The economy that slavery built
Jazzele Jones
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Emmett till was lynched by white men when he was 14 because they ‘thought’ that he
had done something untoward to a white woman
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Enslaved people tried to run away; they would sometimes jump into the river in hopes
that they could hide their scent from the dogs that were chasing them.
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The Mississippi river created soils that were so rich that they led to the expansion of
cotton, it helped to fuel the modern American economy. It created the fertile land that
made cotton king and lavish riches on the white people who owned almost all of it but it
also led to the pain and suffering for the black people who had to work almost all of it.
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United States government dispatched its military in Alabama, and Georgia, and Florida,
and it acquires land and then it sells that land back on the cheap to white settlers.
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Once you have the land, the thing you need next is the labor.
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In 1790, there was about 700,000 enslaved workers on these shores.
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By 1850, there was three million enslaved workers in America, and cotton is driving most
of that growth.
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Enslaved workers had to hit quota every day, if not you may get beat
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Management systems have their genesis in the system of plantation slavery?
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In the past people were put up as collateral when taking out loans because they were seen
as property.
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Majority of credit powering the American slave economy came from the London money
market
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Didn’t have to own humans to make a great profit off of them – slave backed mortgage
bonds.
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At the height of slavery, the combined value of all enslaved people was more than that of
all the railroads and all the factories of the nation combined – that drove our economy.
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“too big to fail >> “too big to exist”