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The history of black people in the Americas does not start with slavery > 1492: Pedro Alonzo Nino, traditionally considered the first of many New World explorers of African descent, sails with Christopher Columbus. Beginning 1500: first slaves brought from Africa by the Spanish.
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The history of black people in the Americas does not start with slavery > • 1492: Pedro Alonzo Nino, traditionally considered the first of many New World explorers of African descent, sails with Christopher Columbus
Beginning 1500: first slaves brought from Africa by the Spanish
1645: First American slave ships sail, from Boston; triangular trade route brings African slaves to West Indies in exchange of sugar, tobacco and wine > middle passage
1776: Declaration of Indipendence adopted without antislavery statement proposed by Thomas Jefferson
1787: Constitution ratified, classifying one slave as three-fifths of one person for congressional apportionment – Congress passes Northwest Ordinance, banning slavery in Northwest Territories and all land north of the Ohio river
1845: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself: Black slaves in England and the U.S. created a genre of literature that testified against their captors and bore witness to the urge to be free and literate: - European dream of reason – American dream of civic liberty • 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin = sentimentalism
1863-1865: American Civil War • 1863: Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln • 1865: Slavery outlawed by 13th Amendment - “black codes” issued in former Confederate states, severely limiting rights of freed women and men • 1865: the Ku Klux Klan is created in Tennessee
1903: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk • “ It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.”
1906: Madame C. J. Walker opens hair-care business, eventually becoming one of the first female American millionaires
Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was a favorite among record listeners. Her "Down-Hearted Blues" on the Columbia label sold over one million copies.
1919: 83 lynchings recorded during “Red summer of hate” • 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana
President Truman proposed to Congress a bill that would outlaw lynching and to create a Federal Commission of Civil Rights on February 2, 1948.
One of the bloodiest and most destructive race riots ever in America happened in Watts, Los Angeles, California and lasted for five days, August 11-15, 1965. 35 people were killed. Federal troops were called in to stop the violence. • The summer of 1967 was called the "Hot Summer," the worst racial uprisings in American history with over 40 riots all over the US. President Johnson appointed a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate the matter. • Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War on March 24, 1967. His unpopular stance said that "Blacks and Whites should seek to resist this war by becoming conscientious objectors."
1966: Muhammed Alì applied with the Selective Service for conscientious objector status = "I Ain't Got No Quarrel With The VietCong... No VietCong Ever Called Me Nigger"
The Black Panthers Party was founded in 1966, in Oakland, California by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, as a black self-defense group aimed at getting revolutionary changes in America's policies as they related to oppressed African-Americans. Other Panther Party members included Eldridge Cleaver and Fred Hampton.
The group created a Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace", as well as exemption from military service for African-American men, among other demands. They focused on black nationalism, black pride and self-defence. • Thinkers: Malcom X, Marx, Mao
Tommy Smith: "If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say 'a Negro'. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight."
