Don Wildman

I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

Welcome back.

We're speaking with Professor Justine Hill Edwards.

Justine, before the break, we looked at how the Atlantic slave trade began and then landed in America.

But I'm wondering about the legal and political aspect of this trade.

How did this industry break down on political lines?

I mean, I'm imagining these companies are...

It's horrible to say these, but purveying these commodities as they see them.

You know, this is the property that they're that they're using.

And so how was this codified into laws and and break down in these different colonies?

People who want to minimize this historically in American story often compare, oh, there were slaves in Rome and all that sort of thing.

And

The difference is that this is a racialized slavery.

This is a very specifically racialized slavery, legally, as you're saying.

And these slave codes, which is chilling how it then resonates through to black codes later on after the Civil War, really do make it official that this is everything to do with the color of one's skin.

This is, again, not only an American phenomenon.

This was done through the Spanish colonies as well.

And this was codified all over the place in different – it really breaks down to absurd fractions is what ends up happening where someone has a quarter of this or an eighth of this.

And it's really amazing how specific and legal it tries to be.

Again, also to distinguish it from indentured labor, which was a whole other kind of thing that someone could move through and –