Worcester Business Journal Special Editions

34 Worcester Business Journal inent not just in the Blackstone Valley but in cities from Holyoke to Fall River to Lawrence. Many Massachusetts' towns began as mill towns along rivers, Klyberg said. Mill owners oen had direct con- nections to slavery and slaveholding, Hardesty said, as they depended on buying cotton from the South grown by enslaved people. e Crown and Eagle Mills in Ux- bridge, for example, imported nearly 240,000 pounds of cotton from South Carolina each year, while the Douglas Manufacturing Co. obtained nearly an identical amount from Georgia, Rock- man wrote. e abundance of cotton and rise of textile mills came together to create a strong textiles industry that furthered the demand for cotton. While those mills became successful because of the cost advantages of slave-grown cotton, manufacturing plants in the Blackstone Valley supplied them with machinery. Whitin Machine Works – whose own- ers' family gave Whitinsville its name – made machinery used to prepare slave-grown cotton for manufacturing. e Draper Corp. manufactured looms for textile factories before slavery was abolished. It then sold looms to cotton mills that were, in turn, buying slave-grown cotton to use on Draper's looms. "You might think of yourself as a machine maker that has nothing to do with that process, and yet, of course if your machines are processing cotton, then you are," said Klyberg. e Draper Corp. – whose roughly 1-million-square-foot mill still towers over the center of Hopedale – was at one point the largest maker of power looms in the country and operated for more than 130 years. What would become Crompton Loom Works of Worcester was started by William Crompton, a British immigrant who received a U.S. patent in 1837 for his new loom allowing for fancier clothing, more patterns and was easier to use. Crompton's loom business began then, profiting off of the success of textile mills and the high demand for textiles. His son, George, took the business from his father when his father retired. George Crompton then perfected and popularized the Crompton loom. He established Crompton Loom Works in Worcester in 1860, five years before the abolition of slavery. e building still stands today on Green Street, hosting a mix of commercial businesses. "It is an abstraction … but it still rests on slave labor," Hardesty said. "What's driving the demand for those machines in cotton mills? e access to cheap cotton. And how is that cheap cotton produced? Slave labor." e growth of the textiles industry benefited others, too. Looms needed materials like wood and brass, growing to a large network those who profited off of slave-grown cotton, said Joanne Pope Melish, an associate professor emerita in the history department at the University of Kentucky and author of "Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation." "Everyone in one way or another is supporting and feeding off of, or making U.S. cotton factories 1,074 Spindles in use 76 million Bales of cotton (in pounds) 641,240 Bales of cotton (in value) $38 million ($1.3 billion in 2020 dollars) Value of manufactured product $66 million ($2.2 billion in 2020 dollars) "Hands employed" 32,295 men; 94,956 women U.S. cotton good manufacturing in 1850 Much of the ties of Central Massachusetts to slavery in the period immediately preceeding the Civil War came from the cotton industry. This data from the U.S. Census in 1850 shows how pervasive the industry was at that time. Source: US Census Data from 1850 Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland, escaped, and then untook missions to free slaves via the Underground Railroad. PHOTO | COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVE a lot of money, off the textile industry," Melish said. e Central Massachusetts' ties to slavery went beyond the textile industry, as slavery effected every part of the economy, Hardesty said. Shoemakers in Leicester produced footwear for enslaved people and one in North Brookfield was one of the state's largest such shoemakers, while another in Millbury made fancier versions for the slave owners. A Worcester hatmaker produced 7,000 palm-leaf hats each year to be sold in Southern markets, and a plow maker designed machines specifically to be used for enslaved people. "Especially adapted to slaves," Ruggles, Nourse, Mason & Co., the plow firm, said in an advertisement of its tools in the mid-1800s. Millbury gunmaker Asa Waters & Co. – whose industrialist founder built the Asa Waters Mansion in Millbury – had a significant market in the South, where firearms were used in the policing of runaway slaves and suppressing slave uprisings, wrote Rockman. "e South is both a market and a producer for New England," Melish said. Slavery's impact on today's diversity & inclusion efforts In his 2012 article "e Impact of Slavery on 20th- and 21st-Century Black Progress," Waters, the professor from the University of Maryland, called the idea of slavery ending in 1865 a devastating myth. Several institutions following abolition still perpetuated the remnants of slavery, such as when sharecropping was used to keep the price of cotton cheap, he wrote. Beyond those institutions, Waters – citing sociologist Joe Feagin from Texas A&M University – wrote several lasting conditions from slavery continued to supress the economy and cultural mobility of Black people in America into the 20th and 21st centuries, specifically: • Restrictions on Black voting in many areas of the South; • Black children still attending segregated schools; • Black families living in segregated areas; • Black people facing informal discrimination when seeking housing; • Black defendants being tried for crimes by all-white juries; • Black professionals facing discrimination in the job market. "Intergenerational poverty was transferred and carried like invisible baggage from place to place," Waters wrote. "As African Americans were forced into ghettoized communities in the South and in the North, poverty became a dominant feature." is poverty has been carried forward and exacerbated by government policies limiting access of Black people to social programs and through the persistent effect of Southern cultural values on American society at large, Waters wrote. "For Americans to acquire more cosmopolitan attitudes and values that support social justice for all, free of a racial animus, would require change in the interpretations and understanding of U.S. history and dominant cultural values," he wrote. Such efforts to find a better understanding of the Black experience in America have been at the core of the greater emphasis on diversity and inclusion since the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota at the end of May. ose moves include executives at UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, the region's largest employer, taking part in a Black Lives Matter rally put on by one of its medical professionals; the College of the Holy Cross and Worcester State University examining their policies to entice more diverse staff and students; and the Hanover Insurance Group in Worcester increasing its efforts to have inclusion be part of its core culture. "e racial equality issues and the unrest today is a problem for society and our business, especially if we don't step up and help some of the systemic issues of our society go away," Hanover CEO Jack Roche said in an interview for WBJ's Executive to Executive feature in August. "We are going to do more than say nice things. We are going to change the way we recruit into the community and change the folks we engage with in order to address these issues." WBJ News Editor Grant Welker contributed to this report. A 1857 advertisement for the sale of a 50-year-old man named Dick and a 14-year- old girl named Lydia in Tennessee PHOTO | COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVE W

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