Worcester Business Journal Special Editions

Worcester Business Journal 33 enslaved workers produced," Waters wrote. "us, whites were the arbiters of African Americans' entrance into that society." Among those lingering effects today, in Worcester County, less than 1% of all businesses are Black-owned, despite Black people comprising 6% of the county's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. ose Black- owned businesses on average have fewer employees and smaller payrolls than the average for all Worcester County businesses. In a 2019 survey of Americans, the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. found most people – 63% – believe slavery still impacts the position of Black people in American society a great deal or a fair amount. Among Black Amer- icans, the rate was 84%, compared to 58% among white respondents. Slavery in Massachusetts Slavery existed in Massachusetts from the earliest Colonial days. Enslaved peo- ple were first brought by boat in 1638 into Boston, and Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641, according to the Massachusetts Histor- ical Society. Between 1755 and 1764, enslaved people made up 2.2% of the Central Mass. ties to slavery When slavery was legal in America, a number of Central Massachusetts companies had ties to either slave labor or slavery. Company Location Ties to slavery Crompton Loom Works Worcester Made machinery to process slave-grown cotton Draper Corp. Hopedale Made machinery to process slave-grown cotton. Asa H. Waters & Co. Millbury Made handguns that are believed to have been used to enforce slavery. Whitin Machine Works Northbridge Made machinery to process slave-grown cotton. Crown and Eagle Mills Uxbridge Imported cotton from South Carolina. Amasa Wood Millbury Produced shoes for slave owners. Ruggles, Nourse, Worcester Made plows and other farm equipment Mason & Co. for the South. The Crompton & Knowles Loom Works company was among the many in the Blackstone Valley servicing the textile industry, which was growing due to the proliferation of slave-grown cotton. Sources: Slavery researchers Seth Rockman, Jared Hardesty and Kevin Klyberg PHOTO | COURTESY OF WORCESTER HISTORICAL MUSEUM Massachusetts population, concentrated in industrial and coastal communities, according to the history of the abolition- ist movement from the Massachusetts state government. "New Englanders essentially craed a narrative where when they do acknowl- edge slavery at all, they make slavery something … that played a minor role economically," said Jared Hardesty, associate professor of history at Western Washington University and author of "Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston." "In the entire business economy of Massachusetts in Colonial times and aer the Revolution … slavery is a sig- nificant component of it," Hardesty said in an interview with WBJ. Colonies in New England exported salt, cod, timber, livestock, corn or rum to either feed enslaved people or to communities benefiting from their work, particularly in the West Indies. Smug- gling, shipping and slave trading helped the regional economy even without having enslaved people living locally, said Kirt von Daacke, assistant dean and an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. "Even if a town had few enslaved people, that didn't mean that slavery and the wealth that the slave trade and slavery-related business produced didn't directly impact economic development in places such as Worcester," he said. Slavery was legal in Massachusetts until 1783, among the first states to embrace abolition. Worcester County played a key role in that process through a slave vs. owner case initially tried in the Worcester County Court of Com- mon Pleas. Quock Walker, who was born into slavery as the property of a Barre family, filed a series of lawsuits as a young adult, starting with assault and bat- tery against the man who married his original owner's widow, according to a state website detailing the Massachusetts constitution and abolition. In time, one slave owner sued another for interfering with his property, and the state Supreme Judicial Court got involved. Ultimately, the court's chief justice in 1783 ruled slavery was incompatible with the state constitution's principles of liberty and legal equality. Aer abolition in Massachusetts, Worcester County was a leader in Massachusetts during a rising antislav- ery movement in the 1840s, Rockman said, giving the highest levels of support statewide to the Liberty Party, a sup- porter of the abolitionist movement, and to the Free Soil movement, which tried protecting Western lands from becoming slave states. Blackstone Valley voters also helped drive an antislavery coalition to power in the state legislature. Worcester's mayor in the 1850s, Peter Bacon, refused to allow Worcester police officers to assist anyone recapturing a presumed runaway slave, said Rockman. at went against the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law requiring enslaved people be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state. But the economic relationship between the Massachusetts and slav- ery continued during this time; it had just shied from the West Indies to the American South, Hardesty said. "Domestic cotton is going to be sent to New England," Klyberg said, "and so while the Blackstone Valley is known for having progressive thinkers and ardent abolitionists, you also have this massive industry which at its base is involved in slave-grown cotton." Slave-grown cotton & the Blackstone Valley Successful textile mills and large man- ufacturing plants were a large part of the American Industrial Revolution. In fact, Westborough-born Eli Whitney is credit- ed with inventing the cotton gin in 1793, making the process of separating cotton from seeds far faster than before. With that breakthrough, the textile industry boomed. Mills became prom- The Crompton & Knowles Loom Works facility on Green Street in Worcester has since been remade into a commercial building hosting a mix of businesses. PHOTO | COURTESY OF WORCESTER HISTORICAL MUSEUM

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