Enslaved people were used as insurance and loan collateral before 1865

Evidence

As long as we have been measuring, white Americans have always had more wealth than black Americans. The black-white wealth gap couldn’t even be discussed until December 6, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. Before that, enslaved black Americans were legally deemed property in this country; white-owned companies were accumulating wealth through insurance policies written on enslaved blacks, and banks used them as collateral for loans. Slavery created wealth for more than just slaveholders, and the North profited along with the South. As “property” enslaved blacks could not get educated, could not get paid for their work. Property could not get married. Property could not own property. There can be no such thing as a black-white wealth gap when the only people the law counted as people were white. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 54

Categorization

• XREF: Insuring enslaved people as profit-bearing property connects to the 1619 Project’s treatment of enslaved persons as financial instruments, and to the prologue on ‘The 400 Richest Americans’ wealth origins.