Module 5

Slide 1

Imagine that you have parked your car at the mall and you are walking through the parking lot. Suddenly, you are grabbed from behind by three people, a hood is placed over your head and you are thrown into the trunk of a car. For several days you are left in the trunk and the car is continually moving. You are given very little food and only a small amount of water and you are not permitted to leave the trunk to use the restroom

Slide 2

Finally the car stops and you are pulled out of the trunk. The hood is removed from your head and you are staring into the faces of several people with strange faces and hair who are all

yelling at you in a language you can’t understand. You are forced to work for these strange and frightening people. Soon you are joined by others who look like you and who are also

forced to work, but you can’t understand each other’s language. You have no idea where you are. You never again are allowed to go back home and you never again see anyone you

ever knew. You must make a new life for yourself with strangers.

Slide 3

How would you navigate this strange and hostile new world? What social and emotional tools would you need to survive? How would you create a new identity and a

new life for yourself? This is what faced Africans who were forcibly brought to the Americas as slaves.

Slide 4

When they were finally freed, they were still hated, faced with violence and poverty, and treated as less than human.

In this module we will learn how they coped with this untenable situation and made lives for themselves in a

country their ancestors had not chosen.

Exam Practice

• Use this practice quiz template to study these terms for the module 7 exam• http://quizlet.com/40927860/module-5-immigration-history-flash-car

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Exam Practice

• Among the millions of immigrants who came to America were those who did not come willingly. For these Africans there were no Push and Pull Factors and no hope for better lives. The slave trade was carried out first by the Portuguese and then by other European groups such as the Dutch, the French, and the English.

• Most Africans who came to America as slaves were taken from the West Africa.

• Africans were kidnapped and marched to the coast, away from everyone and everything they had ever known. The most frightening thing for them was not knowing why they had been captured or where they were going. When they fought back, they were killed.

• Once they reached the coast, those who could speak the same language were separated from each other in order to minimize the frequent uprisings during which the captives would attack their captors. They were held in dark dungeons, often for months, until they were crowded onto ships, headed for the unknown.

Exam Practice

• The journey from Africa to the Americas was called The Middle Passage. The slaves were packed onto the ships and kept in appalling conditions. To minimize uprisings, they were rarely allowed on deck to breathe fresh air. Instead, they were kept below deck, often chained together and forced to lie in their own waste. Thousands upon thousands died on these ships.

• Upon arrival in the Americas, those who survived were cleaned up, fattened up, and prepped for sale. Some of these slaves were headed to the 13 English colonies in what would become the United States.

• Most slaves who came to the colonies worked on tobacco or cotton plantations and made lives for themselves in the slave quarters which operated as small villages.

• Life was hard for slaves who were treated as property rather than people. Their children were sold away from them just as dog breeders sell puppies today. Women were raped by their masters and other white men. Slaves were whipped and subjected to all manner of abuse. As a result, many thousands ran away on their own, or through a network established by abolitionists called the Underground Railroad. Slaves were very valuable so their masters offered rewards for their return.

Exam Practice • Some slaves rebelled openly. The most famous of these rebellions was Nat Turners Rebellion in 1831 during which sixty whites

were killed on one night. Southerners had always feared such uprisings and were committed to ensuring that few such rebellions occurred. They accomplished this by enacting the Slave Codes which monitored every aspect of slave behavior.

• Not all African Americans, however, were slaves. There existed thriving communities of free African Americans in such northern cities as Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. These free blacks founded churches, fraternal orders, schools and businesses that served free black communities in the North. It was to these enclaves that runaway slaves came once they made it to the North.

• The African Meeting House in Boston pictured here served as both a meeting place and a school for free blacks in Boston.

• Once the Civil War put an end to slavery in 1865, the 4 million newly freed blacks in the South hoped and believed that their lives would improve. During an era called Reconstruction, their lives did improve because Union soldiers occupied the South to ensure that African Americans were protected from violence and that they would be permitted to vote. This, however, was short-lived and, with the enactment of the Black Codes, southern blacks were returned to a condition very close to slavery.

• The Ku Klux Klan was a vigilante group formed during this period for the purpose of keeping blacks in their place. Those blacks who dared to assert their Constitutional rights or who stood up to whites in any way might expect a visit from the Ku Klux Klan, as shown in this image. The Klan’s intent was to scare blacks into submission, to keep them in poverty, to keep them segregated from whites, and to ensure that they would not be able to vote.