By Tracy Loeffelholz & DunnJeff Neumann
Slavery made America wealthy, and racist policies since have blocked African American wealth-building. Can we calculate the economic damage?
Dr Martin Luther King Jr Speaking on Federal Subsidies for White Land Owners, the sound doesn't become clear until about eight seconds into the video.
Download a PDF of this infographic:
Sources:
Introduction
http://theconversation.com/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines-33004
http://www.civil-war.net/census.asp?census=Total
1.
1.5 million pounds in 1790 and 2.25 billion pounds in 1859, based on Empire of Cotton, by Sven Beckert (2014) pgs. 104, 106
77% based on: Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power, by Gene Dattel (2009)
http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/161/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860
Joshua Rothman, email correspondence, 2015
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/
http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincoln-in-depth/abraham-lincoln-and-civil-war-finance
48.3% in 1860 according to Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development (LSU Press, 2006, paperback 2013) [personal communication]
2.
http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/dc_emancipation_act/
http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/slavery_in.PDF
The Politics of Despair: Power and Resistance in the Tobacco Wars. Tracy Campbell, 2015
7% based on: Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, Vol. 4. 1979.
3.
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html
70-80%, according to:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2010-08-05/html/CREC-2010-08-05-pt1-PgS6836.htm
http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/lui.pdf
http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc
4.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf
Dime based on:
http://www.insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/LayingTheFoundationForNationalProsperity-MeizhuLui0309.pdf
http://newsreel.org/guides/race/whiteadv.htm
$59 trillion: http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2013/01/calculated-minimum-reparation-due-to.html
$15 trillion: National Legal and Policy Center,
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-reparations-black-farmers/2010/02/21/id/350458/
$25 trillion: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/23/047r-112399-idx.html
Martin Luther King: http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/07/mlk_s_case_for_reparations_included_disadvantaged_whites.html
Republished with permission under license by Yes Magazine
