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Beginning in 1850, the Houston law professor said, Fillmore sent troops to accompany federal marshals seeking to apprehend escaped slaves who had fled north.

The holiday celebrates the last American slaves to be officially freed.

Fletcher notes slave owners used this message to bully enslaved people in the 19th century.

In her show, the slave slate known as Gilead is a veneer of perfection that’s fooling no one, “like a cake with a razor blade in it,” she says.

We see that most egregiously, of course, in the transatlantic slave trade and the extermination or resettlement of Indigenous communities.