Leftist Labor History - Episode 1: American slavery 1492--1865

This first episode of Leftist Labor History examines slavery in the Americas, especially how chattel slavery developed alongside anti-Black racism. The use of slave labor in building the United States and the ideology of slave plantations laid the foundations of US labor and continues to shape our institutions to this day.

Sources:

THE OTHER SLAVERY by Andrés Reséndez, Mariner Books 2016
AMERICAN SLAVERY, AMERICAN FREEDOM by Edmund S. Morgan, Norton 1975
NEVER CAUGHT by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Simon & Schuster 2017
EMPIRE OF COTTON by Sven Beckert, Penguin Random House 2016

At the same time, it is worth noting that there were thousands of free Black slaveholders in the 1800s. At any rate, the point stands that a minority of white people were slaveholders, and the percentage who held more than a few people captive (ie wealthy plantation farmers) shrinks even more considerably.