Published on Thursday, July 6, 2000 in the Manchester Guardian UK
Slavery Link Shames NewspaperAmerica's oldest publication makes front-page apology for profiting from trade in lives
by Michael Ellison in New York
As corrections and clarifications go it was late and long, but America's oldest newspaper in continuous publication has apologised for its complicity in the slave trade nearly 180 years ago.
In an 1,800-word article on its (July 4th) front page, the Hartford Courant in Connecticut said it felt obliged to acknowledge that it had profited from advertisements for the sale of slaves and the recapture of runaways until at least 1823.
"We are not proud of that part of our history and apologise for any involvement by our predecessors at the Courant in the terrible practice of buying and selling human beings that took place in previous centuries," said Ken DeLisa, a spokesman for the paper, which sells more than 200,000 copies a day.
The adverts - which cost 25 cents for 10 lines in three issues in the mid-18th century - included detailed descriptions of scars, brandings and amputations.
One read: "To be sold, a likely, healthy, good-natured Negro boy about 15 years old. Inquire of T Green."
This was Thomas Green, who founded the paper in 1764 and who acted, among other things, as a slave broker.
The Courant's role in the trade was raised by Billie Anthony, a teacher whose students found 90 of the adverts while researching African-American history in colonial Connecticut.
She raised the issue after the paper ran a series of pieces earlier this year about an insurance company which apologised for having sold policies to slave owners.
"The stories about Connecticut's slave profiteers had a glaring omission: the Courant itself," said the paper.
"It was accepted practice. Slavery was so woven into the nation's economy and social fabric that such ads were probably less controversial than gun or tobacco marketing would be today."
But Ms Anthony said: "I will never, ever forget the looks of dismay on their [the students'] faces as they were scrolling through all the microfilm and finding these ads and for-sale notices. The complicity of the Courant in the slave trade is evident."
One black student, Andriena Baldwin, said she remembered coming across one listing a young boy, pigs and butter. "We just stood still for, like, five minutes.
"We were just shocked that they would put a person in the same category as food."
Early editors openly embraced racism. Thomas Day, who bought the newspaper in 1855, wrote in one editorial: "We believe the Caucasian variety of the human species superior to the Negro variety; and we would breed the best stock."
Slavery came to Connecticut in 1640 and by 1774 the state had more blacks than any other New England colony: about 6,500, or 3% of the population. As a rule they were treated better than those in the southern states.
But in a 1798 autobiography, Venture Smith, a former slave, wrote of a beating from his master: "I received a most violent stroke on the crown of my head with a club 2ft long and as large around as a chair post . . . the scar of it remains to this day."
Slavery - what the American south called its "peculiar institution" - was banned in Connecticut in 1848, three years before the outbreak of the civil war. Abraham Lincoln declared slaves to be free in the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Richard Newman, a research officer at the WEB DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University, said: "These ads have become extremely useful to scholars because they are one of the few places that describe slaves physically, their appearance, what type of clothes they wore, whether they were literate, what type of talents they had."
? Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
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