by
Matthew Whitaker
Assistant Professor
History Department
Affiliate Faculty, African and African American Studies
Affiliate Faculty, School of Justice and Social Inquiry
Arizona State University
The horror of slavery and its vicious legacy in North America occupy a central place in the history of the modern world. As James T. Campbell of the Washington Post has reminded us, “in the 340 years after Columbus's voyage to the Americas, some 12 million people migrated” from the “old world” to the “new world”. “Of those, about 2 million were Europeans, while the other 10 million were African slaves. No single datum speaks more bluntly to slavery's centrality in the history of the modern world.” For a little less than two thirds of its history, the U.S. was a slave society, and our nation owes much of our prosperity to the power and wealth that this ghastly and “peculiar institution” engendered. Despite the progress this nation has made in race matters, it is still searching for ways to rid itself of the economic, political, social, and culture shackles of its slave past. Randall Robinson, founder of the humanitarian group TransAfrica, has argued that America must “accept responsibility for the grievous wrong that has been committed against Africans and African Americans,” and our entire society ostensibly, “and take steps to redress that wrong.” The professional historians and documentarians who have collaborated on Slavery and the Making of America, have not only produced a wonderful documentary, they have also done their part to provide the necessary historical context to inspire and inform the requisite degree of atonement for deep and lasting change.
The makers of the film argue that between the 15 th and 20 th centuries, 10 million people of African descent were “imported” as slaves to “New World” slave plantations. This “Tran-Atlantic slave trade” exploded into one of the most massive and despotic extractions of a people from their land and way of life in history. Beginning in the 17th century millions of black slaves were brought to the U.S. The moneymaking plantations of America, therefore, were soon housed and husbanded by unpaid black labor. They were examined, marketed, sold, purchased, exchanged, and treated as chattel. Black people were raped, mutilated, ridiculed as aberrant and inferior, and were denied the freedoms set forth in the Declaration of Independence that America claimed to embrace. By 1865, despite America's proclamation that “all men are created equal,” black slavery had become a monumental atrocity, and with the support of article one of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government, southern planters, and northern industry (after being abolished in the North earlier). By the fall of 1865, there were some 4 million black slaves in the American South, and their numbers represented over 90% of the total number of black people in the U.S.
While the film's narrators and scholars discuss slavery as an American dilemma, they do so from “the vantage point of the enslaved.” In this documentary, slaves are more than chattel, and are not simply victims of white supremacy. They are depicted as innovative agents who maintained African traditions while also forging new identities and influencing the conditions of their daily lives. Throughout their dogged fight, the film also reveals that these slaves deeply influenced the development of the U.S. Major historical events and changes such as the American Revolution, the emergence of the “Cotton Kingdom,” the enormous interstate slave trade, and the Civil War, are shown primarily through the lives of the slaves themselves. This four-part PBS series (Hour One - Down the Spiral , Hour Two - Liberty in the Air , Hour Three - Seeds of Destruction , and Hour Four - The Challenge of Freedom ) has many qualities. It is clearly based upon an enormous body of sound historical research and writing, balanced evaluation of controversial sub-themes and ideas, and visually stimulating images and re-enactments. The only weakness of the documentary is the sometimes monotone, seemingly uninspired demeanor of some of the interviewees. Given the nature of the subject, some of the commentators and the film itself, are surprisingly detached. Even though some of the scholars appear to be unfazed by some of the documentary's exposés, it will prove to be quite informative and sometimes shocking for more popular audiences.
As Campbell argued, “whether Americans are finally ready, 140 years after abolition, to take an unstinting look at slavery is an open question. As our current president has noted, we are a people disinclined to ‘look in the rearview mirror.'” For people who acknowledge and respect the fact that our past is prologue to our future, and wish to take a look back, Slavery and the Making of America is a good place to start. For as the authors of the companion book to this series have argued, slavery's legacy “remains in the history and heritage of the South that it shaped, in the culture of the North where its memory was long denied, in the national economy for which it provided much of the foundation, and in the political and social system it profoundly influenced.” Many of our nation's contemporary problems “are all imperfectly understood without the historical context of American slavery and without an understanding of the means by which a freedom-loving people rationalized their tolerance” of an institution that stood in direct opposition to the principles upon which the United States was founded.
Slavery and the Making of America airs Febraury 9 and 16 at 9 p.m. on Channel 8.
