Joya Wesley, the Easy Breezy Whole Foodie

Thoroughly researched and masterfully constructed

Revisado: 05-24-22

Christians and Muslins and Jews — oh my! And pirates! And kings and queens on multiple European thrones.

These are just some of the nefarious characters who helped create and entrench — and became the first to cash in on — the massively profitable international enterprise of slavery. Through deep research directed by a uniquely insightful perspective, author Clyde Ford follows the money all the way back to the beginning, before the institution even came to America. Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth, documents with sobering clarity how slavery was very consciously baked into the institutions and the very founding documents of the United States, much as Black Americans’ literal blood and sweat is baked into this nation’s actual soil.

Further, he provides a productive reframing of the reparations conversation. Whether or not the idea of reparations was a concept in the British legal tradition from which American legal tradition grew, the idea of “freedom dues” definitely was. They were customary after a period of servitude, and indentured servitude was the only kind going before the aforementioned bad guys got with tobacco planters and others to decide Africans could be/should be subject to servitude for life. Ford details in the book how the founding fathers departed from tradition in this instance to create laws more supportive of slavery.

This masterwork also includes eye-opening little-known information and contextualization including horticultural details about tobacco and cotton, the crops that built the union; historical facts about the world of shipping that transported Black bodies; untold stories of courage and heroism through abolition, the Civil War and after the war; and how railroad companies owned slaves and how actual slaves built railways and bridges and other key infrastructure.

Most chilling are the book’s stories of how the South tried and succeeded in establishing a post-slavery reality as close as humanly possible to actual slavery, using both judicial and extra-judicial means, including unbelievable campaigns of murder and terror carried out by groups including the Ku Klux Klan and the Red Shirts, and how the North and federal government again and again either turned a blind eye or actually conspired in efforts to disenfranchise, dispossess and otherwise oppress former slaves and their descendants. Ford traces patterns that are irrefutable and can point a way to achieving the justice needed for this nation to ever have any hope of healing and peace.

Narrator Julian Thomas did a mostly excellent job reading the Audible edition, but he did get one thing wrong (as do many others, including Mary-Louise Parker in the 2010 film “Red”): the pronunciation of Mobile, Alabama. As the daughter of a proud native of that port city on the Gulf of Mexico, I feel it my duty to let him and everyone know that you don’t say it like a portable phone, nor like someone who can really move. The correct pronunciation is “mo-BEEL.”

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Tayari Jones is a master storyteller

Revisado: 06-24-21

Even quick and dirty, her work is imminently enjoyable. And Bahni Turpin is always a pleasure to hear, too.

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Powerful concept powerfully executed

Revisado: 11-24-20

I was contemplating canceling my Audible subscription when I discovered this exquisitely uplifting and enlightening example of audio programming.

Bravo to Common for the compelling guests and questions, and most moving for me personally, the music. James Brown’s “Mind Power” is a historical treasure righteously resurrected with this podcast. I’m not just saying that because my dad, Fred Wesley, was so instrumental in creating it, but the fact did make it extra special listening for me.

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