The Sunday News
Itai Chapunza
WALL Street. The singular most famous street in the world. It spans eight blocks long and houses the world’s financial powers.
Over time it has become the name of the financial markets of the United States of America.
Even to someone who has no clue what stocks are or how they represent anything, you say “Wall Street”, they think “money”.
What many people don’t know is the source of this power. Many people are ignorant about its history.
I think it is worse for a guy born in my circumstances. My nation was never an American colony, so people in Zimbabwe are generally not drawn towards American products and we do not see much of them in our country.
We then do not understand the power and wealth controlled by institutions whose wealth is founded on Wall Street and how they have shaped our lives today.
Proverbs 1:22
“How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?
The African man cannot afford to be foolish about this regarding our history.
We have for many years been called many things; a dark continent, uncivilised, third world. The list is endless. But the conception of all this is far back in the past than a foolish mind can remember.
If we are to truly understand this amazing history, and how the financial district operates today, it’s also important to understand how it all started, and how influential black people were in its conception.
Wall Street was established on slavery, and even to this day, it still remains one of the key pillars that uphold racial discrimination as well as economic tyranny across the globe.
Proverbs 3:13-15
Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her.
African Slaves Gave the Financial District Its Name and Built Its Wall during the 17th century.
New York City Dutch people had settlers there, and it was called the New Amsterdam in the Dutch colonial province known as New Netherland.
The Dutch people used enslaved Africans labour through the Dutch West India Company; these Africans were the first to be brought into the colony at around the 1627.
These African slaves built the wall that today gives Wall Street its iconic name, and which formed the northern colony boundary warding off resisting Native Americans who were fighting to have their land back.
Hence from the creation of the wall, it became a hedge ensuring the white supremacy reign.
Through enslaving our people and harvesting their efforts through force, the wall immediately began to create classes in society.
Only this time it was not rich and poor class. It was black and white. It is your duty as a black man to find this knowledge and use it as motivation to do better. After all, we are kings.
By no means should you hate the white man, but you cannot afford to be ignorant of what has shaped your life today. Because freedom comes by understanding you’re your oppressor.
Wall Street originally, was a Slave Auction Site. Slavery became the pillar of New York’s economic success in the 1700s.
To regularise the trade, New York officials established a slave market along Wall Street in 1711.
Slaves were reduced to commodities. So to them buying slaves was like buying an income generating asset.
Regular slave auctions happened here where African slaves were sold as property to traders who were in search of slaves.
The street was also a market place where slave owners could hire out their enslaved people for a specific period, a day, week or even longer periods.
If someone else could realise the value in you, to purchase you in order to enrich themselves why are you not able to see the value in yourself and work in order to enrich yourself?
Why do you sit on your mind all day? Why do you put in minimum effort to enrich yourself? The black man must think
. Think clearly and realise that there is more to you than your skin colour. There is more to you than working just to eat.
You can invest in your future. You can build companies that your children will inherit. A black woman is not just a baby making machine.
She is well able to do whatever she desires, as long as she fulfils one condition, put your mind to it and work extremely hard.
Slavery placed New York on the World’s Map as a Financial Centre During the 17th and 18th centuries.
New York had the largest number of urban slaves in mainland northern America.
This means that New York must have been a crucial location doting the transatlantic slave trade era, which quickly established New York as the world’s economic capital.
If it became an economic capital through gathering hard working black men and selling them, why isn’t Africa gathering her people to sell their skills?
Why isn’t Africa maximising their talents in order to prosper? Again it comes back to the mind. The African must think. We must prosper. We have been simple people for far too long.
Well Connected and Large Wall Street Companies Started From Slave Trade.
Many big, renowned financial institutions and companies that we try so hard to get jobs in have benefited from the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.
Some of these include the Lehman brothers, that went bankrupt as a result of the 2008 credit crunch, Wachovia Bank Of North Carolina, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank Of America, The Royal Bank Of Scotland among others loaned slave owners money and accepted African slaves as collateral for the loans.
When slave owners defaulted on their loans, these financial institutions became the new slave owners. These banks trusted the output of an African man, yet the African man today cannot work for himself, instead he still begs from his former slaver.
It is your duty to work hard. It is your duty to free yourself from mental enslavement and see the opportunities in your life. If you don’t, you will die a poor man and will not be remembered.
Making money on the terror of enslaved dead people was another way wealth was created through slaves.
Aetna sold insurance protection to slave owners who desired to protect their slave investments aboard ship slaves just in case any of them died, which was a common occurrence anyway.
The insurance company compensated slave owners for the loss of slaves “property” and up to this day, there are still lawsuits running against these companies seeking reparations for their indirect and indirect participation in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
What we fail to see is that we don’t need to be given a lot of money to be wealthy. We just need a change in thinking.
If you go out into the street today, find a man begging and you give the man a million dollars, a few years if not less down the line, that man will be back on the street again.
This is the same for a wealthy man. If a wealthy man is robbed today and everything is taken away from him. A few years down the line he will be wealthy. There is a simple explanation why.
Wealth and poverty is not the absence or presence of money. It is a mindset thing. So no matter how much we are compensated, we will remain the same because we need a renewal of the mind. Stay blessed and think.
Facebook — Itai Chapunza
