Blackbirder

The renaming of New South Wales’s Ben Boyd National Park — named for Australia’s first blackbirder — as Beowa National Park in 2022 was a good first step. But apologising for running a slave trade that tore tens of thousands of Pacific islanders from their families should not be a hard sell in Australia’s parliament.

Runaway slaves and free blacks were constantly being kidnapped by New York City’s many “Blackbirders,” slave-catching bounty hunters who deported their captures to the plantations.