Diaspora refers to the dispersion of ethnic groups throughout the world, especially with modern global transportation.
The African diaspora started with the movement of enslaved Africans by British, Spanish, and Portuguese imperialists to the Americas.
Many Native Americans were also enslaved and forcibly relocated.
When slavery ended, British colonialists moved free labor, particularly from India, to Africa, the Americas, and parts of Asia.
Consider Trinidad and Tobago: Under British rule, it became a single colony. Initially, Spanish control led to sugar and cacao plantations worked by enslaved Africans.
The British took over in 1797, and by 1815, Trinidad and Tobago were united under English rule.
On August 1, 1834, the British government enforced the Act of Emancipation, outlawing slave trade and slavery.
Emancipation created a labor shortage, so British planters contracted Chinese indentured laborers, but this was too expensive.
They then turned to India for less expensive labor, leading to the growth of the East Indian population. Some Portuguese laborers were used on cacao plantations, based on the myth that White people couldn't work in the sun.
British rule meant the dominance of the English language. Native American, African, East Indian, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese languages declined.
English became the language of schools, and British curricula framed the learning of Trinidadians and Tobagoans. Slave bills, indentured contracts, legislation, government documents, and newspapers were in English.
Today, residents speak English, the language of the global economy.
Consider Singapore: Under the British, it was a major port city in their Malaysian colony. After Malaysian independence in the 1950s, it became a separate nation.
Thomas Stamford Raffles took possession of the island (originally Singhapura, meaning "Lion City") in 1810 for the British East India Company. The British used Chinese laborers to mine tin.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the British introduced the Brazilian rubber tree, which flourished on Malaysian plantations. Tamil-speaking laborers were brought from India for the rubber plantations.
Japanese occupation during World War II encouraged the independence movement from British control. The Japanese claimed their objective was to rid Asia of Western imperialism. Dato Onn bin Ja'afar, Malaysia's first political leader after World War II, noted that the Japanese inspired a new idea of what Asia might become.
Under the banner of "Asia for the Asians," Japan openly preached anti-European doctrines and fostered local nationalism and an independence movement.
Today, Singapore schools are multilingual, with English as the dominant language.
The forced migration of enslaved Africans to North America was part of an evolving pattern of migration sparked by globalization. Today, migration of populations is a major part of the globalization of the world economy.
1868
Naturalization Act-Excluded enslaved Africans from naturalized citizenship
1790
1790-Native-born children of enslaved African women remain slaves without US. citizenship
State laws restrict citizenship rights of free African Americans
1870
Naturalization Act-U.S. citizenship granted to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent
Fourteenth Amendment-Guarantees U.S. citizenship to naturalized and native-born, does not include Native Americans
1896
Plessy decision- "Separate but equal," restrictions on voting rights
1857
Dred Scott decision-Excluded all Africans from naturalized citizenship, native-born African Americans had no rights to U.S. citizenship
1866
Civil Rights Act-U.S. citizenship for native-born except Native Americans
Cultural Transformation and the Forced Migration of Enslaved Africans
Detailing the process of deculturalization and cultural transformation of enslaved Africans is complex because they originated from a variety of language groups and cultures within Africa.
In addition, their treatment as enslaved workers varied from region to region in North America. The forms of deculturalization or cultural transformation depended on the structure of the labor system.
Northern areas of the United States were societies with slaves in contrast to the slave societies of the southern plantation systems. In the North, owners usually had only a limited number of slaves who might work closely with White servants or farmhands.
In these situations, there was greater opportunity for assimilation into the dominant White culture. A similar phenomenon took place in the coastal cities of the South such as Charleston and Savannah.
On the other hand, the plantation system isolated large groups of enslaved Africans from other White workers, so cultural exchange with Whites was more difficult.
In addition, plantation owners were in constant fear of slave revolts and, consequently, denied their workers any form of education.
According to historian Henry Bullock, among White southerners, there was a "general fear that literacy would expose the slaves to abolition literature."
As a result, between 1800 and 1835, southern states passed laws making it a crime to educate slaves. It is not surprising, then, that one of the great literacy campaigns in world history occurred after the Civil War when freed slaves struggled for the opportunity to learn.
In a broader framework, the denial of an education or the provision of an inadequate education often ensures compliant and inexpensive workers.
There are two ways that education can be used to subjugate a population. One method is to use education to control a population after it has been conquered, such as after the United States' conquest of Native Americans and by European and Japanese colonialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The other method, based on a fear of the liberating possibilities of education, is to deny a population an education or to try to limit their educational opportunities.
After the Civil War, African Americans faced many attempts to limit their educational opportunities through underfunding of their schools or by educational segregation. Other groups faced similar limitations.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean immigrants worked for low wages on railroads, in factories, and on farms, while, at the same time, their children were being segregated from European American children in California schools. Mexican Americans experienced similar treatment throughout the West.
This chapter begins with the complex story of the deculturalization and cultural transformation of African Americans with Atlantic Creoles in the seventeenth century and ends with the educational crusades following the Civil War.
Atlantic Creoles
The first enslaved Africans arriving at Jamestown in 1618 spoke European languages, had Hispanic and English names, and, in some cases, had both African and European ancestry.
The enslaved Africans who arrived prior to the development of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century plantation systems came from trading areas established by Europeans along the west coast of Africa.
The word "Creole" refers to a person of mixed European and Black descent. At these African trading posts, Europeans took African wives and mistresses. The result was the growth of a substantial Creole population. These Creoles found themselves in cultural conflict with both the European and African populations.
When they adopted African traditions, Europeans declared them outcasts. Europeans also resented Creoles when they wore European clothing and adopted European manners. Creoles were further scorned by Africans, who denied them the right to marry, inherit property, and own land.
Enslaved and shipped to the Americas, Creoles arrived partially assimilated to the world of their owners. In fact, their ability to speak European languages and understanding of European culture were welcomed by their purchasers. They were bought in small lots and found themselves working side by side with White indentured servants.
Socially, they were considered part of the same social class as indentured servants. The major difference between the two groups was that the White indentured servant was free after working a set number of years, while enslaved Creoles had to purchase their freedom.
For instance, Anthony Johnson was sold as a slave to the Bennett family in the Chesapeake Bay area in 1621. The Bennetts allowed Johnson to marry and to baptize his children. Eventually, Johnson earned his freedom and owned a 250-acre farm, while his son received a patent for a 550-acre farm. In turn, Johnson bought slaves to help operate the farms.
Many Atlantic Creoles purchased in northern colonies also assimilated to Anglo-American culture and bought their freedom. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, large numbers of enslaved Africans congregated in New York City, Philadelphia, Newport, and Boston. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, one-sixth of the population of Philadelphia was composed of enslaved Africans. During this period, New York had the largest number of freed slaves. In the northern colonies, enslaved Africans did a variety of labor, ranging from shipping to farm work.
Slavery and Cultural Change in the North
By the middle of the eighteenth century, a dramatic change had occurred in the origins of the slave population. The burgeoning northern economy and the development of the southern plantation system increased the demand for enslaved Africans.
Increasingly, slave traders arrived with cargo that had been enslaved in the interior areas of Africa. Unlike the Atlantic Creoles, these enslaved Africans had been farmers and herdsmen living in small villages, and they had little or no contact with Europeans before being enslaved. They spoke many different languages and had differing religious traditions.
By the time they reached the Americas, if they survived the ocean trip, they were often psychologically devastated by the experience of being wrenched out of their villages, separated from their families, marched to the African coast in shackles, forced into the dark holds of sailing ships, and then sold to some unknown Anglo-American in a country that had little resemblance to their homelands.
In addition to the dramatic change in slave origins, northern slaves were increasingly owned by artisans and tradesmen to help in the rapidly expanding workshops and warehouses of the northern colonies. In New Jersey, the Hudson Valley, and Long Island, enslaved Africans played an important role in expanding the agricultural base of the colonies.
Ira Berlin reports that by the middle of the eighteenth century, slave men outnumbered free White laborers in many New Jersey counties, such as 262 to 194 in Monmouth County, 281 to 81 in Middlesex County, and 206 to 8 in Bergin County.
As the northern slave population increased, it became more difficult for slaves to gain their freedom. Also, free Blacks found their rights severely restricted by newly enacted laws.
Berlin states, "In various northern colonies, free Blacks were barred from voting, attending the militia, sitting on juries," and in many places, they were required to carry "special passes to travel, trade, and keep a gun or a dog."
Unlike the Atlantic Creoles, the newly arrived enslaved Africans resisted the adoption of European culture. They often refused to Europeanize their names. Similar to Native Americans, they resisted the imposition of the Christian religion. In Newport, Rhode Island, local clergy could only find approximately 30 Christians among a Black population of 1,000. It was estimated that only one-tenth of New York City's Black population was Christian. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Americans of African ancestry established festivals that celebrated African traditions. An observer at a festival in Rhode Island wrote, "All the various languages of Africa, mixed with broken and ludicrous English, filled the air, accompanied with the music of the fiddle, tambourine, banjo, [and] drum.”
Inevitably, free and enslaved Africans learned to speak English. In most cases, language instruction did not take place in any systematic way. It was documented in fugitive slave notices appearing in New York City's presses between 1771 and 1805 that a quarter or more either did not speak English or spoke it poorly.
However, some enslaved Africans learned to read and write English well enough to petition the Massachusetts General Court for their freedom by proclaiming, "We have no Property! We have no Wives! No children! We have no City! No country! In common with all other men we have a natural right to our freedoms."
Freedom in Northern States
For many northern state legislators, though not for southern, there was an obvious contradiction between the principles of the American Revolution and support of slavery. For freed slaves in the North, however, freedom did not mean equality before the law or equality of treatment.
The freeing of enslaved Africans highlighted the difference between freedom and equality in the minds of Anglo-Americans of the Revolutionary generation. Moreover, the treatment of freed slaves underlined the idea that equality meant equality for only a select few.
Petitions for freeing enslaved Africans began appearing during the Revolution. In 1778, the Executive Council of Pennsylvania asked the Assembly to prohibit the further importation of slaves with the goal of eventually abolishing slavery. The Council pointed out that Europeans were "astonished to see a people eager for Liberty holding Negroes in Bondage."
During the same year, the governor of New Jersey called on the state legislature to begin the process of gradual abolition of slavery because it was "odious and disgraceful' for a people professing to idolize liberty."
In 1785, the New York legislature passed a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery. In Massachusetts, slavery ended through court action. By 1830, there were still 3,586 enslaved Africans in northern states, with two-thirds of them being in New Jersey.
During the Revolutionary years, abolitionist societies sprang up. These societies would play a key role in the education of freed Africans in the North and South after the Civil War. In general, the abolitionist groups had a strong religious orientation that shaped the type of education they provided to freed African Americans. In addition, these abolitionist societies were central to the antislavery movement of the nineteenth century and supported efforts by African Americans to escape bondage in the South. The Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery was organized in 1775 and joined with Quakers to ensure the speedy end to slavery in that state. Similar organizations played an active role in other northern states.
1800-1835
Southern states ban education of enslaved Africans
Great Literacy Crusade
1849
Roberts case- "Separate but equal"
1855
Hampton Institute Industrial Model of Teacher Training
1865-1880
1868
1865
Massachusetts outlaws school segregation
Freedman's Bureau created
1895
Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise
1896
Plessy v. Ferguson-"Separate but equal"
1910-1940
Second crusade for black education
1909
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)-Major goal was to end segregation
Educational Segregation
The difference between freedom and equality quickly became apparent in efforts by African American leaders and abolitionist groups to provide educational opportunities for freed slaves in northern states. Unlike in the South when the Civil War ended, there existed in the North free, literate, and educated African Americans who could provide support to enslaved Africans as they made the transition from slavery to freedom.
Education, particularly in reading and writing English, was considered key to this effort. Furthermore, education served to replace African cultures with the dominant American culture.
It was immediately apparent that most Anglo-Americans were not going to accept integrated educational institutions. Racially segregated schools were widely established from the late eighteenth century until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in 1954. Segregation meant more than building a racial divide. It also resulted in unequal school funding. Educational segregation resulted in unequal educational opportunities.
In 1787, African American leaders in Boston petitioned the legislature for schools because they no longer received any benefit from the free schools. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, school districts were required to build separate educational facilities for African Americans.
In Indiana, despite the fact that school laws made no racial distinctions, the White population refused to send their children to schools with African American children. The result was segregated schools. Some Anglo-Americans after the Revolution even protested the provision of any education for African Americans, claiming that it would offend southerners and encourage immigration from Africa.
Resistance to educational integration also extended to higher education. When the African American leader Charles Ray tried to enter Wesleyan in 1832, student protests forced him to leave. In Canaan, New Hampshire, the Noyes Academy in 1835 admitted 28 Whites and 14 African Americans. The school received support from African American communities and abolitionist societies in Massachusetts and New York.
When the school year began, however, four-fifths of the residents of Canaan registered a protest against the integrated school. A mob attacked the school but was eventually restrained by local officials. The residents of Canaan mixed patriotism with racism in protesting the Noyes Academy.
For some Americans, racism would always be cloaked in the mantle of patriotism. The protestors in Canaan condemned abolitionism and praised the Constitution and Revolutionary patriots as they removed the school building from its foundations and dragged it by oxen to a new site. Stories of this sort were typical of efforts of African Americans and abolitionist societies to establish integrated schools.
Discrimination and segregation affected other parts of the lives of African Americans in northern states. Attempts to prohibit interracial marriages occurred in New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois. In Philadelphia, African Americans were allowed to ride only on the front platforms of horse-drawn streetcars, and in New York City Blacks could ride only on "colored-only" vehicles. Race riots broke out in Philadelphia and Cincinnati. In 1834, rioting Whites in Philadelphia forced Blacks to flee-and in 1841, Whites in Cincinnati used a cannon against Blacks defending their homes.
Boston and the Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity
An important example of the early struggle for equality of educational opportunity occurred in Boston. Boston organized the first comprehensive system of urban schools after the passage of the Massachusetts Education Act of 1789. This legislation required towns to provide elementary schools for six months of the year and grammar schools in communities with more than 200 families. In 1790, the Black population in Boston was 766 out of a total population of 18,038. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, no law or tradition excluded Black children from the public schools. Some were enrolled in public schools, while others attended private ones.
Yet few Black children actually attended school. The low attendance rate was a result of the poor economic conditions of the Black population and the hostile reception given Black children in the public schools. To protect their children from the prejudice of White children, a committee of African Americans in 1798 asked for a separate system of schools for their children.
The Boston School Committee rejected this request with the reasoning that if it provided separate schools for Blacks, it would also need to provide separate schools for other groups. Receiving aid from White philanthropists, the parents opened a school that survived for only a few months. In 1800, a group of 36 African Americans again asked the Boston School Committee to establish a separate school for their children. Again, the answer was no. Two years later, the Black community opened another separate private school.
In 1806, the school committee reversed its position and opened a segregated school with a combination of public funds and contributions from White philanthropists. In 1812, the school committee voted to provide permanent funds for the school and established direct control over it.
The Boston School Committee's decision created a complex situation. First, the committee supported and controlled a segregated school, although no law required segregation. In theory at least, Black children were free to attend public schools other than the one established for them. Second, the African American community supported the segregated school as an alternative to the prejudice existing in the other White-dominated schools. Last, the school was supported by a combination of private and public monies. Private contributions to the school became a major factor when Abiel Smith died in 1815 and left the entire income from his shares in New England turnpikes and bridges and from the U.S. bonds he had owned to the support of Black schools. The school committee assumed trusteeship of the estate, which meant that it controlled both the school and the majority of private funds supporting the school.
By the 1820s, the African American community realized that a segregated education was resulting in an inferior education for their children. The school committee was appointing inferior teachers to the all-Black school and was not maintaining the school building. In 1833, a subcommittee issued a report on the conditions of the schools. The major conclusion of this report was that Black schools were inferior to other schools in the quality of education and the physical conditions. The report argued that "a classroom better than a basement room in the African Church could be found. After all, Black parents paid taxes which helped to support White schools. They deserved a more equal return on their share of the city's income."
The most important conclusion of the report was that segregated education was not benefitting either race. The Boston School Committee responded to the report by focusing efforts on building a new, segregated school. The school committee accepted the idea of segregated education and argued that the real problem was ensuring that separate schools for Black children were equal to those of Whites.
Local Black abolitionist David Walker answered this question with a resounding "No!" Walker was representative of an increasingly militant and literate African American community in the northern states. Walker was born in North Carolina in 1779 of a free mother and a slave. According to North Carolina law, Walker was thus born free. He moved to Boston in the early 1820s and became a contributor to and local agent for the nation's first Black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, published in New York.
In the newspaper and in his other writings, Walker argued that there were four principal factors responsible for the poor situation of Blacks in the nation: slavery, the use of religion to justify slavery and prejudice, the African colonization movement designed to send free Blacks back to Africa and the lack of educational opportunity. White Americans, he argued, were keeping Black Americans from receiving any significant amount of education. As proof, he cited the laws in the South that made it illegal to educate slaves. In the North, according to Walker, the inferior education Blacks received in schools was designed to keep them at a low level of education.
After studying the conditions in Boston schools, Walker reached the conclusion that segregated education in the city was a conspiracy by Whites to keep Blacks in a state of ignorance. Walker's arguments added fuel to the fire. Demands by the Black community for integrated education intensified, and for almost two decades, the Black community struggled with the school committee to end segregated education. Part of the issue was the loss of control of Black schools by the Black community.
Originally, the Black community exercised control over its private educational endeavors. Over the years, however, the school committee had gained complete control, so that any complaints the Black community had about its schools had to be resolved by the committee. In 1849, the protests over segregated schools finally reached the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court when Benjamin Roberts sued the city for excluding his five-year-old daughter from the schools. In this particular case, his daughter passed five White primary schools before reaching the Black school. Consequently, Roberts decided to enroll her in one of the closer, White schools. He lost the case on a decision by the Court that the school system had provided equal schools for Black children. This was one of the first separate-but-equal rulings in American judicial history.
The issue of segregation in Massachusetts schools was finally resolved in 1855, when the governor signed into law a requirement that no child be denied admission to a public school on the basis of race or religious opinions. In September of that year, the Boston public schools were integrated without any violent hostilities.
The Boston situation also illustrates the ambivalent attitudes of Whites about the education of African Americans. On the one hand, Whites might have felt that containing the threat of African culture to the dominant Protestant culture of the United States required "civilizing" African Americans in the same manner as Native Americans. This meant providing schools. On the other hand, Whites who thought Africans a threat to their racial purity and culture wanted education of African Americans to occur in segregated schools. As a result of the latter beliefs, public education for African Americans in the United States remained primarily segregated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Plantation Society
Beginning in the eighteenth century, the plantation system spread through the tobacco-growing regions of the Chesapeake area to the rice-growing regions of the Carolinas and eventually to the cotton fields of the deep South. The plantation system originated in the twelfth century in the sugar-growing areas of the Mediterranean, where owners used both White and Black slaves. The model was transplanted to the sugar, tobacco, rice, and cotton areas of the Americas, making its appearance in Brazil in the sixteenth century.
In contrast to the small farmer, the plantation system involved the cultivation of vast areas of land with an army of regimented workers. The Great Plantation House surrounded by workshops, barns, sheds, and slave quarters was the center of this factory-like system. In the hierarchical system, the plantation owner issued orders to the overseers, who commanded a regimented labor force in the workshops and fields. Discipline and order were the keys to making the system work.
Unlike slavery in the North, plantation owners used the lash and other brutal punishments to control enslaved Africans. Southern courts did not prosecute plantation owners if their punishments resulted in the death of a slave. Plantation owners lived in constant fear that their slaves would either run away or revolt against their masters. Brutality, they believed, was essential to maintain control.
Deculturalization was also considered key to making enslaved Africans dependent on their owners. One of the first things planters did after purchasing enslaved Africans was to take away their identities by giving them new names. (The reader will remember that slaves in the North resisted this process of renaming.) Since most newly purchased slaves from interior Africa did not speak English, the plantation owner and overseers made it a practice to frequently repeat the name until the enslaved Africans realized that it represented their new identity.
The deculturalization process continued with newly purchased slaves being housed in barrack-like structures. In these conditions, the recent arrivals on a plantation experienced linguistic isolation. They could not communicate with their owners because they could not speak English. Often, they could not speak to other slaves because they did not share a common language. Because plantation owners made little effort to provide organized instruction in English, enslaved Africans on plantations had to create a language of communication that would be understood by owners and overseers and by their fellow slaves. Also, enslaved Africans had to create new modes of interaction since they came from a variety of African cultures and had been separated from traditional cultural patterns related to marriage, family relations, property, child rearing, friendships, and social status.
This process of deculturalization did not result in the assimilation of enslaved plantation workers to European culture. The first generation carried all the marks of its African heritage, including hairstyles, scarification, and filed teeth. Discovering the economic value of having slaves reproduce, planters supported the rapid growth of native, enslaved Africans.
As African Americans, this second generation of plantation slaves abandoned the outward bodily symbols of its African parents and rarely gave African names to its children. Words, gestures, and language forms were adapted to the new living and working conditions. Rituals involving birth and death incorporated traditional African practices into the requirements of plantation life.
Enslaved Africans developed cultural styles for interacting with an owner who had the power of life and death, an owner who could at any time inflict severe punishment. It was a relationship in which the slave was not protected by any legal institution from the arbitrary brutality of the master, and the owner could demand sexual relations with any slave. The owner had the power to break up families and wrench children from their parents by selling them.
The oral tradition that developed among enslaved Africans provided a psychological refuge against the degradation of slavery. Slave songs were created while working, during whatever leisure time was available, and during religious services. In Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Lawrence Levine concludes, "The slaves' oral traditions, their music, and their religious outlook… constituted a cultural refuge at least potentially capable of protecting their personalities from some of the worst ravages of the slave system."
Created in context of domination, this oral tradition reflected distrust and dislike of Whites. Also, this oral tradition reflected methods by which slaves tried to cope with their state of powerlessness. The religious songs of slaves often portrayed Whites as the devil and slaves as the chosen people. As the chosen people, slaves would eventually triumph over the cruelties of White people. "We are the people of God," "We are de people of the Lord," "I really do believe I'm a child of God," "To the promised land I'm bound to go," and "Heaven shall-a be my home" are examples of refrains that ran through slave spirituals. On the other side of the coin, slave attitudes toward Whites ranged from "You no holy. We be holy" to "No White people went to heaven."
Using disease in relations with masters and other Whites, slave tales outline a social system based on trickery. The only method the slave had for self-protection was to try to trick the master. According to the ethical beliefs of slaves, a slave was justified in taking something from the master that was forbidden. For instance, inadequate food was a constant problem for slaves. The reasoning of the slave was that taking food from the master was not stealing, because the master owned the slave and the food consumed by the slave remained in the ownership of the master. On the other hand, taking something from a fellow slave was considered theft, and the act was considered "just as mean as White folks."
Typical of the slave as trickster was the story of Henry Johnson, who lured a turkey into his cabin and killed it. He immediately ran crying to his mistress that one of her turkeys unexpectedly died. She told him to stop crying and get rid of the possibly diseased bird. That night Henry ate the turkey. In another story, a slave ran to his master to tell him that all seven of his hogs died. When the master appeared at the scene, a group of slaves informed him with sorrow that the hogs had died of "malitis" and that they were afraid to touch the meat. Reacting with fear for his own health at the word "malitis," the master ordered the slaves to eat the dead hogs. "Malitis," a word the slaves created, resulted from a slave hitting each hog in the head with a heavy mallet. In another story, a slave took some chickens and began cooking them in his cabin. The master entered the cabin and the slave informed him that he was cooking a possum. The master decided to wait and share the possum. Fearing that the master would discover the chickens, the slave told him that it would take a long time to cook because slaves make their possum gravy by having the family spit in it. In disgust, the master left. The slaves happily ate the chickens. These animal tales provide a clear picture of the weak outsmarting the more powerful.
Learning to Read
Literacy was a punishable crime for enslaved Africans in the South. However, by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860, it is estimated that 5 percent of slaves had learned how to read, sometimes at the risk of life or limb. Individual slaves would sneak books and teach themselves while hiding from their masters. Sometimes self-taught slaves would pass on their skills and knowledge to other slaves. James Anderson quotes a former slave, Ferebe Rogers, about her husband's educational work prior to the Civil War: "On his dyin' bed he said he been de death o' many a nigger 'cause he taught so many to read and write.”
It was easier for slaves to learn to read if they worked in cities like Charleston and Savannah. For enslaved Africans in these communities, as opposed to those on plantations, there was a chance to earn money to purchase freedom. Also, there was greater assimilation into Anglo-American life. On the other hand, plantation life sometimes provided the opportunity for clandestine learning.
In Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, Leon Litwack relates a number of examples of how literacy spread the word of southern defeats during the Civil War. In one case, discussions of the Civil War by the plantation owners were usually punctuated with the spelling of words so that house slaves could not understand. However, one maid memorized the letters and spelled them out later to an uncle who could read. In Forsyth, Georgia, Edward Glenn, after going to town to get the newspaper, would give it to the local Black minister to read before taking it to the plantation house. Litwack writes,
On the day Glenn would never forget, the preacher threw the newspaper on the ground after reading it, hollered, 'I'm free as a frog!' and ran away. The slave dutifully took the paper to his mistress who read it and began to cry. 'I didn't say no more,' Glenn recalled.
In another situation, a Florida slave kept his literacy secret from his owner. One day the owner unexpectedly walked in while he was reading the newspaper and demanded to know what he was doing. "Equal to the moment," Litwack states, "[he] immediately turned the newspaper upside down and declared, 'Confederates done won the war.' The master laughed and left the room, and once again a slave had used the 'darky act' to extricate himself from a precarious situation.”
Citizenship for African Americans
Prior to the Civil War, the debates about citizenship for free African Americans highlighted the belief of some that only Whites should have full U.S. citizenship In other words, African immigrants were denied the right to become U.S. citizens. National political leaders rejected granting citizenship to enslaved Africans. But what about native-born free African Americans? Should free Americans of African descent be considered full citizens? For those believing that the U.S. republic could only survive with a White homogenous population, the answer was "No!"
In southern states, freed slaves' citizenship rights were severely restricted. After the American Revolution, southern states passed laws making it difficult for enslaved Africans to achieve freedom. In addition, state laws explicitly denied free African Americans the right to vote. The upper tier of southern states adopted the North Carolina system that required free African Americans to register with state and local governments and wear shoulder patches reading "free." Free Blacks were denied the right to have jury trials, obtain legal counsel, and testify in court.
Although the American Revolution promised political equality and liberty to "free Whites," it resulted in greater restrictions being placed over free Blacks in southern states. In northern states, free African Americans were largely denied the right to vote except in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. Despite the work of James Forten, an African American and revolutionary war veteran, to gain equal rights under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, most northern states denied Blacks equal protection in the court system and created segregated public institutions.
Blacks were specifically denied U.S. citizenship and the political rights recognized in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1857 Dred Scott decision. As a result of a complicated set of events, Dred Scott, an African American, sued to win recognition as a free person, a citizen of the state of Missouri, and a U.S. citizen. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roger Taney argued that the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were not intended to provide protection for the political rights of Blacks.
In addition, he continued, U.S. citizenship could only be achieved through naturalization, birth on U.S. soil, or birth to an American father. Blacks were specifically excluded from naturalized citizenship by the 1790 Naturalization Act. Moreover, Taney argued that citizenship resulting from native birth or birth to an American father included only those born into a class that qualified for rights under the Constitution. Blacks, Taney maintained, were not born into a class that qualified for these rights, and, therefore, even if they were native born, they still did not qualify for U.S. citizenship. even if they had a white father.
1857
Dred scott
1790
Naturalization Act
What about allegiance to state and federal governments? Taney added another link in the chain of denial of Black rights. He argued that native-born Blacks owed an allegiance to state and federal governments even though they could not be U.S. citizens. In other words, Blacks had to obey the government but could not exercise the political rights that accompanied full citizenship.
Fourteenth Amendment: Citizenship and Education
Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment, with its clause providing equal protection under the laws, has had an enormous impact on public schools. Equal educational opportunity is a right provided for by the equal protection clause. Like many aspects of the Constitution, the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment has undergone many twists and turns, including first allowing school segregation and then later declaring segregation unconstitutional. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides constitutional acknowledgment