Enslavement Part 1 Flashcards
How is black history in the US divided up?
Into three sections based on Black legal status
What are the three sections of Black History in the US?
Slavery, Segregation, and Post-Segregation
What happened in Virginia 1619?
The first 20-ish Africans arrived as slaves in the English colonies
What is cash-crop agriculture?
Crops that are grown to be sold
What were the first two common American cash-crops?
Tobacco and cotton
How did cash-crop agriculture lead to the slave trade?
People needed free labor to produce their crops
What was the Atlantic Slave Trade?
The forcible kidnapping of Africans and their sail to the Western hemisphere
What was the Middle Passage?
The journey of the slaves from Western Africa to the Americas
What happened in 1790? How many enslaved people were there in the USA? Percentage?
The beginning of the USA after the revolution
700,000 enslaved people
Almost 1/5 of all americans
What happened in 1860? How many enslaved people were in the USA?
Around the time of the Civil War
4 million enslaved people
Where was slavery heavily concentrated? Why?
The South
That’s where most cash crops were grown
Why was slavery not fought against early in American history, although many important people understood it to be wrong?
Many Americans (including enslavers) believed that slavery was a dying institution, so there was no point in trying to take it down
What percentage of the US Black population were free between 1790 and 1860?
6-11%
How did African-American people in the USA become free?
Some had been free since birth, some had been freed from slavery by private manumission, others self emancipated
Define private manumission
When an enslaver decides to free a slave (could be for any reason)
Define self emancipation
When a slave escapes their enslavers and runs away to somewhere where they can live safely and freely
Who was Michael Johnson?
A self-emancipated man who was the first American killed in the Boston Massacre in March of 1770
What was Michael Johnson’s enslaved name?
Crispus Attucks
Who was Benjamin Banneker?
A freeborn African American man and largely self-taught almanac writer who helped to survey the construction site of the US capital, Washington D.C.
Who was Phillis Wheatley?
The first published African American poet in the US
What was Phillis Wheatley’s social status (enslaved/free/etc.) and how did she get to that point?
She was kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved by a wealthy Bostonian family, but was then emancipated after her poems were published
Where was James Forten from?
Philadelphia
What did James Forten do? What happened to him?
Fought on America’s side in the Revolutionary War
Was captured and held by the British until the war ended
What did James Forten do after the war? How was his business special?
He started a sail company, making him the wealthiest man in Philadelphia
He refused to sell sails to anyone involved in the slave trade
Since when was there resistance against American slavery?
Always
How was resistance against slavery dangerous for white people?
They could get jail time, fines, or face violence
How was resistance against slavery dangerous for black people?
They could be murdered or enslaved/re-enslaved
How could enslaved people resist slavery?
They could sabotage work, feign illness, work slowly, self-emancipate, or lead a rebellion
How could outsiders resist slavery?
They could aid self-emancipated people, resist slave catchers, organize anti-slavery groups, or publish anti-slavery papers
When did the Abolitionist Movement begin? What did it aim to do?
1830s
End slavery in the USA
How did the Abolitionist Movement work?
People used written publications and speeches to persuade audiences against slavery
What was the Abolitionist Movement also known for?
Being the most diverse social movement in American history in terms of race, class, and gender
When was the Underground Railroad established?
Late 1700s
How is the Underground Railroad’s name symbolic?
Underground = secretive
Railroad = transportation
Not a literal railroad that is underground
Was the Underground Railroad highly organized? Why or why not?
Not; it was highly decentralized so that if one section of it was discovered, the rest could continue running without fear
Who were the four major figures of the Underground Railroad?
William Still, Levi Coffin, Harriet Tubman, and Thomas Garrett
What is William Still’s nickname? Who was he (social class wise)?
“Father of the Underground Railroad”
Child of former slaves
What is Levi Coffin’s nickname?
“President of the Underground Railroad”
What is Harriet Tubman’s nickname? Who was she (social class wise)?
“Moses”
Self-emancipated
Who was Thomas Garret (social class wise)? Where did he live?
Quaker abolitionist
Wilmington, Delaware
When was the Stono Rebellion?`
1739
Where was the Stono Rebellion?
A couple miles outside Charleston, South Carolina
Who led the Stono Rebellion?
Enslaved warriors from Congo
What was the first act of the Stono Rebellion?
Burning a store and killing the store owners, leaving their heads on the porch
How did the leaders of the Stono Rebellion attract other enslaved rebels?
Played drums
What was the goal of the Stono Rebellion?
Reach Florida for freedom
How was the Stono Rebellion put down?
South Carolina militia fought off the rebellion with firearms
What was the aftermath of the Stono Rebellion?
The heads of the rebels were put on stakes along the highway to instill fear, enslaved people were banned from learning to read to decrease their power, and drumming was banned
When was Nat Turner’s Rebellion?
1831
Where was Nat Turner’s Rebellion?
Inside Virginia
Who led Nat Turner’s Rebellion?
Nat Turner, a self-emancipated prophet who believed God had told him to slay his enemies
Who was killed? How many?
Over 60 white men, women, and children
Who put down Nat Turner’s rebellion?
The Virginia militia
What was Nat Turner’s motive to start the rebellion?
He knew how bad slavery was, causing him to act extremely
Was the Nat Turner Rebellion successful?
No, but they did succeed in sending a message
When was the Christiana Riot?
1850
Where was the Christiana Riot?
In Christiana, Pennsylvania
What began the Christiana Riot?
A group of self-emancipated women escaped from Maryland to Pennsylvania
The enslaver of these people (Gorsuch) chased them to PA
What groups populated the town in PA the people in the Christiana Riot ended up in?
Quakers and free blacks
Why did fighting break out in the Christiana Riot?
A shot was fired
Who was hurt/killed in the Christiana Riot?
Killed - Gorsuch and a police officer
Injured - Gorsuch’s son
What happened to the self-emancipated people from the Christiana Riot?
They escaped to Canada
Who was the fighting between in the Christiana Riot?
The townspeople and Gorsuch (and Gorsuch’s army)
What happened to the townspeople in the Christiana Riot?
31 people were charged for aiding the self-emancipated, but were released with the help of their lawyer, Thaddeus Stevens
Who was Lucy Stanton?
The first black woman to complete a 4 year college degree in the USA
Where was Lucy Stanton born? What social status was she?
Ohio
Free black
What college did Lucy Stanton attend?
Oberlin College
Who was Angelina Grimke?
A white woman born into a slave-owning family in South Carolina
What did Angelina Grimke do?
With her sister, she abandoned her family, converted to Quakerism, and began speaking out against slavery
What was the main point of Frederick Douglass’s July 4 speech?
The Fourth of July wasn’t an important family for enslaved people, because it wasn’t a day of freedom for them. They were still oppressed
