“Generational Wealth: How Reconstruction Shaped African American Society”

Monday, March 18th, 2019

Follow this link to watch Caitlin Blue’s presentation on YouTube.

This past month, we partnered with the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center to bring Caitlin Blue to the TR Site for our ongoing Speaker Nite series. Ms. Blue is a Visitor Experience Specialist and historian who focuses on making history accessible to the public. Her presentation, “Generational Wealth: How Reconstruction Shaped African American Society” explored how the aftermath of slavery and Reconstruction continues to impact African Americans and their economic potential.

Ms. Blue began her talk by explaining that in order to discuss race, it is also necessary to explore class. Often, wealth, land, or property is passed down through generations, effectively giving each subsequent generation more of an advantage. However, for many African Americans, slavery and the subsequent periods of Reconstruction and segregation dramatically reduced their earning potential. Land in particular has been a central issue because of the potential it offers. By means both legal and technically illegal, access to land or land ownership for African Americans was severely limited. Sharecropping tied formerly enslaved people to land in an arrangement that stripped them of any equity. Later zoning laws severely limited the areas where African Americans were allowed to purchase homes, further limiting property values.

That lack of capital is still felt today. Ms. Blue referenced a series of studies that examined the wealth gap between black and white families. One study suggested that it would take a black family 228 years to earn the wealth of a white family. Another discussed how the median wealth of black families is continuing to fall and will reach zero by 2053. Quite simply, slavery and its lasting effects laid a foundation of social and economic inequity that is at the heart of many of the issues the United States faces today.

However, while it is the primary cause, it is important to note that slavery is not the sole cause. The periods of Reconstruction and segregation created and perpetuated mechanisms of oppression that limited upward potential for African Americans. In particular, Ms. Blue discussed the way lynchings were used to exert power, suppress economic growth, or maintain the established hierarchy. Often, the targets of these attacks were African Americans who were becoming economically more self-sufficient or prominent in the community.

To further the point, Ms. Blue discussed one particularly devastating example, the Tulsa, Oklahoma Massacre. The Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa was a thriving black neighborhood. It had even earned the nickname, “Black Wall Street” because of the high concentration of prosperous, African American owned businesses. In 1921, after a white woman claimed a young black boy touched her inappropriately, a fight broke out which lasted 18 hours. By the end of the fight, 35 city blocks of this African American neighborhood were burned down. The residents were forced to leave and the economic success they had begun to enjoy as a community was decimated.

After such a tumultuous history, can the country begin to rectify the inequity so many African Americans still live with? Ms. Blue explored that possibility by discussing the idea of reparations, or programs that begin to start that process. However, some scholars suggest the amount required would be approximately $5.9-14.2 trillion dollars. Other organizations, like Georgetown University, are looking at programs that would begin to address this issue on a smaller scale. They are proposing an initiative that would use student fees to provide degrees for students who are the descendants of formerly enslaved African Americans. These types of programs would begin to democratize opportunities and address the long legacy of social and economic inequity.

Ms. Blue ended her talk by discussing the emotional and generational trauma of slavery. Many families experience something called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome which is a generational trauma still felt by the descendants of formerly enslaved African Americans today. That emotional trauma goes hand in hand with the social and economic inequity that continues to impact black Americans every day. While Ms. Blue’s talk pointed out there is still a long way to go, her research provided valuable insight into the scope and scale of an issue that continues to impact our country today.  

-- Lindsey Evans, Public Programming Assistant

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Speaker Nite is part of the TR Site’s regular Tuesday evening programming, which is made possible with generous support from M&T Bank, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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