Race relations USA Antebellum Race Relations-137-144.pdf

(including members of the royal family) , receiving widespread international attention. 368 369 From 1789 to 1792, the House of Commons heard evidence for and against the slave trade. In 1792,...

(including members of the royal family) , receiving widespread international attention. 368 369 From 1789 to 1792, the House of Commons heard evidence for and against the slave trade. In 1792, an abolition bill passed in the Commons only to be defeated in the House of Lords. Different bills were subsequently defeated by narrow margins. All the while, Parliament felt shy of pursuing any major social reforms in the fear of happenings in Revolutionary France and their possible contagion across the Channel. Equiano died in 1797, with Granville Sharp at his bedside. Ten years later, both houses of Parliament would finally pass legislation putting an end to the African slave trade. 2). Finally, mention should be made of revolts by West Indian slaves themselves. The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803, led by Toussaint Louverture, was the largest slave uprising in history. By winning their freedom, the rebel slaves of Haiti undermined a major argument 370 made by the British slave-ship owners, which was that if Britain abandoned the slave trade, France would get all the business. Westminster addressed racial discrimination in a significant manner with the Race Relations Act 1976 Establishment in 1976 of a Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which became the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on October 1, 2007. See also the transposition of Council Directive 2000/43 of June 6, 2000, implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin. §2. Race Relations in the USA very twisted How could a slaveholder write “All men are created equal”? The convoluted – and often tragic – evolution of race relations make up a characteristic feature of American culture. In varying degrees, discrimination was present at the founding of the American Republic and continues to the day. Despite their quasi-religious moral stature, the founders of the United States left a shameful legacy with respect to race relations. The first American President, George Washington (1732-1799) owned more than one hundred slaves. In addition to land (of which Washington owned some 58,000 acres), slave ownership constituted “another measure of great wealth, whose labors made possible his whole way of life”. In the Declaration of Independence 371 itself, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) famously proclaimed as “self-evident” that “all men are created equal”, and were endowed with the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty, and the 368 Publication by subscription meant that buyers committed themselves to purchasing copies of a book prior to its publication, usually requiring partial payment in advance to cover living and production costs. It is equivalent to the French “avance sur recettes”. 369 Equiano’s autobiography was discussed most notably in France where the first historian of Black literature, Henri Grégoire, drew a comparison with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. 370 The Haitian Revolution began on August 22, 1791 when two thousand slaves launched an attack on the plantations of white slave owners. After years of fighting and mass slaughter, Napoleon’s army withdrew from Haiti in December 1803. Haiti became Latin America’s first independent state and the world’s first nation created by slaves. 371 David McCullough, 1776 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), at 47. 137 pursuit of happiness”. Jefferson nevertheless held a great number of “souls” at Monticello, 372 his estate in Virginia. His “family” included not only his daughters from his marriage with 373 Martha Jefferson, but also the 117 slaves who then lived on his plantation. Later, the slave ranks at Monticello would swell to 140, including a number of slaves who were more than Jefferson’s figurative “family” but literally his own children (born out of wedlock with Sally Hemings). Thomas Jefferson mildly questioned the notion that the “dark” (“black” or “red”) races were inferior to the “white”. As it is, focus will first lie on African-Americans (A), before touching upon the subject of Native Americans (B). A. African-Americans Developments hereafter may be divided into four parts: (a) race relations before the American Civil War, (b) during the Civil War, (c) postbellum relations until the mid-20 century, and (d)th contemporary race relations. occurring or existing before a particular war, especially the US Civil War a). Antebellum Race Relations The American colonist justified slavery much the same way as Aristotle (384-322 BC) had two thousand years before. Believing that each person was born with a particular, highly differentiated constitution, Aristotle inferred from these “differences of nature” that arguments concerning the rights of man could not be extended to all humans. “It is both natural and expedient for the body to be ruled by the soul, and for the emotional part of our natures to be ruled by the mind, the part which possesses reason. The reverse, or even parity, would be fatal all round. This is also true as between man and the other animals; for tame animals are by nature better than wild, and it is better for them all to be ruled by man, because it secures their safety. Again, as between male and female the former is by nature superior and ruler, the latter inferior and subject. And this must hold good of mankind in general. Therefore whenever there is the same wide discrepancy between human beings as there is between soul and body or between man and beast, then those whose condition is such that their function is the use of their bodies and nothing better can be expected of them, those, I say, are slaves by nature. It is better for them, just as in the cases mentioned, to be ruled thus”. 374 Slavery is a bitter history of oppression and exploitation, hatred and discrimination. It is commonplace to consider August 1619 as the date of the first arrival of Africans in the British 372 For David McCullough, these noble ideals contained in Declaration of Independence constituted a major break with a mere statement of independence from the colonial power. Undoubtedly, “[s]uch courage and ideals were of little consequence, of course, the Declaration itself being no more than a declaration without military success against the most formidable power on earth. […] But from this point on, the citizen-soldiers of Washington’s army were no longer fighting only for the defense of their country, or for their rightful liberties as freeborn Englishmen, as they had at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and through the long siege at Boston. It was now a proudly proclaimed, all-out war for an independent America, a new America, and thus a new day of freedom and equality”, in David McCullough, 1776, op. cit., at 136-37. 373 In 1776, Jefferson conducted a census of the “Number of souls in my family”. 374 Aristotle, Politics, trans, T.A. Sinclair (London: , 1981), I, v, 1254, b2, b16. 138 North American colonies (on board the White Lion, an English privateer). Early on, the legal 375 status of Black people in the colonies – categorized as either free persons, enslaved persons, or indentured servants – was made clear with the passage of the Virginia Slave Codes of 376 1705. Slaves were stripped of legal rights and the institution of slavery was legalized with all its barbaric and dehumanizing effects. This being said, the colonies were soon divided on the question of slavery. The southern plantation colonies considered that their economies could not operate without slaves (to till the soil, pick cotton, reap harvests…). In the middle colonies and the north, the outlook was different. The legislature in Massachusetts thus made several attempts before the Revolution to abolish the slave trade (vetoed by the Governor). When the Continental Congress assembled in 1774, it pledged itself to abolish the slave trade throughout the thirteen colonies, and in 1776, it voted that no slaves would be imported into any of them. The result of these differences between the northern and southern colonies 377 would result in a series of compromises. Most notably, if the Declaration of Independence were to be adopted unanimously, it had to say nothing about slavery at all. Thomas 378 Jefferson, the man who wrote the egalitarian phrases in the Declaration of Independence, owned slaves… The authors of the Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay) elevated the property rights of slave owners over the human rights of slaves. All the while, before and after the War of Independence, African-Americans were hideously treated. They were kept in bondage, tortured, sexually assaulted, and deprived of the most basic human rights. Families were separated, sold, and treated with less care than livestock. In the main, reasons behind slavery had to do with economic interests. According to the American historian Howard Zinn, “The United States government’s support of slavery was based on an overpowering practicality. In 1790, a thousand tons of cotton were being 375 The White Lion dropped anchor in the James River, Virginia (near the Jamestown settlement), one year before the Mayflower anchored near the tip of Cape Cod (Massachusetts). A prominent Virginia colonist (and husband of Pocahontas), John Rolfe (1585-1622) recorded the arrival of the White Lion and “20 and odd” Africans on board. Historians generally consider today that Africans were present in the Americas much earlier than 1619 (most notably in Spanish Florida): see Michael Guasco, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Guasco considers that excessive focus on the English colonies – or Anglo-centrism – omits the global nature of slavery. See also Linda Heywood and John Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 376 Indentured servitude is slightly different from slavery in that a (voluntary or coerced) contractual tie unites master and servant, the indentured servant working not for money but in exchange for the price of passage to a fixed destination (such as British North America: e.g. someone seeking a new life in the colonies, but who could not afford the expensive crossing from another country would contract with a wealthy landowner to perform a type of work for a fixed period in exchange for the price of the boat ticket). Indentured servitude progressively dwindled in North America as black slavery grew in importance. As well as slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made “involuntary servitude” illegal in the U.S. It nevertheless reappeared via the practice of “debt slavery” (“debt servitude”, “debt bondage”, or “peonage”), i.e. an employer compels an “employee” against their will to pay off a debt with work. Indeed, the Thirteenth Amendment contained an exception for “punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. The practice was commonly used in the South with respect to sharecropping, mining, the railroad and lumber industries. On involuntary servitude and the U.S. Supreme Court, see the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873). The Supreme Court interpreted the “privileges and immunities” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to only narrowly protect “federal citizenship” of the United States, not the privileges and immunities of “state citizenship”. For extended discussion, see David W. Galenson, “Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis”, (Vol. XLIV) The Journal of Economic History, pp. 1-26 (1984); John M. Cook, “Involuntary Servitude: Modern Conditions Addressed in United States v. Mussry”, 34 Cath. U.L. Rev. 153 (1985). 377 B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 245. 378 T.V. Smith, The American Philosophy of Equality (Chicago: 1927), p.p. 45-46. 139 produced very year in the South. By 1860, it was a million tons. In the same period, 500,000 slaves grew to 4 million”. The slaves were far from passive in this tragedy. Some 250 slave 379 rebellions are documented in the colonies and later the southern United States. By way of illustration, the Stono Rebellion of 1739 began in the colony of South Carolina, near the Stono River, when a group of some 20 slaves raided a firearms store, taking guns and ammunition and killing the shopkeepers. The rebellion grew in size on its way south towards promised freedom in Spanish Florida, waving flags, beating drums, and shouting “Liberty!”. Eventually it was overcome by a militia that crushed the slaves. In retaliation, British North America lawmakers enacted a harsh slave code, “An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Other Slaves in this Province” (also referred to as the Negro Act) that denied slaves the right to education, the right to grow their own food or assemble in groups. Less than a century later, in 1822, Vesey’s Rebellion (after Denmark Vesey) consisted of a conspiracy to incite several thousand slaves to seize the arsenals and guard houses in Charleston, set fire to the city, kill the Governor of South Carolina and every white man they saw. As with the Stono Rebellion, authorities again enacted a number of laws that further restricted the rights of Charleston slaves. Finally mention should be made of Nat Turner who sustained a rebellion in in southeast Virginia 1831 consisting of spreading terror throughout the white South. A new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement and assembly of slaves was adopted in the wake of this rebellion as well. 380 There were few slaves who, like the British-Nigerian Olaudah Equiano, wrote narratives of their own lives. As seen above, this is largely due to the fact that many colonies, and 381 subsequently states, instituted laws that prohibited slaves from learning to read or write and made it a crime for others to teach them. A widespread fear existed that black literacy would prove a threat to the slave system. The South Carolina Negro Act of 1740 adopted in the wake of the Stono Rebellion thus included anti-literacy provisions that provided the following: “Whereas, the having slaves taught to write, or suffering them to be employed in writing, may be attended with great inconveniences; Be it enacted, that all and every person and persons whatsoever, who shall hereafter teach or cause any slave or slaves to be taught to write, or shall use or employ any slave as a scribe, in any manner of writing whatsoever, hereafter taught to write, every such person or persons shall, for every such offense, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds, current money”. 382 The Virginia Revised Code of 1819 provided: 379 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005), at 171. 380 The American author William Styron depicted Turner’s 1831 slave revolt in his novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1967. Turner’s revolt was also depicted in cinema with Nate Parker’s movie, The Birth of a Nation (2016). 381 One notable exception may be found in Phillis Wheatley (1753-84), born in Gambia and sold as a slave in Boston at the age of 8, begins to write poetry in her teens. In a letter, Voltaire writes that Wheatley proved that African Americans could write poetry… One American author considers that “[p]rior to the 1960s, an accepted position in American literary and historical studies was that no distinct, authentic, written Afro-American voice existed in the canons of discourse surrounding American abolitionism”: cf. Houston A. Baker Jr., Introduction to the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (London: Penguin Books, 1982), at pp. 7-8. 382 “Slavery and the Making of America”, PBS, Internet available at https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/education/docs1.html (accessed August 7, 2020). 140  “That all meetings or assemblages of slaves, or free negroes or mulattoes mixing and associating with such slaves at any meeting-house or houses, &c., in the night; or at any SCHOOL OR SCHOOLS for teaching them READING OR WRITING, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall be deemed and considered an UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY; and any justice of a county, &c., wherein such assemblage shall be, either from his own knowledge or the information of others, of such unlawful assemblage, &c., may issue his warrant, directed to any sworn officer or officers, authorizing him or them to enter the house or houses where such unlawful assemblages, &c., may be, for the purpose of apprehending or dispersing such slaves, and to inflict corporal punishment on the offender or offenders, at the discretion of any justice of the peace, not exceeding twenty lashes”. 383 The denial of education waxed and waned over time. Certain slaveholders permitted slave literacy as a way to make the Bible accessible and promote Christianity. Others, fearing slave resistance and most notably the forgery of travel passes that would enable slaves to move as free blacks, strictly prohibited any form of education. This was particularly true in those states where slaves began to outnumber whites (in South Carolina, the ratio was 2:1 by the early 19 th century. One of the foremost American slave narratives was written by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), under the title, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, published in 1845. It was an immediate bestseller and received enthusiastic critical response. 384 It was followed by My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855. Born into slavery in Maryland, in 1818, Douglass escaped to the North where he gained his liberty in 1838. Considered a “fugitive” in real terms and having escaped the “grave yard of the mind” that was American slavery, Douglass devoted a long and productive life to the antislavery effort. He campaigned in the United States, lectured in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and launched a journalistic career that would occupy much of the remainder of his life. In later years, he served a variety of positions, among which minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti, and chargé d’affaires for Santo Domingo. He died of a heart attack in Washington D.C. in 1895 at the age of 77. The following excerpt describes Douglass’s recollection of an overseer, called Mr. Gore. “His savage barbarity was equaled only by the consummate coolness with which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves under his charge. Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel Lloyd’s slaves, by the name of Demby. He had given Demby but few stripes, when to get rid of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself into a creek, and stood there at the depth of his shoulders, refusing to come out. Mr. Gore told him that he would give him three calls, and that, if he did not come out at the third call, he would shoot him; The first call was given. Demby made no response, but stood his ground. The second and third calls were given were the same result. Mr. Gore then, without consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving Demby an additional call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more. His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood. A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon the plantation, excepting Mr. Gore. He alone seemed cool and collected. He was asked by Colonel Lloyd and my old master why he resorted to this extraordinary expedient. His reply was (as well as 383 Ibidem. 384 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (London: Penguin Books, 1982), 141  I can remember) that Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other slaves, - one which if suffered to pass without some demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all of all rule and order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave refused to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy the example; the result of which would be the freedom of the slaves, and the enslavement of the whites. Mr. Gore’s defence was satisfactory. He was continued in his station as overseer upon the home plantation. His fame as an overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial investigation. It was committed in the presence of slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor testify against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the bloodiest and most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, and uncensored by the community in which he lives. Mr. Gore lived in St. Michael’s, Talbot county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is still alive, he very probably lives there now, as he was then, as highly esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had not been stained with his brother’s blood”. 385 The most important anti-slavery speech delivered by Frederick Douglass was given on July 4, 1852, the day America celebrates its freedom. Addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York, Douglass saw no ground to celebrate and instead exposed the hollowness of the freedom values of the United States. Known as “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”, the speech is considered an iconic text, still studied in history and English classes today. completely or immediately Besides outright revolt, slaves were occasionally given the opportunity to buy their freedom (thus with Denmark Vesey, mentioned above: this was extremely rare). Some slaves managed to escape their masters to reach liberty in those territories where slavery was unknown. Different statutes, adopted in the colonies as early as 1643, dealt with refugee slaves. British North American authorities in New York thus passed a measure in 1705 that was designed to prevent runaway slaves from fleeing to Canada. Similar measures were adopted in the Virginia and Maryland colonies offering bounties for the capture and return of escaped slaves. At the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, five states – Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont – had abolished slavery. In order to prevent the new free states from becoming safe havens for runaway slaves, Southern politicians (in particular, Pierce Butler and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina) included a “Fugitive Slave Clause” in the U.S. Constitution (Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3) providing that “no person held to service or labor” would be released from bondage in the event they escaped to a free state. The Fugitive Slave Clause is one of five clauses in the U.S. Constitution that dealt directly with slavery, although the word “slave” is not used (reference being had rather to “person[s] held to service or labor”). The Clause immediately occasioned 386 intense national controversy in that people disagreed about both the scope of this provision and the degree to which the federal government had an implied power or duty to enforce the provision. As the Fugitive Slave Clause eschewed enforcement powers, Congress passed a first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793 to provide for enforcement. The law was at first sight akin to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution but it included a much more detailed description of how fugitive slaves were to be dealt with in practice. Henceforth, a slaveowner or his agents would be able to cross state lines, seize an alleged fugitive slave, and present the alleged fugitive slave to a judge or local magistrate. Upon proof of ownership, the slaveowner 385 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, op. cit., pp. 67-68. 386 As the word “slavery” was not mentioned in the Constitution, Northerners could argue that the Constitution did not recognize the legality of slavery. 142 would then receive a certificate entitling him to return home with his/her captive. As such, the evidentiary requirements provided for by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 were lax: they often amounted to a signed affidavit and even oral testimony was accepted. Furthermore, no traditional legal processes like trial by jury or the right to freedom from self-incrimination were afforded. Financial penalties (of up to $500) could be levied for harboring, concealing or interfering with the recovery of a fugitive. Finally, there was no time limitation (enabling claims to be processed years after an alleged escape). It is estimated that a considerable number of free blacks were illegally captured and sold into slavery. One of the most prominent persons to have suffered this fate was Solomon Northup, a freeborn black violinist who was kidnapped by two conmen in Washington D.C. and who spent twelve years enslaved in Louisiana before winning back his freedom in 1853. The adoption of the Fugitive Slave 387 Act in 1793 proved to be a lightning rod for abolitionists and successful fugitive slaves who objected to the law both in principle (out of disgust at the institution of slavery) and in practice (wary of the idea of turning their states into a stalking ground for bounty hunters). Some organized clandestine resistance groups and built networks to assist slaves in their flight to the North. Most notable among such people was Harriet Tubman (1821-1893) who escaped her masters on a plantation in Dorchester, Maryland in September 1849, and who became a “conductor” on the “Underground Railroad” (a term used to describe the perilous path to freedom before the Civil War). Traveling by night with a bounty on her head, it is believed Tubman led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom (first to Pennsylvania, then to Canada ) 388 and instructed countless others on how to escape on their own. Besides these individual acts of heroism and resistance, states themselves intentionally refrained from enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. On occasion, they passed so-called “Personal Liberty Laws” that gave runaway slaves enhanced procedural protections that were not specified in the Act: trial by jury, the right for suspected fugitives to testify in their own behalf, and strengthened evidentiary requirements for those who had claims on their liberty. Some also prohibited the participation of state authorities in the capture of a suspected fugitive. In 1842, the U.S. Supreme Court was offered the opportunity to test the constitutionality of a personal liberty law in the state of Pennsylvania. The case – Prigg v. Pennsylvania – started after Edward Prigg had been convicted in Pennsylvania on kidnapping charges for taking a recaptured fugitive slave back to Maryland without obtaining the requisite certificate. Holding in favor of Prigg, the Court found that the Pennsylvania “personal liberty law” under which Prigg had been tried was in conflict with both the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 and the U.S. Constitution. Justice Story based his opinion on his belief that the Constitution’s Fugitive Slave Clause “constituted a fundamental article, without the adoption of which the Union could not have been formed”. Accordingly, “seizure and recapture” of fugitive slaves was a basic constitutional right. States could not pass laws interfering with the right. Only Congress had the power to enact legislation enforcing the Fugitive Slave Clause. The ruling was unfortunate in many respects. Besides the effective disbanding of “personal liberty laws” in the matter, it dashed the constitutional settlement that had prevailed since the beginning of the Republic. The problem had to accommodating two diametrically opposed views on the matter in a country that was quickly expanding. The situation – as originally dealt with in the U.S. Constitution – became increasingly untenable. 387 Northup fortunately managed to publish a memoir, Twelve Years A Slave (1853) that fed into the antislavery movement. The book was adapted into a film, Twelve Years A Slave, directed by Steve McQueen (2013), winner of three Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong’o). 388 Tubman was compelled to extend the Underground Railroad to Canada as a result of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. 143 Would slavery extend to new territory? To a large extent, the North was wary of the South trying to impose its “peculiar institution” upon the entire Union, reflected in the sectional balance in the Senate between representatives of both slave and free states. Indeed, “The expansion of slavery into fresh territory, if it could be obtained, would strengthen the defense of the institution by increasing the planters’ representation in Congress”. The Missouri 389 Compromise, enacted in 1820, made up the first real legislative attempt to resolve the question of whether enslavement would continue with westward expansion. Senator Henry Clay devised a solution by bringing Missouri into the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. In addition to this, Congress provided that bondage would be illegal in all areas of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30’ parallel (the southern border of Missouri) with the exception of Missouri itself. The Compromise held for a brief period of time but was soon put to the test, most notably with the expansion into the western territories gained from Mexico. The state of Texas became much larger, and Mexico soon ceded parts or all of Nevada, Utah, California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. Nullification Congress passed a revised Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. 1857: the Supreme Court delivers an infamous ruling on a slave from Missouri - Dred Scott - who had claimed freedom through the courts. The Court held against Scott, ruling (i) that he could never be a citizen as an African -American and (ii) to let him free would deprive his “owner” of his due process rights : “substantive due process” (5th Amendment), interpreted by state and federal courts to mean that property interests cannot be diminished through regulation. The consequence of all this: : a big push towards the Civil War… economic reasons as well, and notable influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96), author of the immensely celebrated anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (published in 1852). Please note that the date of 1619 has taken particular significance in recent times due to a popular podcast and a special issue of the New York Times Magazine (August 2019) that took the date as a platform. Referring to as the “1619 Project”, the contributors to this project were providing a novel – and controversial – interpretation of how slavery shaped current American political, social, and economic institutions, one that in effect addressed the foundational centrality of slavery, white supremacy, and anti-black racism to U.S. history: “Was America founded as a slavocracy, and are current racial inequities the natural outgrowth of that? Or was America conceived in liberty, a nation haltingly redeeming itself through its founding principles?”. 390 Slavery of course is not an exclusive U.S. phenomenon, nor is it one that ended in a dark, distant past. Slavery continues to the day, taking different contemporary forms, whether referring to forced labor, sex trade, child slave trade, or ritual slavery. Mauritania – in 2020 – 391 was estimated to have between 140,000 and 600,000 slaves. A prominent Mauritanian human rights activist, Biram Dah Abeid, established the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA – Mauritania) and has been awards for his human rights activism. 389 Hugh Brogan, The Penguin History of the United States of America, op. cit., p. 304. 390 Adam Serwer, “The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts”, The Atlantic, December 23, 2019. 391 Ritual slavery often takes the form of young girls being provided as sexual slaves to atone for the sins of their family members. 144