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Slavery existed in the United States since European settlers brought Africans to English North America in Jamestown in 1619 (still at the time of the British rule), until 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. [23] | |
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. [24] [25] 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. [26] | |
Perry Lockwood | ca. 1844 | 1929 | Allegedly one of the last living former slaves in lower Delaware; died aged 87. [27] | |
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. [28] 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 [29] | |
David Hendrickson | 1799 | 1900 | Allegedly the last living former slave sold "on the block" in New Jersey. [30] 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. [31] | |
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, [32] after new enslavement was made illegal in Rhode Island. [33] Her death in 1868 was noted in several newspapers around the country, including in the South. [34] James Howland (1758-1859) was also one of Rhode Island's last legal former slaves, and was enslaved until 1842. [35] [36] 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. [37] | |
Margaret Pint | 1778 | 1857 | Purportedly the last living former slave in New York; she was born into slavery in Westchester County. [38] 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. [39] | |
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. [40] | |
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. [41] [42] | |
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and from there to Canada. The network, primarily the work of free African Americans, was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The slaves who risked capture and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the Railroad, respectively. Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. However, the network generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One estimate suggests that, by 1850, approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
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 mainly to Portuguese, British, Spanish, Dutch, and French 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.
Slavery in the colonial history of the United States refers to the institution of slavery as it existed in the European colonies which eventually became part of the United States. In these colonies, 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 victims of enslavement by European colonizers during the era.
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
Emancipation Day is observed in many former European colonies in the Caribbean and areas of the United States on various dates to commemorate the emancipation of slaves of African descent.
Wanderer was the penultimate documented ship to bring an illegal cargo of enslaved people from Africa to the United States, landing at Jekyll Island, Georgia, on November 28, 1858. It was the last to carry a large cargo, arriving with some 400 people. Clotilda, which transported 110 people from Dahomey in 1860, is the last known ship to bring enslaved people from Africa to the US.
Black Indians are Native American people – defined as Native American due to being affiliated with Native American communities and being culturally Native American – who also have significant African American heritage.
The plantations of Leon County were numerous and vast. Leon County, in the U.S. state of Florida, was a true cotton kingdom. From the 1820s through 1850s Leon County attracted cotton planters from Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, plus other states and abroad to its fertile red clay soils and long growing season.
Slavery in New Jersey began in the early 17th century, when Dutch colonists trafficked African slaves for labor to develop the colony of New Netherland. After England took control of the colony in 1664, its colonists continued the importation of slaves from Africa. They also imported "seasoned" slaves from their colonies in the West Indies and enslaved Native Americans from the Carolinas.
The history of slavery in Nebraska is generally seen as short and limited. The issue was contentious for the legislature between the creation of the Nebraska Territory in 1854 and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.
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.
The trafficking of enslaved Africans to what became New York began as part of the Dutch slave trade. The Dutch West India Company trafficked eleven enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam in 1626, with the first slave auction held in New Amsterdam in 1655. With the second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, more than 42% of New York City households enslaved African people by 1703, often as domestic servants and laborers. Others worked as artisans or in shipping and various trades in the city. Enslaved Africans were also used in farming on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, as well as the Mohawk Valley region.
Timbuctoo is an unincorporated community in Westampton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey. Located along the Rancocas Creek, Timbuctoo was settled by formerly enslaved and free Black people, beginning in 1826. It includes Church St., Blue Jay Hill Road, and adjacent areas. At its peak in the mid-nineteenth century, Timbuctoo had more than 125 residents, a school, an AME Zion Church, and a cemetery. The key remaining evidence of this community is the cemetery on Church Street, which was formerly the site of Zion Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal African Church. Some current residents are descendants of early settlers.
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.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime, through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Redoshi was a West African woman who was enslaved and smuggled to the U.S. state of Alabama as a girl in 1860. Until a later surviving claimant, Matilda McCrear, was announced in 2020, she was considered to have been the last surviving victim of the transatlantic slave trade. Taken captive in warfare at age 12 by the West African kingdom of Dahomey, she was sold to Americans and transported by ship to the United States in violation of U.S. law. She was sold again and enslaved on the upcountry plantation of the Washington M. Smith family in Dallas County, Alabama, where her owner renamed her Sally Smith.
Matilda McCrear was the last known living survivor in the United States of the transatlantic slave trade and the ship Clotilda. She was a Yoruba who was captured and brought to Mobile, Mobile County, Alabama at the age of two with her mother and older sister.
From the late-18th to the mid-19th century, various states of the United States of America 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.