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African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid-1800s?

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Page 1: African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid- 1800s?

African Americans at Mid Century

EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid-

1800s?

Page 2: African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid- 1800s?

Origins and Development

• Portuguese and Spanish first brought Africans to the Americas in 1400s and 1500s

• They worked in the Caribbean sugar plantations (colonies of Europe)

• Slavery was brutal: no rights, forced marriage, long hours, little food, clothing once a year, constant beating and supervision.

• Introduced in Virginia: in 1619, the Dutch West India Company brought indentured servants-white and black-to the colony. Blacks were eventually sold into slavery.

• Slave trade increased dramatically with the need for workers in the tobacco and later, cotton fields.

Page 3: African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid- 1800s?

Slavery Effects On Black Americans

• Life under slavery was harsh and unforgiving.• Slaves endured wretched living conditions, hard labor

and harsh living conditions, brutal punishments• Families sold apart; children, husbands, wives

separated • African-American culture emerged from harsh

conditions; slaves developed methods of comfort, resistance and hope.

• Music, religion, art and family merged into a distinct African- American culture in the “New World”

Page 4: African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid- 1800s?

Effects on the Development of the South

• Slavery affected ALL aspects of Southern culture and society, including economics, politics and religion.

• South depended on unpaid labor to grow cotton, tobacco, and rice

• Slavery made it possible for a few people to become extremely rich

• Most Southerners did not own slaves but supported the system, because it made them “better” or “higher” on the social scale.

Page 5: African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid- 1800s?

Efforts To Do Away With Slavery And To Preserve It

• Slave resistance: work slowly, damage goods, run away, pretend they were ignorant

• Armed rebellion rare but a few spread fear in the white population: Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner

• Many ABOLITIONIST spoke and acted against slavery• Underground Railroad conducted by free (and escaped) blacks and many

whites (mainly Quakers) • Slaveholder fought to protect slavery through harsh SLAVE CODES: severe

punishment for resistance and running. away• Nationally, Southerners fought for strict FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS to have

runaways returned to owners

Page 6: African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid- 1800s?

Mid Century

• Not all African Americans were slaves!– Many were former slaves who had escaped to

freedom• Whether A.A lived in slavery or freedom,

discrimination shaped their lives. • Whites looked down on blacks, ignored their

contributions to American life, and considered the U.S “their country”

Page 7: African Americans at Mid Century EQ: How did African Americans face slavery and discrimination in the mid- 1800s?

“Their Country”

Your country? How came it to be yours? Before the pilgrims landed here we were here. Here we brought you our three gifts and mingled them with yours; a gift of story and song, soft stirring melody in an…unmelodious land; the gifts of sweat and brawn [physical strength] to beat back the wilderness…and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire…the third a gift of spirit. W.E.B Du Bois