The Reality of Slavery

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Yesterday was mostly filled with a visit to the Legacy Museum, which details the evils of slavery. It’s in Montgomery, Alabama, and part of it is located on the site of slave factories. Not too far from the museum (on the bus ride as you go to the boat that’ll take you to the sculpture park) you’ll pass the street where the slave warehouses and auctions happened. Yeah, folks, we used to buy and sell human beings in this country like they were dogs. Except the dogs had legal protection. It’s not a pleasant part of American history. It’s also not unique to American history: the British Isles were acquiring slaves before they settled here. World Population Review indicates that, by modern definitions of “slavery” (people who are not free to get their own job, leave a job if they want to, are forced into a marriage, or trafficked for sexual or labor purposes), about 25 million people are subjected to forced labor, marriage, or restriction of life activities (like learning or living independently). Those issues are for another time (although if you want to be nauseated by how prevalent it is in the name of religion, watch a documentary on the arranged marriages in ultra-orthodox Hasidic sects). The museums in Montgomery deal mainly with what Europeans brought to the new world with them: blacks from Africa who’d been bought from tribes who sold the people they conquered in battle, or just kidnapped by people looking to make a buck. There were certainly many examples of “slaves” who were treated more as house servant employees would be (save for, as many of the places I’ve visited have had, separate entrances from the whites). Unfortunately, for every one of those “good” stories there are a hundred or a thousand tales of beatings, whippings, and murders…all of which were “legal” because the slave wasn’t considered human, but property. If that’s hard to read, imagine walking through a museum filled with the stories of it. One scene showed heads (instead of skulls) buried in sand with tidal water washing over it, to represent the people who died aboard transport ships and were tossed overboard like an unwanted bluegill fish. Or a sculpture of a gigantic steel ball with the chain leading to a leg shackle (this one was unlocked, because the sculpture was titled Free At Last). Or reading how New York City had the largest population of slaves in the country at one point. Or seeing laws from various southern states that said slaves who escaped once would be whipped and branded, whipped and branded and in some cases have their ear lobbed off if they tried a second time, and killed if they tried a third time. Yes, that was a difficult day of museum visiting. The museum and the sculpture garden did not allow photography except in a very few places, which is why I have so few photos to show you. The collage here: (Upper left) Entrance to the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. (Upper right) The “National Monument to Freedom” wall. What you cannot see is the inscribed names on that wall, representing the untold millions who died in slavery. (Lower left) A statue of Rosa Parks in the meditation/contemplation park across the street from the Legacy Museum. (Lower right) A waterfall sculpture at the end of the sculpture park, emblazoned with the words of an old spiritual: “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I’m free at last.”