No one should be treated like property. But we have a different problem today, with people claiming they are property when they are free. What those who gave those testimonials then would do with the freedoms we have now I wonder? Certainly not complain about it, they knew what slavery and injustice really is like, they would waste little time in doing the things they could not do before.
"ran to Grandma Gracie" yep NO they did NOT sell off their children. in fact if the north had NOT burned so much down, They kept records of marriages and births, celebrated them. Jeff Davis brought in Teachers... as many. The Carvers had George Washington Carver highly educated, HIram Revel elected in 1870 again 1870 to MISSISSIPPI CONGRESS, 4 yr undergrad degree 3 yrs law school: Puts the start of his college ... education at 1863. < TRUE. What propagandas can do.
It should be played in schools today. Slavery was a near universal human institution around the world. Where there was not enslavement there was feudalism. History is nuanced and has much to teach us and should not be used for political soundbites only.
History is just that, His story. It only benefits the winners. Most proper that have eaten the red pill at some point in their real lives understand this. And this is why we need the accounts from the actual people like this that can tell us the truth. The fact they still teach children Columbus discovered America and the pyramids were built with wooden hoists and by a few thousand people tel us most of the books we read are a farce.
Slavery in America was very different from other nations and time periods. In West/Central Africa (Congo, Mali, Ebo, Songhai, etc) there existed among the tribes a slave-rank structure or classes focusing on domestic, conscription or court slaves that had varying levels of social status, wealth, freedoms. Slaves, dating to Christians of the 1st century, to the ancient Israelites, were to be treated humanely under law. Even given the option, after a period of time passed, to be free (Exodus 21). In other countries, slavery was only to happen if the individual owed a debt, was a prisoner of war, or religious reasons. Until Pope Innocent around 1488. By the 16th century the blessing of the Roman Church lead to the purchasing of slaves without reasons of debt, religion or war. Black slaves, in America, were largely not treated with any humanity. Very few attained freedoms, liberty, social status, wealth. They were as disposable as cattle until 1808, which ended the slave trade…but took another 57 years to end slavery in America. IF it ended there, I would agree we should see it as an ugly means to an end of a developing nation. But it didn’t end there. Jim Crow Apartheid began just 12 years after private slaves were outlawed by the Emancipation (Only the State could have “Slaves” henceforth, as ‘involuntary servitude.’) and lasted, either in de Jure or de facto legal application, until 59 years ago.
People trafficked or held against their will, do they need to accept that these practices? No. Do not condition your children to condone. Evil is evil, no matter if thousands of years or a single night.
"First we overlook evil, Then we permit evil. Then we legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute those who still call it evil." Fr. Dwight Longenecker “In the Last Days, Good will be called Evil and Evil will be called Good.” Are We There YET ?
I think something that gets wrongfully taught about slavery is that white Americans are the only people that had slaves.slavery began at the beginning of time and still happens in different parts of the world.also whites and Europeans didn't go into Africa and capture them to use as slaves.they actually bought slaves from kings and queens in Africa
@@phantomblade89 I watched the movie The Mauritanian about Guantanamo Bay and the imprisonment of so many without trial. I didn't know the word Mauritanian and looked it up. I was not expecting an African country to pop up where slavery still continues. In fact, I didn't realize that slavery exists in a few countries in Africa. I know about modern slavery in the form of sex trafficking but didn't know hereditary slavery still existed.
Enslaved people are made visible when their voices are heard from the period of slavery. This makes them come alive as persons who were enslaved as opposed to being called a slave.
@@xarityfan4370 No it doesn't by any means. You assert it does because you enjoy playing semantics for some reason. You cant actually explain your reasoning for why, you just assert it does.
"ran to Grandma Gracie" yep NO they did NOT sell off their children. in fact if the north had NOT burned so much down, They kept records of marriages and births, celebrated them. Jeff Davis brought in Teachers... as many. The Carvers had George Washington Carver highly educated, HIram Revel elected in 1870 again 1870 to MISSISSIPPI CONGRESS, 4 yr undergrad degree 3 yrs law school: Puts the start of his college ... education at 1863. < TRUE. What propagandas can do.
@@xpusostomosare you daft? You think someone who buys a baby expects it to just start working the fields immediately? You aren’t even asking in good faith. We have many historical references to corroborate this but you don’t do your own research. You are tiny.
1965 I visited a museum that had been a house used for the underground railroad. On that visit there was what might have been the world's oldest docent. She was 105 years old. She was born a slave around 1860 and was officially freed at the age of five though she informed me that she was probably closer to ten when she learned she was free. She said there was little difference in life for her at the end of the Civil War. She still lived on the same plantation. The only real difference was her parents became share croppers and could not be sold and separated. Her master essentially took emancipation in stride. He offered all his slaves a share cropping arrangement where they would work the same fields growing the same crops they always had. Then they would pay the master rent in the form of the crops they grew. What was left in crops they kept for themselves and could sell them and use the money to buy food or other needed items. Mostly they grew cotton and tobacco. The land was still owned by the same plantation owner so he charged them rent for the same shacks they had lived in. He still gave them the same hand me downs that the former house slaves, become paid servants wore out. She said that after five years her parents told her they had enough money saved up and were leaving. How they managed that I don't know. She said she never stopped calling the plantation owner "Master" probably out of habit. She was just surprised to learn at around ten that they were in fact all free and had been for five years. Perhaps the parents just didn't want to get their hopes up until they were off the plantation. Then they moved up north. She told of how it got really bad in the south around the 1870's and how relatives of hers were lynched shortly after her family moved up north. Her mother had learned to read a little so they could right letters back and forth with relatives around the country who did the same. She stopped visiting the south after around 1900. Then the fear grew back in the 1920's when the klan became very popular in the north. She described the 4th of July parade one year either in or near Boston as including a hundred white robed klansmen marching carrying klan flags and such and she and her family who had been at the back of the crowd along the parade route due to Blacks not permitted in the front, just left and never went to another July 4 parade again. This was in the BOSTON area not the deep south. I was five years old and remember vividly how I thought her skin looked like wrinkled up old leather and how her voice and hands trembled but how she spoke with such quiet force of resolve. She really wanted me to know what happened. I can't remember a tenth of what she said but the above are highlights. What stuck in my mind the most was that I was five years old the same age she was a slave and how she described her chores. Not adult chores mind you but hard work. At five she worked 12 hours a day six days a week Monday through Saturday. She said the old master would have her work 7 days if the Lord let him. She picked cotton and carried water to the older slaves. She described how her mother sobbed inconsolably as she watched her get whipped by the overseer hanging from her ankles with her dress hung down over her face. All for steeling a peach that had fallen to the ground. At five.
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker She was just ONE surviving slave out of a few million. Not all told their stories. I just count myself fortunate that I can be her witness on occasion. I'm glad you are as well. These stories need to be told and preserved. I went to school in Massachusetts but had to move to the south to learn about Jim Crow. Every day I commute past an office building that currently rests on a confiscated historic Black cemetery. They never moved the bodies. People just park their cars, walk on and do their jobs on and over roughly 300 people the city decided are not worthy of the dignity of an undisturbed grave. Currently there are no plans to restore the cemetery. They won't even permit relatives to visit and pay respects and there are no signs indicating there are three hundred human beings buried under brick and mortar and pavement. But they do brag about how they preserved their memories by moving all the three dozen or so grave markers, mostly wood, to the new cemetery a few miles away 60 or so years or so.
I really appreciate that even in the 1930s they had the presence of mind to preserve this history and allow the slaves to tell their stories without censorship.
That’s a very pessimistic image of the past you have. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest conflicts of that age and the abolitionists won… why would they censor the horrors of slavery a few decades later? Especially given this was a Federal Project, not some rebel teacher in a small school in the Deep South or something.
You say that like it wasn’t a given back then. We’ve been backpedaling so fast and “progressives” are the biggest culprits of radical censorship out of some perverted paternalism, while “conservatives” simply want to return to a feudal order
The issue now is political figures want to use people and separate them. Slavery was dealt with, millions died , trillions spent to free slaves in America and Africa. Yet they forget to sat that. Imagine the millions of white souls who died to free slaves and destroy the skave trade in Africa, not getting any love at all.
Slavery is as old as history. It is still happening today. I see reports of slavery in modern day Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and many other countries. It is tragic.
The communist chinese government has enslaved it’s own people to manufacture cheap junk for the west. Every time you go to Walmart, you’re participating in the modern slave trade.
*"Slavery is as old as history."* And...supported in the Bible! (edit) Leviticus 25: 44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and *_they shall be your possession_* . 46 And ye shall take them as *_an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever_* : but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. "Bondmen" and "possession" indicate these were chattel slaves, not indentured servants.
Makes one wonder. In 1969, while serving in the US Army. A fellow soldier & I stopped in a Cafe to eat lunch. The waitress came up and said they don't serve blacks. I was caught by surprise. I was instantly filled with anger. I confronted the waitress & the owner. I was a heartbeat from really attacking the owner. My buddy stopped me, he physically took hold of me and pulled me out of that Cafe before I did any real damage. I was livid. My buddy got me calmed down. We went to another place to eat and had no further problems. My buddy was very amazed at my anger. He had never had anyone white, get that upset over the racism around him. He was amazed that I had been ready to fight for him. He said it happens all the time. He calmed me down and told me that he had never seen a white man defend a black man like that. We had a good laugh over it. When he asked me why I had gotten so upset about it, I told him how I truly felt. I told him that we had just gone through 8 weeks of hell in BCT. That we had all been dumb civilians in the begining. We were individuals. But that had changed over the months of combat training. We had all hurt & bled together. We wore the green OD uniform. We had sweated & struggled as a group. I told him that all I saw now, were Soldiers! Word got around about what had happened. I had a number of fellow soldiers step forward to tell me they had respect for me. I was 17 years old. I still often remember that afternoon. 98% of our BCT brigade recieved orders for duty in Vietnam later that week. I wonder what ever happened to my buddy.
It is possible to track down your buddy through US Army records. It will take some persistence and patience, and may be possible online. In the mid 1960s, during racial upheaval, and desegregation, there were protests and marches in Charleston, SC [100 years after the Civil War]. While there was disorder, discord, and violence in the west and the north, in Charleston, things were mainly peaceful and courteous, with white people walking with black, and many different people walking with MLK. Your buddy might have been surprised, if he had visited Charleston.
Thanks for your service, Glenn. I felt the same way, going through BCT over 20 years ago myself--though we thankfully didn't have to deal with something as atrocious as segregation.
I am grateful for having many elder Negro friends who shared their memories about slavery when I was a child. Preciela was like a mother to me, starting as a young child and her assistance to my rearing, I will never forget. She could not read or write, but the love of her gentle hands taught me so many things about such as cooking and gardening, along with my mother, because of their long friendship. (Now she could firece, if anyone put their hands on me.) She made such an impression on my life and others that I could not stop reading history. "Why are people so mean?" I would often ask her sitting in her lap. Tears would sometimes well up in her eyes, and she would say softly, "I wished I's could keep you as a baby, but one day, you will understand. Growing up with dark skin, many have perished." I would just hug her and tell her how beautiful she was.
It's very sad the human memory has to be saddled with the tragedy of slavery. I knew many black people growing up, and most of them were honestly the nicest people I knew.
@@davidm1149 I agree, having grown up in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas. Slavery is without doubt the ugliest stain on the human soul that there is and ever has been. The real tragedy of it is that it continues in some parts of the world today. It needs to be eradicated completely and by whatever means are necessary to accomplish this task. The human soul has no color to it and neither should our love, awareness, and care of others. All human beings have red blood and if we simply must associate a color with other people, let it be the red color of blood that we all share.
You sound like a dirty racist yourself. Using an n-word to describe POC?! And how anyone can tell you about memories of slavery, unless you over 100 years old. And saying that POC you mention as being like a mother? Thats horrifically offensive, and bigoted, you should be ashamed of yourself! Sounds like this poor female was practically a slave of your family, you're disgusting, you are a disgusting bad person and no POC should have anything to do with you, except to spit in your racist face.
@@davidm1149 Yeah it sucks cause of the how the manufactured illiteracy, opportunities, crime operations and propaganda have made them in the worst position. There's many out the projects but the culture still has deep scars.
Sadly, that's not why he did it. Or probably not - I wasn't there, after all. He most likely told her to say that knowing that it was a perceived insult to the owner, as well as knowing full well what the response would be. There was a widespread effort during the Civil War and restoration period to stir up as much trouble between slaves and their owners as possible. Keep in mind - she had never been whipped before, and her grandma knew as soon as she heard it that the child must've done something to prompt it. Upon hearing what she said to the owner, the grandma ALSO whipped her. I'm not defending slavery here, just trying to add context.
@@0megacron sounds more like you're just interpreting it through a modern bias that people couldn't possibly have cared about slaves whereas that's not anything like what is said historically. People passionately cared about the life and freedom of the slaves.
Valuable nuggets of wisdom here. Worth noting: a lot of these interviews are saved on the WPA website. I've been amazed by some of the stories; many thanks to you, David, for helping to put a human voice to something more than just dates and statistics.
None of this is "wisdom". And picking old scabs and re-infecting old wounds is insanity, not wisdom. Was slavery evil? Sure was. Is blaming slavery on present people who do not own slaves evil?? Sure is.
That website must be protected at all costs against the onslaught of fascist conservatives trying to rewrite history. They're already trying to force schools in Florida to teach kids that slavery was all sunshine and rainbows where the slaves were treated well and learned valuable life lessons. They will not stop until every school in America is teaching this to kids, and them banning and burning books just like the Nazis did is part of their efforts.
Anybody interview Kamala's slaves. Some of the people her family owned were alive when she lived. That'd be fun. You could throw in some decedents of Obama's family slaves.
😂 The fact you chose to cut this video so that it ends with "slavery, as a matter of fact, was _not_ good" absolutely made my day. Thank you, David Hoffman, as always, for your marvelous generosity and wealth of material culture from days gone by. These are incredible treasures for us to reflect on. I know it wasn't likely at the time, but I wish this fantastic information could have been delivered by someone from the family or community of the people whose words are recorded. We have grown more sensitive over the years, to how simply recording and reporting the perspectives of "others" perpetuates myths of the past as something that is separate from today. When these kinds of stories are documented, there are usually some invisible but invaluable persons helping the published authors by connecting them with the people with stories to share. Those persons are rarely afforded so much as an acknowledgement in the publication, whatever its form, but their knowledge and experience is always indispensable for making the research possible. Those persons ought to be recognized at least as coauthors, if not the true authors, except societal stratification blocks them at every level from participating in that kind of academic realm.
I have a somewhat uncommon last name. Back in the 60's, if I was visiting a large city, I would look in the phone book to see if anyone had the same last name. I would call them and see how they might be related. While in Memphis, I called a man and he wanted to meet me. He gave me his address and directions and I went over there. I went to the door and knocked, and to my surprise, when he answered the door, he turned out to be black. He was retired from the military and, evidently, his ancestors were slaves on a small plantation outside of Atlanta. A plantation my ancestors owned. He said his great grandfather told him a little bit about those times. According to him, they were treated almost like part of the family and when the Emancipation Proclamation was declared in 1863, they all remained on the plantation. It was only when Sherman came through and burned Atlanta and destroyed the surrounding area that they all fled and took on the last name of their previous owners.
My anglo family is from rural southeast Texas. My grandmother, with an accent so thick you could cut through, would tell me stories, many stories, similar to this. She wasn't on the right side of history, raised in ignorance with the bad traditions that come with it. Luckily for the grandchildren, my mother was the first to go to college. Her children went to Harvard and Stanford. Slavery, like Poverty, is a disease born of ignorance and many other things. We were raised to respect other peoples differences and merits, but it feels like the world we live in these days enjoys vanity and downright passive aggressive behvaior over accountability and equality. I was proud of the progress in the 1990s thru 2000s, but I don't know how to feel about the United States today.
@@oscarinacan What the hell does "accepting" new things mean? I'm seriously curious what goes thru your people's brain. If I dont like a culture and want to live next to it I'm a bad person?
@@RobFromDenver Say for instance I dont like immigrants assaulting my country like its D-Day with boats, moving into my apartment complex cooking goats at 1 AM and smelling like 💩while living 25 in 1 room and making constant noise, leaving trash on the floor and the police being liberal/socialist puppets and not being able to remove them all + shitting on my religion. How is that for starters?
If American History is required in our schools, American slavery is certainly an integral part of it. Yet, it should be presented in a way to promote a peaceful brotherhood by learning from the horrible mistakes of the past. Parents especially should be the ones to help their children put things of this nature into a proper perspective, helping them to see and treat all people as equal members of the one human race.
Should we teach about racism if it exists. And today in American the predominant racism is against white people. Or we pick and choose? How about the racism of blacks against whites in South Africa? Should we teach that was the white man who ended slavery? Should we teach that black people enslaved their own to sell to the white man? Should we teach that only western nations don’t have slaves TODAY! every other race has slaves as we speak.
@@WJACOTT Teach the whole truth about the subject. Again, the fact that such atrocities have occurred in many places on this earth testifies that such evils *cannot be viewed as the mark of any one variety of race or* *particular nationality.* All humans share a common origin. Therefore, there is *only one race,* the precious human race.
@@WJACOTTThere is no need to "teach" it today. It's all out in the open and not past history. Parents should instruct their children how to respond to any form of racial prejudice and injustice, while doing so in a manner as stated in the post about promoting peaceful relationships and learning from the past.
We have to teach the truth about history. American history on slavery is ugly. The way it started and ended even though we are still in it's process. There is more slavery in the world today than in that time.
David, I wish I had you as my high school history teacher in the 1970's the one I had put me to sleep. your film clips and documentaries and your description write up are very informative.
@drewpall2598 I was in high school in the 70’s as well. I share your wish as I’ve always wanted to know more about what we were NOT taught. Not only throughout the slave trade and slave era but throughout the course of American history altogether. 💁🏽♂️
Thank you David 🙏🏾 Im 21 and man your life is only a dream to have as much historical films and research that isn’t shown anywhere I salute you for the amount of years you have stored in your vault.
I've learned so much from David's post, and I'm 68! Share with your peers and enjoy! Mr. Hoffmans library is quite amazingly varied! It does my heart so much to see you youngens aboard ❤️!
@@luciehanson6250I agree with you! it's nice to see the younger generation enjoying David Hoffman as a filmmaker, storyteller, and a genuine caring fellow. 😊
@@drewpall2598although I’m rarely here due to vision problems, you both said it well. Thank you all, as I’m on a short visit here… but aren’t we all? Happy to be able to see tonight. ~
What’s interesting, is that this woman reciting the stories refers to the WPA, the U.S. Government’s initiative to employ and enable people during the Great Depression, and rather than explaining it herself, she encourages them to reach out to people in their respective communities. That was a gentle tool she employed to foster a greater human bond and continuance of our shared memory. The human cruelty and inequity depicted was a fact of life. There was and still is a great cost to that relationship and America needs to own up to it.
WTF do you think welfare is for? At least it WAS. It was supposed to help keep families together in 2 parent households. Not just blacks either. Now it rewards sluts for bad behavior. Of all races. BTW, I'm Southern, and the only people in my family tree who may have kept slaves were Choctaw Indians.
America owned up to it a loooong time ago, and things were getting better and better. The problems we have now are the result of decades of Democrat evil.
I don't think the question is whether or not America should own up to it. It happened before any of us were born, and those responsible are all long dead. The real question is, how do we put it behind us where it belongs? This national guilt trip perpetuates because we all know that it was horrible, but there is nothing we can do to change it. The very idea that people alive today should be held accountable for slavery is racism in itself. That is hardly the cure. It will only continue to divide us, and perhaps even more so than ever before.
"And America needs to own up to it." But an undeniable fact does exists: In America , you earn your place. Blacks were a free ppl after 1865 (civil war)...free to build their own towns/cities/...free to build their own industries, free to build their own schools, free to carve out a place in America vast unsettled lands. They were in fact a free ppl. No ppl owe another ppl forced integration rights. Blacks received that in 1964 (civil rights act). It was in fact the biggest magnanimous gesture from one people toward another in human history. THAT should be pointed out! And what did America get after 1964? Cities went up in flames, looting/torching ofwheit business... #1 in homicide arrests (60 consecutive years), #1 armed robberies (60 consecutive years), #1 violence that cross racial lines (acts of racism for 60 consecutive years), #1 high school drop outs (60 consecutive years). On and on it goes. What about accountability?!
Do you know that the Great Depression was _caused_ by the Leftist-run Federal government? Without the tax hikes, unbridled spending and socialist policies, the stock market crash would have been recovered from in a matter of a couple years. It is absurd to think that a stock market crash would _naturally_ take _ten years_ to recover from. Instead of letting the people who caused the problem suffer the consequences and get it over with, government greatly prolonged the hardship by preventing the recuperation, just like a person who takes painkillers for a back problem instead of getting it treated, only to make the problem much worse.
Yes but sadly schools today are much more a place of indoctrination versus education. That what happens when political narratives are at play which inhibit the light of truth to be heard
It should be learned in schools but the past 60 years have proved that over teaching about one topic in history has consequences, in the 1960s about the time this video was made, that’s when they started drilling slavery into the school system and the black pathers a protest group came from this along side Martin Luther king, now fast for to modern time? Slavery is drilled even harder in school then before, everyone has a opinion on it, social media spreading those opinions like wildfire and all of a sudden BLM arises, yes people need to know about slavery but if the wrong person get ahold of this information and get angered instead of trying learn? BLM happens
@@Okay-pr9fphonestly bro I don’t know what school in this country drills on the slavery topic. Throughout middle school and high school I learned pretty much nothing about slavery other than that it happened and Lincoln abolished it. I’m 20 now and everything I’ve learned has been through my own research outside of school.
@@PimpNamedSlickBack1_ I’m 20 years old as well unless you lived in a small town? Literally every year I had history class we learned about slavery or They would teach anything about old America and they would tie back to slavery and the end of my years in high school they ramped it up even harder
@@Okay-pr9fp I lived in the city and went to catholic and private school. That’s pretty much all we learned about slavery and didn’t spend too much time on it. I think that it should be taught but I agree with you that BLM and its followers are completely out of control…and that’s coming from a black guy. The country would be better off without it in my opinion. But back to the slavery point, I think that if something happened than it should be taught. And I don’t buy the argument of white kids being made to feel guilty in class either. There’s no reason for them to feel guilty. Just like there’s no reason German school kids should be made to feel guilty when learning about 1939-1945. It’s history and it happened, so it should be learned.
I live on a private road where my neighbors practice that subtle racism, where they try to make someone feel so uncomfortable and unwelcome to make the minority neighbor move out. Its sad people are still like this in current times.
@@mr.horrorchild4094 So that young people can learn how wrong it is to own another human being.. that it causes so much suffering and is yet another type of evil..
This gives me strength and helps me remember to keep going. Brothers and sisters today don't realize how hard it was back then. We came sooo far, only to regress into ignorance due to social media, tv and internet. SMH. The struggle continues... Thank you for this content!!!
No accountability. Regressed into ignorance because of following a herd that's led by strangers. But no no, just blame the tools that anyone can use and benefit from. The ignorance part was true at least
Thank you for sharing this, we should never seek to silence the voices of those who have suffered wrongdoing at the hands of their oppressors, nor should we ever cease to shine a light of truth on our shared history lest we forget and miss opportunities to do better by those who deserve to be treated with equality.
@@stevepest4143Do we need to keep up statues of hitler to remember him? No. He was a stain on his country’s history and has been treated as such. The same should be applied for confederate generals (and possibly even Union generals like Sherman who pillaged raped and murdered the innocent).
@@RaptorFromWeegee That's the problem, they knew how to fish in Africa, white people made them fish for everybody else and they didn't have the right to succeed for themselves. And you know that, of course, I'm just going to remind you, because you're not getting by with that here.
The first story about the woman who would only be able to raise her children for the first two years of their life before they were taken away from her and sold literally made me sick to my stomach. As a mother, the thought of someone taking my babies away from me is too much to bare, I literally can't handle the thought of something bad happening to my child. The thought of them being taken from me and sold into slavery? Absolutely unfathomable. My heart breaks for that poor woman and her innocent babies, and for all the other women who experienced anything similar.
I know right! Think where we could be by now as a world! Trust me if the last 4 years has created a new me (which it has) it’s created a wave that won’t be stopped. We have a lot of catch up!
Though I clicked 'Like', this made my skin crawl. Thanks for the share. This is stuff schools would want to show if they get their hands on it. I hope it finds its way into schools, but UA-cam might just replace that function eventually. Preserve this gem.
So true, she killed her own baby for no reason. Pure evil. Sadly, over 1 million American women kill their babies each year, which is more deaths than all the wars and murders combined.
@@peterbulloch4328 - The lack of racial equality today is the fault of racial inequality back then. Hearing the actual voices of former slaves would teach our children just how truly horrible slavery was. That’s legitimate education as it gives them first hand information. Consequently, white people have since spent another century and a half building generational wealth and enjoying privileges denied to black people under decades of Jim Crow laws, enacted by the next generation of white people. Those laws kept black people’s opportunities and rights subjugated so they continued to live in poverty with limited rights. So today, no, we personally didn’t do it. I didn’t and you didn’t. We didn’t actively find the workarounds to legally keep them in poverty. But we can quit denying the realities of the anti-Christian, anti-decency, and outright evils of slavery. And we can correct those things that our ancestors did by leveling out the playing field. We have generational wealth and advantage. They don’t. We can easily balance that out and shore up the last of the laws so that we all get to live and thrive truly equal. The money for it? The national pot has plenty to accomplish that. The government isn’t coming to rob you. If we need more money, we should start by taking it from the bloated salaries and even more bloated perks given to our useless Congress members. We can quit buying thousand dollar hammers for the Army and all those countless other stupid things we hear reported about government waste. That money in the hands of descendants denied opportunities, educations, and inheritance would lead to a lot more houses being bought (a housing and construction boom), small businesses started (a big boost to the national economy), and the ability for all Americans to live more equal like we have long said we believe in. Infividually, it won’t hurt any of us white people. Collectively, we today can finish cleaning up our great-granddaddies collective sins. And then get on with life, once again setting the example for the world about what the word “equal” really means.
I’m proud to share while looking into my Ancestry DNA I had a great grandfather who fought for the North. Side note, it’s always fascinating to see how the world was back in these days. My grandfather was born in 1932 , so this video was how the world was during his formidable years.
Unfortunately, Florida will not allow this in schools. I was blessed to have been too young for the draft, but the right age for affirmative action opportunities. All I needed was a chance, not a handout. I earned a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree. I started multiple businesses and supported dozens of small businesses and bright employees. I retired this year at 65. I sometimes think about how many more people of color could've achieved great things if not for slavery and racial bias in the decades to follow.
What ages is it not allowed? I thought it was only elementary. At that age it can just cause discrimination. I wasn't offered actual classes on slavery until college and it never stopped me from knowing about it or having black friends. I'm glad my kids were homeschooled and didn't learn about it from public school teachers, frankly
@@anuday2022never will. No one alive today should get paid for something they didn't personally experience by people today who had no ownership or responsibility for something that happened hundreds of years ago.
@@anuday2022yeah they did actually.. after the white people forced folks of another religion (whom we’ve kicked out of over 120 countries) brought those slaves on their ships. (Look it up) and then they took ALL the slaves back to Africa and gave them enough coal to create 3 empires but guess what? They BEGGED to come back.. this is occulted history but it’s true. When the Zionists burnt the entire south,along with most of the innocent people,the wrote a history THEY wanted.. they bought all the newspapers,the school system (that was our demise right there) and decided history just as they do today. Those of scattered few,no pun intended,with their eye opened,sees all and knows where to look. I’ll bet you he won’t tell you who owned 100% of the slave ships.. it’s probably been taken from google now but maybe not. But it’s good not to be one of the sheep who believe the foolishness.. they STILL control you,I see. 🪬👁️👑🪷 You’ll probably never have “life” so you’ll always belong to them. Learn the man in the mirror,my friend.. master self and maybe you’ll pull yourself from the simpletons-matrix. Break the chains and ppl might respect you.
It should be read in schools today. When I found out _Huckleberry Finn_ was banned or edited because of the way the main Negro character was addressed and treated, I was appalled. How ever will people understand the evolution of today's difficulties, if they do not see the accurate state of affairs in the past? The correct way to handle these things is to add a preamble to new printings, as has been done with restorations of old cinema recordings, or replays of older television shows: " This program contains descriptions and treatment of people, which may be offensive to current sensibilities. They reflect times when people did not know better, or knew, and did not care. We know better, and this is a reminder of why. We leave this as it was, to set the context of the time. This is not an endorsement, nor an approval, but simply an authentic representation of those times. We see, we learn, and we do better. Ignoring the lessons of the past deprives us of the impetus to avoid repeating it."
Really? Do you really believe that is necessary to make sure nobody gets their feelings hurt?!! Please, give me a break. Why is that so important? If people don't pay attention to what they are being taught about history in school as they grow up, then that is their problem, not everyone else's.
Mark Twain never wrote a bad black character. They were always portrayed sympathetically, if at the same time often as somewhat simple minded. They were always simple and good. But that's in part because as a white boy whose uncle kept slaves, he was treated kindly by the slaves, who seem to have been affected by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome: keep on the whites' good side when they are young and maybe they won't abuse you when they grow up and own you. So Twain had a child's simplistic fondness for blacks who were kindly toward him as a child and who he addressed as "aunt" and "uncle" (hence Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, by the way). But he was also a moral coward who never stood up against his white friends and relatives to object to slavery. He left the United States during the Civil War, and then later became a northern liberal and had to keep his liberal street cred by being a "friend of the Negro" in print and in society. There's nothing racist against blacks in Twain. He sublimated all his racism and contempt for people of color into hatred for the Native Americans. Twain never wrote an Indian character who was not lower than scum, subhuman. There's a passage in Roughing It about an Indian tribe that is not only hateful, if you swap out the word "Indian" in parts of it, and put the n-word in its place, you would swear a Klansman was rallying the boys for a good old lynching. Huckleberry Finn is a very complex work by a tortured man who hated himself and projected that onto society. For Twain, people were all good or all bad. He considered himself all bad. His wife was all good. Blacks were all good. Indians were all bad. Messed up person, Twain. But one thing he did *not* do was write a novel that expressed race hatred toward black people. Way too much guilt to do that.
One of my ancestors in Roberson County, North Carolina, was interviewed by the Library of Congress in the early 1930s . He stated that several days before he was freed by Union troops in 1865, he was "whupped" by his master for trying to learn to read.
I e always found when I watch videos or see pictures of slaves and their stories they always hold themselves like royalty. Such suffering , such pin bit they look so majestic. They have so much strength in their eyes , I can’t explain it . These truly horrendous stories should be shouted from the roof tops, if we forget their stories we forget their names. I’m so glad you are preserving these stories of the voices that are always hidden.
@@HeroInTheSun by that I mean you can look at someone’s eyes and just see the shallowness or pure evil and spite. With the slaves I mostly see strength, like there’s still power in them. I’d rather sit around someone at a dinner table with eyes like that than a creepy , vapid narcissist like the eyes of most politicians.
Your work is brilliant by the way david. Thank you for all you've done. preserving & sharing such profound personal. Cultural & historic moments. Forever grateful for the work you've accomplished capturing humanity through out your career.
Best to read and listen to the original material rather than cherry-picked components such as these. The range of views expressed by the interviewees is astounding and quite simply has no parallel in the innumerable external attempts at interpretation of slavery, the antebellum Southern culture, and the war itself.
What's crazy is that there's more people in slavery today then any other time in history. This should definitely be played. We should study history, not rewrite it or erase it.
It cannot be overstated that these are the most important accounts of slavery there are, directly from the victims themselves. Something every American should have to witness.
In some places, yes, this could be played in schools today. In my opinion though, this should be played in schools everywhere. I find it confounding to no end to know that racism still exists in this country, or anywhere for that matter.
@@Mike-rk3wt I work in a southern factory and when I find myself among the "good old boys" I can blend in well enough they feel very comfortable using colorful language around me. Sent a copy of a group chat to HR and got three fired, lmao.
@@andrewhooper7603 the people that you got fired, were they saying or doing anything that was work related and hurt other people? If not, then, you and I have very different views. I think all kinds of people have views that are absolutely abhorrent, but I would never try to get them fired from their jobs if their views were unrelated. If these people weren't doing anything other than expressing views you disagreed with then I don't see how that's any different than a 1984 I thought crime. You wanted them fired from a factory job. That means you believe they shouldn't have any form of employment at all. Then what? They're forced to go to the streets and become criminals? I'd rather have people have terrible thoughts that they share with their friends as opposed to taking them out of society where they will be forced to take much more drastic measures.
During the New Deal (in the 1930s), some people in the WPA writer’s project realized the window was closing on Americans who had personal experience of being enslaved, slavery having been outlawed in 1865. So WPA writers sought out such elders and interviewed them. I’m very glad they made this record of history, but I’m sad and angry that some school districts, and even whole states, have recently made it illegal for public schools to teach this history, on the grounds that it might make some students feel uncomfortable or ashamed. History can be ugly, friends. But we need to know it, the bad as well as the good.
Even though the way she ends it with "slavery as a matter of fact was not good." comes off as humorous now for being such an obvious statement, back then slavery was so normalized people seriously would not know this. They literally had carnival games that involved hurting slave children back then.
It wasn't thought of as normal to everyone. Some could actually understand the basic fact that it was sick and twisted, but there perhaps are far more weak minds out there is the conclusion you mean to come to
Good evening David, it could be ok to teach it in school now for history buff. Some school my not like it others may like it. I guess it hurts to see it and tell how it was. Thanks for sharing it.👍📸🙂
I constantly tell people it isn't "woke" to take into consideration the absolute trauma done to the black population of this nation. Everytime someone says they oughtta "get over it or stop living in the past" I find it pertinent to remind them just how recent that past was. We are genuinely less than a hundred years from when blacks were legally kept from human rights like voting, places to live and basic equality afforded a human. If you want to really put into perspective, the last living person who had been a slave in his childhood only died in the early 1960's. Think about that. We were less than ten years from landing on the moon, The Beatles were starting to get popular and there was literally a person in existence who had legitimately beem legally considered property.
@@mr.horrorchild4094 It plainly states in black and white in the 'Black Almanac'--a Black source; available in every college library in the country--that 95% of the kidnapped West Africans were sold into slavery in Latin America. I have a sneaking suspicion that you will be fine with that history omitted.
The average cost of an enslaved African was approximately $300 in 1865, which is worth about $5,662.66 today. There were about 4 million enslaved individuals at the end of the Civil War. The total worth of slaves exceeded the combined value of banking, shipping, manufacturing, and commercial real estate.
@myzjed5576 some people have opinions on others in every race especially in America but not 1 owns a slave , that's not the same story in many other countries
Should this be played and taught in schools? Absolutely. But with context. What should NOT be taught in schools is that this is still a current condition.
Jesus Christ my heart was just broken in under 4 minutes. These kids today don't need an edited history lesson to spare their feelings, they need to learn the truth and deal with it without shooting up a school
I mean, in the 1930s it was still pretty controversial. Still had kids and grandkids of slave holders in high politics, and this was just a few years after Wilson was playing the birth of a nation in the White house. There still were tens of millions of people that thought that slavery was a good thing
I'm 32, and I can still remember the day I learned about slavery, racism, and Martin Luther King early in elementary school. Up until then, black kids were just kids with a different skin color the same way that kids had different hair color. After the lesson and during that day's recess, I saw a white girl who was grabbing a ball back from a black girl. I instantly assumed the white girl was being racist and jumped between them. The two of them walked off together confused as hell. I left the class with more prejudice than I had going in. How the hell we should educate kids on racism over time, I have no idea. However I trust kids to be born without prejudice more than I trust modern education to handle it properly.
I remember watching ’Dancing With Wolves’ as a teenager and realising how brutal the introduction of Europeans to the American continent was. Now slavery had an added dimension of sadism to the same brutality.
Various Native American tribes were at war with each other and killing each other for land and resources long before a single European ever set foot in North America. 😉
The term slave has its origins in the word slav. The slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD. Slavery can broadly be described as the ownership, buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of forced and unpaid labour.
Thank you. As the grandchild of "illiterate" Slavic peasants who were nearly starved to death, somehow I have to be reminded all the time to "check my privilage".. We Eastern Europeans KNOW where that word comes from. It's amazing how the English language can take such liberties under the big sky of Russophobia yet bleeps out the "N" word also coined by "Spanish" human traffickers who's descendents get to check off a minority box for freebies.
Even then, the Republican Yankee soldiers recognized the slaves as people, and they tried to teach that girl that she was a person and deserving of respect, and attempted to instill confidence in her.
Yeah lol can't teach kids things aren't infallible no Can't let them learn that the world isnt all black and white and to live one needs a discerning eye to be able to tell what's good and bad If we can't learn and understand history, our misdeeds and accomplishments, we are doomed to repeat them, and ignorance is something that cannot exist in a democracy.
*teacher from 1956* "this can touch and teach students" *teacher from 2024* "I'm not allowed to teach anything about this because our state governor prohibits it"*
People who know how to learn: "I'm bound to come across this information at some point by some source, so I'll just hold myself accountable for what I learn in my life. That way i can always blame myself for listening to stupid people."
This is taught in schools. It seems there is an effort to keep it from being taught or to change the narrative in order to support political agendas and keep us fighting among ourselves.
An important lesson that can't be forgotten. I don't actually think my comment is new or novel, I'm just commenting for the algorithm because we all need to do our part to keep the memory of this awful time alive so we avoid making the same mistakes. The people who did this evil were humans just like us. It is a terrifying sort of folly to assume that it couldn't happen again if we forget the lessons of the past.
I am an African. I was born during apartheid in South Africa and during that time I was young enough to understand what was happening. In 1994 Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa and Apartheid ended. I now live in a new democratic South Africa and life is so much better than it was during the apartheid years. I salute Nelson Mandela. He was a hero. I also salute Harriet Tubman, John Brown and Dr Martin Luther King. They were also heroes.
I was just thinking of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her book Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is 400 pages and each chapter is about 4 pages. I could only read a chapter per day. It was too difficult and heartbreaking. The USA did a terrible thing by allowing slavery. Why didn't they just hire and pay the workers and let them leave/quit if they wished?
I frankly find censoring of racial slurs in historical material to be counterproductive. Removing terms that are today shocking serves to dilute and reduce the impact of these historical records--some parts of our past should be uncomfortable to listen to, not sugar coated.
@@perpetualsick That's for sure a driver of it, and that's central to the point I was trying to make. I argue that UA-cam policies do no favors to the discourse when they cause this kind of self-censorship. In a similar vein, I often hear creators using humorous euphemisms in lieu of the "s word" for fear of demonetization. Who is served when "shortcut to the pavement zone" is safe to use, but "suicide" isn't?
It’s not shocking that there were slaves. It’s shocking AMERICA had slaves. The country founded on the words “all men are created equal with inalienable rights, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness “
Not discrediting this in the slightest but I’d like to Also name. United States of America is the first country on the planet to first abolish slavery, if I am wrong, I ought to be corrected
@@theinfinitesolThe United States has the distinction of going to war over it. Many argue, however, that the institution would have gone away peacefully in time anyway, but The War of States' Rights made that impossible, which arguably was ultimately worse than having it die off naturally.
The Mom's of 🗽 group would definitely report a teacher for sharing this! They have said it makes their children feel bad. Also some books refer to slaves as just workers now. They want to teach that they learned a lot of valuable skills lol. Their stories and lives are important to share and learn about. ❤
I'm 46, i moved from middle tennessee to east Tennessee, where i met not 1 but 2 slaves in 1986. I never want to experience what i heard and seen again.
The craziest thing about this is the same argument that was argued for slavery was argued for abortion today. Ex: my body my choice, if you don't like abortion don't have one but don't tell me what I can do with my body... My property my choice, if you don't like slavery don't own a slave but don't tell me what I can and can't do... People are not property, we are All made in God's image.
That is very much not the same thing a collection of cells isn't a human being. To compare the subjugation and state sanctioned torture of humans to some lady deciding not to be a parent is frankly disrespectful and just plain stupid.
@@prixe12 a clump of cells that is what? Is it a cow that's growing. It's like saying I have a tree in my front yard but we don't know what it is yet it's supposed to be a banana and it's from a banana tree but we're waiting to find out. You've literally twisted your logic to justify child sacrifice. I would ask at what point does it become a human by your logic.
when you say a comment like this you really tell on yourself that you don't really understand how horrific and inhumane the issue of slavery in the united states was, that's being talked about here in this video. it's almost as if you didn't listen to these stories and how horrific they are. it's almost as if you don't view the subjects in the video as human but simply as props to make a point. it's almost as if you have some kind of guilt about it reflected back on yourself because you feel like you should feel some kind of way about it, so you have to deflect the issue to some other country where you don't have to think too hard about it, where you don't have to take any kind of responsibility about it. where you don't have to do anything about it, where you don't ever have to really think about it. you would be wiser to not tell on yourself by making such stupid ass comments and just keep your mouth shut.
a brilliant description of Jim Crow segregation lived by this man - ua-cam.com/video/IXUFiXeNZV4/v-deo.html
Just watched it David. Quite powerful.
Your right, it is quite relavant to our current situation.
free. west. papua.
1.8 mullion dead for 62 years of silent u.s. gold mining
No one should be treated like property. But we have a different problem today, with people claiming they are property when they are free. What those who gave those testimonials then would do with the freedoms we have now I wonder? Certainly not complain about it, they knew what slavery and injustice really is like, they would waste little time in doing the things they could not do before.
"ran to Grandma Gracie" yep NO they did NOT sell off their children. in fact if the north had NOT burned so much down, They kept records of marriages and births, celebrated them. Jeff Davis brought in Teachers... as many. The Carvers had George Washington Carver highly educated, HIram Revel elected in 1870 again 1870 to MISSISSIPPI CONGRESS, 4 yr undergrad degree 3 yrs law school: Puts the start of his college ... education at 1863. < TRUE.
What propagandas can do.
Free Palestine.
“She never got to keep her babies” is so haunting
Now you know how a cattle operation works,
@@cr1424stuff your vegan horseshit! It's not even close to the same goddamn thing.
@@cr1424we are talking about human beings here
@@pl1763theyre comparing the treatment, not the victims
Breaks my heart as a mother the pain she suffered not being able to keep her babies human being can be so heartless and cruel 😭😭😭💔
It should be played in schools today. Slavery was a near universal human institution around the world. Where there was not enslavement there was feudalism. History is nuanced and has much to teach us and should not be used for political soundbites only.
Was? Still is.
History is just that, His story.
It only benefits the winners.
Most proper that have eaten the red pill at some point in their real lives understand this.
And this is why we need the accounts from the actual people like this that can tell us the truth.
The fact they still teach children Columbus discovered America and the pyramids were built with wooden hoists and by a few thousand people tel us most of the books we read are a farce.
Slavery in America was very different from other nations and time periods. In West/Central Africa (Congo, Mali, Ebo, Songhai, etc) there existed among the tribes a slave-rank structure or classes focusing on domestic, conscription or court slaves that had varying levels of social status, wealth, freedoms. Slaves, dating to Christians of the 1st century, to the ancient Israelites, were to be treated humanely under law. Even given the option, after a period of time passed, to be free (Exodus 21). In other countries, slavery was only to happen if the individual owed a debt, was a prisoner of war, or religious reasons.
Until Pope Innocent around 1488. By the 16th century the blessing of the Roman Church lead to the purchasing of slaves without reasons of debt, religion or war. Black slaves, in America, were largely not treated with any humanity. Very few attained freedoms, liberty, social status, wealth. They were as disposable as cattle until 1808, which ended the slave trade…but took another 57 years to end slavery in America.
IF it ended there, I would agree we should see it as an ugly means to an end of a developing nation. But it didn’t end there. Jim Crow Apartheid began just 12 years after private slaves were outlawed by the Emancipation (Only the State could have “Slaves” henceforth, as ‘involuntary servitude.’) and lasted, either in de Jure or de facto legal application, until 59 years ago.
People trafficked or held against their will, do they need to accept that these practices? No. Do not condition your children to condone. Evil is evil, no matter if thousands of years or a single night.
There is no nuance. Evil is evil.
"First we overlook evil, Then we permit evil. Then we legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute those who still call it evil." Fr. Dwight Longenecker
“In the Last Days, Good will be called Evil and Evil will be called Good.” Are We There YET ?
Yes we are.
Allowing a minor (by definition underdeveloped psychologically) to permanently change his/her gender is evil.
When the potential president of the USA leads as a rac!st and fasc!st and he had many followers and voters for that reason you know it’s bad.
We ARE there.....
Pretty sure it's here.
Sadly, this isn't something that just happened 150 years ago. This is something that happens today in many places around the world.
I think something that gets wrongfully taught about slavery is that white Americans are the only people that had slaves.slavery began at the beginning of time and still happens in different parts of the world.also whites and Europeans didn't go into Africa and capture them to use as slaves.they actually bought slaves from kings and queens in Africa
Like Africa.
@@phantomblade89 I watched the movie The Mauritanian about Guantanamo Bay and the imprisonment of so many without trial. I didn't know the word Mauritanian and looked it up. I was not expecting an African country to pop up where slavery still continues. In fact, I didn't realize that slavery exists in a few countries in Africa. I know about modern slavery in the form of sex trafficking but didn't know hereditary slavery still existed.
Human trafficking, child labor. Slavery simply took on new forms.
Yep, Arabs enslave, buy and sell blacks every day in Northern Africa.
Enslaved people are made visible when their voices are heard from the period of slavery. This makes them come alive as persons who were enslaved as opposed to being called a slave.
Is a person enslaved not a slave?
@@woozy7405 Slaves are people though? They are enslaved people. I think you are indulging pointless semantics.
Good semantical exercise.
@@SomeKidFromBritain it implies that they're "slaves first, people second" which is just wrong, really.
@@xarityfan4370 No it doesn't by any means. You assert it does because you enjoy playing semantics for some reason. You cant actually explain your reasoning for why, you just assert it does.
Imagine being so fearful of your baby being sold into slavery that you reckon that baby is better off dead. Terribly sad.
I'm curious why they would sell a baby, who wants a baby slave that can't do anything.
@@xpusostomos perhaps they weren't literally babies when they were taken, but a few years old. The trauma and tragedy are the same ☹
@@JaneAustenAteMyCat the video says 1 or 2 years old, and your silly comment doesn't answer the question.
"ran to Grandma Gracie" yep NO they did NOT sell off their children. in fact if the north had NOT burned so much down, They kept records of marriages and births, celebrated them. Jeff Davis brought in Teachers... as many. The Carvers had George Washington Carver highly educated, HIram Revel elected in 1870 again 1870 to MISSISSIPPI CONGRESS, 4 yr undergrad degree 3 yrs law school: Puts the start of his college ... education at 1863. < TRUE.
What propagandas can do.
@@xpusostomosare you daft? You think someone who buys a baby expects it to just start working the fields immediately? You aren’t even asking in good faith. We have many historical references to corroborate this but you don’t do your own research. You are tiny.
1965 I visited a museum that had been a house used for the underground railroad. On that visit there was what might have been the world's oldest docent. She was 105 years old. She was born a slave around 1860 and was officially freed at the age of five though she informed me that she was probably closer to ten when she learned she was free. She said there was little difference in life for her at the end of the Civil War. She still lived on the same plantation. The only real difference was her parents became share croppers and could not be sold and separated. Her master essentially took emancipation in stride. He offered all his slaves a share cropping arrangement where they would work the same fields growing the same crops they always had. Then they would pay the master rent in the form of the crops they grew. What was left in crops they kept for themselves and could sell them and use the money to buy food or other needed items. Mostly they grew cotton and tobacco. The land was still owned by the same plantation owner so he charged them rent for the same shacks they had lived in. He still gave them the same hand me downs that the former house slaves, become paid servants wore out. She said that after five years her parents told her they had enough money saved up and were leaving. How they managed that I don't know. She said she never stopped calling the plantation owner "Master" probably out of habit. She was just surprised to learn at around ten that they were in fact all free and had been for five years. Perhaps the parents just didn't want to get their hopes up until they were off the plantation. Then they moved up north. She told of how it got really bad in the south around the 1870's and how relatives of hers were lynched shortly after her family moved up north. Her mother had learned to read a little so they could right letters back and forth with relatives around the country who did the same. She stopped visiting the south after around 1900. Then the fear grew back in the 1920's when the klan became very popular in the north. She described the 4th of July parade one year either in or near Boston as including a hundred white robed klansmen marching carrying klan flags and such and she and her family who had been at the back of the crowd along the parade route due to Blacks not permitted in the front, just left and never went to another July 4 parade again. This was in the BOSTON area not the deep south. I was five years old and remember vividly how I thought her skin looked like wrinkled up old leather and how her voice and hands trembled but how she spoke with such quiet force of resolve. She really wanted me to know what happened. I can't remember a tenth of what she said but the above are highlights. What stuck in my mind the most was that I was five years old the same age she was a slave and how she described her chores. Not adult chores mind you but hard work. At five she worked 12 hours a day six days a week Monday through Saturday. She said the old master would have her work 7 days if the Lord let him. She picked cotton and carried water to the older slaves. She described how her mother sobbed inconsolably as she watched her get whipped by the overseer hanging from her ankles with her dress hung down over her face. All for steeling a peach that had fallen to the ground. At five.
That's a horrible story at the end of your statement. God.
David Hoffman filmmaker
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker She was just ONE surviving slave out of a few million. Not all told their stories. I just count myself fortunate that I can be her witness on occasion. I'm glad you are as well. These stories need to be told and preserved. I went to school in Massachusetts but had to move to the south to learn about Jim Crow. Every day I commute past an office building that currently rests on a confiscated historic Black cemetery. They never moved the bodies. People just park their cars, walk on and do their jobs on and over roughly 300 people the city decided are not worthy of the dignity of an undisturbed grave. Currently there are no plans to restore the cemetery. They won't even permit relatives to visit and pay respects and there are no signs indicating there are three hundred human beings buried under brick and mortar and pavement. But they do brag about how they preserved their memories by moving all the three dozen or so grave markers, mostly wood, to the new cemetery a few miles away 60 or so years or so.
@@nunyabiznez6381 Why did the black families sell their cemetery to the white man?
I wish everyone could hear these stories. It's such a heinous sin that there are so many more that will never see the light of day.
Yikes. Psychopaths will psychopath if given a free pass.
I really appreciate that even in the 1930s they had the presence of mind to preserve this history and allow the slaves to tell their stories without censorship.
That’s a very pessimistic image of the past you have.
The Civil War was one of the bloodiest conflicts of that age and the abolitionists won… why would they censor the horrors of slavery a few decades later?
Especially given this was a Federal Project, not some rebel teacher in a small school in the Deep South or something.
You say that like it wasn’t a given back then. We’ve been backpedaling so fast and “progressives” are the biggest culprits of radical censorship out of some perverted paternalism, while “conservatives” simply want to return to a feudal order
People weren’t as evil then as people today make them out to be
The issue now is political figures want to use people and separate them. Slavery was dealt with, millions died , trillions spent to free slaves in America and Africa. Yet they forget to sat that. Imagine the millions of white souls who died to free slaves and destroy the skave trade in Africa, not getting any love at all.
@@TheDungEater You saying this makes me beleive you didn't watch the video. Slavery was, is, and will always be EVIL.
Slavery is as old as history. It is still happening today. I see reports of slavery in modern day Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and many other countries. It is tragic.
it's only going to get worse.
The communist chinese government has enslaved it’s own people to manufacture cheap junk for the west. Every time you go to Walmart, you’re participating in the modern slave trade.
And every single animal is a slave to humans
@@johnnyveganite9141 The Giant Squid isn't...
*"Slavery is as old as history."* And...supported in the Bible!
(edit) Leviticus 25: 44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and *_they shall be your possession_* .
46 And ye shall take them as *_an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever_* : but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.
"Bondmen" and "possession" indicate these were chattel slaves, not indentured servants.
Makes one wonder. In 1969, while serving in the US Army. A fellow soldier & I stopped in a Cafe to eat lunch. The waitress came up and said they don't serve blacks.
I was caught by surprise.
I was instantly filled with anger.
I confronted the waitress & the owner. I was a heartbeat from really attacking the owner.
My buddy stopped me, he physically took hold of me and pulled me out of that Cafe before I did any real damage.
I was livid. My buddy got me calmed down. We went to another place to eat and had no further problems. My buddy was very amazed at my anger. He had never had anyone white, get that upset over the racism around him.
He was amazed that I had been ready to fight for him. He said it happens all the time. He calmed me down and told me that he had never seen a white man defend a black man like that.
We had a good laugh over it.
When he asked me why I had gotten so upset about it, I told him how I truly felt. I told him that we had just gone through 8 weeks of hell in BCT. That we had all been dumb civilians in the begining. We were individuals. But that had changed over the months of combat training. We had all hurt & bled together. We wore the green OD uniform. We had sweated & struggled as a group. I told him that all I saw now, were Soldiers!
Word got around about what had happened. I had a number of fellow soldiers step forward to tell me they had respect for me.
I was 17 years old.
I still often remember that afternoon. 98% of our BCT brigade recieved orders for duty in Vietnam later that week.
I wonder what ever happened to my buddy.
It is possible to track down your buddy through US Army records. It will take some persistence and patience, and may be possible online.
In the mid 1960s, during racial upheaval, and desegregation, there were protests and marches in Charleston, SC [100 years after the Civil War]. While there was disorder, discord, and violence in the west and the north, in Charleston, things were mainly peaceful and courteous, with white people walking with black, and many different people walking with MLK. Your buddy might have been surprised, if he had visited Charleston.
Thanks for your service, Glenn. I felt the same way, going through BCT over 20 years ago myself--though we thankfully didn't have to deal with something as atrocious as segregation.
im white and been denied service in black owned establishments before... It didnt occur to me to attack the owner !!! you must be poorly educated
You're a good man
@@bza069 That's a moronic attempt at moral equivalence.
I am grateful for having many elder Negro friends who shared their memories about slavery when I was a child. Preciela was like a mother to me, starting as a young child and her assistance to my rearing, I will never forget. She could not read or write, but the love of her gentle hands taught me so many things about such as cooking and gardening, along with my mother, because of their long friendship. (Now she could firece, if anyone put their hands on me.)
She made such an impression on my life and others that I could not stop reading history.
"Why are people so mean?" I would often ask her sitting in her lap. Tears would sometimes well up in her eyes, and she would say softly, "I wished I's could keep you as a baby, but one day, you will understand. Growing up with dark skin, many have perished." I would just hug her and tell her how beautiful she was.
It's very sad the human memory has to be saddled with the tragedy of slavery. I knew many black people growing up, and most of them were honestly the nicest people I knew.
@@davidm1149 I agree, having grown up in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas. Slavery is without doubt the ugliest stain on the human soul that there is
and ever has been. The real tragedy of it is that it continues in some parts of the world today. It needs to be eradicated completely and by whatever
means are necessary to accomplish this task. The human soul has no color to it and neither should our love, awareness, and care of others. All
human beings have red blood and if we simply must associate a color with other people, let it be the red color of blood that we all share.
You sound like a dirty racist yourself. Using an n-word to describe POC?! And how anyone can tell you about memories of slavery, unless you over 100 years old.
And saying that POC you mention as being like a mother? Thats horrifically offensive, and bigoted, you should be ashamed of yourself!
Sounds like this poor female was practically a slave of your family, you're disgusting, you are a disgusting bad person and no POC should have anything to do with you, except to spit in your racist face.
@@davidm1149 Yeah it sucks cause of the how the manufactured illiteracy, opportunities, crime operations and propaganda have made them in the worst position. There's many out the projects but the culture still has deep scars.
"Negro friends"
You're a racist.
Its really touching how that Yankee soldier tried his best to make her understand she was a human. I bet despite the switching it changed her life.
Sadly, that's not why he did it. Or probably not - I wasn't there, after all. He most likely told her to say that knowing that it was a perceived insult to the owner, as well as knowing full well what the response would be. There was a widespread effort during the Civil War and restoration period to stir up as much trouble between slaves and their owners as possible. Keep in mind - she had never been whipped before, and her grandma knew as soon as she heard it that the child must've done something to prompt it. Upon hearing what she said to the owner, the grandma ALSO whipped her. I'm not defending slavery here, just trying to add context.
@@0megacron sounds more like you're just interpreting it through a modern bias that people couldn't possibly have cared about slaves whereas that's not anything like what is said historically. People passionately cared about the life and freedom of the slaves.
@@binabina4445Yes, you can tell by the owner’s response how passionately he cared for his slave and saw her as human.
@@binabina4445no you are wrong. It was highly likely that soldiers was being bogus and setting a trap. You need some southern friends that are brown
I've got a screenplay with a very-similar dialogue between a white New Yorker and a black southern woman in 1950.
Valuable nuggets of wisdom here. Worth noting: a lot of these interviews are saved on the WPA website. I've been amazed by some of the stories; many thanks to you, David, for helping to put a human voice to something more than just dates and statistics.
None of this is "wisdom". And picking old scabs and re-infecting old wounds is insanity, not wisdom. Was slavery evil? Sure was. Is blaming slavery on present people who do not own slaves evil?? Sure is.
That website must be protected at all costs against the onslaught of fascist conservatives trying to rewrite history. They're already trying to force schools in Florida to teach kids that slavery was all sunshine and rainbows where the slaves were treated well and learned valuable life lessons. They will not stop until every school in America is teaching this to kids, and them banning and burning books just like the Nazis did is part of their efforts.
Anybody interview Kamala's slaves. Some of the people her family owned were alive when she lived.
That'd be fun.
You could throw in some decedents of Obama's family slaves.
There's also a series of books from the WPA.
"slavery, as a matter of fact, was not good"
So why so many people in "western world" vote for communist/totalitarian ideologies to be enslaved?
Was searching for this comment...yeah...
haha I guess that wasn't a given to a lot of people in the 30s.
That's the best y'all can do uh... Nah. Apology not accepted.
@@DicelandEntertainment Um, okay? Lmao
You ain't never gonna do anything but fucking cry about it and continue to destroy your community anyway.
😂 The fact you chose to cut this video so that it ends with "slavery, as a matter of fact, was _not_ good" absolutely made my day. Thank you, David Hoffman, as always, for your marvelous generosity and wealth of material culture from days gone by. These are incredible treasures for us to reflect on.
I know it wasn't likely at the time, but I wish this fantastic information could have been delivered by someone from the family or community of the people whose words are recorded. We have grown more sensitive over the years, to how simply recording and reporting the perspectives of "others" perpetuates myths of the past as something that is separate from today. When these kinds of stories are documented, there are usually some invisible but invaluable persons helping the published authors by connecting them with the people with stories to share. Those persons are rarely afforded so much as an acknowledgement in the publication, whatever its form, but their knowledge and experience is always indispensable for making the research possible. Those persons ought to be recognized at least as coauthors, if not the true authors, except societal stratification blocks them at every level from participating in that kind of academic realm.
yeah I was like "that's so tragic" but that at the end hit me out of left field
There are a series of books, taken from the transcripts of interviews that are definitely worth reading.
I have a somewhat uncommon last name. Back in the 60's, if I was visiting a large city, I would look in the phone book to see if anyone had the same last name. I would call them and see how they might be related. While in Memphis, I called a man and he wanted to meet me. He gave me his address and directions and I went over there. I went to the door and knocked, and to my surprise, when he answered the door, he turned out to be black. He was retired from the military and, evidently, his ancestors were slaves on a small plantation outside of Atlanta. A plantation my ancestors owned. He said his great grandfather told him a little bit about those times. According to him, they were treated almost like part of the family and when the Emancipation Proclamation was declared in 1863, they all remained on the plantation. It was only when Sherman came through and burned Atlanta and destroyed the surrounding area that they all fled and took on the last name of their previous owners.
My anglo family is from rural southeast Texas. My grandmother, with an accent so thick you could cut through, would tell me stories, many stories, similar to this. She wasn't on the right side of history, raised in ignorance with the bad traditions that come with it.
Luckily for the grandchildren, my mother was the first to go to college. Her children went to Harvard and Stanford. Slavery, like Poverty, is a disease born of ignorance and many other things.
We were raised to respect other peoples differences and merits, but it feels like the world we live in these days enjoys vanity and downright passive aggressive behvaior over accountability and equality.
I was proud of the progress in the 1990s thru 2000s, but I don't know how to feel about the United States today.
You said it yourself - your grandma was racist, but you aren't. It's going to take time, generations, for people to be accepting of new things
@@oscarinacan What the hell does "accepting" new things mean? I'm seriously curious what goes thru your people's brain. If I dont like a culture and want to live next to it I'm a bad person?
@@RobFromDenver Say for instance I dont like immigrants assaulting my country like its D-Day with boats, moving into my apartment complex cooking goats at 1 AM and smelling like 💩while living 25 in 1 room and making constant noise, leaving trash on the floor and the police being liberal/socialist puppets and not being able to remove them all + shitting on my religion. How is that for starters?
In your case - you really seem like a 'bad person', yeah.@@royale7620
@@royale7620It isnt cultural to denounce racism.
If American History is required in our schools, American slavery is certainly an integral part of it. Yet, it should be presented in a way to promote a peaceful brotherhood by learning from the horrible mistakes of the past. Parents especially should be the ones to help their children put things of this nature into a proper perspective, helping them to see and treat all people as equal members of the one human race.
Should we teach about racism if it exists. And today in American the predominant racism is against white people.
Or we pick and choose? How about the racism of blacks against whites in South Africa? Should we teach that was the white man who ended slavery? Should we teach that black people enslaved their own to sell to the white man?
Should we teach that only western nations don’t have slaves TODAY!
every other race has slaves as we speak.
@@WJACOTT Teach the whole truth about the subject. Again, the fact that such atrocities have occurred in many places on this earth testifies that such evils *cannot be viewed as the mark of any one variety of race or* *particular nationality.* All humans share a common origin. Therefore, there is *only one race,* the precious human race.
@@WJACOTTThere is no need to "teach" it today. It's all out in the open and not past history. Parents should instruct their children how to respond to any form of racial prejudice and injustice, while doing so in a manner as stated in the post about promoting peaceful relationships and learning from the past.
We have to teach the truth about history. American history on slavery is ugly. The way it started and ended even though we are still in it's process. There is more slavery in the world today than in that time.
Naw
David, I wish I had you as my high school history teacher in the 1970's the one I had put me to sleep. your film clips and documentaries and your description write up are very informative.
@drewpall2598
I was in high school in the 70’s as well. I share your wish as I’ve always wanted to know more about what we were NOT taught. Not only throughout the slave trade and slave era but throughout the course of American history altogether. 💁🏽♂️
This should be read at schools, so people will understand the terrible conditions and teach what real victims are.
agreed!
Thank you David 🙏🏾 Im 21 and man your life is only a dream to have as much historical films and research that isn’t shown anywhere I salute you for the amount of years you have stored in your vault.
I've learned so much from David's post, and I'm 68!
Share with your peers and enjoy! Mr. Hoffmans library is quite amazingly varied!
It does my heart so much to see you youngens aboard ❤️!
@d4rmthai.e536... I have enjoyed reading your comment and agree fully with your sentiments on David Hoffman.
@@luciehanson6250I agree with you! it's nice to see the younger generation enjoying David Hoffman as a filmmaker, storyteller, and a genuine caring fellow. 😊
@@drewpall2598although I’m rarely here due to vision problems, you both said it well. Thank you all, as I’m on a short visit here… but aren’t we all? Happy to be able to see tonight. ~
@@crystalbelle2349 Thanks you Crystal and take care. 😊
What’s interesting, is that this woman reciting the stories refers to the WPA, the U.S. Government’s initiative to employ and enable people during the Great Depression, and rather than explaining it herself, she encourages them to reach out to people in their respective communities. That was a gentle tool she employed to foster a greater human bond and continuance of our shared memory. The human cruelty and inequity depicted was a fact of life. There was and still is a great cost to that relationship and America needs to own up to it.
WTF do you think welfare is for? At least it WAS. It was supposed to help keep families together in 2 parent households. Not just blacks either. Now it rewards sluts for bad behavior. Of all races. BTW, I'm Southern, and the only people in my family tree who may have kept slaves were Choctaw Indians.
America owned up to it a loooong time ago, and things were getting better and better. The problems we have now are the result of decades of Democrat evil.
I don't think the question is whether or not America should own up to it. It happened before any of us were born, and those responsible are all long dead. The real question is, how do we put it behind us where it belongs? This national guilt trip perpetuates because we all know that it was horrible, but there is nothing we can do to change it. The very idea that people alive today should be held accountable for slavery is racism in itself. That is hardly the cure. It will only continue to divide us, and perhaps even more so than ever before.
"And America needs to own up to it."
But an undeniable fact does exists: In America , you earn your place. Blacks were a free ppl after 1865 (civil war)...free to build their own towns/cities/...free to build their own industries, free to build their own schools, free to carve out a place in America vast unsettled lands. They were in fact a free ppl. No ppl owe another ppl forced integration rights. Blacks received that in 1964 (civil rights act). It was in fact the biggest magnanimous gesture from one people toward another in human history. THAT should be pointed out! And what did America get after 1964? Cities went up in flames, looting/torching ofwheit business... #1 in homicide arrests (60 consecutive years), #1 armed robberies (60 consecutive years), #1 violence that cross racial lines (acts of racism for 60 consecutive years), #1 high school drop outs (60 consecutive years). On and on it goes. What about accountability?!
Do you know that the Great Depression was _caused_ by the Leftist-run Federal government? Without the tax hikes, unbridled spending and socialist policies, the stock market crash would have been recovered from in a matter of a couple years. It is absurd to think that a stock market crash would _naturally_ take _ten years_ to recover from.
Instead of letting the people who caused the problem suffer the consequences and get it over with, government greatly prolonged the hardship by preventing the recuperation, just like a person who takes painkillers for a back problem instead of getting it treated, only to make the problem much worse.
This should be played in schools; it is a vital part of our history, and it goes on to this day. Our education is not limited to boundries.
Yes but sadly schools today are much more a place of indoctrination versus education. That what happens when political narratives are at play which inhibit the light of truth to be heard
It should be learned in schools but the past 60 years have proved that over teaching about one topic in history has consequences, in the 1960s about the time this video was made, that’s when they started drilling slavery into the school system and the black pathers a protest group came from this along side Martin Luther king, now fast for to modern time? Slavery is drilled even harder in school then before, everyone has a opinion on it, social media spreading those opinions like wildfire and all of a sudden BLM arises, yes people need to know about slavery but if the wrong person get ahold of this information and get angered instead of trying learn? BLM happens
@@Okay-pr9fphonestly bro I don’t know what school in this country drills on the slavery topic. Throughout middle school and high school I learned pretty much nothing about slavery other than that it happened and Lincoln abolished it. I’m 20 now and everything I’ve learned has been through my own research outside of school.
@@PimpNamedSlickBack1_ I’m 20 years old as well unless you lived in a small town? Literally every year I had history class we learned about slavery or They would teach anything about old America and they would tie back to slavery and the end of my years in high school they ramped it up even harder
@@Okay-pr9fp I lived in the city and went to catholic and private school. That’s pretty much all we learned about slavery and didn’t spend too much time on it. I think that it should be taught but I agree with you that BLM and its followers are completely out of control…and that’s coming from a black guy. The country would be better off without it in my opinion. But back to the slavery point, I think that if something happened than it should be taught. And I don’t buy the argument of white kids being made to feel guilty in class either. There’s no reason for them to feel guilty. Just like there’s no reason German school kids should be made to feel guilty when learning about 1939-1945. It’s history and it happened, so it should be learned.
I live on a private road where my neighbors practice that subtle racism, where they try to make someone feel so uncomfortable and unwelcome to make the minority neighbor move out. Its sad people are still like this in current times.
Thanks for sharing this. This hurts to watch, but they should be playing this in schools.
Why?
@@mr.horrorchild4094
So that young people can learn how wrong it is to own another human being.. that it causes so much suffering and is yet another type of evil..
@@C-Here Should teach them not to shoplift or play the knockout game while you're at it
@@mr.horrorchild4094 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@mr.horrorchild4094
Found the Trump supporting racist. Makes total sense.
This gives me strength and helps me remember to keep going. Brothers and sisters today don't realize how hard it was back then. We came sooo far, only to regress into ignorance due to social media, tv and internet. SMH. The struggle continues...
Thank you for this content!!!
?
lol no we need revenge these people shouldn’t own this stuff like at all
This bot equates maga with slavery, that's what it is
No accountability. Regressed into ignorance because of following a herd that's led by strangers. But no no, just blame the tools that anyone can use and benefit from. The ignorance part was true at least
Social media? Because schools brainwash
Thank you for sharing this, we should never seek to silence the voices of those who have suffered wrongdoing at the hands of their oppressors, nor should we ever cease to shine a light of truth on our shared history lest we forget and miss opportunities to do better by those who deserve to be treated with equality.
The whole point of removing statues and renaming stuff is to ignore history and blank it out
and thousands of slaves were owned by Blacks, this fact is ignored
All these tales of woe. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever.
@@stevepest4143Do we need to keep up statues of hitler to remember him? No. He was a stain on his country’s history and has been treated as such. The same should be applied for confederate generals (and possibly even Union generals like Sherman who pillaged raped and murdered the innocent).
@@RaptorFromWeegee That's the problem, they knew how to fish in Africa, white people made them fish for everybody else and they didn't have the right to succeed for themselves.
And you know that, of course, I'm just going to remind you, because you're not getting by with that here.
The first story about the woman who would only be able to raise her children for the first two years of their life before they were taken away from her and sold literally made me sick to my stomach. As a mother, the thought of someone taking my babies away from me is too much to bare, I literally can't handle the thought of something bad happening to my child.
The thought of them being taken from me and sold into slavery? Absolutely unfathomable. My heart breaks for that poor woman and her innocent babies, and for all the other women who experienced anything similar.
Thanks for this David! Of all the channels on UA-cam, you have the most authentic old videos.
i read that as authistic, my bad 😸
This is the real history. Stories from people. Pretty sickening how cruel man can be.
Just any man in particular?
@@brad9092 Not a real honest man, are you?
@@leonfrancis3418 lol relax my man, life is too short!
@@leonfrancis3418 man = humans = hominins
What a shame our educational standards today are so low versus 5 decades ago
I know right! Think where we could be by now as a world! Trust me if the last 4 years has created a new me (which it has) it’s created a wave that won’t be stopped. We have a lot of catch up!
It's crazy to think about slavery as an institution that convinced generations of people that this is all they'll ever know in life.
This country needs more men like you Mr. Hoffman. Thanks for sharing
Thank you. This is only a drop in the ocean, but it hopefully helps our understanding a little more.
Though I clicked 'Like', this made my skin crawl.
Thanks for the share. This is stuff schools would want to show if they get their hands on it. I hope it finds its way into schools, but UA-cam might just replace that function eventually.
Preserve this gem.
0:48 When she said, “which is the content we teach”
It is hard to imagine being so cruel to any living thing, and yet such cruelty is common
Not to people that deserve it though. But these people yes its horrifying
@@1984isnotamanual no one deserves slavery that's a joke.
the problem really is in how to address the condition.
@@rustyshackleford1465 I didn’t say they did, I said that some people deserve cruelty. Not slavery particularly.
Human conditioning is more powerful than one can imagine
So true, she killed her own baby for no reason. Pure evil. Sadly, over 1 million American women kill their babies each year, which is more deaths than all the wars and murders combined.
That ending killed me. "Slavery was not good" What a take away 😂
Really 😄 i was just laughing the entire video
Ronald DeSantis disagrees with you.
@@urzmontst.george6314grow up lol
For millions of years and still around the world today many think it's still good
@@Sandlin22 Become a slave and tell me it's good
This should be required to be played in all schools to all students. Especially where it has to be forced on a school board to show it.
As long as the students are made aware that the people living today are not responsible for these horrible events.
@@peterbulloch4328 - The lack of racial equality today is the fault of racial inequality back then. Hearing the actual voices of former slaves would teach our children just how truly horrible slavery was. That’s legitimate education as it gives them first hand information.
Consequently, white people have since spent another century and a half building generational wealth and enjoying privileges denied to black people under decades of Jim Crow laws, enacted by the next generation of white people. Those laws kept black people’s opportunities and rights subjugated so they continued to live in poverty with limited rights.
So today, no, we personally didn’t do it. I didn’t and you didn’t. We didn’t actively find the workarounds to legally keep them in poverty. But we can quit denying the realities of the anti-Christian, anti-decency, and outright evils of slavery. And we can correct those things that our ancestors did by leveling out the playing field. We have generational wealth and advantage. They don’t. We can easily balance that out and shore up the last of the laws so that we all get to live and thrive truly equal.
The money for it? The national pot has plenty to accomplish that. The government isn’t coming to rob you. If we need more money, we should start by taking it from the bloated salaries and even more bloated perks given to our useless Congress members. We can quit buying thousand dollar hammers for the Army and all those countless other stupid things we hear reported about government waste.
That money in the hands of descendants denied opportunities, educations, and inheritance would lead to a lot more houses being bought (a housing and construction boom), small businesses started (a big boost to the national economy), and the ability for all Americans to live more equal like we have long said we believe in.
Infividually, it won’t hurt any of us white people. Collectively, we today can finish cleaning up our great-granddaddies collective sins. And then get on with life, once again setting the example for the world about what the word “equal” really means.
@@peterbulloch4328 No, but plenty of people seem to want to go back to them.
@@MySerpentine Who do you see as being those people?
@@mikeb5372 Half of the Republican party, for a start.
the only way to overcome this dark history is to face the harsh realities of what happened- and not bury the facts under political litigation
I’m proud to share while looking into my Ancestry DNA I had a great grandfather who fought for the North.
Side note, it’s always fascinating to see how the world was back in these days. My grandfather was born in 1932 , so this video was how the world was during his formidable years.
Unfortunately, Florida will not allow this in schools. I was blessed to have been too young for the draft, but the right age for affirmative action opportunities. All I needed was a chance, not a handout. I earned a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree. I started multiple businesses and supported dozens of small businesses and bright employees. I retired this year at 65. I sometimes think about how many more people of color could've achieved great things if not for slavery and racial bias in the decades to follow.
You have done beautiful things Dave and I thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences.
David Hoffman filmmaker
What ages is it not allowed? I thought it was only elementary. At that age it can just cause discrimination. I wasn't offered actual classes on slavery until college and it never stopped me from knowing about it or having black friends. I'm glad my kids were homeschooled and didn't learn about it from public school teachers, frankly
It’s not about a handout it’s what is owed to ADOS. They never paid Black people reparations.
@@anuday2022never will. No one alive today should get paid for something they didn't personally experience by people today who had no ownership or responsibility for something that happened hundreds of years ago.
@@anuday2022yeah they did actually.. after the white people forced folks of another religion (whom we’ve kicked out of over 120 countries) brought those slaves on their ships. (Look it up) and then they took ALL the slaves back to Africa and gave them enough coal to create 3 empires but guess what? They BEGGED to come back.. this is occulted history but it’s true. When the Zionists burnt the entire south,along with most of the innocent people,the wrote a history THEY wanted.. they bought all the newspapers,the school system (that was our demise right there) and decided history just as they do today. Those of scattered few,no pun intended,with their eye opened,sees all and knows where to look. I’ll bet you he won’t tell you who owned 100% of the slave ships.. it’s probably been taken from google now but maybe not. But it’s good not to be one of the sheep who believe the foolishness.. they STILL control you,I see. 🪬👁️👑🪷
You’ll probably never have “life” so you’ll always belong to them.
Learn the man in the mirror,my friend.. master self and maybe you’ll pull yourself from the simpletons-matrix. Break the chains and ppl might respect you.
It should be read in schools today. When I found out _Huckleberry Finn_ was banned or edited because of the way the main Negro character was addressed and treated, I was appalled. How ever will people understand the evolution of today's difficulties, if they do not see the accurate state of affairs in the past?
The correct way to handle these things is to add a preamble to new printings, as has been done with restorations of old cinema recordings, or replays of older television shows:
" This program contains descriptions and treatment of people, which may be offensive to current sensibilities. They reflect times when people did not know better, or knew, and did not care. We know better, and this is a reminder of why. We leave this as it was, to set the context of the time. This is not an endorsement, nor an approval, but simply an authentic representation of those times. We see, we learn, and we do better. Ignoring the lessons of the past deprives us of the impetus to avoid repeating it."
Really? Do you really believe that is necessary to make sure nobody gets their feelings hurt?!! Please, give me a break. Why is that so important? If people don't pay attention to what they are being taught about history in school as they grow up, then that is their problem, not everyone else's.
Mark Twain never wrote a bad black character. They were always portrayed sympathetically, if at the same time often as somewhat simple minded. They were always simple and good. But that's in part because as a white boy whose uncle kept slaves, he was treated kindly by the slaves, who seem to have been affected by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome: keep on the whites' good side when they are young and maybe they won't abuse you when they grow up and own you. So Twain had a child's simplistic fondness for blacks who were kindly toward him as a child and who he addressed as "aunt" and "uncle" (hence Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, by the way). But he was also a moral coward who never stood up against his white friends and relatives to object to slavery. He left the United States during the Civil War, and then later became a northern liberal and had to keep his liberal street cred by being a "friend of the Negro" in print and in society. There's nothing racist against blacks in Twain. He sublimated all his racism and contempt for people of color into hatred for the Native Americans. Twain never wrote an Indian character who was not lower than scum, subhuman. There's a passage in Roughing It about an Indian tribe that is not only hateful, if you swap out the word "Indian" in parts of it, and put the n-word in its place, you would swear a Klansman was rallying the boys for a good old lynching. Huckleberry Finn is a very complex work by a tortured man who hated himself and projected that onto society. For Twain, people were all good or all bad. He considered himself all bad. His wife was all good. Blacks were all good. Indians were all bad. Messed up person, Twain. But one thing he did *not* do was write a novel that expressed race hatred toward black people. Way too much guilt to do that.
One of my ancestors in Roberson County, North Carolina, was interviewed by the Library of Congress in the early 1930s . He stated that several days before he was freed by Union troops in 1865, he was "whupped" by his master for trying to learn to read.
I think it is horrible that even today African Royalty sells their people into slavery.
I e always found when I watch videos or see pictures of slaves and their stories they always hold themselves like royalty.
Such suffering , such pin bit they look so majestic.
They have so much strength in their eyes , I can’t explain it .
These truly horrendous stories should be shouted from the roof tops, if we forget their stories we forget their names.
I’m so glad you are preserving these stories of the voices that are always hidden.
"strength in their eyes" ???
Then just there.
@@HeroInTheSun by that I mean you can look at someone’s eyes and just see the shallowness or pure evil and spite.
With the slaves I mostly see strength, like there’s still power in them.
I’d rather sit around someone at a dinner table with eyes like that than a creepy , vapid narcissist like the eyes of most politicians.
@@matthewjoseph9897 that’s the right description, the perfect one I felt.
Dignity . Thank you.
Well said!
Another absolute treasure.
Now if we'd all simply treat one another like treasures as individuals and groups, all would be well.
@iahelcathartesaura3887... I love your sentiments, the dreamer in me wish it could be, but I also know that reality is often unkind.
There'll Always be Mao, Pol Pat, Stalin, Hitler or Fidel.
Be meek, but never weak . .
☆
Strange how such a short story can have such a powerful and lasting impact!
Your work is brilliant by the way david. Thank you for all you've done. preserving & sharing such profound personal. Cultural & historic moments.
Forever grateful for the work you've accomplished capturing humanity through out your career.
Best to read and listen to the original material rather than cherry-picked components such as these. The range of views expressed by the interviewees is astounding and quite simply has no parallel in the innumerable external attempts at interpretation of slavery, the antebellum Southern culture, and the war itself.
It hurts my heart... but needs to be known... thanks David 😎👍
Thank you for the video. Such tragic stories.
What's crazy is that there's more people in slavery today then any other time in history. This should definitely be played. We should study history, not rewrite it or erase it.
There are also more people in the world today
I didn’t expect the unintended hilarious punchline at the end, ‘ Slavery was not good’, understatement of the century! 😂
Absolutely should be played in school
Very interesting, David! As always, thanks for sharing.
It cannot be overstated that these are the most important accounts of slavery there are, directly from the victims themselves. Something every American should have to witness.
Thank you for sharing this!
But! But! But!
But, according to some members of the GOP, those slaves were being taught "valuable skills for work". 😠
In some places, yes, this could be played in schools today. In my opinion though, this should be played in schools everywhere. I find it confounding to no end to know that racism still exists in this country, or anywhere for that matter.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "still exists".
@@Mike-rk3wt I work in a southern factory and when I find myself among the "good old boys" I can blend in well enough they feel very comfortable using colorful language around me.
Sent a copy of a group chat to HR and got three fired, lmao.
@@Mike-rk3wt yes
@@andrewhooper7603 you'd make an excellent communist
@@andrewhooper7603 the people that you got fired, were they saying or doing anything that was work related and hurt other people? If not, then, you and I have very different views. I think all kinds of people have views that are absolutely abhorrent, but I would never try to get them fired from their jobs if their views were unrelated. If these people weren't doing anything other than expressing views you disagreed with then I don't see how that's any different than a 1984 I thought crime. You wanted them fired from a factory job. That means you believe they shouldn't have any form of employment at all. Then what? They're forced to go to the streets and become criminals? I'd rather have people have terrible thoughts that they share with their friends as opposed to taking them out of society where they will be forced to take much more drastic measures.
During the New Deal (in the 1930s), some people in the WPA writer’s project realized the window was closing on Americans who had personal experience of being enslaved, slavery having been outlawed in 1865. So WPA writers sought out such elders and interviewed them.
I’m very glad they made this record of history, but I’m sad and angry that some school districts, and even whole states, have recently made it illegal for public schools to teach this history, on the grounds that it might make some students feel uncomfortable or ashamed. History can be ugly, friends. But we need to know it, the bad as well as the good.
Even though the way she ends it with "slavery as a matter of fact was not good." comes off as humorous now for being such an obvious statement, back then slavery was so normalized people seriously would not know this.
They literally had carnival games that involved hurting slave children back then.
Slavery had been done away with for 100 years at this point. It wasn't normalized. This just isn't true.
It wasn't thought of as normal to everyone. Some could actually understand the basic fact that it was sick and twisted, but there perhaps are far more weak minds out there is the conclusion you mean to come to
Good evening David, it could be ok to teach it in school now for history buff. Some school my not like it others may like it. I guess it hurts to see it and tell how it was. Thanks for sharing it.👍📸🙂
I have read that not having intact families was the cruellest aspect of slavery.
I constantly tell people it isn't "woke" to take into consideration the absolute trauma done to the black population of this nation. Everytime someone says they oughtta "get over it or stop living in the past" I find it pertinent to remind them just how recent that past was. We are genuinely less than a hundred years from when blacks were legally kept from human rights like voting, places to live and basic equality afforded a human. If you want to really put into perspective, the last living person who had been a slave in his childhood only died in the early 1960's. Think about that. We were less than ten years from landing on the moon, The Beatles were starting to get popular and there was literally a person in existence who had legitimately beem legally considered property.
that is an astoundingly good way to contextualize the discriminiation black americans face today
i hate the word woke its just a catch all term used by conservatives to describe anything more left on the political spectrum than them
half the beatles are still around too
Yes, it belongs in schools. Bring it to light and develop dialogue and understanding. If X can be taught and is part of the curriculum, then so can Y.
Yes, people need to know bad things happened in the past
@@mr.horrorchild4094 It plainly states in black and white in the 'Black Almanac'--a Black source; available in every college library in the country--that 95% of the kidnapped West Africans were sold into slavery in Latin America. I have a sneaking suspicion that you will be fine with that history omitted.
"Slavery, as a matter of fact, was not good."
We must not forget.
2 million Uyghurs enslaved in China today.
Still isn't.
There are different forms of slavery. Don't think it's just about American agricultural slavery over 150 years ago.
The right seems to want to.
The average cost of an enslaved African was approximately $300 in 1865, which is worth about $5,662.66 today. There were about 4 million enslaved individuals at the end of the Civil War. The total worth of slaves exceeded the combined value of banking, shipping, manufacturing, and commercial real estate.
Don't forget about the 7000 black slave owners
Okay, here comes where did you get those numbers from how about link or direct me to the source material ?
@@ronnelson930 it's available on Google search just type it in .
@@ronnelson930 it's all available here on UA-cam just search for it all the sources and videos are just at your finger tips.
You can find all the things you want on Google search.
@@ronnelson930 Google it .
Its amazing how so many can be led to believe that other humans are less than human for any reason
Cruel world back then, barbaric times all around for everyone , we today would not know what that's like
@@mostlyshorts7462 lol yeah that never happens today
@myzjed5576 not in America but in Africa and many Middle Eastern places there is still slavery today
@@mostlyshorts7462Sadly my friend, there are still plenty of people in America that view other humans as less than human.
@myzjed5576 some people have opinions on others in every race especially in America but not 1 owns a slave , that's not the same story in many other countries
Should this be played and taught in schools? Absolutely. But with context. What should NOT be taught in schools is that this is still a current condition.
Obviously, this is about history.
Well, no shit.
Well, this isn't audio of enslaved peoples. This audio of a women reading a paper claiming it to be so
Jesus Christ my heart was just broken in under 4 minutes. These kids today don't need an edited history lesson to spare their feelings, they need to learn the truth and deal with it without shooting up a school
My great great father at the age of 2 was sold off from his mother. After years of research and DNA I have been able to trace and reunite them
reunite who?
So he was still breathing? And she?
3:26 WOAH THERE, LETS NOT GET CONTROVERSIAL!!!!11!!1!!! /s
I mean, in the 1930s it was still pretty controversial. Still had kids and grandkids of slave holders in high politics, and this was just a few years after Wilson was playing the birth of a nation in the White house. There still were tens of millions of people that thought that slavery was a good thing
This really did break my heart to hear.
I'm 32, and I can still remember the day I learned about slavery, racism, and Martin Luther King early in elementary school. Up until then, black kids were just kids with a different skin color the same way that kids had different hair color. After the lesson and during that day's recess, I saw a white girl who was grabbing a ball back from a black girl. I instantly assumed the white girl was being racist and jumped between them. The two of them walked off together confused as hell.
I left the class with more prejudice than I had going in. How the hell we should educate kids on racism over time, I have no idea. However I trust kids to be born without prejudice more than I trust modern education to handle it properly.
I remember watching ’Dancing With Wolves’ as a teenager and realising how brutal the introduction of Europeans to the American continent was. Now slavery had an added dimension of sadism to the same brutality.
Various Native American tribes were at war with each other and killing each other for land and resources long before a single European ever set foot in North America. 😉
Only an ignoramus is educated about history by Hollywood movies
The term slave has its origins in the word slav. The slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD. Slavery can broadly be described as the ownership, buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of forced and unpaid labour.
Thank you. As the grandchild of "illiterate" Slavic peasants who were nearly starved to death, somehow I have to be reminded all the time to "check my privilage".. We Eastern Europeans KNOW where that word comes from. It's amazing how the English language can take such liberties under the big sky of Russophobia yet bleeps out the "N" word also coined by "Spanish" human traffickers who's descendents get to check off a minority box for freebies.
Classic anti-reparations response 🤡 🔫 . There are also still millions of survivors of the Jim Crow era.
ok? what is your point
Beautiful and sad.
Crazy to think that slavery still continues in this day in age in places like Asia, middle East ECT
It's different today than back then. It was institutionalized codified into laws.
Even then, the Republican Yankee soldiers recognized the slaves as people, and they tried to teach that girl that she was a person and deserving of respect, and attempted to instill confidence in her.
Some of them did, some of them didn't.
1:05 that is SO sad 😞😞😞
this is so sad. Humans can be very very terrible people.
Please never let these stories be forgotten. We need to learn from our mistakes from the past, or we're doomed to repeat history
if we showed this in schools today they would accuse it of being "cRiTiCaL rAcE ThEoRy"
Yeah lol can't teach kids things aren't infallible no
Can't let them learn that the world isnt all black and white and to live one needs a discerning eye to be able to tell what's good and bad
If we can't learn and understand history, our misdeeds and accomplishments, we are doomed to repeat them, and ignorance is something that cannot exist in a democracy.
"Slavery was not good". Man, she should write Texas history books!
*teacher from 1956* "this can touch and teach students"
*teacher from 2024* "I'm not allowed to teach anything about this because our state governor prohibits it"*
this stuff and even MORE is taught in schools, what are you talking about
It’s so backwards isn’t it?
@@user_name_taken_9188Florida.
People who know how to learn: "I'm bound to come across this information at some point by some source, so I'll just hold myself accountable for what I learn in my life. That way i can always blame myself for listening to stupid people."
This is taught in schools. It seems there is an effort to keep it from being taught or to change the narrative in order to support political agendas and keep us fighting among ourselves.
An important lesson that can't be forgotten.
I don't actually think my comment is new or novel, I'm just commenting for the algorithm because we all need to do our part to keep the memory of this awful time alive so we avoid making the same mistakes. The people who did this evil were humans just like us. It is a terrifying sort of folly to assume that it couldn't happen again if we forget the lessons of the past.
I am an African. I was born during apartheid in South Africa and during that time I was young enough to understand what was happening. In 1994 Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa and Apartheid ended. I now live in a new democratic South Africa and life is so much better than it was during the apartheid years. I salute Nelson Mandela. He was a hero. I also salute Harriet Tubman, John Brown and Dr Martin Luther King. They were also heroes.
I was just thinking of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her book Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is 400 pages and each chapter is about 4 pages. I could only read a chapter per day. It was too difficult and heartbreaking.
The USA did a terrible thing by allowing slavery. Why didn't they just hire and pay the workers and let them leave/quit if they wished?
greed
I frankly find censoring of racial slurs in historical material to be counterproductive. Removing terms that are today shocking serves to dilute and reduce the impact of these historical records--some parts of our past should be uncomfortable to listen to, not sugar coated.
This is likely a UA-cam thing, my man
@@perpetualsick That's for sure a driver of it, and that's central to the point I was trying to make. I argue that UA-cam policies do no favors to the discourse when they cause this kind of self-censorship.
In a similar vein, I often hear creators using humorous euphemisms in lieu of the "s word" for fear of demonetization. Who is served when "shortcut to the pavement zone" is safe to use, but "suicide" isn't?
If slaves could see 160 years into the future they would have said "you're still blaming our hardship on your failures?"
It’s not shocking that there were slaves. It’s shocking AMERICA had slaves. The country founded on the words “all men are created equal with inalienable rights, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness “
Not discrediting this in the slightest but I’d like to Also name. United States of America is the first country on the planet to first abolish slavery, if I am wrong, I ought to be corrected
@@theinfinitesolFrance and Great Britain abolished before we did
@@theinfinitesolThe United States has the distinction of going to war over it. Many argue, however, that the institution would have gone away peacefully in time anyway, but The War of States' Rights made that impossible, which arguably was ultimately worse than having it die off naturally.
Slaves are still being used today. That's just what humans do.
@@BradRaiche The United States Civil War has the distinction that it wasn't about morals and more about money.
The Mom's of 🗽 group would definitely report a teacher for sharing this! They have said it makes their children feel bad. Also some books refer to slaves as just workers now. They want to teach that they learned a lot of valuable skills lol. Their stories and lives are important to share and learn about. ❤
Misleading title
You know it's bad when feelings are chosen over documented history.
I'm 46, i moved from middle tennessee to east Tennessee, where i met not 1 but 2 slaves in 1986. I never want to experience what i heard and seen again.
The craziest thing about this is the same argument that was argued for slavery was argued for abortion today.
Ex: my body my choice, if you don't like abortion don't have one but don't tell me what I can do with my body... My property my choice, if you don't like slavery don't own a slave but don't tell me what I can and can't do...
People are not property, we are All made in God's image.
That is very much not the same thing a collection of cells isn't a human being. To compare the subjugation and state sanctioned torture of humans to some lady deciding not to be a parent is frankly disrespectful and just plain stupid.
@@prixe12 a clump of cells that is what? Is it a cow that's growing. It's like saying I have a tree in my front yard but we don't know what it is yet it's supposed to be a banana and it's from a banana tree but we're waiting to find out.
You've literally twisted your logic to justify child sacrifice. I would ask at what point does it become a human by your logic.
Yes, show this in schools and tell children that slavery still exists in other parts of the world.
Not America's problem. The world needs to figure their own shit out and stop relying America.
when you say a comment like this you really tell on yourself that you don't really understand how horrific and inhumane the issue of slavery in the united states was, that's being talked about here in this video. it's almost as if you didn't listen to these stories and how horrific they are. it's almost as if you don't view the subjects in the video as human but simply as props to make a point. it's almost as if you have some kind of guilt about it reflected back on yourself because you feel like you should feel some kind of way about it, so you have to deflect the issue to some other country where you don't have to think too hard about it, where you don't have to take any kind of responsibility about it. where you don't have to do anything about it, where you don't ever have to really think about it. you would be wiser to not tell on yourself by making such stupid ass comments and just keep your mouth shut.
Slavery is such a sensitive topic in modern day. It’s refreshing to hear about it in a purely educational, historic, and non political light.