Milton Midterm - African American History Honors

I hate the kuoch kids.

Sometimes referred to as the triangular trade. Unlike immigrants from Europe who whatever their reasons, voluntarily crossed the Atlantic during the 15th-20th centuries, Africans up until the 20th century arrived in "The West" in chains, exiled from their home continent

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

The spread of people around the world ( people of African ancestry, around the world)

Diaspora/African diaspora

To turn a human into an object

Thingification

Turning people into property that can be brought and sold (ongoing)

Chattle enslavement

The souls of Africans that assisted the Europeans would be condemned to eternal wondering like a buzzard

King buzzards

Huge complexes for holdig captured Africans

Forts

Boats transporting Africans

Slavers

Family members of Africans that were used as collateral for the delivery of war captives

Pawns

War captives, holding pen, chained in ships

Common elements of the ordeal

Forcing enslaved people to "marry" and mate ( slave marriages were not recognized by law )

Breeding

The process of breaking a slave mentally and physically

Seasoning

Slaves born in the Americas

Creoles

Slaves who had been in the Americas for a while

Old Africans

The newly arrived Africans "fresh"

New Africans

A slave who was not seasoned

Unbroken

Renaming an African to have a christian or Roman names

A part of the seasoning process

Those who trained or seasoned new Africans

Creoles and old Africans

Could be black and in charge of the enslaved work gangs (they carried whips)

Drivers

Filling a slave ship over capacity (large numbers of Africans would die but a profit could still be made

Tight packing

Fill a ship below capacity to save lives ( not effective )

Loose packing

Between 25% and 33% of the newly arrived did not survive seasoning

Seasoning survival rate

Generally an unhealthy place with high mortality rates that required greater female participation than coffee plantations due to overuse of males in processing the cane

Sugarcane plantation

Relied on manager (both white and black) who viewed sexual access as their right

Absentee owners

The notion that humans can be separated into basic, hierarchically arranged categories based upon certain combination of shared physical traits (developed in tandem in slavery)

The concept of race

Native, Asians. and people of "mixed hertage

located along the continuum between black-white polarities

whites used to their personal advantage, poor whites accepted race because it ennobled them, granting them a status that could never be challenged by darker people

How whites viewed and used slavery

Did not always accept associations based upon skin color, preferring a cultural and linguistic-based identity instead

African born slaves

Complex societies

Civilizations

Approximately 50 million people in Africa in 1700, half of who were exposed to the trade in enslaved Africans.

Many scholars estimate

12 to 20 million African from thousands of language and cultural groups were forcibly detained for deportation between the 1440s and the 1870s

Scholars agree

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, three out of every four humans that arrived in the Americas was an African

Slaves statistics

Much of what is called "jamaican," "puerto Rican," "U.S.," and "Brazilian" national culture is, for example, directly shaped by the diverse and at once similar improvised culture African resistance, preservation and extension

African influence on countries the eventually took independence from European sponsors

Derived from the tenth century Latin word "scalvus," used to refer to the central and eastern Europeans reduced to servitude by the later Roman Empire

Slave

Ruined by the depopulation that came from the introduction of new disease

The first Europeans enslavement for commercial interests.

The proper adjective form of the Latin word "After," which was used during antiquity by the Romans to refer to the warm wind coming from the direction of the continent that would eventually carry the name

African

Indian, Negro, and Black

Sub or non human categories

There is on common set of measures for determining what is a "developed" form of society

Society development

Seizure of war captives, criminals, debtors, defenseless members of smaller societies and groups dependent on larger states for protection and or survival

Methods for acquiring humans for trade

Depending on time or place, Africans could be forced to walk from 60 to 400 miles to the coast, at a loss of life from 10 to up to 40%

Capturing slaves

Depicted as soulless beings who did not have consciences or shared humantity

European depiction in stories

African societies did not have what we would consider prisons. In fact, there was no word that translates into "prison" in most African languages

Holding prisons

Slaves were baptized and frequently branded by a hot iron in the shape of a cross. This marked their "conversion" to Christianity, which became a rationale as well for their enslavement

Converting slaves to Christianity

Between 5 and 20% of Africans and 15 to 20% of the ship's crew died during the Atlantic Crossing

Mortality rates

Feared the whites were cannibals

One of the Africans greatest fears

Whiteness was the color of death, and Europeans, therefore, represented this spirit

West-Central African belief

All who were in chains were similarly dark skinned, and all who were not were "white." All who had undergone the ordeal, from he capture to arrival in a foreign land across an ocean, had some common elements

kinship

The sexual exploitation of African women may have been the most significant element which sealed the identity of Africans together as people who had to make common cultural and ideological causes against their oppression. The process bonded communities around the physical violation of women. Community includes those beyond blood kin

community

Less than 6% of all Africans brought from Africa came directly to North America

Distribution

Whips, chains, chopping off limbs, burning, and rape

Coercive and punitive force

The historian John Henrik Clarke was fond of remarking, "the difference between a black American and a Black Puerto Rican or Jamaican or Haitian is the point of a finger. With that motion from a slavemaster, any one of us could be from the Caribbean or from the U.S."

Catagorize

Brazil is still, in fact, the country with the largest population of Africans outside of the African continent

African population in Brazil

Jamestown

First English settlement in North America, 1607.

Indentured Servants

Africans worked under contract for land after service.

William Tucker

First Black child born in American colonies, 1623.

Negroes

Term for Africans, meaning 'Black' in Spanish.

John Punch

First lifetime servitude case, 1640.

Slavery Legislation

Massachusetts legalized slavery in 1660.

Virginia Law 1662

Child's status follows the mother's enslaved status.

Bacon's Rebellion

1676 revolt uniting Black and White servants.

Slaves as Property

Formal designation of slaves as property, 1705.

Tobacco Colonies

Regions where tobacco was the main cash crop.

Low Country Colonies

Regions where rice was the primary cash crop.

Creolization

Blending of African and European cultures.

Great Awakening

Religious revival promoting spiritual equality.

Gullah and Geechee

Languages mixing English with African elements.

Miscegenation

Interracial relationships, primarily between Black and White.

Mulattoes

Children of interracial unions, legally classified as Black.

Societal Concerns

Fear of mixed-race class disrupting social order.

Black Women's Roles

Varied from freedom in New England to fieldwork in South.

Domestic Work

House slaves performing tasks and serving families.

Forms of Resistance

Passive actions like goldbricking and tool breaking.

Maroons

Escaped slaves forming self-sustaining communities.

Stono Rebellion

Slave revolt in South Carolina, aimed for freedom.

Siege Mentality

Increased fears of slave revolts among whites.

rice is the cash crop of what region?

Low Country

name the Jamestown uprising that involved freemen, slaves, and indentured servants

Bacon's Rebellion

In early America, Africans were not slaves but rather?

Indentured servants

Examples of an African word used in the English Language would be?

yam, tote, nanse, goober

The children of miscegenous relationships were once called?

Mulattoes

Process of creating culturally American children?

Creolization

This word means: interracial sexual contacts

Miscegenation

What was the cash crop of North Carolina?

Tobacco

The religious revival in early America was called?

the Great Awakening

Escaped Slaves who did not venture far from the plantation?

Outliers

Escaped slaves who went into the wilderness and formed communities there were called?

Maroons

The first black person born in the Americas was named and arrived?

William Tucker - 1623

who is john punch?

he was the first slave

the Stono Rebellion took place near?

Charleston, SC

What happened in Jamestown in 1619?

The first African people arrived in America

Who led the Stono Rebellion?

A slave named Jemmy

What were some forms of slave resistance?

goldbricking, breaking tools, harming animals, and poisoning masters

What was the goal of the Stono Rebellion?

to reach Florida for freedom, although they were halted by militias and local Indigenous groups

What did the Stono Rebellion result in?

it resulted in heightened fears of slave revolts and stricter security, creating a "siege mentality" among whites.

When did the Stono Rebellion take place?

September 9, 1739

Who banned miscegenation?

Colonial assemblies

Why was miscegenation banned?

to prevent the formation of a mixed-race class that could challenge the rigid social order.

what were the concerns of miscegenation?

Concerns included fears that mixed-race children, who would be classified as Black, might sue for freedom or otherwise disrupt the racial hierarchy.

What kind of work and freedom was available to Black women in New England?

some freedom and flexible work roles were available

What kind of work and freedom was available to Black women in the South?

work options were limited; most Black women did grueling fieldwork, even while pregnant, leading to low-birth-weight babies

What were some of the tasks of Black women working as domestic slaves?

house slaves, performing domestic tasks and serving as body servants and wet nurses