More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped..

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:Connie Schultz
@ConnieSchultz
“For the first seven decades of its existence, Congress returned again and again to one acrimonious topic: slavery. Many of the lawmakers arguing in Washington were participants in the brutal institution at home.”

This is who they were.

More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped...
The Washington Post has compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress by examining thousands of pages of census records and historical documents.
washingtonpost.com
7:42 AM · Jan 10, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/

No paywall
https://archive.fo/YDFs0

From the founding of the United States until long after the Civil War, hundreds of the elected leaders writing the nation’s laws were current or former slaveowners.

More than 1,700 people who served in the U.S. Congress in the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries owned human beings at some point in their lives, according to a Washington Post investigation of censuses and other historical records.

The country is still grappling with the legacy of their embrace of slavery. The link between race and political power in early America echoes in complicated ways, from the racial inequities that persist to this day to the polarizing fights over voting rights and the way history is taught in schools.

The Washington Post created a database that shows enslavers in Congress represented 37 states, including not just the South but every state in New England, much of the Midwest, and many Western states.

*snip*

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[niyad]

2. KNR and bookmarking.

[Pantagruel]

3. Understandable

why the GOP doesn't want to talk about race in U.S. history. Not a "feel good" topic.

[bullwinkle428]

4. In addition, 9 of the first 11 Presidents were slaveholders. The only

exceptions were Adams and Quincy Adams.

[gladium et scutum]

5. In all

18 Presidents of the United States owned slaves. The last President to own a slave was Ulysses S. Grant.

[crickets]

6. Today I learned

The first woman to serve in the Senate (briefly - one day in 1922) was also its last enslaver. 😔