What Is The Black Holocaust?

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Definitions

The word “holocaust” is defined as “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially that caused by fire.”1 A holocaust is usually a series of atrocities organized by one social group against another.

In the last hundred years, the world has witnessed many such atrocities: for example,  the Armenian Holocaust, the Cambodian Killing Fields, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Genocide in Darfur.

Usually, in America, when we sayThe Holocaust,” we mean the systematic mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis from 1941 to 1945.

Similarities Between the Jewish and the Black Holocausts

The four hundred-year history of captured Africans and their descendants has many similarities with the Holocaust experiences of European Jews – and other victims of mass atrocities.

These include:

  • Forced marches and migrations
  • Stolen property
  • Dehumanization
  • Slave labor
  • Mass incarceration
  • Torture
  • Medical experimentation
  • Discrimination
  • Race riots (pogroms)
  • Lynchings
  • Mass murder
  • Long-lasting psychological effects (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) on survivors and descendants.

Dr. James Cameron founded this museum after he visited Yad VaShem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. He saw the many similarities between the experiences of the Jewish people and African Americans.

When he named this museum, it was because of those similarities. He also admired how Jewish people value their history and educate themselves and others about it. Dr. Cameron saw how this gave the Jewish people strength and wanted the same for his people.

Cameron wanted visitors to understand this: The Black Holocaust began hundreds of years ago, but its effects – and even some of its practices – continue today.2

There at the Start

The Black Holocaust in America began in the 1600s in the first settlements in Virginia. That colony passed laws making black people – and only black people – slaves for life.

Slavery and segregation have since become illegal, but the Black Holocaust has had far-reaching effects on our entire society and on generations of our citizens – black and nonblack.

Some Facts about the Black Holocaust:

  • From 10 to 12 million African men, women and children were kidnapped from their homes.3 They were forced to march as much as 1000 miles to the sea. There they were held in underground dungeons for up to a year.
  • The kidnapped people were packed below decks as cargo on 54,000 slave ship voyages to the Americas. They were usually shackled and unable to move. They lay in each other’s feces, urine and vomit during the 60 to 120 day trip. These trips, calledThe Middle Passage,” made up one of the largest forced migrations in world history.4
  • When they arrived in America, men, women, and children – even infants – were put on the auction block at slave markets. They were handled by the buyers as if they were cattle. The buyers poked and prodded and pulled the Africans’ mouths open. Some buyers forced the captives to remove all their clothes in public, so they could be examined for defects. Children were often sold away from their parents, and husbands from their wives.5
  • Our original colonies passed slave codes.6 These laws reserved slavery for people of African descent only. There were also fugitive slave laws7 that made it easier for slave owners to capture runaways – and even force free blacks into slavery.
  • By the time of our country’s Civil War in 1861, eight generations of black children were born, grew up, toiled, and died as the property of white adults and children. Slaves worked at hard labor, from sun up to sun down, for no pay, six or seven days a week. They were frequently whipped or suffered other cruel punishments at the owner’s whim. They were not allowed to learn reading, writing or arithmetic. They were poorly fed, housed and clothed. Many of their daughters, sisters, and wives were raped. Many saw their children, spouses, parents, siblings, and friends sold away. And there was no hope of an end to their suffering.
  • The 13th Amendment to our Constitution outlawed slavery. But many of the four million former slaves were forced back into unpaid labor. They became sharecroppers on their old plantations. If a white man said a black man was “shiftless,” that black man could be arrested and forced to work without pay in a mine, factory, or farm. This was slavery by another name.8
  • After emancipation came the “separate and unequal” system of Jim Crow in the South.   This made it legal to have racially segregated public schools, buses, restaurants, movie theaters, and occupations. Under Jim Crow, black lives were cheap. Over five thousand African Americans were strung up, shot, tortured, mutilated, and burned to death during those one hundred years. Most lynchings occurred in the South, but many took place in the North and West as well.9
  • The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s challenged Jim Crow. The Jim Crow era “officially” ended when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  However, white Americans found ways around many of the gains African Americans made. In “white flight,” white parents moved to the suburbs or put their children in private schools. White neighbors signed “covenants” not to sell their homes to black families. White unions made it difficult for black workers to become members and advance themselves in the skilled trades. Many African Americans became trapped in poverty.10
  • The effects of slavery and Jim Crow continue today. The net worth of white families is 22 times the net worth of black families.11 Since the 1970s, the unemployment rate for African Americans has been double the national average. Most white Americans live to be over 78 years old; most Black Americans  die shortly after their 73rd birthday. Three times more black babies die at birth than white babies. Half of the people we send to prison are black, even though African Americans are only 13 percent of our country’s population. And the list goes on….

Holocaust Memorials and Museums

Today there are many museums that help people understand and cope with various holocausts around the world. America’s Black Holocaust Museum is one of these.

 

Endnotes:

1https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holocaust

2See Breaking News

3See Estimates from Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

4Africans in America, Part I. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr4.html

5American Abolitionist, Indiana University

6American History

7Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

8Slavery By Another Name: The Film

9What Was Jim Crow?

10White Flight

11WealthGaps Rise to Record Highs

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.

42 Comments

  1. Jamie White-Farnham on April 23, 2013 at 3:09 PM

    This is a wonderful resource, thank you! I just came across it while studying lynching generally. This is a wealth of information.

  2. JoAnna on August 26, 2013 at 2:47 AM

    This website if full of profound facts about black history which are not taught to children in school. Many of these facts even unconscious black people are unaware of and don’t think they matter in today’s society.

  3. paige harris on November 5, 2013 at 2:39 PM

    it was good for the learning experience

  4. Luca on January 31, 2014 at 3:18 PM

    i came across your website while searching for the word “pattyroller”, which i didn’t know and I crossed watching the original movie version of 12 yrs a slave. well, i’m Italian and we don’t study too much of American history out there, your site is so full of infos, i bet if you got enough resources to put on some foreign languages version that would be very appreciated by non-English speakers. I can assure you they ‘re the majority in the world. And this knowledge has to be shared with everybody, black or white, chinese or brazilian, christian or muslim. because, after all, slavery it’s al about greed and money upon all, and people must be aware of that. So keep on your wonderful job! Luca

  5. Ana on February 13, 2014 at 9:04 AM

    I find black history fascinating. Hard as it may be to believe I was listening to a song by Kanye West, named New Slaves and he repeats “blood on the leaves” many times throughout the song so I researched it, which led me to Billie holiday, Abel Meerobol, & the lynching of Abram & James, & here I am. I don’t live too far away, so I have now a desire to come visit your museum. I’m not satisfied with reading only, I want to experience it as closely as I can. Anyway, thank you for all your wonderful work, it’s amazing, and beautiful, I appreciate it so much! God bless!

  6. Pastor Trina Davis on April 1, 2014 at 4:21 AM

    I am in college and we have a 2000 word term paper due at the end of April. I was word searching and came a cross this profound article. Thank you this will help me a great deal.

  7. Marianne Diaz on April 25, 2014 at 2:50 PM

    I work at educating those who are in the field of mental health and social services to understand that to be “of color” means something very different than being white. The historical context has to be understood and accepted. PEACE!

  8. Marcia on April 30, 2014 at 5:53 AM

    Why does this historical information make my heart hurt? And why do the pictures make me cry??

  9. Diana on May 14, 2014 at 11:43 AM

    I can not express enough how much I agree with everything on this post. I deliberately searched for “Holocaust in America” and of course found countless links of the United States and its role in the genocide of World War II. Its infuriating when one realizes that history books (of course written by the oppressors) have hidden the horrors and crimes against African people and to this day, continue to downplay the importance of this information. Thank you for this educational piece. As an African descendant, I am proud to know there are people who still search for the truth.

    • dr_fran on May 20, 2014 at 7:37 PM

      Thank you, Diana. It’s good to know that our work does not go unnoticed.

  10. Jill E. Dymond on June 18, 2014 at 6:16 AM

    I am the Chief Administrator for a group on Face book called: ( Black History what they didn’t teach us) In my researching today for posting up, I came across your website, and now would like to share with our 15,000 members. Keep up the great work!

    Sincerely yours,
    Jill E. Dymond

    • dr_fran on June 19, 2014 at 11:33 PM

      Thanks for letting us know about your group and for sharing ABHM with your followers! We both do important work.

  11. j.jeffrey weisenfeld on November 26, 2014 at 1:26 PM

    About 500,000 Africans were brought to what became the United States. By 1860, the number of black slaves in the US was about 5,000,000. The only genocide in history where the number of people inceased dramatically. The opposite of a Holocaust. Slavery was horrible enough without distorting the facts or using wrong labels.

    • dr_fran on November 26, 2014 at 11:16 PM

      Yes, Jeffrey, about 500K Africans arrived in N. America on slave ships, but some 12-15 million were taken onto those ships. What happened in between? Millions died from malnutrition and disease chained together in dark, filthy holds. Many hundreds were thrown overboard to drown, for various reasons. Some managed to commit suicide. If that is not a holocaust, I’m not sure what is. Also, though the numbers of slaves increased even after most of the slave trade ended, the treatment of those many slaves was devastating. They also died in large numbers from malnutrition, disease, overwork, and the brutality of slaveholders. Forced labor, brutality, starvation, rape, etc. are features of a holocaust, and these conditions prevailed through the convict lease system and debt peonage that followed the Emancipation. Much of this still goes on today. The last 500 years of dehumanization, discrimination and other forms of physical and psychological abuse have certainly constituted a holocaust.

  12. Mary A Smith on December 15, 2014 at 6:35 AM

    Thank you for this great contribution to Truth. God is for truth.

  13. Christina Hearon on February 27, 2015 at 9:56 PM

    Oh, how my heart aches. I am 41, well-educated, and live in the Bible Belt…I thought I was pretty informed about racism and the African-American plight in this country!! Thank you for all your hard work in bringing this information to light!

  14. miniimah salaam on March 4, 2015 at 7:45 AM

    it blew my mind to read about this. I never knew that there was even a museum about the black Holocaust. It was very interesting to know these facts, as I grew up in school learning about history never was there any mention of American Black American history. maybe history class would have been a bit more interesting if we knew about the success, downfalls, economy struggle, slavery ofAfrican Americans

  15. elise on March 21, 2015 at 10:12 PM

    Thank you for safeguarding these historical American events. I found your site as I was researching material for a film project. If it weren’t for sites like these and those unafraid to continue the story telling, no one would remember the truth. The struggle for blacks to survive continues, the holocaust of blacks continues, the oppression continues, but there will be an uprising of a great people reknown for their great strength.

  16. Saleem on March 24, 2015 at 1:01 PM

    I appreciate your efforts Dr. Fran. To solve any problem you must “Find out where the fish got away”. The answers to the African American people are to know and understand where we come from. Until we can all acknowledge were our problems stem from we will continue to be blind.

    • dr_fran on March 25, 2015 at 1:07 PM

      Thanks for your kind words, Saleem!

  17. Stephanie Davis on April 1, 2015 at 3:32 PM

    I was creating a unit comparing and contrasting the Jim Crow laws with the Anti-Semitic Laws in Germany. I want my (6th grade) students to draw similarities between the atrocities suffered by the African American population in the United States with the atrocities suffered by the Jewish population in Nazi-occupied Germany and how these events have impacted today’s society. What an incredible wealth of information your site is!

  18. William Word on April 8, 2015 at 12:48 PM

    I’m trying to find out where you located in Milwaukee , I’m trying visit soon

    • dr_fran on April 23, 2015 at 6:46 PM

      We are located in cyberspace. At present ABHM is an online museum only. We are planning to move back into a physical space eventually.

  19. William Word on April 8, 2015 at 12:53 PM

    Trying to get your location for a visit to your museum

    • dr_fran on April 21, 2015 at 7:49 AM

      William, by coming to this website you have already visited our museum! ABHM is currently (2015) an entirely online museum. That means we have no physical plant to visit. Plans to return to a building are in the works, but will be several years before we have a building for you to walk into. In the meantime, ABHM online has more than 2600 exhibits for you to explore – and more are added all the time. We hope you’ll return to this web museum again and again. Thanks for visiting!

  20. Kugremah on September 11, 2015 at 5:14 PM

    I was searching for info on a picture which had a text “9/11/1801, dont forget” on my twitter timeline which lead me to the American holocaust and eventually to this site. I had no idea there ever was such a mass killing and disregard for African American lives in the American history. Sure i read about the struggle for equal rights and about Martin Luther King Jr but that was just about it..atleast till now.
    As one with interest in history and past events i thank you so much for this extra knowledge.
    I live in Ghana and I hope very much that if I should visit America one day I get to visit your museum again but that time a physical room full of history. God bless.

    • dr_fran on September 12, 2015 at 4:37 PM

      Thanks for your comments, Kugremah! Sadly, many, if not most, Americans do not know any more of the history we memorialize here than you do. Thank you for visiting our museum and for your concern with our past. We hope to welcome you to America one day soon!

  21. IFA SANGO on September 11, 2015 at 5:34 PM

    An Educational Effort That is Long Overdue.

  22. Christopher Simmons on October 3, 2015 at 12:01 PM

    I’d like to thank who ever put this here and I’d like to tell my teacher about this so she will tell others.

  23. CARNELLE Marlon on November 27, 2015 at 5:12 AM

    November, 20th 2015,

    To whom it may concern, Dr Fran KAPLAN from ABH Museum.

    Hello, my name is Carnelle Marlon, I am french student from France, and I am now studying in school about the African American segregation, and everything that happened to them since the 1776’s American declaration of indepedence and the slavery of African American to now and their access to their rights, and the almost equality in America between all their citizens.

    Therefore, this is why our teacher made us work on your website museum to be interest and know more about this important part of American History. Actually, to fullfil our knowledges your website were an amazing and simple way to do it.
    Indeed, your website is fully loaded for everything we need to learn and know about the tragedy that happened but also the good ending with the civil rights and equality finally given to the African American due to all the sacrifices that brave and courageous people made for them. Moreover, the videos are another good thing in your website, because through those, we can feel sadness, pity and shame for what happened to them, their conditions, and the cruel role of white people in this story. I spent almost 1hour of our english time on your website, I don’t know if it was enough to read and understand everything on the website but I went out the classroom with so much knowledges about it.
    The only regret I may have about it would be that I don’t understand why you are only on internet and still do not have a personal building to make this museum real. Are you planning to make it? I would be glad to visit it when I might have the chance to get to United States Of America.

    Your faithfully,

    CARNELLE Marlon

  24. Darryl Turner on November 29, 2015 at 7:16 PM

    The American Slave is from the tribe of Judah and Jerusalem (Deut. 28:68) because our forefathers worshipped idols, we inherited the curses the Moshe warned us about , also Joel 3- verse 4-6 says predicted we be sold to the Grecians in order to remove us far from our Land, America is the Mordern Babylon prophesied about in the bible and Yaweh will restore us to our land. and deal with the King of Babylon.

  25. Ronald Watts on January 14, 2016 at 7:18 AM

    First off let say that this was very brilliant work. I’ve read the Black Holocaust letter by” Marvis Garvey Jr.” during my 8 years in prison. So, I’m very familiar with this very informative material. but however, reading this brought me more insight on how these atrocities still have long term effects on us today.

  26. Phillip H. Porter, Jr. on January 22, 2016 at 2:06 PM

    January 21, 2016, age 78+, led 1954 lunch counter protest(Enid, OK), integrated Phillips Univ., Enid,OK.,1955-59. Have studied, spoken, written and marched for the cause of Civil Rights, and YET THIS PAGE, is to me most informative. Further, I so appreciated the manner in which you present, while it is evident you share the painful inequities, your presentations are without rancor. May you continue to enlighten, inform and encourage!

    • dr_fran on January 25, 2016 at 7:03 AM

      Thank you for your kind comments and for sharing your story, Bishop Porter. We would love to know much more about your work as well and will contact you about contributing that story as an exhibit.

  27. Tom on March 6, 2016 at 9:05 PM

    what holocaust of African Americans??? where did you get that horseshit? The holocaust involved mass executions by gas and bullets. Spare me this garbage comparison. Africans commit genocide against Africans. Africans also sold thier own people into slavery, and history traces slavery to Africa with African Egyptians over the Jews being a major example. However slavery is not race specific, has happened to all throughout history.

    • Joan Keptor on June 15, 2016 at 3:33 AM

      Speaking to ‘Tom on March 6, 2016’ …It’s really difficult to heal or enlighten someone to truth when they are trapped in their own hurt, so deep they cannot see or phathom that the same or worse could possibly happen to any other group of people. Spewing anger toward any group of people for being victimized, or, in your opinion only, in some kind of effort to prove the group of people you obviously identify with, hold a ‘record’ for being the most ill treated as a race is pointless, when the true facts of history dictate otherwise, in more than a few instances in history.

  28. Justin on June 11, 2016 at 7:59 PM

    This site is a tremendous resource. As one can tell from the comments, there is a need for the public to be more thoroughly educated. The stories must be retold and learning’s reapplied to each new generations community.

  29. george whitney on June 19, 2016 at 11:59 AM

    So, why did you leave out the part about Africans being sold by their own people into slavery? I mean, it helps keep things legit…..

  30. April on June 22, 2016 at 11:01 AM

    I don’t believe in black Holocaust. It doesn’t exist to me at all .

  31. Lynn on September 20, 2016 at 4:45 PM

    Thank you so much for what you are doing…its long overdue….you’re speaking truth to power and light. But truth can sometimes affect billions to trillions of dollars in revenue for those perpetuating systems you mention. So only drink bottled water and test your air and tap water in your home, regularly. Paranoid …yes, LOL…but dead-serious! Keep up the great-excellent work.

  32. Maxwell on September 27, 2016 at 7:03 AM

    I’m glad I found this. My friend told me about it and I don’t think i ever would have learned about it in school. But then again, there’s a lot of things they find unworthy to teach.

  33. poin4d on October 30, 2016 at 12:02 PM

    yes, I totally agree with what you write thank you for the information … I hope I can still read the article that you create thereafter …

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