Children were always being sold. So people didn’t live in family groups, although adults and children lived under the same roof.” I am startled. This means the splitting up of the African American family was done systematically from the start. The dysfunctional situation many children grow up in, in places like South Central in Los Angeles, or the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, with absent fathers and defeated mothers, might have been created or imparted back in the time of slavery.
