Concerns have been raised about how slavery is hastily taught in the American educational system while apologists try to downplay the inhumane practice to suit their agendas.
Many have also tried to distort details about the inhumane practice where victims were nothing but a commodity to their owners. As conversations about slavery continue among Americans, it is imperative to highlight some of the top myths about the practice to enable people to sort out fact from fiction.
The following are some of the lies that have been told about American slavery:
First slaves in America were white people
Many historical textbooks, as part of moves to soften the brutal experiences that enslaved blacks went through, argue that Irish immigrants were also enslaved, but their case was ignored.
Apparently, these Irish immigrants were only indentured servants, meaning they still held basic human rights, including the fact they were not designated property, unlike the enslaved blacks.
Slavery is illegal in America
Contrary to popular belief that slavery became illegal over 150 years ago, the inhumane practice still persists in various new forms.
Citing Ava Duvernay’s documentary 13th, Koski writes that there was a gap in the 13th Amendment that basically allows people to be placed into forced labour as a form of punishment for being convicted of a crime.
For example, in January 2017, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson in Massachusetts presented local inmates as slave labour to help build the border wall with Mexico.
Likewise, Duvernay’s documentary indicates that about 25 per cent of all people that are incarcerated in the world are in the U.S., making them prone to be put into slavery.
The majority of African captives moved to what became the U.S.
Contrary to this belief, only four to six per cent of captives came to the U.S. – a little over 300,000. Statistics from Slave Voyages show that the majority of enslaved Africans went to Brazil and the Caribbean.
These enslaved Africans came to the American colonies by way of the Caribbean, where they were prepared for the life of slavery, writes The Conversation. These captives had to battle horrifying experiences for years and months of the Middle Passage.
The Middle Passage was the crossing from Africa to the Americas, which the ships made, carrying their ‘cargo’ of slaves. It was the middle section of the trade route taken by many of the ships.
The first section – the ‘Outward Passage’ – was from Europe to Africa, then the Middle Passage and the ‘Return Passage’, which was the final journey from the Americas to Europe.
Recovering from the brutal experiences of the Middle Passage, these enslaved Africans were moved to plantations on American soil, where they began their new lives as nothing but a commodity to their owners.
All Southerners owned slaves
Historical accounts state that U.S. slaves lived mainly in the South, throughout colonial and antebellum history.
By 1790, 293,000 slaves lived in Virginia alone, making up 42 per cent of all slaves in the U.S. at the time, statistics cited by EH.net show. South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland each had over 100,000 slaves.
After the American Revolution, the Southern slave population increased, reaching about 1.1 million in 1810 and over 3.9 million in 1860. Nevertheless, figures show that slaves usually comprised a minority of the local population.
Most Southerners owned no slaves and most slaves lived in small groups rather than on large plantations, the EH.net report said. Less than one-quarter of white Southerners held slaves, with half of these holding fewer than five and fewer than 1 per cent owning more than one hundred.
Slavery was the headache of the South
When discussions are made about slavery, the American north is often viewed as the ray of hope for the enslaved. However, the northern states were actively involved in slavery.
According to writer Dustin Koski, almost all the ships that brought slaves through the infamous Triangle Trade originally set sail in New England even after it was banned in that region.
New England is the oldest clearly defined region of the U.S., and it predates the American Revolution by more than 150 years. The northern states also allowed slavery much later than people would admit.
For instance, in Pennsylvania, there were still hundreds of black slaves in 1850 even though it had been banned under state law in 1780 because the system allowed them to remain slaves until their 28th birthday, Koski adds.
