What Makes A Country? (Acknowledging It's A Country)

"Inform yourself of the impact [of slavery] and also remember that these benefits were passed from one generation to the next. Slavery wasn’t that long ago, and there is slave money in the pockets of millions of people all around you."

ADDED:

"Every year or two, somebody discovers that a famous bank on Wall Street profited from slavery. This discovery is always treated as if the relationship between slavery and the American financial system were some kind of odd accident, disconnected from the present. But it was not an accident. The cotton and slave trades were the biggest businesses in antebellum America, and then as now, American finance developed its most innovative products to finance the biggest businesses.

In the 1830s, powerful Southern slaveowners wanted to import capital into their states so they could buy more slaves. They came up with a new, two-part idea: mortgaging slaves; and then turning the mortgages into bonds that could be marketed all over the world."