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SLAVERY: Introduction

SLAVERY: Introduction. The institution of slavery is as old as civilization. Many nations and empires were built by the muscles of slaves. AFRICAN AMERICANS:. From slavery to segregation to desegregation. THE BEGINNING OF SLAVERY.

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SLAVERY: Introduction

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  1. SLAVERY: Introduction The institution of slavery is as old as civilization. Many nations and empires were built by the muscles of slaves.

  2. AFRICAN AMERICANS: • From slavery to segregation to desegregation

  3. THE BEGINNING OF SLAVERY • In the early Middle Ages, the Arabs discovered sub-Saharan Africa, as an ideal source for slave labor and began taking millions of slaves to their empires. • Already in Africa some ethnic groups like the Ibos and Mende people owned slaves.

  4. OLAUDAH EQUIANO (1745-1801)or GUSTAVUS VASSA • For example, Olaudah Equiano, a slave on three continents, was born free in West Africa. He was captured and enslaved at age 11. • Olaudah Equiano experienced slavery in Africa, in the Caribbean and American colonies, and as a slave sailor to a British Naval officer, before he purchased his freedom and became a famous abolitionist speaker and author. • Olaudah Equiano's account of slavery brought to the eyes of the world community the use of children taken and used as slaves • His writings became one of the first written accounts of slavery written by a slave. • That work was entitled, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African published in 1789.

  5. SLAVE TRADE • The Atlantic slave system began in the 1440s, when Portugal started to buy and ship African slaves to Europe. • Slavery was based on the demand and supply of labor. • A shortage of labor throughout the Americas-- Africa provided most of the supply. • Slaves worked on plantations from Brazil to Virginia, growing sugar, rice, coffee, tobacco and cotton for the expanding international markets.

  6. AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE • The first Africans were brought to what is now the United States in 1619. • In colonial America most Africans and some white Europeans were indentured servants (Takaki, 1993). • Following the arrival of Africans in Virginia, the face of American slavery began to change from the "tawny" Indian to the "blackamoor" African in the years between 1650 and 1750.

  7. AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE • Arguably, the unsuitability of Native Americans for the labor intensive agricultural practices, • their susceptibility to European diseases, the proximity of avenues of escape for Native Americans, and the lucrative nature of the African slave trade • led to a transition to an African based institution of slavery.

  8. AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE • The intermarriage of Africans and Native Americans was facilitated by the population in balance of African male slaves to females • the decimation of Native American males by disease, enslavement, and prolonged wars with the colonists. • Native American societies in the Southeast were primarily matrilineal, African males who married Native American women often became members of the wife's clan and citizens of the respective nation

  9. AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE • In order to control the African Americans and avoid a rebellion by poor European Americans, the white landowning class codified the separation of races through the legalization of lifetime servitude (chattel slavery) of African Americans.

  10. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE • From 1619 until slavery ended officially in 1865, 10-15 million Africans were brought to America and so many died in transport; and this journey is called the Middle Passage (Zinn, p.29). • The resulting trans-Atlantic flow of more than 10 million Africans was invaluable for the rapid development of the New World—America. • By the early 1800s, there was hardly a business without ties to slavery. • Slave-produced exports especially cotton, helped to build New York and nourished the Northeastern textile industry, creating a consumer society.

  11. A NATION IN CRISIS: SLAVERY TIMELINE • By 1807, the British Parliament had put a stop to shipping and trading African slaves. • By 1808, the Congress of the United States made it illegal to bring more slaves into the country • By 1820, the Missouri Compromise was adopted, allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slaveholding state and Maine as a free bearing state. The Missouri Compromise kept the number of free states and slave states balanced. • 1831. Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia. • By 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The British Parliament abolished slavery in the entire British Empire during this year. • The Amistad slave incident happened in 1839

  12. TIMELINE (continued) • The Compromise of 1850 again brought up the issue of slavery. California entered the union as a free state, but the territories of New Mexico, Utah, and Texas were allowed to decide, as individual states, the choice of being a slave state or a free state. • Compromise of 1850 attempts to settle slavery issue. As part of the Compromise, a new Fugitive Slave Act is added to enforce the 1793 law and allowed slaveholders to retrieve slaves in northern states and free territories. • By 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which became the best selling book and a major influence for the Anti-Slavery Movement. • 1854-1857, The Dred Scott Case. • 1860, Abraham Lincoln elected president. South Carolina secedes.

  13. TIMELINE (continued) • 1861. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia secede. Formation of the Confederate States of America. • Attack on Fort Sumter. • 1861-1865. The Civil War

  14. TIMELINE (continued) • February 1, 1865, Abraham Lincoln ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing slavery throughout the whole United States. • Lincoln was assassinated two months later by John Wilkes Booth on April 15, 1865. • Juneteenth or June 19, 1865, is considered the date when the last slaves in America were freed.

  15. SLAVE CODES AND RESISTANCE • The slave codes robbed the Africans of their freedom and will power • Many slaves ran off and lived in the woods or vast wilderness in the undeveloped American countryside. This group of slaves were called "maroons."

  16. SLAVE REVOLTS AND REBELLIONS • Slave revolts and rebellions were numerous, but most accounts were kept quiet. Historians were able to document several of these violent outbreaks. Among them were: • Gabriel Prosser, in August of 1800, set out to free himself along with about 1,000 other slaves. His plot was to kill most of the white residents and take the town of Richmond, Virginia. • Nat Turner,31 year old preacher to the slaves, devised a plan of "terror and devastation." His organized revolt became America's most famous and violent act involving slave resistance. • On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner and six other slaves killed Turner's plantation master and his family in Southampton County, Virginia.

  17. THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT • Many of the northern states were developing strong coalitions of free Black and White groups in an organization called the American Anti-Slavery Society, established by 1833. • Prominent black leaders began to join this organization. Among them: Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth & Harriet Tubman. • Among those whites who joined in the cause of the abolitionist movement were: Theodore D. Weld, Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan,

  18. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD • Many of the abolitionists endorsed a clandestine movement i.e. hidden routes to help the African slave achieve freedom called Underground Railroad. • The most skilled and successful "conductor" of the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman because she helped many runaway slaves to freedom. • Raymond Bial's book, The Underground Railroad, published in 1995, depicted the essence both in text and with superb pictures of those mystical hidden passageways which made up the Underground Railroad.

  19. THE AMISTAD INSURRECTION • In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. • Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. • On August 24, 1839, the Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY, by the U.S. brig Washington. • The planters were freed and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven, CT, on charges of murder • President Van Buren was in favor of extraditing the Africans to Cuba. However, abolitionists in the North opposed him • The case went to the Supreme Court in January 1841, and former President John Quincy Adams argued the defendants' case. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans—returned to their homeland

  20. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) • Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom'sCabinwas based upon the life in narrative of Josiah Henson, a runaway slave.

  21. THE DRED SCOTT CASE (1857) • Dred Scott decision by U.S. Supreme Court Mar. 6 held,1857, 6-3 vote, that a slave did not become free when taken into a free state, Congress could not bar slavery from a territory, and blacks could not be citizens.

  22. RAID ON HARPER'S FERRY (1859) • The John Brown (white abolitionist from Kansas) Hanging elevated him as a martyr for the Abolitionist's cause. • During the time of the raid he had grown a long beard; thus he was called the "Moses" of the Abolitionist

  23. THE ELECTION OF 1860 • Abraham Lincoln, nominee of Republican Party • The Democratic Party split up into a Northern Wing with Stephen A. Douglas as its candidate and a Southern Wing with John C. Breckinridge • Abraham Lincoln won the election on November 6, 1860 & became the 16th President of the United States on March 4, 1861 • Lincoln had built a reputation as an opponent of slavery • Therefore, on December 20, 1860, secession took place with South Carolina taking the lead, followed in January 1861, by the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi & soon followed by other southern states • They formed a separate Union within the United States called the Confederate States of America.

  24. THE CIVIL WAR (1861-1865 ) • The firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 was the start of the American Civil War • Abraham Lincoln issued on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation, "freeing all slaves in areas still in rebellion" • Enlist them in the U.S. Union Armed Forces. • African American units were known as the United States Colored Troops • The Civil War ended April 9, 1865.

  25. THE RECONSTRUCTION (1865-1877) • America, including the South, had to be rebuilt • Despite the South's hostile resistance, African-Americans were slowly becoming part of this nation's inclusion. • By 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution confirmed the long awaited citizenship for Blacks in America. • By 1870, the 15th Amendment was added to the Constitution which made it illegal to deny the right to vote based on race. • Gains were taking place: Citizenship, Voting, Education, and Politics. • Reconstruction ended in 1877

  26. PLESSY CASE (1896) • Gains during the Reconstruction were Later restricted by Jim Crow Laws, i.e., violence discrimination, and the denial of equal protection by law against African Americans • Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court decided on May 18, 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities satisfy Fourteenth Amendment guarantees, thus giving legal sanction to Jim Crow segregation laws.

  27. LEGAL CASES • Dred Scott v. Sandford case in 1857 sanctioned slavery • 1896, Plessy v. Fergusson case “separate but equal” doctrine legalized segregation of races • 1954-55, Brown v. Board of Education case overturned the “Separate but equal” doctrine—ending legalized segregation • Desegregation period • Therefore, the Journey from Slavery to Freedom only opened the door halfway and it still goes on

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