The heartless way predominantly white people behaved towards enslaved African American people always makes me think of the heartless and brutal way humans behave towards other species. Of course one of the ways they justified their brutality was by classifying enslaved Africans as 'animals' or sub-humans That's the green light to deprive other living entities of all their rights and dignities and their well-being and life itself.
Many of the infamous locations of the auction blocks where this barbarity was enacted have been disappearing, engulfed by modern purpose structures, a power plant, a baseball stadium, a new court house. But the buildings of some of the profiteers from human trafficking remain and some of them have had historic markers placed nearby.
Even though I once worked as a volunteer doing Underground Railroad in New Jersey presentations, in the costume and persona of an Abolitionist I based on Abigail Goodwin of Salem, NJ, and through this volunteer work, learned a great deal about our history with slavery, I am always learning more.
Just as with Women's History, as time goes by, more and more African American historians and people interested in researching our shared African American history, more books are published and more of this list history is revealed. These new perspectives and discoveries are both thrilling and disheartening in the sense that discovering a lost world is thrilling, and seeing the brutality and inhumanity that was practiced there is disheartening. I can never get used to it.
Local History: it is with great interest that I find more and more of our local African American history explored via Camden County Historical Society exhibits and programs. It was there that I first learned about the slave market held on the shores of our own Camden County, NJ. I must admit, I was shocked. Equally shocking was the number of enslaved African America workers held in New jersey on farm/plantations during our Colonial and pre-Civil War days. Historian Giles Wright estimates about 14,000 were held in slavery in 1790 New Jersey. Although slave trade with Africa had become abolished, the slave trade between states, mostly in the South, continued and flourished until the Civil War.
Here is a copy/paste from the announcement of the placing of the marker for the slave site in Camden, NJ:
"The now-bustling spot just feet from the Delaware River looks a lot different than it did nearly 300 years ago, when enslaved Africans, snatched from their homeland, arrived on crowded ships at the Camden docks and were sold at auctions around the city.
A cast-iron historical marker was unveiled Monday at one of three former slave auction block sites in Camden, where historians say more than 800 slaves were sold. Organizers said they want to make sure this painful part of New Jersey’s history is known.
“We are here to bring pride and dignity to those who regularly experienced deprivation,” said Derek Davis, a member of the Camden County Historical Society, who headed the project that he said was necessary “to set history straight.” His great-great-great grandfather was born a slave in Alabama in 1853.
The marker is titled, “Enslaved Africans Once Sold Here.”
By the way, I believe I mentioned before a book called STOLEN about the true story of the kidnapping of 5 free boys in Philadelphia to be sold into slavery in the South. Kidnapping, after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, was a flourishing trade.
I have bought it but haven't read it yet as I have been buy finishing my two Revolutionary War books: The British Are Coming, and Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment. Both of the former and latter mentioned books I highly recommend to anyone interested in the Revolution. Both were extremely well written and Slaves to Soldiers was our History Book Club selection for winter at the James and Ann Whitall House, Red Bank Battlefield, National Park, NJ.
Happy Trails wither through the woods or the aisles of the book store!
Jo Ann
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