auction block
Selling stand, historically
An auction block is a platform where people or goods are displayed for sale to bidders.
The term is most associated with the sale of enslaved people in the American South, where men, women, and children stood on blocks while buyers examined and bid on them: Families were torn apart on the auction block.
The phrase now appears figuratively for anything put up for competitive sale: The company is on the auction block.
- bidOffer to purchase
- highest bidderWinner at auction
- gavelSmall ceremonial hammer
- going onceAuctioneer's initial announcement
- lotLarge amount or portion
plantation · chattel slavery · hammer · human trafficking · historical trauma · triangular trade · antebellum · slavery · forced labor · dehumanization · marketplace · reserve price · fair market value · public scrutiny · going · slave trade · sold down the river · human rights
- livestock auctionsstockyard, cattle market, bidding, bidder, bid
- auctionsbidding, bid, bidder, hammer price, gavel
- platformspodium, Windows, stage, Linux, platform
- slaverychattel slavery, enslaved, slave, enslavement, slave traders
- Antebellum Southplantation, cotton kingdom, overseer, slave quarters, big house
- Slavery Historyabolitionism, slave narratives, abolitionist, antislavery, chattel slavery
auction blockemancipation
Release from legal bondage
freedom · liberation · manumission · free soil · freedom papers
block, blocked, blocking, auction, blockage, blocks, blockade, blockhead, unblocked