How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans

[frogmarch]

47. On an episode of

"Who Do You Think You Are," the celebrity whose genealogy was being explored (I can't think of his name. He's a well-known black actor) was dismayed to learn that some of his ancestors who were free owned slaves. Further research showed that the slaves were family members of the free ancestor who owned them. The historian explained that free blacks often bought their slave relatives to give them good homes and to keep them from being sold to other people.

I don't fully understand the laws pertaining to the freeing of slaves before the abolition of slavery. I'll look up manumission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission

snip:

After invention of the cotton gin in 1793, which enabled the development of extensive new areas for new types of cotton cultivation, manumissions decreased due to increased demand for slave labor. In the nineteenth century, slave revolts such as the Haitian Revolution and especially the 1831 rebellion led by Nat Turner increased slaveholder fears, and most southern states passed laws making manumission nearly impossible. Before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery after the American Civil War in 1866, manumission was sometimes accomplished at the death of the owner, under conditions in his will.