Untitled Flashcard Set

Timeframe: Early 19th century (c. 1816 onward).
Setting: Tom Lea’s plantation; cockfighting pits, quarters, social gatherings.
Focus: Next generation — George (son of Kizzy & Tom Lea) coming of age.

George (“Chicken George”): Learns cockfighting under Mingo; gains skill, status, nickname; conflict between loyalty, survival, and aspiration.
Kizzy: Endures Tom’s assaults; teaches literacy secretly; sacrifices her own chance at freedom to stay with family.
Tom Lea: Irish-born slaveowner; insecure, cruel, reliant on George’s talent; claims kinship ambiguously (George may be his son).
Mingo: Enslaved pit master; resents George’s rise; fatally injured during post-rebellion violence.
Matilda: George’s love interest → later wife; moral compass, faith-driven, stresses dignity over material survival.
Marcellus: Free Black man; mentor figure; shows George possibility of freedom.

Opening: Tom violates Kizzy → she reaffirms vow to persist.
George & Cockfighting: Learns under Mingo; creates unique methods (diets, training, talking to birds). Wins fights → earns nickname “Chicken George.”
Kizzy’s Resistance: Teaches Tricia (Tom’s wife) to read; counsels her to “talk about nothing” to pass among white women. Protests George’s relocation to cockfighting.
Tom’s Social Climbing: At picnic with elites, Tom is humiliated for low-class Irish roots; slaps William Byrd → challenged to duel. George acts as his “second.”
Nat Turner’s Rebellion Context: White paranoia; reprisals. Mingo attacked, later dies. Quarters burned. George caught between loyalty and survival.
Parentage Reveal: George suspects Tom is his father; Tom ambiguously acknowledges; forces George to promise a son named after him.
Marriage: George marries Matilda with Tom’s reluctant approval.
Kizzy’s Sacrifice: Offered freedom by Marcellus; refuses to leave family. Holds knife to Tom but ultimately stays for her children.

Freedom vs. Bondage: George buys freedom papers but racism persists; Kizzy sacrifices freedom for family.
Identity & Paternity: George torn between being property vs. son; internal conflict shapes ambition.
Power & Hierarchy: Tom’s Irish marginalization shows class within whiteness; enslaved negotiate limited agency (George, Mingo).
Violence as Control: Sexual violence (Kizzy), duels, Nat Turner backlash; cockfighting as symbolic parallel to slavery’s brutality.
Generational Legacy: Marcellus mentors George; Kizzy maintains Kunta Kinte’s memory; Marcellus & Matilda shape George’s sense of true freedom.
Symbolism of Cockfighting: Birds mirror enslaved lives — caged, forced into violence, used for profit; yet George turns skill into survival + partial resistance.

George’s ambition in cockfighting = advancement vs. compromise → survival within slavery but not full freedom.
Kizzy’s sacrifice → gendered form of agency; motherhood under slavery.
Bloodline revelation → destabilizes master/slave binary; complicates George’s identity.
Nat Turner’s rebellion → shows white fear as central to maintaining slavery.
Cockfighting as metaphor for enslaved lives.

Kizzy: “The more you talk about nothing, the smarter them ladies think you be.” → survival tactics.
Marcellus to George: “By the way you carry yourself, I thought you were free, too.” → freedom as self-perception.
Kizzy refusing Marcellus: sacrifice of personal liberty for family unity.

Equiano (1789): Middle Passage horrors; British abolition debates; counters Jefferson’s “civilizing” myth.
Jacobs (1861): First fugitive woman’s narrative; sexual violence; motherhood; hiding in attic.
Shared: Humanized enslaved life; abolitionist propaganda; resistance through testimony.
Different: Equiano = transatlantic/global focus; Jacobs = domestic, gendered oppression.

Daily resistance: sabotage, illness, slowdowns.
Cultural survival: names, religion, music (Voodoo, Santería, Candomblé).
Women’s resistance: poisons, abortions/miscarriages.
Revolts: Haitian Revolution (1791–1804); German Coast (1811); Nat Turner (1831); Amistad (1839).
Maroons: Jamaica & Florida.
Du Bois: Civil War = “general strike” of enslaved.

National Rise:
- SF State (1968) → first program; Black Student Union + Third World Liberation Front.
- Cornell (1969) → Straight Hall occupation.
- Duke (1969) → Allen Building takeover → Malcolm X Liberation University
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At FSU:
- First Black man (1962), women (1963), Fred Flowers integrated baseball (1964).
- Doby Flowers first Black Homecoming Queen (1970).
- First Black faculty (1968).
- Courses (1969: 7 courses, 6 departments).
- African American Studies Program founded 1976 after protests
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- Report card: under-enrollment, low graduation rates, lack of Black faculty.
What is a Discipline? (Foucault) → Knowledge = power; disciplines regulate thought/behavior
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Why Black Studies?
- Counters Eurocentrism; centers Black voices.
- Humanities provide critical skills employers seek (analysis, communication).
Black Women & Black Studies:
- Contributions: Wheatley (1773) → poetry; countless activists/writers.
- Organizations: NCNW, Combahee River Collective (1977), Assata’s Daughters.
- Black Feminism: centers Black women’s oppression.
- Womanism (Alice Walker, 1979): balance, pro-humankind, survival of Black people.
- Africana Womanism (Hudson-Weems, 1995): rejects Eurocentric feminism; unique African women’s experience.