WEBVTT - The $15 Trillion Wealth Truth 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.440 Welcome to Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production 0:00:03.680 --> 0:00:14.520 of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey Hey, 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:16.960 it's John O'Brien and this is the Money in Wealth 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:22.319 podcast series on Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio, season three, 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:27.120 and we're about to get popping here with a really 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:32.600 important episode that deals with a theoretically tabot issue that 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.800 I don't think needs to be which is the legacy 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.600 of slavery. But not in the way in which you 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:42.040 may think, I'm not dealing with the ethical issues or 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:46.360 the moral issues, or you know, the responsibility issues. All 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:52.320 those things historians have covered in much much greater degree 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:56.120 in accuracy than I ever could. That's not my focus. 0:00:56.200 --> 0:01:00.000 My focus is, and I think this is a conservative number, 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:07.920 the fifteen trillion dollar plus secret that was hiding in 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.520 plain sight. I think you think the number is as 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.640 shockingly high as forty trillion dollars when you think about 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.720 missed economic opportunity. But this is the fifteen trillion dollars 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:25.160 secret the economics of slavery in the wealth gap. Imagine 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:30.880 it's eighteen fifty eight. A cotton planner in Mississippi has 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:38.320 just finished his harvest bales of cotton. Thousands of pounds 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:43.160 of it are loaded onto steamboats heading down the Mississippi River. 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:49.360 That cotton travels south to New Orleans, the busiest cotton 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:59.200 port in America. But the journey doesn't stop there. Merchants 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:03.920 in New Orleans or New Orleans anew who you're from, 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:08.960 where you're from, and how you pronounce it, arranged financing 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:15.160 with banks in New York. Insurance companies ensure the ship 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:21.280 the shipment. The cotton is loaded into a Transatlantic ship 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:29.520 bound for Liverpool, England. Weeks later it arrives in the 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.400 largest contentrading market. 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:34.400 In the world. 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:40.959 From Liverpool, it travels to textile mills in Manchester, England, 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:49.280 where machines spin it into fabric. That fabric is sold 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:55.840 across Europe and around the world and even back in 0:02:55.919 --> 0:03:03.000 America and the Americas. Now here's the extraordinary part about this. 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:10.440 At every step of that journey, from the plantation to 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:19.400 the banks, to the ships to the factories, money is 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:29.000 being made, wealth is being gained. Plantation owners profit A 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:33.360 little segue here, only three to five percent. Let's be 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.640 liberal and say five percent of all whites in the 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.800 South owned more than fifty slaves. So it was just 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:47.360 a small portion of the European population that were slave owners. 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.240 So wing to give proper context here, wasn't every white 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.320 person or even most white people who owned slaves. It 0:03:54.440 --> 0:04:01.760 was the elite class. For for whomever that fact is important. 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:17.520 Plantations owners profited, merchants profited, banks profited. Any bank that's 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:23.920 older than one hundred and seventy five years old had 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:29.359 a stake and a hand in all likelihood the slave trade. 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:35.520 Because they took back they put loans on plantations and properties, 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:38.640 and part of that security for that loan, part of 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:44.680 the collateral was the barn and the land and the machinery, 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:49.839 and part, unfortunately of the machinery were slaves. So you'll 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:52.839 find banks that are certainly two hundred years old, the 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:58.640 oldest banks in America, who have human beings on their books. 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:02.400 Don't blame the leadership of the day had nothing to 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:06.200 do with it. But it is a sad fact that 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:10.480 everybody was involved in this business. And this only gets 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:14.480 deeper and more interesting. And for those who are interested 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:16.520 in blame, there's enough to go around. By the way 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:18.800 you had, I mean, how do you think the slaves 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:20.960 got from the central of Africa to the coast right. 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.800 It was blacks that are capturing other blacks, and tribes 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:26.440 didn't know they were selling them the slavery. But my 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.600 point is that tribes captured are the tribes, and they 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:31.640 didn't know what they were doing, but they some of 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:33.599 them sold them unconsciously. 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:34.120 In a slavery. 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:36.880 You had Indians and in India slave traders, you had 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:41.200 Arab slave traders. You had I'm sure Asian. I don't 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.160 have that fact handy, but I'm sure they were involved 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:47.719 in some way, and you could put quotation marks and 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:56.200 say that Asians were also related to Indians and certainly Europeans, 0:05:56.240 --> 0:05:59.279 of course, I'm going back to the Asian example for 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:01.000 a minute. It was some mean it hit my brain 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.599 about why there might be a natural or unnatural connection there. 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:10.120 But the point is everybody was in the business, so 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:15.280 to speak. It was unfortunately rather normal at that time, 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:20.520 and people just wanted to profit from it moral socide. 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:28.400 So insurance companies profited after banks, textile manufacture is profited. 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.200 So my point of the racial thing was it wasn't 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:34.719 really racial. It wasn't as I keep saying black or white, 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:36.880 as in rais or red or blue, and as in 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.960 politics today it was green, and right, it's always been green. 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.880 We just need to turn bad capitalism into good capitalism. Right, 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.560 bad debt financing slaves into good debt financing the purchase 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:53.560 of companies and growing industries, and and and us going 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.640 from being an asset to owning assets, and us being 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.960 African Americans. My second great grandfather and second great grandmother 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.640 there were slaves. My grandfather on my father's side was 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:04.880 a sharecropper RB. 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:05.320 Smith. 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.159 My next book, Capitalism for All, lays all of this 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:11.000 out about where do we go from here, which was 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:16.239 doctor King's last book before he was assassinated. So banks profit, 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:22.320 insurance companies profited, textile manufactures profited. Entire global economy was 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:27.080 on the move, all connected to one shipment of cotton. 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:32.080 Let that sink in, and almost all of that cotton 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:38.080 was picked by enslaved labor. By eighteen sixty, cotton made 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:42.360 up more than half of all American exports. I'll say 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.560 that again, and I'll say it a little slower so 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:49.480 it sticks. By eighteen sixty, cotton made up more than 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:53.400 half of all American exports, and the market value of 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:57.080 enslaved people had grown to three billion dollars In eighteen 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:04.640 sixty money. Just for context, that's more valuable than all 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.680 of the currency of that day, all of the precious 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:11.480 metals of that day, all of the railroads of that day, 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.600 all of the banks of that day, all of the 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:22.400 insurance companies of that day, hold on together the largest 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:29.280 financial asset in the United States. Enslave people, free talented labor. 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.360 I say talented because some would have you believed that 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.520 slaves or some lazy are blacks or lazy they would 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:38.760 say today, but they would say back then, slaves were lazy, 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:42.560 they were any human, they were untalented. No one goes 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:48.280 halfway around the world at enormous expense as an entrepreneur 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:55.319 or a business builder to take a risk on useless assets. 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:57.800 You do that because you have no choice, or you 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:02.520 believe is the best choice. And we were agricultural geniuses 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.439 who could take dead soil and bring it back to life. 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:13.000 And where was the cotton rooted best? Where did it 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:21.760 grow best? And hot, humid soil hard to cultivate and 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:28.240 bring back to life? The Caribbean, Latin America, but specifically 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.439 the best area it appeared the southern states of the 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.679 United States of America. And my poor white brothers and 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:39.160 sisters then from Europe who were brought here as indentured 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.480 servants along and put aside along with blacks. By the way, 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:45.160 there were white indigent servants as well, there were blacks. 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:47.319 The first indigent service were black and white. That's a 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:52.880 whole other podcast I did explaining how race is literally 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:57.520 made up in America in the last four hundred years 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.120 and sorry made it race. The racial word white eight 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:04.120 was literally made up in a world is five billion 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:08.040 years old, and human existence which goes back you know, 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:11.240 you know, modern human existence a few thousand, a couple 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:14.040 hundred thousand years old, and then you know primitive human 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:16.640 couple hundred you know, let's just say, let's just be 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.200 easy to say a couple of million years ago, right, 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:26.560 but and enlightenment three thousand years ago, right, Traders six 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:29.640 thousand years ago. But somehow in the global world the 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:34.560 racial word white was created four hundred years ago. In America. 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.280 It was for commercial reasons, by the way. It was 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.080 to separate blacks and whites who were getting along, because 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.880 they could not have them be friends, because they said, 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.520 you can have a race ride, you cannot have a 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.599 class ride, because we're the class so you want to 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.120 know an answer is something you keep following the money, 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.080 and nine times out of ten you take the emotions 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:58.600 out of it, by the way, and follow the money, 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:06.400 you'll get your answer. So Africans who became African Americans 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:08.800 four hundred thousand slaves who turned into four million because 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:12.640 they cultivated this group, because they were so profitable, they 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:14.040 were the only group that could take this debt. So 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.760 let bring it back to life and produce these crops 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.680 of gold, cotton, tobacco, et cetera. Anyway, the largest financial 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.040 asset in the United States was, without a question, in 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:29.400 slave labor, the equivalent of ten to fifteen trillion dollars today. 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.400 Some would argue you twenty one trillion dollars. I'm giving 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.760 you the conservative number, which means that to understand wealth 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:39.720 in American today, you first have to understand how wealth 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:45.839 was built in America yesterday. So today we're going to 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.599 talk about the economics of slavery from a non emotional, 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:55.240 non blaming, non polarizing perspective. Just the math. I like 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.360 math because it doesn't have an opinion. Again, my quoting 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.840 my friend Melody Hopson, who's that that's her quote, that's 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.880 a great quote, very illuminative. This is a story that 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.280 Americans were never talked in school, not to assign blame, 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:13.120 as I said, but to understand the system, because once 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:16.040 you understand the system, you can learn how to win 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:22.760 in it. So welcome back to money and wealth, everybody, 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:25.800 And today I'm gonna talk to you about something that 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.559 most Americans were never talked, not because it isn't important, 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:34.400 but because it's uncomfortable. Today we're going to talk about 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.439 the economics of slavery. Now, let me be clear before 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:41.360 we get into this. This episode is not about blame. 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:43.080 I'm said this a half dozen times and when I 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:47.200 underscore and cause people are clipping this in segments. Is 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.280 not about blame as in a distraction. It's not about 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.960 making anybody feel guilty. Even it's not about victimhood. I'm 0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:00.559 no victim. I'm a victor and so are you this 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:06.080 episode and certainly my forefathers and four mothers, my family 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:09.520 who weren't slaves themselves. My second grand grandmother left slavery, 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.240 left escaped slavery, and went on to buy a house, 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.280 didn't have a mortgage on it, had a border renter, 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:19.319 which means she was she turned into a capitalist It 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:22.960 is such an inspiring story. My second grand grandfather, George 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:26.440 Young on my father's side, that was my mother's side 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:28.400 of the lady on my father's side, went on to 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:33.760 answer Abram Lincoln's call for the Emancipation Proclamation and went 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.960 on to protect the people of Memphis, Tennessee and the 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.880 black regimen. One of seven thousand black officers. He was 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:45.520 protecting people who were not really all that throat about 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.520 protecting him. So there's my social justice bones and my 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:55.160 capitalist bones all in one story. So this episode's about 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:59.040 understanding the economics of America, because if you want to 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.439 understand wealth in America today, you have to understand how 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.760 wealth was built yesterday. And once you understand this story, 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.559 we can talk about how to build wealth going forward. 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.400 Let me start with the statistic that shocks me and 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:15.880 will shock you the first time you hear it. In 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.920 eighteen sixty, just before the Civil War, the single largest 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:23.760 financial asset in the United States of America was enslaved people. 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:30.000 And the wealthiest city in America was Notacha's, Mississippi. I'll 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.880 repeat that. The wealthiest city in America, and some would 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:34.520 say the wealthiest city in the world at that time 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:40.720 was Notch's Mississippi small footnote. Part of Wall Street started 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:46.560 in Montgomery, Alabama. That's where some very well known investment houses, 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:50.880 including names you would know today, began there because that's 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.120 where the money was being made. So the largest asset 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.840 was not railroads, It was not banks, or land, or 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:05.400 factories or even just sort of talented human capital, human beings. 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:09.960 It was enslaved people of Historians estimate nearly four million 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.160 enslaved people in America had a combined market value of 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:16.360 about three billion dollars in eighteen sixty. Now that number 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:19.760 might not sound enormous today we mentioned a billion. 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:20.800 It doesn't sound enormous. 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:23.440 We're living in strange times, by the way, But when 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.640 economists compared to the size of the economy at that time, 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.200 it would have been somewhere between ten and fifteen trillion 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:34.160 dollars a day conservatively, dude, And giving you some context 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.280 for that, the US economy is about thirty trillion, with 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:40.800 the largest economy in the world, the market value of 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:45.440 the stock market, which is a fifty trillion plus. Yeah, 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.640 it's a big number, right, And this is you know, 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:56.200 let's just say half of the US GDP. So the 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.240 largest concentration of wealth in America in eighteen sixty was 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:01.000 an asset, if you want to call it. 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:03.440 That quotation marks worth the. 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:08.880 Equivalent of say, fifteen trillion dollars today. That means enslave 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.040 people represented more wealth than all the railroads, all the factories, 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:16.160 or the banks in the country combined. And here's the 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:19.360 part that most people don't know. And slave people were 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:23.040 treated not just as labor, but as a capital asset. 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:31.920 They could be mortgaged, ensured, us as loan collateral, bought 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:35.360 and sold in financial markets, basically a form of what 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:39.880 we call today's securitization. This is why historians today say 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:44.160 something important. Slavery wasn't just a social system, it was 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:47.280 an economic system. And I'll go one step further and 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.320 tell you that the Civil War was an economic dispute. 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:56.760 It was the South resisting northern economic domination. The North 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:00.120 was moving to industrialization, factories and all that stuff. And 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.520 the immigrants of that day, the left behind and the 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:09.240 thrown aways of that day who came in America, the Polish, 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:12.919 the Italians, the Jews, whoever you want to think about 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:15.119 of that day, who were not considered sort of the 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:18.280 upper class. They were coming in and trying to strive 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.000 and grow and build things. But they're heading north along 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:25.240 with industrializations. So those economies were growing, and the Homestead 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.040 Act gave land away heading west, and so the West 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:29.040 and the North were growing. 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:30.199 In the South was. 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.840 Stuck in an old model of slavery, even though it 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:37.080 was where half of all millionaires, more than half of 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:41.760 all millionaires lived in the South, specifically Mississippi. Do you 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:46.960 know Mississippi was the wealthiest state in America before the 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:51.639 Civil War. It's the poorer state in America today. And 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.280 I've got family there, so I want them to come 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:56.960 up from where they are now. And that's why again 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:59.240 written this book Capitalism for All that's coming out soon, 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:02.920 that hopefully business plan for all of us. Now, let's 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:07.679 talk about cotton, because cotton was the engine of that 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:15.480 economic system. By eighteen sixty, cotton made up about sixty 0:18:15.480 --> 0:18:19.040 percent of all US ex sports. Think about that, more 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.280 than half of everything sold to the world came from 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:27.760 one product, cotton, and almost all of that cotton was 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:32.920 grown and processed by enslaved labor. In fact, the United 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:37.360 States produced roughly three quarters of the world's cotton supply, 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:43.240 which means the global textile industry, the biggest manufacturing industry 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:47.520 on Earth at that time, dependent on American cotton. 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:49.240 They call it king cotton. 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:53.760 Actually it was the gold of that time, the platinum 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.560 of that time, the ai of that time, if you 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:01.760 want to call it that, artificial intelligence, the capital market, 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:09.200 king or queen, and that cotton came primarily from places 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:13.520 like Mississippi, where my family is from, Alabama, where my 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:19.080 family is from, Louisiana, where Ambassador Andrew Young's family is from, 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.600 and Georgia, where again my family is from. This is 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:28.800 why people at the time called cotton again king cotton. 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.480 Cotton wasn't just agriculture. Cotton was the energy source of 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:39.360 the global economy. It was the oil of the nineteenth century. 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:43.720 And that cotton economy created enormous wealth, which leads to 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:49.680 another surprising fact. Most Americans today think of Mississippi as 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.760 one of the poorest state states in the South, and 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:57.920 really it's the poorest state arguably in America, in the country. 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:03.199 But this fact is worth underscoring again. In eighteen sixty, 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:09.880 Mississippi was actually the richest state in America per capita. 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:15.359 Let that sink in the richest state. Why because the 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:20.560 Mississippi Delta produced some of the most profitable cotton plantations 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:25.879 in the world. Some plantation owners controlled thousands of acres 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:31.320 of land and hundreds of enslaved workers. They were even 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:34.719 a town called as I mentioned earlier. But I'm an 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:40.960 underscore here Nachez, Mississippi Natcchez, if you'd like to look 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:44.440 it up for yourself. At that time, Nachez was one 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:48.120 of the highest concentration of millionaires in the United States 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:51.199 of America, the richest city in America. But there's something 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:58.160 important to understand here. That wealth was extremely concentrated. Only 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:02.159 a small percentage of white Southerners actually owned and slaved people, 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.800 as I mentioned earlier, and an even smaller percentage own 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:10.400 large plantations. So it's no different than the uber wealth 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:12.719 you see today. It's just the uber wealth we see today, 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:18.239 I believe is more responsible, more authentic, more I mean, 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:20.399 for what you ever think about it, it's they're not 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:24.199 engaging in slavery at least not the folks I do 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:26.600 business with are not out in public. It's not a 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:31.119 mainstream industry. No legitimate business person of any ilk is 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:35.160 doing that today. So we have made progress from immoral 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.119 ends to at least neutral ends, if not moral ends. 0:21:38.160 --> 0:21:41.840 I'm trying to move us into a moral economy. Good capitalism, 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:45.200 our capitalism can serve all of God's children and take 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:46.720 the bottom third and lift them up and put the 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:48.200 ladder to the bottom and so you can climb to 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:51.359 the top. So that folks don't resent rich people. They 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:56.800 want to become one. Back to the story. So when 0:21:56.840 --> 0:21:59.959 we talk about southern wealth in eighteen sixty, were really 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:02.640 talking about the wealth of a very small elite class. 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:08.080 But that elite class controlled massive economic power. Now here's 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:12.560 where the story gets even more interesting because the cotton 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:18.640 economy wasn't just Southern, it was global. Let me explain 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:23.040 how the system worked. Cotton grown on plantations Mississippi or 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:27.239 Alabama would be shipped down the Mississippi River again the 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.600 New Orleans as an example for the New Orleans, it 0:22:30.640 --> 0:22:34.120 would be exported to Liverpool, England. Liverpool was the financial 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:36.800 center of the global cotton trade. If you didn't know that. 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:41.320 By the way, did you know that Birmingham, Alabama was 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:44.200 named after Birmingham, England because it was an industrial center 0:22:45.640 --> 0:22:49.080 in the world of Birmingham, England for cotton and Birmingham 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:53.600 Alabama was an industrial center in America for slavery and cotton, 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:57.000 and you know railroads ran through it, just like you 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:03.240 know in Birmingham anyway. How interesting today the Mayor of 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:08.439 Birmingham is a black man who is doing actually what 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:12.080 Woffin Woodfin, who's a very good man and doing a 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:14.119 very good job. I think he just won his third 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.840 re election, which is unprecedented in a very diverse place 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:21.160 like Birmingham. In operation hope. I don't think he would 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:23.920 mind me saying this is responsible. Well, he's responsible for 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:27.159 him becoming a homeowner, but we facilitated it through our 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:32.080 open side program that Mayor Randall Woodfin uh uh partnered 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:34.959 with in the for the employees of the City of 0:23:35.040 --> 0:23:39.160 Birmingham full circle and through and with a mortgage through 0:23:39.840 --> 0:23:42.880 Region's Bank, our partner in that area for hope inside 0:23:43.640 --> 0:23:46.480 good capitalism, doing well by doing good. I think he's 0:23:46.480 --> 0:23:49.320 a first homeowner, homeowner in his family and now a father. 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.479 So we can have rainbows after storms. In fact, as 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:55.520 a scientific fact, you cannot have a rainbow without a 0:23:55.560 --> 0:24:00.000 storm first. So it would be exported to Liverpool, England. 0:24:00.119 --> 0:24:02.359 Liverpool was the financial center of the global cotton trade 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:05.760 and from Liverpool cotton went to textile mills and Manchester 0:24:05.840 --> 0:24:10.720 and other industrial cities in Britain. Those mills turned cotton 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:16.800 into fabric okay, and that fabric was sold. 0:24:16.560 --> 0:24:21.800 All over the world. But there was another piece in 0:24:21.840 --> 0:24:22.360 the system. 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:30.760 Finance banks in New York finance the cotton trade investment 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:37.040 banks in places like Montgomery, Alabama, facilitated portions of that 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:42.240 financing activity. Specifically as relates to cotton banks in New 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:47.119 York finance, the cotton trade insurance companies insured shipments. Shipping 0:24:47.160 --> 0:24:53.560 companies transported goods, merchants issued credit. Some of the early 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:57.280 financial firms that later became part of Wall Street actually 0:24:57.359 --> 0:25:01.919 began in the cotton economy. Let's give you some examples. 0:25:03.280 --> 0:25:07.359 Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers started in Montgomery, Alabama as a 0:25:07.400 --> 0:25:12.240 cotton trading business. Cotton was so valuable that in some 0:25:12.280 --> 0:25:16.520 cases it actually functioned like currency. So when we talk 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:22.639 about slavery, we're also talking about global capitalism. Cotton plantations, 0:25:22.800 --> 0:25:31.760 New York finands, British factories, global markets all connected. Now 0:25:31.760 --> 0:25:35.680 here's another economic reality that rarely gets discussed. When slavery 0:25:35.720 --> 0:25:41.560 ended in eighteen sixty and by the way I want 0:25:41.600 --> 0:25:44.480 to commend. There's one particular bank. I'm thinking about two 0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:48.919 banks where they acknowledged their history where they had some 0:25:49.080 --> 0:25:53.959 involvement with slavery. So the precursor to truest Bank, Sun Trust, 0:25:54.160 --> 0:25:57.159 the precursor to all those. I think it was Trust. 0:25:57.200 --> 0:25:59.080 I think it was Trust Company anyway. I don't know 0:25:59.119 --> 0:26:02.080 the name before Sun Truls that, I can't remember it 0:26:02.119 --> 0:26:04.040 off the top of my head. But the CEO there, 0:26:04.080 --> 0:26:09.520 Bill Rogers, owned this history and didn't have to. I'm 0:26:09.640 --> 0:26:12.520 ninety nine percent sure that my friend Jamie Diamond and 0:26:12.600 --> 0:26:16.640 JP Morgan Chase owned their history because there are records 0:26:16.640 --> 0:26:20.159 of enslave people in those banks records as well, And 0:26:20.240 --> 0:26:24.240 there are many others who would fit this criteria, and 0:26:24.280 --> 0:26:28.639 the leaders have stepped up and acknowledged in most of 0:26:28.640 --> 0:26:35.120 those cases. Now here's another economic reality that really gets discussed. 0:26:35.160 --> 0:26:35.480 Also. 0:26:35.560 --> 0:26:41.159 When slavery ended in eighteen sixty five, the loss to 0:26:41.280 --> 0:26:49.200 the South was almost complete. The South loss's largest asset class. 0:26:49.520 --> 0:26:54.879 Almost overnight, the three billion dollar slave asset market disappeared. 0:26:58.880 --> 0:27:00.760 If you want a joke about it's not but you 0:27:00.760 --> 0:27:04.160 wonder why people are upset. You know, in the traditional South, 0:27:05.840 --> 0:27:09.200 you lose fifteen trillion dollars overnight. See how you're feeling, 0:27:09.240 --> 0:27:13.560 whether you're moral or not, it's it is the children. 0:27:13.600 --> 0:27:15.280 And those people are like, I didn't do anything about this. 0:27:15.400 --> 0:27:16.520 Why am I broke? 0:27:16.600 --> 0:27:16.719 Now? 0:27:16.760 --> 0:27:22.080 Why can't I get my carriage? Mercedes? Mercedes was a carriage, 0:27:22.119 --> 0:27:24.040 was a Mercedes that day? Why can't I get my 0:27:24.760 --> 0:27:28.040 farmhouse mansion? The farmhouse was a mansion of that day, 0:27:28.080 --> 0:27:30.640 and so on and so forth. Why can't I get 0:27:30.680 --> 0:27:35.159 my horse as in horsepower, you know, the ferrari of 0:27:35.200 --> 0:27:38.560 that day? Because with my daddy and my granddaddy did 0:27:38.560 --> 0:27:44.480 ain't nothing to do with that. So the economy collapses. 0:27:46.640 --> 0:27:50.800 That collapse devastated the Southern economy. But something else happened 0:27:50.800 --> 0:27:54.679 to four million newly freed people entered the economy with 0:27:54.800 --> 0:27:59.159 no capital at all. In fact, they had no land, 0:27:59.320 --> 0:28:03.119 they had no financial assets, they had no access to credit. 0:28:03.880 --> 0:28:06.240 They it was even illegal to teach them to read 0:28:06.359 --> 0:28:09.000 before the end of slavery. So now you're walking in 0:28:09.040 --> 0:28:13.919