One of the most vexing questions in African-American history is whether free African Americans themselves owned slaves.
I do not know the importance but it does amaze me when an oppressed group of people turnaround an oppress another group of oppressed people. Why did Jews own slaves for they understood oppression was wrong? Why did the Irish the lowest of the low in their homelands except when they came to America and turnaround and try to drive the free blacks out of cities here in America? Why would Free Blacks want to own slaves?
Is it a case of adapting to the culture and society they live in or grew up in? Is it a simple case of greed and getting ahead within a slave society...
Here some numbers...
https://www.evblog.virginiahumanities.org/2011/12/slavery-by-the-numbers/
Less than 4: The percentage of the total number of enslaved Africans transported to the New World who were imported to the area that became the United States. (
Source)
90: The percentage of the total number of enslaved Africans transported to the New World who were imported to Brazil and the Caribbean. (
Source)
33: The percentage of South Carolina’s enslaved labor force early in the 1700s made up of American Indians. (
Source)
4 to 1: The ratio of white servants to enslaved Africans in Virginia late in the 1670s. (
Source)
4 to 1: The ratio of enslaved Africans to white servants in Virginia early in the 1690s. (
Source)
1 in 7: Chance that a New York State resident in 1776 was enslaved. (
Source)
25: The approximate percentage of the total number of enslaved Africans transported to the Americas who came
after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807. (
Source)
$97,100,000,000,000: Estimated value of the labor performed by black slaves in America between 1619 and 1865, compounded at 6 percent interest through 1993. (
Source)
1: Votes by which eighteenth-century lawmakers in the United States rejected outlawing slavery in all future states beyond the original thirteen. (
Source)
55: The number of white people killed in Southampton County, Virginia, during Nat Turner’s rebellion in August 1831. (
Source)
15: Votes by which Virginia lawmakers rejected outlawing slavery in the commonwealth on January 25, 1832. (
Source)
500: Estimated number of anti-slavery petitions sent to the United States Congress between 1835 and 1836. (
Source)
7.5: Percentage of all free blacks in the United States in 1830 who owned slaves. (
Source)
12: Percentage of all free blacks in Virginia in 1830 who owned slaves. (
Source)
1 to 1: Ratio of the average 1850 price in Texas of a healthy male slave to that of 200 acres of prime farmland. (
Source)
490,865: Total number of slaves in Virginia in 1860. (
Source)
30.7: Percentage of slaves among total Virginia population in 1860. (
Source)
52.2: Percentage of slaves among total Albemarle County, Virginia, population in 1860. (
Source)
$15: Price an Indiana historical museum charged in 1999 for visitors to spend 90 minutes as a runaway slave. (
Source)
2 to 1: Estimated ratio of white to black runaways in an Indiana historical museum’s slavery reenactments in 1999. (
Source)