New Orleans slave pens prepared captives by falsifying their skills and health

Evidence

The farther we marched, the hotter it got. Our skin grew around the rope. Our muscles melted to nothing. Our fat to bone. The land rolled to a flat bog, and in the middle of it, a city called New Orleans. When we shuffled into that town of the dead, they put us in pens. Fattened us. Tried to disguise our limps, oiled the pallor of sickness out of our skins, raped us to assess our soft parts, then told us lies about ourselves to make us into easier sells. Was told to answer yes when they asked us if we were master seamstresses, blacksmiths, or lady’s maids. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 527

Categorization

• QUESTION: The deceptions — disguising limps, oiling away pallor, rehearsing false skills — suggest a specific merchant trade in ‘refurbishing’ captives before sale. Worth chasing the historiography of New Orleans slave pens and their doctoring practices.
• XREF: Interlocking with the reader’s goal: this gives the concrete empirical texture of the domestic slave trade that the reframing argument (slavery as foundational American infrastructure) sits on top of.