Enslavers rented out enslaved people to third parties for annual income

Evidence

For the enslaved people at Northview, little changed other than the type of work they were tasked with. When there was not enough work on the farm to keep them all busy, Margaret rented them out to other merchants and families in the area. She shrewdly hired out ten of the men to slaughterhouses and tanneries and seven of the women to other households as cooks and house servants. This left just over half of the enslaved at home to work the farm and make it as self-sustaining as possible. By renting out the others, she earned an annual income of roughly 1,500 a year (a little over 47,000 today). While it is true that some enslavers allowed enslaved workers to keep a small share of the income they earned when hired out, enslavers still kept the lion’s share, further exploiting black Americans. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 64

Categorization

• QUESTION: The $1,500/yr rental income from 17 hired-out people is a specific financial fig-ure worth verifying against census records if cited in a reparations brief.