The Afterlife of Slavery

What is the Afterlife of Slavery?

This infographic attempts to make the concept of the “afterlife of slavery” quickly understandable for students and others working to explore racism and the plight of Afro-Americans.  The term was coined by Saidiya Hartman in her book, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route.  Slavery’s “afterlife” is basically the continuation of slavery’s diminishments of Black Americans.

In other words, the Emancipation Proclamation and later the Thirteen Amendment of the US Constitution indeed outlawed chattel slavery.  But for African-Americans today, the varieties of suffering that their enslaved grandparents endured live on.

W.E.B. Dubois stated it elegantly when he said,  “…the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”