Beginning in the 16th century, millions of African people were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas under horrific conditions. Nearly two million people died at sea during the agonizing journey. Over two centuries, the enslavement of Black people in the United States created wealth, opportunity, and prosperity for millions of Americans. As American slavery evolved, an elaborate and enduring mythology about the inferiority of Black people was created to legitimate, perpetuate, and defend slavery. This mythology survived slavery’s formal abolition following the Civil War.
Overview
In the South, where the enslavement of Black people was widely embraced, resistance to ending slavery persisted for another century following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
Today, 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, very little has been done to address the legacy of slavery and its meaning in contemporary life. In many communities like Montgomery, Alabama—which by 1860 was the capital of the domestic slave trade in Alabama—there is little understanding of the slave trade, slavery, or the longstanding effort to sustain the racial hierarchy that slavery created.
In fact, an alternative narrative has emerged in many Southern communities that celebrates the enslavement era, honors enslavement’s principal proponents and defenders, and refuses to acknowledge or address the problems created by the legacy of slavery.
Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade documents American slavery and Montgomery’s prominent role in the domestic slave trade. The report is part of EJI’s project focused on developing a more informed understanding of America’s racial history and how it relates to contemporary challenges.
EJI believes that reconciliation with our nation’s difficult past cannot be achieved without truthfully confronting history and finding a way forward that is thoughtful and responsible.
How to cite
Equal Justice Initiative, “Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade” (2018).
Read More in This Series
Our nation’s history has been shaped by a narrative of racial inferiority that defined Black people as less human than white people. Rooted in the need to justify genocide and enslavement, this belief in racial hierarchy survived slavery’s abolition, fueled racial terror lynchings, demanded legally codified segregation, and spawned our mass incarceration crisis. This series follows the myth of racial difference and its legacy from enslavement to mass incarceration.