Historian Robin Blackburn has completed a trilogy of books that provide a comprehensive Marxist account of slavery in the New World. He spoke to Jacobin about the intimate links between the slave systems in the Americas and the origins of capitalism.
What was the Civil War about? In a word, slavery. The driving force in American politics in the decades after the American Revolution was the rise of an arrogant, ruthless, parasitic oligarchy in the South, built on God-ordained economic inequality.
Edda L. Fields-Black sets out to restore the Combahee River Raid to its proper place in Tubman’s life and in the war on slavery.
"Pete" was one of many slaves considered property of the Jarrot family in Cahokia Heights. He sued for his freedom, and the lawsuit closed Illinois' slavery loophole. Pete's lawyer, Lyman Trumbull, went on to shape the 13th Amendment.
A new book investigates the lives of the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Americans who were brought to or traveled to Europe in the sixteenth century—a story central to the beginning of globalization.
Reader Comments: Trump-Haley-MAGA GOP Embrace Slavery-Fascism; Israeli War Crimes; Migrants and Immigration; Reader Response to Police Reform; Maestro Does Disservice; March on Washington for Gaza-Jan 13; more Announcements; Cartoons;
‘Perhaps the greatest shame of the Atlantic slave trade was that it inspired no shame at all. In their own time, Britain’s slave traders were men of distinction: “worthy men, fathers of families and excellent citizens”
Roger Ross Williams cinematic tour de force proceeds to tell the story of racism through the colonial period up to today’s Black Lives Matter struggles against police brutality and more.
Where can African Americans find this lost golden age? Do we discover it during the first centuries of the Republic when slavery was the law of the land? Do we fast forward to the Red Summer, Jim Crow laws, “strange fruit” hanging from poplar trees?
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