an image of slavery

[kindkit]

I'm temporarily suspending my rule about focusing on happy stuff to link you to this post by Ta-Nehisi Coates about a ca. 1865 photograph of freed slaves from New Orleans. The photograph was taken and distributed to raise money for the education of former slaves, and it was accompanied by a letter giving information about the lives of all the

Comments

[a2zmom]

Thank you for this link.

I am never surprised by man seeming infinite ability for cruelty, but the picture and the commentary speaks volumes.

[kindkit]

For me, it's something that too easily becomes abstract: "slavery was horrible." The reminder of just what "horrible" actually meant--and the sufferings the photographed people experienced were not even the worst, by any means--is, for me, occasionaly needed.

[mangosorbet007]

I came across this picture a few years ago and have used it a number of times in class to explain "Desiree's Baby", a story that does not make much sense to kids in a fairly white part of continental Europe. They always keep asking "But how? How did the fathers sell them and how did the wives not leave their husbands and why didn't people free their siblings?"
It was a very peculiar institution indeed.

[kindkit]

*nods* Not that brutality towards members of one's own family is all that rare, but there's still something especially appalling about a pervasive ideological system that makes family connections meaningless if they cross a perceived racial barrier.

[fatchickengirl]

I remember being shocked in a museum in Huddersfield (known as 'Monkey hangers' due to their trying and hanging a monkey shipwrecked from a French ship when we were at war with them...early 1800s) when I saw a 1816 poster for a slave sale...been to the Wilberforce force museum in Hull the man who pushed for many years for aboilishment in the British Empire. (wonderful film 'Amazing Grace' with ioan Gruffud spelt wrong I know he's Welsh can't do it)!

But seeing something like this really brings it home I've read a bit of Andrea Levy and there is a lot about how mixed the lives and blood was between the owners and slaves (she writes from a British Jamacian POV).

The one drop policy for what ever reason doesn't appear stand here: you are mixed race so which is better as both side are recognised and as important...Or so the theory goes...

[kindkit]

The "one drop" idea seems to have been strongest and lingered longest in places where there was a large slave population over generations, so it's not surprising if it's more common in the US (even now) than in the UK.

[fatchickengirl]

True whilst we were heavily into the Slave trade it was out of sight and out of mind as they were dumped in the colonies...

[executrix]

For a man of the planter class, going to a whorehouse was a cost center, whereas raping his slaves was a profit center.

Sometimes I wish I could just turn in my papers and belong to some other species.

[kindkit]

Yes, human beings often seem like a pretty bad bunch.

[kindkit]

*nods* Even white abolitionists were mostly convinced racists