The Debt, 2020

A quarter of a million enslaved Africans and their descendants was everything to the generated wealth of America. According to Professor David Blight “by 1860 the nearly 4 million American slaves were worth some $3.5 billion, making them the largest single financial asset in the entire US economy, worth more than all manufacturing and rail-roads combined.” Even after Emancipation, former slaves received no compensation for their centuries of free labor.