countries around the globe. Sex trafficking immensely contributes to both local and international migrations.
• History of Slavery and Its Impacts The concept of slavery in the contemporary society has undergone a gradual transformation. Modern forms of slavery include forced labor, child exploitation, sexual abuse, and human trafficking.
• History of Slavery and Its Impact on Contemporary Society Slavery is the period that cannot be forgotten, and the relations that were developed between people during the slavery period influenced the way of how people treat each other today.
• History of Slavery and Its Impacts on Society The role of the history of slavery cannot be neglected. It introduces several lessons and much information about the mistakes that have been already made and the opportunities.
• History of Slavery and Its Impact on the Society Slavery emerged together with the rise of the first civilization as the most primitive form of relationships between different members of the ancient society.
• Slavery in Women’s and Men’s Narratives H. Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” tells one of the perverted cases of sexual harassment. F. Douglas wanted to shoot down some pro-slavery arguments.
• William Lloyd Garrison and Slavery in America William Lloyd Garrison made a significant contribution to the anti-slavery movement through his idealism. Garrison took both moral and practical approach to issues.
• Slavery in the American Society Slavery is one of the historical events that characterize the American society since many people lost their lives in trying to prevent it while others decided to shift to other places.
• Slavery Emancipation in Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil Slavery was viewed as both an infringement of human rights in addition to the existence of forced labor. Numerous differences existed in the manner in which slaves were treated across the globe.
• Views on Slavery by F.Douglass and B.Washington Douglass and Washington draw the readers’ attention to the fact that their situations and descriptions of slave life are the reflections of the conditions typical for the period.
• Defending Slavery: Termination of Slavery and Slave Trade in South America The United States amended its constitution in 1865 in an attempt to abolish the slave trade. However, the amendment only led to a decline in slavery.
• Documentary: Slavery and the Making of America by Betty Wood Slavery and the making of America (2013) is an interesting documentary which tells different stories. Thus, it depicts the way people became slaves and the way they were sold and resold.
• When Did Slavery Start in History?
• Who First Started Slavery in Africa?
• Did Racism Precede Slavery?
• Did Slavery Create More Benefits or Problems for the Nation?
• Did Southerners Favor Slavery?
• Who Ended Slavery?
• Who Abolished Slavery First?
• Did Thomas Jefferson Want to End Slavery?
• When Did Slavery End in Africa?
• What Country Still Has Slavery?
• What Were the Main Causes of Slavery?
• Have Historians Over Emphasised the Slavery Issue as a Cause of the Civil War?
• Is Slavery Still Legal in Texas?
• How African Americans Were Treated During the Slavery Period?
• Why Did the North Not Support Slavery?
• How Did Slavery Start the Civil War?
• How Did African American Slavery Help Shape America?
• How Did African American Women Deal With and Survive Slavery?
• Is Slavery Legal in Canada?
• What Explains Slavery Was Milder in the North?
• How Does the Legacy of Slavery Continue to Impact Both Blacks and Whites?
• What Were Abraham Lincoln’s Feelings About Slavery?
• What Contributed to the Spread of Slavery in the Southern American Colonies Between 1607 and 1775?
• What Are Edmund Morgan’s Thesis and Argument About Slavery?
• What Is a Modern Day Example of Slavery?
• Where Is Slavery Most Common Today?
• Does Slavery Still Exist in Today’s World?
• What Are the Characteristics of Slavery in New York?
• Is Slavery Illegal in the World?
• What Created the Differences Between the North and South Concerning Slavery?

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StudyCorgi . "203 Slavery Essay Topics." September 9, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/slavery-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . 2021. "203 Slavery Essay Topics." September 9, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/slavery-essay-topics/.

These essay examples and topics on Slavery were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on June 24, 2024 .

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Ethics in modern slavery research

A project exploring the key ethical issues involved in conducting high-quality modern slavery research.

A multi-disciplinary research project led by the University of Liverpool and University of Nottingham is investigating the key ethical issues involved in conducting modern slavery research, informed by the perspectives of people with lived experience.

Research ethics covers the benefits, harms, agency and equity of the research, including decisions on structure, scope and methodology, as well as what happens after the research is completed. Modern slavery research poses many potential ethical considerations, including ensuring that researchers use their skills to serve communities and participants, rather than the other way around, and that they utilise existing data to minimise unnecessary requests made on survivors. The power imbalance between ‘researching’ and ‘researched’ individuals needs to be acknowledged and mitigated, and ways to foreground survivor inclusion on terms that are respectful and jointly devised, can help build capacity among peer-researchers, allies and research institutions to co-produce robust academic research.

Including people with lived experience in research is essential for improving policies addressing modern slavery and has been shown to produce better outcomes. But there’s a need to do this in ways which are both meaningful and ethical, especially as a growing number of research funders are requiring survivor engagement.

Risks to researchers of vicarious trauma, or carrying out fieldwork in high-risk sites, especially in supply chains research also exist. University research ethics committees have to respond to submissions from a wide range of disciplines, and might not always have the experience of the specific issues that arise in modern slavery research.

There’s a need to better understand the common ethical issues of modern slavery research, as well as to identify current best practice in embedding ethical survivor engagement into projects.

This project aims to do this through three interlinked workstreams; first through a desk-based review of pre-existing ethical and safeguarding guidance; then research with focus groups, as well as expert consultations including those with lived experience of modern slavery, modern slavery researchers, members of research ethics committees and NGOs and community groups which have participated in modern slavery research. Finally, it will create a review of current research ethics practice in modern slavery research and offer guidance on possible techniques, practices and structures that can improve this.

Research team: Wendy Asquith, Helen Stalford, Edmira Bracaj (University of Liverpool), Bethany Jackson (University of Nottingham), Kimberley Hutchison (independent consultant).

Related content

Modern slavery impact of the nationality and borders act.

Research project analysing the impact of the UK Nationality and Borders Act's modern slavery provisions on survivors.

Communicating modern slavery in the UK

Project working with survivors to identify language more effective in increasing the understanding of modern slavery in the UK.

Fellowship: support for children with lived experience of modern slavery

Fellowship focused on assessing the support for children with lived experience of modern slavery delivered through the guardianship service in England and Wales.

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7 Key Questions in the U.S. Slavery Reparations Debate

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It's more than 400 years since the first African slaves arrived in America, but the trauma of slavery didn't cease with the end of the Civil War in 1865. Many scholars and activists argue that slavery and the racist policies of Jim Crow combined to rob black Americans of generations of wealth and progress, the effects of which are still being felt today.

If the United States owes a financial and moral debt to the modern-day descendants of slaves, then the solution, some say, is reparations. A "reparation" is a legal term for making amends for a past wrong, usually involving financial restitution. Reparation comes from the Latin word for "to restore."

Not everyone agrees that reparations are the best way to close the widening wealth gap between black and white Americans or to increase the far lower rates of home ownership and stock ownership in the black community. This has led to a passionate political debate over what the United States government owes, or does not owe, to the descendants of slaves.

In 2019, we consulted experts in the history and legal framework of slavery reparations to answer some of the biggest and most important questions in the ongoing reparations debate.

• What's the Case for Slavery Reparations?
• What Do Opponents of Slavery Reparations Say?
• Have Governments Paid Reparations Before?
• How Long Has the Reparations Request Been Going On?
• What Would Paying Reparations Look Like?
• How Much Is Owed in Reparations?
• Do Reparations Have a Chance of Passing in Congress?

1. What's the Case for Slavery Reparations?

The core argument of the reparations movement is that America's wealth was built on the backs of slave labor and that black Americans have been systematically denied access to that wealth.

Black slaves were the engine of the American cotton industry, the most profitable enterprise of the 19th century. According to Yale University historian David Blight , cotton constituted 59 percent of all goods exported from the United States in 1836. Massive profits from cotton allowed the U.S. to invest in transportation and other industries that spread the wealth of Southern plantation owners to the North and West.

By 1860, writes Blight , "the nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the largest single financial asset in the entire U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined."

Even after Emancipation, former slaves received no compensation for their centuries of free labor. The short-lived Reconstruction era gave former slaves a brief glimpse of the rights to vote and own land in the South, but those rights were cruelly stripped away in the Jim Crow era.

"After the fall of Reconstruction, black people were subjected to a regime of racial terror in the South and were systematically disenfranchised," said Manisha Sinha, a history professor at the University of Connecticut and author of the essay "The Long History of American Slavery Reparations" in The Wall Street Journal .

In addition to horrific acts of violence committed against black businesses and prosperous black communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — the Red Summer of 1919 , for example, and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 — the U.S. government supported policies that excluded black Americans from acquiring property and accruing intergenerational wealth.

Home ownership, for example, is one of the most direct paths to wealth creation in America. But the cards have been stacked against black homeowners since 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal created the Home Owners Loan Corporation to bail out failing home mortgages during the Depression. The government graded neighborhoods by their level of credit risk and Black neighborhoods were circled in red for "hazardous" and denied low-interest loans.

This practice, known as "redlining," persisted through the 1960s, keeping home ownership out of reach of most Black Americans. Even Black World War II veterans were denied the promise of the G.I. Bill, which was supposed to provide mortgages with no down payment to vets and their families. Since the banks backing the mortgages still employed racist redlining policies, Black vets were often rejected.

Today, the legacy of slavery and generations of racist economic policies can be seen most clearly in the wealth gap between Black and white families in America. The median family wealth for white households is $171,000 compared to $17,600 for Black households, according to a 2019 New York Times article .

Proponents of reparations, particularly cash reparations, believe that the tremendous economic debt owed to slaves and their descendants needs to be repaid. Other reparations supporters believe the greater debt owed to Black Americans is a moral one, and that the United States government needs to make a full moral accounting (in addition to a financial accounting) for its complicity in the crime of slavery.

2. What Do Opponents of Slavery Reparations Say?

Most Americans don't see the point of slavery reparations. Only 29 percent of Americans agree that the federal government should pay cash reparations, according to a 2019 Associated Press poll. And only 46 percent believe that the government should even issue a formal apology for slavery. A 2021 poll had similar results .

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up the view of many who oppose reparations in his remarks ahead of a June 2019 House Judiciary Committee meeting about reparations.

Some people think the U.S. government cannot afford to pay reparations. Others argue that reparations amount to yet another massive government entitlement program that discourages poor Black communities from "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps," as the saying goes.

For instance, Burgess Owens, a former NFL football star who is Black, told the House Judiciary Committee at the same June 2019 meeting: "We've become successful like no other because of this great opportunity to live the American dream. Let's not steal that from our kids by telling them they can't do it."

Overall, the idea of using tax money to write a check to every Black person in America strikes some people as "unfair," including 79-year-old Lori Statzer of Florida, quoted by the AP. "My ancestors came to this country, worked hard to become Americans and never asked for anything."

Historian Sinha thinks that folks like Statzer are missing the point, confusing personal accountability with government accountability.

"The notion that 'My parents were immigrants, we have nothing to do with this,' belies that fact that slavery was an institution of lasting and systematic harm that was sanctioned by the government of the United States and its laws," said Sinha.

Also, the reparations discussion started back when slaves were still alive (as we'll see later), only they were never compensated.

3. Have Governments Paid Reparations Before?

Absolutely.

To atone for the death of millions of European Jews in the Holocaust and the profits made from slave labor, West Germany paid $7 billion (in 2019 dollars) to the state of Israel and $1 billion to the World Jewish Congress.

When South Africa ended its racist policy of Apartheid in 1994, the country established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which recommended that every victim of Apartheid-sanctioned violence would receive approximately $3,500 a year for six years .

But the United States doesn't have to look abroad for an example of reparations. In 1988, Congress issued a formal apology to the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans who were interned in American concentration camps during World War II. In terms of reparations, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 authorized payments of $20,000 each to the roughly 60,000 surviving victims of Japanese-American internment.

4. How Long Has the Reparations Request Been Going On?

"This is not new," said Roy Brooks, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and author of " Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations ." "The first claims were made by African Americans during the Revolutionary War and every generation since has made claims for reparations."

At the end of the Civil War, freed slaves thought they were going to receive at least some compensation from the government. Union General William T. Sherman, frustrated by the crowds of freed slaves trailing his army, issued a special order that 400,000 acres of former plantations in South Carolina and Georgia would be divided among the freed slaves and each family would receive " 40 acres and a mule ."

The Sherman land grants were supplemented by the Freedmen's Bureau, a government agency created to help Black former slaves and poor Southern whites get on their feet after the Civil War. But after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, both of these early reparations schemes were canceled by Lincoln's successor, the former Tennessee slave owner Andrew Johnson.

"This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men," said Johnson in 1866.

The second major push for reparations came in the late 19th century, when former slaves and some congressional supporters argued for the creation of pensions for former slaves similar to the government pensions extended to Union soldiers.

The pension movement met strong resistance from the federal government and resulted in the first reparations lawsuit in 1915, in which the former slaves' claim of $68 million in cotton taxes collected by the government between 1862 and 1868 was ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court.

The topic of reparations came up during the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, but no real movement was made until 1989, a year after the U.S. government issued its apology and reparations to interned Japanese Americans.

That's when the late John Conyers, the longest serving Black congressman, first introduced H.R. 40 (a reference to "40 acres and a mule"), a bill calling for the creation of a special commission to study the issue of slave reparations. The exact same type of commission was formed to study reparations for Japanese Americans a few years earlier.

"All H.R. 40 does is call for a study," said Brooks. It doesn't authorize reparations. Yet the House of Representatives has never put the bill to a vote, even though Conyers reintroduced it every year for the next 17 years. After Conyers death, the bill was resubmitted by Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas. It is still stalled in the House in 2022.

5. What Would Paying Reparations Look Like?

"A reparation is limited only by the imagination," said Brooks. "It depends on what the perpetrator wants to do and what's acceptable to the victims."

Cash payments to individuals is only one method of issuing reparations, and for his part Brooks isn't a fan. First, there's the issue of deciding who qualifies for the payments. Do you hand out checks to all Black Americans or only those who can claim direct lineage to an enslaved person? The group American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS), for example, believes that reparations should not be given to Black Americans whose ancestors came here as immigrants, not slaves.

And then there's the legalistic nature of the individual payment approach, which Brooks calls the "tort model." Reparations of this sort are "compensatory," in essence a lawsuit for damages. If the evidence is convincing, the perpetrator is forced to pay out a sum, but not to apologize and certainly not to work with the victims to heal old wounds.

"With the tort model, there's nothing about racial reconciliation. There's no apology and it's backward looking," said Brooks. "Reparations need to be forward looking if you're really interested in racial reconciliation."

Brooks is a proponent of rehabilitative reparations or what he calls "the atonement model." Instead of just cutting a check to individuals, the atonement model focuses on healing and uplifting entire communities.

"Rehabilitative reparations means is that your'e looking to build up Black communities which have suffered as a result of the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow," said Brooks.

What could that look like? Zero-interest mortgage loans, guaranteed contracts for Black-owned businesses and free college tuition were some of the ideas put forth at the June 2019 hearing .

6. How Much Is Owed in Reparations?

Several economists have tried to calculate the full economic debt of slavery and Jim Crow, but the best we have are estimates. Larry Neal at the University of Illinois figured that lost wages alone between 1620 and1840 added up to $1.4 trillion in 1983 dollars. Other economists calculated that labor discrimination between 1929 and 1969 cost Black workers an additional $1.6 trillion.

Ignoring inflation and interest, that's $3 trillion right there. And if you divide that amount by the 43.8 million Black Americans listed on the most recent U.S. census, that adds up to nearly $70,000 for every Black man, woman and child in the United States.

7. Do Reparations Have a Chance of Passing in Congress?

The topic was front and center at the Democratic primary debates in the summer of 2019 and nearly all candidates supported H.R. 40 , which would create a commission to study the issue.

In June 2022, the state of California released a 500-page document detailing the harms suffered by descendants of enslaved people and the roles played by systemic racism in perpetuating discrimination. The report outlined a list of actions to take such as reducing mass incarceration, offering free college tuition and creating a state-subsidized mortgage program for African Americans. California was the first state to have a task force on reparations and is expected to try and come up with an implementation plan in 2023.

But as mentioned earlier, reparations remain largely unpopular among voters, which means that politicians don't feel a lot of pressure to support reparations measures. Reparation remains a divisive issue along both political and racial lines. While 74 percent of Black Americans supported reparations in 2019, only 15 percent of white Americans thought it was a good idea.

In 2009, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution formally apologizing to African Americans "on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow." The resolution included a disclaimer that "Nothing in this resolution ... authorizes or supports any claim against the United States."

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Slavery and the Slave Trade

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Literature Review & Research Methods

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Research Methods in General

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In brief, the lit review is the part of a scholarly paper that discusses the relevant research, theoretical and methodological contributions on the topic. Watch these videos to learn more!

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Research Methods in Social Science

Here are some books that discuss researching methods specifically for the social sciences in general, and African American studies in particular.

Search Strategies 

1. Use the following  keywords  to identify qualitative research.  

These keywords will search the titles, abstracts and keywords of records held in the databases. Use quotations to search as a phrase:

qualitative "action research" "cluster sample" "constant comparative method" "content analysis" "discourse analysis" ethnograph* "ethnological research" ethnomethodolog* ethnonurs* "field stud*" "focus group*" "grounded theor*" hermeneutic* heuristic* interview* "life experience*" "lived experience*" narrative* "observational method" phenomenol* "purposive sample" semiotics "thematic analysis" 2. Use  controlled vocabulary Databases use controlled vocabulary to categorize each record stored. The terms they use are known as  thesaurus terms  or subject headings .  The thesaurus terms vary for each database according to their indexing system. For example, qualitative research is indexed in  PubMed  as "Qualitative Research" or "Nursing Methodology Research", while in CINAHL  their subject heading "Qualitative Studies" is complemented by more detailed terms, including "Phenomenological Research" and "Grounded Theory". Tutorials  for searching subject headings:                        uses  )                 uses  3. Use  qualitative research filters Qualitative research filters are pre-formulated search strategies that have been constructed by librarians to help you retrieve articles in databases that deal with qualitative research. You can use the filter and then combine the results with your subject. Go to  PsychINFO  database in  Database Finder . Enter your topic in the search box. In right column, under  Methodoly,   MATHEMATICAL MODEL , select  Qualitative study . Under  Refine Search  section on the left, limit further your search under  Methodology  drop down menu. Modify your search strategy accordingly by using thesaurus terms, such as qualitative research, grounded theory, interviews, observation methods, etc. Evidence Based Practices Module The IRIS Center at Vanderbilt Peabody College has created a 3 part module to walk you through the theory and application of evidence based practices. << Previous: Citing Tools & Citation Managers Next: Background Info, Encyclopedias, & Handbooks >> Last Updated: Aug 21, 2024 1:52 PM URL: https://lib.guides.umd.edu/c.php?g=740563 Library of Congress Research Guides Newspapers & Current Periodicals Slavery and Abolition: Topics in Chronicling America Introduction. Search Strategies & Selected Articles Newspapers & Current Periodicals : Ask a Librarian Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help. Chat with a librarian , Monday through Friday, 12-2 pm Eastern Time (except Federal Holidays). About Chronicling America Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Read more about it! Follow @ChronAmLOC External and subscribe to email alerts and RSS feeds. Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries , a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them. Slavery and abolition are closely connected; for as long as humans have known about slavery, humans have also objected to, resisted, and opposed it. Slavery and abolition are also tightly interwoven through the history of the North American colonies and the United States of America. Read more about it! The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection  Chronicling America . The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic. You can find articles in Chronicling America about each of the items in the timelines. A section of this guide also provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection. 1789 Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery resolves to seek improved conditions for free blacks. 1820 The (prohibits slavery north of 36°30´). January 1831 William Lloyd Garrison founds newspaper in Boston, demanding immediate, unconditional, uncompensated, and universal emancipation. August 1831 Nat Turner leads a violent revolt of the enslaved in Southampton, Virginia. 1833 Formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. 1836 Congress passes a rule that antislavery petitions sent in by constituents will not be discussed ("Gag rule"). In force until 1844. 1850 Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Law, part of the . 1851-1852 Author Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin, a work of fiction, but based on research using documents collected by abolitionists. The work first appears in installments in The National Era newspaper. 1854 Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which effectively repeals the Missouri Compromise restriction on slavery's expansion. 1856 Antislavery U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Charles Sumner gives a speech in Congress titled, "The Crime Against Kansas" which calls out some fellow Congressmen's support for slavery. The next day pro-slavery U.S. Representative from South Carolina Preston Brooks finds Sumner at his Senate desk and beats him unconscious with a heavy cane. 1857 The U.S. Supreme Court issues its decision in the case of Scott v. Sandford ("Dred Scott") maintaining that slaveholders may enjoy the protections of their human property anywhere in the Union, that black Americans are not U.S. citizens, and that they "have no rights which the white man is bound to respect." October 1859 Abolitionist John Brown leads a biracial armed group in an unsuccessful assault on the U.S. Armory at Harper's Ferry. December 1859 John Brown is executed. November 1860 is elected President of the United States. December 1860 South Carolina secedes from the Union, followed over the next several months by ten more states (the Confederate States of America). 1861 Civil War breaks out between the United States and the Confederate States of America. April 1865 The Civil War ends in victory for the United States; days later, President Lincoln is assassinated. December 1865 The to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery. Next: Search Strategies & Selected Articles >> Last Updated: Aug 1, 2024 9:12 PM URL: https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-slavery-abolition The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Questions Regarding Slavery I have some questions regarding “Slavery” that I would like to know more about. What were the concerns about banning slavery? Why did they want to ban it? Also why did they want to allow slavery (other than labor)? Have a wonderful day. Sincerely Mariam Dear Mariam, Slavery originated from two sources: the exploitation of free labor and the belief in the “otherness” of fellow human beings of another race, religion, nationality or even tribal group. American Indians enslaved captives taken from rival tribes and the English used Irish slaves in their Caribbean plantations. In communist nations, most notably the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, political prisoners did slave labor in the gulags. In Nazi Germany, some races, most notably Slavic Russians, were marked for permanent slave labor, while others, such as Jews, Poles and Gypsies, were intentionally put to work with reduced food and medical care, deliberately calculated to literally work them to death until they were completely exterminated. Red Amazon ants (genus Polyergus ) are known to raid black ant nests for eggs and breed them from birth to do the “heavy lifting” in their own nests. The only practitioners of slavery among their own species, however, are Homo sapiens . Slavery need not be permanent—throughout history slaves in Roman and Islamic cultures often attained free status. Western nations came to be less flexible in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, a major economic factor being the growth of cotton and tobacco farming, which is spread out and labor-intensive, but requires quick harvesting before rot sets in (until machines took the place of labor). The other economic drawback to ending slavery was competition for low-paying jobs, which often led to race riots from New Orleans to New York between black American freemen and incoming Irish immigrants in the antebellum years. Why Western nations came to abandon slavery might be explained by the growing rediscovery that one human depriving freedom of choice from another, for any reason, was morally wrong. The most prominent firebrand in that cause was William Wilberforce, who served in the British Parliament from 1784 through 1825, and who after becoming an Evangelical Christian in 1785, became a staunch abolitionist after 1787. He devoted much of his career thereafter to ending the slave trade, leading to the Slave Trade Act of 1807. One month after his death on July 29, 1833, his efforts bore their ultimate fruit with the passing of the Slave Abolition Act of 1833, which set the standard for slavery’s eventual end throughout the Western world. One of the reasons the United States was a latecomer with the 13 th Amendment in 1865 was the widespread claim that blacks lacked the intellectual ability to live with free choice—a racist rationalization to which they had already repeatedly put the lie to in other countries, and to which black Americans have repeatedly put the lie to ever since. By the way, if Wilberforce seems like too recent a moral voice against slavery, might I also recommend that you go back a bit farther and read the section in your Bible called “Exodus”? The concept of freedom over slavery goes back at least that far. Sadly, it also continues in certain parts of the world—recent examples including the so-called Islamic State and Boko Haram. Sincerely, Jon Guttman Research Director World History www.historynet.com More Questions at Ask Mr. History Don’t miss the next Ask Mr. History question! To receive notification whenever any new item is published on HistoryNet, just scroll down the column on the right and sign up for our RSS feed. Related stories Portfolio: Images of War as Landscape Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, […] Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. Celebrating the Legacy of the Office of Strategic Services 82 Years On From the OSS to the CIA, how Wild Bill Donovan shaped the American intelligence community. During the War Years, Posters From the American Homefront Told You What to Do — And What Not to Do If you needed some motivation during the war years, there was probably a poster for that. The Rights of American Slaves The hidden history of how some enslaved people exercised legal rights There’s a traditional narrative about the history of Black people and the law. It describes how slaves were entirely shut out of the legal system, disenfranchised and bereft of even a modicum of legal know-how or protection. The UC Berkeley professor Dylan C. Penningroth upends this narrative in his book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights , which traces the forgotten history of how slaves used the law—how they forged contract and property rights and other “rights of everyday use.” Penningroth makes clear that although slaves obviously did not have equal protections under the law, the needs of slave owners and the regular interactions between slaves required legal relationships. This use of the law by Black communities flourished, even under slavery and Jim Crow, often because rights are regularly enforced even without government intervention: “And so, when you think about, How does a white person in 1850 own a cow? ” Penningroth asks, “Well, it’s not because there’s a policeman standing behind waiting to arrest anyone who touches the cow. It’s because most people in that area have seen the white person with the cow, understand the white person’s relationship to the cow. In other words, property, in general, isn’t so much a relationship between a person and a thing; it’s a relationship among people about a thing. And enslaved people are participants in the same system of property that white people are.” Listen to the conversation here: The following is a transcript of the episode: Jerusalem Demsas: In a just society, the law both constrains action—prevents us or punishes us for certain behaviors—but it also outlines our liberties: domains where we are free from interference of others and the government. It outlines the rules of the road so that anyone can play and demand fair treatment. The laws that govern contracts, govern marriage, govern what we owe to each other—all of these bind and free us in turn. But what was the law to a slave? My name is Jerusalem Demsas. I’m a staff writer here at The Atlantic . And in today’s episode of Good on Paper , I’ve asked Berkeley historian Dylan C. Penningroth to join me to investigate this very question. Dylan wrote a highly acclaimed book titled Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights where he complicates the traditional narrative about how slaves interacted with the law, and the unexpected ways they interacted with the legal system. But I’ll let Dylan explain that narrative. It’s the one we’re familiar with: Dylan Penningroth: The master narrative of African Americans in the law is, I think, at some level, pretty simple. It’s that they were oppressed by law. They were outsiders to law. That if they had any contact with law, it was as an oppressive force. And so that, I think, is true as far as it goes, but it has some consequences. When you think about Black people as outsiders to law, it’s part of this larger narrative that I call the freedom-struggle narrative. Which, broadly speaking—and I’ll sort of caricature just for a moment—it tells a story of Black people who are outsiders to America and who, over the course of 250 years, gradually move toward greater inclusion, more equal rights, from no rights to equal rights, from slavery to something like freedom. In his telling, this traditional narrative misses the full picture. Dylan’s argument gives us a window into life under American slavery where slaves often interacted with the law—were clearly understood to have some rights to property and contract—and particularly in interactions among slaves, understood how the law worked. That is, we’re used to thinking of the history of Black Americans and the law as being the relationship between Black and white Americans. What Dylan’s book does is show how much of Black Americans’ relationship to the law happened among Black people themselves. And perhaps most surprising to me was that even white slave owners and the soldiers defending their rights couldn’t ignore the obvious humanity of the people they were enslaving. That’s where we begin, with the story that pushed Dylan to write this book. Demsas: You start off the book with a story. It’s a 1976 tape recording that your uncle, Craig Baskerville, made. And I know you say that you’re not trying to overturn the freedom-struggle narrative, but it was shocking in the way that you described it to be shocking. So I’m hoping, for the listeners, you can tell that story and explain how it pushed you down the road of telling the new history of Black Americans. Penningroth: Sure. This is a story that I probably heard a few times when I was growing up, but I really didn’t grasp it until I got a recording from my mom. It was a little cassette tape that her brother made, Craig Baskerville, of his great uncle, Thomas Holcomb. So on the tape, one of the very first things that Thomas Holcomb says—and Uncle Craig’s asking him about the family history—Uncle Tom says that his father, Jackson Holcomb, was a slave, that his mother was a slave, too: Louisa Brown. And then he says Jackson Holcomb had a boat. And then he goes on to tell this story about how, in the last days of the Civil War, after the Battle of Richmond, there are all these Confederate soldiers running through the woods, and they come to the Appomattox River, where Jackson Holcomb has his boat. And he carries them across the Appomattox—ferries them across—and then when they get to the other side, they paid him. And so I’m thinking about this story and wondering, Hold on a second. These are heavily armed white men—Confederate soldiers—fighting to preserve slavery, to keep men like Jackson Holcomb in slavery. They have no legal obligation, and they don’t really need to pay him anything. But they do. And so that set me off wondering, not just, Why did they pay him? but, Why did it seem so taken for granted for them to pay him? And as I dug in, I realized that the story that I just told, the story of Jackson Holcomb and his boat, it’s part of this larger world of privileges that’s very much intertwined with—it’s mixed up with—not a world outside law but with law itself. The reason they paid him is because white people in the South in 1865 were used to paying enslaved people for services rendered. They were used to seeing enslaved people having boats, having property, chickens, horses, and so forth. Jackson Holcomb could not have sued to get his boat if they had taken it. He couldn’t have sued for breach of contract if they hadn’t paid him. He didn’t have rights, but he had privileges, and those privileges were powerful enough and broadly enough understood that these Confederate soldiers paid him without any questions. And that’s the story that begins the book and sets up this longer story that I want to tell about Black people’s relationship to law, their relationship to one another, and about civil rights. Demsas: So when you dive in after hearing the story and deciding to look into this question of what sorts of what you call privileges were available, what did you find? What sort of privileges was it? I mean, it sounds like what’s implied here are contract rights and property rights. What other things were you finding and kind of what are examples of that? Penningroth: Right. So when we think about what civil rights meant in, say, 1850, most Americans would have said something like, It’s the right to contract, the right to property, and the right to go to court—sue and be sued . I call these the rights of everyday use. Abraham Lincoln campaigned for president on a platform that said that all men, including free Black men, are entitled to these basic, fundamental rights. For him, that was the line between slavery and freedom. So slaves didn’t have civil rights, so they couldn’t sue over property, and they didn’t have legal rights of contract or property, but they had these privileges. And I’ll just give an example of one privilege that slaves had and why it was that they were allowed to have these privileges. So one privilege that many slaves had was the privilege of working after hours and to earn money. And so in many different parts of the South, you had enslaved people who would come home after working 12 or 14 hours in the fields, and they would go and they’d spend an hour or two working a garden of their own. They would raise chickens. If they were lucky, they could raise cows and more expensive livestock. And they would basically use the proceeds of these things to make their lives better. But a lot of what slaves are doing is they’re trying to nourish themselves beyond the corn and fatback that their masters are giving them. Now, why did masters let enslaved people do that? The answer is that it saved the masters money. It was good for the bottom line, for their profits. That’s why they did it. The second reason they did it is because they never had to acknowledge these things as rights. Again, they were powerfully understood, broadly shared understandings. But, of course, if an enslaved person had tried to go to court and say, Well, my master didn’t allot me the garden plot that I’m entitled to , the court would have laughed him out. But there is this kind of baseline understanding. And so one of the things that I say in the book is that, because enslaved people had these privileges, when freedom came, the advent of civil rights—that is, the idea that Black people could have rights and be citizens—was actually not such a huge step for white southerners to take. Now, of course, there are all these questions about dignity; they weren’t willing to grant that. They weren’t willing to grant what they called social rights, and they certainly weren’t willing to grant political rights to Black southerners. But when it came to these basic civil rights of property, contract, and standing, it wasn’t such an enormous transition for white southerners, and that had consequences. Demsas: Well, I want to dive into a little bit why it was that white people and masters were, in any way, respecting these privileges or these quasi rights. You write, at some point, that slaves owned property in every legal sense of the word, except that no court would protect their ownership as a right. You just made that argument here, too. But that feels like a significant exception, right? If no court protects that ownership, how is it meaningful? Why are they respecting it? What does it mean to the bottom line? If the slave has the energy to plot the garden, why doesn’t the master make them continue working for a couple more hours? What is actually playing out there that makes it in the interests of the dominant class to allow this to go on? Penningroth: I think there are two ways to answer that. One, as I said, is that it was good for the master’s bottom line. There’s what Derrick Bell, the founder of critical race theory, called an interest convergence, where the interests of the master converged in some small measure with the interest of the slave. So that’s one answer. But the other answer that I think you’re getting at here is that enslaved people didn’t have civil rights, and so when I say that they owned property in every sense of the word except the legal one, that’s a very significant one. They couldn’t go to court, but that raises a secondary question: How often do we go to court over property or contract? We really only do it when something goes wrong. And even then, we tend not to do it. Most people, when something goes wrong with a contractor, suing is a last resort. We generally try to work things out outside court because court is expensive. It’s unpredictable. All sorts of things can happen in court that you may not anticipate. And things were not that different in the 1840s and 1850s. So the fact that enslaved people couldn’t go to court meant that, yes, they couldn’t do anything about it, legally, if the master decided to take away that privilege. They could go on strike. The master could punish them. But then you’re into a spiral, which is profoundly unprofitable for the master and dangerous for the slave. So there’s this kind of negotiated balance. When it goes wrong, the slaves are out of luck. But when it is working, the masters are perfectly willing to let enslaved people have these privileges as long as they don’t try to claim them as rights. The other part of the story is that white people are operating in this same world. If slaves aren’t going to court over property, neither are white people. And so, when you think about, How does a white person in 1850 own a cow? well, it’s not because there’s a policeman standing behind waiting to arrest anyone who touches the cow. It’s because most people in that area have seen the white person with the cow, understand the white person’s relationship to the cow. In other words, property, in general, isn’t so much a relationship between a person and a thing; it’s a relationship among people about a thing. And enslaved people are participants in the same system of property that white people are. Demsas: You know, it’s funny. I write a lot about housing, and I’ve done a lot of research on segregation and how the color line broke down and residential segregation. And there’s this great paper: Economist Allison Shertzer and her co-authors—they talk about how they were able to look block by block and see how it segregated and desegregated and the prices that were paid for different homes and rentals. And they find that “to induce incumbent white owners to sell to a Black family, these pioneers paid a premium of roughly 28 percent relative to the prices that white homeowners were paying on the same block.” And so, in that story, that’s much further past where we are right now. But you see that the color line is not broken down because you have individual white homeowners deciding, Out of my own beneficence or desire to be a good person or belief that Black people are actually equal partners in the law . It is that there’s a financial incentive here. And it seems like a through line that you’re drawing all the way back to slavery is that it just was easier. It just was easier. It was less costly. It was less difficult to allow people their dignity. And I wonder how much of that is a theme of your work. Penningroth: Absolutely. It’s a theme throughout, and it threads through a bunch of different things that I talk about in the book. So, for example, efficiency or the efficiency costs of going to the trouble of carving out a separate law of property for Black people—that’s a through line. The costs that white lawyers would have had to endure if they had either declined to take Black clients or segregated them on their books—that’s another theme. In many different ways, you see white people, over and over again, recognizing Black people’s rights, not so much because they are committed to a cause but because it’s good for them, in some sense. We could talk about why, for example, white supremacist lawyers, like Senator James Eastland of Mississippi—who blocked dozens of civil-rights bills during the 1950s—why it was that he had a great number of Black clients, who he represented in lawsuits against contractors who refuse to pay, tort lawsuits for accidents. He had Black clients. It didn’t seem to bother him. And at the very same time, he’s a member of the White Citizens’ Council, and he’s blocking all these civil-rights bills. And I think the reason he does that is because he wants to make money. And there really isn’t a threat to him or a threat to the system of white supremacy. In other words, his interests are converging with those of Black people. And you see that again and again in the stories that I tell. Demsas: It feels like there’s a big tension within historical and economic scholarship about whether these markets are helping break down racial inequalities or they are a part of perpetuating them. Obviously, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. There are ways in which both of those things can be true at the same time. But how do you think about that? Because obviously this is something that is happening because these markets are allowing people to sell their labor or sell goods and services. And then, of course, the housing markets were the way they were because of a lot of capitalist tendencies. And, at the same time, there’s a lot of scholarship about racial capitalism that indicates it is a system of exploitation that’s really built on slavery. How do you think about the tension? Penningroth: Just taking the example of slaves owning property—that did not do anything to break down the system of slavery, and it didn’t challenge the idea of white supremacy, either. It actually helped slavery. It helped the master’s bottom line. It made slavery more profitable. What you see going on there is enslaved people super-exploiting themselves. You remember: They’re working 10, 14 hours a day for a master, and then they have to go home and work in a garden so that they can grow the vegetables that they need to survive. I don’t think that this interest convergence undermines institutions like slavery. It’s a difficult question, and I think that the literature on racial capitalism is really important in understanding what’s going on there. What I would add to it, though, is that Black people—to the extent that they’re participating in these systems, to the extent that they’re exercising rights of property and contract—that opens up a way for us to think about Black people’s relationships with one another, as well as their relationships with whites. And a lot of the way that Black people negotiated their relationships with each other—as parents and children, as friends, as neighbors—was through law. And when I say law here, they’re not negotiating their relationships through what we think of as civil-rights law—that is, antidiscrimination law, federal antidiscrimination law. It’s not in the Supreme Court. That’s not how they’re doing it. They’re doing it through face-to-face negotiations over a horse, over a fence, over a contract to carry someone across a river. That’s the way that civil rights help us open up this dimension of Black life that I think has been underexplored because we’ve been so rightly concerned with the struggle against white supremacy. Demsas: It’s interesting. I don’t have a definitive point of view on this yet, but, in my sense, it does feel like there are ways in which these interactions do help break down white supremacy. Even having to recognize that this person is capable of these interactions—I mean, this is Confederate soldiers, right? These are not repeat players trying to cross the river when they’re coming to your ancestor there. These are people who are just like, All right. Well, this is a person who’s making a claim to me. I’m recognizing, at some level, this humanity in this interaction that we’re having together. It’s interesting that you don’t see that as playing a role in breaking down the idea that there is no dignity. No one would ever pay, you know, an animal to cross them across a river, so I wonder how you see that. Penningroth: That’s a really important thing to point out, and I’m glad you’re pushing back here because it gets at a really important point that I’ve tried to make. So I think what you’re articulating—this idea that whites thought of Black people as subhuman, as something other than human—is something that you see a lot in African American history scholarship. There’s this idea that the essence of slavery was the chattel principle—the idea that slaves were property, just like a horse or a cart, was the animating spirit, the driving engine of slavery. And I just think that’s not true. Or, at least, it’s not the whole story. If anything, the genius of slavery is that it could be so many different things at once. In one situation, a master could treat a slave as a thing. But in another situation, a master would treat a slave as an agent—someone who is exercising the master’s prerogatives on his behalf. And so, the mutability of slavery, I think, is what gives it its enduring power. There’s a larger issue tied up here, though, and that is that the chattel-principle idea—this idea that the essence of slavery is that the slave is a thing, a person with no rights—that actually is, at bottom, or, at least, it echoes an abolitionist argument that later becomes an important component of the Republican Party’s platform that sends Abraham Lincoln to the White House. That is to say: They portrayed slavery as an institution that reduced people to things, and they portrayed freedom as an institution that made people the opposite of slaves. And they went a step further, and they said that the difference between slavery and freedom was civil rights, that the powers, the rights that made you more than a thing—more than a horse or a cow—was the right to property, the right to contract, and the right to go to court. That, I think—you can see where this is going—it’s a powerful argument. It also, I think, is part of the animating spirit of the ultraconservative Roberts court. It animates a lot of libertarian discourse. And the basic idea is—you take it a step further—those mark the difference, the bright line between slavery and freedom. And that’s all you need. Demsas: All right, time for a quick break. More with Dylan when we get back. Demsas: I think you got at this a little bit, but why isn’t this the traditional story? Because when I read your book, I realized that, implicitly, had absorbed this idea that there really wasn’t anything going on amongst slaves and the law. And, even during Jim Crow, the idea that people would really be doing anything other than being oppressed by the law—I mean, that’s just not how I thought about history. That period of time felt like a black hole, to me, about what was even going on in the lives of slaves, until you get to this traditional narrative that you’ve described about the civil-rights movement and these lawyers and organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee coming down. And so, how does it get erased? What happened, and why? Penningroth: Let’s take it into the Jim Crow period. And I’ll just take one important example of what we’re talking about here: Think about Black colleges, like Spelman, Howard, Morehouse. These are all founded in the late 1800s. So are Black fraternities, many Black churches. These are among the most important and wealthy institutions in Black communities. They all get founded in the late 1800s, and they represent enormous concentrations of Black wealth—less than white people but, nevertheless, they’re important. Then, too, consider that Black people in about 1915 owned about 15 million acres of land, and almost all of it was in the South. That’s around the peak of lynching. So there’s this way in which the story that we tell about Jim Crow fails to account for—or, at least, it has to shunt off on a separate track—this story of Black achievement. And what happens when we don’t take account of the story in this way is, I guess, a couple of things: One is it’s hard to make sense of it. And two, the only way to make sense of it is to take account of, number one, this interest convergence, and number two is to take account of power dynamics among African Americans. Because the only way that Black people—remember, they’re just a generation removed from slavery—the only way that they could accumulate property on that scale is by mobilizing the labor of family. They literally had to work like crazy for generations and then keep that wealth together, concentrated in the hands of a few people. In other words, they needed to mobilize members of a family, even members of a community, to go in one direction and to pool their resources. That’s not something people necessarily do just because they’re all Black or just because they’re all members of a family. Somebody had to exert power. And so a lot of the story that I tell about Jim Crow—and, indeed, this has implications for the period of civil-rights struggle—is about how Black people formed organizations or how they thought about existing social organizations like family, how they made decisions about the structure of power, rights and privileges to resources within those social organizations, and who was part of it. To put it in a nutshell: Who got to decide who belonged in the family, and what did it mean to be a member of a family? Demsas: And so you talk about this in your book, about how SNCC organizers—who are usually cast as the heroes of the civil-rights movement, or one of the heroes of the civil-rights movement—you talk about them kind of critically. It seems that you view them as having perpetuated the idea that Black southerners had no sense of the law. What led you to see them as being perpetrators of that narrative? And why did that happen? Penningroth: Well, it was really some of the SNCC organizers’ own words that I was reading. Some of them were quite critical of SNCC. John Lewis was one, and one of the things that he wrote in his autobiography was that SNCC had horrendous troubles with governance. I think there’s a line that he writes in his book, quoting members of SNCC, saying something like, SNCC isn’t a democracy. It’s not an organization. It’s not a union. SNCC is a movement. And to John Lewis—he’s on his way out when he writes these words—but to John Lewis, that was a symptom of one of the fundamental problems with SNCC, which is that, in its pursuit of radical democracy, it failed to embark on the kind of organizational work that it needed to do. It didn’t concentrate power in a president. Anyone could object, at any time, to any decision that it made. And so, of course, you have these meetings that drag on for hours and nothing gets done. And furthermore, SNCC—although it said that it was all about power to the people and empowering the grassroots—many of the grassroots organizers they were trying to recruit, they actually wanted SNCC to appoint leaders, to elect leaders and empower them, maybe even to incorporate. And so SNCC only lasted for, I think, seven years. And then it collapsed in infighting. You can contrast that with an organization that came a few years before SNCC—the Montgomery Improvement Association. So that’s the organization that drove the Montgomery bus boycott. And not many people think about this, but about five months into the boycott, in June of 1956, the organizers of the MIA go down and they incorporate the MIA. In other words, they turn it into a corporation. Martin Luther King is its president. And what that does is it empowers the board of directors to make decisions on behalf of the organization, to speak for the organization. And the members have very few rights within the organization. They can’t speak out against what MIA is doing. That power to take in money, to speak for the organization, to dole out money and do it legally through a corporation—that’s what enabled the MIA to prevail over the ferocious onslaught of the Montgomery white power structure. And so that contrast, for me, points up a couple of things. One is: Black people knew about law. They were using law for a century before SNCC even came along. And second: That law was essential to the civil-rights movement. So, in other words, they’re seeking changes in federal law, but what powers the movement, often, are these ordinary rights of property, contract, the right to go to court, and this right to incorporate and delegate power. Demsas: I wonder what you think would have been different if there had been a focus on these rights of everyday use that you call them, instead of focusing on the civil rights and this kind of movement politics that it seems you’re lamenting left behind something important. What would it have looked like for a civil-rights movement to focus on those laws and to see civil rights as something all people have in common with one another rather than something the law is granting to Black people? Penningroth: I think, really, this is more a matter of messaging than anything else, or the public face of the movement. So the public face of the movement is about anti-subordination, antidiscrimination. It’s about federal law. But it’s clear as day that everyone in the movement, every day, is relying on these rights of everyday use. Another part of it is that what I’m calling rights of everyday use, people didn’t call them that. That’s just a word that I’m bringing to them. And people also, by the 1940s, they were no longer tending to refer to those as civil rights anymore. So in popular discourse, like in Life magazine or in presidential addresses, when people talk about civil rights, they’re now talking about things that in 1850 would have been thought of as social rights, like the right to go to school with someone else, the right to marry someone of a different race, the right to ride on a train or other public accommodation with members of a different race. The civil rights that they’re talking about in the 1960s and ’50s are social rights and also political rights. So in the 1850s, you’ve got this three-part division of rights: social rights, civil rights, and political rights. By the 1950s, those categories are starting to blur in interesting ways. And property, contract, and the right to go to court—those are kind of an unmarked category. People don’t really refer to them explicitly anymore as civil rights. So that’s how I would answer that question, is that it’s there all the time. It’s hiding in plain sight, but that’s largely because of this change in the public meaning of the term civil rights . Demsas: I write a lot about exclusionary zoning and local government and the ways in which local governments have been really the front lines of discrimination and segregation in the history of the United States—and often kind of seen as the federal government coming in and enforcing civil-rights law, whether it’s desegregation, or preventing it, you know, during reconstruction. And even now, we see that how people conceive of how to get local governments to do the right thing is to get the federal agents involved, whether it’s the Justice Department coming in to do consent decrees or things like that. In your story, local and state courts are really avenues where Black Americans were able to navigate areas of freedom and these rights of everyday use but also carve out, really, their own dignity. Should I be thinking better of local governments? I really don’t want to, but I will hear you out if you tell me to. Penningroth: Well, I don’t know if you should think better of them, but I think that it’s worth considering that they were, in fact, dealing with Black people all the time. So I like to think back on this famous scene from the movie Selma because I think it captures what you’re talking about really nicely. So, Ava DuVernay’s wonderful movie from 2014 has this scene—many of you may have seen it—where a character played by Oprah Winfrey goes to the courthouse to try to register to vote, and she’s treated horribly by the registrar, the voter registrar. That is true. But the larger implication of the movie is that Oprah Winfrey has never been to that courthouse before, or that she’s scared to be there. She’s scared all right, but the reason she’s scared is because she’s registering to vote. I know, because I’ve looked at 14,000 of these cases, that Black people were in local courts all the time. They were there exercising these other civil rights. They weren’t trying to register to vote—that’s political rights. They weren’t trying to go to school with white children—that’s social rights. But they were there to argue over a horse or a cow or to get divorced or to sue their minister. These sorts of everyday uses of law are the stuff of Black legal life, and they don’t challenge white supremacy. I don’t necessarily think that you should think better of state and local officials, but I do think that there’s a story that hasn’t been told about those local courthouses. And it’s a story that’s as much about Black people’s relations with each other as it is about dealings with the registrar or the sheriff or the county clerk. Demsas: Well, as long as I get to continue thinking badly of these groups, then I’ll continue to read— Penningroth: ( Laughs .) Yes, you have my permission. Demsas: ( Laughs .) When I was reading your book, I actually started thinking more about how common it is to miss the details of the lives of people who are oppressed. I think that a big part of this missing story you’re talking about is not seeing Black communities and Black people as fully human, and to see them just as members of an oppressed class. A year ago, I was in Frankfurt. I went to the Museum Judengasse, and they have a preserved block of the Jewish ghetto from the 1400s and 1500s. And they’ve preserved, somehow, many of the informal legal documents that governed Jews’ relations to one another. So it’s people fighting or stealing from one another or getting married. And they have this exhibit where you can listen to a dramatization of a lot of these documents read aloud and give you a picture of that life. And it just struck me then—and again while reading your book—it’s a very common thing to see, in historical narratives about oppressed groups, that they’re really flattened in this way. Do you view the civil-rights arc that you talk about in your story as somehow being particular to the experience of Black Americans in not seeing that full humanity? Or is this a kind of trope that is employed time and again because of how effective it is at getting more support—you have to really erase some of the humanity and human interactions and the privileges that people do have in order to make your case to a broader public? Penningroth: That’s a great question. And, of course, I’m not an expert in European history and these other fields, but it absolutely makes sense that a powerful way to organize a social movement and to attract support from people beyond the affected minority group is precisely that. You have to engage in storytelling—and storytelling, by definition, flattens. And so there are some aspects of the freedom-struggle story that are absolutely true, and it is also absolutely true that the activists who did that work—many of them unsung—were indeed heroes. But I also think that treating them as heroes and treating them as outsiders to law, as you say, flattens our understanding of what Black life was like. Demsas: Mm-hmm. Penningroth: I’ll just give one example that comes from the early period and actually has a through line to today, and it’s about Black churches. So in 1966, there was a woman named Vernita Wimbush, who’s a member of a CME church—what they called a Colored Methodist Episcopal church, now Christian Methodist Episcopal church—in Washington, D.C. She writes a letter to her bishop where she says, Do you remember the March on Washington of ’63? And she basically threatens that she and a bunch of her fellow members are going to march on the bishop’s house if the bishop does not reappoint the minister they want in their church. So what she’s doing here is she’s co-opting the language of the freedom struggle in order to fight a battle that she has with her bishop. Vernita Wimbush is one of many Black women who are essentially fighting a two-front war. There’s a war against white supremacy in society, and then there’s a war against male supremacy in church. I think that these sorts of questions ought to change the way that we see Black life by focusing attention on Black people’s relationship with each other and by focusing on the way that Black people used law and tried to turn privileges into rights. Demsas: It’s so interesting because you talk about this in your book, and it’s interesting how much women were willing to subordinate their cause as Black women to just the cause of Black people and civil-rights movement and how much that story was necessary in order to get them to do that. I wanted to move us to modern day because one of the things I couldn’t help thinking when reading your book is there’s another group of people, I think with very different political goals than your books, that use some of this rhetoric, too. There’s been push by some conservatives to recast the era of slavery as having had many privileges and benefits for slaves. For instance, in Florida, there was a debate on an education bill, and the Republican state rep said, “There is only one way to teach about slavery in Florida, and that is that it was evil. But if we can’t have an honest discussion and say that some slaves were paid for their work and were able to actually get a portion of payment that slave owners receive for their labor, then we’re afraid of teaching accurate history.” I could imagine someone reading your book, coming across the first chapter that’s titled, “The Privileges of Slavery,” and seeing that as somehow simpatico with this argument that slavery wasn’t that bad for slaves or, at least, that we’re missing some of these privileges. How do you think about that debate that’s going on and how your scholarship fits into it? Penningroth: Oh, goodness. That’s just politicians being politicians. They’re twisting the past for their own ends. I thought about this issue—what bad actors might do politically with the things that I was writing about. That gets at a really big question: What is the obligation of a scholar? Is it solely to uncover the truth? Or how much should we worry about what Ron DeSantis and his cronies on the Florida education board are going to do with our work? What I decided is that I was going to tell the story, and that story is not very complimentary to the argument that DeSantis and his people are making. On the one hand, they want to say that slavery was evil. On the other hand, they want to say that there were some good things about it. I mean, evil is sort of a categorical statement, right? Demsas: Yeah. Penningroth: Something can’t be evil but also good. So their argument is contradictory, at bottom. But I think the most damning point about this is that the argument that DeSantis is making is that there’s something inherently liberating about having property. And, of course, that fits into a longstanding component of Republican Party ideology—again, it goes back to Abraham Lincoln—which is that civil rights are the things that make us free and that if you have civil rights, you are free and nothing else. We don’t need to worry any more than that. I think you can see elements of that coming out in the idea that, somehow, slaves owning property and having gardens means that slavery wasn’t evil. That’s a testament to what I view as one of the fundamental flaws of Republican Party ideology. Demsas: You know, I really appreciate you sharing that weighing with me because, as someone who—I’m not in the academy, but I’m often talking to academics about their work, and it’s really useful to know that people are thinking about this stuff but also choosing, at the end of the day, to do the scholarship anyway. Because you just never really know how your stuff is going to be used, but if you are doing good scholarship, you have the chance to move the needle toward the truth, which is incredibly important for understanding and getting toward progress. So I talk to a lot of academics all the time who wrestle with this in their own work, and it is useful to me, and I think to a lot of people, that there is still a strong norm of, You still have to publish . It’s not about what someone right now might do. Scholarship is supposed to live for decades, if not centuries. Penningroth: Absolutely. I’m not going to say that I published everything that I found. I mean, there is this— Demsas: What are the secret files? Penningroth: Yeah. Well, what I mean by that is that the kinds of records I was looking at—a lot of them are very personal. They’re very intimate, especially when people get divorced or when there’s inheritance. Again, my book is largely about Black people’s relationships with each other. And those relationships were often angry. Sometimes they were petty, and so there were times when I thought, Well, there are stories that I could put in here, and I’m just not going to do it. I’m not going to put that into the book, because I don’t know how that might get used. And, at bottom, it’s not really essential. It’s not necessary for me to make the argument that I’m going to make. The more important thing that I want to take from this part of the conversation is precisely that these records are so incredibly rich. You could write 20 books from these records about Black life. I’ve just scratched the tip of the iceberg. And I want to give a shout out, too, to the people who are the caretakers of these records. These are local county clerks and deputy clerks in little towns all over America. They often have very small budgets. And they made it possible for me to do this work. Demsas: Well, when you write one of those potential 50 books, we’ll have to have you back. But, for now, it’s our final question: What is something that you initially felt was a good idea, but it turned out to only be good on paper? Penningroth: I’m thinking back on a bicycle trip that I took with my father when I think I was 11. We used to do that from time to time. I lived in central Jersey and Princeton. And I remember that one trip we took, we were going to the Pine Barrens, and we mapped out the whole thing on the table. This is back when you had paper maps. And one of the places we wanted to go was a little town called Friendship and then take the road from Friendship to the Carranza Memorial, which is an interesting local monument. So we bicycled down these roads, and we get to where Friendship is supposed to be, and we can’t find it. And we’ve realized that Friendship is a ghost town. And then, you know, finally we got back on our bikes, and we start down the road to the next stop, at the Carranza Memorial. It turns out that the whole road was sand after that point. Demsas: Oh, no! Penningroth: And so we’re spending hours—you can’t ride a bicycle on sand. These are not beach bikes. I had a ball. I was 11, and I was going back and forth, and—I’ll add—I did not have all the sleeping bags and tent and food on my back. So my dad is back there sweating. His wheels are digging into the sand, and he finally gets off and walks. Like I said, it looked good on paper. But when we actually got there, it was even more fun. Demsas: I do feel like some of these stories about—I think that we’ve had a couple of these now where it’s about someone making the wrong turn while on their bike or driving or whatever. And it’s funny. It feels like GPS has taken away this rite of passage for us. Now it’s like everyone knows—you can even see on Google Maps—the exact walkability. What’s it going to look like? And you don’t get lost anymore. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was incredibly fun. I feel like I just learned so much, and I really appreciate you taking the time. Penningroth: Oh, I so appreciate you having me on. Thank you. Demsas: Good on Paper is produced by Jinae West. It was edited by Dave Shaw and Claudine Ebeid, fact-checked by Ena Alvarado, and engineered by Erica Huang. Our theme music is composed by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. And hey, if you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. I’m Jerusalem Demsas, and we’ll see you next week. About the Author More Stories Kamala Harris Defines Herself—But Not Too Much You May Miss Wokeness Visit the new and improved Hamilton Education Program website AP US History Study Guide History U: Courses for High School Students History School: Summer Enrichment Lesson Plans Classroom Resources Spotlights on Primary Sources Professional Development (Academic Year) Professional Development (Summer) Book Breaks Inside the Vault Self-Paced Courses Browse All Resources Search by Issue Search by Essay Become a Member (Free) Monthly Offer (Free for Members) Program Information Scholarships and Financial Aid Applying and Enrolling Eligibility (In-Person) EduHam Online Hamilton Cast Read Alongs Official Website Press Coverage Veterans Legacy Program The Declaration at 250 Black Lives in the Founding Era Celebrating American Historical Holidays Browse All Programs Donate Items to the Collection Search Our Catalog Research Guides Rights and Reproductions See Our Documents on Display Bring an Exhibition to Your Organization Interactive Exhibitions Online About the Transcription Program Civil War Letters Founding Era Newspapers College Fellowships in American History Scholarly Fellowship Program Richard Gilder History Prize David McCullough Essay Prize Affiliate School Scholarships Nominate a Teacher State Winners National Winners Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize George Washington Prize Frederick Douglass Book Prize Our Mission and History Annual Report Contact Information Student Advisory Council Teacher Advisory Council Board of Trustees Remembering Richard Gilder President's Council Scholarly Advisory Board Internships Our Partners Press Releases Yale and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Announce 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalists New Haven, Conn.— Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition today has announced the finalists for the twenty-sixth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, one of the most coveted awards for the study of the African American experience. Jointly sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University’s MacMillan Center, this annual prize of $25,000 recognizes the best book written in English on the topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition copyrighted in the preceding year.  The finalists for the 2024 prize are: Kerri K. Greenidge for The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family (Liveright Publishing Corporation); Sara E. Johnson for E ncyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and University of North Carolina Press); and Emily A. Owens for Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans (University of North Carolina Press). The winner will be announced following the Douglass Prize Review Committee meeting in the fall, and the award will be presented at a celebration at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City on February 11, 2025. From a total of eighty-two submissions, the finalists were selected by a jury of scholars that included Amy Murrell Taylor (Chair), T. Marshall Hahn Jr. Professor of History at the University of Kentucky; Natasha J. Lightfoot, Associate Professor of History at Columbia University; and John K. Thornton, Professor of History and African American Studies at Boston University. The jury’s descriptions of the three finalists follow. Kerri Greenidge’s beautifully written The Grimkes is a transformative account of a long-celebrated American family. Alongside the sisters Angelina and Sarah and their White kin, it is the Black Grimkes—Nancy, Archie, Frank, John, Charlotte Forten, and Angelina Weld Grimke—who take center stage. Telling a fuller, richer story of the Grimkes across four generations, Greenridge brings remarkable research and a sensitive reading of evidence to bear on a story that adds up to much more than a retelling of one family’s saga. The Grimkes is instead an unsparing and gripping meditation on the long reach of slavery well into the twentieth century, its legacy perpetuating the privilege of some and the trauma of many others. Moreau de Saint-Méry was one of the most diligent and thoughtful of French writers on many issues of colonial history in the late eighteenth century. His description of Saint-Domingue (the present-day Haiti) was massive and is still a critical primary source for that colony on the eve of the Revolution. Sara Johnson’s Encyclopédie noire takes a careful view of Saint-Méry’s work, his life, his outlook, and above all his sources and their interpretation. In this remarkable study of Saint-Méry’s connections and attitudes, Johnson’s meticulous collection of material serves as what she calls a communal biography of him written by others. Both rigorously researched and fluidly and often cleverly written, this is a real monument of scholarship, crossing many disciplines and exercising well-reasoned judgments. Emily Owens’s Consent in the Presence of Force is a well-written and theoretically daring take on the history of the so-called fancy trade and sexuality in antebellum New Orleans slavery. At its heart is a critical question: How did sexual violence become so ordinary? The analysis pivots on Owens’s conception of consent as something that enslaved women complicatedly gave to their White male sexual aggressors as part of a transaction, or contract, from which they derived better status in enslavement or eventual freedom. Fluid prose, careful reading of fraught legal records, and theorizing that evidences a consistent mind at work on the page, all combine to make a very familiar subject—namely rape as a building block of slavery—appear reinvented anew. The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center in 1999 to stimulate scholarship in the field by honoring outstanding accomplishments. The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), an enslaved person who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the great American abolitionists, reformers, writers, and orators of the nineteenth century. The mission of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) is to support academic excellence in the study of slavery and its enduring legacies, make this knowledge freely available to the public, and foster work toward social justice. Launched in 1998 through contributions from philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, the GLC is affiliated with the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. The Center supports research fellowships, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, scholarly working groups, publications, free public programs, and educational workshops for secondary school teachers and students, domestic and international. For further information and to find out how you can support the continuing work of the GLC, visit glc.yale.edu , e-mail: [email protected] or call (203) 432-3339. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History was founded in 1994 by Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman, visionaries and lifelong supporters of American history education. The Institute is the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to K–12 history education while also serving the general public. Its mission is to promote the knowledge and understanding of American history through educational programs and resources. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is supported through the generosity of individuals, corporations, and foundations. The Institute’s programs have been recognized by awards from the White House, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Organization of American Historians, the Council of Independent Colleges, and the Daughters of the American Revolution. For further information, visit gilderlehrman.org or call (646) 366-9666. PRESS CONTACTS: Yale University Michelle Zacks 203-432-9238 [email protected] The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Josh Landon 646-366-9666 x137 [email protected] Stay up to date, and subscribe to our quarterly newsletter. Learn how the Institute impacts history education through our work guiding teachers, energizing students, and supporting research. Northern Illinois University Thursday, September 12 2024 Lincoln Lecture - A discussion with award-winning author Clint Smith Thursday, September 12, 2024 7:30 PM Share 2024 Lincoln Lecture - A discussion with award-winning author Clint Smith on Facebook Share 2024 Lincoln Lecture - A discussion with award-winning author Clint Smith on Twitter Share 2024 Lincoln Lecture - A discussion with award-winning author Clint Smith on LinkedIn About this Event 595 College Ave, DeKalb, IL 60115 This conversation, moderated by Christina Abreu, Director of the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies, draws on Smith’s 2021 book , How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. Smith’s bestselling books include  How the Word Is Passed , which  Publishers Weekly  called “an essential consideration of how America’s past informs its present.” It has won numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and was named one of the best books of the year by  TIME ,  The New York Times ,  The Economist and  The Washington Post . His latest book,  Above Ground , was named to  TIME  magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books and  NPR ‘s Books We Love. Smith’s first book,  Counting Descent , won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. In his forthcoming book,  Just Beneath the Soil , he will explore the little-known stories behind World War II sites and discuss how they shape our collective memory of the war. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine , The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review and elsewhere. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic . The W. Bruce Lincoln Endowed Lecture Series brings to campus distinguished scholars who address topics of interest to both the academic community and the general public. The lectures engage key issues and are often interdisciplinary, in the spirit of Professor Lincoln’s research, writing and teaching. Event Details Target Audience Contact Name Anne Hanley Contact Email or Phone [email protected] Your browser does not support iframes. See Who Is Interested 2 people are interested in this event Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World Read our research on: Full Topic List Regions & Countries Publications Our Methods Short Reads Tools & Resources Read Our Research On: The Political Values of Harris and Trump Supporters Wide differences over cultural issues, role of government and foreign policy, table of contents. Cultural values and the 2024 election Views of government and the 2024 election Foreign policy values and the 2024 election Acknowledgments The American Trends Panel survey methodology This spring, Pew Research Center conducted a major study of American political values . This survey examined the public’s views of topics including immigration, race and ethnicity, government, family, gender identity, religious values, and foreign policy. Reports released earlier this year looked at these attitudes among supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump – then the likely major-party nominees for president. Because the Pew Research Center interviews the same adults over time using the online American Trends Panel, for this analysis we are able to link respondents’ voter preferences across multiple surveys. As a result, we can analyze results from the spring survey by vote preferences collected in a more recent August survey – when we asked voters about their preference in the presidential contest between Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This analysis uses responses from 4,527 registered voters who took both surveys. The values survey was conducted April 8-14, 2024. The vote preference survey (support if the presidential election were held today) was conducted Aug. 5-11, 2024. Everyone who took part in these surveys is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Surveys were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The results are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors.  Read more about the ATP’s methodology . Refer to the original reports (linked in the text of this report) for the full toplines. Here is the survey methodology for this analysis. The 2024 presidential campaign has changed dramatically since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee. What has not changed is the vast differences in political values between voters who support Harris and those who back Republican nominee Donald Trump. Following Harris’s extraordinary ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket, this publication and the accompanying detailed tables serve to update Pew Research Center data on political values that we released earlier this year, when Biden was still in the race. Some of the widest gaps between Harris and Trump supporters are on issues that have divided Americans for decades, such as the role of guns in society, race and the legacy of slavery. In addition, voters who back Harris and Trump have sharply different views on immigration, gender identity, and whether society should prioritize marriage and having children. Here’s the original report on cultural issues , released June 6, 2024. And here is updated data on Harris and Trump supporters’ views about:   Race and racial diversity  |  Immigration and language  |  American history  |  Gender, family, reproductive issues  |  Gender identity and sexual orientation  |  Religion  |  Crime and policing  |  Guns For decades, Republicans have mostly expressed a preference for smaller government, while most Democrats favor a larger government that provides more services. This remains the case today, with Trump supporters over three times more likely than Harris supporters to favor smaller government. Other attitudes about government – including its role in providing health care coverage – show similar patterns. However, large majorities of both candidates’ supporters oppose any reductions in Social Security benefits. Here’s the original report on views of government , released June 24, 2024. And here is updated data on Harris and Trump supporters’ views about:   Government’s scope and role Supporters of Harris and Trump also have fundamental differences on America’s place in the world. Harris supporters are more likely than Trump supporters to say the United States should take into account the interests of its allies, and that is at least very important for the U.S. to have an active role in world affairs. Trump supporters are more likely to support policies aimed at maintaining America’s role as the world’s lone military superpower. Here’s the original report on foreign policy , released Aug. 2, 2024. And here is updated data on Harris and Trump supporters views about: Foreign policy, U.S. military strength Related: War in Ukraine: Wide Partisan Differences on U.S. Responsibility and Support Sign up for our weekly newsletter Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings Sign up for The Briefing Weekly updates on the world of news & information Donald Trump Election 2024 Kamala Harris Partisanship & Issues Political Issues As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. exits, a look at who supported him in the 2024 presidential race Harris energizes democrats in transformed presidential race, many americans are confident the 2024 election will be conducted fairly, but wide partisan differences remain, joe biden, public opinion and his withdrawal from the 2024 race, amid doubts about biden’s mental sharpness, trump leads presidential race, most popular, report materials. Political Values of Harris and Trump supporters Detailed Tables 901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries Research Topics Email Newsletters ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts . © 2024 Pew Research Center 344 COMMENTS 271 Ideas, Essay Examples, and Topics on Slavery Analysis of Slavery in United States. The main points highlighted in the lecture are focused on the socio-economic differences between the two systems, the actual life of slaves, and methods of blacks' rebellion. "Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades" by Patrick Manning. Slavery Research Paper Topics Explore the rich history of slavery through our comprehensive guide on slavery research paper topics. This page is designed for history students seeking in-depth insights into various aspects of slavery, including ancient, medieval, Islamic, and modern periods. We present an extensive list of slavery research paper topics categorized into 10 ... 90+ Research Paper Topics on Slavery: Yesterday and Today 1 Argumentative topics about slavery. 2 Compare and contract slavery topics. 3 Definition research paper topics on slavery. 4 Topics about slavery in art and literature. 5 Research paper topics on slavery in world history. 6 Topics about slavery in US history. 7 Topics about slavery today. The Yale & Slavery Research Project 1864 August. The New York Times attacks Yale for its alleged "draft-shirking," accusing Yale students and their faculty and administration of "plotting evasion and desertion.". At the college, claims the Times, "how to escape the draft" is the issue of the day. "The gutters are dragged for substitutes…. Learning About Slavery With Primary Sources Part I. The article uses primary sources to tell the story of slavery from 1619 to 1865. To begin thinking critically about primary sources, look at the cover image for the article, which uses ... Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery The first phase of the initiative's work was to uncover the truth of Harvard's ties to slavery through deep research guided by a committee of distinguished faculty drawn from across the University. This research provides a strong foundation for our next phase: the process of reckoning and repair. ... We explore these questions through ... Views of reparations for slavery in US vary ... As with views of reparations, racial and ethnic differences on this question are notable. Black Americans (85%) are more likely than Hispanic (64%) and White (50%) Americans to say the legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in the U.S. a fair amount or a great deal. The partisan gap on this question is also wide. Teaching Notes Teaching Notes by Samir Goswami. January 16, 2018 11:30 am (EST) Ahmad Masood/Reuters. Slavery disproportionally affects women and girls while also victimizing men and boys of all backgrounds, and ... Slave Past, Modern Lives: An Analysis of the Legacy of Slavery and As questions about racial reparations have entered public and political discourse again, research about the long-term impact of chattel slavery—so called "legacy of slavery" research—has taken on new significance. LibGuides: Researching Slavery and the Slave Trade: Databases Freely Available Databases. Slave Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Contains information on more than 35,000 slave voyages involving the forcible transport of more than 12 million Africans to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover ... Modern Slavery Research Methods: Enabling Data-Driven Decisions To generate the evidence required to make data-driven decisions and to empower the private sector to make targeted changes, greater investments in modern slavery research need to be made ... Black Americans' views of reparations for slavery Among Black Americans, political party affiliation, educational attainment and income are important points of difference in views on this question. The share of Black Democrats and Democratic leaners (57%) who say the legacy of slavery affects Black people a great deal outpaces the share of Black Republicans and Republican leaners (39%) who say ... U.S. Slavery: Timeline, Figures & Abolition Slavery in America was the legal institution of enslaving human beings, mainly Africans and African Americans. Slavery existed in the United States from its founding in 1776 and became the main ... Slavery Slavery is the condition in which one human being is owned by another. Under slavery, an enslaved person is considered by law as property, or chattel, and is deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons. Learn more about the history, legality, and sociology of slavery in this article. Slavery in the United States: Primary Sources and the Historical Record Individuals or groups might be challenged to research and gather a set of primary sources on a topic other than slavery. Additional activity suggestions for different types of primary sources: Objects - Hypothesize about the uses of an unknown object pictured in an old photograph. Conduct research to support or refute the hypothesis. Why Did The Slave Trade Last So Long? Plus 6 More Key Questions Europeans developed the Atlantic slave trade, and American plantation slavery, at a time when they had turned their back on slavery at home. African slavery was encountered in the early European trading missions, but it was the shortage of labour in the Americas that sealed the Africans' fate. The swift collapse of the population of native ... 37 questions with answers in SLAVERY 1 answer. Aug 12, 2023. Because the output of economic slavery is social slavery and cultural nakedness! Relevant answer. دکتر محمود دهگان. Aug 12, 2023. Answer. Any government that ... 203 Slavery Essay Topics & Research Titles at StudyCorgi 👍 Good Slavery Research Topics & Essay Examples "The Escape, Or: A Leap for Freedom", "Uncle Tom's Cabin": The Need for Social Action on Slavery. Stowe and Brown wrote plays with different intentions, but both shared a single purpose - to convince their white audiences that the practice of slavery was an inhuman practice. Modern Slavery PEC A multi-disciplinary research project led by the University of Liverpool and University of Nottingham is investigating the key ethical issues involved in conducting modern slavery research, informed by the perspectives of people with lived experience. Research ethics covers the benefits, harms, agency and equity of the research, including ... 7 Key Questions in the U.S. Slavery Reparations Debate The core argument of the reparations movement is that America's wealth was built on the backs of slave labor and that black Americans have been systematically denied access to that wealth. Black slaves were the engine of the American cotton industry, the most profitable enterprise of the 19th century. Literature Review & Research Methods Doing Research on Sensitive Topics by Raymond M. Lee This book is a comprehensive guide to the methodological, ethical and practical issues involved in undertaking research on sensitive topics. Raymond M Lee explores the reasons why social research may be politically or socially contentious: its relation to issues of social or political power ... Slavery and Abolition: Topics in Chronicling America Antislavery U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Charles Sumner gives a speech in Congress titled, "The Crime Against Kansas" which calls out some fellow Congressmen's support for slavery. The next day pro-slavery U.S. Representative from South Carolina Preston Brooks finds Sumner at his Senate desk and beats him unconscious with a heavy cane. 1857 Questions Regarding Slavery The concept of freedom over slavery goes back at least that far. Sadly, it also continues in certain parts of the world—recent examples including the so-called Islamic State and Boko Haram. Sincerely, Jon Guttman. Research Director. World History. www.historynet.com. More Questions at Ask Mr. History . Don't miss the next Ask Mr. History ... The Rights of American Slaves The following is a transcript of the episode: [Music]Jerusalem Demsas: In a just society, the law both constrains action—prevents us or punishes us for certain behaviors—but it also outlines ... History of slavery in the United States by state Evolution of the enslaved population of the United States as a percentage of the population of each state, 1790-1860. Following the creation of the United States in 1776 and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, the legal status of slavery was generally a matter for individual U.S. state legislatures and judiciaries (outside of several historically significant exceptions ... Yale and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Announce 2024 Jointly sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University's MacMillan Center, this annual prize of $25,000 recognizes the best book written in English on the topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition copyrighted ... 2024 Lincoln Lecture This conversation, moderated by Christina Abreu, Director of the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies, draws on Smith's 2021 book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. The Political Values of Harris and Trump Supporters This survey examined the public's views of topics including immigration, race and ethnicity, government, family, gender identity, religious values, and foreign policy. Reports released earlier this year looked at these attitudes among supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump - then the likely major-party nominees ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review thesis