Undoubtedly, Wall Street is the world’s leading financial district, however, many people are ignorant about its history.  If we are to truly understand this amazing history, and how the financial district operates today, it also important to understand how it all starter, and how influential #black people were in its conception. Wall Street was established on #slavery, and even to this day, it still remains one of the key pillars that uphold racial discrimination as well as economic tyranny across the globe.

African Slaves Gave the Financial District Its Name and Built Its Wall

During the 17^th century, New York City Dutch people had settles there, and it was called the New Amsterdam in the Dutch colonial province known as New Netherland.  The Dutch people used enslaved Africans labor through the Dutch West India Company; these Africans were the first to be brought into the colony at around the 1627. These African slaves built the wall that today gives Wall Street its iconic name, and which formed the northern colony boundary warding off resisting Native Americans who were fighting to have their land back. Hence from the creation of the wall, it became a hedge ensuring the white supremacy reign.

Originally, Was a Slave Auction Site

Slavery became the pillar of New York’s economic success in the 1700s. To regularize the trade, New York officials established a slave market along Wall Street in 1711. Regular slave auctions happened here where African slaves were sold as property to traders who were in search of slaves. The street was also a market place where slave owners could hire out their enslaved people for a specific period, a day, week or even longer periods.

Slavery Placed New York On The World’s Map As A Financial Center

During the 17^th and 18^th centuries, New York had the largest number of urban slaves in mainland northern America. This means that New York must have been crucial location doting the transatlantic slave trade era, which quickly established New York as the world’s economic capital.

Well Connected and Large Wall Street Companies Started From Slave Trade

Many big, renowned financial institutions and companies have benefited from the transatlantic slave trade; and these include the Lehman brothers, that went bankrupt as a result of the 2008 credit crunch, Wachovia Bank Of North Carolina, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank Of America, The Royal Bank Of Scotland among others loaned slave owners money and accepted African slaves as collateral for the loans. When slave owners defaulted on their loans, these financial institutions became the new slave owners.

Making money on the terror of enslaved dead people

Aetna sold insurance protection to slave owners who desired to protect their slave investments aboard ship slaves just in case any of them died, which was a common occurrence anyway. The insurance company compensated slave owners for the loss of slaves “property” and up to this day, there are still lawsuits running against these companies seeking reparations for their indirect and indirect participation in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Global Capitalism Has Its Roots in Slave Trade

The modern day global capitalism was built from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Millions of Africans were removed from their native African homes to work in European colonies in the Caribbean and Americas. All over northern America, the Caribbean and Europe white companies and families accumulated fortunes from slave trade, fortunes which apparently became the foundation for many other economies across the world. These factors made Africans the perfect slaves providing much needed labor for European colonial powers across the Americas and Europe.

Via Atlanta Black Star