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Slavery existed in the United States from its inception in 1776 to its complete abolition with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 5, 1865, under which it was abolished nationally. The last known survivors who were born into legalized slavery or enslaved prior to the passage of the amendment are listed below. The list also contains the last known survivors in various states which abolished legal slavery prior to 1865. Some birth dates are difficult to verify due to lack of birth documentation for most enslaved individuals.
Name | Image | Birth | Death | Notes and References |
---|---|---|---|---|
Elizabeth Cash Green | June 2, 1862 | February 20, 1975 | Born in Midland, Georgia in 1862, moved to Arkansas in 1882, and died Helena, Arkansas in 1975. [1] | |
Peter Mills | October 26, 1861 | September 22, 1972 | Born in Prince George's County, Maryland, and died after a pedestrian accident in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. [2] | |
Sylvester Magee | May 29, 1841? | October 15, 1971 | Unverified and purportedly died at 130 years old in Columbia, Marion County, Mississippi. [3] [4] Age is unverified, and such a claim would have made him the oldest person in the world, so his birthdate is likely after 1841. | |
William Casby | January 19, 1857 [5] | August 17, 1970 [6] | Photographed on March 24, 1963, by Richard Avedon in Algiers, New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, with multiple generations of his family. [7] [8] [9] | |
Mary Hardway Walker | May 6, 1848? | December 1, 1969 | Purportedly lived to 121 years old; she had a child who died in his 90s, according to the family Bible on Ancestry.com.[ citation needed ] She moved from Union Springs, Bullock County, Alabama, to Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Tennessee, where a newspaper article was published about her learning to read in 1966 at age 116. [10] | |
Anna J. Cooper | August 10, 1858 | February 27, 1964 | Anna Cooper was a notable academic and activist who was born in slavery Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina. [11] [12] | |
Josephus | pre-1865 | after August 28, 1963 | Listed in a bulletin for Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington as supposedly the last surviving American slave. [13] | |
Jeff Doby | February 6, 1858 | March 26, 1963 | Believed to be the oldest living person in South Carolina at the time of 1961 and one of the last living former slaves in South Carolina. Jeff was born in Camden, Kershaw County, and died at the age of 105 in 1963. He was featured in the local newspaper after his 103rd birthday and photographed. Two of his sons would also live to be nearly 100 years old. [14] | |
Fountain Hughes | 1859 | July 4, 1957[ citation needed ] | Former slave freed in 1865 after the American Civil War. Descendant of Betty Hemings, slave matriarch at Thomas Jefferson's plantation Monticello. Hughes was interviewed in June 1949 about his life by the Library of Congress as part of the Federal Writers' Project of oral histories of former slaves persons. The recorded interview is available online through the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library. | |
Alfred "Teen" Blackburn | April 26, 1842 | March 8, 1951 | Received a Confederate pension in 1929 for accompanying his owner during the Civil War; resided in North Carolina. [15] | |
John Wesley Washington | c. 1843 | May 15, 1951 [16] | Possibly last surviving former slave living in Washington, D.C. | |
Eliza Moore | 1843 | January 21, 1948 | One of the last verified surviving American slaves; resided in North Carolina. [17] | |
William Andrew Johnson | February 8, 1858 | May 16, 1943 | Believed to be the last surviving person enslaved by a U.S. President (Andrew Johnson); visited FDR at the White House in 1937. [18] [19] | |
Adeline Dade | 1853 | December 1941 | Possibly one of the last living former slaves in New York. [20] | |
Harriet Wilson Whitely | March 15, 1855 | April 26, 1941 | The last living former slave in Fairmont, Fairmont County, West Virginia. [21] | |
Matilda McCrear | 1857 | January 1940 | The last known survivor of the Clotilda in 1859–1860, the last trans-Atlantic slave ship to arrive in America from Africa. [22] | |
Redoshi | 1848 | 1937 | The next to last known survivor of the Clotilda , the last slave ship to arrive in America. [22] | |
Delia Garlic | 1837 | 1937 at the earliest | Born in Virginia; was purportedly 100 years old during an interview with Margaret Fowler in the late 1930s. [23] [24] Date of death is unclear. | |
Cudjoe Lewis | 1841 | July 17, 1935 | One of the last survivors of the Clotilda , the last slave ship to arrive in America. [25] | |
Perry Lockwood | ca. 1844 | 1929 | Allegedly one of the last living former slaves in lower Delaware; died aged 87. [26] | |
Reuben Freeman | c. 1835 | c. 1915 | One of the last slaves in Somerset County, New Jersey; lived in Somerville; was enslaved to William Annin of Liberty Corner. [27] Likely other later survivors because final slaves were not emancipated until 1865 in New Jersey. | |
Julius Lemons | c. 1850 | after 1915 | Possibly last survivor of the Wanderer [28] | |
David Hendrickson | 1799 | 1900 | Allegedly the last living former slave sold "on the block" in New Jersey. [29] Likely other later survivors because final slaves were not emancipated until 1865 in New Jersey. | |
Louise Tritton | ca. 1780 | 1891 | One of the last living former slaves in Connecticut, and oldest person in New Haven, New Haven County. [30] | |
Adjua D'Wolf | 1794 | 1868 | Possibly the last surviving slave in Rhode Island. Adjua was enslaved in Africa, brought to Bristol, Bristol County, Rhode Island, in 1803 and sold to the D'Wolf family, a family of slave traders, [31] after new enslavement was made illegal in Rhode Island. [32] Her death in 1868 was noted in several newspapers around the country, including in the South. [33] James Howland (1758-1859) was also one of Rhode Island's last legal former slaves, and was enslaved until 1842. [34] [35] D'Wolf and Howland are likely not the last slaves, due to RI's gradual emancipation with several legally slaves still listed in the 1840 census, and likely enslaved until the 1843 RI Constitution banned all slavery. | |
Hannah Kelley | ca. 1760 | January 15, 1864 | Died at 103 years old in Cross Creek, Cross Creek Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, as possibly the last living former slave in Pennsylvania, formerly owned by John Gardner of Jefferson, Jefferson County. [36] | |
Margaret Pint | 1778 | 1857 | Purportedly the last living former slave in New York; she was born into slavery in Westchester County. [37] Likely not the last living former slave, because final emancipation in New York did not occur until July 5, 1827. | |
Venus Rowe | ca. 1754 | 1844 | Purportedly one of the last living former slaves in Massachusetts, resided in Burlington, Middlesex County. [38] | |
Name | Image | Birth | Death | Notes and References |
---|---|---|---|---|
Charlie Smith | 1842 (claimed) or 1874 or 1879 | October 5, 1979 | Allegedly born in Liberia or United States of America, claimed to be the last Civil War veteran and slave, among other false claims. Discredited and died in Florida in 1979. [39] | |
Mary Duckworth | 1861 (claimed), likely between 1874 and 1880 | April 20, 1983 | Allegedly born into slavery, but discredited due to census and social security records reporting other later birth dates. [40] [41] | |
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The outfitted European slave ships of the slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central and West Africa who had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade. Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.
The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 is a United States federal law that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
Slavery in the colonial history of the United States refers to the institution of slavery that existed in the European colonies in North America which eventually became part of the United States of America. Slavery developed due to a combination of factors, primarily the labour demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies, which had resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were targets of enslavement by European colonists during the era.
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during the early colonial period, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing.
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions.
The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of enslaved people who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause which is in the United States Constitution. It was thought that forcing states to deliver fugitive slaves back to enslavement violated states' rights due to state sovereignty and was believed that seizing state property should not be left up to the states. The Fugitive Slave Clause states that fugitive slaves "shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due", which abridged state rights because forcing people back into slavery was a form of retrieving private property. The Compromise of 1850 entailed a series of laws that allowed slavery in the new territories and forced officials in free states to give a hearing to slave-owners without a jury.
Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of slave mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property; analogous legislation existed in other civilizations including Medieval Egypt in Africa and Korea in Asia.
The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The social, economic, and legal positions of slaves have differed vastly in different systems of slavery in different times and places.
Slavery in Georgia is known to have been practiced by European colonists. During the colonial era, the practice of slavery in Georgia soon became surpassed by industrial-scale plantation slavery.
The history of slavery in Kentucky dates from the earliest permanent European settlements in the state, until the end of the Civil War. In 1830, enslaved African Americans represented 24 percent of Kentucky's population, a share that had declined to 19.5 percent by 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. Most enslaved people were concentrated in the cities of Louisville and Lexington and in the hemp- and tobacco-producing Bluegrass Region and Jackson Purchase. Other enslaved people lived in the Ohio River counties, where they were most often used in skilled trades or as house servants. Relatively few people were held in slavery in the mountainous regions of eastern and southeastern Kentucky; they served primarily as artisans and service workers in towns.
In the American Revolution, gaining freedom was the strongest motive for Black enslaved people who joined the Patriot or British armies. It is estimated that 20,000 African Americans joined the British cause, which promised freedom to enslaved people, as Black Loyalists. Around 9,000 African Americans became Black Patriots.
Slavery among Native Americans in the United States includes slavery by and enslavement of Native Americans roughly within what is currently the United States of America.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 slaves during his adult life. Jefferson freed two slaves while he lived, and five others were freed after his death, including two of his children from his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. His other two children with Hemings were allowed to escape without pursuit. After his death, the rest of the slaves were sold to pay off his estate's debts.
Sylvester Magee received much publicity as the last living former American slave. He was accepted for treatment by the Mississippi Veterans Hospital as a veteran of the American Civil War.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again. According to Time on the Cross - The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Drs. Fogel and Engerman, who used scientific methods, the cruelty of slavery has been exaggerated by historians.
From the late-18th to the mid-19th century, various states of the United States allowed the enslavement of human beings, most of whom had been transported from Africa during the Atlantic slave trade or were their descendants. The institution of chattel slavery was established in North America in the 16th century under Spanish colonization, British colonization, French colonization, and Dutch colonization.
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