I saw a Reddit comment that said “ During the peak of slavery only 1.4% of white people owned slaves, while 28% of freed African (ex-slaves) owned slaves - and they were much more brutal than their white counterparts.” And “ The African slave trade could not have happened without the active participation of black Africans, who knocked out and kidnapped other Africans and sold them to the whites.”. Is the true?
It is certainly the case that African polities sold other Africans into slavery, but your numbers for the proportion of the American population who were enslavers are ludicrously low -- in the states where people were able enslave people, more than 25 percent of the white population were enslavers. There's lots more on this here in these linked threads:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2200dc/if_i_was_an_average_american_citizen_either/
since someone answered the "freed slaves" question decently already, i'll just focus on the other one.
Sylviane Diouf's introduction to the book she edited, Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies, does a very good job of putting the thrust of the "Africans sold each other!!" talking point into its proper context. Africans also saved each other from slavery, but this is rarely mentioned because the purpose of the argument is usually victim-blaming, rather than exploring the social and historical reasons that caused various actors to collaborate with, work against, or try to avoid the slave trade at various times and places. for those that did participate, it needs to be stressed that few (if any) thought of what they were doing as "selling other Africans", nor did the victims think of themselves as having been "sold by other Africans". here's an excerpt from that introduction on how people who were sold into slavery understood what happened to them:
autobiographies and interviews clearly evidence that [Africans kidnapped and sold into slavery] did not think they had been sold by “black brothers and sisters.” Omar ibn Said writes that he was captured in war by “infidels”; Ibrahima abd al-Rahman Barry was made a prisoner by “Heboes” and sold to “Mandingoes”; Job ben Solomon was kidnapped by “Mandingoes”; Ali Eisami Gazirmabe by “Fulbe”; Muhammad Ali ben Said by “Kindills”; Olaudah Equiano was abducted by “two men and a woman”; Abu Bakr al-Siddiq was captured by “Adinkra’s army”; Joseph Wright was made a prisoner by “the enemies”; Samuel Ajayi Crowther by an army of “Oyo Mahomedans, Foulahs and foreign slaves”; William Thomas was sold by “people belonging to Pedro Blanco’s slave barracoon”; Ottobah Cugoano-the only one who at one point refers to betrayal by “some of my own complexion”-was abducted by “great ruffians”; and Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua was made a prisoner by “enemies”.
Nowhere in the Africans’ testimonies is there any indication that they felt betrayed by people “the color of their own skin.” Their perspective was based on their worldview that recognized ethnic, political, and religious differences but not the modern concepts of a black race or Africanness. With time, when an encompassing African - no longer an ethnic - consciousness developed in America, the story passed on still was not that people had been sold by other Africans but that they had been individually tricked and abducted by whites enticing them from the slave ships with European goods. For the most part these were not descriptions of actual events - although some certainly were - but allegorical tales that assigned blame where the Africans and their descendants thought it belonged: with the people who came to take them away not with their own. These “memories” of the elders turned into solid truths for their descendants, even though they mostly were, in an objective sense, symbolic constructions not the reflection of reality. Later generations developed the black betrayal model. It is no more historically true than the one it replaced.
i definitely recommend you read the whole introduction if you're interested in these kinds of issues. it's very good and there are many, many citations.
I have been researching quite a few family trees on Ancestry... It has amazed me how many black people in the 1700's and 1800's owned slaves. A lot of Mulatto's did as well. For example, there was a Slave Master named Antoine George (deSimiane) Simien that arrived in Louisiana in 1753. He ended up having children with a black woman named Marie. Here is the shorter version: https://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/trees/495997/I520969450/marie-simien/individual - Here is a longer version of the story: https://www.dailyworld.com/story/news/local/2019/09/26/story-marie-magdalena-esprit-lemelle-simien/3777085002/
Well, after they were free census records show their son George Simien owning 22 slaves at one point. His mother also owned slaves. I haven't even checked the other children. The census doesn't lie for all of these people. I have seen more instances of slavery in the few accounts I have looked at than any other so far of white people.
I would also like to add, one of the accounts I was tracing happens to be a Lumbee Indian (Dad's side) with a black mother. For some reason they were getting tons of land grants. One family got about 500 acres within 3 generations. They were roaming around with a lot of slaves as well. It's extremely interesting. At times I wonder if they were just hiding them claiming they were their slaves (Mulattos can look white)...
Another thing that has surprised me, is how many fought for the union in the Civil War. The widows also got war pensions. So, I am not sure if they at times were able to save up that money and get a couple family members out at auction.
However, there were also plantation owners with a lot of them. It's also amazing how many were NOT enslaved. Usually if one is people make a point of making that very clear. There were a lot of Freedmen walking around. Perhaps I just happened to get a few odd accounts. But that's what I have notices so far.
If you are ever interested in it, just get into Genealogy bit, and you'll learn your way around it. People did also make a point back then to share information on family trees and the history of the people. I came from German and Irish Immigrants on my fathers side and I'm at a brick wall because he came in as a servant and was banished to a South Carolina plantation. The Irish one was also a servant - Brick wall on my past there so far as well. Many people changed their names back then.
I hope that helped. I will plug in another name to see if I can make some sense out of some of this. The Indian happens to be my best friend, so I texted asking him what was going on? He said "History is very strange." Indeed it is. :)
If I find some amazing new finding, I will share here!
-OTBBS