Connections to slavery

To the editor:

It will take a very long time for our country to rid itself of its slavery legacy. It was founded on slavery by slave owners.

Until the end of the Civil War, most presidents came from slave-holding families. Even today, it is rumored that President Biden is descended from Maryland slaveholders. The Bush family owned slaves in Colonial Connecticut. I could go on and on.

In addition to being connected to skin color slavery, there also were prominent families and institutions that profited greatly from the opium wars, which imposed narcotic slavery upon vast numbers of Asians. Many of our own citizens were addicted to opiates, among them perhaps our most famous popular song writer, who supposedly met one of his wives at an opium den where they were “kicking the gong around.”

Among those who made money on the opium wars were the ancestors of presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt.

Former president Donald Trump does not have a family connection to slavery itself, which would have been odd for a family that only came here at the end of the 19th century. But his father seems to have been a member of the Ku Klux Klan before World War II, and an active violator of anti-discrimination laws after it — along with his son, Donald.

Alan Saks

EDITOR’S NOTE: While The New York Times reported in 1927 about the arrest of Fred Trump during a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, the charges were never detailed, and he was released. A 2020 factcheck by USA Today says there is no direct evidence the elder Trump was a member or a supporter of the KKK.

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