Second Middle Passage
“Cotton brought about another demographic change—and for African Americans, a uniquely cruel and destructive one. On the new plantations of the Deep South, cotton meant longer hours for slaves, harder work, and increased brutality. It also meant that slave families in the Upper South had become suddenly and terrifyingly vulnerable. African Americans had spent decades creating these families under slavery, establishing bonds of marriage and kinship as best they could. But cotton’s spread into the Deep South created a vast new market for slaves—slaves who could not be imported since the trade had been outlawed by the Constitution and Congress in 1808. Exploiting the natural increase in the slave population, however, made the states of the Upper South a warehouse of exportable human capital, creating an immensely profitable internal slave trade. Slave auctions became large and wrenching daily events in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, at which wives were separated from husbands, children from parents and siblings. Tens of thousands of uprooted African Americans were put on trains or boats or marched in chains, walking to the plantations of the Deep South. This became the Second Middle Passage, in many ways just as destructive as the first.16”
Excerpt From: Jr. Henry Louis Gates. “The African Americans.” Hay House, 2012-04-30. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStor...
Excerpt From: Jr. Henry Louis Gates. “The African Americans.” Hay House, 2012-04-30. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStor...
Thank you for this history!