Many people in America symbolize the place called “Wall Street” (located in New York City, New York) as the country’s source of wealth and opportunity but most Americans are ignorant to the history that the famous Wall Street was created from. In order to understand how Wall Street became the wealth center that it is today and its role in the system of global capitalism, it is imperative to know Wall Street’s upbringing. Wall Street was made from the backs of African Americans and to this day, it remains a key component in preserving racial inequality and financial oppression.
The Dutch settled in what is known as present day New York and named it New Amsterdam during much of the 17th century. Through the Dutch West India Company, the Dutch used enslaved Africans for labor when they were first brought to this colony around 1627. These African slaves built the wall that gives Wall Street its name, …show more content…
Somewhere between 12 to 30 million or more Africans were stripped from their homes in Africa to become slaves in European colonies in North and South America and the Caribbean. Despite this act of exploitation, Africans were more beneficial than Native Americans because they were plentiful and easily replaceable, Africans had to ties to the land, and they knew how to grow the essential crops such as; sugar and cotton which grew Africa, the Caribbean, and the southeastern United States. African slaves were an essential factor to the wealth of Wall Street and since this wealth stayed within the slave owners, not the slaves, blacks remained socioeconomically subordinate to whites for generations to come. Slavery continued for nearly 300 years when Britain, America, and other countries that contributed to the trans-Atlantic slave trade abolished it. Even after slavery ended, the foundation of modern capitalism, white supremacy, and racial inequality was in full