Unit 2: Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance

Ladinos

Early Christianized Black people who arrived in the Americas were known as ladinos, and the term referred in general to those who were familiar with the religion, cultures, and languages of Spain or Portugal. This familiarity could have come from being born in those countries, or having had long exposure to them as servants, slaves, soldiers, students, diplomats, merchants, etc. They began to arrive in the Americas as early as the 15th century, many as auxiliaries to the Spanish and Portuguese explorers

Atlantic Creoles

Ladinos were part of a generation known as Atlantic creoles. These were Africans who worked as intermediaries on the African coast before the transatlantic slave trade really began to get aggressive. Their familiarity with multiple languages, cultural norms, and commercial practices granted them a measure of social mobility. They were the African wives of Portuguese officials on the African coast, as well as their mixed-race children. Their abilities to navigate between the two racial worlds earned them reputations as expert traders and negotiators.

La Florida

Spain's name for the area that would later become Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia​.

Conquistadores

Conquistadors or conquistadores were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. They came to the Americas in search of riches. Many people of African descent - both enslaved and free - were conquistadors, or participated in their expeditions.

Juan Garrido

Juan Garrido was born in the Kongo, moved to Portugal as a young man, and converted to Catholicism, choosing the Spanish name Juan Garrido. He came to the Americas as a free man and joined a Spanish expedition in Santo Domingo (Hispaniola) in about 1502. He participated in the conquest of present-day Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1508. In 1513, as part of Juan Ponce de León's entourage in search of gold, the expedition landed in Florida, which makes him the first known African to explore what would become the United States. By 1519, he had joined Hernan Cortes's forces and invaded present-day Mexico, participating in the siege of Tenochtitlan.

Estevanico

An Arabic-speaking black man from Morocco, he participated in a 1528 expedition, which set out from Cuba under the leadership of Pánfilo de Narváez to explore and colonize Spanish Florida. After numerous challenges, including shipwrecks and enslavement by Native Americans, Estevanico, along with three other survivors embarked on an epic journey, covering nearly 2,000 miles, through the American interior, becoming the first Africans and Europeans to enter the American West.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

This is the name given to the centuries-long transport of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean. Altogether, historians estimate that about 12.5 million enslaved people were shipped to the Americas, nearly 2 million of whom died before the ships ever arrived. The trans-Atlantic slave trade started in the early 1500s and continued all the way until the late 1800s when illegal shipments of enslaved people were still arriving in spite of laws prohibiting it.

Senegambia

This is the westernmost zone that enslaved people were taken from. This area was near the Senegal and Gambia Rivers and accounts for 23.6% of all enslaved Africans brought to what would become the United States. Note that Senegambia also includes offshore Atlantic islands in the area as well.

Sierra Leone

Between Senegambia & Liberia, this region accounts for 11.6% of enslaved people brought to the U.S.

Liberia / Ivory Coast

Together, Liberia & the Ivory Coast are between Sierra Leone and Ghana, and account for 5.6% of enslaved people brought to the U.S.

Ghana (Geographic Area)

Just West of Benin, this region accounts for 11.6% of enslaved people brought to the U.S. This zone includes the Volta River.

Benin

Just East of Ghana, this region accounts for 2.4% of enslaved people brought to the U.S.

Nigeria

Situated to the East of Benin, this region accounts for 16.7% of enslaved people brought to the U.S. This zone includes the Niger River.

Angola

Situated in West-Central Africa (where the Kingdom of Kongo was), this region accounts for 23.8% of enslaved people brought to the U.S. Note that the Angola region also includes the offshore island of St. Helena

Mozambique

This Southeastern African region accounts for 2% of enslaved people brought to the U.S. Note that the Mozambique region also includes islands in the Indian Ocean

The Wolof People (Senegambia)

The Wolof people are a West African ethnic group found in northwestern Senegal, the Gambia, and southwestern coastal Mauritania. This was and continues to be an Islamic region of Africa.

The Akan People (Ghana)

The Akan people live primarily in present-day Ghana (where they are the largest ethnic group) and in parts of Ivory Coast and Togo in West Africa.

The Igbo People (Nigeria)

Igboland, also known as Southeastern Nigeria, is the indigenous homeland of the Igbo-speaking people. Geographically, it is divided into two sections by the lower Niger River: an eastern and a western one.

The Yoruba People (Nigeria)

The Yoruba people are a West African ethnic group who mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. They are one of the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria.

The Middle Passage

This is the second leg of what many call the Triangular Trade. The Middle Passage refers to the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean. This nightmarish voyage could take months and was filled with violence, malnutrition, abuse, disease, and death. About 1.8 million enslaved Africans would die onboard the ships of the Middle Passage.

Slave Narratives

The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved Africans, particularly in the Americas. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist. About 150 narratives were published as separate books or pamphlets. In the United States during the Great Depression (1930s), more than 2,300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program.

Olaudah Equiano

Known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa, Equiano was a writer and abolitionist. Enslaved as a child in West Africa, he was shipped to the Caribbean and sold to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more before purchasing his freedom in 1766. As a freedman in London, Equiano became a leading anti-slavery figure. His 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, sold so well that nine editions were published during his life and helped secure passage of the British Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished the slave trade.

Phillis Wheatley

Born in West Africa, she was kidnapped and subsequently sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America, where she was bought by the Wheatley family of Boston. After she learned to read and write, she went on to become the first African American to publish a book of poetry. The publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773, brought her fame both in England and America.

The "Brookes"

British slave ship launched at Liverpool in 1781. The Brookes became infamous after prints were published in 1788 that showed the inhumane crowding of African bodies onboard. Between 1782 and 1804, The Brookes made 11 voyages to Africa and transported thousands of enslaved people across the Atlantic. The publication of the Brookes diagram was very important in the growing anti-slavery movement and played a significant role in getting England's Slave Trade Act of 1788 (also known as Dolben's Act) passed, which regulated the number of enslaved people who could be carried based on the size of the ship.

Willie Cole

Contemporary American sculptor, printer, and conceptual and visual artist whose work often integrates imagery and references from African and African American history. He is best known for assembling and transforming ordinary domestic and used objects into imaginative and powerful works of art. In the context of this class, he uses the image of an old iron to reference the Middle Passage and conditions onboard slave ships in his 1997 artwork Stowage.

"La Amistad"

In 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, in violation of treaties then in existence. Two Spanish plantation owners, Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz, purchased 53 Africans and put them aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad to ship them to their plantation. During that voyage, the Africans seized the ship, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered Montes and Ruiz to sail to Africa. But they tricked the Africans and sailed the ship near New York, where it was spotted and seized, and the Africans were sent to prison in Connecticut on charges of piracy and murder. It became a huge and complicated legal issue that played out in the courts for months before the Africans were finally declared free.

Senge Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinque)

Pieh was born in present-day Sierra Leone and was a rice farmer and trader. At the time of his capture he had a wife and three children. In 1839 slave traders kidnapped Pieh while he was working in the rice fields and sent him to Cuba where he would soon lead the Amistad captives in rebellion. Two years later, he would be freed and returned to Sierra Leone.

Solomon Northup

Northup was a free musician from New York who was captured and illegally sold into slavery on a cotton planation in Louisiana. He wrote an eyewitness account of his experiences in his narrative, Twelve Years a Slave, which was published in the turbulent 1850s, eight years before the Civil War, and sold 30,000 copies. It became an important part of anti-slavery literature at the time.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Born free, Harper was a poet, women's rights advocate, and abolitionist. She was the first African American woman to publish a short story.

Cotton Gin

Invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, this was a machine (short for "cotton engine") for cleaning the seeds out of cotton. In England, the mechanization of spinning threads into fabric had created a greatly expanded market for American cotton, whose production was inhibited by the slowness of manual removal of the seeds. Whitney crafted a device that pulled the cotton through a set of wire teeth mounted on a revolving cylinder. The cotton was pulled through, but the narrow slots were too small for the seeds to pass. This invention could be powered by people, animals, or water - and vastly improved the efficiency of cotton cultivation, virtually to the exclusion of other crops in the U.S. South. As a result, slavery was reinvigorated and cotton plantations spread rapidly. U.S. cotton exports had grown from less than 150,000 pounds before the cotton gin to more than 18 million pounds by the turn of century. The effects of the cotton gin on the American economy, the geographical expansion of the new nation, and the growth of slavery were staggering.

Trail of Tears

Signed into law by Andrew Jackson in 1830, the Indian Removal Act forced almost the entire eastern population of Native Americans in the U.S. (maybe 100,000 people) to leave their ancestral homelands and move west to what is now Oklahoma. Different groups moved at different times and under different circumstances. This forced march - often done by foot over a period of months, and covering a distance of at least 800 miles, is known as the Trail of Tears. Untold thousands would die along the way. This freed up vast areas of land throughout the South for the expansion of cotton cultivation. Included among the Native Americans forced Westward were the "five civilized tribes" (Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw & Seminole), all of whom owned enslaved people - and they brought their enslaved people with them. An estimated 4000 Black people (enslaved and free) walked the long Trail of Tears.

The Upper South

Generally speaking, the Upper South refers to the original areas that slavery took root in the United States. These include states such as Virginia and inland states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri. You can also view these as essentially the border states between the North and the South from the perspective of the Civil War. In these states, slavery was generally smaller and grew less important to the economy as time went on, particularly before the invention of the cotton gin.

The Lower South

The lower South is what we think of as the "Deep South" - the heart of the Confederacy - and is made up of states like South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. These are the states were slavery was not very important in the early years, when it was more confined to the Upper South. However, after several important historical events (the 1793 invention of the cotton gin, the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and the 1830 Indian Removal Act), this area saw dramatic increases in the cultivation of cotton and the population of enslaved people.

Gang System

The idea of a gang system is that enslaved workers would work all day (traditionally, from sunrise to sunset) under the supervision of an overseer. Breaks for lunch and dinner were part of the system. On a cotton plantation, the gangs, usually of 20 or 25, worked their way along the cotton rows and were harshly disciplined for failing to keep up the pace.

Task System

Usually thought of as less harsh than the gang system, the Task System was used in the production of crops like rice and indigo. Instead of being pushed by an abusive overseer, enslaved people were given a particular task to complete, and this was done under relatively little supervision. When the task had been completed to the satisfaction of the slave driver who represented the owner's interests, the person would be freed from labor for the rest of the day. Generally speaking, this was calculated to be ten hours of hard work, and would usually begin at dawn in order to avoid the hottest part of the day.

Overseer

On large plantations, an overseer was the person who directed the daily work of the enslaved people. This was usually a white man but occasionally an enslaved black man (a "driver") would be promoted to the position by the plantation owner. Their job was to ensure productivity, so overseers often used brutal punishment in order to guarantee that the owner of the land made as much money as possible

Gullah

The Gullah are an African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. They worked under a task system on rice plantations in relative isolation from whites. In this way, the enslaved Africans in this region, who came from a variety of Central and West African ethnic groups, developed a language based on English (called Geechee), and a culture that preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage.

Carolina Lowcountry

The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast, including the Sea Islands. During slavery, it was known for its rice and indigo crops that flourished in the hot subtropical climate. Today, the Lowcountry is still heavily dominated by African American communities, such as the Gullah/Geechee people.

13th Amendment

As important of a law as the Emancipation Proclamation was, it was only a wartime measure. Plus, it did not free all enslaved people. Therefore, an actual Constitutional amendment needed to be passed in order to truly end slavery in the U.S. after 246 years. The 13th Amendment is the formal law that finally ended slavery (except as punishment for a crime). Passed by Congress in January of 1865 and ratified by the end of that year, this law freed roughly 4 million enslaved people. The only people it did not free were the 10,000 enslaved people held in bondage by Native American tribes. It took one additional year for these people to be freed via treaties with the U.S. in 1866.

Slave Codes

Sets of rules created by colonial / state governments that defined enslaved people as property and not persons. They established social controls and severely limited what enslaved people were allowed to do (for example: regulations on freedom of movement, the right to read, the right to be off of a plantation without consent, owning weapons, wearing fine fabrics, gathering in groups, owning loud instruments, etc.)

Chattel Slavery

Chattel slavery is a form of slavery in which the enslaved person is seen as a commodity and not a person. In the Americas, chattel slavery can be defined as a race-based, inheritable, lifelong condition.

Code Noir

In French colonies like Louisiana, the Code Noir used violence and intimidation to keep Black residents in slavery. Any enslaved person who struck their enslaver or a member of their family was to be executed. Enslaved people could not leave their enslaver's property or own property of their own without permission. They were also prohibited from owning guns, testifying at trials, signing contracts, drinking alcohol, carrying out commercial transactions, etc. Other punishments allowed under the Code Noir included whippings, branding with a fleur-de-lis, and cutting off ears.

Codigo Negro

This was the Spanish version of the Code Noir, and was in some ways based on it. However, this law also sought to limit some of the abuses of slavery. It specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, protected marriages, and forbid the sale of young children away from their mothers.

15th Amendment

This 1870 Constitutional amendment established that men could not be denied the right to vote based on race or previous enslavement.

Stono Rebellion

Slave rebellion in 1739 near the Stono River in South Carolina. The existence of Fort Mose is believed to have helped inspire the Rebellion. During the revolt, several dozen Africans believed to be from the Kingdom of Kongo tried to reach Spanish Florida. Some were successful, and they rapidly adjusted to life there, as they were already baptized Catholics and spoke Portuguese. The Stono Rebellion killed about 25 Whites and was the largest slave revolt in the history of colonial America.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Often considered the most shameful Supreme Court decision in U.S. history, this case established that the Constitution was never intended to apply to African Americans, that they were not citizens, and that they had no rights, including the right to sue (the plaintiff, an enslaved man named Dred Scott, was attempting to sue for his freedom). According to the language of the ruling, Black people have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." This ruling would not be overturned until African Americans received citizenship via the 14th Amendment in 1868.

Elizabeth Key

In 1656, Elizabeth Key (born of a White father and an enslaved Black mother) became the first Black woman in North America to sue for her freedom and win.​ Soon after, in 1662, Virginia made sure her case wouldn't be repeated by establishing that all children of enslaved women were born enslaved.

Partus Sequitur Ventrem

Literally meaning "offspring follows belly," this is the 1662 law in Virginia that legally established hereditary racial slavery by declaring that any child an enslaved woman had was automatically born enslaved (even if the father was free).

Race

The idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical, cultural, and behavioral differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century have established that race is not biological, and scholars now argue that "races" are cultural inventions that were imposed on different populations in the wake of western European conquests beginning in the 15th century.

Phenotype

Phenotype refers to an individual's physically or scientifically observable traits, such as height, eye color and blood type. A person's phenotype is determined by both their genomic makeup and environmental factors.

Hypodescent

The classifying or identifying of a biracial or multiracial individual as a member of the lower or lowest socially ranking racial group from which that person has ancestry (regardless of the proportion of ancestry the individual has from any given group).

One-Drop Rule

The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification which established that a person with even one Black ancestor ("one drop" of so-called "Black blood") was considered Black.

Nat Turner

The leader of the most famous revolt in U.S. history. Inspired by visions from God, Nat Turner, who was a devout Christian, led a group of enslaved people in a powerful 1831 revolt in Virginia. It killed more Whites than any other U.S. rebellion and terrified the South.

Denmark Vesey

Denmark was an enslaved man who won the lottery and purchased his freedom. He became a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and became fiercely committed to destroying slavery. In 1822, using an Old Testament theology of liberation, the plan was set to kill the governor, set fire to the city, kill every White person they saw, liberate the enslaved, and sail to the free Black republic of Haiti. However, news of the rebellion was leaked by some of Vesey's followers. Vesey was arrested and hanged and his church was burned to the ground.

Maria Stewart

Born free and based in Boston, abolitionist and women's rights advocate Maria W. Stewart was one of the first women of any race to speak in public in the United States. She was also the first Black woman to write and publish a political manifesto. Her calls for Black people to resist slavery, oppression, and exploitation were radical. A deeply religious woman, Stewart used Biblical language and imagery to condemn slavery and White racism. She argued that it was God's will for Black people to struggle against oppression, using force if necessary. Stewart's thinking and speaking style influenced Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

Frederick Douglass

Born enslaved, Frederick Douglas escaped from Maryland and found freedom in the North where he became the most famous abolitionist in American history. He was a writer, speaker, newspaper editor, and women's rights advocate. He also was the most photographed man of the 19th century, using the relatively new art form of photography to offer a dignified portrayal of Black masculinity in a racist society that usually presented images of African Americans as childish, stupid, lazy, or cartoonish. He embraced Christianity and even became a licensed preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Douglass' powerful speeches tapped into his deep sense of religion and talked about how the supposed Christianity of Southern slaveholders was hypocritical, deceitful, and fraudulent.

Henry Highland Garnet

Born enslaved in Maryland, Garnet and his family escaped to New York, where he became an advocate of militant abolitionism. He converted to Christianity as a teenager and became deeply religious, ultimately becoming a minister. He urged the enslaved to rebel against their enslavers in his 1843 "Call to Rebellion" speech - a philosophy that many abolitionists like Frederick Douglass disagreed with and denounced. Garnet also became supporter of African American emigration in the mid-19th century. He helped establish the Cuban Anti-Slavery Society in New York (1872) and was appointed U.S. minister to Liberia after the Civil War.

Spirituals

A genre of Christian music that is associated with African Americans, which merged sub-Saharan African cultural heritage with the experiences of being held in bondage in slavery.

The Underground Railroad

A secret network of escape routes, hiding places, and safe houses that helped to guide enslaved people to freedom in Northern states or Canada (although some went South to Mexico as well). It was led by both White and Black people, enslaved and free, and men and women. It is estimated that at least 30,000 enslaved people reached freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Wallace Willis

Willis was a formerly enslaved Black man in Choctaw territory in Mississippi who was displaced to Oklahoma territory during the Trail of Tears. He documented and composed the spiritual "Steal Away."

David Drake

Despite bans on literacy for African Americans, David Drake, an enslaved potter in South Carolina, exercised creative expression by inscribing short poems on the jars he created on a range of topics including love, family, spirituality, and slavery.

The Blues

Blues is a music genre that originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture, many of which had their roots in West Africa.

Fodet

The repetitive structure of the blues resembles the Senegambian musical structure called the fodet. The fodet is basically a recurring musical structure of a fixed number of beats with specific melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic characteristics. Like the blues, fodets are cyclic and can be repeated as many times as the performer desires. Fodets are also parallel to blues structure in the organization of their tonal character.

The American Colonization Society (ACS)

Founded in 1816, The American Colonization Society's mission was to send free African Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States. In 1822, the society established a colony in West Africa that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. Although fiercely opposed by the Black community and most abolitionists who believed Black people had the right to remain in the U.S., The ACS transported approximately 12,000 African Americans to Liberia over the course of its existence.

Colored Conventions

From 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans gathered across the United States and Canada to participate in political meetings held at the state and national levels. A cornerstone of Black organizing in the nineteenth century, these "Colored Conventions" brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights. These were crucial spaces for Black people to discuss methods to improve their political, economic, and social status - although Black women were often excluded from participation.

St. Augustine, Florida

The oldest continuously occupied city in the U.S., St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565. It became a refuge for enslaved people from the British Colonies who escaped and fled Southward. St. Augustine offered them freedom if they made it to the city.

Francisco Menendez

Captured in Africa and sold into slavery, Menendez survived the Middle Passage and found himself enslaved in South Carolina. He soon escaped and fled to St. Augustine, where he converted to Catholicism and joined the Spanish militia. He became a leader at Fort Mose, which was the settlement created for Black people who had escaped. Menendez would be recognized by the Spanish Crown for his loyalty and courage in many conflicts in which he fought on the side of Spain.

Yamasee War

This was a war fought in colonial South Carolina between English settlers and the Yamasee Native Americans and other Native allies from 1715-1717. After escaping from slavery in South Carolina, Francisco Menendez fought with the Natives against the English during this war. This powerful conflict came close to wiping out the colony of Carolina, but in the end, the Native Americans lost.

Fort Mose

Formally called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, Fort Mose was established in 1738. It was under the command of Francisco Menendez, who had escaped from slavery and fled to St. Augustine. The fort was part of Spanish Florida's northern defenses and provided sanctuary to enslaved people who had escaped the British colonies. It is estimated that 100 African Americans found freedom at Fort Mose.

The Haitian Revolution

A series of conflicts between 1791 and 1804 between enslaved people in Haiti (San Domingue), French colonists, and the armies of the British and French colonizers. Through the struggle, the Haitian people ultimately won independence from France. This was the only successful slave rebellion in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Saint Domingue

This is the French name for what would become the country of Haiti. It is where the Haitian Revolution took place. It was also France's crown jewel in the Caribbean with an extremely profitable slave-based plantation economy producing mostly sugarcane.

Haiti

In 1804, General Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the independent Black republic of Haiti after enslaved rebels defeated French troops sent by Napoleon Bonaparte. Haiti became the first nation ever to successfully gain independence through a slave revolt and the second independent nation in the Americas behind the United States.

The Louisiana Purchase

In 1803, the United States purchased a vast amount of land which was owned by the French. Called the Louisiana Territory, it stretched from New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to the Canadian border. The purchase doubled the size of the U.S. and eventually 15 new states (or at least parts of them) would be created from this deal. Often thought of as a masterpiece of negotiation by Thomas Jefferson, some argue that the real reason France sold the territory to the U.S. was because of the Haitian Revolution. Now that France had lost its most valuable colony in the Americas, Napoleon gave up on his dream of a French empire and let the land go.

Maroons

Maroons were enslaved people who had escaped from slavery and who set up autonomous communities where they lived as free people. Maroon societies were established throughout the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean and Brazil. They developed their own culture, government, trade, and military defense against their European and American oppressors. They attempted to live as free people, beyond the sight and control of the planters or colonial officials.​ In many cases, Maroons defeated efforts by European militaries to track them down and destroy them.

The Louisiana Slave Revolt (1811)

In 1811, over 500 enslaved people started a rebellion in Louisiana. Beginning about 30 miles from New Orleans, the plan was to capture the city and make New Orleans the capital of a new republic. The principal organizer and leader of this revolt was a man named Charles, a laborer on the Deslonde plantation. The Deslonde family had been one of the many San Dominigue slave holding families that fled the Haitian Revolution and settled in Louisiana along with the enslaved people they owned, including Charles. Although the revolt was powerful and well-organized, it was not successful. Many of the leaders and participants were killed. Some were captured and executed. Their heads were cut off and placed on poles along the river in order to frighten and intimidate the enslaved community. This display of heads placed on spikes stretched over 60 miles.

The Male Uprising (1835)

The Malê revolt was a Muslim slave rebellion that broke out during Ramadan in 1835, in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Inspired by Muslim teachers, a group of enslaved people and freedmen rose up against the government. The rebels knew about the Haitian Revolution and wore necklaces bearing the image of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who had declared Haitian independence. Although unsuccessful, the day-long rebellion ended in the deaths of 80 enslaved people and seven National Guards troops. Approximately 300 rebels were captured, several were executed, and hundreds were expelled and sent back to Africa.

Jacob Lawrence

An American painter known for his portrayal of African American historical subjects. In 1942, with segregation in full force, he broke a racial barrier by becoming the first African American artist whose work was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art. Through his vivid, accessible visual storytelling, Lawrence presented the richness and complexities of African American history and culture both to his own community and to the larger world. One of his famous works of art was The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, a series of 15 prints depicting the life of the leader of the Haitian Revolution.​ He would later complete a series on the Great Migration as well.

1526 Slave Revolt

The first slave rebellion in what's now the United States happened in San Miguel de Gualdape, a Spanish colony on the coast of present-day Georgia in 1526.​ Enslaved people had been brought to the area five years earlier, by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, a wealthy sugar planter from Santo Domingo (The Dominican Republic). The settlement was plagued by disease, starvation, and violence. In 1526, the enslaved population rebelled and set fire to several buildings and escaped into the North American countryside.

Charles Deslondes

Deslondes was the leader of the German Coast Uprising (also known as the Louisiana Revolt of 1811). This powerful revolt was the largest slave revolt in U.S. history, with 400 to 500 enslaved people participating. Deslondes was from Haiti, which had recently experienced a massive and successful enslaved revolution, and he was inspired to do the same in Louisiana. The revolt was unsuccessful and Deslondes was brutally executed.

Madison Washington

Washington was an enslaved man who escaped to Canada in 1840 but was captured and sold when he returned to Virginia in search of his wife Susan. He found himself onboard a ship named the Creole which was on its way to New Orleans as part of the domestic U.S. slave trade. Along with 18 others, Washington led a slave revolt onboard.

The "Creole" Revolt

In 1841, the ship Creole, was transporting 135 enslaved people from Richmond, Virginia to New Orleans, Louisiana to be sold. Led by Madison Washington, 19 men overwhelmed the crew, killing one and wounding several others. The captured ship sailed to the British island of the Bahamas where slavery had been outlawed in 1833, and after some legal squabbles, the rebels were declared free. Because of the number of people eventually freed (128), the Creole revolt was the most successful slave rebellion in US history.​

The Great Dismal Swamp

This seemingly uninhabitable swamp stretches for more than 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, it became an essential sanctuary for enslaved people who had run away. Although conditions were harsh, research suggests that thousands lived there between about 1700 and the 1860s.

Palenque

In the early 1600s, a group of enslaved Africans led by Benkos Bioho escaped from their Spanish captors in Cartagena, Colombia and fled into the hills. After resisting many attempts to be recaptured, they were finally granted independence in 1713, making Palenque the first free African town in the Americas. The term "Palenque" was later used to refer to any maroon community in Spanish America.

Quilombos

This is the term for maroon communities in Brazil. Quilombo comes from the word kilombo (war camp) in Kimbundu, a Bantu language in West Central Africa. In 17th century Angola, Queen Njinga created a kilombo, which was a sanctuary community for enslaved runaways where she offered military training for defense against the Portuguese.

Quilombo dos Palmares

The largest Brazilian quilombo was Palmares​. Hidden in the rugged backcountry of the Brazilian Northeast, it was home to 20,000 enslaved runaways, free Black men and women, indigenous Brazilians, and settlers of mixed ancestry. It was even home to some poor whites, especially Portuguese soldiers trying to escape forced military service. They raided plantations and sugar mills in search of new supplies and recruits. Palmares repelled the repeated assaults of European authorities for almost a century until finally in 1694 an army of more than 6000 destroyed it​.

Bayano

In Panama, Bayano and a force of up to 1,200 maroons set up a Palenque and led a war against the Spaniards for five years. The palenque was democratic in nature and even was home to a mosque for Muslim slaves in the community. Others in the group were believed to be Christians, converted by their enslavers. Eventually, the Spanish overran the maroons and recaptured many enslaved people, including Bayano himself, who was sent to work in South America where he died in captivity.

Queen Nanny

Nanny and her four brothers (all of whom became Maroon leaders) were sold into slavery and later escaped from their plantations into the mountains and jungles of Jamaica. She founded the maroon community of Nanny Town. Nanny limited her attacks on plantations and European settlements and preferred instead to farm and trade peacefully with her neighbors. She did however make numerous successful raids to free enslaved people held on plantations and her efforts are believed to have contributed to the escape of almost 1,000 enslaved people over her lifetime.​ The British became embarrassed and sent expeditions to wipe out the maroons.

Capoeira

An Afro-Brazilian martial art and game that includes elements of dance, acrobatics, music and spirituality. It is known for its acrobatic and complex maneuvers, often involving hands on the ground and inverted kicks.

Congada

An annual tradition that takes place on the second Sunday of October and combines elements of Roman Catholic and African traditions, a testament to the mixing of cultures, religions and races in Latin America's largest nation. It was initially performed by groups of enslaved Africans brought to Brazil. Dressed as members of the royal court, the participants of the congada enact such themes as military victory and the crowning of Queen Njinga of Angola.

Manumission

Another word for freeing enslaved people.

Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime strategy designed to end the Civil War. First issued in September of 1862, President Lincoln offered the South three months to surrender or else he would free their enslaved people. They refused to surrender and the Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863. All enslaved people held in states currently in rebellion against the U.S. were now free. As Union troops marched through the South, formerly enslaved people fled their plantations to join them, many of whom would then sign up to fight as soldiers in the war. Note that the slaveholding border states were left out and those people were not declared free. Other than those freed by advancing Union troops, the Proclamation actually had little tangible effect on the lives of enslaved people, and true freedom for most only came later with the passage of the 13th Amendment.

The Second Seminole War

In the Second Seminole War (1835-42), Black Seminoles took the lead in resisting Indian Removal (the effort by the government to force them off of their land). They led an impassioned guerrilla war against the U.S. Army. The war dragged on for seven years and cost the U.S. government more than $20 million. By 1845, however, most Seminoles and Black Seminoles had been resettled in Oklahoma.

The Creeks

Originally living in a large area of what is now Georgia, Alabama, and Southern Tennessee, the Creeks were one of the "five civilized tribes." By 1860, the Creek held 1,600 enslaved people in bondage. Although slavery ended for most people in 1865, the Creek did not abolish slavery until 1866.

The Cherokee

The Cherokee originally lived in parts of 8 different Southeastern states. They were one of the "five civilized tribes." By 1860, the Cherokee had about 4,600 enslaved people. In 1866, the Cherokee Nation signed a treaty with the US government abolishing slavery and granting full citizenship rights to the Freedmen. But in practice, Freedmen were often excluded from the tribe.

The Choctaw

Originally living across most of central and southern Mississippi into parts of eastern Louisiana and western Alabama, the Choctaw were one of the "five civilized tribes." African slavery among the Choctaws was a growing and widely accepted institution but it differed from Southern slavery in that it was normally not practiced for profit. Rather, the Choctaw held slaves in order to avoid doing agricultural work themselves. The 1860 federal census showed about 2,300 enslaved people among the Choctaw nation.

The Chickasaw

The Chickasaw people settled in the thick forests of northern Mississippi, western Tennessee, northwestern Alabama, and southwestern Kentucky. They are considered one of the "five civilized tribes." The Chickasaw are known for harsh slave ownership, in some cases even practicing the separation of families, which was not practiced among the other tribes. Chickasaw citizens owned 975 slaves, which amounted to 18 percent of their total population.

The Seminoles

The Seminoles are an offshoot of the Creek tribe, who migrated to northern and central Florida. They are considered one of the "five civilized tribes." The Seminole enslaved Black people, but it was not as harsh as the American system of slavery. Under the Seminoles, the enslaved served in varying capacities - as advisors, interpreters, warriors, hunters, and field hands. Many intermarried with the Indians. And while they had to surrender a portion of their harvests, most lived in their own communities without supervision or control.

Emigration

The act of leaving your home country to settle in a different country.

Black Nationalism

Black nationalism is a nationalist movement which seeks liberation, equality, representation and/or self-determination for black people as a distinct national identity. It promoted Black unity and pride, and during slavery, some Black Nationalists believed there was no way for Black people to live peacefully in the United States, and should look for alternate places to go.

Paul Cuffee

Cuffee was the first person to take African Americans from the U.S. to Africa. In 1815, he took 39 African Americans to the British Black settlement of Freetown in Sierra Leone, where some of the Black Loyalists during the Revolutionary War were taken by the British after their defeat