“In the early 1700s, as America was being ravaged by smallpox, Onesimus, an African slave who belonged to Cotton Mather, told of a technique, long practiced in Africa, to prevent smallpox by introducing the ‘pus from the ripe pustules’ of a smallpox patient into a small incision on the arm of an uninfected patient. The […]
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How Many American Corporations Were Built On The Backs Of Slaves?
“In 1858, 75 percent of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance policies were written on slaves.” – From, “Medical Apartheid” By: Harriet Washington. So many American corporations were built on the backs of slaves. Tweet
Read the rest of this entry »The Origin Of The Term “Indian-Giver”
“When the Europeans came to Turtle Island, they looked at it as land that was there for the taking. They had to kill a few Indians to get it but history shows that was no problem for them. At the time the first Europeans came to the continental United States, there were at least three […]
Read the rest of this entry »Slavery After Emancipation: Debt Slavery & Forced Confessions In Kangaroo Courts
“The county convict leasing system, with its efficient mechanisms for forcing Black men to do the bidding of White business operators, soon leached into the process of collecting debts of any kind. White farmers who advanced money to Black tenants at the beginning of a crop season began to enforce their debts not by evicting […]
Read the rest of this entry »Slavery After Emancipation: The Beginning Of The Prison Industrial Complex- Part 4
“By the end of Reconstruction in 1877, every formerly Confederate state except Virginia had adopted the practice of leasing Black prisoners into commercial hands. There were variations among the states, but all shared the same basic formula. Nearly all the penal functions of government were turned over to the companies purchasing convicts. In return for […]
Read the rest of this entry »Slavery After Emancipation: The Beginning Of The Prison Industrial Complex- Part 3
“In 1871, Tennessee leased its nearly eight hundred prisoners, nearly all of them Black to Thomas O’Conner, a founding partner along with Arthur Colyar of Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. In the four decades after the war, as Coylar built his company into an industrial behemoth, its center of operations gradually shifted to Alabama, […]
Read the rest of this entry »Slavery After Emancipation: The Beginning Of The Prison Industrial Complex- Part 2
“Hardly a year after the end of the war, in 1866, Alabama governor Robert M. Patton, in return for the total sum of $5, leased for six years his state’s 374 state prisoners to a company calling itself ‘Smith and McMillen.’ The transaction was in fact a sham, as the partnership was actually controlled by […]
Read the rest of this entry »Slavery After Emancipation: The Beginning Of The Prison Industrial Complex- Part 1
“With the southern economy in ruins, state officials limited to the barest resources, and county governments with even fewer, the concept of reintroducing the forced labor of Blacks as a means of funding government services was viewed by Whites as an inherently practical method of eliminating the cost of building prisons and returning Blacks to […]
Read the rest of this entry »How Many American Corporations Were Built On The Backs Of Slaves?
“In 1858, 75 percent of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance policies were written on slaves.” – From, “Medical Apartheid” By: Harriet Washington. So many American corporations were built on the backs of slaves. Tweet
Read the rest of this entry »
