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American Slavery

American Slavery. “I have assumed the task of explaining how things actually were while at the same time thinking that no one will ever really know.” Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black. U.B. Phillips American Negro Slavery (1918) Slaves were docile.

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American Slavery

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  1. American Slavery

  2. “I have assumed the task of explaining how things actually were while at the same time thinking that no one will ever really know.” Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black

  3. U.B. Phillips • American Negro Slavery (1918) • Slaves were docile. • Slavery was essentially an educational institution. • W.E.B. DuBois • The Souls of Black Folk • Herbert Aptheker, • Essays in the History of the American Negro (1945)

  4. Erected by the city of Natchitoches in grateful recognition of the arduous and faithful services of the good darkies of Louisiana.

  5. Kenneth Stampp, • The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (1956) • slaves = white men in black skins. • slavery was a severe and profitable institution. • slavery limited the development of the black family. • influenced by E. Franklin Frazier • The Negro Family in the United States (1939) • Stanley Elkins • Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959) • slavery destroyed the black psyche • produced “Sambos”

  6. Elkins influenced policy . . . • matriarchal social structure dominated and continues to dominate black family life, • matriarchy . . . “ . . . seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the negro male and, in consequence on a great many negro women as well.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, 1965.

  7. Eugene Genovese, • Roll, Jordan, Roll, The World the Slaves Made (1972), • first historian to look at slavery from the slave’s viewpoint, • “Black America’s tie with an African tradition . . . helped shape a culture entirely its own.” • Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, • Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery (1972) • slavery was reasonably mild and very profitable. • John Blassingame, • The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1972), • direct refutation of Elkins, • the slave quarters were the focal point of slave life.

  8. Blassingame . . . “The sophisticated research of ethno-musicologists, anthropologists, and folklorists, coupled with the evidence in a large number of primary sources, suggests that African culture was much more resistant to the bludgeon that was slavery than historians have hitherto suspected.”

  9. Herbert Gutman, • The Black Family in Slavery and freedom, 1750-1925. (1976), • slave family were strong and stable. • Charles Joyner, • Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (1984) • emphasis on African roots of slave culture.

  10. Charles Dew, • Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge (1994) • slavery worked in an industrial setting. • John Hope Franklin, • Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (1999) • resistance was much more prominent than traditionally believed.

  11. Which came first ?Prejudice or slavery ?

  12. Color as a physical descriptor • English visions of “beauty.” • African - European contact • North African contact for millennia, • Sub-Saharan Africa - 14th century. • Where did Virginia’s first “Negars” come from?

  13. When did “slavery” actually start? • 1672 - The Royal African Company • 1676 ? • Bacon’s Rebellion • 1619-1700: Situation ?

  14. Was slavery consistent over time? • 18th century slavery • Chattel • Barbados • Loss rate = 6% per year • 1640-1700: 264,000 slaves imported • 1700 population = c. 100,000 • 1712-1762: 150,000 slaves imported • Increase in slave population by 1762 = 28,000

  15. Virginia • Tobacco vs. sugar • 1700-1750: 45,000 slaves imported • Population: • 1700: c. 8,000-10,000 • 1750: 100,000+

  16. 19th Century • “Christian Masterhood” • The “good” master was a good father. • System supported establishment of families. • Tradition ensured a “right way.” • Black Americans had no legal standing. • Slavery enforced by unrestrained violence.

  17. Questions . . . • What role did African culture play in the development of “African-American” culture? • What role did African culture play in the development of “Southern” culture?

  18. Most slaves lived with large numbers of other slaves. Slaves Whites Only 1 in 4 whites had any association with slaves.

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