african americans at mid century eq: how did african americans face slavery and discrimination in...

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.

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”

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.

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

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”

“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