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New York City, Feb 9, 2005
Photo: Richard B. Levine
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Ships filled with African slaves arrived every day in the United States for over 200 years. New York was the largest importer of slaves in the United States, second only to South Carolina. Human trafficking and slave labor made New York City one of the most prosperous ports and financial centers in the world.
According to a recent New York Historical Society exhibition on the role of slavery in New York City, nearly half of colonial New York households owned one or two African slaves. Colonial New York was not the metropolis it is today, of course. The population was mainly small merchants connected to the port trade.
“First Dutch and then English merchants built the city’s local economy largely around supplying ships for the trade in slaves and in what slaves produced—sugar, tobacco, indigo, coffee, chocolate, and ultimately, cotton,” the exhibit noted.
In 1861, New York City mayor Fernando Woods, a rich merchant and corrupt politician, suggested that New York City declare itself a “free city”—free from the anti-slavery North—in the face of the looming Civil War so that it could continue to profit from the cotton trade with the Confederacy. Though New York abolished slavery in 1827, it benefited from it long after that—just as it benefits from continued racial discrimination of African Americans today.
Today, New York City is the most populous city in the United States. In many ways it is the economic capital of the capitalist world, with worldwide influences in business, finance, trading, law and media.
The New York City Council members who introduced the resolution want the city to apologize for its role in sustaining and benefiting from the slave trade where 12 million Africans were physically coerced into a life of bondage in the Americas. This comes in light of various attempts made by lawmakers to absolve the country of its associations with slavery.
The first official apology came from the U.S. Senate in 2005 with a resolution apologizing to lynching victims, survivors and their descendents—three filibusters and 105 years after the first anti-lynching bill was introduced by a Black senator. In 1998, Bill Clinton fell short of an apology after simply expressing deep regret for the country’s complicity in chattel slavery.
In December, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld fraud claims brought by African Americans against 15 major U.S. banks, insurers and transportation companies that hid their slave-trading histories from consumers.
Institutions like the Moravian and Episcopal churches and Brown University have done more than the government in attempts to atone for their participation in the slave trade by investigating how to compensate Black members.
Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn state assemblyman, introduced a bill in February to establish a commission to study reparations for slavery, making it possible for descendents of an enslaved person in New York before 1827 to sue for damages of unpaid labor. Harper’s Magazine estimated a total of $100 trillion owed for over 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865.
Opponents of reparations claim that African Americans and descendents of slaves have no standing to receive reparations since the statute of limitations has expired and that all African slaves have passed away. But the collective economic status of African Americans, the descendents of slaves, directly corresponds to their historical exploitation.
African Americans suffer the highest unemployment rate of all ethnic groups at over 8 percent. They fare poorly in every indicator of well-being—economic, social, educational and political.
The mean income of African Americans as a group is 65 percent that of white people; that means that for every dollar a white person makes, an African American on average makes 65 cents. By very moderate estimates, a third of all African Americans live below the poverty level.
African Americans have survived chattel slavery, Jim Crow, institutional racial discrimination, a biased justice system and deplorable living standards. All of these are residual effects of slavery. The failure of the U.S. government to redress its crimes against Black America is itself a crime.
Compared to the reparations that the African American community in the United States deserves, an apology would be a small gain. But an official apology is well deserved and should be supported by working people of all races and nationalities.
The current U.S. ruling class would love to hide the consequences of its association with slavery and the criminal system of bondage that arose with capitalism in the 15th century. It would rather blame African Americans themselves for the devastating impact that slavery and continued racism have had.
We know better.
