Exam Essay
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PowerPoint_Enslavement_System.pptxEnslavement System
Dr. G. J. Giddings
Characteristics
forced,
resisted,
Codified/legal,
Contradictory …
(Evolving/evolutionary)
(indentured servitude; post-bellum …)
Key Concepts (M. Karenga, 1980)
Culture
collective, self-conscious means by which a people (re-)create, celebrate and introduce themselves to the world.
History
struggle and record of a people … humanizing the world, i.e., shaping it in their own image …
Forced … Chattel slavery
4
Forced … by the numbers
Capitalism
12.5 (10.7)million
U.S.: 388,000;
Brazil: 5 million
~90% enslaved
50% enslaved, plantations
88% enslavers, owned <20
25% of enslaved, lived on plantations of >50
~52% of free, Southern
“Slave Community”
Enslavers; overseers; head-slaves (house, field, freshwater, creoles.
Forced …by the numbers
Legal…
Mass Bay Colony, 1641 “Slave Code”
244 years enslaved; 155 years free
Virginia Code, 1670
Child followed mother’s status
U.S. Constitution, 1787
3/5 compromise clause
End of slave trade clause (1808)
“fugitive slave” clause
Fugitive Slave law of 1793
South Carolina, 1822
Black sailors imprisoned while ships were docked
After Denmark Vesey revolt conspiracy
Death penalty
73 death penalty laws: for crimes of arson, rape, revolts …
Resisted …
Day-to-day
Small daily acts of defiance
Cultural
Remaining one’s self; holding on to African traditions …
(“Sankofa” by Haile Gerima)
Escape
1810-’50: 100,000
Revolutionary War: 30, 000 in Virginia; 75% enslaved in Georgia
War of 1812(-1815) Blacks
(Alan Taylor’s The Internal Enemy: Slavery & War in VA, 1772-1832)
Revolt
1/10 mutinied (i.e., Amistad, 1839)
Gabriel P., 1800; D. Vesey, 1822; N. Turner, 1831
Creole Case, 1841: Revolt; British freed 128 in Bahamas
Contradictory …
Crispus Attucks, 1723-1770
“Boston Massacre” martyr, 1790
Phillis Wheatley, 1753-1784
poet …
“Brains & Beauty as well as Brawn”
Rice cultivation in South Carolina; metallurgists; carpenters …
Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings’ relationship;
“Internal enemy” (A. Taylor)
Ethnology
Polygenesis theory of human development
“One drop rule”
5,000 Black Revolutionary War veterans
Emigration
American Colonization Society, 1816
Segregation started at Puberty
Contradictory …
Crispus Attucks 1723-1770
Narragansett mother
1750 Advertisement
Boston Massacre,
1770
5 casualties
“Blackness” …
“Normative behavioral system; a way of looking at the world, deciding how one aught to behave, and then acting accordingly”
-Rhett Jones (1997)
3 ingredients
Slavery experience
Lack of ethnicity
One drop rule
