A life entwined with slavery
By Hamilton’s time in pre-revolutionary America, wealthy Northerners like him not only benefited from and propagated slavery, but enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built on the labor and lives of enslaved people.
Hamilton’s father-in-law had among the largest slaveholdings in the North. His mother-in-law was the daughter of Johannes Van Rensselaer and Angelica Livingston, both members of two of the largest slaveholding families in the North.
Hamilton’s early years in the Caribbean were also marked by slavery. He was born on the British West Indies island of Nevis in the 1750s into a household that held slaves. By age 11, he was working as a clerk for Beekman & Cruger, a firm based in New York that traded enslaved people and other commodities – like food products and wood for shipbuilding – that fed the slave economies.
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DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) Even though slavery was abolished more than 100 years ago, the wealth gap between White and Black Americans still exists.
Experts say this gap was created right after the Civil War and it continues to persist. Duke economist William Sandy Darity says the first failure of the federal government was their inability to make good on their promise to give formerly enslaved people 40 acres and a mule.
Since then, Professor Darity says the federal government has continued to create policy and situations to perpetuate the wealth gap.