If you’ve felt that it’s odd that African-Americans and their ancestors are pretty much overlooked in the entire Veterans’ Day narrative, author Edward Baptist agrees with you, His book, The Half Has Never Been Told, lays out EXACTLY how human enslavement created a flush nation and why, in further insult to the memories and dignities of those men, women and children, only those on the battlefield get any respect for “bravery” and “sacrifice.” As one commenter stated: “Owning a person, having the legal right to kill them on a whim (and yes, this happened), forced labor camps for the sake of money–these things were and are an unadulterated, horrific evil. It’s always amusing to me how quickly conservatives leap to moral relativism (oh, them’s was different times) when one of their hallowed beliefs is threatened. Human rights are more important than property rights, period. Or, as Larry WIlmore says, “You know how you feel about money? Some of us feel that way about people.”

“I think history textbooks are very different from what they were 50 years, 60 years ago, when the plantation myth really did reign unchallenged. But at the same time, they still do things that symbolically annihilate the lives of enslaved people and the influence of slavery in American history. We’ll now see some acknowledgment that plantations were profitable enterprises rather than things that were run as kind of a charity. But we take this history and put it in one chapter that says, “Here’s the downside of the main narrative of expansion and industrial development, cultural transformation, the rise of American nationalism, and the history of American politics that ultimately leads to the Civil War.” And it puts slavery outside of that story.
When I speak to mostly African-American audiences, I do not have to spend any time convincing them that the exploitation that occurred in slavery moments is a) horrific and b) essential to the rise of the United States and its development. I think the fact that mainstream history is still struggling with that, I think that means mainstream history loses credibility with the African-American audiences. They always know there are things that mainstream history is trying to cover up. It is essentially, on some level, not a completely honest history, and it’s a history that is having to, on some level, placate whites.” (Salon)

For additional reading on the calculated debt owed to living African-Americans for the wealth stolen from their ancestors and various other atrocities committed during the slave trade and the induction of The Black Codes and Jim Crow, click here and here.