Black History Month: Slavery, MLK and American Capitalism

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Martin Luther King – “Why I am opposed to the war in Vietnam”

Jurassic 5 – “Freedom”

You’re listening to Back in the USSR here on CFRU 93.3 FM, I am Siegfried, this is Black History Month and that was Dr Martin Luther King Jr himself, an excerpt from his anti-imperialist speech condemning the war in Vietnam and expressing his staunch opposition to empire and the capitalist system driving it.  To begin this second show of Black History Month, I’d like to compare Martin’s words in his speech on Vietnam with the words of another African-American leader one century before him.  This is what Frederick Douglass said in 1852 in “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro". 

Frederick Douglass was speaking at a time when slavery was still a major mode of production within the context of American capitalism.  As historian Edward E. Baptist made clear in his book “The Half Has Never Been Told”, slavery played an integral role in capital accumulation in early America, with black slave labor producing massive profits for plantation owners, banks, and commercial interests alike.  Making millions of Africans work for free from sunup to sundown was a very profitable thing, that’s why so many black people were kidnapped from Africa in the first place and brought half-way around the world to grow cotton, sugar and other cash crops under the merciless law of the whip and the gun.  Consider this: In the span of a single lifetime after the 1780s, the American South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out plantations to a sub-continental empire. Entrepreneurial enslavers moved more than 1 million enslaved people, by force, from the communities that survivors of the slave trade from Africa had built in the South and in the West to vast territories that were seized—also by force—from their Native American inhabitants.

1783 at the end of the American Revolution to 1861, the number of slaves in the United States increased five times over, and all this expansion produced a powerful nation. For white enslavers were able to force enslaved African-American migrants to pick cotton faster and more efficiently than free people. Their practices rapidly transformed the southern states into the dominant force in the global cotton market, and cotton was the world’s most widely traded commodity at the time, as it was the key raw material during the first century of the industrial revolution. The returns from cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy, and by the time of the Civil War, the United States had become the second nation to undergo large-scale industrialization. In fact, slavery’s expansion shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics of the new nation—not only increasing its power and size, but also, eventually, dividing US politics, differentiating regional identities and interests, and helping to make civil war possible.  That’s the context in which Frederick Douglass and the other heroes of the abolitionist cause were writing.

And I want to be clear, lest some people think Canada had no part in this history of profitable enslavement.  The history of slavery in Canada spanned two centuries in what was New France and Lower Canada under British rule. Canada was involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Within the country’s borders, people were bought, sold and enslaved. Canada was further linked to the institution of enslavement through international trade. The country exchanged products such as salted cod and timber for slave-produced goods such as rum, molasses, tobacco and sugar from slaveholding colonies in the Caribbean.  Black people were kept captive by people of all classes — from governors to priests, to blacksmiths, to tailors; and from figures such as Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, to James McGill, the founder of McGill University, one of Canada’s top universities. While slave ownership filled a need for cheap labour, it was also considered part of an individual’s personal wealth. The law enforced and maintained enslavement through legal contracts that detailed transactions of the buying, selling or hiring out of enslaved persons, as well as the terms of wills in which enslaved people were passed on to others. As chattel, they had no basic rights or freedoms and they were either treated humanely or cruelly, depending on their slave master.

French and English colonies depended on slave labour for economic growth. The intention of enslaving Black people was to exploit their labour. Colonists wanted free labour to increase their personal wealth, and in turn, enhance local and colonial economies. In Canada, the majority of enslaved people worked as domestic servants in households, cooking and cleaning, and taking care of their owners’ children. Many were employed in the businesses of their owners, including for example inns, taverns, mills and butcher shops. Enslaved Black people cleared land, chopped wood, built log homes and made furniture in the colonies. As agricultural workers, they prepared fields, planted and harvested crops and tended to livestock. Many also worked as hunters, voyageurs, sailors, miners, laundresses, printing press operators, fishermen, dock workers, seamstresses, hair dressers and even as executioners. Slave labour was used to make a range of products, such as potash, soap, bricks, candles, sails and ropes. Enslaved males were trained and employed in skilled trades such as blacksmiths, carpenters, cobblers, wainwrights and coopers. They were often “hired out” as a way for slave owners to earn more money on their investment. Enslaved Black people laboured long hours, doing physically strenuous tasks, and were always at the beck and call of their masters.

Introduced by French colonial settlers in New France in the early 1600s, slavery lasted until it was abolished throughout British North America in 1834.  While it might not have been as integral to the economy as slavery in the southern plantation country was, slavery was a major driver of economic growth from the time fish caught on the East Coast became a staple of the diet of slaves in the British colonies in the West Indies in the 1600s. The British government in 1790 passed the Imperial Statute of 1790, which allowed colonial settlers in the U.S. loyal to the British, to bring in “negros (sic), household furniture, utensils of husbandry, or cloathing (sic)” into Canada duty-free.   Around 3,000 enslaved men, women and children of African descent were brought into British North America. By the 1790s, the number of enslaved Black people in the Maritimes (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island) ranged from 1,200 to 2,000. There were about 300 in Lower Canada (Québec), and between 500 and 700 in Upper Canada (Ontario).

In early Canada, some slave owners held a small number of slaves, while others had more than 20. Father Louis Payet, the priest of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, Québec, owned five slaves — one Indigenous and four Black. James McGill, member of the Assembly of Lower Canada and founder of McGill University, counted six enslaved Black persons as part of his property holdings. Boatswain and Jane were both owned by Loyalist widow Catherine Clement in Niagara, where they were advertised for sale in the Niagara Herald in 1802. Noted deputy superintendent of the Indian Department, Matthew Elliott, is known to have held at least 60 enslaved Black people on his large estate in Fort Malden, Ontario (present-day Amherstburg). British army officer Sir John Johnson brought 14 Black slaves with him to early Canada. Prominent military officer and merchant John Askin bought and sold as many as 23 slaves on both sides of the Detroit River. James Girty traded with, and was an interpreter for, the Indigenous peoples in the Ohio region. He owned at least three enslaved Black people in Gosfield Township in Essex County, Ontario. One of his slaves — Jack York — was accused of an offense against a White woman and was sentenced to be hanged. However, Jack escaped before the sentence could be carried out.

Slave ownership was prevalent among the members of the early Upper Canada Legislative Assemblies, as well. Six out of the 16 members of the first Parliament of the Upper Canada Legislative Assembly (1792–96) were slave owners or had family members who owned slaves: John McDonell, Ephraim Jones, Hazelton Spencer, David William Smith, and François Baby all owned slaves, and Philip Dorland’s brother Thomas owned 20 slaves. Dorland was replaced in Parliament by slave owner Peter Van Alstine. And the following six out of the nine original members of the upper house of the Legislative Council of Upper Canada were also slave owners and/or members of slaveholding families: Peter Russell, James Baby, Alexander Grant Sr., Richard Duncan, Richard Cartwright and Robert Hamilton. Peter Russell, the first receiver and auditor general of Upper Canada, had a free Black man named Pompadour working for him. But Pompadour’s wife Peggy and their three children Jupiter, Amy and Milly were enslaved by Russell.

The following 14 out of the 17 members of the second Parliament of the Upper Canada Legislative Assembly (1797–1800) either enslaved Black people or were from slaveholding families. David W. Smith, who was serving his second term in the Assembly, was a slaveholder. Thomas Fraser, who owned four slaves in the District of Johnstown, was the district’s first sheriff and came from a Loyalist slaveholding family. Richard Beasley owned several slaves in Hamilton, and Richard Norton Wilkinson was in possession of a Black woman and two Black children. Thomas McKee came from a slave-owning family and enslaved eight Black people himself. Dr. Solomon Jones purchased an eight-year-old Black girl from his brother Daniel in 1788, and Timothy Thompson owned a number of enslaved Black people in the Midland District (see Midland). Robert Isaac Dey Gray was Upper Canada’s first solicitor general, and became a slave owner when his father, Major James Gray, died, leaving him a Black woman named Dorinda Baker and her sons Simon and John. Benjamin Hardison owned Chloe Cooley before selling her to Adam Vrooman. Samuel Street and his business partner Thomas Butler (son of Colonel John Butler of Butler’s Rangers) dealt in the sale of many goods, including enslaved people. In 1786, they sold “a Negro wench named Sarah about nine Years old” to Adam Crysler for £40. William Fairfield and Edward Jessup Jr. were also from families that enslaved Black people. And lastly, Christopher Robinson was from a family that enslaved Black people and was also the sponsor of the 1798 Bill to authorize and allow persons coming into this Province to settle to bring with them their Negro Slaves. Though the bill passed the first three readings in the Assembly, the Legislative Council tied up the bill until the close of the parliamentary session, and in doing so prevented it from becoming law. The introduction of this bill reflected an opposition to the abolition of slavery in the province.

Members of Nova Scotia’s Legislative Assembly were also slave owners. James DeLancey and Major Thomas Barclay, both of whom served in the 6th General Assembly (1785–93), owned six and seven slaves respectively. James Moody, who sat in the 7th General Assembly (1793–99) possessed eight slaves. John Taylor, who was a sitting member in the 8th General Assembly (1799–1806), held six Black people in bondage.

Just as in America, while the formal system of enslavement in Canada ceased to exist in the 19^th Century, specifically in 1834 when slavery was officially abolished throughout the British Empire, 184 years later, Black people remain policed, monitored and marginalized by state institutions.  While they make up only 3 percent of the population, they represent 10 percent of the people incarcerated in Canada.  So slavery existed in Canada, and racism against black people in this country is still a very real thing, not that it’s much talked about.  There’s a real tendency in this country to downplay things like racism and racist violence and say that they “don’t happen here” or they’re somehow an “American problem” and that’s just not true.  There’s a lot of ignorance about the real history of Canada and that needs to change.

The Welfare Poets “Let it be known”

You’re listening to Back in the USSR.  Now, I started the program talking about Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader, anti-war activist, and prime target of the American national security state for his efforts with regard to both of these things.  This might be hard to believe to some people today, given how everyone seems to invoke his name and speak words of praise, not only in politics but in the business world as well.  I remember hearing one marketing guru using his name in the same sentence as Apple Computers once.  And if you look at the real history of his life and career, it becomes clear just how much of an effort there’s been to reduce him from the radical figure that he was into a harmless icon who can be used to sell products in Superbowl commercials.  That’s exactly when the next piece I’m going to play is all about.  This is an interview with African-American historian Gerald Horne this past week on the Real News Network.

Gerald Horne “Ram Truck’s Superbowl Ad Drives Over MLK’s Legacy”

Public Enemy “By the Time I Get to Arizona”

You’re listening to Back in the USSR.  Gerald Horne briefly mentioned the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and expressed his doubts as to the official narrative about his killing, something which many others have also had over the years.  I want to focus on that right now in fact, because, as you’ll see, there is considerable documentary evidence that the United States government did in fact conspire to murder King because they indeed viewed him as a threat: for his anti-war stance on Vietnam, to his growing criticism of the capitalist system in America, to his mobilization of working class people and his plans on initiating a tent city occupy-style protest in Washington D.C. around the issue of poverty, to the increasingly radical message he was delivering to oppressed African-Americans.  This next clip is of Barry Zwicker discussing the details of King’s assassination in light of the evidence now available.

Martin Luther King Assassination, New Evidence (Barrie Zwicker, 360 Degree Vision, 2008)

William Pepper, “The Execution of Martin Luther King,” (Seattle, WA, 2008)