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Slave Trade: Courant Comes Clean
Daily acknowledges, apologizes for profiting from ads during slavery era
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Business New Haven
7/10/2000
By: BNH
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After two centuries, the state's largest news organization has come clean about its slavery-tainted past.
In a July 4 article, the Hartford Courant acknowledged that it had published ads for the sale and capture of slaves - in effect profiting from the slave trade - from the paper's founding in the mid-18th century until well into the 19th century. The story came four months after the paper reported that Aetna Inc. was apologizing for insuring slaves, and a story the next day detailing how other businesses had supported slavery.
From its founding in 1764 well into the 19th century, the Courant ran many ads for the sale and capture of human beings. "In effect," said the article, "Courant publishers, including founder Thomas Green, acted as slave brokers."
Blacks had been enslaved in Connecticut since about 1640. They were used mainly as domestic servants and farmhands. Many of the state's prominent families - Wadsworths, Seymours and Wyllyses - owned slaves, reported the Courant.
In 1774, Connecticut had the most black residents among the New England colonies - some 6,500 people, representing about three percent of the population.
African-Americans in colonial Connecticut could not vote, had to carry passes outside the towns where they lived and could be whipped for minor transgressions, including any threat to a white person. They could be sold away from their families at the whim of their owners.
Newspaper advertisements selling slaves or offering rewards for the capture of runaways were commonplace. "Slavery was so woven into the nation's economy and social fabric that such ads were probably less controversial than gun or tobacco marketing would be today," reported the Courant.
Nevertheless, the Courant's role in the slave trade went largely unmarked until a Bloomfield schoolteacher named Billie Anthony happened across advertisements in old Courants as part of a class project. In April the paper published a letter to the editor describing Anthony's findings.
"The complicity of the Connecticut Courant [as it was known in colonial times] in the slave trade is evident, and we may not always like what we find, but the truth is valuable," Anthony told the paper.
Connecticut abolished slavery in 1848.
Explaining the paper's decision to come clean, Courant deputy publisher and vice president for external affairs Lou Golden said, "This is a newspaper with a long and rich heritage. If we can claim ownership of the high points, we're also responsible for the low points. Clearly, the fact of the Courant's involvement in slavery, like most newspapers of its time, is something we as an institution must acknowledge and take responsibility for."
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