US Slavery 'Foundational Institution', Explains Nikole Hannah-Jones | GZERO World

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Slavery is central to the American story. It wasn't accidental.

Many people today still think US slavery was only prevalent in the South. They are wrong, says Nikole Hannah-Jones. All 13 colonies had slaves upon America's independence.

It's not just that the Founding Fathers were slave-owners, which we all know. Slave labor, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist points out, powered the US Industrial Revolution by producing cheap cotton for textiles.

"We've kind of tried to section slavery off as if it was just in the realm of the backwards South, but this wasn't American endeavor and our nascent capitalism, [which] was really built on the institution of slavery."

In her view and that of the 1619 Project she created, slavery is central to the American story because it wasn't accidental at all.

"We did not need slavery to be successful, but we chose slavery. And that led to our success in many ways."

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[tombesson]

If you don't think that slavery has a major role in American history, you might as well say that currents don't have a major role in the course of rivers.