Africa & Iran Just Sent America a LEGO Message — And Every Black American Needs to Hear This

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:02][music] >> Between 1619 and 1865, >> [music] >> enslaved black women and girls were raped by European slavers and American plantation owners. [music] >> [singing] >> This was not incidental.

[00:00:19]It was systematic policy.

[00:00:20]>> [music] >> It was deliberate.

[00:00:24]It was profit.

[00:00:26]THEY CALLED IT PROPERTY.

[00:00:29]They called it their right.

[00:00:32]They raped in the [music] daytime.

[00:00:35]They raped through the night.

[00:00:38]On the ships [music] and the plantations.

[00:00:41]Black women were raped every single day.

[00:00:44]In front of their husbands, in [music] front of their children. This was the design. Not the exception. The way.

[00:00:52]The Portuguese launched the transatlantic [music and singing] slave trade in the 1800s.

[00:00:57]By 1619, the first Africans arrived on Virginia shores in [music] chains.

[00:01:03]Captains and crew members raped women in the holds of slave ships. Women were held in the lower [music] decks separated from men for easier access.

[00:01:14]The rapes began before the ships even left the African coast. [music] They continued across the entire duration of the middle passage. [music] The crossing lasted between 6 and 12 weeks on the open sea.

[00:01:27]Historians [music] estimate up to 2 million Africans died during those voyages. Women who survived arrived already violated, [music] already carrying children they did not choose.

[00:01:39]Plantation owners viewed the rape of enslaved women as a direct economic strategy. [music] A woman who became pregnant produced another slave at no additional purchase cost.

[00:01:51]Thomas Jefferson fathered [music] at least six children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved girl. Hemings was 12 or [music] 13 years old when she entered Jefferson's household.

[00:02:03]She had no legal [music] protection, no ability to consent, no recourse under American law.

[00:02:09]Rape [music] was not classified as a crime when the victim was an enslaved black woman. It was classified [music] as property damage. If it was recorded at all.

[00:02:33]>> [music] >> Black women were raped every single day.

[00:02:41]This was the design.

[00:02:44]The way.

[00:02:46]Enslaved [music] men were forced to watch their wives and daughters be assaulted.

[00:02:50]This was done deliberately [music and singing] to destroy psychological resistance across the community.

[00:02:56]Girls as young [music] as 10 and 11 years old were documented victims on plantations.

[00:03:01]Plantation [music] physicians were hired specifically to examine enslaved women for breeding capacity.

[00:03:08]Forced reproduction [music] operations were called slave breeding farms concentrated in Virginia and Maryland.

[00:03:15]After the international slave trade was banned in 1808, domestic breeding [music] became more systematic. The enslaved population grew from 700,000 in 1790 to nearly 4 million by [music] 1860.

[00:03:30]A significant portion of that growth came through the forced violation of [music] black women's bodies. Enslaved women could not testify in court, [music] COULD NOT FILE CHARGES, could not speak freely. The children born from these rapes were enslaved at birth and legally owned by their [music] fathers.

[00:03:49]The DNA of tens of millions of black Americans today trace directly back to white enslavers. [music] These are not allegations. These are facts supported by census records.

[00:03:59]Plantation laws and genetic science.

[00:04:02]These are facts recorded in the archives.

[00:04:05]These are facts written in the blood.

[00:04:08]Millions of [music] black Americans carry the DNA of the men who violated their ancestors.

[00:04:15]This was not the exception [music] >> [singing] >> to American law.

[00:04:20]This was American law.

[00:04:23]Harriet Jacobs wrote in 1861 about the constant [music and singing] daily threat of sexual violence on plantations.

[00:04:31]>> [music] >> She hid inside a crawl space for 7 years to escape her enslaver's abuse.

[00:04:36]Sojourner [singing and music] Truth bore children fathered by the man who claimed legal ownership over her body.

[00:04:44]Their testimonies exist in writing.

[00:04:47]Their names [music] exist in history.

[00:04:50]Their children exist in us.

[00:04:53]The rape ships [music] crossed the Atlantic for nearly 400 years without interruption.

[00:04:58]The plantations operated the same violations for two and a half centuries on American [music] soil.

[00:05:05]No reparations were paid.

[00:05:07]>> No trials were held. No convictions were ever [music] recorded. The children born from those rapes built this country with their hands and their [singing] blood.

[00:05:17]The descendants are alive today.

[00:05:19]Carrying that history in their bodies and their names.

[00:05:24]This is [music] not a closed chapter.

[00:05:26]This is an open wound passed through every generation.

[00:05:29]>> [music] >> Say their names.

[00:05:31]Record their truth. Let nothing about what happened here be erased.

[00:05:42]They called it property.

[00:05:44]>> [music] >> They called [singing] it daylight.

[00:05:50]>> [music] >> They raped in the daytime.

[00:05:58]>> [singing] >> They raped through the night.

[00:06:06]On the ships and the plantations black women were raped every single day.

[00:06:16]In front of their husbands >> [music] >> in front of their children.

[00:06:22]>> [singing and music] >> This was the desire not the exception.

[00:06:31]The fancy trade was [music] a documented market in New Orleans [singing] from the 1820s onward. Enslaved [music] women and girls were sold specifically for sexual use to wealthy white men.

[00:06:44]They were advertised in newspapers [music] by age, skin tone, and physical features.

[00:06:50]Prices for these [music] women were three to five times higher than the average slave auction rate. The auction block required women to be stripped completely [music] and physically inspected by buyers.

[00:07:01]Their teeth were checked, their bodies were measured, their ages were estimated like livestock.

[00:07:07]George Washington [music] owned over 300 enslaved people and fathered children with enslaved women on his estate. James [music] Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson all did the same and history recorded none of it as crime.

[00:07:20]Southern churches did not condemn the rape of enslaved women. Many ministers argued [music] that black women were spiritually and biologically inferior and incapable of being violated.

[00:07:32]The [music] stereotype of the Jezebel was deliberately constructed to justify what [music] enslaves were already doing. It framed black women as sexually aggressive so that their rape could never [music] be named as rape.

[00:07:45]That framing did not disappear with [singing] the emancipation. It survived [music] into American culture for >> [music] >> another century.

[00:07:57]They called it property.

[00:08:01]They >> [screaming] >> They called it they Oh, they raped IN THE DAYTIME.

[00:08:11]>> [music] [singing] >> THEY RAPED THROUGH THE NIGHT.

[00:08:21]ON THE ships and the [music] plantations Black women were raped every single day.

[00:08:30]>> [music] >> In front of their husbands.

[00:08:34]In front of their children. [music] Hey.

[00:08:38]Hey.

[00:08:39]This was the daily violence.

[00:08:42]Not the exception.

[00:08:44]>> [music and singing] >> Huh.

[00:08:46]In 1855 in Missouri, >> [music] >> an enslaved woman named Celia killed her enslaver, Robert Newsome. Newsome had been raping Celia [music] repeatedly since she was 14 years old. [ __ ] She resisted. [music] She fought back. She ended the abuse the only way she could.

[00:09:03]The court [music] ruled that as an enslaved woman, she had no legal right to [music] defend herself [singing] from rape. Huh.

[00:09:11]Celia was convicted of murder and hanged on December [music] 21st, 1855.

[00:09:17]She was approximately 19 [music] years old.

[00:09:21]Dr. J. Marion Sims, considered the father of modern [music] gynecology, performed surgical experiments on enslaved black women. He operated without anesthesia on women who could not refuse [music] to develop procedures later used on wipe women. The suffering produced the medical advancements that bore his name.

[00:09:42]>> [music] >> Why? Theirs were never recorded. After emancipation in 1865, freed women still had no legal protection from sexual [music] violence. The black codes passed immediately after the Civil War gave white men [music] continued access with no accountability.

[00:10:01]Reconstruction era records [music] show thousands of cases of black women raped with zero prosecution filed. Ida B.

[00:10:07]Wells documented this violence in the 1890s and received death threats for publishing [music] the truth. Violation did not end with the [singing] signing of any document.

[00:10:19]It continued under new laws with the same intent. [music] Every name that was never written down still existed.

[00:10:29]>> [music] >> Every child born from violence still lived and breathed and built [music] something from nothing.

[00:10:38]The record does not [music] require permission to be true.

[00:10:43]It only requires someone willing to [music and singing] say it without looking away.