Black labor wasn’t just part of America’s foundation—it was the foundation. Enslaved people powered the cotton economy, built the railroads, and made billionaires before they had freedom. Even after emancipation, systems like sharecropping and redlining kept Black wealth out while extracting Black labor in.

And still, they built.
Black Wall Streets. Patents. Businesses. Culture.

So when we say, “We built this,” it’s not a metaphor. It’s a receipt.

In a just society, a child’s zip code would not determine their destiny. Yet across America, it does. The cost of inaction is devastating: lost dreams, wasted potential, and a society that betrays its promise.

The Industrial Revolution is often celebrated as a triumph of ingenuity and progress—but what if its foundation was built on theft? Beneath the innovation lies a darker truth: the rise of the United States as an economic superpower was fueled by the systematic expropriation of Native American land and the exploitation of African American slave labor.