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The Lockean Project

Slavery

“Slavery,” Monterey Herald—Jan. 14, 2023

America inherited slavery from the rest of the world. Slavery existed in Asia, the Middle East and Europe for centuries before the United States existed.  Brutal Black-on-Black slavery existed in Africa for thousands of years.  Black African leaders sold many Blacks to the New World. Young Black males collected other Blacks onto slave ships.

In 1830, in America, 3,775 Blacks owned 12,750 slaves. Later, 3,000 Black people owned slaves in New Orleans alone and many more Blacks owned slaves throughout the South. The largest slave owner in 1860 South Carolina was a Black man, William Ellison.

And American Indians owned slaves, too. And there were white indentured slaves. Also, white males who did not own property did not have the right to vote until, Andrew Johnson was the 17th president. And Jim Crow laws of the South, disenfranchised many poor white people as well as Black people.

Most of the white Europeans, who came to America, in the great immigration periods, were very poor and their children did not inherit money as millions, like my parents and aunts and uncles lived through the Great Depression. And without wealth, they worked so hard their whole lives to make it here.

Giving money to those who were never slaves is racial robbery.

— Ronald Lomanto, Monterey