Slavery in North America was for both the "Black" AND "White"

“Both Indian and Negro, besides white servants were bound out to a master for a term of years and received no wages. Of these there were a few in the Pilgrim group.” Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, Vol.1

Dear friends,

The Puritans of New England found no problem with human enslavement. After all, Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first British colonial settlement in North America to legalize slavery. That happened approximately 21 years or slightly less than a generation after the landing of the famous Pilgrim group.

Remember, that the whole purpose of the North American venture by the British ruling class was to extract as much wealth - precious metals or whatever, as they could, both human and non-human, for the good of their class - not their so-called "race". As Professor Lloyd Hogan explains, "It must be emphasized that Wealth Accumulation is not done in the abstract. Indeed, it must be carried out by the exercise of the conscious will of people acting in the role of wealth accumulators. These wealth owners have the onus of preserving the form of their wealth while, at the same time, striving to increase its magnitude. Just as important, is the necessity for continuous control over the Wealth Accumulation Process by the wealth owners”. (The Principles of Black Political Economy by Lloyd Hogan)

Due to the "tax benefits" of illegally trafficking in captive workers (so-called slaves), it is impossible for anyone to determine how many Africans were brought here. Although the numbers of captive workers who actually lived in New England were not as numerous as the Southern states, there was an enormous slave-dealing business in this region - particularly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island - with other British North American colonies, as well as the motherland - England herself. (A succession of British laws, over generations, prohibited the colonies to trade with other countries.)

The wealth created by the mostly free labor from all of these Black folks in North American colonies helped serve as the basis for the development of businesses and real estate and, therefore, political power, in early America. But Africans who later became African Americans were not the only people to give their labor freely. That is, since the native peoples in the Americas, for the most part, were unwilling to "cooperate" with their attackers, then the rulers had to "de-people" North America, by the murder of Early American Native peoples or so-called Indians, in order to "re-people" with poor and desperate Europeans, especially those fro England, Germany, Spain, and France.

As a result, during the colonial period of North American history, that is, prior to the War of Independence, English citizens were coaxed, tricked, coerced, and even kidnapped in order to provide the necessary (human) bodies of labor to increase the wealth of the British ruling class. As well, many miscreants were shipped here (the U.S.) for the benefit of the British ruling class to have additional labor available.

About British settlements like Massachusetts Bay Colony, Charlotte M. Waters wrote, "The colonies were used too as dumping ground for prisoners and undesirables generally, in spite of protests from the colonists. Criminals, prisoners of war, and inconvenient Irish were thus got rid of. Royalist prisoners after Worcester shared the fate with 2,000 Irish girls and boys deported by order of the Government. Kidnapping was not uncommon. Such emigrants were sold by auction..." (Waters, An Economic History of England).

Indentured servitude is the name applied to Europeans, particularly the early British settlers, who traded both their human and civil rights to British merchants, usually for a term of four years, in order to gain access, that is, barter their labor ability in exchange for passage, to North America. These indentured servants were unable to feed themselves in their European homelands. For instance, in the Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, Vol.1 it is pointed out about early New Englanders, including the famous "Pilgrim" group, that landed at Cape Cod (Plymouth Rock), that there was a small servile population. The official document reads: “Both Indian and Negro, besides white servants were bound out to a master for a term of years and received no wages. Of these there were a few in the Pilgrim group.”

Now, since there was nobody here from England already when the Pilgrims came, then that means that the slave owners were on board with their captive workers or so-called slaves. Yet, school history books, under the guise of “No child left behind”, continue to pitch the lie that the Pilgrims came here for religious freedom.

The following passage was written by a priest who wanted to see for himself exactly what European peoples had to go through on the ships that transported them to British North America. This particular six-months voyage took place around 1750 or 26 years before the start of the War of Independence. "...during the voyage on these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of sea-sickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably. Add to this want of provisions, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, anxiety, want, afflictions and lamentations, together with other trouble, as c.v. the lice abound so frightfully, especially on sick people, that they can be scraped off the body...Children from 1 to 7 years rarely survive the voyage; and many a time parents are compelled to see their children miserably suffer and die from hunger, thirst, and sickness, and then to see them cast into the water." (English Historical Documents, Vol. 9, edited by Merrill Jensen)

In an essay called "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the U.S.A.", Barbara Jeanne Fields indicates, "...the rationale that the English developed for suppressing the 'barbarous' Irish later served nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and indigenous American Indians." In other words, slavery in America was not invented for Africans. Rather, it was already a practice that went on between Europeans themselves.

The preceding information has been pointed out because, based upon the illusion that they are "white", many North Americans suffer from an identity crisis. That is, under their fantasies or illusions that they are "white", most European Americans disregard their true identities by pretending to share some kind of common heritage, based upon skin color. Regrettably, the majority of people who live in America today hide behind their whiteness - like Ku Klux Klanners in white bed sheets - concealing their true cultural pasts (which invariably are not in North America but someplace in what we now know as Europe). Even worse, the few that have genuine history in this country, going back before the North American Civil War, are themselves the descendants of slaves, albeit temporary ones or indentured servants. Please stay tuned for more on this topic. Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus