Don’t answer if you saw this in the news today. Trivia question:
How many US Presidents are NOT descendants of slaveholders? And can you name them.
I saw that and was surprised how many, and not just presidents but other politicians.
Not that surprising at the number of other politicians given that they are usually wealthy. Most white Americans didn’t own slaves, and some only had a tiny number. A small number had thousands.
I was slightly surprised that the number of presidents was so low and who they were at first, though on later consideration, it makes sense.
I didn’t look it up, but I’d guess all of them, except maybe Trump (don’t know his maternal ancestry).
Yep. Including Obama through his mother’s side. Trump is the only one, immigrant grandparents.
Same here, on my other’s side. Surprised me, because the family I knew had no real wealth. But, if one has southern heritage and can trace their roots back far enough, you’ll have some slaveowners. The most recent I’ve found was a couple in 1850.
Did you know that Cuba imported 2-3x the number of slaves as the US? I didn’t until Henry Lewis Gates mentioned it on his program.
Guess sugar cane is work intensive, though not sure they harvested cane in Cuba then. Here’s a little known fact, Jamaica banned slavery in 1834. I think they were the first to do so in western hemisphere.
Sugar was the main cash crop for Cuba from the mid-late 1700s until the fall of the USSR. It was also the main crop in Jamaica, which is why when Jamaica banned slavery they also made every slave over age 6 an indentured servant to their prior owners, which did give the former slaves some future rights but didn’t make their work any easy.
Growing up in Florida there were some sugar cane patches…not really farms…but a plot with some on it. One backed up to my junior high school. During gym we’d sometimes break some off and suck on the stalk. A nice sweet treat.
Donald trump
In Florida in the 80s and 90s cane was big biz in Florida. I remember the massive fires when they burned the harvested fields. It’s water intensive and they were draining the Everglades to grow it.
Some countries didn’t have intergenerational slaves as much as we did. They imported them, worked them to death, and imported more.
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