Resistance, Abolition, and Free Black Communities before the Civil War

Question 1

Resistance to Enslavement (3 Types)

Answer 1

Everyday – slow down, claim illness, break tools, sabotage harvest, poison, songs and stories that asserted equality or celebrated freedom

Individual – running away, “lying out,” (leaving for a period of time) negotiating within limits (David’s story from Florida)
What was the “underground railroad?”

Collective – Revolts and rebellions

Question 2

Underground Railroad

Answer 2

A system of connections among people who work together to help self-emancipating slaves to safety.

Question 3

Routes of the Underground railroad.

Answer 3

17th century: Florida; Spaniards promised freedom to slaves leading to fort Mose.

19th century: Routes going to the east cost, some to the west and others to the north.

Question 4

First free Black colony in Florida.

Answer 4

Fort Mose.

Question 5

Rebellion in Charleston, NC 1739

Answer 5

Stono rebellion: enslaved people from Charleston decide to take the armory arm themselves go through the countryside around Charleston to plantations that have a greater number of enslaved people than white people, arming enslaved people and killing white people who get in their way and then head to Fort Mose (St Augustine). They were captured and executed before they could make it to florida. That’s why the Americans were keen on purchasing Florida

Question 6

American Revolution and Slavery.

Answer 6

4,000 black men fought on either side of the revolution.

Also in a way a slave revolt. On both side of the revolution there’s a great deal of anxiety over what to do with enslaved people, the Americans who enslave black people have potential enemies in the form of them and the british. The british take advantage of that and promise any enslaved people who flee and join the british army their freedom after the war.

Some of them end up in Nova Scotia, some end up in the carribean, sierra leone. Americans have to do the same thing to keep enslaved people from banding against them.

Question 7

Haitian Revolution

Answer 7

1791-1804

resulting in the first free black republic in a post-slavery world from the former French colony of St Domingue.

Question 8

Denmark Vessey

Answer 8

Led a well planned conspiracy to seize armory and then free charleston in 1822.

Question 9

Second Seminole War.

Answer 9

1835-1842

the americans were trying to displace the Seminole from their land in florida to accommodate more white people. The black people fight alongside the Seminole against the americans. Some of them end up going west with the Seminole’s starting interracial families.

Question 10

Free Black People in Pre-antebellum America.

Answer 10

People free from the beginning
Some set free in the 1600s (indentured)
Majority are from northern states that gradually abolished slavery (1780-1800) population of freed black people

Question 11

Where do most free people live? Did they encouter segregation?

Answer 11

Free people live in Baltimore, boston and philidelphia, over time the face the earliest forms of segregation, i.e the first segregated transportation was in Massachusetts (the railroad)

Question 12

Why was the existance of free black people at the time important?

Answer 12

Very important to African American history, important community leaders, proof that black people should be free, healthy dynamic communities that help each other succeed individually and collectively.

Question 13

Free black people in the south are descendants who were…?

Answer 13

Free from the begginning, descendants of those who were manumitted.

often these peoples are the descendants of white slave owners (related to powerful white people)

Question 14

How does the south maintain its hold on the government despite its smaller population?

Answer 14

The south has small number of people but maintains it’s hold on the government by counting enslaved people as people when it comes to apportioning representation in congress, and because they are wealthy.

Question 15

Free Black Communties before the Civil War

Answer 15

Community like any other in many ways – cooperation among extended families and households

Bonds of obligation and shared disadvantage

self-determination and personal dignity, mutual aid, shared

responsibility for the progress of the race

Question 16

What difference did race make? Slavery? Region?

Answer 16

they understood how white people saw them and judged them based on what their blackness meant, and so they understood that one path to progress is to improve the standing of black people everywhere

The issue with this (respectability politics) is that it’s always the promise held out by the dominant society but when black people fulfill that promise (get and education, build a business) they are not celebrated but punished, lynched or murdered for being successful (exposes racism as a lie)

Question 17

African cultural roots of many Africans in America, African-Americans

Answer 17

African tradition and American traditions in these cultures. Many things we think are American have roots in Africa.

Question 18

NOT isolated, not passive, not all the same. Diverse in background, experience, class, gender, color, region

Answer 18

baptist vs Methodist,

social class depends on how long a family has been free.

Colour: ways in which people with different skin tones are treated differently by whites and blacks. Assumptions based on lighter skin or darker skin.

Region: largest black communities are on the east coast. Baltimore, Philadelphia, NY vs New Orleans and Charleston, SC. It’s different to live as a free black person when you see enslaved black people everyday as opposed to living in a region where slavery is not as common.

Question 19

False dichotomy between African and American, between integrationist and nationalist

Answer 19

False dichotomy: there are people who believe in assimilation, i.e act like white people or at least aspire to the same goals they have to earn their respect. Opposite view, we should be proud of ourselves and live in our own way.

Regardless of their view, the independence was something they felt empowered to do in the face of segregation, if I’m not wanted why I’m here?

Question 20

Patriotism and Race - continual problem of American ideals v. American realities – call upon the rhetoric of republican democracy but could not make it expand to include them

Answer 20

hypocrisy of ‘all men are created equal’ the ideals of America do not align with the treatment of African americans.

Question 21

What did Black people think about white people in this period?

Answer 21

Black people essentialized ideas about whiteness, had their own stereotypes about white people (Missy Ann to Karen).

’angry saxon’ form of strategic essentialism.

Question 22

When did published excuses for slavery start to appear?

Answer 22

• 19th century
• 1820 to be specific

-Racist ideology – historical, religious, “scientific”

Question 23

What marked the beginning of the civil rights movement?

Answer 23

Black intellectuals combating the racist justification for slavery (from science and religion)

• AA’s called on Egypt, emphasizing the importance of black/african intellectuals and intelligence had been in the development of the modern world (engineering, math)
• Form they’re own views about white people (angry-saxon)
• “racism and anti-racism grew up together” (18)

Question 24

What was the impetus for the development of black racial thought?

Answer 24

Free black opposition to the colonization movement

Question 25

What was the colonization movement?

Answer 25

Colonization was a movement, first embraced by free black people in the late 18th century and then later by white slave owners.

Colonization: Since the United States couldn’t provide a free, equal existence for black people they should leave, some did.

In the late 18th century there are some free African americans with wealth and power sponsor colonization campaigns to send black people, mostly from the north, to Liberia and Haiti, black republics where they can be free.

But in 1816 some white people take over the movement, with the idea that in order to end slavery they need to free black people and send them back to Africa.

Question 26

How did Free Blacks try to counter white prejudice?

Answer 26

leaving,

self-cultivation (education, hard work, improvement)

‘we can show them we are worthy of respect/ teach them not to be racist’

attacking it directly

Question 27

Two early black colonizationists?

Answer 27

Absalom Jones, Richard Allen,

Question 28

How does black racial thought explain race?

Answer 28

frame their differences as a race as due to different life experiences/historical differences (our ancestors were kidnapped and sold), however we are equal in the eyes of God and politically.

Black race was sent by God to redeem the human race, (less proud; less dominant), superior to whites.

Race as a fallacy.

White people are inferior because they are unjust, unmerciful, avarice, cruel.

Very few antiracist white abolitionists, many of them see black people as childlike and pitiful, deserving of assistance, not their equals but not people.

Question 29

Institutions in Free Black Communties

Answer 29

Americans in the early 19th century were “joiners” – associations and clubs
Moral reform, temperance, sabbatarians, health and diet, evangelical missions, antislavery

Racial uplift.

Question 30

What difference did gender and class make in joining institutions/organizations?

Answer 30

There is a great deal of this that is tied up in gender, slavery denies black people the ‘natural/proper gender roles’ a part of their dehumanization. Black men being able to enter a mutual aid society to protect their families, is a restoration of their masculinity. If free black woman can enter into temperance/evangelical missions/anti-slavery societies were they did work together that was respectable, middle class, moral so much the better.

Question 31

Church, religion, and the Second Great Awakening

Answer 31

Democracy of religion

It challenges old notions of church hierarchy and invites, native people, black people and women to stand at the front and testify, no need for a middle man to have a relationship with God.

Question 32

Role/Importance of the Black Church.

Answer 32

white people don’t question a large gathering of black people who are worshipping, in any other circumstance that’s threatening (fully African American run space). Not true in the south because some of the most famous slave revolts come from black churches.

worship, community, morality, internal judiciary

in black communities rather than going to the white power structure where they don’t count, they turn to their own preachers, deacons and bishops to make calls where it comes to those matters

Question 33

Where can africanisms be found in American culture?

Answer 33

language, food, music, worship.

Black and white Americans are aware of the way their existence is part of American culture.

Question 34

African American influence in theater and popular music.

Answer 34

Blackface Minstrelsy: love and theft (whites acknowledged and absorbed black culture even as they defended white America against it)

Social construction of whiteness against these stereotypes of blackness (esp. for anxious immigrants)

Question 35

What is Blackface Ministrelsy?

Answer 35

Series of black characters
white people dress up as, perform as stereotypical black characters, meant to make fun of black people, establishing white people as the opposite (smart).

Thomas ‘daddy’ Rice, performs character of Jim Crow,

the very fact that these immigrants can darken their ckin and perform blackness proves they are not black (immigrants)

Question 36

How did the populist politics of the jacksonian era affects citizenship/voting?

Answer 36

after the American revolution only white men who own property can vote, but states eventually do away with the property requirement, under the property requirement there were single women and black people, including single black women and men, who if they amassed enough property could vote, this is done away with, now only white men are full citizens who can vote.

Women and any men who are not white are denied citizenship rights.

The democracy is expanding to include the poor and male

Question 37

What did one encounter when traveling while black?

Answer 37

humiliation, segregation

humiliation of being forced (even if they’ve bought a first class ticket) to ride third class, because segregation in transportation is increasing.

America is expanding the rights of poor/others and removing them form the blacks, breeding frustration.

Question 38

Why was the colonization movement initially supported by black people?

Answer 38

Initially supported by free blacks, because they felt white americans would not stop being racist even with the abolition of slavery.

Question 39

How did white people co-opt the colonization movement?

Answer 39

First president of the colonization movement in New York is former President James Madison, rich white men fund these trips, they appeal to states to abolish slavery or as people divest themselves from their slaves they raise money to but them and then send them to Africa.

Question 40

Criticisms of the the colonialization movement?

Answer 40

This is criticized by free blacks, who say their americans too and have rights to liberty, they also fought for the country.

Question 41

The ________ movement comes out of the colonization movement once WLG begins critiquing it.

Answer 41

Abolition movement comes from the colonization movement. William Lloyd a former supporter of the colonization movement understands the position of free blacks and promotes the end of slavery as an immediate moral reform that needs to happen.

Question 42

How did white people rationalize ending slavery?

Answer 42

Unfortunately the reasoning to end slavery is not because black people are human, but because slavery morally corrupts white people.

Question 43

What were some benefits of potential colonies established through colonization?

Answer 43

trade, spread christianity, support antislavery and free more people

Question 44

Colonization was fueled by _______

______, but those who emigrated returned because they are american not haitian or african.

Answer 44

Colonization was fueled by racial essentialism, the idea that black people belonged together and are somehow all the same because slavery grouped them all together.

Turns out that people who’ve been living in thirteen colonies and then the united states are not west africans, their americans.

White slaveholders eventually became the patrons of the colonization movement.

Free blacks in the 19th century wanted to be called, coloured not African, they have been in America for several generations, they speak the language, fight in their wars and contribute to the culture.

Question 45

Southern Paranoia about antislavery leads to….?

Answer 45

Limited black sailors rights 1823:
-black sailors had been bringing abolition information, papers and pamphlets to the south, limiting black sailor’s rights to move out of their ships when they are docked.

Censoring of the mail by 1830s:
-they start to censor the mail, abolitionists were sending out thousands of abolitionist pamphlets through the mail to the south, southerners breaking the law and violating the constitution (freedom of speech), by burning the papers.

Question 46

How did free people protest slavery (anti-slavery movement)?

Answer 46

Organized Protest, Reform, Antislavery:

All shared connections to people still enslaved

Literacy and Black newspapers

Colored Conventions
Farming and financial independence

Antislavery societies

Aid to fugitive slaves (the “Underground RR”)

Question 47

Role of Education in the antislavery movement?

Answer 47

Inherent connection between education and antislavery/antiracism, once you educate someone they no longer accept that racism is something they have to live with.

Question 48

Women in the anti-salvery movement?

Answer 48

Some of the most prominent antislavery speakers are women. Link between antislavery work and early feminism. This creates issues for well meaning white abolitionist men who aren’t interested in learning from/taking orders from black women.

Question 49

When did the overt attacks against anti-slavery begin?

Answer 49

About 1830 northern abolitionist began an overt act against slavery, slavery is morally wrong, unamerican and unchristian, if the constitution protects slavery then we should burn the constitution, because this is no good.

Up unto this point nobody has said slavery is a good thing, ‘slavery is an unfortunate institution we’ve invested in and don’t know how to get out of’ now southern racists argue slavery is the best thing that’s happened to black people, ‘we took them from Africa and made them Christian.’

Question 50

Gradualists vs Immediatists?

Answer 50

Gradualists: think the best way to get rid of slavery is to gradually end it some how, through colonization or gradual emancipation.

The immidiatists: tend to be free black people, the most radical of the whites believe this. They make a moral and religious argument, they also believe slavery is undemocratic, because slaveholders the top 1% have more than their fair share of power in this democracy.

Question 51

Paternalistic argument in support of slavery.

Answer 51

Paternalism: the arguments against abolition, swirl around this myth of the white man who is the father who cares for his dependents, wife, father and servants. He cares for all of them. Doesn’t always look like this. Paternalism is racism with a sentimental mask on it. Grown black people do not need a white man telling them how to lead their lives.

They wrote that black people without slavery would starve to death because they coudn’t work and no one would feed them.

Even though white people and their survival is dependent on black work.

Cherrypick the right bible verses.

Question 52

Economic argument against antislavery

Answer 52

Arguing that enslaved people are better off then free workers in the north because free workers in the north are also poor, because the slaveholding class is working for the merchant class in the north to amass all this wealth and not share it with anyone else.

Question 53

How does the south respond to antislavery?

Answer 53

Closed society, loyalty required, dissenters attacked and persecuted, mail censored, laws passed to isolate slaves from abolitionist ideas, limit free black rights (define color line, need powerful white people to post $500 on your behalf because you’re such a threat to the slave system)

Censorship in the south, make it illegal to teach enslaved people to read.

Question 54

What is Radical Abolition and who supported it?

Answer 54

immediate, unconditional emancipation and civil equality for all African Americans

against slavery on moral and religious grounds – slavery was a sin, and a practice that corrupted the families and morals of both blacks and whites.

supported by different Americans – free blacks and whites; working class and middle class; men and women; urban and rural, North, South and West

Question 55

How did free blacks argue for radical abolition/who were some of these people?

Answer 55

• free African-Americans, especially in the black church, argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament.
• Influence sympathetic whites who were once gradualist persuading them that immediate abolition is the only true American and moral answer
• Maria Stewart, David Walker, and Frederick Douglass influenced some sympathetic whites like Garrison

Question 56

What were the biggest political challenges to radical abolition?

Answer 56

Politics after 1830 polarize around the line of slavery ultimately leading to a civil war.

Abolition threatened the harmony of North and South in the Union

Abolition also ran counter to the U.S. Constitution, which left the question of slavery to the individual states.

The federal government only has the power to end the international slave trade after 1807.

Question 57

The Liberator.

Answer 57

a newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison, beings to publish in 1831.

Question 58

How the battle against slavery fought before the civil war?

Answer 58

takes place in american politics and culture pretty significantly.