Edward E. Baptist Quotes

#1. From 1783 at the end of the American Revolution to 1861, the number of slaves in the United States increased five times over, and all this expansion produced a powerful nation.

Edward E. Baptist

#2. By the late twentieth century, Jefferson's windfall would be feeding much of the world.

Edward E. Baptist

#3. few years after Ball was herded south, a slave trader marched a coffle past the US Capitol just as a gaggle of congressmen took a cigar break on the front steps. One of the captive men raised his manacles and mockingly sang "Hail Columbia," a popular patriotic song.

Edward E. Baptist

#4. In a broader sense, much of this story about the expansion of slavery and how it shaped the lives of black folks and the wider world is driven by the white men who tried to impose their codes on everything around them.

Edward E. Baptist

#5. The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth.

Edward E. Baptist

#6. And everyone who teaches about slavery knows a little dirty secret that reveals historians' collective failure: many African-American students struggle with a sense of shame that most of their ancestors could not escape the suffering they experienced.

Edward E. Baptist

#7. Everyone knows that banks take in deposits and lend out money, but they don't always realize that when banks lend, they actually create money. We call that money credit.

Edward E. Baptist