As we read in the Autumn, 1619 is the year that the first kidnapped men, women and children, abducted from Africa, arrived in the English colony of Virginia. To acknowledge the 400th anniversary of this violent act that would be followed by the enslavement of millions, the New York Times played a role in creating The 1619 Project.
Look through the titles of the articles that appear at this link and choose one to read. Then share as a comment one thing that you did not know before reading the piece that you learned from the article that you chose.
As is our practice... reply to the comments others, minimally twice.
Whilst reading the 1619 Project articles I came across an astounding piece of information that I did not previously know. I was well aware of the harsh and massive nature that slavery in America once was. However, I was unaware of its truly colossal size. In a collection of poems and articles I learned that an entire 12.5 million Africans were forced into the trans-Atlantic slave trade throughout the entirety of slavery in the Americas. At first that may just seem like a number, and even I have not completely come to terms with the sheer immensity of this horrible system, but it truly is monumentous and set a horrifying precedent of what was to come.
ReplyDeleteI had some vague idea that there were millions of Africans brought over to the Americas during the slave trade, but putting a number to it makes it feel significantly more real, and it forces you to think about the millions of individuals who were forced to endure this system.
DeleteI agree that showing the number of Africans that were forced into the slave trade truly shows how terrible it really was. 12.5 million people is a lot of people no matter how you look at it and people during this time thought it was okay. That really is terrible.
DeleteI was also surprised to learn this. I don't know how many people I thought were in the slave trade but I definitely didn't expect 12.5 million. It's obviously terrible that all those people were treated that way and that lots of people at the time didn't think this was wrong.
DeleteI also do think that we might know that there were many people that lived through this but we never do realize how many people really where we just assume that there where victims. hearing the number of 12.5 million people just makes you think.
DeleteIt is astounding how much we can learn simply by reading paragraphs of information. The article goes deeply into detail about blacks and how they have been persecuted for many centuries.
DeleteI was also surprised to see this, I thought that they didn't bring many slaves over but 12.5 million people is astounding
DeleteI agree. 12.5 million human beings is a lot no matter the circumstances, and the circumstances being slavery makes it so much wors.e
DeleteHearing the number of 12.5 million really makes them seem like something that was people very desensitized to, then and now. People know there were slaves back then, and they think of it as more of a fact, and it doesn't get to you until you hear just how many slaves there were.
DeleteWhile reading the articles on the 1619 project, I learned about how segregation played a massive part in the planning of highways, and how modern problems like traffic are a direct result of racism. In Atlanta and countless other cities like it across the USA, highways have been used as lines to divide communities. I-20 in Atlanta was made on a windy course to divide the black and white neighborhoods, to in theory make Atlanta more desirable. This inefficient and racist system has now clogged up the city and still serves as a reminder of segregation and all it's baggage.
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DeleteI was aware of the massive affects of segregation on our country. However, I didn't know the true depth of slavery into things such as how traffic is managed and the highway systems were constructed.
DeleteI recently learned about the creation of highways to separate and segregate communities, and it just goes to show exactly how systemic racism has been ingrained in American society for centuries.
DeleteThis fact is interesting as I haven't learned that there was a correlation to racisms in Highways. Traffic being a direct result of racism is terrible. But it also means that while we are seeing this problem and understanding it now shows that we got better.
DeleteI hadn't know this before and it feels unsurprising as to how many different ways richer white people attempted to distance themselves from black people.
DeleteThis fact is interesting, but melancholy at the same time. I had not known this before, but it just makes me feel melancholy and upset at this country.
Deletewhen you think about it its really sad that there was a point in when we wanted to separate people and that we can even now see the effects that its having on everyday life.
DeleteI didn't understand how deep-rooted the racism and what remains from slavery is in modern America
DeleteI read an article about the false medical reasons that were used to validate slavery. I knew that doctors and physicians used to hold the belief that black people had inherent physical differences simply because of their race, but I was shocked by the sheer amount of tests and essentially torture that was performed on African Americans because of this belief. Black people were operated on extensively long before the invention of anesthesia because people believed that they had a higher pain tolerance than white people, and some enslaved people were forced to endure burns and cuts in doctors' efforts to prove that their skin was thicker than that of white people.
ReplyDeleteThis feels very important because the false medical reasons to validate slavery continue to show how white people did everything they could to distance themselves from slaves and make them seem inhumane,
DeleteThis is crucial information because it is a common theme throughout history for discrimination has been justified as well as used by the medical field. Such things need to recognized and taught.
DeleteI agree its disgusting that slave owners tried to bend science and region to justify their horific acts.
DeleteThis seems like the pseudoscience called Eugenics, and it should be stated to be false more often because people might forget about the clear stupidity of the ideal.
DeleteThe fact that people deliberately faked science to distance themselves from some people is disgusting. It shows how twisted things can become when people in power want them to.
DeleteWell it only makes sense that they tested these on blacks because they found them as mere "rats"
DeleteWhite reading an article I learned that the plantation owners would have books that kept track of the efficiency and work of each and every one of their slaves. The man most notable for this is named Thomas Affleck who apparently had a book that ran into eight editions and ran until the civil war. It had per worker productivity with columns and rows of information. It was considered cutting edge in the informational technologies of that time.
ReplyDeleteThis just goes to show that whites really cherished their slaves, but not as emotion, but simply for work purposes.
DeleteWhile reading the article about the criminal justice system I learned the ways in which many principles and rules that were used by slave owners have been adopted and are very similar to the inhumane rules put into prisons. One example is the way in which slaves who be put in "the hole" if they didn't pick cotton fast enough is still very common in prisons today. The hole is the way prison guards threaten inmates currently.
ReplyDeleteI agree I am appaled that these practices still somewhat continue to this day
DeleteOh wow I hadn't realized that before.
DeleteI think it is awful that prisons are being influenced by slavery and putting in place rules that were in place back then.
DeleteI am dismayed after reading that fact. It is sickening to see how after years, the system is still the same.
DeleteI dismayed to hear that the old traces of slavery still have its effect on black people today, even though it happened so many years ago and was abolished for along time.
DeleteWhile reading the article, I knew that blacks had been subject to the harsh and brutal oppression of their white masters ever since the first ship of slaves arrived. However, I did not know that that they would experiment on them to see if their biases and assumptions about the differences between whites and blacks. This to me was a new idea, and those biases still exist and perpetuate themselves in schools today. I also didn't know they considered these experiments perfectly acceptable.
ReplyDeleteI also find it crazy how people at the time thought it was okay to experiment on black people and treat them so terribly.
DeleteI wonder what they thought they would find to "prove" their biases and assumptions about the difference between whites and blacks were true.
DeleteWhile reading the 1619 project I was astounded at the absolutley gargantuan amount of slaves brought over, over 12.9 million which is large by todays standards, but even larger when you consider the much reduced population of that age.
ReplyDeleteI agree back then that amount of slaves was so large that if you made that population ratio to today’s population that number would most likely be a little under like maybe 80 million people or something like that. Which is crazy to think about.
DeleteAnd just think about all those people who could have benefited our society
DeleteWhile reading the article I was surprised to hear how many slaves were brought over and under such terrible conditions. I already knew It was a lot of people but I did not expect it to be about 12.5 million. 12.5 million slaves were forced to be in the slave trade and somehow most people at the time thought it was okay.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this number is very surprising and while people don't believe in its normalcy as commonly, it still happens even today.
DeleteWhile reading the article I was shocked at how many slaves were brought over, 12.9 million, which is a massive portion of the population then and now. I didn't think there were that many, and had the misconception that only a few hundred or thousand were brought and then forced to have children to make more slaves
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree because that is an enormous ratio of slaves to citizens in population
DeleteYeah this was very surprising
DeleteI know it was almost 5 million or something around that number of Africans that were brought to Brazil, and I know that isn't talked about at all.
DeleteWhile reading the article about black music throughout history, I was shocked to learn that what sparked "two centuries of legalized racism" was a song stolen by a white singer named Thomas Dartmouth Rice. This song was robbed from an enslaved black man who was working on the land of a man whose last name was Crow. He copied the song verbatim, only changing the name of the man's owner because he failed "to take down the old man's name." As if stealing the tune was not enough, Rice made himself look like a black man and performed the song night after night. People like Thomas Rice had already taken away freedom from the enslaved, so why would stealing a song make any difference? It was flabbergasting to read that a white man began an era of legal racism with a song he stole from an old black man.
ReplyDeleteI also didn't know this was how the Jim Crow era started off and it is surprising to me how this isn't common knowledge taught in the school systems.
DeleteWhile reading the article, I stumbled across the sentence "While Interstates were regularly used to destroy black neighborhoods, they were also used to keep black and white neighborhoods apart." I did not know how to feel after reading that. It caused anger in me. It made me melancholy. Before this article, I did not know the darkness interstates held. I was dismayed after reading that fact.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the articles on the 1619 project, I was astonished that doctors used to believe that black people had a different type of physical body and anatomy because of their race and the amount of torture given to these innocent African Americans because of there race, like operating without anesthesia and many other operations made me feel horrible and it shocked me.
ReplyDeleteIn the article about racism in the the medical field was when they said that the idea of finding ways to prove that African Americans where inferior biologically to other races. they did these to have an excuse for having slavery. what surprised me is that well educated people believed and tried to prove this with experiments to feel like their actions where justifiable.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the many articles, I have come to the conclusion that blacks have been persecuted for much longer and much more that I had initially thought. I knew for a fact that blacks were persecuted for many centuries and have been identified as property for most of their lives. The American Civil War would be a big result of bitter debate on slavery. Whites often mistreated them and punishments were often barbaric. I didn't really think that the articles would drive the point so far, however. One article states that blacks were often experimented on, which was bamboozling. This comes to show that blacks have been considered lower than whites in the past (White Supremacy), and that we should learn from our mistakes and treat them as if they were ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that the Domino's sugar factory was built because of the sugar trade built out of enslaved people's labor. The building that was across the river from me for so long was actually built for nefarious, sinister purposes and that just upsets me.
ReplyDeleteI'll never look a Domino's sugar container the same.
DeleteSame, this kinda reminding me of the Goya Bean thing.
DeleteAfter reading many articles I was very surprised by many things. The extensive hate in the constitution, which I was aware of but was still jarred by, and the doctors believe African Americans were a different type of physical body.
ReplyDeleteBoth of these things are very shocking, because people see the US constitution as a beacon of freedom and equality, but that isn't quite true, as your comment states.
DeleteAfter reading the article "Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery—and are still believed by doctors today," I learned that many people believe that physiology and biology are different based on race. Dating back to plantation owners in the 1700s, scientists were determined to prove that the bodies of different races had different characteristics. Although the horrible experiments are no longer happening, doctors still believe certain myths, causing them to prescribe less painkillers for their black patients than they need.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the article "The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slave," I learned a bunch of interesting stuff. For instance, I knew that after sugar trade was extremely lucrative but I didn't know that it brought an abundance of slaves to the colonies leading to the NY General Assembly enforcing new codes. These slave codes in 1730 included, making it “unlawful for above three slaves” to meet on their own, and authorizing “each town” to employ “a common whipper for their slaves.” These codes were very new information to me and it was interesting how it was linked back to sugar.
ReplyDeleteIt is shocking how dehumanizing the slave codes were. I also didn't know that the codes were connected to the production of sugar.
DeleteOne thing that i learned from "What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot." was that the highway system was also used as a means to segregate people. They were used to destroy black communities while also keeping the black and white communities apart.
ReplyDeleteI think it is crazy that something that, on the surface, seems to have the benign purpose of connecting people across the country could have such an evil true purpose.
DeleteOne thing I did not know was that the United States has an extremely low rate of unionization compared to many other countries, as low as 10%.
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