The Myth About Jews Controlling The American Slave Trade

In 1991, the Nation of Islam anonymously released a book entitled The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which claimed that Jews played a prominent role in Atlantic and European slavery and bore “monumental culpability” for it. At the same time, David Duke, the former leader of the KKK, was spreading similar narratives, igniting a torrent of antisemitic tropes about Jewish involvement in the American slave trade.

In 2022, flyers appeared at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, asserting that “At the height of American slavery, 78% of slave owners were ethnic Jews. 40% of the Jewish population were slave owners, while only 0.35% of white Americans owned slaves.” Antisemites naturally believed these claims and disseminated the message across social media.

However, decades of research, resulting in numerous academic publications based on meticulously kept records, have proven these accusations to be false. While some Jews in America did own slaves, their ownership was proportionate to their population in the states concerned. Records from this period also indicate that only 10% of Jews living in America resided in the South, and those Jews who did own slaves typically owned fewer than their non-Jewish counterparts. Of the 59,000 slave owners who owned over 20 slaves, only 23 were Jewish, and only 4 Jews, out of 11,000, owned more than 50 slaves—a figure even smaller than some historians initially believed.

Moreover, Jews were not prominent in the slave trade, despite unfounded claims that they owned the vast majority of slave ships and ran the auction houses. Historical records show that Jews held only minor shares in fleets involved in slavery, and those vessels that were Jewish-owned rarely carried slaves. For example, Aaron Lopez of Newport, the most prominent Jewish merchant in America, commissioned around 200 voyages, yet only 14 of these transported slaves, accounting for just 1% of the slaves brought into Rhode Island, one of the leading slave ports in North America.

Claims that Jews ran slave auctions are similarly unfounded. The assertion that American slave markets were only closed on Saturdays and Jewish religious holidays is indisputably false. In reality, the only day of the week that some markets closed was Sunday, including America’s largest slave market, Hewlett’s Exchange in New Orleans. There are no records of American slave auctions closing on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, which would have been the case if this antisemitic canard were true.

It’s not just Jews who are targeted with false claims regarding slavery. White supremacists often circulate statistics from 1860, proclaiming that only 1.4% of Americans owned slaves and that 20,000 slaves were owned by 3,000 Black people. While these figures reflect official records, they are presented in a misleading manner to suggest that Black individuals owned a significant number of slaves.

In 1860, it is estimated that around 1.4% of all Americans owned slaves, but this figure encompasses northern states, which had far fewer slaves, including those where slavery was entirely banned. When examining records from states where slavery was prevalent, the true figure for slave ownership is over five times higher, with some states reporting that nearly half of households were slaveholders. Although official records do indicate that 20,000 slaves were owned by Black people, this figure represents only 0.5% of all slaves in the country and, importantly, these slaves were usually purchased out of benevolence to free and reunite families.

Slavery is a shameful part of America’s history, but claims that Jews played anything more than a minor role are nothing but attempts to rewrite history. The abundance of official records unequivocally proves that Jews constituted only a tiny fraction of those involved in both slave ownership and the slave trade.