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Africans did NOT sell their own people into slavery
The Liverpool Museum website has a firsthand account of the story of an African boy, Ouladah Equiano violently forced into a life of slavery. It reads in part, “Generally, when the grown people in the neighbourhood were gone far in the fields to labour, the children assembled together in some of the neighbours’ premises to play; and commonly some of us used to get up a tree to look out for any assailant or kidnapper that might come upon us; for they sometimes took those opportunities of our parents’ absence to attack and carry off as many as they could seize...One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both, and without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood.”
The young man was thus taken from his country and taken to lands he had not seen before, sold for hundred and seventy two white shells and after six to seven months, arrived at the sea coast. A lot of Africans were kidnapped in this manner, others captured in battles, some sold off into slavery as payments for debts, and more sold as a punishment for crimes committed. They were then traded for goods which reduced them to no more than a commodity. The story of most African-Americans starts in a setting quite similar to Olaudah Equiano’s in Western Africa. It is a story of violence and dehumanisation that can never be forgotten or pushed under the rags of conciliatory denial.
Beginnings
The Portuguese are remembered as the first people to start enslaving Africans. They took captured Africans to Europe and the Spanish joined the growing industry, taking Africans to America in 1503. This marked the beginning of what was a macabre commercial enterprise dealing in people. BBC says, “Traders would export manufactured goods to West Africa where they would be exchanged for slaves from African merchants. The slaves were then transported across the Atlantic and sold for huge profits in the Americas.” It was an illustrious business that made many people but the victims rich. Traders in Africa were enriched just as merchants from the West also benefitted. What has been forgotten is how African communities resisted the trade in persons. The deliberate omission is an attempt to make the communities that remained culpable in a dirty system that only stole their loved ones from them.
The Untold Story of Resistance
It is a fact that there were certain African communities which worked hand in hand with Europeans to sell prisoners of war, criminals and even kidnap slaves for goods. Not much is then said of the resistance of such communities as Benin in what is now Southern Nigeria, and the Fante people of modern Ghana. Africa Speaks says Fante leader King Ansah had his people watch for ships and prevented them from coming ashore. In Benin, the people killed Europeans on sight while leaders in other parts of Africa only realised too late that the slave trade was really just exploitation and they gained little from it.
A Congolese king, Nzinga Mbemba wrote letters to the Portuguese after being awakened to the evil of slavery. In one letter he wrote, “That is why we beg of Your Highness to help and assist us in this matter, commanding your factors that they should not send here either merchants or wares, because it is our will that in these Kingdoms there should not be any trade of slaves nor outlet for them.”
https://www.africanexponent.com/pos...of-african-resistance-against-the-slave-trade
Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery: Misconceptions About the African Involvement in the Slave Trade
In the first place, the Portuguese initiated what eventually became the Trans-Atlantic slave trade mainly through slave raids along the coasts of Africa. The first of these raids came in 1444 and was led by Lançarote de Freitas. The problem with raiding for slaves was that it was extremely dangerous. For instance, the slave trader Nuno Tristão was killed during an ambush. Slave raiding proved to be an extremely dangerous way to obtain slaves, but buying slaves was much safer and took less effort on the part of the Europeans. Therefore, the first phase of the slave trade began not with a trade, but with a series of raids. This point is especially important because although the slave trade was on some levels based on a partnership between European buyers and African traders, the slave trade did not begin as such.
Moreover, the partnership between the traders and buyers was an uneasy one. The European slave traders often betrayed those who supplied them with slaves. A famous case of this was the African slave trader Daaga who was tricked and captured by slave traders. He was taken to Trinidad where he would eventually lead a mutiny. Another example is given by Anne Bailey in her book African Voices in the Atlantic Slave Trade. She mentions the story of Chief Ndorkutsu who had been providing captives to the European traders. Eventually some of the Ndorkutsu’s own relatives were tricked into boarding a slave ship and then taken as slaves to Cuba.
Typically wars in West Africa were relatively short affairs that left a small number of causalities. The introduction of European weapons made these wars more drawn out and destructive affairs. Moreover, the only way Africans could acquire these firearms was through the trade of slaves. A king of Dahomey once requested that Europeans establish a firearms factory in his nation, but this request went ignored. Firearms became necessary for African nations to defend themselves both from African rivals as well as from European intrusion, but the only way to acquire these weapons was through the slave trade. This situation only benefited the competing European powers that were able to play Africans against each other.
Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery: Misconceptions About the African Involvement in the Slave Trade | HuffPost
How Many Slaves Did Blacks Own?
So what do the actual numbers of black slave owners and their slaves tell us? In 1830, the year most carefully studied by Carter G. Woodson, about 13.7 percent (319,599) of the black population was free. Of these, 3,776 free Negroes owned 12,907 slaves, out of a total of 2,009,043 slaves owned in the entire United States, so the numbers of slaves owned by black people over all was quite small by comparison with the number owned by white people. In his essay, " 'The Known World' of Free Black Slaveholders," Thomas J. Pressly, using Woodson's statistics, calculated that 54 (or about 1 percent) of these black slave owners in 1830 owned between 20 and 84 slaves; 172 (about 4 percent) owned between 10 to 19 slaves; and 3,550 (about 94 percent) each owned between 1 and 9 slaves. Crucially, 42 percent owned just one slave.
It is reasonable to assume that the 42 percent of the free black slave owners who owned just one slave probably owned a family member to protect that person, as did many of the other black slave owners who owned only slightly larger numbers of slaves. As Woodson put it in 1924's Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830, "The census records show that the majority of the Negro owners of slaves were such from the point of view of philanthropy. In many instances the husband purchased the wife or vice versa … Slaves of Negroes were in some cases the children of a free father who had purchased his wife. If he did not thereafter emancipate the mother, as so many such husbands failed to do, his own children were born his slaves and were thus reported to the numerators."
Moreover, Woodson explains, "Benevolent Negroes often purchased slaves to make their lot easier by granting them their freedom for a nominal sum, or by permitting them to work it out on liberal terms." In other words, these black slave-owners, the clear majority, cleverly used the system of slavery to protect their loved ones.
Did Black People Own Slaves?
Now would you like to discuss the years after slavery, or are you scared?
No one is going to read that shit. You don't have the credibility.
