The Business of Slavery: Uncovering the Unspoken

While The Lehman Trilogy tells the epic story of an immigrant family rising and falling on the career ladder, there is little mention of the enslaved people who catapulted their success. Both history and theater reminds us to reflect on the perspective that is portrayed and which perspectives might be missing. Let’s learn how one family’s fortune was built at the expense of millions of enslaved people.

When Europeans colonized North America in the early 1600s, they saw opportunities to use the land to build a strong economy and society. They initially intended to rely on forced labor of the Indigenous people who inhabited the land, but many died due to mass killings and diseases. In 1619, Dutch colonists trafficked 20-30 Africans to North America and traded them for food and supplies. This exchange was part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which brought over 305,000 Africans to North America alone—12 million Africans were captured and shipped across the globe in horrific conditions that caused over 2 million people to die in transit. The labor of enslaved Africans became a key pillar of European’s economic success in America, exponentially growing to 4 million enslaved Africans by 1860.

The Lehman brothers spent their early years of business in the cotton industry in Alabama, the top cotton producing state in the country, due to its fertile soil. Since cotton is considered a “cash crop” and can be sold for a high value, enslaved laborers were forced to work from dawn to dusk to meet a daily quota and were brutally punished if they did not meet the expectations of their owners. Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin significantly increased the production of cotton, making it quicker to separate the cotton fibers from its seeds, allowing an enslaved person to increase their cotton production from five to 50 pounds per day. Ultimately, cotton was King and drove political and economic decisions, including the Lehman brothers. To put it into perspective, the value of the slaves in 1860 was “roughly three times greater than the total amount invested in banks,” and it was “equal to about seven times the total value of all currency in circulation in the country, three times the value of the entire livestock population, twelve times the value of the entire U.S. cotton crop and forty-eight times the total expenditure of the federal government that year.” (Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life).

Not only did the Lehman brothers’ business benefit from enslaved labor, but their household owned enslaved Africans as well. These stakes led the family to be key supporters of the Confederacy during the Civil War. When President Lincoln issued a trade blockade on exports, the Lehman brothers attempted to evade this and continue providing cotton to those who wanted to buy it. When the Civil War ended, they moved to New York to start the New York Cotton Exchange, eventually leading to the creation, success, and ultimate demise of their financial firm.

In 2002, descendants of enslaved Africans filed a lawsuit against corporations, including Lehman Brothers, requesting reparations for the profit from the labor of their ancestors. This petition went to the Supreme Court in 2007, but was ultimately denied a hearing. Although the ending is still being written, stories like The Lehman Trilogy provide a cautionary tale to treat others with humanity and dignity, to right the wrongs of the past, and prioritize people over profit.