Slavery in the US: Here are seven things you probably didn’t know

07/19/2020 Business, World

But in a country where enslaved blacks were so essential in their rise to global power, it is impossible to remove every link to their painful history. Slavery has marked everything from the United States Capitol to the alcohol that Americans consume.

One of the largest life insurance companies in the US admitted that its predecessor company insured the lives of enslaved people to their owners.

In 2001, New York Life provided the New York Public Library with its file records containing insurance policies sold to slave owners.

“Our predecessor company, Nautilus Insurance Company, sold policies on the lives of enslaved people between 1846 and 1848,” the company said on its website. “We have been open and transparent about this brief and unfortunate period in our history, with the sale of Nautilus for slave policies covered in news accounts and books dating back to 1895.”

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Nautilus said more than 500 people “identified as enslaved or from records are likely to have been enslaved” and paid the claims of 15 of the deceased, according to New York Life.

“We have made it clear through our words and actions for many years that our predecessor’s involvement in slavery is a blot on our history that we can never forget. We are committed to fostering a greater understanding of slavery in the United States. and support the black community, “New York Life said on its website.

A company spokesperson told CNN that while New York Life cannot change its history, its long-standing recognition of that history has helped shape its commitment to the black community.

Yale University

Amid protests of racial injustice across the country, the #CancelYale hashtag started trending in June. It started with a newsletter on 4chan, the online message board that often features extremist content, according to the Yale Daily News. Then it gained steam after Jesse Kelly, host of the “I’m Right With Jesse Kelly” show, tweeted that Yale University is named after slave dealer Elihu Yale.

“I call @Yale to change his name right away and remove the Yale name from every building, sheet of paper, and merchandise. Otherwise they hate blacks. #CancelYale,” Kelly’s tweet said.

While the motivation behind the hashtag may have been troll the liberals and cancel the culture, there is some truth behind the Yale namesake. Elihu Yale was a slave trader who profited from the sale of human lives. The school president told the Yale Daily News in June that changing the name of the school has not been considered.

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Yale also launched the Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal to help researchers and students “find primary sources related to slavery, abolition and resistance.”

Yale University rejected CNN’s requests for comment.

Yale also went to a building named after a leader who supported slavery. In 2017, after months of protests on campus, the school renamed one of its residential undergraduate universities to Grace Hopper College at Calhoun College, named for John C. Calhoun, a white supremacist who called slavery a “very positive”.

Many American universities also have links to slavery. Harvard and Princeton had presidents who owned enslaved people. At public universities like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Virginia, enslaved people worked on campus or helped build campuses. Some schools, such as Georgetown University, sold enslaved people to pay debts and keep the school running.

CSX transport

A CSX freight train passes through Homestead, Pennsylvania, on February 12, 2018.

CSX Transportation owns a railroad that was built by enslaved people.

The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad in Virginia, acquired by CSX in 2003, owned and contracted black slaves from 1834, when it was rented, until the end of the Civil War in 1865, according to the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

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“The company shares the nation’s deep remorse for the shameful institution of slavery and racial discrimination that has occurred in the country,” Cindy Schild, a CSX spokeswoman, told CNN in an email. “CSX opposes any form of discrimination and is committed to raising awareness of racial disparities.”

Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey

That’s right, even alcohol is connected to slavery.

Although Jack Daniel never owned enslaved people, he learned to make whiskey in Tennessee from an enslaved person named Nathan “Nearest” Green, who was owned by a Lutheran minister, according to the company.

Daniel bought the business from the minister, then hired Green as his first primary distiller.

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The New York Times shed light on Green’s story in 2016. Since then, Uncle Nearest, a new whiskey brand honoring Green, has emerged. Whiskey is a “minority-only business,” according to its website.

Svend Jansen, a spokesman for Jack Daniel, told CNN that the company “has known and publicized the special relationship between Jack Daniel and Nearest Green for many years and is a common story in Lynchburg, Tennessee.” Several of Green’s sons and grandchildren eventually worked for Jack Daniel’s Whiskey, Jansen said.

Jack Daniel’s installed a closer green display at its visitor center in March 2018, Jansen said.

“We continue to think of other ways to honor the Nearest story,” he said.

financial world

Wall Street originated as a slave market in the 1700s.

Before Wall Street became the world’s largest stock exchange, the location flourished as a slave market between 1711 and 1762, according to JSTOR Daily, a digital library.

In 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio commemorated a marker for the enslaved people who laid the foundations for Wall Street.

“This place reminds us of one of the worst chapters in our history,” de Blasio said at the time. “Three hundred and four years ago, with the approval of the city government, this became a place to buy, sell, and rent human beings.”

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New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray said slavery built the foundation for the city and that its slave market only rivaled the market in Charleston, South Carolina.

“You could come here any day and see how it happens and it is somehow considered normal in this city. It continued in other parts of the city for almost 80 more years,” de Blasio said.

The White House and the United States Capitol

The exterior view of the south side of the White House.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama caused a stir in 2016 when she said enslaved people built the White House. She was not wrong.

Construction of the original White House began in 1792. Officials planned to import European workers to help build the structure, but recruitment did not go as planned, so they turned to blacks, free and enslaved, according to the Historical Association of the White House.

The United States Capitol building was also built with the labor of enslaved people. Construction of the building began in 1793. Like the White House, officials struggled to find skilled labor, so they turned to enslaved people, who were often hired from owners. Congress revealed a marker in 2012 honoring enslaved people who built the Capitol, according to the Capitol Architect.

Storm clouds fill the sky over the United States Capitol.

“So when you see that slave labor was used on Capitol Hill and the White House, it’s not just about the personal relationships between the founders and slavery, it’s about a national and institutional issue that the government itself was involved in in slavery, “said Adam Rothman, a history professor at Georgetown University who specializes in slavery.

After Obama’s comments in 2016, the White House Historical Society began aggressively investigating slavery and its relationship to U.S. presidents and the White House, said Matthew Costello, a historian of the historical society.

The research helped form the Slavery in the President’s Neighborhood website, which launched in February.

“We have to give those people a voice. Historically speaking, people are interested in presidents and first ladies, but what is going on behind those closed doors? Who are the people who really run and operate the White House?” Costello told CNN.

George Washington

Although George Washington’s ties to slavery are well known, the extent of those connections may surprise some.

Enslaved people were part of Washington, literally.

Although folklore depicts Washington with wooden teeth, there is no evidence to support that claim, according to historian Alexis Coe, who wrote the best-selling biography, “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.”

The mouth of the first president, Coe said, was filled with teeth of walruses, hippos and enslaved people. Washington paid enslaved people a below-market fee for their teeth, Coe said.

Coe said Washington also signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which allowed slavers to arrest fugitive enslaved people and claim them as property.

“The propensity to put Washington on a pedestal does not favor us,” said Coe. “It keeps us away from the man himself, because it is a dishonest reading of his life.”

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