black people in colonial north america chapter 3

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Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

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Page 1: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Black People in Colonial North America

Chapter 3

Page 2: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Slavery Codes

The slavery codes regulated slaves and asserted the rights of slave owners.

Page 3: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

I. The Peoples of Eastern North America

Eastern Woodlands Indians– Diverse environments– Variety of languages– Influenced by Indian cultures of Mexico

Adena culture– Ohio River Valley

Mississippian culture– Extensive trade, division of labor, urban centers– Weakened by disease, ineffective resisting British

Page 4: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

The Peoples of Eastern North America (cont.) Indians knowledgeable about East Coast

survival and influenced new arrivals– Food crops– Tobacco– Transportation– Clothing

Race mixing– Sexual contact

• Common between black people and Indians in early America

Page 5: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Escaping Slaves in the Carolinas

Escaping slaves in the Carolinas during the early eighteenth century sometimes found shelter with the Tuscaroras and other Indian tribes. This map, drawn during a colonial expedition against the Tuscaroras in 1713, shows a Tuscarora fort that escaped slaves probably helped design and build.

Page 6: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

The Spanish Empire

Colonial Empires in the Americas - gold and silver mining - sugar - tobacco - leather goods

Economy dependent on Indian labor

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The British and Jamestown

First permanent British colony in North America founded in 1607– Trading company looking to make money

for investors• Gold, trade, lumber, rice, silk

– Tobacco was a profitable crop• Labor intensive

– Undesirables – Indentured servants

Page 8: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Africans Arrive in the Chesapeake First arrivals

– Origins unknown• 15 men• 17 women

1619 Dutch ship– Unfree

• English had no law for slavery• English custom forbade enslaving Christians

Page 9: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

II. Black ServitudeIn the Chesapeake

Indentured servants– Sold labor for passage to Chesapeake

• Two to seven years

– High mortality ~ most died before term expired– Blacks and whites

• Only skin color distinguished early laborers • Worked, lived, and slept together as unfree• Earned freedom at the end of term• Anthony Johnson PROFILE

Chattel slavery– Slaves were legal private property

Page 10: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Race and Origins of Black Slavery 17th century British tobacco colonies

• Evolved from an economy based on white indentured servants to one based on black slaves

• British Caribbean sugar plantations created a precedent

• British gained more control over Atlantic slave trade

– Reduced price of African laborers

Page 11: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Race and Origins of Black Slavery (cont.)

• White indentured servants sought greater opportunities elsewhere

• Race and class shaped the character of slavery

–Belief that Africans were inferior to English

»Prohibitions against bearing arms»Becoming Christian

–Discrimination in colonial polices

Page 12: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Chattel Slavery

From unfree to slave for life– Mid-17th century men, women, and children served

masters for life

– Slavery followed the mother

– Slave codes 1660-1710 aimed to control and exploit• owning property, making contracts, leaving without a pass • Christianity offered no protection against enslavement

– Masters exempt from charges for murdering slaves while administering punishment

Page 13: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

From Servitude to Slavery

Page 14: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676

Uprising against colonial elites – Demand for land and resources by white

indentured servants– Class-based, biracial alliance

Less use of white indentured servants and more dependence on black slaves– Reduced class conflict

Page 15: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

III. Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 Tobacco Colonies

– Increased demands for labor and slaves• Racial prejudice• Fewer white indentured servants available• More Africans available• Fear of class conflict

Page 16: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 (cont.) Low-Country Slavery

– Early settlers were immigrants from Barbados

• Brought slaves with them• Never any black indentured servants• Enslaved more Indians than other British

colonies• West Africans experienced at cultivating rice• Figure 3-1

Page 17: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Africans Brought as Slaves to British North America, 1701–1775 Figure 3–1. Africans Brought

as Slaves to British North America, 1701–1775.

The rise in the number of captive Africans shipped to British North America during the early eighteenth century reflects the increasing dependence of British planters on African slave labor. The declines in slave imports during the periods 1751 to 1760 and 1771 to 1775 resulted from disruptions to commerce associated with the French and Indian War (or Seven Years’ War) and the struggle between the colonies and Great Britain that preceded the American War for Independence.

SOURCE: R. C. Simmons, The American Colonies: From Settlement to Independence (New York: David McKay, 1976).

Page 18: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Plantation Slavery, 1700-1750 (cont.) Race relations

– White fears of revolt– Slave code

• Carolina had strictest in North America in 1698• Watch patrols• Curfew

Task system– Permitted autonomy without white supervision

Preserved more of their African heritage

Page 19: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Sales

Sales like the one announced in this 1784 broadside were common since slavery had been established in the low country ninety years earlier. South Carolina and Georgia remained dependent on imported slaves for much longer than did the Chesapeake and the North.

Page 20: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Regions of Colonial North America, 1683–1763

Map 3–1. Regions of Colonial North America, 1683–1763.

The British colonies on the North American mainland were divided into four regions. They were bordered on the south by Spanish Florida and to the west by regions claimed by France.

Page 21: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Slave Life in Early America

Minimal housing Dress

– Men wore breechcloths– Women wore skirts

• Upper bodies bare

– Children naked until puberty Heritage and culture

– Slave women used dyes made from bark• Decorated cloth with ornaments• Created African-style head-wraps, hats, and hairstyles

Page 22: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

View of Mulberry Street

Thomas Coram, “View of Mulberry Street, (House and Street).” About 1770, Thomas Coram painted the slave quarters and the master’s house at Mulberry Plantation, located near Charleston, South Carolina. The slave cabins with their high-pitched roofs were influenced by West African architecture.

SOURCE: Oil on paper, 10 x 17.6 cm, Gibbes Museum of Art, Carolina Art Association.

Page 23: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

IV. Miscegenation and Creolization Early Chesapeake

– Africans, American Indians, and white indentured servants interacted

– Cultural exchanges part of creolization Miscegenation

– Extensive in British North America in 17th and 18th centuries, though less accepted than in European sugar colonies in Caribbean, Latin America, or French Canada

• British North America had many more white women• Interracial marriages banned by colonial assemblies

– Kept white women from having mulatto children– Prevented a legally-recognized mixed-race class

Page 24: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

V. The Origins of African-American Culture

Creolization and miscegenation – Created African Americans

• Retained a generalized West African heritage– Family structure– Kinship– Religious ideas– African words– Musical instruments– Cooking and foods– Folk literature– Folk arts

Page 25: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

The Origins of African-American Culture (cont.) The Great Awakening

– Began process of converting African Americans to Christianity

• Evangelical churches welcomed black people– Increased black acculturation– Biracial churches

• Segregation and discrimination

Page 26: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

The Origins of African-American Culture (cont.) Language, Music and Folk Literature

– Black English• Gullah and Geechee

- African words and grammatical elements with English structure

– Music• Important to preserving African culture - sang while working and religious ceremonies

- banjos

– Folk Literature• Entertained, instructed and united the Africans• Consisted of weak animals outsmarting the strong

Page 27: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

South Carolina Plantation

This eighteenth-century painting of slaves on a South Carolina plantation provides graphic proof of the continuities between West African culture and the emerging culture of African Americans. The religious dance, the drum and banjo, and elements of the participants’ clothing are all West African in origin.

SOURCE: Abby Aldrich, Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, VA.

Page 28: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

African Mbanza

This photograph depicts two versions of the African mbanza. They feature leather stretched across a gourd, a wooden neck, and strings made of animal gut. In America, such instruments became known as banjos.

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VI. Slavery in the Northern Colonies

Fewer slaves– See Figure 3-2

– Cooler climate• Sufficient number of white laborers• Lack of staple crop• Diversified economy

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Africans as a Percentage of the Total Population of the British American Colonies, 1650–1770

Figure 3–2. Africans as a Percentage of the Total Population of the British American Colonies, 1650–1770.

SOURCE: From Time on the Cross: The Economics of Negro Slavery by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Copyright © 1974 by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Page 31: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Slavery in the Northern Colonies (cont.)

Less threat of slave rebellion– Milder slave codes

• New England slaves could legally own, transfer, and inherit property

• Rapid assimilation– Fewer opportunities to preserve African

heritage

Page 32: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Philadelphia’s London Coffee House

This eighteenth-century drawing of Philadelphia’s London Coffee House suggests the routine nature of slave auctions in early America. The main focus is on architecture. The sale of human beings is merely incidental. SOURCE: John F. Watson, “Annals of Philadelphia,” being a collection of memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of Philadelphia. The London Coffee House. The Library Company of Philadelphia.

Page 33: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

VII. Slavery in Spanish Florida and French Louisiana Routes to freedom more plentiful

– Spanish Florida• Blacks needed as soldiers• Became Catholic and acquired social status• People of African descent fled to Cuba when British took

control in 1763

– French Louisiana • Most black slaves lived in New Orleans• Became skilled artisans• Catholics• Extensive black population remained when the United

States took control in 1803

Page 34: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

African Americans in New Spain Northern Borderlands More Freedoms

- Fewer Africans than in British colonies

- gained employment instead of being slaves

Racial Purity determined social status

- pure blood Spaniards at the top

- Africans and Indians at the bottom

Africans and Indians could buy a higher social status

Page 35: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Mural

This detail of a mural located in the Arizona capitol building shows, on its extreme right, the former slave Esteban, who wears a blue turban. During the early 1500s, shipwrecked Esteban traveled through Texas to Mexico. Later he joined Spanish expeditions that explored what are now New Mexico and Arizona.

Page 36: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

IX. Black Women in Colonial America Varied according to region

– New England• Boundary between slavery and freedom permeable

– Lucy Terry Prince

– South • Few opportunities

– 17th and 18th centuries ninety percent work in fields

» In time more women become house servants

» Constant white supervision

» Sexual exploitation

– More complications giving birth

Page 37: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

Black Women in Colonial America

Black women in colonial America.

Page 38: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

X. Black Resistance and Rebellion “Goldbricking” to sabotage to escape and

rebellion– Early resistance and rebellion aimed to force

masters to give concessions and not end system New arrivals

– Most open to defiance– Maroons

• Escaped slaves• Established communities

– Spanish Florida– Great Dismal Swamp

Page 39: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

X. Black Resistance and Rebellion (cont.) Resistance

– Subtle day-to-day obstructionism• Malingered, broke tools, mistreated animals, destroyed

crops, stole, and poisoned masters

Rebellions– Smaller and fewer than in Brazil or Jamaica– Several in 18th century British North America

• New York City, 1712• Charleston, South Carolina, 1739

– Intensified fear of revolt in Deep South

Page 40: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

African-American — American Events

Page 41: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

African-American — American Events

Page 42: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

African-American — American Events

Page 43: Black People in Colonial North America Chapter 3

African-American — American Events

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XI. Conclusion

Resistance to oppression Much lost but much West African

heritage preserved Fundamental issues

– Contingency and determinism in human events