Between movies like Gone With the Wind and Sweet Home Alabama, and antebellum-themed weddings, vacations, and weekend lunches for the rich and famous, the notion of plantation life as idyllic remains ingrained in the American imagination, especially for white Americans. More than 300 plantations in the United States remain intact, dozens of them set up as museums.They serve to remind Americans of a time of obscene individual wealth gained from humans, an absolute power over human beings unrivalled in all of history. For so many even in this age, the awe of amassing so much money and power far outweighs the horrors of enslaving people generation after generation.Make no mistake, the first American Dream was plantation slavery, or wealth American style. It included taking the land and the lives of Indigenous Americans, kidnapping and enslaving Africans, codifying African women’s wombs into property, and growing tobacco, cotton, indigo, and sugarcane as cash crops.
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