Little known fact about slavery

[David Lockmiller]

The New York Times today, in a story titled "The Smithsonian Looks at How the Slave Trade Shaped the World," reports a little known fact about slavery regarding numbers. [Well, at least I did not know.]

“In Slavery’s Wake,” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, looks beyond the United States to tell a global story.

A historical section presents plenty of cold, hard facts, starting with a wall map showing the flow of the roughly 12 million Africans carried away into chattel slavery (which was distinct from the forms of bondage that had long existed in many societies, including in Africa). Of those people, about 500,000 came to what is now the United States — a figure dwarfed by the estimated five million who landed in Brazil.

Chattel slavery is a form of human enslavement where a person is treated as property and owned by another person. The term "chattel" means personal possession. In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is considered a piece of property that can be bought, sold, given away, or inherited.