Today in Labor History March 2, 1807: Congress abolished the African slave trade. The first American slave ship, Desire, sailed from Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1637. After that, nearly 15 million Africans were transported as slaves to America. Overall, the African continent lost 50 million people to slavery and the deaths associated with it. Another 250,000 slaves continued to be illegally imported into the U.S. up until the Civil War.

The Thirteenth Amendment “prohibited” slavery throughout the USA, but with the following clause: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” Jim Crow laws in the past and racial profiling today result in large numbers of African Americans being incarcerated and subjected to legal slavery. Sometimes prisoners have even been rented out to plantations that had used chattel slaves in the past. But with the U.S. having both the world’s highest number of incarcerated people (2.1 million) and the highest incarceration rate (665 per 100,000), there are a lot of people from all ethnicities being subjected to legal slavery.

And on this same date in 1859: The Great Slave Auction began. The two-day event was the largest such auction in U.S. history. The auction was held at Ten Broeck Race Course, near Savannah, Georgia. They sold 429 men, women, children and infants. Prior to the sale, they housed the slaves in stables. Journalist Mortimer Thomson pretended to be a buyer. He then wrote a scathing article titled, “What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #slavery #civilwar #africa #abolition #africanamerican #BlackMastodon #racism #jimcrow #thirteenthamendment #prison

Today in Labor History February 1, 1865: President Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. However, the 13th Amendment does not abolish all forms of slavery. The state is still permitted to force prisoners to work for free, or for wages far below the minimum wage, with virtually no labor rights. They are even allowed to do this and sell the products made by prisoners for a profit, sometimes even getting tax breaks for doing so. Of the 1.2 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the U.S., nearly 800,000 are laboring by force, whether they want to, or not. Roughly 17% of these prisoners work for government-run businesses (e.g., DMV call centers; doing laundry for public hospitals; hazardous spill cleanup; firefighting in state-owned forests); while 3% work for private-sector employers, at extremely low wages, with no labor rights or protections. And, so long as capitalism exists, the rest of us are wage slaves, forced to choose between selling our bodies and our time to whoever will agree to pay us, or losing our ability to feed and house our families, sometimes at paltry wages that have been driven down by competition from the incarcerated slave labor force. Sadly, with the right-wing backlash against everything “woke,” politicians and pundits successfully convinced California voters to vote against Prop 6, in 2025, which would have banned prison slave labor in their state.

https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #slavery #Abolition #lincoln #thirteenthamendment #prison #capitalism #wageslavery #BlackMastodon

Today in Labor History February 1, 1865: President Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. However, the 13th Amendment does not abolish all forms of slavery. The state is still permitted to force prisoners to work for free, or for wages far below the minimum wage. They are even allowed to do this and sell the products made by prisoners for a profit, sometimes even getting tax breaks for doing so. And, so long as capitalism exists, wage slavery will still persist. Sadly, with the right-wing backlash against everything “woke,” politicians and pundits successfully convinced California voters to vote against Prop 6, which would have banned prison slave labor in their state.

https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #slavery #Abolition #lincoln #thirteenthamendment #prison #capitalism #wageslavery

December 18, 1865: The #ThirteenthAmendment, prohibited #slavery throughout the USA. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” Jim Crow laws in the past and racial profiling today result in large numbers of African Americans and poor people being
#incarceratedworkers -
#IWOC - organising committee #prisonindustrialcomplex #iww

https://www.onebigunion.ie/iwocireland

#Slavery #ThirteenthAmendment

Ahead of Juneteenth, congressional lawmakers again seek to remove exception for slavery from US Constitution | CNN Politics
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/16/politics/abolition-amendment-slavery-constitution/index.html