Page 122 - 1619 Project Curriculum

SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2019 9

Sugar cane cutter, metal and wood,
19th century.

A Deadly
Commodity

BEFORE COTTON dominated
American agriculture, sugar drove
the slave trade throughout the
Caribbean and Spanish Americas.
Sugar cane was a brutal crop
that required constant work six
days a week, and it maimed,
burned and killed those involved
in its cultivation. The life span of
an enslaved person on a sugar
plantation could be as little as
seven years. Unfazed, plantation
owners worked their enslaved
laborers to death and prepared for
this high ‘‘turnover’’ by ensuring
that new enslaved people arrived
on a regular basis to replace the
dying. The British poet William
Cowper captured this ethos when
he wrote, ‘‘I pity them greatly, but
I must be mum, for how could we
do without sugar or rum?’’ The
sweetening of coffee and tea took
precedence over human life and set
the tone for slavery in the Americas.