Candace Owens Says “Jews Were In Control of the Slave Trade.” Is She Right?
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Aaron Lopez
12 min read
The article explicitly mentions Aaron Lopez (1731-1782) as a Jewish merchant and slave trader, with an image caption. His Wikipedia article provides detailed context about one of the most prominent Jewish participants in the colonial American slave trade, allowing readers to understand the specific historical figure being referenced.
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Royal African Company
12 min read
The article states this British Crown-chartered company 'transported more enslaved people than any other institution in history' and uses it to contrast actual institutional control of the slave trade versus minority participation. Understanding this company's operations illuminates who actually controlled the Atlantic slave trade.
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Jodensavanne
12 min read
The article specifically mentions this semi-autonomous Jewish settlement in Suriname ('Jewish Savannah') where Jews owned sugar plantations and enslaved people. This obscure historical site provides concrete evidence of regional Jewish participation while illustrating the difference between local presence and global control.
Candace Owens is having a moment.
The former Daily Wire host has transformed herself from a conservative commentator into something more volatile: a cultural provocateur who mixes legitimate critiques of Israel’s war in Gaza with conspiracy theories about the death of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and, more recently, sweeping historical claims about Jewish control of the Atlantic slave trade.
In a recent YouTube broadcast, Owens addressed Black Americans directly: “Wake up and learn the true history of slavery because that wasn’t exactly a white men sport. Okay? Jewish people were the ones that were trading us. Jewish people were in control of the slave trade. They’ve buried a lot of it, but it’s there, and you can find it.”
It’s a claim designed to redirect Black frustration away from white American institutions and toward a different target. It sounds like hidden knowledge finally being spoken aloud. There’s just one BIG problem:
It’s not true.
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Where This Claim Actually Comes From
Owens didn’t invent this accusation. She’s repeating a narrative that originated (at least prominently) in a 1991 book called “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” published anonymously by the Nation of Islam’s “Historical Research Department.”
The book, with its 1,275 footnotes and scholarly veneer, claims that Jews were “key operatives” in the slave trade and played an “inordinate” and “disproportionate” role in the kidnapping and sale of African people. Minister Louis Farrakhan has promoted the book for decades, holding it up at rallies and declaring, “This is a scholarly work, not put together by nincompoops!”
The reality is that the book works through a process historians (and everyone else) would call “cherry-picking:” selectively quoting legitimate scholars out of context to construct a narrative that those same scholars explicitly reject.
Here’s how it works: the anonymous authors would find a passage in
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