On 27 December 2019, Time magazine published Olivia B. Waxman’s sobering and insightful article on the hiring of slave labor, “The Dark History of New Year’s Day“:

“Americans are likely to think of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as a time to celebrate the fresh start that a new year represents, but there is also a troubling side to the holiday’s history. In the years before the Civil War, the first day of the new year was often a heartbreaking one for enslaved people in the United States.

“In the African-American community, New Year’s Day used to be widely known as “Hiring Day” — or “Heartbreak Day,” as the African-American abolitionist journalist William Cooper Nell described it — because enslaved people spent New Year’s Eve waiting, wondering if their owners were going to rent them out to someone else, thus potentially splitting up their families. The renting out of slave labor was a relatively common practice in the antebellum South, and a profitable practice for white slave owners and hirers.”

Please read the article and revisit these blog posts:

• Hire of Charles from the estate of James A. Barnes
• Hire of several enslaved families from the estate of Elias Barnes
• Hire of Patrick from the estate of Thomas Williamson
• Hire of Peter, Chana, Jack, Margaret and child, Liza and children, Tempe and child, Nettie and child, Rose and Hannah from the estate of Hickman Ellis
• Hire of Willis, Hines, Ann and Critty and her children from the estate of W.E.J. Shallington
• Hire of Arch and Dilley from the estate of Rhoda Shallington
• Petition to hire enslaved people for the benefit of a widow and children