Assessing the built legacy of America's slave auction sites

2020-02-13T18:52:00-05:00

The latest installment of The New York Times' 1619 Project takes a look at the largely erased built legacy of slavery in America. The article visits a collection of sites that had to be uncovered more or less through original research, as little documentation and few historical markers exist with regards to these places.

Writer Anne C. Bailey and photographer Dannielle Bowman take a look at what remains of this sordid legacy. In the article, Bailey writes, "After the Civil War, most former auction sites quietly blended into the main streets of today. Except for the occasional marker or museum, there was no record of the horror of separation suffered by many black families."

Enslaved people owned by Thomas Jefferson were sold on the steps of Monticello to help pay off the ex-president's debts following his death in 1826. Image courtesy of Wikimedia user David Broad.

Bailey adds, "The sales took place all over the growing nation — in taverns, town squares and train stations, on riverb...

That traffic jam you're stuck in? Blame white supremacy

2019-08-15T19:59:00-04:00

This intertwined history of infrastructure and racial inequality extended into the 1950s and 1960s with the creation of the Interstate highway system. As in most American cities in the decades after the Second World War, the new highways in Atlanta—local expressways at first, then Interstates—were steered along routes that bulldozed “blighted” neighborhoods that housed its poorest residents, almost always racial minorities.

Writing in The New York Times, Kevin M. Kruse connects the dots between highway planning and America's historical campaign to keep African Americans "in their place," an impetus that can be traced back to slavery and its modern day manifestations: segregation, urban renewal, redlining, gentrification, and mass incarceration.

The story is part of The New York Times' 1619 Project, a collection of stories and reports that "reframe the country's history" by foregrounding America's conception in its historical relationship to slavery.

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Assessing the built legacy of America's slave auction sites

That traffic jam you're stuck in? Blame white supremacy