The Stolen Wealth of Slavery

November 1, 2023

There is a perception that the guilt for historical enslavement in the United States adheres primarily to the South. Investigative journalist Montero (Kickback: Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network) disabuses readers of that notion. He shows that shipping and banking interests on Wall Street accumulated a far greater profit than the Southern plantations, which were often heavily indebted to bankers in the North. The book links vast stories of wealth to banks and corporations still in existence today. They are entities that have never suffered any loss or repercussions for their part in this blood-soaked past. With palpable anger, Montero methodically walks readers through the shipping trade from Southern ports and English mills to Wall Street banks. He notes how indebted plantation owners often used the people they enslaved as collateral for loans. When a Southern business failed, the Northern banks ended up taking possession of the enslaved people and reselling them. The common story is of the sins of the South in holding people in bondage, but the story Montero tells is of how the entire country was complicit during enslavement and how fortunes built on enslavement persist. VERDICT Montero persuasively argues that profitable businesses owe reparations to people who continue to suffer from historic injustices.--Caren Nichter

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December 1, 2023
Montero (Kickback, 2018), who has produced episodes for PBS' Frontline and reported for the Nation and the Christian Science Monitor, presents an unsparing account of the untold billions of dollars, ill-gotten over centuries from the labors of American enslaved people, that made their way from southern plantations to major financial institutions in the North. The huge profits made in shipping goods from the South to New York then to England were pumped back into the expansion of the slave-based agrarian system in the South and also into the financing of America's industrial revolution, a robust and organized resistance to the abolitionist movement's efforts to end slavery in the nineteenth century, and the creation of some of the largest multinational corporations of the twenty-first century, including Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers. Montero's fulsome investigation limns the deep and multiple connections between southern plantations and northern boardrooms, while also citing current research into the topic as well as public acknowledgements and apologies by some entities, like Lloyd's of London, over their historic connections to the slave trade. A book both appalling for what it reveals of America's deliberately hidden past and hopeful for the light now being thrown on the issue.

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December 15, 2023
A sharp account of the massive wealth extracted from enslaved people in America. In this follow-up to Kickback: Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network, Montero shows that this wealth is responsible for America's rise to world leadership. The author is a diligent researcher, and he marshals his facts meticulously. Unpaid Black labor created immense quantities of agricultural and industrial production, as well as infrastructure that enriched white Americans, especially in the north. Many of today's large corporations grew and prospered from slave labor, while southern farmers, including all but a minority of plantation owners, were "chronically in debt, many on the verge of being broke." The author is convincing in his declaration that this extraction was "the largest money-laundering operation in American history," although scholars might deny Montero's claim that historians have paid little attention; indeed, he quotes liberally from their writing. Just as drug cartels profit not by growing their product (which is not terribly profitable) but by transporting and supplying it, northern businesses did the same with cotton and other commodities. Montero devotes most of the book to detailed accounts of 19th-century entrepreneurs, corporations, and banks who prospered off the backs of enslaved people, using the money to create purportedly legitimate businesses. Corporations do not perish with their founders, and many have long boasted of their staying power without mentioning the source of their vast financial reserves. A robust reparations movement emerged early in the 21st century, but its future remains uncertain. The author concludes by recounting legal actions against banks and corporations that have profited from slavery. Public demands for reparations have produced a flurry of apologies and some voluntary contributions to Black institutions, but no significant payments to date. Perhaps this book, featuring a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson, can invigorate the movement. An expert history and defense of the reparations movement that will hopefully persuade detractors.

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