Transcript Slide 1

Slavery In
America
The Evolution of Civil Rights
in the United States
?
A wealthy
eighteenth
century family
?
?
?
Can you identify the luxury items pointed to in this painting? Where would they
have come from? Why were they so expensive?
White gold & black misery
Why did so many people support
the slave trade?
Olaudah Equiano
11 years old when kidnapped,
son of tribal leader
• Traded from family to family until he
arrived at coast of Africa – transported to
America
• Purchased in Virginia; his master taught
him how to sail
• Purchases his freedom and becomes
active abolitionist
• 10-12 million people
sold into slavery
• Anyone could be
abducted – poor,
royalty
• Devastated African
culture, families were
destroyed
• Guns increased
warfare and slave
raids
• After kidnapping the
slaves, merchants
forced them to walk to
the coast (sometimes
1,000 miles)
• Only ½ survived, some
would be left by side of
road shackled to dead
body
•It made good business sense to kill those who were
not strong enough to survive walk (made those who
survived be obedient and get rid of weak – less
money paid for them)
• Once at the coast they often waited in
dungeons inside costal forts (Europeans
sometimes referred to them as trading posts)
• Some slaves were there for up to a year, but
worse was yet to come…
How similar is this account to the
picture on the previous slide?
I saw many of my miserable countrymen
chained together, some with their hands tied
behind their backs. We were taken to a place
near the coast and I asked the guide why we
were here. He told me that I was to learn the
ways of the white-faced people. He took a gun,
some cloth and some metal in exchange for me.
This made me cry bitterly. I was then taken to a
ship where I saw my fellow captives moaning
and crying.
Account by a slave who was taken to work in the West Indies.
Middle Passage – voyage to
America
• Branded with irons,
restrained in shackles,
there was sometimes
only 3 feet headroom
•Often sitting so close, not allowed to move, it often
meant sitting in feces, urine and blood = spread of
disease.
•Diseased slaves were thrown overboard, sometimes
still alive.
•1-2 million people died in the voyage
•If caught attempting suicide, would be punished and
force fed (loss of income for merchant)
A diagram of the slave ship Brookes a Ship based in Liverpool, which regularly
sailed between Britain, Africa & West Indies. The black marks are slaves. What
do you think life was like on board this ship?.
How were slaves prepared for
auction?
• Washed with water
• Rubbed with oil
• Gunpowder, hot tar or
rust rubbed into
wounds
• Teeth inspected
• Brutal remedies, e.g.
for diarrhoea
• Two methods of sale
– auction & scramble
What does this C19th poster tell us about the
way slaves were treated by plantation owners?
Slaves waiting for the auction to begin. Imagine you are one of the people
waiting at auction. List the thoughts that are going through your mind.
What sort of lives did they lead?
How would you feel if you were
branded with one of these irons?
• Branded on face, chest
or back
• 3-4 year-olds work in
‘trash gangs’ (weeding)
• 9-12 year-olds work in
fields with adults
• Elderly worked as
domestic servants
• No legal rights –
forbidden to read, write,
marry own property
• Flogging & other
punishments
• Early slaves showed English
settlers how to grow rice in
swampy areas – import more
slaves to work the plantations
(included cotton and tobacco)
• Required brute force to
control the growing African
population – included
branding, whipping,
castrating or killing slave.
• Laws supported this
treatment of slaves, a
runaway slave was thought of
as stolen property. By 1750
slavery was legal in all of the
Thirteen Colonies.
Punishments/Daily Life
• Rebellions – rebels nailed
to ground, fire applied
starting at the feet and
moving upwards
• Running away – neck ring
or iron muzzle
• Continued running away
– removal of hand or foot
• Flogging – one lash for
each year of slave’s life
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
5:30 – go straight to field.
Work until 8.00am.
Latecomers whipped
8:00 – Stop work for breakfast:
boiled yam & okra seasoned
with salt & pepper
8:30 - Continue work
12:00 pm – Rest & lunch:
salted meat or pickled fish
2:00pm – Start work again
6:00pm – Return to huts
Night time – During harvest,
work in mill through night
Why did the slave trade last so
long?
• People knew little about Africa
• There were rumours and
untruths (e.g. Africans were
cannibals)
• Africans seen as a subspecies
• Too many people benefited
financially
• Christian missionaries hoped
to convert slaves
Slave poster, 1769. What does this poster tell us
about European attitudes to African men &
women?
When did slavery eventually
end in Britain?
William Wilberforce, one of the strongest
campaigners for the abolition of slavery.
• 1807, illegal for British
traders to buy or sell
humans
• Slaves continued to
work in plantations
• 1833, slavery
completely abolished
• Other nations
followed (e.g. America)
 Your task
• Imagine you have been asked by the
abolitionists to give a speech in Parliament to
support the new banning the slave trade. Write a
speech, including some or all of the following
points
–
–
–
–
–
–
Outline the extent of this horrific trade
Criticise the supporters of the trade
Emphasise the human cost of slavery
Use case studies, e.g. Olaudah Equiano
Highlight the support the campaign has
Finish with a powerful and memorable concluding
statement (e.g. a quote from Wedgwood’s plaque)
The American Civil War
(1861–1865)
• Between the nothern states (the
Union) and the newly formed
Confederate States (the South).
• At the time the country was led by
Abraham Lincoln. The Southern
states knew that he did not support
slavery, so his election was the
excuse the break from the Union.
• Famous battles included Fort
Sumter, Shiloh, Antietam,
Gettysburg and Atlanta Georgia
(which was burned to the ground
by Union troops).
• September, 1862, Lincoln
declared the Emancipation
Proclamation which freed all
slaves, this intensified the
fighting.
• April 9, 1865 the Confederate
leader Robert E. Lee
surrendered to General
Ulysses S. Grant and the war
ended.
• It was the bloodiest war in US
history, with 620,000 deaths.
• Despite all of the efforts made to end
slavery in the United States, that did not
mean that race relations in this country
improved. It took more than a century for
African Americans to be given the same
legal rights as whites in America.
JIM CROW LAWS
• Named after a caricature of African Americans.
• After the Civil War, Southern States enacted laws that
mandated “separate but equal” status for black
Americans.
• The most important laws required that public schools,
public places and public transportation have separate
buildings, toilets, and restaurants for whites and
blacks.
Some examples include:
• “All marriages of white persons with
Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya
hereafter contracted in the State of
Wyoming are and shall be illegal and void.”
• “Any Negro man and white woman, or any
white man and Negro woman, who are not
married to each other, who shall habitually
live in and occupy in the nighttime the same
room shall each be punished by
imprisonment not exceeding twelve (12)
months, or by fine not exceeding five
hundred ($500.00) dollars.”
• “All persons licensed to conduct a
restaurant, shall serve either white people
exclusively or colored people exclusively
and shall not sell to the two races within the
same room or serve the two races
anywhere under the same license."
“It shall be unlawful for any amateur white
baseball team to play baseball on any
vacant lot or baseball diamond within two
blocks of a playground devoted to the
Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for
any amateur colored baseball team to
play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball
diamond within two blocks of any
playground devoted to the white race.”
• “Books shall not be
interchangeable
between the white and
colored schools, but
shall continue to be
used by the race first
using them.”
• 1955, Rosa Parks refuses to
give up her seat on a
segregated bus in Alabama and
is arrested.
• Inspires black leaders to mount
a one-day bus boycott. A main
speaker is a new minister in
town, 26-year-old Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The boycott lasts until
December 1956. The bus
company suffers economically;
violence erupts; bombs are
thrown at organizers' homes;
and the white Citizens Council
and the Ku Klux Klan hold
rallies.
• At last, a Supreme Court
decision integrates the buses,
and soon thousands of black
riders are on the buses again -sitting where they please.
1954 legal decision Brown v. Board of Education, the
Supreme Court declared segregated classrooms were
illegal. When desegregation began, many black students
found mobs protesting outside their integrated schools, and
other schools chose to close rather than integrate.
• The Little Rock Nine were a
group of courageous black
students who integrated the
Arkansas capital city's Central
High School in September
1957. Initially thwarted by
violent white mobs and
National Guard troops who
refused to help, the students
eventually entered school
after President Dwight
Eisenhower ordered
paratroopers to protect them.
Little Rock Nine - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSdLPNQSa4k&feature=related
The Black Panthers
• Like Malcolm X, the Panthers
did not discourage the use of
force in self-defense, and they
often resorted to violence.
• Critics tended to ignore their
many non-controversial
activities, including running
medical clinics and free
breakfast programs for the poor.
• Branded "America's greatest
threat" they found themselves
under assault by the FBI and
police.
• Tensions culminated in a
December 4, 1969, raid that left
Chicago Panthers leader Fred
Hampton and a colleague dead.
• On August 28, 1963, a quarter of
a million black and white people
marched to the Lincoln Memorial
in Washington, D.C. in a show of
unity, racial harmony and support
for the civil rights bill.
• Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other
folk singers entertained the
crowd and others made
speeches.
• Civil rights leader Martin Luther
King, Jr. gave one of his best
known speeches, inspiring the
assembled crowd with the words,
"I have a dream."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4AItMg70kg&feature=related
• By 1964 a Civil Rights Act was passed
which achieved many of the aims of the
Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had been
quickly overturned. The 1964 law barred
discrimination based on race, color,
religion or national origin in public facilities
such as restuarants or hotels. Later laws
were passed to legislate fair election
practices.
How are
things today?
Slavery Footprint: http://slaveryfootprint.org/
Faces of Modern Slavery - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkalobOACeA
Did you know slavery exists in 21st century? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CQhNIfAN9c
Chocolate and Slavery - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSBXSXAxVOU