Evils of Slavery and False Narratives
Historical Notes on Slavery’s Global Reach
1. Slavery in African Societies
Historical Context: Slavery existed in Africa long before European contact, deeply rooted in ancient civilizations such as Mali, Songhai, and Great Zimbabwe. It often resulted from warfare, where prisoners of war were enslaved, or from social structures where debt or crime led to servitude.
Key Facts:
Enslaved individuals performed labor (agriculture, mining), were traded, or served as status symbols for elites.
Some slaves were integrated into households, while others faced severe conditions.
The trans-Saharan trade, beginning in the 7th century, supplied slaves to North African and Middle Eastern markets, with an estimated 7–10 million Africans enslaved by the 19th century.
African slave systems varied, from temporary servitude in some societies to hereditary slavery among groups like the Igbo and Yoruba.
African elites actively sold captives to European and Arab traders during the transatlantic slave trade (16th–19th centuries), driven by demand for goods such as firearms and textiles.
Significance: Slavery in Africa was an indigenous practice, shaped by local power dynamics and economic incentives, demonstrating that the institution was not introduced by outsiders, but rather evolved within African societies.
2. The Arab and Trans-Saharan Slave Trade
Historical Context: The Arab slave trade lasted from the 7th to the 20th centuries, operating through vast networks that transported enslaved Africans across the Sahara, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean to North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia.
Key Facts:
Approximately 10–12 million Africans were enslaved, comparable to the transatlantic trade’s scale, though spread over a much longer period.
Male slaves were often used as soldiers or laborers, while women were frequently taken as concubines or domestic servants.
Castration of male slaves was a common practice, especially for those destined for harems or elite households.
Major trade routes included the trans-Saharan caravan paths and East African coastal ports like Zanzibar, which supplied slaves to the Ottoman Empire and Persian Gulf.
The trade persisted into the 20th century, with slavery legally abolished in Saudi Arabia only in 1962.
Significance: The longevity and brutality of the Arab slave trade highlight the deep entrenchment of slavery in global economies, challenging the Western-focused discourse on slavery.
3. The Transatlantic Slave Trade
Historical Context: The transatlantic slave trade (16th–19th centuries) was an industrialized system driven by European colonial powers, supplying labor for plantations in the Americas, primarily in the Caribbean, Brazil, and North America.
Key Facts:
12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic, with 10.7 million surviving the Middle Passage—a journey marked by mortality rates of 10–20%.
Chattel slavery in the Americas meant enslaved people were lifelong property, devoid of legal rights.
Slavery became explicitly racialized, targeting Africans based on pseudoscientific racial inferiority theories.
Major European colonial powers involved included Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, and the Netherlands, with Brazil receiving the largest share (about 5 million enslaved Africans).
Though the trade was abolished in the 19th century (Britain in 1807, U.S. in 1808), slavery persisted in the Americas, notably in the U.S. until 1865 and Brazil until 1888.
However, this isn't actually true as it was known that in the state of Oregon, slavery of whites was still occurring from 1850-194.
Significance: The scale, racial ideology, and economic impact of the transatlantic trade distinguish it as a uniquely horrific system, but its prominence should not overshadow other global forms of slavery.
4. Slavery in Europe and Asia
Historical Context: Slavery and servitude were widespread in Europe and Asia, evolving from ancient systems into medieval and early modern forms of bondage.
Key Facts:
Ancient Greece and Rome: Slavery was central to the economy, with slaves drawn from conquered peoples (Europeans, Africans, and Asians). The Roman Empire enslaved millions for agriculture, mining, and domestic work.
Medieval Europe: Serfdom replaced chattel slavery, binding peasants to land with restricted freedoms, while the Ottoman Empire enslaved Europeans, Africans, and Asians through the Devshirme system, which conscripted Christian boys as soldiers or administrators.
Asia:
In China, slaves served in households and agriculture.
In India, caste-based servitude and debt bondage persisted.
In Southeast Asia, the Khmer Empire and other states practiced slavery.
Millions were enslaved in these regions over centuries, with systems tied to warfare, debt, and social hierarchies.
5. Shanghai Tunnels & Forced Labor in Portland, Oregon
Time Period: Late 19th–early 20th century (c. 1850–1941)
Portland’s Reputation:
Known as the "Shanghai Capital of the World", infamous for its rampant human trafficking and forced labor practices.
Victims:
Primarily white men, including sailors, loggers, and laborers, who were abducted and forced into maritime servitude.
Women were also targeted, particularly those in bars and brothels, often sold into prostitution under the term "white slavery".
Methods of Abduction:
Victims were kidnapped, drugged (commonly with laudanum or alcohol), or tricked in saloons such as Erickson’s and Valhalla.
They were held in brick or wooden cells beneath Portland’s waterfront.
Transported through a network of basements and tunnels, allegedly linked to Willamette River docks, before being forced onto ships.
Price Per Person:
Sold to sea captains for $50–$55 per head, meeting the demand for labor in trans-Pacific trade.
When supplies to feed these slaves ran low, some were killed, cooked and served to everyone as "long pork."
Women Victims:
Many women, particularly those in bars and brothels, were abducted and sold into prostitution, a practice known as "white slavery", targeting vulnerable populations for sexual exploitation.
Human Butchery & "Long Pork":
Some victims were not merely murdered but butchered, treated as cattle, and fed to captives and crew under the term "long pork"—a euphemism for human flesh.
Reports suggest that shanghaied individuals who resisted or were deemed unfit for labor were killed and processed as food, reinforcing the inhumane brutality of this system.
Other Locations with Similar Practices:
San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and Puget Sound ports (Seattle, Tacoma) employed similar tactics, with crimps kidnapping sailors for maritime labor.
Astoria, Oregon, also reported shanghaiing, reflecting the Pacific Northwest’s role in this trade.
Significance:
The Shanghai Tunnels highlight that slavery and human trafficking were not exclusive to African populations but also affected white victims in Western contexts.
The Old Portland Underground, commonly referred to as the Shanghai Tunnels, consists of passages beneath Old Town Chinatown, connecting basements of hotels and taverns to the Willamette River waterfront.
While Oregon also has a tendency to cover up and hide its "unpleasant history" seeking to erase it, which has even included cemeteries, broken glass bottles found in the Shanghai Tunnels.
Victims were drugged (e.g., with laudanum or alcohol), knocked unconscious, or lured into saloons like Erickson’s or Valhalla. They were dropped through trapdoors, known as “deadfalls,” into basements or tunnels, then confined in holding cells.
Captives were sold to sea captains for $50–$55 per head, forced into unpaid labor on ships bound for Asia, often waking mid-ocean with no escape. Women were abducted for prostitution, termed “white slavery,” and sold to brothels or shipped to distant cities.
Broken glass, from bottles dating to the late 19 and early 20th centuries, was deliberately scattered on tunnel floors to deter barefoot captives from escaping.
Kidnappers removed victims’ shoes to exacerbate the risk of injury, making flight across glass-strewn passages painful and dangerous. This practice is noted in tour accounts and secondary sources, such as Portland’s Haunted Tunnels (2024), which describes captors shattering glass to discourage escape attempts.
Estimates suggest 1,500–2,000 people were shanghaied annually at the practice’s peak (late 19th century), per Michael P. Jones of the Cascade Geographic Society.
Physical evidence includes holding cells (wooden or brick), trapdoors in saloons (some still functional, e.g., at Old Town Pizza), and maritime infrastructure like tunnels linking basements to Willamette River docks. Artifacts, such as abandoned boots and glass shards, support claims of forced confinement.
Originally, the tunnels were built to move goods from ships to storage areas, avoiding street traffic and thieves, they also expanded to include opium dens, gambling dens, and brothels that were by then often run by organized crime. For example, Bow Yuen on NW 4th Ave was a known gambling site.
This system, driven by maritime labor demands, parallels other slavery systems in its exploitation of vulnerable groups for profit, revealing the universal nature of human trafficking.
Historian Barney Blalock notes limited physical evidence of tunnel use for shanghaiing, suggesting they primarily facilitated smuggling or police evasion.
However, oral histories and contemporary accounts (e.g., The Oregonian, 1890s) confirm the practice’s prevalence.
The Oregon Historical Society estimates thousands were shanghaied annually, underscoring Portland’s role in this coercive labor market.
Oregon’s Suppression of “Unpleasant” History
Historical Context: Oregon has a documented history of minimizing or erasing evidence of its darker past, including slavery, racial violence, and criminal enterprises, to project a progressive image.
Key Facts:
Cemetery Erasure: Oregon has obscured historical sites, such as Native American and pioneer cemeteries, through urban development or neglect. For example, the Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, established in 1855, has faced encroachment, with unmarked graves potentially lost to construction (The Oregonian, 2015).
Racial and Criminal Cover-Ups: Oregon’s exclusionary laws (e.g., 1844 Black exclusion law) and anti-Chinese riots in the 1880s were downplayed in official histories. Portland’s Chinatown, adjacent to the tunnels, was stereotyped as a den of “heroin, prostitution, and violence” (The Oregonian, 1950s), fueling myths but obscuring systemic racism and crime. The same existed in Salem Oregon as well being a river city itself.
Shanghai Tunnels: The tunnels’ criminal history was romanticized or ignored until the 1970s, when Michael P. Jones’ tours popularized the shanghaiing narrative. Historians note that Portland’s civic leaders avoided documenting shanghaiing to protect the city’s reputation, leaving gaps in primary records.
Skepticism of Tunnels’ Role: Historians like Barney Blalock argue that tunnels were primarily used for smuggling or gang activities (e.g., by Chinese tongs) rather than shanghaiing, citing no contemporary evidence of tunnel-based human trafficking. This skepticism may reflect Oregon’s tendency to sanitize its past, as oral histories and artifacts contradict such dismissals. Significance: Oregon’s efforts to erase or downplay its history have obscured the full extent of shanghaiing, making secondary sources, artifacts (e.g., glass, cells), and local lore critical to reconstructing the truth. This suppression reinforces your point that the state has hidden its complicity in slavery.
Maritime Trade Infrastructure and Slavery
Historical Context: Portland’s maritime trade, a cornerstone of its economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, relied on forced labor to crew ships, facilitated by the tunnels’ infrastructure.
Key Facts:
Infrastructure: The tunnels connected saloons, hotels (e.g., Merchant Hotel), and brothels to Willamette River docks, enabling discreet transport of goods and people. Built by Chinese laborers, they featured steel doors, secret stairways, and trapdoors for security and evasion.
Maritime Demand: The trans-Pacific trade, especially to Shanghai, required large crews, but sailors often deserted due to harsh conditions or gold rush opportunities (e.g., California, 1849). Captains paid crimps to supply shanghaied men, creating a slave trade embedded in Portland’s port economy.
Artifacts: Excavations have uncovered maritime relics, such as ship-related tools, ropes, and glass bottles, linking the tunnels to dock activities. Trapdoors and cells, documented by the Cascade Geographic Society, facilitated victim transport to ships.
End of Shanghaiing: The practice declined with steamships, which required skilled crews, and legal reforms like the Seamen’s Act of 1915, but persisted in Portland until World War II, when tunnels were starting to be more actively sealed or erased with later city renovation projects and construction.
Salem Oregon’s Underground Tunnels: Structure and Purpose
This par of the state, being the capital city, is particularly nasty about erasing historical records, even ignoring the fact the current flag of the state was designed, established and to this day has not been replaced having been approved by a Democrat Governor who was also backed and funded by the KKK.
Downtown Salem, Oregon, beneath State Street, Liberty Street NE, the old Title Building, Reed Opera House, and Marion County Courthouse.
Some tunnels linked to the Oregon State Penitentiary, but direct evidence of their use for forced labor remains debated.
This video was posted by the Stateman Journal October 19, 2010 and died on August 26, 2011 at 75 years of age.
Despite his credentials some 14 years later, "state officials" deny his claims as they "fill in, and erase more history" for modernization projects and creating intentional disconnection of generations of citizens that have lived there and know the actual history that is constantly "scrubbed."
Time Period:
Late 19th century–early 20th century, with potential use until the 1940s. During the 1990s construction of the Transit Mall at Courthouse Square, tunnels were exposed but later sealed.
The sidewalk vaults in downtown Salem were installed around the turn of the century and used primarily for deliveries — some for coal and others for gold — through steel hatches still found in some blocks. Grids of purplish glass blocks were embedded in the sidewalks to help illuminate the vaults.
Since this time, Salem Oregon has also been sealing up and filling in the tunnel systems, many of which were significantly damaged and neglected since a massive flood of 1996 on February 8. Most downtown visitors have no idea they could be walking on the roof of an underground vault whose structural integrity may be impacted by time and elements.
Examples of lies told by state officials is that such things as discovered an antique bank vault, a gold drop where miners cached treasure, an old grocery front, a café mural, rusting elevators and empty shafts where people lived are all just urban legends and myths which is factually false.
Where most cities want to preserve a lot of their history, this clearly is lacking in Salem, Oregon even when renovation of building cites would be less expensive then full on demolition which is also driven by a desire to "modernize" it while sacrificing it's good history that were once locations visited by several generations as a shared connection and sites of good memories that kept the bonds alive. But officials have long since disconnected with such values.
I am one of the few who knows about this having been born there in 1973, and lived there till 2007 having left a lot of the nonsense behind watching so much history being destroyed and loosing an increasing sense of connection with my original home town.
Purpose:
Built by Chinese immigrants in the 1870s, during the Transcontinental Railroad era, primarily for moving goods and avoiding street traffic.
Used for illicit activities, including gambling, opium dens, and bootlegging.
Some accounts suggest human trafficking or forced labor, but direct evidence remains limited.
Underground Chinatown:
Created to evade persecution after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Housed laundries, gambling dens, and opium dens.
Reports of coerced labor or trafficking exist, but documentation is scarce.
Physical Evidence:
Purple Glass Prisms: Sidewalk prisms, originally clear but turned purple due to manganese oxidation, provided light to underground spaces. These are visible on State and High Streets.
Tunnels Under Title Building: Firsthand testimony confirms tunnels beneath the old Title Building, with glass prisms illuminating passages. Nearly two miles of tunnels beneath the Oregon State Hospital once were used to transport patients and supplies between buildings and under Center Street NE when the campus stretched across both sides.
Holding Cells and Shackles: Anecdotal accounts suggest cells and shackles near the Oregon State Hospital and penitentiary, but no official records confirm forced confinement.
However, my mother who worked there at one time did observe them and when I was taking some boxing classes in one of the underground areas that used to be accessible from the street, I and a couple classmates got turned around and came face to face with said wall shackles and cages.
Fairview Training Center: Tunnels at this former institution transported patients, but evidence of coercive confinement is anecdotal which is another example of public access and evidence of such things being erased from official records.
The background: A seven-block area bounded by Chemeketa, High, Ferry and Front streets makes up the Salem Downtown Historic District. The district includes 57 buildings as contributing resources, including about two dozen built in the late 1800s and another two dozen in the early 1900s. Many have basement vaults extending under the adjacent sidewalks, not to be confused with the old tunnels.
Other Locations with Similar Practices:
San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and Puget Sound ports (Seattle, Tacoma) employed similar tactics, with crimps kidnapping sailors for maritime labor.
Astoria, Oregon, also reported shanghaiing, reflecting the Pacific Northwest’s role in this trade.
Significance:
The Shanghai Tunnels highlight that slavery and human trafficking were not exclusive to African populations but also affected white victims in Western contexts.
This system, driven by maritime labor demands, parallels other slavery systems in its exploitation of vulnerable groups for profit, revealing the universal nature of human trafficking.
Historian Barney Blalock notes limited physical evidence of tunnel use for shanghaiing, suggesting they primarily facilitated smuggling or police evasion.
However, oral histories and contemporary accounts (e.g., The Oregonian, 1890s) confirm the practice’s prevalence.
The Oregon Historical Society estimates thousands were shanghaied annually, underscoring Portland’s role in this coercive labor market.
Significance: These examples illustrate that slavery was a global phenomenon, not exclusive to Africa or the Americas, reflecting universal human tendencies toward exploitation.
The Pervasive Evils of Slavery
Slavery’s evils transcended geography, culture, and time, manifesting in the shared act of reducing humans to commodities. Whether in African kingdoms, Arab markets, European colonies, or Asian empires, slavery stripped individuals of autonomy, subjected them to violence, and justified their suffering through economic and social rationales.
The Danger of Selective Narratives
Focusing solely on the transatlantic slave trade, while understandable given its scale and lasting impact, risks distorting history. Millions suffered in the Arab trade, African systems, and Eurasian societies—these victims deserve equal recognition. Selective outrage may frame slavery as a racially exclusive issue, when non-Western societies also participated in slavery, revealing its true global scope.
Intellectual Honesty in Confronting History
Slavery was often normalized because it was economically viable, not due to unique cruelty. This fact does not excuse historical actions but provides context. A fact-based approach, free from ideological bias, ensures inclusivity and accurately represents all victims—whether in Timbuktu, Istanbul, or Charleston.
Balancing Universal and Specific Truths
While slavery’s global scale underscores its universality, specific systems like the transatlantic trade warrant unique attention due to their racialized brutality and enduring legacy. The systemic racism embedded in American slavery still shapes inequalities, demanding targeted reckoning. Recognizing both broad patterns and specific atrocities ensures historical clarity.
Historical Context: After 1865, Southern states exploited loopholes in the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime." This led to convict leasing and debt peonage, primarily targeting Black Americans.
Key Facts:
Convict leasing (1865–1920s) saw Black men, often arrested on minor or fabricated charges (e.g., vagrancy), leased to private companies for labor in mines, railroads, and plantations. Conditions were brutal, with high mortality rates.
By the 1880s, states like Alabama leased thousands annually, generating significant revenue. The practice declined after exposés (e.g., Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon, 2008) but lingered in some areas into the 1940s.
Debt peonage trapped Black and poor white sharecroppers in cycles of debt to landowners, forcing them to work indefinitely. The U.S. Department of Justice investigated peonage cases into the 1940s, with some prosecutions as late as 1945.
Estimates suggest tens of thousands were ensnared in these systems, effectively replicating slavery’s exploitation. Significance: These practices reveal that slavery-like conditions continued for Black Americans, showing that 1865 did not mark a clean end to coerced labor.
Historical Context: Beyond shanghaiing and convict leasing, other coercive labor practices persisted in the U.S., affecting diverse groups.
Key Facts:
In the Pacific Northwest, Native Americans (First Nations people) faced forced labor in early 20th-century logging and fishing industries, often through debt or coercion, with reports into the 1930s (per Native American Labor History, 2015).
Immigrant laborers, particularly Chinese and Mexican workers, faced exploitative systems like contract labor or bracero programs, with conditions bordering on servitude. For example, Chinese workers on railroads post-1865 were often bound by debts or threats, with cases reported into the 1900s.
Human trafficking for prostitution, targeting women (mostly white and immigrant) in urban centers like New York and Chicago, peaking in the early 20th century. The Mann Act of 1910 aimed to curb this, but cases persisted into the 1930s (per FBI records). Significance: These examples illustrate that forced labor extended beyond Black victims, affecting Native Americans, immigrants, and white women, further debunking the idea that slavery ended in 1865.
Conclusion
Slavery’s evils, rooted in the dehumanization of millions, were a global tragedy spanning continents and centuries. By categorizing its historical manifestations—African systems, the Arab trade, the transatlantic trade, and Eurasian practices—we uncover the full extent of its horrors. Confronting history with intellectual rigor honors all victims and guards against oversimplified narratives. Slavery’s legacy demands not selective outrage but a resolute pursuit of truth, fostering a deeper understanding of shared humanity and the vigilance needed to prevent such atrocities in the future.