Inhuman Bondage

By host Tom Ashrbook:

Even now, after all the words and film and fury, Americans still tend to have a "Gone with the Wind" version of slavery running through their minds. Mint juleps and happy mammys. Bad — yes — but a manageable chapter at one margin of American history.

Celebrated historian David Brion Davis says no, slavery was far more central to the whole American story than that. In fact, he says, it was the cornerstone of the entire New World project, from Massachusetts and Connecticut, to the Carolinas, the Caribbean and Brazil.

Slavery, Davis says, was the economic bulwark of the Americas. And visible bondage was the foil against which many Americans defined their personal freedom.

Hear about the true depth of slavery with historian David Brion Davis.

Guests:

David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus and Director Emeritus of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.