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THREAD—"At 43, I am part of the first generation of black Americans in the history of the United States to be born into a society in which black people had full rights of citizenship." — @nhannahjones #1619Project nytimes.com/interactive/20…
@nhannahjones "We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all."
@nhannahjones "Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire.
"Through backbreaking labor, they cleared the land across the Southeast. They taught the colonists to grow rice.
"They grew and picked the cotton that at the height of slavery was the nation’s most valuable commodity, accounting for half of all American exports and 66 percent of the world’s supply.
"They built the plantations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, sprawling properties that today attract thousands of visitors from across the globe captivated by the history of the world’s greatest democracy.
"They laid the foundations of the White House and the Capitol, even placing with their unfree hands the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome.
"They lugged the heavy wooden tracks of the railroads that crisscrossed the South and that helped take the cotton they picked to the Northern textile mills, fueling the Industrial Revolution.
"They built vast fortunes for white people North and South—at one time, the 2nd-richest man in the US was a Rhode Island 'slave trader.' Profits from black people’s stolen labor helped the young nation pay off its war debts and financed some of our most prestigious universities.
"It was the relentless buying, selling, insuring and financing of their bodies and the products of their labor that made Wall Street a thriving banking, insurance and trading sector and New York City the financial capital of the world.
"But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom.
"More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy."
