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RECOMMENDED BOOK:THE AMERICAN SLAVE COAST-A HISTORY OF THE SLAVE BREEDING INDUSTRY BY NED & CONSTANCE SUBLETTE (3626 hits)


This August, when Hillary Clinton met with Black Lives Matter protesters, they told her that ongoing violence and prejudice against blacks was part of a long historic continuum where, for example, today’s prison system descended from the old Southern plantations. Slavery, Clinton replied, was the “original sin... that America has not recovered from.” But how much do modern Americans really know about slavery in colonial America? In the genocide of Native Americans? In the War of Independence or the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights? Or afterward for decades until the Civil War? Chances are, not very much. Not that slaves, for example, were money in the antebellum South—currency and credit—which led to the enforced, systematic break-up of black families in generation after generation. There was no national currency, and little silver or gold, but there was paper tied to slaves bought on credit whose offspring were seen as a dividend that grew over time. That’s just one of the riveting and revolting details from a new book, The American Slave Coast: A History of The Slave Breeding Industry, by Ned and Constance Sublette. They trace other telling details that are not found in traditional American history books, where slavery is usually described as an amoral but cheap labor system. For example, have you read about the rivalry between Virginia and South Carolina, which had competing slave economies? Virginia was the epicenter of a slave breeding industry, in which enslaved women were expected to be constantly pregnant, were sold off if they didn't produce children, and sometimes were force-mated to achieve that end. The offspring were sold to newer settlers and those migrating west. Charleston, South Carolina, in contrast, was colonial America’s slave importing and exporting port. In the late seventeenth century, Carolina exported captured native Americans as slaves to Caribbean plantation islands, gradually replacing them with imported laborers. As the South was emptied of native Americans and American plantations grew, South Carolina became the major slave importer in the colonies and in the early republic. Virginia eventually won out when Congress, at President Thomas Jefferson's urging, banned slave importation as of January 1, 1808—protectionism, say the Sublettes, for Virginia's slave-breeding industry, and sold to the public as protection against the alleged terrorism of "French negroes" from Haiti. After that, a new interstate slave trade grew, propelled by territories and new states that wanted slavery, and by the breeders who wanted new markets. Thus, the slave-breeding economy spread south and west, driving the expansion of the U.S. into new territories. Slavery, as the Sublettes describe it, wasn’t a sidebar to early American history and a new nation’s growth. It was front and center—protected by law and prejudice, custom and greed. The enslaved were unloaded, sold, and taken (women’s necks tied with rope, men’s necks put in chains) via major roads, steamboats, and passing through cities and villages to their destination. Newspapers, owned by Benjamin Franklin, sold advertising for buying and selling slaves. All of this unfolded in full sight, with prosperous settlers assuming that slaves were a necessity for daily living and accumulating wealth. For generations, the property value of slaves was the largest asset in America. The authors, Ned and Constance Sublette, are not traditional scholars, but gifted cultural historians. Ned Sublette, who was born in Lubbock, Texas, and lived in Natchitoches, Louisiana as a boy, was trained as a musician and created the record company Qbadisc in the 1990s—featuring top Cuban artists long before Ry Cooder’s Buena Vista Social Club. His book Cuba and Its Music is considered by many to be the most authoritative on the island’s unique mix of African and European traditions and musical heritage. He realized that the conditions of different forms of slavery—French, Spanish, American—accounted for key differences between Afro-Latin and African-American culture. His second book, The World That Made New Orleans, deconstructs how successive waves of slave importation, under Spanish, French and then American rule, created that city’s music. But throughout his research, working with his wife, Constance, the Sublettes realized that the history of slavery—especially its most vicious form that took hold in North America—was largely untold, unknown, and explained much about the violence, racism and exploitation that is at the core of U.S. history. The American Slave Coast is the result of 15 years of inquiry. It’s an epic volume—668 pages before footnotes and citations—and a lot to digest. But if Americans are ever to come to terms with the anti-black violence that endures today, it is necessary to understand the roots of an economy and culture that has needed and feared Africans. For example, take Jefferson and America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Most Americans know that slaves had no rights. Or they know that the slave-owning Jefferson cynically wrote, “All men are created equal” in the Declaration, and owned slaves and had several slave children. But they probably don’t realize how the Constitution and Bill of Rights enshrined into law an economic system where the major form of property was slaves, and created a government to protect the wealth of that system’s upper class. Today’s right-wing fetish about the Constitution’s perfection ignores input by prominent Virginians and Carolinians, including many signers of the Declaration of Independence, to protect slave property. As their book points out, the gun-toting militias sanctioned by the Second Amendment were a guarantee that slave owners could hunt and kill escaped slaves and Native Americans. The Sublettes stunningly trace how fear (of slave revolts) and self-interest (protecting slave-tied wealth) played a major role in framing America’s founding documents. But they go further and demonstrate why Jefferson is the the founding theorist of white supremacy in America. It’s not just that Jefferson owned slaves, including his own children who were 7/8ths white. Nor was it his letters with the leading men of his day—like George Washington—explaining how owning slaves was better than other investments. Nor was it his ugly and racist description of blacks in Notes From The State of Virginia, where in the 1780s he wrote, “Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions… are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.” Mostly, it was Jefferson’s lifelong belief that slaves could not be freed but had to be deported en masse, because sizeable numbers of ex-slaves would take up arms and annihilate slave-owning whites. These prejudices, fears and draconian remedies reverberate today—such as Donald Trump’s bid to deport 11 million migrants. The American Slave Coast starts with the horrible truth that America—unlike the French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean—was a slave-breeding society from colonial times through emancipation. There was no path to freedom for slaves, because, say the Sublettes, "no escape from the asset column could be permitted." Black families were intentionally broken up as part of creating an economic system for a new nation. As Ned Sublette said, “Writing this book revolutionized our understanding of our history.” Constance Sublette adds, “No matter how bad you thought slavery was, it was worse than that.”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Friday, October 2nd 2015 at 12:57PM
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This author confirms my second revelation that Black Americans are a NEW race of people bred into existence orchestrated by White people the slave masters when he breed himself with his slave for 300 years producing a NEW race of people.

Since we are a NEW race of people everything about us must be NEW as well! We must have our own prophet; our own religion, our own Bible/Quran and our own country. These things can only be supplied by God and when a prophet announce himself to his people know for sure that God is in the mix!

After hearing the things I’ve been saying now for the past 7 years it baffles me that you are still committed to Mr. Farrakhan and the Arabian religion Islam and not to God through me!

Friday, October 2nd 2015 at 6:00PM
Harry Watley
I'm glad I wasn't born during those terrible days. I've read that ,.....The majority of slaves were churchgoers; their religion was dominated by superstitious beliefs. They believed that in order “to keep peace” between masters and slaves the power of charms and amulets provided them with protection from whippings and other forms of abuse. Black Americans utilized conjuring traditions because they believed that the supernatural realm offered alternative possibilities for empowerment. Slaves used charms on their doors and windows for protection, in the same manner that the Jewish religion hangs their mezuzahs. Slave-owners blamed Conjurers and other supernatural practitioners for organized transgressions and subversive activities.
Saturday, October 3rd 2015 at 10:49AM
Helen Lofton
Ms. Helen,

You are a fu*king lair! You are making up stories and lies about our ancestors. Our ancestors did not have any damn charm. Slaves are not intelligent people. Our ancestors were taught to be submissive and obedient or they were whipped or killed you dumb-ass woman!

Saturday, October 3rd 2015 at 9:07PM
Harry Watley
Nate Turner was deeply religious, Nat was often seen fasting, praying, or immersed in reading the stories of the Bible. Turner often conducted Baptist services, preaching the Bible to his fellow slaves who proclaimed him "The Prophet".
According to Hurston, the Bible, with its miraculous formulae and magical legends, was viewed by many Conjurers as the“greatest Conjure book in the world.” Charms containing inscriptions of the Psalms provided wearers with luck and prosperity.

Sunday, October 4th 2015 at 11:02AM
Helen Lofton
Notice how Harry didn't make a come-back statement. Maybe he took the time to search and find out that he doesn't know everything about Black History. (lol)
Wednesday, October 14th 2015 at 2:18AM
Helen Lofton
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