Much of what Edward Alfred Pollard wrote in 1871 about slaveholders applies to today’s world of big business:
It is astonishing how little the slaveholders of the South, despite their supposed knowledge of the negro, really knew of what was in him. . . . The difficulty was that slavery was a perpetual barrier to an intimate acquaintance with the negro; it regarded him as a thing, and was never concerned to know what was in the sodden and concealed mind of a creature that represented only so much of productive force, and was estimated, body and soul, in dollars and cents.
(Quoted from page 84 of From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1975, by Christopher M. Span, University of North Carolina Press, 2009. The quotation’s original source is Edward A. Pollard’s book, The Romance of the Negro, published 1871.)
For a brief biography of Edward A. Pollard, click here. For Christopher M. Span’s homepage, click here.
It is astonishing how little the slaveholders of the South, despite their supposed knowledge of the negro, really knew of what was in him. . . . The difficulty was that slavery was a perpetual barrier to an intimate acquaintance with the negro; it regarded him as a thing, and was never concerned to know what was in the sodden and concealed mind of a creature that represented only so much of productive force, and was estimated, body and soul, in dollars and cents.
(Quoted from page 84 of From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1975, by Christopher M. Span, University of North Carolina Press, 2009. The quotation’s original source is Edward A. Pollard’s book, The Romance of the Negro, published 1871.)
For a brief biography of Edward A. Pollard, click here. For Christopher M. Span’s homepage, click here.
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