ap-african-american-studies-course-and-exam-description

Slave Ship Diagrams and Commodification

• In the 18th and 19th centuries, slave ship diagrams served as a visual record of commodification. This was achieved by depicting individual Africans as an anonymous, homogenous group, effectively turning them into fungible goods for sale.
• Today, the slave ship icon represents a crucial development in the shared history of African descendant communities: the birth of a global African diaspora.
• Willie Cole's "Stowage" uses an iron to symbolize the history of Africans brought to America through the Middle Passage, forced to labor for their enslavers.
  • The iron's vertical faces represent various African communities transported on slave ships.
  • The horizontal image symbolizes the ship itself.
• Africans on slave ships faced immense obstacles and near-certain death if they resisted enslavement, even though they outnumbered their enslavers.
• Slave ships exemplify the convergence of economic opportunity with the mass incarceration and surveillance of African descendants, as shown in slave ship diagrams and the Amistad plea.
• Sengbe Pieh was also known as Joseph Cinque.

Slave Auctions and the Domestic Slave Trade

• Sources:
  • Excerpt from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (1853).
  • Broadside for an auction of enslaved persons at the Charleston Courthouse (1859).
• LO 2.5.A: Describe the nature of slave auctions in the 19th-century United States South.
  • EK 2.5.A.1: Enslavers used the law and white supremacist ideology to abuse enslaved Africans and their descendants.
    • Those who resisted sale were severely punished, often whipped in front of family and friends.
• LO 2.5.B: Explain how African American authors used their writings about slave auctions to advance abolition and equality.
  • EK 2.5.B.1: African American writers used narratives and poetry to describe the physical and emotional trauma of being sold at auction into unknown territories.
  • EK 2.5.B.2: These writers aimed to counter enslavers' claims that slavery was benign, thus promoting abolition.
• LO 2.5.C: Explain how the growth of the cotton industry displaced enslaved African American families.
  • EK 2.5.C.1: After the transatlantic slave trade was banned in 1808, the enslaved population grew mainly through childbirth to meet the rising demand for agricultural laborers.
  • EK 2.5.C.2: The lower South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas) was defined by the slave-cotton system, making enslaved African Americans valuable commodities.
  • EK 2.5.C.3: During the cotton boom of the 19th century, many African Americans were forcibly relocated from the upper South (Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri) to the lower South via the domestic slave trade.
  • EK 2.5.C.4: Over one million African Americans were displaced in this "Second Middle Passage," more than two-and-a-half times the number brought from Africa during the original Middle Passage. This was the largest forced migration in American history.
• Solomon Northup, a free African American musician, was captured and illegally sold into slavery on a Louisiana cotton plantation. He wrote Twelve Years a Slave as an eyewitness account.
• The cotton gin's invention increased cotton production, profits, and dependency on cotton as a cash crop in the United States.
• The forced removal of Indigenous communities via the Trail of Tears made land available for large-scale cotton production.

Labor, Culture, and Economy

• Sources:
  • Sugar Cane Harvest, Antigua, West Indies 1823, 1826
  • Broadside Advertising “Valuable Slaves at Auction” in New Orleans, 1859
  • Rice Fanner Basket, Circa 1863
• LO 2.6.A: Describe the range and variety of specialized roles performed by enslaved people.
  • EK 2.6.A.1: Enslaved people of all ages and genders performed various domestic, agricultural, and skilled labor in urban and rural areas.
  • EK 2.6.A.2: In some areas, domestic and agricultural laborers had distinct roles, but enslaved people could be reassigned based on the enslaver's preferences.
  • EK 2.6.A.3: Some enslaved people were bound to institutions like churches, factories, and colleges instead of individual persons.
  • EK 2.6.A.4: Many enslaved Africans brought skills such as blacksmithing, basket-weaving, and rice and indigo cultivation. Enslavers exploited these skills, along with specializations in painting, carpentry, tailoring, music, and healing. African Americans used these skills to survive, create culture, and build community despite commodification.
• LO 2.6.B: Explain how slave labor systems affected the formation of African American musical and linguistic practices.
  • EK 2.6.B.1: Enslaved agricultural laborers often worked in gang or task systems.
  • EK 2.6.B.2: In the gang system, laborers worked in groups from sunup to sundown under an overseer, cultivating crops like cotton, sugar, and tobacco. They created work songs with syncopated rhythms to maintain pace.
  • EK 2.6.B.3: In the task system, individuals worked until meeting a daily quota, with less supervision. This system was used for crops like rice and indigo, allowing for the maintenance of linguistic practices like the Gullah creole language in the Carolina lowcountry.
• LO 2.6.C: Evaluate the economic effects of enslaved people’s commodification and labor within and outside of African American communities.
  • EK 2.6.C.1: Slavery fostered economic interdependence between the North and South. Cities indirectly involved in the slave trade still benefited economically.
  • EK 2.6.C.2: Enslaved people’s labor was foundational to the American economy, yet they and their descendants were alienated from the wealth they produced.
  • EK 2.6.C.3: Slavery deeply entrenched wealth disparities along racial lines, as enslaved African Americans had no wages to pass down, no right to accumulate property, and faced decisions dependent on their enslavers.

Slavery and American Law: Slave Codes and Landmark Cases

• Sources:
  • Articles 1–10 from the Louisiana Slave Code (Code Noir, or Black Code), 1724
  • Excerpts from The South Carolina Slave Code, 1740
  • Article I, Section 2 and Article IV, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, 1787
  • Excerpts from Dred Scott’s Plea and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s Opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857
• LO 2.7.A: Explain how American law affected the lives and citizenship rights of enslaved and free African Americans between the 17th and 19th centuries.
  • EK 2.7.A.1: The U.S. Constitution refers to slavery without using "slave" or "slavery," terms that first appear in the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.
  • EK 2.7.A.2: Slave codes defined chattel slavery as a race-based, inheritable, lifelong condition, restricting movement, congregation, weapon possession, and clothing, as manifested in codes like Code Noir and Código Negro in French and Spanish colonies.
  • EK 2.7.A.3: Slave codes hardened the color line, reserving opportunities for upward mobility and protection from enslavement for white people while denying them to Black people.
  • EK 2.7.A.4: Free states enacted laws that denied free African Americans opportunities for advancement.
    • Some barred free Black people from entering the state.
    • Some restricted Black men from voting (e.g., New York) and testifying against white people in court (e.g., Ohio).
    • Before the Fifteenth Amendment, only Wisconsin and Iowa allowed Black men to vote.
• LO 2.7.B: Explain how slave codes developed in response to African Americans’ resistance to slavery.
  • EK 2.7.B.1: South Carolina’s 1740 slave code was updated after the Stono Rebellion in 1739, classifying all Black people and Indigenous communities not submitting to the colonial government as nonsubjects and presumed enslaved.
  • EK 2.7.B.2: South Carolina's 1740 slave code prohibited enslaved people from gathering, drumming, learning to read, rebelling, running away, or moving abroad, and condemned to death any enslaved persons who tried to defend themselves from attack by a white person.
  • EK 2.7.B.3: Legal codes and landmark cases denied African Americans citizenship rights and protections. The Dred Scott decision (1857) ruled that African Americans, enslaved and free, were not and could never become citizens of the United States.
• Louisiana’s Code Noir was similar to South Carolina’s but included greater emphasis on Catholic instruction and acknowledged marriage between enslaved people while forbidding interracial relationships.
• The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the Reconstruction Amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth).
• By 1860, Black men could vote in only five of the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire).

Social Construction of Race and the Reproduction of Status

• Sources:
  • Laws of Virginia, Act XII, General Assembly, 1662
  • “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” from The Liberator, 1849
• LO 2.8.A: Explain how partus sequitur ventrem affected African American families and informed the emergence of racial taxonomies in the United States.
  • EK 2.8.A.1: Partus sequitur ventrem, a 17th-century law, defined a child’s legal status based on their mother's status, impacting enslaved African Americans.
  • EK 2.8.A.2: It codified hereditary racial slavery, ensuring enslaved African American women's children inherited their status as property, invalidating claims to their children.
  • EK 2.8.A.3: Partus prevented mixed-race children of Black women from inheriting the free status of their white fathers.
  • EK 2.8.A.4: It gave male enslavers the right to deny responsibility for children they fathered with enslaved women and commodify enslaved women’s reproductive lives.
• LO 2.8.B: Explain how racial concepts and classifications emerged alongside definitions of status.
  • EK 2.8.B.1: Race is considered socially constructed, not biologically based, with more genetic variation within than between racial groups. Racial classifications emerged with systems of enslavement.
  • EK 2.8.B.2: Phenotype (e.g., skin color, hair texture) largely contributes to racial identity. During slavery, racial categories were legally defined, regardless of phenotype. Laws like partus sequitur ventrem linked racial categories to rights and status to perpetuate slavery.
  • EK 2.8.B.3: In the United States, race classification was based on hypodescent. Before the Civil War, states varied on the percentage of ancestry defining a person as white or Black. The “one-drop rule” in the late 19th and 20th centuries classified anyone with any African descent as Black.
  • EK 2.8.B.4: Despite having European or Indigenous ancestry, race classification prohibited African Americans from fully embracing multiracial or multiethnic heritage.
• In 1656, Elizabeth Key, born to a white father and enslaved Black mother, sued for and won her freedom. In 1662, the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, defining slavery in North America as an inherited status linked to racial identity.

Creating African American Culture

• Sources :
  • Cream and Red Appliqued Quilted Bedcover, Circa 1850
  • Excerpt from Chapter 6 of My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, 1855
  • Storage Jar by David Drake, 1858
  • Gospel Performance of “Steal Away to Jesus” by Shirley Caesar and Michelle Williams (video, 0:00–2:00), 2001
  • Lyrics to “Steal Away to Jesus,” Mid-Nineteenth Century
• LO 2.9.A: Describe African American forms of self-expression in art, music, and language that combine influences from diverse African cultures with local sources.
  • EK 2.9.A.1: African American creative expression drew from African ancestors, community members, and local European and Indigenous cultures.
  • EK 2.9.A.2: African Americans incorporated African aesthetic influences into pottery and quilt-making for storytelling and memory keeping.
  • EK 2.9.A.3: They drew from African and local influences to construct instruments like gourd rattles, banjos, and drums.
  • EK 2.9.A.4: Enslaved Africans arrived with knowledge of African and European languages. They developed creole languages, such as Gullah, combining West African and European elements.
• LO 2.9.B: Describe ways enslaved African Americans adapted African musical elements from their ancestors and influenced the development of American musical genres.
  • EK 2.9.B.1: Enslaved people adapted Christian hymns, combined rhythmic and performative elements from Africa (e.g., call and response, clapping, improvisation, and syncopation) with biblical themes, creating gospel and blues.
  • EK 2.9.B.2: Senegambians and West Central Africans influenced the development of American blues in Louisiana, retaining the same musical system as the fodet from Senegambia.
• LO 2.9.C: Explain the multiple functions and significance of spirituals.
  • EK 2.9.C.1: Musical and faith traditions combined to form spirituals (sorrow songs and jubilee songs) expressing hardships and hopes.
  • EK 2.9.C.2: Religious practices served social, spiritual, and political purposes, resisting dehumanization, expressing creativity, and communicating strategic information.
  • EK 2.9.C.3: Spiritual lyrics had double meanings, using biblical themes of redemption to alert enslaved people to opportunities to run away via the Underground Railroad.
  • EK 2.9.C.4: Spirituals reflect African heritage and American identity, preserving West African rhythms and performance styles while expressing contemporary experiences in America.
• Despite bans on literacy, David Drake, an enslaved potter in South Carolina, inscribed poems on his jars about love, family, spirituality, and slavery.
• Enslaved people maintained African-derived beliefs, syncretic forms of Christianity, and Islam. Christian beliefs animated political action and justified the pursuit of liberation.
• African performative elements are present in the ring shout found among the Gullah Geechee community.
• “Steal Away” was documented by Wallace Willis, a formerly enslaved Black person in Choctaw territory displaced to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears.

Black Pride, Identity, and the Question of Naming

• Sources:
  • Selections of letters written to newspapers from Call and Response, 1831–1841
• LO 2.10.A: Explain how changing demographics and popular debates about African Americans’ identity influenced the terms they used to identify themselves in the 19th century and beyond.
  • EK 2.10.A.1: After the United States banned international slave trading in 1808, the percentage of African-born people in the African American population declined.
  • EK 2.10.A.2: The American Colonization Society sought to exile the free Black population to Africa, leading many Black people to emphasize their American identity by rejecting the term “African.”
  • EK 2.10.A.3: From the 19th century onward, African Americans used a range of ethnonyms, such as Afro-American, African American, and Black.
• Beginning in the 1830s, African Americans held political meetings known as Colored Conventions across the United States and Canada to debate identity and self-identification.
• In 1988, civil rights activist Rev. Jesse L. Jackson promoted the term “African American” to identify the shared cultural heritage of the descendants of enslaved Africans born in the United States.

Stono Rebellion and Fort Mose

• Source: Letter from Governor of Florida to His Majesty, 1739 & Excerpt from An Account of the Stono Rebellion, 1739
• LO 2.11.A: Explain key effects of the asylum offered by Spanish Florida in the 17th and 18th centuries.
  • EK 2.11.A.1: St. Augustine, founded in Florida in 1565, is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of African American and European origin in the United States. Enslaved refugees from Georgia and the Carolinas sought asylum in Spanish Florida, which offered freedom to those who converted to Catholicism.
  • EK 2.11.A.2: In 1738, the governor of Spanish Florida established Fort Mose, a fortified settlement under Francisco Menéndez, an enslaved Senegambian who fought against the English. Fort Mose was the first sanctioned free Black town in what is now the United States.
  • EK 2.11.A.3: Spanish Florida’s offer of emancipation inspired the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739. Jemmy, an enslaved man from Angola, led nearly 100 enslaved African Americans toward sanctuary in Spanish Florida. Many were from the Kingdom of Kongo and were Portuguese speakers familiar with Catholicism.
  • EK 2.11.A.4: South Carolina passed a restrictive slave code in 1740 in response to the Stono Rebellion. British forces later invaded Florida, seizing and destroying Fort Mose.
• The full name of Fort Mose was Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.
• African-born leaders like Francisco Menéndez and Jemmy acquired names as enslaved people in Spanish and British colonies.

Legacies of the Haitian Revolution

• Sources:
  • The Preliminary Declaration from the Constitution of Haiti, 1805
  • Frederick Douglass’s Lecture on Haiti at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1893
  • “L’Ouverture,” 1986, “To Preserve Their Freedom,” 1988, and “Strategy,” 1994, from The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, a series by Jacob Lawrence
• LO 2.12.A: Explain the global impacts of the Haitian Revolution.
  • EK 2.12.A.1: The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the only successful uprising of enslaved people that overturned a colonial government, transforming Saint-Domingue into a Black republic free of slavery (Haiti).
  • EK 2.12.A.2: France's costs fighting Haitians led Napoleon to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States, expanding slavery.
  • EK 2.12.A.3: France lost its most lucrative colony and temporarily abolished slavery (1794 to 1802) throughout the empire.
  • EK 2.12.A.4: The destruction of Haiti’s plantation system shifted sugar production to the United States, Cuba, and Brazil.
  • EK 2.12.A.5: The revolution brought white planters and enslaved Black refugees to United States cities, increasing anxieties about slave revolts and contributing to the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798).
  • EK 2.12.A.6: Haiti’s development was hindered by the requirement to pay reparations to France for 122 years.
• LO 2.12.B: Describe the role of maroons in the Haitian Revolution.
  • EK 2.12.B.1: Maroons were Afro-descendants who escaped slavery and established free communities.
  • EK 2.12.B.2: During the revolution, maroons disseminated information and organized attacks. Many freedom fighters were former soldiers enslaved during civil wars in the Kingdom of Kongo.
• LO 2.12.C: Explain the impacts of the Haitian Revolution on African diasporic communities and Black political thought.
  • EK 2.12.C.1: For some African Americans, Haiti’s independence highlighted the unfulfilled promises of the American Revolution.
  • EK 2.12.C.2: The Haitian Revolution inspired uprisings such as the Louisiana Slave Revolt (1811) and the Malê Uprising of Muslim slaves (1835) in Brazil.
  • EK 2.12.C.3: The revolution served as a symbol of Black freedom and sovereignty, impacting Black political thinking.
• Article 14 of the 1805 Haitian Constitution reversed racial categories by declaring all citizens of Haiti to be Black, reframing Black as an identity signifying citizenship.
• Frederick Douglass was appointed General Consul and United States Minister to Haiti (1889–1891).

Resistance and Revolts in the United States

• Source: Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Rufus King, 1802
• LO 2.13.A: Describe the daily forms of resistance demonstrated by enslaved and free African Americans.
  • EK 2.13.A.1: Enslaved people resisted through slowing work, breaking tools, stealing food, or running away.
  • EK 2.13.A.2: Daily resistance sustained the larger abolition movement.
  • EK 2.13.A.3: Religious services and churches galvanized resistance, serving as sites for community gathering and political organizing.
• LO 2.13.B: Describe the inspirations, goals, and struggles of different revolts and abolitionist organizing led by enslaved and free Afro-descendants throughout the Americas.
  • EK 2.13.B.1: The transatlantic slave trade led to a concentration of former African soldiers in some areas, aiding enslaved communities’ ability to revolt.
  • EK 2.13.B.2: In 1526, Africans enslaved in Santo Domingo led the earliest known slave revolt in what is now United States territory, escaping into nearby Indigenous communities.
  • EK 2.13.B.3: Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, Charles Deslondes led up to 500 enslaved people in the German Coast Uprising (Louisiana Revolt of 1811), which was violently suppressed.
  • EK 2.13.B.4: In 1841, Madison Washington led a mutiny aboard the slave brig Creole, sailing it to the Bahamas, where nearly 130 African Americans gained their freedom.
  • EK 2.13.B.5: Religion inspired rebellions, such as those led by Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, and the activism of abolitionists like Maria W. Stewart and Henry Highland Garnet.

Black Organizing in the North: Freedom, Women’s Rights, and Education

• Source: “Why Sit Here and Die” by Maria W. Stewart, 1832
• LO 2.14.A: Explain how free Black people in the North and South organized to support their communities.
  • EK 2.14.A.1: The free Black population grew in the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By 1860, 12 percent of the Black population was free, with more in the South than the North.
  • EK 2.14.A.2: Free Black people built communities through mutual-aid societies, Black schools, businesses, independent churches, and support for Black writers and speakers.
• LO 2.14.B: Describe the techniques used by Black women activists to advocate for social justice and reform.
  • EK 2.14.B.1: In the 19th century, Black women activists used speeches and publications to address gender and Black women’s experiences in antislavery discussions.
  • EK 2.14.B.2: Maria W. Stewart was the first Black woman to publish a political manifesto and one of the first American women to give a public address, contributing to the first wave of feminism.
• LO 2.14.C: Explain why Black women’s activism is historically and culturally significant.
  • EK 2.14.C.1: Black women activists addressed the intersections of race and gender discrimination.
  • EK 2.14.C.2: They fought for abolitionism and women’s rights, paving the path for the women’s suffrage movement.
  • EK 2.14.C.3: By highlighting the connections between race, gender, and class, their activism anticipated political debates central to African American politics.

Maroon Societies and Autonomous Black Communities

• Sources:
  • Leonard Parkinson, a Captain of the Maroons by Abraham Raimbach, 1796
  • The Maroons in Ambush on the Dromilly Estate in the Parish of Trelawney, Jamaica by J. Bourgoin and J. Merigot, 1801
  • The Hunted Slaves by Richard Ansdell, 1862
• LO 2.15.A: Describe the characteristics of maroon communities and the areas where they emerged across the African diaspora.
  • EK 2.15.A.1: Maroon communities emerged throughout the African diaspora in remote and hidden environments, some lasting for years, others for a century.
  • EK 2.15.A.2: They consisted of self-emancipated people and those born free, creating autonomous spaces where African-based languages and cultural practices flourished, despite facing illness, starvation, and the threat of capture.
  • EK 2.15.A.3: African Americans formed maroon communities in areas such as the Great Dismal Swamp and within Indigenous communities.
  • EK 2.15.A.4: Maroon communities included palenques in Spanish America and quilombos in Brazil. The Quilombo dos Palmares in Brazil lasted nearly 100 years.
• LO 2.15.B: Describe the purposes of maroon wars throughout the African diaspora.
  • EK 2.15.B.1: Maroon leaders and their militias often waged wars against colonial governments to protect their collective freedom and autonomy or made treaties requiring them to assist in extinguishing slave rebellions.
    • Bayano led a maroon community in wars against the Spanish in Panama in the 16th century.
    • Queen Nanny led maroons in Jamaica in wars against the English in the 18th century.
• The Portuguese word quilombo comes from kilombo (war camp) in Kimbundu, a Bantu language in West Central Africa. In 17th-century Angola, Queen Njinga created a kilombo as a sanctuary for enslaved runaways, offering military training for defense against the Portuguese.

Diasporic Connections: Slavery and Freedom in Brazil

• Sources:
  • Festival of Our Lady of the Rosary, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by Carlos Julião, Circa 1770s
  • Escravo Mina and Escrava Mina by José Christiano de Freitas Henriques Junior, 1864
  • Capoeira Players and Musicians on Beach in Salvador da Bahia
• LO 2.16.A: Describe features of the enslavement of Africans in Brazil.
  • EK 2.16.A.1: More enslaved Africans disembarked in Brazil than anywhere else in the Americas, laboring in various enterprises such as sugar plantations, gold mines, coffee plantations, cattle ranching, and the production of food and textiles.
  • EK 2.16.A.2: The massive number of African-born people in Brazil preserved cultural practices like capoeira and the congada.
• LO 2.16.B: Explain shifts in the numbers of enslaved Africans in Brazil and the United States during the 19th century.
  • EK 2.16.B.1: In 19th-century Brazil, the number of enslaved Africans decreased as the free Black population grew due to manumission. By 1888, when Brazil abolished slavery, approximately 4 million people of African ancestry were already free, and the abolition freed approximately 1.5 million Africans still enslaved.
  • EK 2.16.B.2: Even after the 1808 ban against importing enslaved Africans, the number of enslaved Africans in the United States increased steadily throughout the 19th century. Approximately 4 million Africans remained enslaved in the United States by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Brazil is home to the largest African diasporic population in the Americas.
• The source photographs Escravo Mina and Escrava Mina portray enslaved people who arrived in Brazil as children, likely during the collapse of the Oyo Empire (Nigeria) in the early 1830s.
• The drawings display the diversity of labor forms, from marketers to medical work, and a festival by the brotherhood of Our Lady of the Rosary, which speaks to the ways enslaved people in Brazil recreated Afro-Catholic customs from West Central Africa.

African Americans in Indigenous Territory

• Sources:
  • Diary Entry Recounting the Capture of 41 Black Seminoles by Gen. Thomas Sidney Jesup, 1836
  • Abraham, a Black Seminole leader, 1863
  • Gopher John, a Black Seminole leader and interpreter, 1863
  • Arkansas Petition for Freedmen’s Rights, 1869
• LO 2.17.A: Explain how the expansion of slavery in the United States South affected relations between Black and Indigenous people.
  • EK 2.17.A.1: Some African American freedom seekers (maroons) found refuge among the Seminoles in Florida and were welcomed as kin, fighting alongside them in resistance to relocation during the Second Seminole War from 1835 to 1842.
  • EK 2.17.A.2: Many African Americans were enslaved by peoples of the five large Indigenous nations. When Indigenous enslavers were forcibly removed from their lands by the federal government during the Trail of Tears, they took the African Americans they had enslaved with them.
  • EK 2.17.A.3: The five large Indigenous nations adopted slave codes, created slave patrols, and assisted in recapturing enslaved Black people who fled for freedom.
  • EK 2.17.A.4: Codifying racial slavery within Indigenous communities hardened racial lines, severing Black–Indigenous kinship ties and eliminating recognition for mixed-race members of Indigenous communities, redefining them as permanent outsiders.

Debates About Emigration, Colonization, and Belonging in America

• Sources:
  • “Emigration to Mexico” by “A Colored Female of Philadelphia,” The Liberator, 1832
  • Excerpt from The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered by Martin R. Delany, 1852
  • “West India Emancipation” by Frederick Douglass, 1857
• LO 2.18.A: Explain how 19th-century emigrationists aimed to achieve the goal of Black freedom and self-determination.
  • EK 2.18.A.1: With the spread of abolition in Latin America and the Caribbean, African American emigrationists supported building new communities outside the United States, as an alternative to continued slavery and racial discrimination.
  • EK 2.18.A.2: Emigrationists identified locations in Latin America, the Caribbean, and West Africa as promising areas for relocation due to their large populations of Afro-descendants, shared histories, and advantageous climates.
  • EK 2.18.A.3: Black abolitionists who supported emigration, like Paul Cuffee and Martin R. Delany, embraced Black nationalism, which promoted Black unity, pride, and self-determination.
  • EK 2.18.A.4: Paul Cuffee was the first person to relocate African Americans from the United States to Africa, taking 39 to Freetown in Sierra Leone in 1815.
• LO 2.18.B: Explain how transatlantic abolitionism influenced anti-emigrationists’ political views about the potential for African Americans’ belonging in American society.
  • EK 2.18.B.1: Anti-emigrationists believed abolition and racial equality reflected the nation’s ideals and that they would achieve liberation, political representation, and full integration of African Americans, seeing themselves as having “birthright citizenship.”
  • EK 2.18.B.2: Because of the Fugitive Slave Acts, Frederick Douglass and other formerly enslaved abolitionists were not protected from recapture, even in the North, finding refuge across the Atlantic and advocating from there.
  • EK 2.18.B.3: 19th-century anti-emigrationists highlighted the paradox of celebrating American independence while excluding millions from citizenship and profiting from their exploitation.
• African American emigration among Black abolitionists was distinct from the white-led American Colonization Society.
• Martin R. Delany, a Black nationalist leader, viewed African Americans as a subjugated “nation within a nation."
• Frederick Douglass’s ideas about how American slavery should end changed throughout the 19th century, going from advocating nonviolent resistance to accepting violence.
• In the West India Emancipation speech (1857), Frederick Douglass spoke the famous line “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Black Political Thought: Radical Resistance

• Sources:
  • Appeal by David Walker, 1829
  • “An Address to the Slaves of the United States” by Henry Highland Garnet, 18