Hey, can I get your opinion on something? I designed a new t-shirt that pays homage to MLK’s “I have a dream speech” where he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I put the design on more than a t-shirt. Click here to check it out (or the image below). If you like it, please order one or give it as a gift and help spread the message that who a person is on the inside is more important than the color of their skin.
Thank you in advance!
Jim
I now return you to this newsletter, already in progress.
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NOTE: At some point, before bed, I read through 50+ news sources and share my findings here. If you like it, share it. If you don’t, share it. Follow my blog now to support my work or to find new reasons to complain about it. My opinions are my own. All tips are welcome as well as comments on my video series - The Jim Stroud Show.
Today’s post is an excerpt from my newsletter – Black History Quiz. I thought I would share it as a counter-argument to a common notion taught in public schools and promoted in the mainstream. If you want to know more history that you might not have learned when growing up, be sure to subscribe to it.
DISCLAIMER FOR THE EASILY TRIGGERED: Slavery is wrong. I make no apologies for it. None of the research presented herein is intended to lessen the injustice of African slavery in America or slavery in any incarnation. If you disagree with what I have researched and decide to call me a (insert your insult here) I will say now, that you’re rubber and I’m glue. What you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Such is my present-day retort and likely my future rebuttal, should I feel so inclined. If you’re still curious as to why I posted this disclaimer, read on.
No, America did not get rich from slavery.
If using slave labor made America rich then, why were the Northern states more prosperous than the Southern states prior to the Civil War? Michael Medved answered this question in his Townhall column. I quote him below and added links to his quote so you could research what he said further and see it in context.
IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES. Pennsylvania passed an emancipation law in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island followed four years later (all before the Constitution). New York approved emancipation in 1799. These states (with dynamic banking centers in Philadelphia and Manhattan) quickly emerged as robust centers of commerce and manufacturing, greatly enriching themselves while the slave-based economies in the South languished by comparison.
At the time of the Constitution, Virginia constituted the most populous and wealthiest state in the Union, but by the time of the War Between the States the Old Dominion had fallen far behind a half-dozen northern states that had outlawed slavery two generations earlier. All analyses of Northern victory in the great sectional struggle highlights the vast advantages in terms of wealth and productivity in New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and the Midwest, compared to the relatively backward and impoverished states of the Confederacy.
While a few elite families in the Old South undoubtedly based their formidable fortunes on the labor of slaves, the prevailing reality of the planter class involved chronic indebtedness and shaky finances long before the ultimate collapse of the evil system of bondage.
Source: Lumen Learning
The notion that America based its wealth and development on slave labor hardly comports with the obvious reality that for two hundred years since the founding of the Republic, by far the poorest and least developed section of the nation was precisely that region where slavery once prevailed.
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