Federal and State-sponsored Racism

The federal government and the states created and encouraged racial segregation which resulted in the creation of ghettos with poor services and high rents. This was not an accident; it was intentional policy. Listen below -- our first radio show embed.

Of course, it was not just in the creation of ghettos that government had a hand. Government also created and backed the financial instruments that underpinned much of the plantation system of slavery. In order for cotton and sugar production to expand, planters just starting out needed loans to buy slaves and land. Louisiana bankers Hugues Lavergne and Edmond Jean Forstall allowed slaveholders to use what few slaves they had as collateral for loans, and then Lavergne and Forstall repackaged these loans into financial instruments backed by the Louisiana state government with public money. Once secured with public money, European financiers confidently bought slave-based securities, which in turn pumped dependable European currency into America’s agricultural economy.